To mark the 35th anniversary of Hot Wheels cars, Larry Woods, a Mattel designer for 34 years, brought some of his original drawings and automotive classics to the Automotive Fine Arts Society display at Pebble Beach.(Revs)(Interview)

To mark the 35th anniversary of Hot Wheels cars, Larry Woods, a Mattel designer for 34 years, brought some of his original drawings and automotive classics to the Automotive Fine Arts Society display at Pebble Beach. Before he got there, we spent a few minutes asking Larry some questions:

AW: How many cars have you designed?

Woods: I actually haven't been able to figure it out... Someone once told me we've made over 3 billion cars so far. I work on over 100 cars a year. In the beginning, it wasn't like that, we'd do eight or 12. It was nowhere near this big. Now we have about 30 designers.

AW: What is the biggest change you've seen at Hot Wheels?

Woods: The biggest change is the electronics, the computer. We used to have to make everything by hand. Now it's all computers... The time is cut tremendously, probably about a third is cut. The things that do take a lot of time are exotic cars, the ones you can't get any [computer] files on.

And the audience has grown tremendously. When I started, we did toy cars for kids and a few adults... and now we have a huge collector base that will pay about anything for some of these models. We did the ...