Hot Wheels Matchbox design director Bryan Benedict at the Canadian International AutoShow in Toronto.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
Surrounded by million-dollar exotic cars at the Canadian International AutoShow in Toronto, Bryan Benedict reaches into his pocket and pulls out six of his favourites. Total value, about $10.
“This is my personal car,” he says, looking at one of them. “This is what I drive on the weekends, or whatever – it’s a ‘72 Corvette convertible. But unfortunately, a stupid neighbour crashed into me, and so as an Easter egg, we actually made the crashed version of my car, in Hot Wheels.”
So two of the toy cars in his hand are blue 1972 Corvette convertibles, but one is intentionally scratched on the right side, by the factory. Benedict says he’s still in the process of getting the real Corvette fixed, but the Hot Wheels model will make it to stores around the world, where thousands of them will be sold for a couple of dollars each.
Mr. Benedict's favourite Hot Wheels.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
Benedict is the design director for Hot Wheels Matchbox and he’d just flown in to the auto show from his Los Angeles home. He was here to explain his passion for the little cars and to oversee the Bigfoot monster truck that’s on display in the South Hall. His Uber from the airport was delayed by the snow, and the Bigfoot might have been a more sure-footed ride.
“I think it would actually do pretty well,” he says. “It’s so heavy, right? And it’s got the grippy tires. I think it would do just fine in all the snow.”
Hot Wheels has had a promotional partnership with the Bigfoot series of monster trucks for the last five years, though it’s been 50 years since the first real Bigfoot was built. That truck was based on a Ford F-250, with 48-inch tires, and now Bigfoot No. 24 is currently under construction. They thrill the audience at monster truck shows when they drive over hapless cars, and they cost about US$250,000 to build from special parts. It’s Bigfoot No. 8 that’s at the auto show, the first to be built with a tubular steel frame, and its 66-inch tires cost US$7,000 each.
Bigfoot monster truck No. 8 on display at the AutoShow in Toronto.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
The inside of the Bigfoot monster truck, with all of its exposed gauges and switches.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
However, you can buy a much wider and more fanciful selection from Hot Wheels that will fit in your pocket.
“There’s a 50th anniversary edition, with a special gold-and-blue paint scheme, and they made that as a real truck – my team designed that,” says Benedict, describing both the lifesized monster truck and its Hot Wheels companion. “We also design our own kind of crazy themed trucks. We’ve got a dinosaur truck, we’ve got a shark truck, and all kinds of different themes. We like to have fun with it. We design lots of wild stuff.”
Hot Wheels produces more than a million toy cars every day, made mostly in Malaysia, Thailand and China. They’re bought as both toys and collectibles, by children with their pocket money, and by adults like Doug Woods.
“I was always into cars even from an early age,” says Woods, 48. “I knew all the marques, knew all the badges, you know, yelling them out the window and pointing to cars. The wheels got turning at an early age. I just started collecting cars.
“We’d go across the border to Buffalo and my dad would buy me an empty carry case, one of those blue Matchbox cases or a Hot Wheels case, and we’d fill it up together. He’d have one level and I’d have the other level and we’d go to the stores down there and that’s how my collection grew.”
Now he has about 25,000 Hot Wheels cars at his home in Vaughan, Ont., more than any other Canadian, though only about 5,000 are on display at any one time. They fill a room in the house he shares with his understanding wife, Rebecca, and 6-year-old daughter Charlotte, who’s already begun her own collection.
Hot Wheels collector Doug Woods stands with his Beach Bomb surfer van. It was the first one he bought when he was 4 years old. Now, Woods has about 25,000 Hot Wheels cars.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
Woods is an automotive wholesaler who buys and sells real cars for a living. His Hot Wheels are considerably cheaper, though he says he once paid $7,000 for a Hot Wheels Evil Weevil Volkswagen, a dual-engined VW Bug from the 1970s, of which there are maybe five of its type in the world. “It’s unpainted with no text on the base – it’s a sort-of test or prototype version,” he says. “It’s kind of one of the crown jewels.”
Even so, his favourite may be the first car he ever bought, when he was 4 years old: a 1969 Volkswagen Beach Bomb surfer van that cost him 10 cents and which he still owns. He says that he and Charlotte like to set up a track at home and actually play with the cars, where “she’ll race her cars against Daddy’s old cars. Though we’ll put a pillow at the end so they don’t get damaged.”
In the end, Woods says his Hot Wheels collection is a cost-effective way to indulge his automotive whimsy, and Benedict agrees completely.
“That’s the thing – it’s such an easy entry-price point,” says Benedict. “It’s a way to engage in the car community in a way that’s so affordable and so approachable. It allows people to live out their dreams. Maybe they can never afford a Bugatti or a Koenigsegg, but they can buy the Hot Wheels, right?”