Small Miracles
Small Miracles – the World’s best selling toy is Hot Wheels. But it’s so much more than a 1:64 model.
Hot Wheels is the gateway to a world of cars for all types of car fans, from kids driving at 1,000 mph around the kitchen floor, to collectors creating one-off replicas of their recent purchase. Craig Callum is a long-term Morgan fan and also the Senior Design Manager at Hot Wheels.
Photographer: Matt Jennings & James Lipman
“Once you’ve got the Super 3 in your hand, suddenly you’re driving the Super 3. But this is your key to a real car, because that’s all they have. They’re not going to drive the real car and they know they’re not going to jump in the real car.
So this is the real car to them. This is reality.”
Being a car designer must rank as one of the most coveted of jobs for anyone with more than a passing interest in industrial design. Car design is a mixture of abject creativity, industrial design, engineering appreciation and – crucially – compromise. If you remove the practical constraints of homologation, pedestrian safety and physics, you end up drawing beautiful concept cars never destined to become a physical object. That sounds great fun, but making a one-off concept car is an incredibly expensive undertaking.
What if there was a role where you could be free of the limitations of science, where engineering considerations make way for a more emotional response. The ability to inspire people of all ages, to require and encourage imagination. Some might say the holy grail of automotive design.
Enter Craig Callum, Senior Design Manager at Hot Wheels®.
“When we’re choosing cars we want really strong silhouettes, a really obvious stance and appearance that works well at this 1:64 scale. So we’re not just making every car on the road, we really think about what is the car that’s really going to work as a Hot Wheels, what car is Hot Wheels, or, if it’s not already, how do we modify it or customise it to really give it that Hot Wheels spirit.”
“When we talk about the spirit of Hot Wheels, it’s really about these cars that are the most extreme something; they’re wild, they’re fantastical, or they’re the fastest or they’ve got these great aero details or a fantastic silhouette. Hot-rods work so well, they’ve got great proportions, they look like they’re going fast. The imagination of being able to drive these cars and handling them personally is such a drive.”
“I think that what’s often overlooked is that we think people buy these cars for attention. The guy in his Ferrari, the guy in his flashy sports car wants attention. But there’s normally a reason why they’ve chosen that car and it’s not always just for the attention. And I think with the more quirky vehicles like a Morgan and like some of the vehicles I have, it’s definitely a choice you’ve made. So it’s interesting to know what is that choice? What’s the story behind this? What inspired you to get there? And for me, yeah, it’s a quirky little French car from back in the 80s.”
It’s fair to say that Craig lives up to his reputation as a gearhead. The passion sparked with an encounter in a Citroën 2CV and some students in another 2CV coming in the other direction.
The film at the top of this page is a compilation of projects we’ve produced with Craig, from the launch film of the Super 3 in the USA, a cars and coffee event in downtown LA, a canyons blast and a cruise around the Venice Beach area in the new Plus Four, it makes sense that these cars resonate with him so much. In his four (four !) garages you’ll currently find an Austin Mini (the car he owned as a teenager) a 1955 Chevy 150 – lightly customised like all his cars, a 1931 Ford Model A race car called “Old Red”, a Ford Model A roadster, a Triumph Scrambler 900, a vintage BSA and sidecar and enough spare parts to make several more of each.
“LA gets a bad rap for traffic, and the traffic is pretty bad. But actually, if you’re just driving, then you kind of accept the traffic for what it is. I’ve never been too worried about being sat in traffic, because I’m sat in something interesting.
Going slowly, in a Morgan with the roof down and the sun and the palm trees around you, everything like that, there’s not much to complain about! It’s a good excuse to go slowly, and that’s a pretty good thing.”
“When we talk about the spirit of Hot Wheels, it’s really about these cars that are the most extreme something; they’re wild, they’re fantastical, or they’re the fastest or they’ve got these great aero details or a fantastic silhouette. Hot-rods work so well, they’ve got great proportions, they look like they’re going fast. The imagination of being able to drive these cars and handling them personally is such a drive.”
“You’re not driving it because you need to get from A to Z. You’re not driving it because you’re trying to be flashy. You’re driving it because you enjoy something about it and that something came from somewhere. So, what’s the story behind where that came from?”
