If you like cars, you’ve probably thought about becoming a car designer at least once in your life. Odds are you never went through with it, since it would require going back to college, pulling more all-nighters than you can shake a stick at, and then getting into one of the few grad programs that could actually lead to a career in car design. But you’ve at least thought about it. And I don’t blame you, either. Car designers are awesome, and their jobs look cool as hell.
Then again, no matter how cool an idea is originally, car designers still have to work around all those pesky regulations, while also making sure there’s room for multiple full-size humans inside and dealing with budget constraints. Hot Wheels designers, on the other hand, don’t have to worry about all that. No one buys a Hot Wheels car based on how spacious the back seats are or complains about how the doors work. If they want to design a pickup truck with a V12 in the bed, they get to do exactly that.
Hot Wheels has created a new web series that features some of the top designers at major automakers talking with Hot Wheels designers, and if you care about car design at all, I promise you’re going to want to give this series a watch.
Driving Design
“Driving Design” may not be the most creative name for a web series, but the first episode just dropped today, and it’s excellent. You also won’t have to block off a big chunk of your day to watch it, since the first episode is just under eight minutes long. Still, you get Alex Alexiev, McLaren’s principal designer, talking with Craig Callum, Hot Wheels’ senior design manager, about car design and all their favorite little details that make it into their final designs, like the new W1 hypercar.
Future episodes in the six-part series will feature Ford lead exterior designer Omead Dorandish, GM lead designer Raphael Molina, Lamborghini head of design Mitja Borkert, Nissan senior design director Ken Lee and Porsche chief designer Michael Mauer, all talking about different aspects of car design with various designers at Hot Wheels. From the sound of it, each episode will touch on a different aspect of the design process, whether it’s taking inspiration from aircraft, music, when to bend the rules, and the challenges of working with an iconic nameplate.
“Great design is the catalyst for so many things in our lives, and understanding the process behind it is massively inspiring,” director Derek Powell (and dear friend of Jalopnik) said in a statement. “With this series, I wanted to explore their journeys from a human perspective, witness those moments of inspiration taking shape—and invite the viewers to be part of these personal conversations.”
