Most Mustang enthusiasts get started at a young age, and we don’t mean those angsty, rebellious mid-teenage years when they’ve finally got a license and a car. No, Mustang fever usually takes hold at a much younger age, before the first signs of adulthood have ever emerged. As children, we come enamored with the coolest car on the block, and that car is almost always a Ford Mustang, no matter where you live.

Works on toy cars for a living

But nobody in their right mind is going to let a seven-year old drive a 400-plus horsepower muscle car, so we make due with the next best thing; a Hot Wheels die cast replica. Felix Holst never really grew out of the stage, becoming the lead designer for the Hot Wheels toy company. That means he gets to decide what the toys we buy and love look like, and as he explains in the above video, the Ford Mustang holds a special place in his heart.

Now you might be asking, what does the head of design for Hot Wheels actually have to do, besides deciding on a color palette? Well as it turns out, simply shrinking a full-sized car down to Hot Wheels proportions isn’t a simple job; proportions that work well at full-size don’t scale done properly, leading to skinny-looking vehicles with too-tall greenhouses. So Holst has to pretty much redesign the entire car, while staying faithful to the original design. Not exactly an easy task.

Of course it’s not enough to just make a Mustang into a Hot Wheels, they’ve got to add big wheel arches, wild paint jobs, and other standout features like you’d find on many a customized muscle car. As the man in charge of getting us hooked on Mustangs at a young age says,“It’s just badass American muscle car.”