Paul Tam's lifelong dream was to design cars for General Motors. He realized that dream in the 1960's, though it was short-lived. In 1970, he then drove to California, to the offices of Mattel - makers of Hot Wheels - and said, "I want a job." "Just like that," Paul says. "Brash." But it worked. Paul joined with Larry Wood and Ira Gilford at Mattel in the early days of Hot Wheels cars to work as a designer and started designing some of the company's signature cars. Among them the Whip Creamer, a turbine car, which was his very first design for Hot Wheels.