Probably one of the coolest things to come out of the Star Wars craze is this life-size Hot Wheels Darth Vader car that was featured on Jay Leno’s Garage. While this car is not actually in the film, it’s a pretty cool tribute design. Designer Bryan Benedict and builder Billy Hammon walk us through the features of the car in this episode of Jay Leno’s Garage and show us the features of what they call a “character car”.
“They’re meant to be vehicular expressions of popular characters,” said Benedict. “When I’m designing character cars, I try to find the best vehicle type that will work best with that character.”
Benedict says that he had inspirational words written on his computer while designing this particular car, and they included “powerful, menacing, strong, performance”. But, as Leno pointed out, it had to be something that Mrs. Vader could take to the store.
The car features custom wheels built specifically for the car and the car breathes just like Darth Vader. There was a lot of thought put into every aspect of this vehicle. Benedict said, “For this particular vehicle, we wanted to represent the Empire Strikes Back version of Darth because that is really Darth’s movie.”
Check out the video to see more features of the car and to hear more about what the designer and builder have to say.
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