FROM THE STREETS TO THE BOARDROOM AND BACK WITH FELIX HOLST
STORY | Justin W. Roeser
PHOTOGRAPHY | Trip Davis
In the early 1970s, the North Sea (connecting Great Britain, Norway, Germany, and Denmark) was the wild west. Companies such as Philips, BP, and Shell sent troves of working-class roustabouts and roughnecks out to sea to man their rigs and drill for the sweet crude. It was a dangerous and unforgiving job, often deadly. Rough seas, heavy equipment, long hours, and isolation forged workers with extreme fortitude. One of those roughnecks was Robbie Holst, an educated, working-class father trying to provide for his new family.
The oil companies knew the high demands on their workers, and they tried to make the rigs accommodating. Hot meals, bottomless coffee, and cartons of cigarettes were the steady diet. As a nice auxiliary benefit, rig workers also had V.I.P. access to the latest movies and magazines. After weeks or sometimes months at sea, Robbie would travel back home hauling a stash of car mags and talking about movies he saw on the rigs. Vanishing Point, The Italian Job, Car Craft, and Rod & Custom fed the mind of his young boy Felix, who drew his first car at age two. Four decades later, artist and designer Felix Holst’s unique elixir of stencil, graffiti, and color dominate his vivid automotive canvases from inside his Los Angeles studio.
“ART SCHOOL FELT LIKE HOME”
In the mid ‘80s teenage Holst submerged himself in hip hop, street art, and skateboarding to escape the grim realities of his hometown. Newcastle was a major epicenter of the Industrial Revolution, but during the Thatcher conservative era the economy took a massive downturn. With the privatization of the coal industry and shipbuilding moving to Asia, the industrial hub was depressed. Hauling sports bags filled with spray cans and Thrasher mags, and blasting Schooly D on cassette, Holst became a nomadic creator. “Skateboarding was a lifestyle that all things tied into,” explains Holst “the candy paint, fluorescent colors, it became my evolution from cars.” Simultaneously evolving was Holst’s musical talent. His four-piece band Feral was steady gigging in the late ‘80s and, by his high school graduation in 1991, they released their first 7” record. “We got our single back from the vinyl plant the same day as our A level results. I got a D for art,” Holst laughed.
Though his bohemian lifestyle often overshadowed his academic responsibilities, Holst still managed to assemble his portfolio and submit his work to Newcastle College. “Art school felt like home” remembers Holst after joining the Art Foundation course at Newcastle. The program offered semesters in fashion, graphic, and product design as well as introductions to sculpture and photography. The purpose of the foundational course was to narrow down and help one choose their path of continuing education. Many of his teachers and mentors pushed Holst’s technical leaning mind to consider Design for Industry (Industrial Design) versus automotive design. “The idea was to bring product innovation not just automotive styling to the industry,” recalls Holst.
With his target set, Holst enrolled at Northumbria University in Newcastle with his sights on a degree in Design for Industry. With school during the day and music and clubbing during the night, Holst found his yin and yang for the next four years. He earned his bachelor’s degree and, while he halfheartedly applied to the Royal College of Art to further his studies in automotive design, he ditched the idea of more school, concluding that two more years of his youth would be sucked away. Watching from the sidelines as many of his school friends continued or landed jobs, he knew he wasn’t ready to get serious about a career yet.
ROCK BANDS AND HOT WHEELS UK
“My heart wasn’t in it; I wouldn’t have been an appealing candidate,” Holst speaks to his memories job hunting. But his interest was piqued by an ad in Design Week magazine: “Hot Wheels UK seeking temp product designer, send resume to ….” Holst remembered Hot Wheels from his childhood and was surprised to see the company was still around. Holst sent his resume to Hot Wheels and, several weeks later, he showed up to his first interview driving a self-described “beater” ‘83 Alfa Romeo Alfetta GTV. Serendipitously, the Product Development Manager Michael Lannie had a thing for Alfa Romeos and the pair formed an immediate bond. After meeting with the corporate hierarchy in multiple interviews, Holst was tasked with removing 20% of the parts in the tool plan for the Hot Wheels Car Wash. His background in design for industry paid off and Holst landed a six-month contract with Hot Wheels UK in 1997. “Hot Wheels felt natural,” said Holst, and his new job had him jet setting to Milan, Los Angeles, and back to the UK as a temp designer. “The Americans were impressed by my ability to draw muscle cars,” said Holst. “It was easy to get off the plane and fit right in even as a Brit.” In Venice Beach, Holst had the surreal experience of combing the very parking lots he had watched his teenage idol Natas Kaupas skateboard on VHS.
Unfortunately, two years later Mattel closed their UK operation and Holst, then a project manager, packed up his 16-valve Volkswagen GTI and moved into a community house with bandmates. “I needed to get back to art to find out who I was.” Holst’s new band, The Kustom Built, spent the next five years touring, recording, and getting steady radio play while living a “happy but penniless” life on the road. Managing multiple personalities in confined spaces taught him a lot about managing people, but it took a toll. “I was the glue that was keeping the band together,” he said. But it left him exhausted and he eventually decided to leave the band. After the band fell apart in 2004, Holst dialed up his old mates at Mattel to see if any jobs were open.
Holst accepted a new position with Hot Wheels in sunny California, managing their adult collector line. However, parent company Mattel pivoted last minute and directed Holst, suitcase and guitar in hand, to New Jersey to reinvent the Matchbox brand. Matchbox had been acquired by Mattel in 1996 but, to those on the inside, it was considered a dying brand. “Leadership was tired and lacked imagination, and yet, when I got there, I was still met with a ‘who the fuck are you?’” But Holst and his team hired new talent, made improvements in construction, and gave the brand a complete re-face, rocketing Matchbox annual sales from approximately $35M to $140M in just four years. In just six years, he went from Manager to VP of the entire Wheels Division, which consisted of Hot Wheels, Matchbox, Tyco, RC, Dinky, and others. “I was happy, working hard, playing hard, great friends—everything was cool,” remembers Holst.
MORE THAN JUST TOYS
From the highest level, Holst envisioned making the Hot Wheels halo brand more than just toys. “The strategy was to make Hot Wheels real and do crazy shit … build the stuff kids always pretended to do on their bedroom floors,” said Holst. So, Holst and his team dreamt big and used the centennial Indianapolis 500 as one of their launchpads. One way he morphed the public’s perception of the brand was by building a life size “V-Drop” track towering 10 stories tall complete with life-size Hot Wheels stunt truck. “I remember Mattel’s CEO and Head of HR standing next to me at the Indy 500 and, in my head, I’m thinking ‘are we really going to do this?!’” With 300,000+ spectators and a massive TV audience, legendary Rallycross and stunt driver Tanner Foust set the new world record for longest jump for a four-wheeled vehicle at 332 feet in the Hot Wheels truck. The following year, Foust returned along with driver Greg Tracy to perform on the infamous Hot Wheels double loop stunt track at the 2012 X Games.
During Holst’s reign, the old idea of static show cars disintegrated and seven functioning, world class stunt cars were added to the Hot Wheels family. “If you are only seen as a toy car, it’s hard to convince someone to wear your t-shirt. Nobody wears a Red Bull or Monster Energy t-shirt because they represent a sugary drink, they wear those t-shirts because they represent radical death-defying action.” These highly publicized stunts allowed Hot Wheels to open new channels for global sales including Brazil and China. These countries did not have the same history with car culture or toy cars as North America or the UK, but they became major contributors to sales growth. This worldwide expansion bolstered Holst’s transformation of a legacy brand into a lifestyle brand.
Furthering the toy car to real car strategy, Hot Wheels partnered up with General Motors and made the Hot Wheels edition Camaro in 2013. The $6,995 package included Hot Wheels badging, Kinetic Blue Metallic paint, 21” wheels, and several bits from the top-of-the-line ZL1. These coordinated marketing events created exceptional results at a time when the toy car market was globally stagnant, and most brands were in decline. Hot Wheels was quickly becoming one of the automotive industries most exciting places to work. Holst regularly received calls from designer’s agents trying to land their already successful clients a job at Hot Wheels. With this steady success Hot Wheels garnered the attention of Hollywood and rumors of a new blockbuster movie were buzzing. Columbia and Legendary Pictures both had rights to a future Hot Wheels film, but it was this very film project that pushed Holst to leave the boardroom to find himself again. Looking back on this monumental crossroads, Holst said “I realized I was at terminal burnout, and I’m only here once and have to be happy.”
(RE)BIRTH OF AN ARTIST
After spending the last two decades in global manufacturing, Holst set his future vision around empowering consumers to create their own product designs. With a partner, he formed HACKROD, intending to mesh hot rod innovation with bleeding edge technologies like industrial 3D printing, machine learning, and AI “to reimagine and regenerate bespoke vehicles.” Can you imagine putting on your VR headset and building your own car or motorcycle? Then having it shipped to your door either complete or in pieces for you to assemble? “It was miAdidas for configuring vehicles,” laughed Holst, recalling the now-defunct online shoe configurator. “You could 3D print a custom bike for $30K or spend double, triple, and have a custom builder make you one.” HACKROD went on to work with various automotive manufacturers over the next few years but, when the pandemic hit in early 2020, the work slowed, the partnership suffered, and Holst immediately pulled back to his healing roots: art.
Holst’s close friend, Porsche restoration expert John Benton of Benton Performance, had suffered a major fire at his Anaheim warehouse. Friends had created a GoFundMe page, and Holst wanted to help. “I was sitting in my office looking at a painting I did as an experiment and wondering if I could sell it and give the money to John,” remembers Holst. “But how do I reach a market that cares about someone like John?” Holst teamed up with Bring a Trailer (BaT) power seller Wob, who had previously auctioned cars for Holst, to create the first charitable art auction in BaT history. Holst raised $10,000 selling his mixed acrylic-and-spray-paint canvas of an early 1970s 911ST. After the tremendous success of the first auction, Wob asked Holst if he would be interested to make another painting for auction. “I painted another 911 piece that sold for even more.” Though Holst had concerns his new audience would see this as shameless self-promotion, “It couldn’t have been further from the truth. The best part is that I found a way of selling art directly to my target audience: car collectors not art collectors.”
We had the pleasure to witness Holst painting the Gulf 917 you see in these very pages. But before he even started the painting, he had to make the 70” x 40” canvas. “I forgot how therapeutic it is to build the substrate that I’m going to paint on. It’s a very magical process to go from a pile of loose fabric and bits of wood to create a drum tight object before you even start painting.” Holst often uses stencils that he’s hand-cut and he’s done it this way from the beginning, for over 30 years. Now, he’s eager to embrace technology and has transitioned to laser cutting because it gives him more time to focus on painting. “My style really is to get it to look like a very good painting of a car ... then fuck it up.” Holst sometimes spends hours sitting and staring at his pieces as he begins to “refine the noise.” This is when his simple painting of a car transforms into pop art. “I get to a point in my painting where my eye dances around and I start enjoying it. That’s when I know it’s done.”
Holst takes pride in building personal relationships with his clients, and he was eager to deliver this 917 commission to the new owner. He even installed it, the largest painting he had ever created, on his client’s office wall. Then he had a couple of beers reminiscing about his toy career with the owner’s children. The Gulf colors hit a major sentimental note with the owner, whose parents met at Gulf Oil in the 1970s. “To see his wife’s tears in her eyes when she looked at my art was just as good as the money,” expressed Holst.
Though supporting your livelihood by artistic means is a real challenge, Holst has lived and continues to live a life balanced by art, creativity, and bushels of courage. Pushed to work, pulled back to create. There are moments during his life when these two forces mingle, but ultimately Holst’s art is the restorative potion essential to his being. His timing and ability to hit the switch on the ejection seat has repeatedly landed him back on the ground and allowed him to start all over again. I trust Holst will take this path to new heights, continuing to use his talents to build a canvas, paint a picture, fuck it up, and refine the noise.
