BRIAN REGINALD: We love Hot Wheels, Hot Wheels cars.
DARRYAN GREAR: Isn’t that where every like, car obsession starts as a kid?
BRIAN REGINALD: That’s it!
BRIAN REGINALD: We probably been collecting Hot Wheel cars for maybe fifteen years now. One of the main
inspirations for the Land Rover build was a four-wheel drive down here.
BRIAN REGINALD: This is our creation of a Hot Wheels Land Rover Defender. It's actually a 1985 Land Rover
Defender County.
BRIAN REGINALD: We bought it for $1000 pretty much destined for the scrap heap. It was in pretty bad shape.
Total build time, it took about two years from start to finish. With the engine, we decided to go a V8 motor.
So my wife wasn’t too happy about that because it is pretty loud. The Defender weighs about 2,300 kilograms.
BRIAN REGINALD: My sons were a big help in the build, especially my oldest Darryan. He does a lot of the
wooden fabrication in the car. It was a lot of fun and arguments and all that sort of stuff.
DARRYAN GREAR: But we got there in the end. BRIAN REGINALD: Yeah.
BRIAN REGINALD: We love Hot Wheels, Hot Wheels cars and basically we wanted something...
DARRYAN GREAR: Isn’t that where every like car obsession starts as a kid? BRIAN REGINALD: That’s it.
DARRYAN GREAR: My dad first told me about wanting to restore an old Land Rover Defender when he came to me
one day and was like, ‘Oh, Dayg check this out. Wouldn’t this be an awesome build?” It was a photo of an
old-rusted out Land Rover Defender behind an old shed. I was pretty surprised at what he wanted to do but at the
same time it was one of those builds that if we could pull it off, it would just set a new benchmark.
BRIAN REGINALD: I had a passion for vehicles pretty much my whole life. I remember being 12-13 years old
and getting my first car and fixing that up with my father. He has a lot of background in rebuilding cars.
Without him, it wouldn't have been possible.
JOHN REGINALD: It’s a good project and I like working on cars as well. It was interesting to me.
BRIAN REGINALD: Do you remember when we had to pull apart this car for the first time?
DARRYAN GREAR: Yeah. BRIAN REGINALD: I think the beauty about a Land Rover
is you can pull it apart into heaps and pieces. We counted up about 130 different parts, handles and things
that needed to be sandblasted, powder-coated. The main elements of this Land Rover would be the air bag
suspension, the big wheels. The motor definitely sets it apart and the paint job is very unique. And the colour,
well, we just wanted something that was bright.
DARRYAN GREAR: Yeah. Back and forth for about a month, - oh, what do you think of this colour now?
And the colour that we end up choosing for the car.
BRIAN REGINALD: You can’t buy it. You just basically, we went in and mixed it up and came up with this colour,
and it’s a really cool colour because at night, under fluoro lights, the car glows.
It’s just a beautiful finish as well.
BRIAN REGINALD: Defender is 100% road legal. The top speed of the Defender hasn’t really been tested, but I can
say I’ve had it to about 160-180 km/h. The total cost of the vehicle is probably about $30,000, which was
surprisingly good for a car that was modified as much as it is. A project like this, you don’t build it for other
people, you build it for ourselves and for the memories.
DARRYAN GREAR: I’ll always be proud of my dad in anything that he does, and I guess that’s why I am so into
cars and my ideas as well, and it all starts with him.
JOHN REGINALD: I’m happy that he is showing interest in what I show interest in.
BRIAN REGINALD: I probably wouldn’t consider selling the vehicle simply because three generations working on
the vehicle and my dad being 76 years old, it’s good to have the memories of working on the vehicle.
And my children being so young, they can have memories when they get older as well.