On Ferrari Friday’s, William Ross from the Exotic Car Marketplace will be discussing all things Ferrari and interviewing people that live and breath the Ferrari brand. Topics range from road cars to racing; drivers to owners, as well as auctions, private sales and trends in the collector market.
This week William crosses over with Crew Chief Eric from Break/Fix Podcast to talk about the Netflix Series, Car Masters: Rust to Riches, Sixth Season, and the conclusion of their journey into high-end exotics and the Ferrari saga.
Episode 29: MODDED.
William Ross: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Ferrari Marketplace. You know me, William. And I got my buddy and partner here, Eric, on the other side of this. And we’re going to revisit, I guess you could say. We had a review of the Car Masters episodes being shown on Netflix. It kind of left it at a cliffhanging moment, which they really didn’t go back into more into season six.
They just went a completely different route. I don’t know what they’re thinking at Counts Customs. Oh, I mean, I’m sorry.
Crew Chief Eric: Gotham Garage.
William Ross: So if anyone’s watching. Every time I see their gates, it says Gothico. I’m just thinking it looks just like Count’s Custom. Man, are they just like [00:01:00] copying those guys or what’s the deal?
Crew Chief Eric: Picture it, January 2024 when Season 5 came out. This is the first time Car Masters has aired what I call the second half or the next season in the same year because we’ve gone so long between seasons you almost forget. you’re like, Oh shoot, another season of car masters.
William Ross: Honestly, till you said something about it. I had completely forgot about the show. It was out of my mind.
Crew Chief Eric: If you’re watching this behind the scenes of Patreon, I dress the part. I got my beanie logo and I’m looking my best Mark Towley. Right. I don’t have the ponytail like he does, but you know, I figured I got to dress the part to get into the mood for this.
William Ross: Do you think that ponytail is real?
Crew Chief Eric: No, I think he’s bald. He’s bald under there.
William Ross: Well, I guess you would say start with season five. It was absolutely horrendous what these people did to this 360. It just got even worse for season six that just got released. There were some Ferraris involved in the beginning. There’s one at the end. We’ll get to that.
Crew Chief Eric: You and I talked about the green monster, the 360. And as you mentioned, the season ended on a [00:02:00] cliffhanger, which now we find out is West Coast exotics. touring the dealership. And at the time, Nick Smith presented a package deal, this sort of ultimatum, all or nothing, get into the high end community with a navy blue Ferrari 612 Scaglietti, and then a Ferrari 458 Italia that were supposed to be customized with no confirmed client. Bargain combo for the low, low price of 290K. And you’re sitting there going, how the hell are you getting these two cars for 300 grand? That just doesn’t make sense.
William Ross: Yeah, what’s going on with that?
Crew Chief Eric: So they left us there. Again, as my wife likes to point out when we watch the show together, it always sort of feels like half a season at a time is what we’re getting.
And okay, so be it. So when we start season six, we’re sort of doubling down. We find ourselves Resetting the entire scene like all right guys forget what happened in season five We’re at west coast exotics again, and we’re presented with two ferraris and we’re like wait What happened to the blue car and the black car?
Now we got a white car and a yellow car and instead of [00:03:00] a 612 and a 458 We’ve got a F8 Tributo and a 488 GTB.
William Ross: Yeah, completely changed. Completely different car.
Crew Chief Eric: But the deal remains the same. 300, 000 for these two cars. And I’m scratching my head. Even my wife’s going, one of these has to be worth 300, 000 by itself. There’s no way.
William Ross: Well, that’s what was baffling me. It’s like, all right, is it got a salvage title? There’s something more to that story on those cars that they obviously don’t go into at all. If I walked into a dealership and says, Oh, you can have this basically three year old car and five year old car for a two year old grand boat that both retailed over 300 grand brand new, just a few years ago. It’s not like they’re depreciating that bad.
Crew Chief Eric: No.
William Ross: I would have said done, but obviously there’s a lot more to, Hey, what’s the story behind these cars and whatnot. That’s why I’m saying maybe they’re salvatized and whatnot because their intent was anyways to hack them up.
Crew Chief Eric: Which is true of the 360 that they modified. That car was an accident car, an insurance car, a repo car. It was missing pieces, bumpers, all sorts of stuff. So in that [00:04:00] sense, it made sense. We’re going to take a salvage title. Well, we don’t need to rehash that. There’s a whole episode on that thing. So again, we find ourselves at West Coast Exotics with this yellow 488 coupe and a white F8 Tributo.
And you maintain a Ferrari market value index on your website. And correct me if I’m wrong, William, the F8 is trending at 350 grand by itself. And the 488 is around 250 grand. How did they end up with a two for one deal of 300k when, to me, that adds up to basically 700, 000 in car?
William Ross: That’s even under wholesale.
That’s the other thing, too, that was kind of a scratch in my head, because I would love to know what the hell the background story was on those cars. You know, you go look at wholesale numbers on that, That’s still way, way under wholesale numbers. So it’s like, what is the story behind this car? Again, they didn’t get into it.
So who knows, but there was no physical attributes looking at the car saying, well, okay, there’s a ding here, scratch here, dah, dah, dah. There was really nothing very blatant saying, all right, I can see [00:05:00] why they’re so cheap. They look fine to me. So, I mean, unless they had a hundred thousand miles each on them and.
That was a steal and a half. I mean, that was just a no brainer. Just taking those just to flip them. Yeah. They might’ve sat on them for a bit, but I mean, you’re going to make money one way or another on those cars as we’ll get into what they did with one of them. But that’s still a head scratcher to me, how that came about.
And no other things, baby. And again, that bean bowl wholesale. And even if those cars have been sitting there for six, seven, eight, nine months, you know, obviously just taking up space, how they have their dealerships set up. If they’re doing floor financing or what they’re doing on that, if they’re paying a nut on that every month or smart way to do it is know you own everything because you pay cash.
I mean, that’s the best way to ever set up your dealership if you ever get into that industry. I don’t know, maybe West Coast Exotics thought, well, hey, all right, put our name out there with this. You give us five, 10 minutes of the screen time. And that turns into, Hey, advertising, marketing for us. So we can duck this because, Hey, we’re getting exposure.
Cause you have X amount of viewers and whatever, blah, blah, blah, Netflix. I mean, I don’t know.
Crew Chief Eric: I think in Hollywood, they call that product placement.
William Ross: [00:06:00] There you go. There’s so many ways to skin a pig, right?
Crew Chief Eric: Unlike the 360 that they trailered in, they drove both those cars and they’re street legal. They ran, they seem to have almost zero issues whatsoever.
William Ross: Well, before we delve into these two cars, I kind of want to get into their mindset, what they’re thinking in regards to, Oh, we’re going to take our garage this way. This is what we’re going to get more high end stuff that I, cause they think, Oh, we’ve struck the muddle load. You know, they just gaudied up this 360 and whatever rich meth head they got to buy that car.
Is beyond me so they’re thinking oh, we got this thing and you know, they made good money on the car So I was saying what they say 45 grand or something like that.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah in profit
William Ross: So he’s got all his costs everything labor and that stuff covered in that and so there’s 45 grand profit Well, you can’t ignore that say hey We’re onto something and
Crew Chief Eric: I like that he had enough leftover paint that he resprayed his truck the same color as the ferrari.
William Ross: Oh my god – Florida have mercy.
Crew Chief Eric: Did you notice the corvette? That he had in the background that was also matching the truck.
William Ross: You know, it kills me. Is there a, Oh, and he’s always saying, Oh, I’m [00:07:00] the creative one. I have all these, uh, just let my juices flow. Give me creative control. I’m just going to do it. I was like, Oh my God, I’ve seen what you do.
That’d be a nightmare. If anyone’s watched this show, they’re not going to give you creative control because it’s horrendous. Nick should understand. I don’t know if anyone’s looked into his background. He’s got a little dealership, you know, he delves into these little cars I mean, he’s not all just Ferraris, Lamborghinis, stuff like that.
He gets into lesser expensive products.
Crew Chief Eric: And he’s known for vintage bikes as his thing.
William Ross: Yeah, how he got dang this, who knows, but it was like no real thought and conversation was had. Nick understands that market, that industry, those clients in regards to how it’s gonna work and what these people are and how they are.
Those other guys, they had no clue and they’re just kind of going off base and it seems like Nick should have sat down and had a very, very serious conversation with him and got him, I would say, sign off, but say, look, and hammered his home five, six, seven different times to him. Say, do you understand? No one’s going to give you carte blanche unless they’re just Incredibly stupid or as we’ll get into with that McLaren in a future episode to [00:08:00] someone’s a youtuber They just want to get views and hits and whatnot.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah,
William Ross: that was a head scratch to me, too It’s like oh my god They’re just jumping in with just completely blind not understand us at all and thinking oh We’re gonna make 50 grand and all these we’re just gonna make these things look ugly as shit But anyways continue
Crew Chief Eric: there comes a couple of points in the first half of the season where Nick is like look whatever you do Has to be not so much subtle, but it needs to be in line with the ethos of Ferrari. Because if you do something drastic, the value of the car is going to plummet significantly. That 350 grand that that Tributo is worth. If they just sold it at that moment, take a hundred grand off the car easily because who wants a highly customized F8 Tributo or a 488 GTB or whatever. Now let’s get into his plan a little bit.
Because I didn’t disagree with his thought process. The execution is something else. Mark turned his attention on the white car. Satin white finished F8 Tributo. And they kind of parked the [00:09:00] 488, which was in Giallo, which is yellow, off to the side. And they’re like, we’ll deal with that car later. Okay, fine.
When he first shows the plan for the Tributo, I went, ooh. F40. I like this. I see where you’re going. That’s kind of neat. You know, wide body is his thing and big wheels and, and all that kind of stuff.
William Ross: I’m glad you saw that. That was just a total rip off of an F40 front.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And I was like, okay, I can live with that.
Now the back end is always a problem. And we’ll get to that as we continue talking about these cars. But the front, I was like, okay, I’m on board. I would love to see you do this, but how are you going to do this without destroying the car? And in my opinion, that would have meant taking the hood off, taking the bumper off, taking the fenders off, making it so you could convert the car back to what it originally was.
But you’re going to have to create an F40 clamshell from scratch. And I don’t know that that was money and time well spent in that sense. They nipped that in the bud pretty quick. Nick turns around and tells him, the guy wants some [00:10:00] vinyls, suspension adjustment, and he wants wheels, and a couple other little just simple mods.
You could tell everybody was like, why are we doing this? What’s the point? Which at that moment, my wife turns and goes, you know, sometimes it’s okay to just be a tuner shop. If that’s what the clientele wants and you can make profit on wheels and you can make profit on an exhaust profits, profit, exactly.
So I didn’t take issue with it. I do think it was a huge letdown because there was all this buildup to what they were going to do with the tributo. And it’s like. Okay, well you added two vinyl stripes and you put on some actually kind of neat looking wheels.
William Ross: Yeah, it wasn’t bad. I liked them.
Crew Chief Eric: I did love that the gotham garage shield double g thing was glued on and you could see them like With 3m tape like putting it on you knew that was coming right off.
William Ross: Oh exactly. Yeah That’s another thing too, you know, and you see a lot of those that you see on TV and stuff and do that. And you see it in this series too, putting their name, everything on that. And you’re putting it out there, but you know, it’s Gaudi’s it up so bad. I mean, and that logo sticking up there on the front.
I mean, that’s [00:11:00] a scenario where it’s saying, Hey, do you mind? Hey, if we do this and this, and I’d be like, if I didn’t mind, I’d be like, well, then take some money off. Cause that’s advertising for you.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. That is a weird situation to be in. Now. I do think that those Gotham garage emblems came off pretty quickly after the car was the West coast.
William Ross: Yeah.
Crew Chief Eric: I did check their inventory to see if either of those two cars are still there, and they’re not. Not available, not for sale, so whether they haven’t updated or they took them down because the show is airing or whatever, but they don’t list them as available there. So, the Tributo, all well and good aesthetically.
Nothing drastic, nothing major. The Italian stripes, Lended more to like the Lamborghini performante, which came with those stripes from the factory is kind of the same idea, especially offset asymmetrical. Okay. Nothing really original there. That’s fine. Now the exhaust swap was kind of interesting, but they didn’t make that exhaust.
They bought that exhaust. That was a bolt on competition replacement exhaust or whatever, which then they had issues with.
William Ross: Well, that’s the other thing too, is they didn’t get into [00:12:00] this. Oh, we got the guys coming over. They’re going to die. Not see what the hell is going on with it. Why it’s coming up. Then they didn’t explain, oh, here’s what happened.
So obviously, I guess they fixed it. Maybe it’s just going into the ECU. So, but I mean, you have no clue.
Crew Chief Eric: Swap two vacuum lines because it’s a baffled exhaust and away they went. What clued me in there is when they called West Coast and brought the guys over to Quote unquote, fix the car or at least help them fix the car.
My wife and I pause and we were like, so is this the new deal? They’re going to be doing the tuning work for West coast because they don’t do their own tuning. They’re the dealership. They just want to flip the cars and sell them. That’s not a bad relationship. That’s not a bad side hustle to have. It’s like, here’s a bill of materials.
That the client wants you guys take care of it. We give you three or four points on the deal and the margin on the parts or whatever, and away you go. But that’s not what Mark wants, right? Mark wants to cut these cars up.
William Ross: Which is sad because it’s like to Nick’s point, it takes time. You got to build up.
One, I mean, that’s a great upsell for West Coast, because if a guy comes in and says, well, I like that, but I want some more zing to it, I’m [00:13:00] like, well, hey, tell you what, this is what we can do. We have a partner we work with, what’s your thoughts and ideas, and we can get it done for you and do the upsell, you know, and right there, the dealership can tack on crap loads of profit into that.
And then, like you said, market stuff in the back end, but what happens is, is the dealer says, hey, this is who we partner with, so they know who it is. So. What do they do when they get tired of that after six months a year or whatnot, or they got all their hits and everything they wanted on their channels and Instagram.
They go back to Gotham, say, Hey, tell you what, I need a new wrap. I need this, dah, dah, dah. Then you all of a sudden you get in repeat business. And then now this person is coming direct to you. So you got the full boat, you know, on this stuff. It’s very short sighted thinking and it’s kind of like ego getting in the way.
And especially how they have that set up. Cause that’s the other thing too, is I know in the earlier season and how they originally set this up is, is they all share in the profits. Now, like these people are getting an hourly, nothing like that, unless they changed it. I don’t know, but my understanding is they all share in the profits and whatnot.
So this is all of them. Basically. It’s like an employee owned shop in essence, ESOP, whatever it is. Profit’s profit. And it’s not like they got [00:14:00] 50 cars or 20 car jobs lined up, and you can turn and burn those things in a day or two.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.
William Ross: That’s easy money. Buying the wheels, fixing the stance, the exhaust might take a bit, but doing the vinyl wrap, whatever on it, that’s a day or two depending on the extent of it.
And it gets them into that market. That’s the thing that I just don’t understand. He does not see it.
Crew Chief Eric: And we’re still just talking about the first episode. And one thing that Nick said towards the end of that episode is, And I thought it was code for something. You know, you could tell there was tension between him and Mark.
Like, things weren’t going well for a while. And you have to imagine, ten months has gone by. or longer since they shot and released season 5 to season 6 and all that kind of stuff. But Nick says, and he keeps saying, we got lucky with the 360.
William Ross: I was catching that too and I was like, damn straight. And that goes back to my comment, whatever meth head rich guy they got to buy that thing is, man they should have been thanking the man upstairs for that because god that thing was so ugly.
You know, I, I’m using the word someone said on the show, they use that. And I was like, that is just sums everything up right there in that car. Cause it was just absolutely gaudy as [00:15:00] anything. I mean, that’s, I was just got stupid money and saying, ah, you know what? I’m going to be on the show and I don’t care.
I got dropped 160, 170 grand wherever it was. They sold it for, you know, and who cares? You know, he’s just got dumb money.
Crew Chief Eric: Look at it this way. A year later, we’re still talking about the green monster. So,
William Ross: yeah, I mean, I, yeah, I guess. Yeah. What, what’s that saying? It is
Crew Chief Eric: all publicity is good publicity, even if it’s bad.
William Ross: There you go. Yeah. Unless you’re Diddy.
Crew Chief Eric: Let’s talk a little bit about the 488 sitting in the corner. We don’t know what the heck’s going on with this Giallo 488 GTB.
William Ross: That yellow is beautiful. I mean, and that’s a factory colored car. Even that we makes it a little, I would say rare, but
Crew Chief Eric: I’m not a fan of yellow Ferraris, but the 488 wears it well, which is surprising.
You know what I mean? I’m like, ah, actually it looks pretty good. I think the 488 honestly looks worse in red. You know, if I had to choose between ketchup and mustard, probably go with the yellow in that case. Granted, I’m a big fan of gray and black Ferraris, but that’s a whole nother story, right? We sort of pan left suddenly, and Nick shows up with a McLaren.
Like, after the F8’s gone, we’re on to the next exotic, and I’m like, [00:16:00] McLaren? Okay.
William Ross: Out of left field, all of a sudden, it’s just, and again, they just drop the whole storyline. You have to guarantee that there’s a lot of people watch. Well, what the hell happened to them? What’d you guys do? I mean, did you just sell them?
It’d take you a minute and a half or not even just to kind of go in the storyline saying, well, Hey, you know, we whole set out or we did this or we gave it back to, you know, whatever. Tell people what you end up doing with the car because it’s just hanging out there. They know they have the client and the customer.
They dialed up the F8, which again, didn’t turn out bad. Looked pretty good. But what did you do? You always see is Nick driving out with the car. That’s it.
Crew Chief Eric: On to the next one.
William Ross: Then there’s McLaren.
Crew Chief Eric: I knew something was up. Even my wife says this feels a little staged because of all the tape and the cardboard and all the stuff that they were mocking up.
They weren’t really working on it like they would something else. They started to do that with the Tributo as well, where they were like, well, this is where we’re going to cut the fenders. And they weren’t really, it was all just tape and magic markers, you know, that kind of stuff. I don’t know if Mark actually knew this kid [00:17:00] was a kid.
What was he maybe 20 years old? YouTuber, TikToker.
William Ross: At best, if that, and you would think the kid must’ve been all hyped up on his Adderall or something. Cause I mean, he came in just all geeked up.
Crew Chief Eric: I mean, he was thinking need for speed underground. It was like, we’re going to put led lights and we’re going to big wheels and wings and flames.
And I’m like, Holy cow. That is Mark’s target audience is the people that are really into, as my wife likes to call it. Hot Wheels cars. Yeah. And that’s a shtick and that’s fine. And he does that really, really well. But I was like, this is a new McLaren. Like seriously. And then Nick shows up with his dad.
William Ross: Yeah. And
Crew Chief Eric: I, I’m gonna say it this way, shit gets real fast.
William Ross: Oh, gotcha. And you know, and you have to wonder too. And in that scenario I would put out some of that, blame a good portion of that on Nick. Nick had to have known the whole situation because I would have to say, I mean, I can’t imagine some young kid like that came to me.
My first thing to go, so wait, is this your car titled in your name? You can do what you want. Dad’s not involved. Mom’s not involved and get it clarified. Cause then if he [00:18:00] says, Oh yeah, it’s mine. Okay. Then you put it on the kid. But if he would just went blind, the kind of this kid reached out and says, Hey, I got a McLaren.
I want to do this stuff. And just like, yeah, okay. We can do it, you know, and not really doing some due diligence. I’m at some egg on your face.
Crew Chief Eric: I also feel like it was a little petty. My wife said it Felt like Nick was trying to prove a point to the crew because the dad was really open and transparent.
That was not scripted. He was like, what are you thinking? The value of this car? Like he went on this tirade about, you know, not no way, not know how. And I was like, amen. And you could see when they would shoot Nick in the background, he had this cat eating the canary grin on his face. Like I’m making my point very clear that you cannot do what you want to do with these cars.
These types of buyers are all going to be kind of cut from this mold, so pay very close attention to what he’s saying because that’s what they’re going to want and that’s what they’re going to pay for.
William Ross: Another thing too, and again it’s a missed opportunity because it kind of goes back to what they did in the F8.
Someone could have stepped in and it should have been Nick. Tell you what, we obviously want to do some of this [00:19:00] with the car. He wants to do this with it. Where’s our happy medium? Okay, well let’s not do all the fun stuff. What if we got into doing this? And again, it’s baby steps. Putting the underground light in it.
Doing a wrap on it. This and that. Putting some new wheels on it. Not getting too nuts and cutting the body all up. But you could do 15, 25 grand out the door and it cost you maybe 8 to 10. You know, hey, you could make some good money on it. But again, no one stepped in to do it. But to your point, it’s Nick’s in the background and whatnot saying, look, see, this is what I’ve been trying to tell you and you’re not listening to me.
And that’s exactly where they went.
Crew Chief Eric: And the other thing that my wife and I talked about was what happens when If this kid is driving his dad’s McLaren, as we found out, and his dad goes off about like, how are you going to clear the driveway with the splitter? And how are you going to drive this every day?
And it must be nice to, you know, be 20 years old and driving a McLaren every day. And that’s fine.
William Ross: Real world problems.
Crew Chief Eric: To each their own. But my wife said, what if that kid, God forbid, got into an accident with a modified McLaren? How does the insurance company handle that? Where you’ve cut up the car, And now they got to replace [00:20:00] big sections of the car with stuff that maybe didn’t need to be repaired in the same way.
Does it change the safety? Does it do this? Does it do that? So it’s like, where does this rabbit hole finish? When you think about it from the perspective of I’m putting this highly modified car in the hands of a young driver.
William Ross: Obviously, you know, real world stepped in with dad standing there and pointing out all these things.
Yeah, cause guarantee that kid driving around, he’s going to crash it at some point in time. Be in the first six hours or first 60 days, it was going to happen. That McLaren, it’s a beautiful car too. I mean, what else you’d really want to do that anyway?
Crew Chief Eric: And the dad says that he says something like this car was perfection from when it left.
The factory. And he’s like, what are you going to do to it?
William Ross: Flare. Well, first of all, that’s like two feet coming out that side. So you’re adding another four feet. It’ll be as big as a dually. It’ll be ridiculous. I mean, that’s just obnoxious. And again, it’s just not being realistic in regards to that market.
Yeah, it’s a missed opportunity for them. It is the way they operate.
Crew Chief Eric: And so now we’re talking broader exotics and collector cars too at the same time, right? [00:21:00] And so this is such a weird season because there’s this interweaving of classic muscle hot rods, all the stuff that they like to do, you know, big military vehicles and all that kind of stuff, not to give away the whole season.
And then we got these exotics and included in the exotics. I think was a bit of foreshadowing. You don’t realize until the end of the season why they suddenly brought in a DeLorean. You’re like, what the heck is this about? And to give it away is they’re setting up this whole idea of doing nostalgia cars.
At the end of the show, which we’ll talk about another Ferrari, they hone in on, you know, Magnum PI. My wife and I were laughing about, you know, Nexus Knight Rider and the Flintstones and the Munsters and God knows what else. But the DeLorean is another nostalgia car. And so they did it almost like, it’s like a litmus test.
And it was really interesting because it goes right in line with what Nick was saying about these high end exotics. The customers want things a certain way. And when they did the DeLorean, Mark goes. The DeLorean community is very specific about the way [00:22:00] they preserve these cars. You don’t mess with the stainless.
You don’t do this. And the client was exactly like that. So what did they do? They wrapped it. And I’m just like, Oh my God, this guy is going to have an aneurysm when he sees this car.
William Ross: Oh my God. And that kills me. Cause I always go back to my mind and go, this guy thinks he’s creative and he can create. Oh my God.
It was again, fugly. Unbelievable what they did to that thing. And they put the exhaust on. Okay. It did sound a little bit better, but that thing’s got 130 horsepower. Okay. You need to do something with the motor. If you’re going to do something, but again, just do an aesthetic. And here’s the funny thing is that almost went back to exactly what they did on the F8 just a little bit more.
They put the air dam side skirt under tray. I mean, they did a little bit more, but it was basically almost the same thing they did with the F8 that they were pitching a moment about saying, well, we’re not just going to be a tuner shot. I mean, I was like, well, you basically did that with the DeLorean.
Crew Chief Eric: And I have to say that rear splitter was just.
Oh my god, let’s add some more weight to an already rear biased car.
William Ross: Yeah, I saw those brackets that they’re putting on there to mount that thing. They had a quick shot of it and where it was, I’m like, wait a minute, that’s just, [00:23:00] oh my god, that’s, he’s just gonna kill it.
Crew Chief Eric: That’s so the owner can just unbolt it and throw it in the trash.
William Ross: Yeah, I felt so bad, you know, and the guys, You know, very adamant aluminum and is like, no, we’re going to wrap it. Screw it. We’re going to do it. And so, and then that rap was just horrendous. And was the doc being nice for the show? Oh, it looks great. This and that. And then as soon as he got to take that shit off, it didn’t do anything to it.
No,
Crew Chief Eric: I have seen some painted DeLoreans black and some other colors and they actually look really cool when they’re done right. So I wasn’t opposed to wrapping it because as my wife pointed out. If Doc doesn’t like it, they can just rip it right back off the car and it’s back to stainless steel. No harm, no foul.
Painting is a bigger deal and painting stainless is really, really tough anyway. I’ve seen them in other colors and I think they look neat. The candy apple carbon fiber probably wouldn’t have been my first choice. But then again, you’re sort of limited on what that car can wear that it’ll look good. I thought the wheel choice was bold, but it actually worked for the body style.
William Ross: Yeah, it wasn’t bad. I don’t know. It just baffles me each time you think he’s being [00:24:00] creative on this. Now, I’m not going to take it away from the people in the shop.
Crew Chief Eric: No, they’re awesome.
William Ross: Yeah, caveman is just a monkey just cutting stuff up and whatnot. Assembles things takes it apart and cuts it up. But you know the new guy Jake they kept he’s really good the girl She’s a great engine builder.
She knows what she’s talking about and the other guy, you know, he’s babbling up metal work I don’t like that. I mean he does some really creative things and what he can build I just don’t see this creative that mark thinks he has
Crew Chief Eric: my wife and I always enjoy the episodes where mark, shawn and nick Are out of the way and it’s just the crew working.
And I’ll just lightly reference the Humvee build with the biodiesel. And I was talking about that and I said, I love when Tony starts to talk and he’s like the professor of the group. And he’s like, look, guys, this is how it works. And if you do this and then the science of that, and we’re going to take it over the machine and we’re going to run it in the CAD and it’s going to bubble up, dude, we’re learning something like this is awesome.
There’s another show on motor trend and it’s like one guy or two guys. And he’s very like that. Yeah. He talks through the process. Why he’s building it that way. Why we got to curve it like this. And it’s [00:25:00] super educational. Now it might not be exciting and dramatic, you know, less reality, television and more reality.
Like the science of car building. I always appreciate when they have a build like that, where they can do what they need to do. It’s still creative, but we’re learning to your point, what they’re doing and why they’re doing it.
William Ross: Yeah.
Crew Chief Eric: The DeLorean is this beginning, this foreshadowing of this nostalgia thing that mark’s got running around in his head You see it again with the kenworth semi truck and all that kind of stuff And I will leave that to the article that i’m writing that reviews the entire season But let’s get back into the ferrari saga,
William Ross: you know talking about the guys what they’re able to do So, I mean, I guess bringing mark’s vision to life.
Obviously there’s episodes that go on between there’s some stuff that happens changing up their thought process, some hiccups and whatnot. But we get to the next Ferrari, the one episode it ends, Mark and Nick have a conversation and basically states, Hey, we’ll leave on good terms. Nick, you get something that comes about, Hey, let’s work together.
But you know, this is just not what we’re going to do. [00:26:00] So right there, you think, okay, that’s it. Exit next stage left. That’s it. You’re not going to see him on the show anymore. How they do these shows, if they’re scripted out, planned out, or if it’s done, hey, they don’t know what they’re doing from two weeks to the next.
I don’t know, but you weren’t going to hear from Nick at all. Uh, the blue all of a sudden he reaches out and says he has something of interest. I want to say it was a 78 or 79. It was one of the early ones. You know, it was a Ferrari 308. It looked like it was sitting for a while cause it was a bit dusty and dirty.
But what is it? The guy that owned it obviously has a ton of money. He had a bunch of toys. Mark is trying to do this on his own because, you know, Sean’s all of a sudden all jazzed up because now, hey, we’re getting back to our roots, this and that. So he got his juices flowing again and everything like that.
In the one episode, he starts working on this big package deal where we’re going to build this and trade that and get this and work our way up. It’s almost like work your way up to a Ferrari from a paperclip situation. So that’s going on. They talk about, which you’ll read about and see is Mark Finch is building a Kenworth truck that was kind of basically a tribute to his dad’s [00:27:00] truck that his dad used to drive back in the day for work.
And he was very familiar. So he does that up. I don’t know about that front grill, but it turns out pretty decent. So Mark’s kind of working with Nick, Nick reached out to Mark. So he says, Hey, we’ve got something to work out now. One whole deal fell through on the Humvee. That’s a whole story itself. And some people got to go to themselves, dig up these customers, this stuff.
I got to tell you what, that’s where a lot of these people act and aren’t the way they think, especially when they have money. They just think, Oh, I’m going to hoodwink these guys and this and that and stuff like that. And you get really annoyed to them. And there’s one guy in regards to this Camaro. They do a deal with that.
I would have punched the guy in the face when he was trying to pull that with me, because it was just, that was annoying to me to go. This guy’s just a piece of. You know what? But anyways, the one whole deal falls due on this Humvee. So that was supposed to get traded for the Jag that they were supposed to then all of a sudden work on and get into a six figure range.
What they had in their mind, thinking it was going to be a 200, 000 car.
Crew Chief Eric: You imagine what they would have done to that Jag?
William Ross: Exactly. Oh my God. That was in my mind going, what in the hell would they do to that poor Jag? I mean, that thing, as we all know it, you know, everyone says, Oh, Enzo said that’s the most beautiful car ever.
There’s a bunch of debate at [00:28:00] that, but it’s a gorgeous, gorgeous car. You don’t touch that. You don’t do anything to it.
Crew Chief Eric: 63 Series 2 convertible. That’s the perfect E type Jag. Like what are you doing?
William Ross: Exactly. And it’s like, Oh my God. So that all falls through. So they’re stuck. They have no project done going on.
So Mark becomes the wheeler dealer. When Nick calls about this, he wasn’t sure what he was going to do the truck. Well, it turns out, well, this guy is pretty eclectic in regards to what he likes to have in his garage, which you see when they go there, he brings the semi and basically ends up trading the semi for the Ferrari.
You know, I don’t know trucks, semis like that, value wise, whatnot. I know some of those older trucks like that, when they’re done, they’re worth some big money. So it’s not like it’s cheap, but I want to say the guy with the Ferrari, I think probably made out in the positive, because that 308, you could tell it’d been sitting a while, a lot of dust on it, dirt, everything like that.
It did fire up, but service wise, I mean, that thing needed to be, you know, Gone through left, right, which is something else we can talk about, which they didn’t even say anything about on this car.
Crew Chief Eric: And so I went back to your Ferrari market index to see where the 308 GTSs are trending. [00:29:00] And so obviously there’s a lot of variables to that.
Like you’re saying mileage records, you know, condition that it have this option or that option. This is a U S spec 308 GTS. Cause the big park bench bumpers and all that kind of stuff. According to the market, 88, 000 for a 308 in probably pristine condition. So they were saying in the show, 60, 000 to 70, 000.
The truck was probably worth 120, 000 to 150, 000 in that range. So Mark’s like, I’m upside down, but it’s going to take me months to unload a custom semi, which probably isn’t far from the truth. So I think he saw his exit. And he’s like, I’m going to take it in the shorts because we can continue to move the ball forward.
And then a bunch of people got upset by that, but it’s business, right? I don’t think he made the wrong move.
William Ross: No, no. You know, and I applaud him for that because when you have a business like that, and you’re the one running the show and it’s you and the buck stops with you. Those are the type of decision and moves you have to make.
They’re going to hurt. What’s more important, you keeping your toy or moving things forward to grow [00:30:00] your business? Again, looking down the road, we’re in the future. Okay. Once we get bigger, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Hey, I’ll buy another one. Isn’t that? I applaud him for making that move because he left a lot of money on the table, but Hey, he got going and he got it.
The body, everything on that car looked like it was in decent shape. Didn’t look bad, but again, who knows service history wise or whatnot. My guess would be is that guy that traded it with didn’t have it long or he just picked it up recently because when you see the guy’s garage everything’s got you think within the first two weeks that he has something he’s gonna clean it do whatever so who knows how this guy got the car so but then they get it and lo and behold what happens is they show up at the shop with it surprising everyone else in the shop well okay now we’re back to doing exotic so to speak if they want to call the 308 an exotic it was that curveball mark’s sitting there and who drives it in Nick, that was kind of an interesting setup, but again, you know, being scripted, I would hope, or I guess you say realism, that they didn’t tell everyone in the shop what was happening.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.
William Ross: It should have surprised them. I would hope that’s how they went about doing it [00:31:00] because, get that authentic, Whoa, what the hell, I didn’t think we were doing these anymore.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, and Sean seemed legitimately angry, like, My wife and I both thought he was going to quit on the spot, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
William Ross: Exactly. I’m
Crew Chief Eric: sort of tired of his style and I don’t want them to replace him, but they need to replace him or they need to do this differently again, talking about the next season, if there is one, I think they are going to do things differently because this model of the negotiation and. The way they do things is tired.
It’s old. We need to move on from that. Now, Nick style isn’t any better. No, it’s different, but it’s also cringy and it’s just whatever. So yes, they show up at the shop and we thought that Sean was done. You can’t fake that. Like he was visibly disturbed.
William Ross: And you know, and I don’t know why, you know, honestly, because.
When you have a shop like that, if you’re going, all right, I got one person I only deal with, like this, and he works here, he’s fine. I’m like, you’re just setting yourself up fail. I mean, in this industry and doing especially [00:32:00] that is you got to have so many contacts and whatnot. And who cares where the car or the source or anything came from?
Hey, if it’s going to work, you do it. And he should recognize that my reaction would have been, Oh, sweet. Oh, Hey, great job, Nick. This is awesome. We can do this and that. Who’s this guy. We got it from, what’s his deal, you know, and blah, blah, blah. Hey, what are the opportunities there? Again, very close minded and took it very personally, thinking he sucked at his job and he’s going to get fired or whatnot.
I had the same thought. I thought when he walked out that door, the next scene was going to be him, like, out in the parking lot talking to the thing, saying, Yeah, I’m done. I’m not going to be treated or disrespected, blah, blah, blah. You know, they sat down and talked it out. Something about him, I don’t know, just seemed shady.
I don’t know. He’s got that weird vibe, the way he goes about talking and everything. Just like he’s hiding something, you know, it’s like, I don’t know what it is, but it just seems, and the way he has that talk and this and that, and the way he just goes about doing things, it’s just like, Oh,
Crew Chief Eric: it’s sort of like the old wanted posters in the post office.
You’re like, did you buy a car from this man? I’m like, I don’t think so.
William Ross: Exactly. So [00:33:00] obviously the tension, you know, you got to have your tension and whatnot, your little trauma stuff for the show. But they get the 308 silver black interior. And as they do in the other episodes, as everyone that watches knows is they do the computer generated what they’re going to do.
Oh my God.
Crew Chief Eric: Everybody loves to rip that whole thing off from the great British baking show. Like the artist’s rendering of what it’s going to be.
William Ross: Yeah. Then you start hearing the wife is getting this for her husband as a birthday present. So it’s going to be a surprise. So there’s no input from the person that’s getting it.
Hey, well, I want the Magnum PI, dah, dah, dah, this and that. So, okay, what are you, peanut red? Get into some little stuff to add to it. Oh, some Italian racing theme to it. But if you can, and she’s willing to pay a little extra if you guys can do it and they like it, some inspector gadget stuff. Right. I. e. some James Bond stuff in his car.
So like, oh my God, this is just, you start pictures, you shouldn’t have, what are you doing? Then they go to the computer generated stuff and you’re like, Wait, what? They’re gonna do what? It’s like, okay, maybe they’re just exaggerating on the computer generated stuff. But [00:34:00] then all of a sudden you see them, they’re disbanding the car, taking out the ugly bumpers and whatnot.
But then you see them put on the first fender flare. And I’m like,
Crew Chief Eric: This to me was reminiscent of, I think it was season four where they did the Mako Shark C3 Corvette and they’re widening it and you know the side pipes and the big flares and the big wheels and all this and in a very Hot Wheels style.
Which, in some ways, I was on board with modding that C3 Corvette. And in the same way I was on board with modding the Ferrari. Because, like you said, is it really an exotic? It is the most mass produced Ferrari of all time. It’s like the 944 for Porsche. It’s what saved them from going under. You know, the same idea.
So there’s a ton of 308s out there. So I didn’t feel so bad about them cutting it up. But there’s a certain way of going about it. When you looked at the plan, as I like to call it, you know, the renderings
William Ross: air quotes in that plan.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, it’s a little bit shooting from the hip, but I was sort of thinking, okay, we were going to do an F [00:35:00] 40 tribute with the F eight.
Is he going to do a two 88 GTO? Is he going to do a three Oh eight evolution and like wide body? Is he going to try like this and that and the other thing? And they kept harping about, you know, we need to defuglify the car, all this kind of stuff. Yeah. You know, knock all the fugly off it is the exact quote that Mark uses.
And I’m like, okay, so you get rid of the U. S. spec bumpers. You get rid of this. You get rid of that. Can sort of see in my head, maybe where you’re going. And then it was again, like a carbon copy of what he had done before. And my biggest complaint with it. Is the unfinished rear fender quarter panel section.
He has a tendency to leave the wheels in the back exposed and it just bugs me because it breaks up the shape of the car, but the front that grill, I mean, literally to use the rapper term, that grill, not the grill, it looked like braces on a teenager, like I didn’t understand what they were doing. Because you only have so many options with the [00:36:00] 308.
You can very quickly make it look like a 288. You can make it look like a 328 with a square air dam front end. But I was like, what are we doing to this? Yeah. When it’s all said and done, I was really actually happy with the front minus the back. The grill and the side skirts and like it worked to a point and then those scoops and that rear fender and I would have done the SS Camaro tail.
I would have extended the rear. I would have exaggerated that. I would have brought it down. I would have brought it into the fenders. Like a bunch of other stuff could have been done to that.
William Ross: Well, like you were saying, I had the thought we mentioned before, you know, Liberty Walk does their kits and that, but what they do and a lot of these other, you know, do it is they don’t just tack on a fender flare at the arch and that’s it.
So you got this thing just sticking out. Yeah. They take that whole panel. And shape it so it’s all extended out one piece, i. e. a la, hey, looks like a 288, just on steroids, because it’s bigger and beefier.
Crew Chief Eric: Bigger and [00:37:00] beefier to the tone of 14 inch wheels. Huge!
William Ross: That’s why I was hoping, okay, it’s got promise, because again, you know, have at it, do something really cool to it, really fatten up and do it, but They just tack shit on.
That was it.
Crew Chief Eric: I’m a fan of a wide body when a wide body is done correctly and a 308 wears a wide body really, really well. If you look at even was a year or two ago, that SEMA 308 that had the Honda VTEC in it. And there’s been a couple other ones that have been done really, really well. And they look awesome.
Now, I get it. Mark’s going to do it in his style and he doesn’t want to copy somebody else and this and that either, but I’ve seen some of the other stuff that he’s done. And it’s like, come on, man, like smooth it out, make this sucker, like just look menacing in a three awake and look really just diabolical.
Right. And it can be a very James Bond car if you dress it up, right. But it was just like you said, it was sort of tacked on. And I think the problem came in when they had the wheels made for the car. And I don’t know what the hell they measured, [00:38:00] Because I think a 10 and a half or 12 would have been the maximum under that body.
The first time he cut the fender, I said, we are so screwed, you know, because I looked at it and I said, there’s no way you can turn into a parking spot with this. No,
William Ross: no. And even after they think, Oh, I think we’re good. Oh. And then he makes the comment, Oh, even when it’s turned at the suspension, it’ll clear.
And I’m like, I guarantee the first time that guy goes turning left. Or right into a driveway or something. It’s gotta be
Crew Chief Eric: and I understood what he was saying when you’re turning The nose is gonna lift but that’s gonna happen at speed But the problem is you’re not thinking about the other side where the suspension is compressing and then cutting the tire Yeah, not only that they did the stretch tire thing like you see on a japanese import as well, and i’m just like They did as much as they could to fit the biggest wheel possible in there If I was building it, I would have gone, okay, do we have more space on the inside to have the wheel offset internally?
Maybe put coil overs in there, get rid of the stock 308 suspension. [00:39:00] Cause they didn’t touch any of that stuff. And I’m like, there’s ways to make space and fit a big wheel and it’s not shoving it to the outside of the car and then cutting the body.
William Ross: Yeah. I don’t know where they got their history lesson or whatnot in that car and that frame.
That’s just a metal tube chassis. Basically. There’s plenty of room to go into that thing. So I don’t know what he was talking about with cutting into the unibody. This and that. I’m like, huh?
Crew Chief Eric: Well, I think for them, anything that isn’t American style body on frame is considered unibody, right? Regardless of the fact that it’s a tube frame car, regardless of the way those things were assembled. It’s just, okay, well, it’s a unibody in their world.
William Ross: Then you think too, and it kind of popped into my head. Okay. Maybe just because they’re in a tight timeframe, they had 11 days to do it. That’s kind of the other thing to this equation. Yeah. Now, if they had all the time in the world or hey, they had six months to do it.
You go back to other episodes and see what they’ve done in the past. This is their MO. Yeah. This is just how they do it. I think even if they had six months to do instead of 11 days, it wouldn’t turned out the same [00:40:00] product. You know, it’s unfortunate because that car can be something really cool. We’ve seen it out there, people posted and whatnot, great car to start with.
It’s super light. Two thousand pounds. It’s got to get rid of the motor because you know, you got 210 horsepower I think when that earlier one
Crew Chief Eric: out of a three liter.
William Ross: Yeah, it’s like yeah, it ain’t going anywhere quickly But again, it’s got kind of thing lightness thing, but it’s again just about aesthetic So you could do something good with that.
But again, they just tacked this shit on and it looks unfinished I’m thinking to myself too is they’re lucky in the fact being that it’s an old 308 Ferrari won’t care.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah,
William Ross: if they would have done that with the newest, uh, been on their door with the cease and desist or something from Ferrari saying, what the hell are you doing?
Crew Chief Eric: You’re on one end like, Oh, this is not good. My wife’s on the other end going, I want to hate it, but it’s really hard to, she’s still on her pain meds. She liked it. She saw they executed the vision. They did what they said they were going to do. Yes. It’s reminiscent of that Corvette. And so I sit in the middle, I sort of love it and I hate it at [00:41:00] the same time.
Cause there’s parts of it. I really like, I like the asymmetrical Italian flag paint scheme. I like the front end minus the braces. There’s other pieces that I absolutely despise. I think the back is terrible. You know, I thought that just like the slot machine thing, the revolving transporter style rotating license plate was really cool piece of engineering.
William Ross: That kid’s really good at that. Perhaps I’ve covered solutions for that. That was brilliant. They left
Crew Chief Eric: that bare aluminum. And I’m like, that should have been black and blended into the rear end, you know, all this kind of thing, blah, blah, blah. So there’s parts of it. I didn’t like those parts. I like now going back and reanalyzing it in slow motion and in still to prepare the article where we review all this stuff in more detail, I noticed at certain angles, it really made it look like a second generation.
Oh yeah. I Yeah, you’re right. And I’m like, Oh God. And then in my head, I’m going, Oh, this is like the 308 Fiero builds. And it gave it this like kit car feel. And that’s why I sort of sit in the middle because you’re looking at it going, is that a real [00:42:00] 308 or is that a fake 308 built on something else? And that’s where it’s sort of like, it’s cool, but they ruined it.
I don’t love it. I don’t hate it. But they did walk away with a pretty sizable payday on it.
William Ross: Yeah. They made some money up. You made the comment about the paint job. I don’t know how close he looked at it. I might’ve paused. I think it was crooked. Yes. You saw it too. All right. So not just me. And when they did it, I’ll say a closeup of it, but they got kind of close.
It was almost like the one rear three quarter view of they got on it. It was a horrible paint job. It was almost like a rattle can job.
Crew Chief Eric: My wife pointed that out in the night shots. She said that satin finish looks really neat during the day, but at night it almost had like an orange peel and it looked like it was unfinished, like they needed to spray it again and put some clear on it.
Like it really did reflect very oddly in the dark. So I agree with that. And then to your point about the crooked thing, I joked and I said, is he trying to do what he did on the Camaro where the lines weren’t straight?
William Ross: Yeah.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I guess that’s cool. It looked good on the Camaro. Because again, that was an asymmetrical black on one side, orange on the other.
I don’t know. I think Mark’s trying new [00:43:00] things. I will say, and I’ve always said, which is what was disappointing about this car. He’s a really good painter. Yeah. When you look at some of the stuff he can do, especially that Corvette, where he did that gradiated from dark blue all the way to silver. So it looked like a shark.
William Ross: I guess you could say that might’ve saved him a bit too, is putting all those gadgets on there, getting that extra 18 grand they made out with. You know a lot of things you didn’t see the interior
Crew Chief Eric: the same thing on the DeLorean when they redid it Yeah, they didn’t show you the inside.
William Ross: No and supposedly they were supposed to redo on the door and it’s all we’re gonna We all love it.
It’s that then so you didn’t even see it’s just exterior tacking on some appendages Painting it and putting it out the door unbelievable, but that paint job was horrendous So again, i’m glad you saw it too because soon as I saw it on the road I go wait that line is not straight I mean, it’s just blatant because you got red on white there and it just goes off at an angle You Sad thing is, is that theme could have been done a lot better, but execution wasn’t there.
Again, because of the time crunch or what? I don’t know. The way it was painted with the color and stuff, that really accentuated, there was no [00:44:00] flow to it. You could tell the shit was just bam, bam, bam, put on. It wasn’t like they did anything to make it nice and smooth. And, and when they’re saying, oh, we’re going to eliminate that one channel that’s going down kind of seperate.
Crew Chief Eric: And they ended up leaving that at the end too. It was like,
William Ross: Exactly. Whatever. So I don’t know. That would have been a lot of Bondo in that crevice. Buckets and bucket. We’re not ruining the episodes for you guys by telling you what’s going on. It happened. If you haven’t watched it, trust us, you need to watch it to see what it is.
Cause then you’re gonna be like, Oh my God, I see what they’re talking about. Cause there’s really no good thing to paint the picture.
Crew Chief Eric: And I think we leave our listeners with the question, if you’re going to modify an exotic. Especially a Ferrari. What camp are you in? And there’s multiple lanes. You could be on the far left, like these cars are, just like they came out of the Hot Wheels packaging.
Or you could be on the other side where it’s, I’m gonna do some vinyl, I’m gonna put on some wheels, a sport exhaust. Where is your happy medium? Where’s your comfort level of customization? And I think that’s the moral to the story with a lot of this. And [00:45:00] someone’s creative vision doesn’t necessarily always align with what you want.
Your expectations. As a buyer as a collector and that’s why I think some of the cars that are on that far left side are extremely hard to move. And it begs the question, where do they end up? Where’s that green 360 after a year? Like who’s got that car? Like I’ve never seen it at a show. I didn’t see it at car week.
I haven’t seen it in a museum. You’d think it went up at like the Volo museum, you know, with all the other crazy cars that they have, but it’s sort of like tucked in a warehouse somewhere never to be seen again. Yeah. Probably being converted back to a stock 360, you know,
William Ross: at this day and age, obviously with YouTube, Instagram, all your social media platforms, everything like that.
If it’s a well known car and put out there and the person that owned it got a crap load of followers, whatnot, like that, moving it to someone that just worships to whoever the person is and getting rid of it, usually isn’t too bad. But beyond that, that’s just a drop in the bucket. You see these companies that sell the kits and everything like that.
For that one you see on a YouTube channel, there’s 15, [00:46:00] 20 other kits they sold to someone else. You’re getting into the personalization programs these manufacturers have for all of them now. I mean, all your high end stuff, they have it because they can make 90 percent profit on these things. It’s unbelievable.
You’re getting it so specific in regards to your own taste. What are you going to do with yourself? Because you’re going to have to find that person. OK, I can live with half the stock three quarter stuff on there. Yeah, I probably would have done maybe that, but I can deal with it. You know, with vinyl wraps and stuff like that, you can change the exterior color pretty easily.
But option wise, you know, that’s kind of where you get stuck. It’s like, oh, I wish I would have this and that, but I’ll live without it. Because once it’s hacked up like that, and one thing, if you remove body panels off, and you’re putting whole new panels and sections on, you had to do a little massaging to make it work, but it wouldn’t take all that much to turn it back to original.
Are you keeping all those panels like that, so any subsequent owner down the line, say, look, here’s all the stuff that came off the car, you can turn it back if you want. Some of those manufacturers, those kits, kind of push that, say, look, oh, it’s bolt on, bolt off, yeah, maybe you gotta do a little this and that, I mean, how true it is, [00:47:00] I don’t know.
What are you going to do with this? Oh, here’s the car. I mean, you got to have someone that’s like, that’s, Oh, I love it. That’s my style. I don’t know. Cause it changes the car. Especially if you start messing with stance, you’re making a wider, you’re making a lower, you’re doing all these things. You got these guys tacking on, having 1500 horsepower, this kind of stuff too.
Crew Chief Eric: You know what it is, William? We’re looking at the wrong car shows. We need to be looking at Radwood and not Car Week.
William Ross: Yeah. You would think to your point on that green 360, at least you think the guy would take it to some car shows or, or he’s not that because you know, I would say it’s. A famous car, but it’s decently well known.
I don’t know what the viewership is for this show, but people go Oh, that’s that car from god and I’d love to see that thing in person because god I only can imagine how bad it is In person, yeah pictures of it seeing that thing in person be like, oh my god, it’s worse than I thought,
Crew Chief Eric: you know It’s funny, We’ve always tried to track the newer What I call restoration shows. And to your point about viewership, Car Masters seem to have outlasted a bunch of other ones, whether it was Rust Valley Restorers or Goblin Works Garage, or even last year they did that one down in El Paso [00:48:00] that has disappeared.
William Ross: Yeah.
Yeah. Interesting. You know, they’re talking about saying going into nostalgia and going that kind of stuff. My personal interpretation at the end of this season. They’re going into replica movie cars. Totally different genre in regards to marketing. And there’s a decent sized market for that, but you got to do it right.
You can’t just hack it together like some of the stuff they’ve done. I mean, you have to have that thing dead nut spot on for authenticity.
Crew Chief Eric: That’s where this season ends. I’m a fan of the show. My wife and I have been watching since the very first season. Cause we thought the concept was really cool and they leave us with them pushing in a 66 Imperial, the black beauty from green Hornet, and they’re on this whole nostalgia kick.
And this three Oh eight was allegedly the beginning, even though. I think the DeLorean was the beginning of this nostalgia thing and we’re going to build other stuff. The Nautilus from League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. We’re going to build, you know, maybe Kit, you know, who knows? And that’s cool. And that falls into that Hot Wheels sort of thing that Mark is very good at and the team can get all excited about.
The Ferrari saga is over.
William Ross: I hope so.
Crew Chief Eric: I think they put that to bed.
William Ross: They did that Pechanga car for the casino. That was cool. I like what they did with that. I mean, that theme car, whatnot, what they did, and they did the slot machine wheels, that steering wheel, everything was really good. That thing turned out really nice for what its purpose was.
And intent was that thing was fantastic. That looked great. And it’s our minds. That’s I think their niche is doing stuff like that. You’re getting into almost kind of an orange County chopper situation. Well, you’re doing it with cars and in previous season, it seemed to my person is that’s where they were good at and they moved cars and they made good money on just steer clear of our stuff because that’s not their forte.
You know, I know as creative as Mark likes to say he is and all of this and that he’s not, I think it takes some stuff and making these replica movie cars and what he’s done in the past and executing them. He’s got a great team behind it. Mark can stick with this paint job to make these things look spectacular because he’s a great painter.
Give him that. But as for coming out and really designing a whole car to tweak it or whatever you want to call it for him [00:50:00] I would say to your point. I think that would make the show that much better if okay mark handles stuff You see the business side he goes out finds the cars do whatever You know get rid of sean and shows him doing the painting and everything on it prepping all that kind of stuff Tony’s on their side going through, Hey, how we did this stuff like that.
Crew Chief Eric: Here’s how you build a flux capacitor.
William Ross: Showing how they did it, especially go with these movie cars. Cause those things always have these cool little things. And if they’re fully functional and work, people want to know how you did it and incorporating the car and how’d you tie it in. Cause you know, some people are watching that going and saying, well, hey, I’m bored.
I’m going to see if I can hook something like that up my car. You know, you’ll learn from it. And I like watching stuff like that. I like watching the shows and YouTube and stuff like that shows with the build process, not so much rebuilding wrecked cars, which seemed to be a big thing. You know, I like the stuff where the guy’s taking the car, doing the modification, making it better and how they went about doing it.
That’s just really impressive to me because you know, having that ability to do it and complete it is impressive. And I think that’s the way they should go. In my opinion. And I think they would do a lot better viewer [00:51:00] wise. You’re going to turn a lot of people off coming in, taking a Ferrari and hacking it up and just making it gaudy.
I’m going to watch this because if that’s what they think this is, forget it. I’m not going to watch. It’d be really interesting to see numbers wise from the end of season five, going into six, what happened in regards to, was there a big drop? What were the demographics of the people that you lost? I thought there were only six episodes.
So I got done with episode six. I’m like, All right, but then also the thing pops up in the bottom next episode. Like, oh, wait, there’s more. And then luckily my wife’s out of town. So I was like, well, I got nothing else to do. So, all right, I’ll watch the next episode. And then it got into, I’m like, where it ended up.
And again, it seemed like, all right, now it’s like, it was a half season. It’s like, okay, you guys, where you ended this? It seems like, should be more episodes.
Crew Chief Eric: And I think the bigger question for us, and I know you’re a newer fan, you haven’t been following the show from day one. Is there going to be a season seven?
We don’t know. We probably have to wait. Till sometime in 2025 to see, but it seems like they’re going to keep doing what they do. But are you going to keep watching it? Are you that kind of intrigued to see what their antics and what they’re up to next?
William Ross: Next season comes out when it does, I’m going to watch [00:52:00] it.
Yeah, I want to see where they go because I think these replica car movie cars, I think it’d be a good route to go for them. Those are tough cards that they choose to build right off the bat. That’s for sure. But there’s good money in those things, real good money. Basically to see where they head, to hope they got all that other stuff out of their system.
To your point, what you said before is what tweaks they make to the cast. Finding what you need to build those cars isn’t too difficult, because you’re going to basically tear those things down to the frame anyways. There’s rust on the body like that. I mean, you can start with something that’s pretty bad.
Crew Chief Eric: And I’m glad you brought that up. And that’s kind of my final thought on this. And my wife made it really, really clear. When we wrap this whole thing up, kind of thinking about this season, previous seasons, and where they’re going next. She goes, did you notice that this was the rust free season? They’re going to have to change their tagline, rust to riches, because not a single one of those cars had rust on them.
William Ross: I said the same thing. I go, the title’s not working anymore, guys. There was no rust involved whatsoever. They were even saying it. Wow. There’s nothing on this body. It’s fantastic. There’s no rust anywhere. The rocker panels are fantastic. [00:53:00] I’m like, Uh, you guys got to just change this to car masters building movie rep because something, but yeah, I had the same thought.
Yeah. The titles is not going to work for you guys anymore.
Crew Chief Eric: All right. We’ll bring us home, William.
William Ross: Yeah. Thank you guys for listening. I really appreciate it. As you can see, Eric’s cracking the whip on me to get more episodes out on a more consistent basis. So. Remember to leave some comments and your thoughts and feelings, because we’d love to hear you and get your feedback and see what you guys think of what Car Masters did with these Ferraris.
So let us know how you feel, guys. Remember to go over to MotoringPodcast.net to check out all the other episodes we have in regards to not just the Ferrari Marketplace, but the other podcasts we have on there. There’s some fantastic stuff on there, and we’re adding more as we speak. Just keep an eye on that.
Hit that up as your favorite because there’s some really cool things happening there. Check out the exotic car marketplace. We did a little bit of an overhaul the other week on that. So we rearranged some stuff in that. We’re tweaking it as we go. You’ll see what we want to see. Everything like that. And stay tuned to Rockin Rev’s website.
Also for the show next year will be updated. The date is July 27th. So keep that in mind. More stuff will be coming out [00:54:00] on that. We appreciate you listening and stay tuned. More to come. Thanks guys.
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