Exotic Car Marketplace

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.

Go Behind The Scenes!

Episode 18

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Ferrari Marketplace podcast. I’m William Ross, your host. Uh, I want to welcome. Everyone over to our new platform. And I want to also welcome my, I don’t want to say guest on the show. I’m going to say more like co host because, you know, we’re a kind of, [00:01:00] you know, good friends, uh, business associates.

Um, you know, we do a lot of things together. So, but Eric. Crew chief Eric is joining me on this and he’ll probably be on a lot of subsequent episodes as well as either co host, guest, moderator, what have you, but you will be hearing some more soon. So crew chief Eric, introduce yourself to our listeners.

Well, William, folks that are familiar with the BreakPix podcast are familiar with my voice and, you know, it, I always say it’s a little bit. Odd being on the other side of the microphone. So I appreciate you inviting me onto the Ferrari marketplace podcast. Talk about a really interesting topic tonight, but, uh, happy to be here.

Happy to have you as part of the motoring podcast network. So this is a lot of fun and looking forward to seeing where things go for the future of the Ferrari marketplace podcast. Yeah, so as everyone heard, uh, Eric just mentioned is the motoring podcast network is a nice little project is getting launched.

That is going to have basically all podcast, uh, motoring related and it’s going to be a fantastic platform. [00:02:00] So it’ll give you many, many options and choices to listen to different, various podcasts of people we know and people that, Hey, we kind of all jump on each other’s podcasts, but, uh, you’re going to find a lot of variation in regards to what you can listen to.

So definitely get on there and sign up and keep a listen. So tonight we are going to be talking about a show that Eric turned me on to, um, or inform me on, I should say, I wouldn’t say turn me on to because, you know, I kind of scratched my head about watching it, but I know Eric and his wife are kind of big fans of it.

Um, it is on Netflix. It’s called car masters for us to riches. Um, if you look it up, you’ll see there’s five seasons, uh, and it follows this crew at Gotham garage out in California. Uh, and you know, it, it’s kind of along the lines of what you would think when you see a TV show that’s on Netflix or any other of these like motive trend or whatnot.

Um, but you know, their philosophy or I guess to say business model is to take. [00:03:00] Really junk cheap cars, fix them up to sell them for X or trade it for Y, and then take that and do the same thing to it, but for more money to get to Z, which would be a six figure car. So they just basically taking that old adage, and I think they use this example in the beginning talking about it, talking about the person using the paperclip, and 11 trades later they own a house.

Kind of that scenario is what they’re looking at. So there’s some interesting people on the show. Um, I know Eric’s done a lot of research on the show and the individuals I’ve done a little bit on it too, because it was a head scratcher on some of these guys. Cause. Um, you kind of like, are they legit or are they just kind of actors or what, which you’ll find out one of them kind of is, um, so, but you know, the majority of the guys were in the car, you know, they know their stuff, I’ll give them that.

So, but you might be asking yourself, why are we talking about this show on the Ferrari Marketplace podcast? Well, here’s the reason. [00:04:00] In an episode, or in season five, towards the last few episodes. There is a Ferrari that they get their hands on and modify and if you want to take the time to watch it, watch it, and you’ll see what we’re talking about here, but oh, my Lord.

I mean, it is. It is. Oh, my Lord. And yeah, it’s like, where to start. I mean, I just, and you know, I, when Eric told me about this, you know, the show itself and you know, Hey, this is right because they did this Ferrari and I’m like, all right. Well, and I did, I watched the first season. I watched a couple episodes and I’m like, okay, I got the gist of it.

So I jumped right to the ones for the Ferrari. So it was like the last three episodes of season five, it kind of goes across it. So, and there’s kind of a big jump in regards to some things happening from season one to season five as well. And they expand and all this stuff, but anyways. It’s the kind of same thing.

And if you want to [00:05:00] take a quick trip down seasons one through four, we actually released part of our too long. Didn’t read mini series. I go over all of my previous reviews of seasons one through four on break fix. And you can listen to that and kind of get caught up with what we’re talking about as we’re talking about season five, but you’re right.

A lot of things changed on the show. COVID played a big part in it. This has been going on for many, many years now that my wife and I have been following these builders and following the show. And to your point, it does follow a bit of a formula that other, what we call restoration shows will follow, whether it’s Rust Valley Restorers, whether it’s Tex Mex Motors, whether it’s Car Masters and some of the other ones, you know, fast and loud, all those ones that, you know, from the old days, there’s a certain way of doing it.

The thing that was interesting about Gotham is the head of the ship, which is Mark Towley, who is famous for building some of the most interesting Hollywood replica cars or like Hot Wheels [00:06:00] inspired type of cars. And the most famous one he built many, many years ago, and it’s in the Peterson, is the Mach 5 racer full size car that was used in the movie Speed Racer.

So, you know, that really put him on the mark. That was the first car he got in the museum. There’s been others since then. But he’s got this particular style about the way he likes to conduct his builds. And we’ll get into that as we go along. Yeah, and you can probably, and listen to those ones, because I’m sure Eric touches on the legal issue that came about with one of these cars that got built.

But, hey, as in, watch all the seasons and listen to his reviews, or hey, you want to skip all the things, listen to his thing and watch the Ferrari, Either way, take a listen to it because it’ll be very insightful and there’s a lot of good tidbits and stuff in that. So please definitely take a listen to that for the Break Fix podcast as well.

So let’s, let’s set the stage for season five. It picks up exactly where season four left off. And so to give people an idea of why that’s important, season four [00:07:00] was a bit of a game changer for the show. It moved away from the classic format of upgrade and trade. They called it, like you said, the red paper clip to the house in 11 trades later, they sort of decided that they wanted to go and start reaching for high end clientele.

They wanted to do six figure builds. Every time they built a car. And so the builds got more extreme. They got more exaggerated. Some of them you’re like, I don’t really know if this flies or if this works. And they did keep some of the cartoony aspect to a couple of the builds. Let’s say the rocket car or the school bus or some of the other ones that they built.

And you can go back and see those in season three and season four. The reason season four is such a turning point in the show is. It brings in this dynamic duo of a design that apparently Mark had been sitting on for about 20 years. And it’s a bit of a Bugatti inspired supercar built on top of, you know, his favorite chassis, which is a C4 [00:08:00] Corvette.

And so there were struggles getting that car sold and incomes, a personality that. Most of us that have watched anything on Motor Trend would recognize this gentleman right away. He’s a bloke from the UK, as we like to say. His name is Nick Smith. He’s originally from Classic Avenue, which is a big, you know, brokerage in classic motorcycles and classic cars and things like that.

He presents himself on TV as The appraiser, right? I’ve seen him on a lot of shows where they have to bring in a specialist to put a number on, let’s say, an old school Mercedes or something like that. So Nick suddenly walks in the Bay of Gotham garage and you’re like, what’s he doing here? And he’s representing.

The client that’s going to buy this duo supercar and motorcycle that they had built during season 3 that they struggled to unload because of covid and everything else. So season 5 picks up exactly at that handshake when they were all sort of getting together and now Nick Smith’s team of fabricators is getting together [00:09:00] with Mark’s team at Gotham.

They’ve got 2 locations that they’re working out of and. You’re sort of thrown in the middle of it going, where is this going to go? Is this going to work? Are these guys going to gel? Are they going to have personality conflicts? And the show, if you go back and watch the previous years, one of the things we always highlighted and appreciated was it was a pretty low drama show.

When you compare it to like a Rust Valley Restorers where they’re at each other’s throats and you never know who’s going to throw a wrench across the room next. And, you know, it’s like West Coast choppers, you know, that kind of just ridiculousness. These guys are pretty mellow. They’re really laid back.

They work well together as a team and they take direction well, and it was nice to watch a restoration show where people aren’t at each other’s throats and they’re building some interesting stuff. Whether you agreed with the final product or not. You’re like, I can appreciate what went into that, the labor and the process.

So that’s, what’s kept us engaged up until this point now introduced. Nick Smith [00:10:00] introduced his team. How is this all going to go down? Are we suddenly going to become, you know, West Coast shop, West Coast customs or anything like that? Where is this going to lead us? Luckily, they stayed pretty subdued, but we hit this other bump in the road when they tried to build the cover car, which is this Tesla that they converted.

To a rear wheel drive LS powered abomination. That’s the word I want to give it. They had a really hard time selling this car and they finally found the right buyer. Let’s say that, and that opened the door for this Ferrari. So William, why don’t you talk about the Ferrari, the deal they brokered and the condition of the car?

Well, It’s a 360, uh, spider. Um, so right there, it tells you, you know, F1 tranny, not a six feet. So right there, it tells you, you know, even with low miles, even say 10 feet, I mean, you’re still maybe a 90, car retail, you know, and depending on case, you may be a [00:11:00] little bit more, but you know, that’s about it. You know, there’s a lot of factors that go into it.

You’ll serve history like that. Well, this is actually a theft recovery car. Now, this is what I found interesting. First of all, when they’re saying it was a theft recovery and they were showing it when they were looking at it, you know, to go view it and then try you for the initial process of potentially buying the car.

It was only missing its rear bumper cover and the lower front valance on it. Think was gone to, or the rear, the rear deck, the hood was missing at that point. So, which was kind of baffling to me because I mean, I, I, I’m not in that field, so, but I figured that car would have been stripped a lot more than that.

Cause you know, there’s a lot of expensive parts on there that they could have just peeled off and made, you know. You know, whoever did it or stole the car. So stealing some aesthetic pieces off the car seemed a bit, you [00:12:00] know, I don’t know, just head scratcher. It didn’t make sense. But hey, you know what weird stuff’s happened.

Um, so then when they negotiated, obviously the first initial thing was they supposedly agreed on a price at 60 grand. But you’re my mind if I was looking to say, okay, that’s not so bad because it won’t take all that much You know, you can put in you know, 20 grand into it You know and get it back up to where it needs to be and then sell it for you Whatever, you know put it out there for 110 something like that and take your 95 whatever you make a nice profit on it Okay, so 60 grand for this theft recovery 360, but let’s, let’s be real for a minute.

What do you think the broker or the consigner in this case, what did they get the car for from the police auction? 35 grand. Right? Okay. So some, so there’s a profit margin in every step of this equation as we move along in the story of this car. Yeah, I mean 35 40 grand tops. I mean, it’s, you know, coming through because obviously, you know, whoever owned it got their payout from the insurance or anything like [00:13:00] that.

And, you know, they, you know, the cops get, you know, however it got in the insurance company, they just want to get off their hands. So there’s money to be made all steps. And it just depends on what level you want to be at. But then, you know, it, it, And it was a big jump because then all of a sudden, you know, they thought they had the deal at 60, but then all of a sudden they get the phone call saying, well, we had another person come in and offer a 75.

And if, if you’re willing to meet, it’s like, it’s like typical used car salesman stuff. Yeah. You’re like, oh, I got another buyer on the line. Suddenly the price has gone up. If you want to get, I was like, are you kidding me? Yeah. That, that is like the absolute typical, well, I had someone in earlier today, you know, putting in an offer.

You know, I got someone calling me back or, you know, this same old BS. So they fall for it. So true or not, whatever. So they, because they told him that, well, if you can match it, since you were here first, and we’ll sell you the car. So they kind of mull it over briefly and say, I pulled the trigger and buy it.

And I’m like, it’s 75 grand. What that was. I go right there. That’s just [00:14:00] a loser as it is. Because what’s the market look like on a three 60 these days? It’s pretty soft, right? Oh God. Yeah. Especially with an F1 tranny. I mean, you know, if you’re going to buy one, obviously you want to buy it with the six feet and hey, with that car, I mean, you could get the, you know, conversion done or you’re still, you know, on those.

I think it’s like 40 grand, 35 grand on a 360 to do the conversion. So, I mean, that ain’t cheap. So you start doing the math and get it up there. So. Um, but yeah, F1 traffic 360 is spider. I mean Yeah, like I saying, depending on modules, you know, to me, like I said, top markets, you know, 1 10, 1 20, you know, I know there’s people out there trying to, you know, ask for a lot more, but you know, the ain’t gonna sell, you know, you could ask wherever you want for the car, who wants to, you know, pay for that.

’cause, especially when you go, you know, from a 360 to a four 30, you got, there’s such a huge jump in regards to performance and just, you know, the driving quality of the car and everything you get out of it. It’s like you [00:15:00] would spend the extra 25 grand and jump into a 430 than you would a 360 because, you know, you can get a, you know, mid, mid to low 20, 000 mile at 430, you know, um, you know, in the shit, you know, the 140 range, 150 range, you know, decent, great service, everything like that, you know, whereas why would you spend 120 on a 360?

When you could spend an extra 20 grand and get, you know, a hundred more horsepower, you know, you go from timing belts to change. So you don’t have the belts, the situation going on as you do with the three 60 going into the four 30. There’s so many differences between the two. It’s like pay the extra money.

Yeah. And this is where it gets awkward, right? Because up until this part in the show. We were still trying to figure out how Nick and Sean, the other broker from Gotham garage, we’re going to do business and how things were going to work. And they were disagreeing about the strategy going forward and all this kind of stuff.

And here we are standing in front of this Ferrari. And by the way, this was the second Ferrari that was proposed in this season. The first deal fell apart and we were just like, [00:16:00] Oh, gee drama. It’s not going to work out. They’re not going to do a Ferrari. They’ll go do another Chevelle or something, you know, wait, so what?

We’ll move on with life. But now we’re faced with this three 60, the theft recovery car. At 75 grand after all that kind of overproduced, you know, lifting of the price. And as my wife and I were watching this, we’re thinking about it going like something’s not right here. Like, and if I was Mark and Sean coming from the hot rod world, from the customs world, dealing mostly with domestics, we’ve seen what’s happened in the past when they did the Volkswagen, when they did the smart car, when they’ve done a lot of the foreign stuff, there was even a.

Kit car going back to our kit car episode, an elite laser nine 17 thing built on a BW bug with a Porsche engine in it. And they struggled with that. And she and I are looking at each other going, this isn’t going to end well. If this Ferrari has a single mechanical problem, they are so done. Yep. [00:17:00] Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, no, uh, the girl on the show was a Constance, um, you know, on the show, I mean, she knows her stuff. I mean, give it that, you know, it’s, yeah, she’s an attractive girl, but you know, you can’t, you don’t hold that against her. She knows her stuff, you know, but yeah, that’s a totally different animal, you know, and working with those type of engines and, you know, especially, you know, mechanics, you know, electronic wise, everything in that stuff.

Yeah. They try to tell them that it ain’t no. It’s not no Chevelle where it’s nice and simple and straightforward. You know, it’s, it’s very complicated. You can really screw some things up and cost tons of money down the road. Um, you know, that’s why one day I was kind of surprised about it. Cause my first thought too, I think I said, okay, we’re going to do a, you know, uh, do a conversion to a six beat.

You know, that, that, well, those are what made the most sense. Hey, and, you know, yeah, by the kit, they probably figured out cause it’s just cables and whatnot. It’s not too complicated. You get all the pieces for it. It’s not anything crazy. You know, it’s just, you know, reprogramming the [00:18:00] ECU and stuff like that.

What, you know, again, you know, you have someone that knows what they’re doing, you can get it done. You know, so that was my thought that they’re going to go that route and clean up, but as we both know, they, they didn’t, no, they didn’t. And that goes back to a previous for our marketplace. Episode where you talked about doing the six speed conversions.

You even talked about that on one of our, what should I buy episodes, but more importantly, what we didn’t see was the behind the scenes. If they test drove the car, if they didn’t, everything sort of happened in the parking lot. And you see Nick Smith jump in the three 60 at one point, started up rev the engine and they’re like, okay, cool.

We’re going to buy it. And it’s like, that’s it. Yeah. Okay. You really didn’t even see the interior ever, ever at any point. Even after they did the car, right? Which was kind of strange. It was like, all right You know, so that’s another thing. It’s like, okay, what shape was that in? I mean, what were you gonna have to do with that?

Um, so there again that there’s some [00:19:00] head scratchers and you know, kind of just going as some you know It doesn’t seem right here and it’s starting to get a bit Staged kind of I guess you could say or they’re hiding some things And again, it goes back to initially looking at the car and saying it’s a theft recovery and only those couple things are missing, you know, because if you really want to enhance the show and really create that, ah, factor, it’s like, okay, everything should be stripped out of this car, the interior, the seats should be gone, everything should be, you know, be torn out, everything like that, I mean, I’m going to say it’d be a shell of a He wasn’t even missing an emblem.

I mean, everything was there. Yeah, I mean, yeah, you’d think that’d be one of the Whoever stole it, whatever, you know, top that thing off and put it on a necklace, you know One of those type of deals, you know, yeah, none of that stuff was missing It’s like this just seemed a bit strange and it seemed a bit staged.

So, you know again, it’s like I Enjoy, let’s just see what they they go do here Exactly. And next they kind of cut away. We’re back at the shop and they’ve got some other projects on the [00:20:00] back burner that they’re bringing forward because they need to make money to pay for all this. Right. So they did that.

They did this, uh, blacked out Chevelle. They’re working on this pontoon cartoon VW bus thing, which actually I thought. Pretty cool. That was a lot of fun, right? And so that’s the kind of stuff I enjoy watching them build. You’re like, I would have never thought to put those two things together. And then the money they got for it was decent.

Although that deal, the way they brokered it, that’s that typical Sean. And I literally called the number they were going to settle on. Cause I’ve seen it so many times. I was like, he’s going to come in at 40 something. The other guy’s going to come in at 20 and then they’re going to do this little game.

They’re going to settle on 37 and a half. And that’s how that’s going to go out the door. And it hit right on the number. And my wife was like, man, you need to go on the prices. Right. And I’m like, it’s difficult. You know, it’s like, why just cut the cut? Chase, you say this to eight, we’re going to be in the middle anyways.

Let’s just call it a day. Exactly. But that’s part of enjoying the show and being a fan for now, five, six years, you get used to how [00:21:00] they do things and you’re like, okay, I see where this is going to go. So again, a little bit formulaic. And then they start, once they get all that out of the way, they start to turn their attention to the Ferrari and what they’re going to do.

And there’s a good part of one episode where Mark goes back home. You see one of his Corvettes in the driveway. He’s kind of sitting in his garage and he’s got pen to paper. This is the same sort of scene they used in season three, when he went back to quote unquote, the drawing board to design or bring out his design for the supercar and the bike.

And I’m like, Oh man, here we go. And he starts talking about the heritage and the lineage and the Ferraris that are going to inspire his design. And he’s got this whole cork board of photographs that he pulled off the internet and stuff. And I’m sure you paused at that point, William, and you were like, okay, so this is this and this is that.

Cause I recognize things like the three 30 P three. I recognize things like the two 50 GTL Ms and stuff like that. And in the background, the pontoon fender Testa Rosas. [00:22:00] So there’s a bunch of cars there, like classic Ferraris. And I, and I’m wondering if you had the same thought I had on where this design should have gone, but I want you to talk about the classic Ferraris that he was looking at.

Well, yeah, my thought was, Oh, I’m like, Oh Lord, he’s going to F this up big time. There’s he started referencing those cart with those bows and whatnot. I’m like, it’s not going to work. I go, first of all, I go, if you look at, especially like the P3 and stuff, and you look at the ass end on it and, you know, regards with the intake stuff of that, you look at a three 60.

That cue is there, you know? And so, you know, a lot of those things, you know, nuance wise was already on the car, you know? And that’s, you know, that’s when the styling exercise, you know, people were going back to, you know, honestly retro, but looking back at old designs to bring them forward because they’re so popular.

You know, I mean, like the mustang, everything, you know, all these things know Camaros did ’em, so if you look at it, did it, so it’s like, you know, A, you know, [00:23:00] how would you, you know, incorporate that in? And, and B is like, how extreme are you gonna go? ’cause you know, are you gonna just get all new body panels made and completely go nuts and have to really start doing some serious, serious, you know, changes and modifications to the chassis.

To accommodate everything that you have to do, you know, and as you know, I mean, proportionate is everything, you know, and you know, that those cards aren’t huge. It’s not like you, you know, you got these big long lines. It’s not like some big massive Lincoln or some old caddy or something like that. I mean, it’s a small, small, compact car.

So, I mean, no, your lines going from front to back, you know, you don’t have all that much distance to go. So, I mean, You start creating these big bulbous things on the thing. It just really throws all the look off. Okay. Okay. So I’m glad you brought that up because they brought that up too. And you know, the design masters at Ferrari and this and that, and if you look at a three 60, there’s not a crease on the car, it does have a belt line.

It’s very subtle. And that actually was referenced later. [00:24:00] There’s a lot of care and thought and imagination that go into the passion of designing a Ferrari, and they’re right. Everything was accounted for. Everything was purposely put on that car and shaped the way it was wind tunnel or otherwise. And you may not like.

The 360 design, it is pretty smooth compared to a 458 or 488 or even the cars that preceded it. So the 360 sort of a little marshmallow and that’s okay. So I understand where he’s coming from and that it’s a blank canvas. Maybe we, we can work with this. Maybe we can modify it. And I’m sitting here going and the words are coming out of my wife’s mouth.

Saying, well, how do you mess with perfection? Because the Ferrari, when you look at it at that moment in time, the 360 was perfect. It pulled the inspiration from the older cars without being ostentatious, without being ridiculous. And one other comment that they brought up when they were talking about the heritage cars.

Outside of the 330 P three, which was a race cars purpose built for Lamont to [00:25:00] go against Ford, you know, in the late sixties and all that kind of thing. All the other cars they were taking inspiration from. They kept saying how unique and different they were. And I’m sitting here going, if you know anything about a two 50 outside of Yeah.

You know, it’s chassis long or short. They’re basically all the same car, especially when you look at the arch fenders, even the pontoon fender. Testarossa shares design cues and design language with some of the other 2 50 base cars. So they’re not that different. So I’m like, you’re not pulling from a drastically different line of cars and we’re going to pick out this 1 little feature and this other little feature.

It’s like they sort of focused on 2 families and tried to run with it. Mhm. Now, you know, we’re discussing these classic Ferraris and we’re talking about another one that was built in the mid 2000s. And I’m thinking to myself this entire time. Why didn’t they go down the rabbit hole of doing some sort of wide body GTLM type of car, some [00:26:00] sort of 575 homage, something to the F40, where the heritage would have been a lot closer, it would have been easier, turn it into like a Magnum PI 308 inspired sort of thing, like if you’re gonna go for it, but you go all the way back to the 60s, like, I don’t know.

Yeah, well, you know, another thing too is. Them, you know, I say using those references and, you know, making those kind of statements, you know, I, you look at, I guess you would say 99 percent of the viewers, maybe 96 percent of the viewers have no clue about that type of history on Ferrari. What not? I mean, they’ll know the Chevelles, they’ll know those kinds of things, the hot rod and stuff like that.

But, you know, it’s, you know, the target audience isn’t one that’s going to be as nuanced into history and stuff, but as we are in regards to, especially, you know, racing cars, old Ferraris, you know, Porsches, everything. You know, um, you know, so I, I doubt that was high on their priority list to kind of really put thought into it saying, well, you know, some people are going to catch this and kind [00:27:00] of probably say, that’s not their thought process.

Their thought process is, wow, these other people are going to think, oh, wow, they’re going to refer, you know, look at these old Ferraris from the 60s. They’re going for millions of dollars. You know, again, it’s just, and that’s, you know, they made that point about the show. Is it scripted bad to a point, you know, but.

You know, it’s what they had to do and how much, you know, him going to his garage and doing the drawings and going back. I mean, was that suggestion by producers? Hey, let’s do this. You don’t really instead of him just thinking. Hey, why don’t we kind of go this route with it? I mean, who knows? You know, it’s, um.

It’s unfortunate, but I agree with you. I mean, ’cause that was also a thought I had, you know, um, you know, taking a page out of, you know, like what Liberty Walk does with their, those wide body kits, you know, say mantry with the ones or, you know, uh, RWB does on the Porsches, you know, kinda like going something like that in regards to, you know, going wide body on it, you know, and just really kind of going, I don’t wanna say extreme, but going extreme, but, you know, keeping that nuance there.

I mean, just kicking out the fender [00:28:00] flares, you know, getting it out there, making that stance. You know, lower and wider, you know, really just killing it that way. But, you know, keep it, just work with the lines that are there, but just, you know, take them out more. And when I thought about it more, it would have been really cool to do a Chinetti tribute and do like a NART design, like get rid of the headlights, give it those GTU, GTP blocks flares.

Like you can see in the eighties that they did on the five 12 BB. And I’m like. That would have been really, really slick. And that would have been something somebody wouldn’t like, man, that’s a modern old NARC race car. That’s really kind of cool. And so for me, reaching back to the sixties was a stretch and then some.

So what did we end up with? Right. Nick Smith. Is buying new parts or finding parts. I don’t know where, right. A new bumper cover for the rear, the rear grill, the tail lights, everything that was missing from the back of the car. And it seemed like we boiled the ocean to come up with three major [00:29:00] changes to the car.

Am I wrong? No, you’re right. Yeah. I mean, front splitter, front hood, and then these we’re going to talk about the flares in the bath. Yeah. Well, and yeah, front splitter. I don’t know where the hell that came from or what it was. I mean, I’m like, I saw that thing. They put it up there even like touch, like put it up there.

I’m like, where’s that from? I mean, if you saw the bracket on the side and everything, and Then, especially when they mounted it and we’re trying to mold it in, I’m like, Oh my God, that’s going to look like, and oddly enough, the front end was the best part, wherever they got the splitter from, if it came off of a Mustang or they measured something, it might’ve been.

An energy and RG branded front splitter kind of generic because the rear wing that they put on it definitely was right off the shelf at Amazon, right? So, but the, so they had to take that splitter that didn’t really fit. And molded [00:30:00] into the nose. So on first glance, when you saw it with its color, you know, with the discrepancy in the color between the red of the, you know, that tornado read the Ferrari red of the three 60 and the carbon fiber black, you’re like, that’s going to actually look pretty cool.

You know, they, they made some cuts, they slid it in, but then they, to your point, when they put in the turnbuckles and the reinforcement to, to accommodate the extra weight, they made these really boxy. Almost ski slopes on the side with these air ducts that I didn’t understand. They’re not canards. They’re just like, it reminded me of the Audi S1 Pikes Peak that has those sort of like ramp flares in the front that come down to the spoiler.

And I’m like, that’s not a Ferrari thing. That’s very German looking. It was really strange. Yeah. I just like, I’m like, that doesn’t fit. Exactly. It doesn’t fit. But the cringe, the cringe moment was when they took the hood off the car. And they’re like, we’re going to put in all [00:31:00] the scoop. Yeah. The GT 40 hood scoop.

And I’m like, Oh boy, they were referencing a lot of Ferrari. And I’m there thinking, well, it was, you know, they said it, but they’re doing, I’m thinking like, you know, the Pista and the new, you know, F8 style like that. But then he started to reference a lot of Ferrari. I’m like, it’s not going to go anywhere.

Yeah. And my wife was asking me, she’s like, how is that going to change the handling of the car? Yeah. Nothing. I was like, it’s either going to handle like ass because it’s changed the aerodynamics or it’s going to do absolutely nothing. And it’s just there for effect more than anything. It’s a bucket.

It’s a bucket. Cause they didn’t take it out into the front underneath the nose to where the air would come up and go to, they didn’t do anything. They just dropped it in there and some rain catcher. I mean, that’s all it is. And I don’t know if you caught it, you know, and we haven’t gotten to the color.

They painted it yet. But if you didn’t, I don’t know if you caught it or not, is they didn’t even paint all the way down into there. They left it black. Yeah. And, and it wasn’t like it was a line or anything, and it wasn’t even like a nice fade [00:32:00] to it. It was just like, they were just doing a rattle can to it and just like, there you go.

Bad overspray. It was, that was not well finished for sure. No. And it was just, that was another head scratch. And I’m like, seriously? I mean. But until, until they put. The final touches on the nose again with the uprights and all the stuff they needed to reinforce it. I was like, okay, this can work. I can see this happening like with the splitter and the, and the cutout nose and all that kind of stuff.

It sort of had this now for GT. Thing going for it. And I’m like, we’re not pulling from Ferrari’s playbook. We’re still thinking Le Mans. We’re still thinking that era, but we’re in the wrong paddock. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Wrong manufacturer people. And then we moved to the back of the car. Oh, oh boy. You know, all they did, you know, I, obviously it was just all fiberglass work, you know, and that was the other thing too.

I’m thinking, okay, they’re going to pull [00:33:00] off the existing panels and like buy new ones or build new ones or something. No, let’s just slap more fiberglass on there and build them up and make them taller, fatter, and wider that blew everything out of proportion. I look so bad. Yeah. So wrong. I, and I’m watching this stuff going.

These guys are not the best fiberglass people in the world. That’s for sure. Well, and that was something my wife pointed out. If you notice everybody else has got latex up to their elbows and they’re trying not to get any of the resin on them and Mark’s doing it like bare handed and glass, and then they used fiberglass over the carbon Kevlar body or whatever, and then they use that as a mold to do carbon fiber.

And then they grafted the carbon fiber fenders to the existing fender, as you were describing, and it’s like, yeah, you couldn’t tell where the seam lines were, but the big giveaway, which gets pointed out by the buyer later, and we’re going to get to that too, is the air duct for the [00:34:00] engine. I’m like, guys, you couldn’t take the time to open that up and smooth it out to make the teardrop just look natural.

It had this weird, what’s that bad guy in the Marvel movies that has no nose? It looked like him, you know, the red skull or whatever. It just was like, if you chop somebody’s nose off and you just get that diaphragm down the middle. That’s what it looked like. It was weird. Well, you know, the other thing too is.

I’m sitting there saying to myself, I go, all right, with everything they’re doing and putting on there and doing stuff, they’re adding all this weight to this car. They had added a good two, 300 pounds by the time they were done. Yeah. Yeah. Easily. And I’m like, Oh my God. Yo. And some people I think, Oh, I, it’s like, you know, a person or something like that drastically changes the car itself immensely.

The arrow, the handling, the performance. And to your point, you know, we, we skipped over doing the obvious. Let’s put a six speed in it, do some other stuff, maybe a wide body. All the things we talked about, they did zero performance months to it. And let’s, let’s face it like [00:35:00] nothing, nothing, right. But like any exotic, there’s a tax.

And I don’t think they could afford to take it to that level and say, Oh, we’re going to do this. We’re going to do that. Plus they’re out of their element. Right? They’ve got a Ferrari for the first time in the shop. And it’s like, well, what do we really do with it? Let’s just do some bodywork. Right? Yeah.

And, you know, and you look at the car, there’s another thing too, is it wasn’t like it was absolutely necessary. I mean, to me, look at stop the bodywork look fine. Yeah. Hey, you know, take it to a good detail or get it all done up, get some paint correction done and whatnot. You’ll be done with it for the day.

Wash your hands, you know, they would have been better off Just doing a wide body can stuff doing some performance mods putting an exhaust on it conversion whatnot And for what they got for they would have probably gotten that for it justifiably, you know, because in the end The guy wasn’t justified.

We’ll get there we get there, but it’s just it was baffling the thought process [00:36:00] and you know and the scary thought is because now Staged you’re not Is there mine there? Oh, we can do this to some more Ferraris. Oh, we’ll get there too. But we gotta, we gotta talk about the color. Yeah. Yeah. That’s like, oh, this is a sacrilege.

I mean, this is, you know, it’s a factory color just from a different factory. Yeah. Jesus. Kia. Well, that’s not, it’s nine 11 GT three RS green, right? It’s Carrera green. Yeah. And it looks horrible on that car. I don’t know if it was the lighting. Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, I don’t, they changed the hue slightly or whatnot because that green on a nine 11 looks spectacular.

I mean, it looks great. And that’s because a nine 11 can wear almost every color. Like, I mean, if you look at the seventies, they came in the assortment of M and M colors from the factory and that orange, yellow, that Kelly green career green is [00:37:00] one of those colors in the catalog, right? But Ferraris. If you’re going to do green, you go back to the 308 catalog and you do that metallic green that really dark with the gold fleck in it.

Like the, the Ferrari’s where darker colors better if you, and as far out as you can go, is that kind of gangster yellow, you know, the, the, the job, low, whatever they call it, you know, that, that they have that, that bright mustard color. And, and that’s about as, as outlandish as they get. And you kind of think about Ferrari.

And you start painting it, these crazy colors like that. And it’s like, well, who the hell do you think you are? Lamborghini, like Lamborghini does that, right? Paint it orange, paint it ink, purple, like all these Chrysler colors that came on the challenger, right? But a Ferrari, it’s like red, black, Navy blue, dark gray.

You know, all those, those wonderful colors that they come in. But Carrera green. That 360 does not wear that color well. And I tell you what, even if it was a race livery, it wouldn’t look good in [00:38:00] that color. No, it was horrendous. And, you know, like I said, once you see it, you’re going to be like, you want to puke.

Let’s talk about the accents, shall we? Oh, you know, and I think that’s, those are the only patterns they know is that fucking spiderweb pattern. And as you people, if you watch the preview ones or what I go through, you’ll see it’s a, it’s a common theme on a lot of the cars they do is that they, they redo the grills and whatnot, but putting these spiderweb accents in the ducks in the front and then, you know, and either putting that little Gotham logo or putting, getting the name Gotham on it, you know, on the front.

Oh my, and this was gold. No, not just gold, rose gold, rose gold, my bad, rose gold because and that was the color of the wheels to boot too, which sometimes, you know, the rose gold can look good in certain situations on certain cars if it’s done correctly, you know, but on this situation, it just didn’t work because it’s rose gold on, on this just vomit green and but [00:39:00] it was the tackiest, tackiest ugliest.

Look at you, they, they pull off and you look at their front. You just gotta be, are you kidding me? So when they put the Gotham garage in rose gold inside of the bucket, right? The rain collector, as you like to call it, that was the flava flave with the big clock around his neck. Like it was so, Out of place.

It was so wrong. Like, even if they had just put their big, you know, double G logo with the bat wings, it wouldn’t look right either. It just. To your point, it needed to have a better gradient in the paint scheme. It needed to be subtle, needed to be shadowed, but putting that Gotham garage and the way they sat it, it was partially in the green, partially in the back, it just stood out like a gold tooth and you’re just like, Oh God, this is terrible.

Drawing attention to the worst. One of the worst things on that front end where they did a shit paint job. They didn’t complete it. It’s like. Let’s put some accent on there that looks like crap and that draws attention to that as well. [00:40:00] Well, and I’m glad you said shit paint job because we’ve watched them paint cars over the years and Mark is an extremely talented painter.

I’ve said it before. I will stand by that. Some of the stuff he has done in the paint booth is amazing. I want to reference the Mako Shark inspired C3 Corvette that they did. He did this beautiful. Gradient from just like a shark’s body from a deep dark blue all the way to a silver through these multiple.

I mean, it was just gorgeous metallic, you know, and they’re capable of doing some awesome paint jobs. I noticed with this car, we didn’t see it in the paint booth. No, we saw them getting together. Afterwards and they’re pulling Nick Smith in. Oh, you got to get dirty and put your overalls on and everybody gets involved in the big build and all this BS and I’m like, okay, fine.

And you watch them and they’re pulling the, you know, the painter, the frog tape off of the car. And at 1 point, my wife pointed out, she goes, look, you can still see the red. They didn’t prime the car. So they did like a Mako spray over [00:41:00] on this thing. And I’m sort of wondering, like, is this like a plastic dip?

Like they’re going to be able to peel this paint off later kind of thing. Because normally you would see the whole stage, them sanding down the car and doing all this stuff and doing the prep work and blah, blah, blah. And in this case, they kind of blasted through that. And I’m like, Oh boy, all that fiberglass work that they did on the tube on the ass end, you know.

That’s a shit load of prep work and getting everything. And then, you know, panel gaps, everything. I mean, again, yeah, they, uh, they hit a lot, I guess you could say in regards to process and steps that were taken to get to that end result, which just is just absolute blasphemy. I mean, just, I could not believe my eyes when I saw that thing, when it was done.

But it gets worse. It gets worse. I was just about to say, and you think, oh my God, it can’t get any worse than this. Oh, it gets worse. Because, you know, then it even gets more along the lines. You’re thinking this is a stage or whatnot, and it kind of go referencing, you know, the two sales guys. [00:42:00] I can see Nick having some contacts and whatnot, just because of his background, everything like that.

What, you know, he came up through with, uh, you know, it’s symbolic and uh, was it Sotheby’s or one of the auction houses? Classic Avenue and all that. Yeah. So I could see him having, you know, some of the content stuff, but the other guy, you know, if you look at his resume and stuff like that, a guy, you know, he’s been on a couple of the car shows, but he was mainly, the guy’s an actor.

You know, and I’m like, I don’t think this guy knows anybody. So this was somebody getting pulling strings or something or someone they knew, but you know, making those calls and as you know, cause you saw it, but so everyone, you know, just kind of going over it, you know, they stage, they have an event, you know, they call around and try and find a place.

They find out there’s a winery, really nice winery, everything like that. And they, so they invite all these people that are prospective buyers and everything like that. At night, I want to point out. At night, yeah, which was a good, yeah, good move. Try to make it as dark as possible. Always sell a car at night if [00:43:00] you don’t want anybody to look at the mistakes.

Just feed them that booze before you take the cover off. So, you know, they get the stage set, so obviously they corral all these people to come out. You know, and, you know, my understanding would be open bar and whatnot. So, you know, 80 percent of the people come and, hey, they’re just coming for the free booze and snacks and stuff like that.

But, you know, kind of given a ballpark is where they’re thinking this thing might be at, you know, they were kind of given a definitive hard number, you know, to get people to go, but, you know, they’re kind of getting out there because people, you know, would want to know that before traveling however far it may be.

You know, and you know, the one guy comes out that traveled very far. I mean, I felt bad for these people Yeah, because when they uncovered the car if you looked if you paused and sort of looked into the crowd The reaction wasn’t all smiles with a big sign that says applause and they all go crazy. There were people are like What the heck is this thing, right?

And so there was a lot of hype around the car and in the background the murmurs within the crew [00:44:00] is like This is either going to make us or break us because to your point sure doing a ferrari in this color in this way It’s sacrilege, especially in a community that knows those cars wants those cars in their collection with their other ferraris or their porsches Or whatever they have, you know, this is not a toy.

This is not a corvette You can dress up like a hot wheels car, which as a matter of fact, they’ve done on this show before. And so for me, I’m, I’m on pins and needles going, man, this is going to go over like a lead balloon and they’re going to be stuck with this car. And this is like three times that they’re stuck with some bill that they just cannot unload.

There comes a point, you know, they unveil the car, people are talking and you see people are walking away. You know, I got to get another drink before I look at this thing again. And they’re trying to work the crowd. The whole team is trying to work the crowd. Every one of them is. And at one point, and I don’t know if they meant to leave it in or not, but you hear Constance saying, this isn’t going well.

Nobody’s interested in this [00:45:00] car. And I was like, dang, that is savage. Well, you know, everyone that you’ll walk up to is kind of thing. You go, ah, I’ll have to think about it. You know, it’s just a nice way to like, you’re outta your mind. Oh, that guy talking about his wife, I gotta run it by my wife. I’m like, oh man.

Yeah, exactly. It’s like, yeah, again, it’s the, the old car sales stuff, you know, on the purchaser side, you know, using the same excuse. But yeah, I mean, going up to everybody, eh, I don’t think so, whatnot. And what we’ve left out, the big reveal is how much they wanted for the car, right? Oh, yeah. I mean, what was he at?

2 25? Two and a quarter. For 360. Yeah. For 360. With no performance mods. Yeah, depth recovery, which, you know, you’ll find on doing a VIN thing on stuff like that. And if they’re worth their salt, they would have disclosed that too, that this was a depth recovery car. You know, which is a, you know, a big red flag for anybody, especially a Ferrari that, you know, is done by a shop that has no business working on a Ferrari.

You know, it’d be one thing if you’re going to an actual [00:46:00] Ferrari shop, they got a theft recovery, went through a tooth and nail, everything like that. Every nut and bolt and you can trust the fact is, but then you got these guys. You know, they’re they’re even, you know, how, how many fires they worked on two, one, maybe a best, you know, zero, you know, so that was the, you know, uh, the other thing about it too is I, I want to say the balls on them to ask that.

I mean, that is some balls, you know, to stand by that Jane. Okay. Let’s see. Yeah. We want to 25 for it. You know, and if you, in other episodes I watch it, you know, and if you go back and watch other ones, you’ll see, they kind of. You know, as a group or, you know, between Mark and Paul, you know, they kind of usually come up with the number, but then when they get in front of the client, potentially, Paul always jacks the price up more.

Oh, Sean does. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sean does, you know, and get it down. So, you know, it’s like, okay, they’re starting high, but on the big builds on big [00:47:00] builds like this, like the supercar, like the Tesla, the Ferrari, there’s a couple others. He digs his heels in the sand and he doesn’t want to budge on the number.

And they mentioned that even during this, when it comes almost down to closing, because we get this dark horse rolling in at the last minute when everybody’s pretty much like, nah, brah, you can, yeah. You can take that thing back on the trailer it came on, right? He’s dig, you can tell he’s digging his heels and he wants that 225.

He wants 200. And then they’re, they’re screwing around with the numbers. And at one point, Sean’s playing the same game. He always plays it. I’m like, here we go. And you don’t look on Nick’s face. And again, the editing this season is funny compared to previous ones where they left certain things in. And Nick is like, just rolling his eyes.

Like, come on, man. This is not how we do business in the Ferrari world. Like, what are you doing? You know? Yeah, well, you know, and you have to start wondering because you watch is like him digging his heels in. Is it more ego, you know, and his mind thinking, you know, no, in my mind, it is worth this, you know, [00:48:00] something’s only worth what someone’s willing to pay for it.

Exactly. And unless you have, you know, all it takes is two people to create a bidding war, so to speak, and to drive a price up whatnot. But if you have one person that’s dictating market value, it’s going down. I mean, you got one buyer, you’re going to have to bite the bullet. But yeah, I mean, digging his heels in, you know, them getting a little paranoid because, you know, I think those other ones, they, they were thinking too, is like, oh crap, we’re going to be stuck with this car, you know, and then what are we going to do with it?

How are we going to sell? Because if you go back, you know, to those. The Bugatti S car, you know, they made an attempt to sell that thing online. He dug his heels in and wouldn’t let it go. And then, you know, luckily they, how legit it was or whatnot, because Nick was the one that brought in the supposed big high ball and roller deal, you know, buyer and Nick ends up being on in season five.

So I was like, how much was that kind of plate? So who knows? But, you know, uh, it’s just, you can see the kind of worry and everyone else that I saw, crap, we’re going to be stuck with as well. But [00:49:00] again, now we get something that seems a little too TV esque as well. This major collector from the East coast comes rolling in who supposedly is just, it happens to be a town.

This was a two week window from them calling on this guy coming in, which is a little odd because something like that, you know, in that timeframe, unless you’re talking something super special. And you know, that they were looking for this specific car. They’re not going to kind of say, drop everything or be able to squeeze something in, you know, this guy’s, you know, if he’s a major collector, the kind of dealings this guy has.

He’s not gonna be like, well, yeah, yeah, you know, the auto show’s going on, but I’ll try and see if I can squeeze in and whatnot. Let’s be real, William. If they had called you, you would have gone. You would have showed up. Yeah, yeah, why not? Well, God, I wanted to see what the hell this thing was. I mean, talk about a great YouTube video.

That’d have been fantastic. Oh my God, that would have got, you know, went viral. Look at this thing, he’s dropping this thing before the show aired. But, um, you know, so as you saw, and this guy comes rolling in, it was in a Rolls Royce or I’m trying to [00:50:00] remember what it was in. Yeah. So when he’s in the backseat, you know, I’ll ask you, Hey, I’m a high ball or roller here and coming in and you know, he comes in, you know, gets out of the car, they greet him, guys, very kind of low key and the covers already off the car.

So it wasn’t like they did the reveal to him. So he comes walking up and see this car. Now, again, this guy is supposedly, uh, A major collector. So you have to assume he’s probably got some Ferraris in his collection and supposedly an expert in three sixties. They said, yes. And yeah, and I’m sitting and thinking to myself, if this guy’s a major collector and he’s got anything he could give two shits about a three 60, there’s nothing special about it unless it’s like a three 60 challenge or something like that.

You know, um, yeah, it’s just some standard three 60 channel. I mean, three 60 is like. What would he care? I mean, it’s a, I would say entry level, but it is like buying a three Oh eight. You’re like, whatever. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So him getting is all worked up about it, but no, so he comes walking up and starts looking at it.

And again, as we described this card, [00:51:00] and as if you watch the episodes, you will see how horrific this car is. And this guy like actually showing some kind of interest in the car, which was absolutely shocking to me that I’m saying, okay, this is just kind of set up now. This is, is not making sense. I.

There’s just no way. So as we guys out, we knew where they were starting at at the 225. You know, so they get down to brass tacks and start, you know, kind of discussing that. I know he’s going over the car He’s talking about violence stuff. I mean, he’s really kind of, you know, scrutinizing the car kind of going again Go back.

We don’t see the interior at all. I don’t see him open a car door and look inside at all You know, he doesn’t you don’t see him start the car, you know, nothing, you know I’m, sorry, but you’re gonna buy something like that. You’re gonna start it. I want to hear it run all right, let’s drive because I want to see how the transmissions I think is If the F1 trade shot on that, that’s 20 grand right there.

You know, it’s like all these things, if you’re going to be spending that kind of money, you know, you’re north of six [00:52:00] figures. You’re going to want to scrutinize the hell out of this car. And you’re probably, you know, get a PPI done and do all this stuff. And hey, I want to see records on, on, on, on, you know, I just come strolling in to see this gaudy ass green snot thing sitting there with these rose gold accents, spiderweb accents, saying Gotham garage on it.

Going. Yeah. I’m going to put that in my collection. And offering up 165 grand. And my wife was like, what did he just say? 165. I was like, I’m sitting and go, okay, this guy is not legit. I go, there is no way this guy would even start there. I was, I was waiting for like one 20 or one 10 to come out of his mind.

Even then I’ve been like, yeah, you guys should probably take that, you know? And, but no, and him started once he did, I was like, Oh God, you know? And so then they came back at the 200. So then he’s kind of scary. He goes, well, you know, and then I think he came to one 70. They came down to one 90. And then he just says, I can’t go [00:53:00] any higher than 175 like, uh, yeah.

And so, and that’s, again, when Mark’s kind of digging his heels and they’re kind of like looking at Mark going, oh, crap, we’re going to be stuck with this car. And, you know, they do that dramatic effect, looking at Mark, everything like that. So then he starts, you know, going into the spill about, you know, you’re thinking, okay, he’s not going to sell.

Then he’s like, well, but. You know, this gets us in the door or dah, dah, dah for this market. Did it in a snap? So yeah, we can do one saying, fine. I’m thinking, Oh my God, if this guy’s, if that guy bought that car, he’s legit and that car is sitting in a collection of five or 10 cars or whatnot. That thing’s like sitting up front or something like that.

I mean, people are going to walk in and go, this guy’s got absolute. Stupid taste. I mean, why would you buy that car? The money it would take to convert it back to a just plain jane 360. You’re completely upside down I mean the hood alone. I can’t imagine after they sacrificed it is cheap, you know In my opinion if you’re gonna mod a ferrari to your point Pull the fenders off, pull the hood off, [00:54:00] keep the original parts so you can convert it back to what it was in case it just goes totally pear shaped.

But to mod the car like it was an old Chevelle or an Impala or something and say, well, here it is, you know, we shaved the door handles. You’re like, ah, that’s, that’s, it’s hard to come back from that. You go out into the market, you know, and again, we’ll refer and referencing like, you know, Liberty Walk, Banstree, RWB and whatnot.

They really do not with any of those kits really basically fiddle with. The look of it, they just kind of enhance it and, and just give it a meaner looking stance. You know, they’re gonna get into a fiberglass work here and there. Yeah. I mean, you got some extreme ones where it’s complete new bolt-on kit for, you know, quarters and fenders and whatnot.

But, you know, those ones are, you can tell that that’s what they are, but you look at, you know, what those other ones are. It’s like, it enhances it. They, they work with the car, you know, and what those guys did is just, it’s horrendous and it just, I. And it’s like, is that, that’s why I just really think, okay, when he got to [00:55:00] that point, okay, that guy’s not legit.

It ain’t real. It’s like And I’ve been kind of looking around online trying to find any anything else on this car, you know where did it end up whatnot because you know Either a the guy did buy it and he fucking put it in a dumpster and just like lit it on fire And says, oh, hey, I got some good pr on that or whatnot God only knows, you know, or put it in a you know, smash up dirt car derby or something I mean, I don’t know what you would do that because I would be embarrassed to take that thing to any type of Even to a cars and coffee I mean, because people are going to be like, they know how much you paid for it.

They’re going to be looking at you going, you’re the fricking idiot that bought this car. You know, it’s, you know, and if that guy is legit, the people that know him in the industry as, and whoever’s like, they dealt with them or sold them cars or whatnot. I mean, his phone would have been ringing off the hook saying, how in the hell did you pay that?

Why would you pay that for that car? But I mean. You talk about getting ridiculed, and you know, [00:56:00] he’s probably like, I actually didn’t buy the car, I just threw it out there and whatnot to kind of let them save face. So, and that’s exactly what we were thinking. I think who ended up with that car is the young guy with the flat brim hat that they brought in at the beginning of the season, who has all that collection of the Lamborghinis and Bugattis and all that kind of stuff, and he bought, Custom Dodge Charger that they built for him.

It’s the first car they did in the season. And I was scratching my head going like, why the hell does somebody want like a hooptie charger from 2006? And, you know, and they built him this car that he could kind of take and go hoon around it and whatever. And I’m like. This Ferrari sort of leans in that direction, and he was there that night, and they didn’t pay him a ton of attention.

They started the yo, bro. What’s up? You know, you’re here. Thanks for coming to the party. And he was in the background. And even when they negotiated with Poindexter, you know, from the East Coast, if you notice, there was no crowd. Yeah, they’re everyone’s gone almost exactly. And there was continuity issues that my wife and I [00:57:00] picked up on in the filming where Mark was wearing different hats and you had to pay close attention and they didn’t, they didn’t even take the time to like brush off his blazer.

Like it was, it was a mess, right? And we’re like, what the hell? And we really think that that other guy, and I can’t remember his name right now. Probably ended up with a car because it sort of falls more in line with his style, you know new money You know fancy car just kind of you know fast and the furious type of look at me Look at me look at me and I’m cool with that man If you like if you like cars and that’s your thing, I’m good with it, right?

But this other dude, yeah I didn’t believe it for a second. But yeah where we go from here Is what really got my attention and remember they’re talking about this saying we’re gonna do high end cars We want to do jaguars and porsches and ferraris and mercedes benz and all this kind of stuff And i’m like, I keep thinking to myself.

This is a weird marriage between nick’s team And mark’s team nick keeps talking about having how he wants to elevate them and [00:58:00] i’m like You got to get them to pack up the custom the custom american cars and the hot rods because hot rods and exotics I hate to say they don’t mix. No, they don’t. They don’t, right?

So when you look at a shop on the east coast or on the west coast, like a Forza or Prancing Skunk or any of those people that are doing restorations that are working on those cars, or if they are doing modifications to them, they’re within reason. They’re within the right mentality of how you would modify a Ferrari or a Maserati or a Lamborghini or whatever it is.

But I just don’t see this working, right? And we’re kind of, I felt like my wife and I, as we were watching this, We breathe the sigh of relief as did the past and everybody else sort of when it was over like, Oh my God, we’re going to put this Ferrari thing to bed and we’re going to move on and hope that season six is better because this is just a train wreck.

And then we get this sort of after the credits at the Marvel movie, you just sat through, you know, the Hulk and Iron [00:59:00] Man doing their thing. And there’s this extra five minutes of Nick, Sean and Mark. In a private collection. And so why don’t you describe it for everybody? What plays out next? That’s a dealer.

Okay. DDD has been in that shop a few times. I don’t know if anyone watches DDE, the daily driven exotic YouTube channel, but they actually were in there recently and they’ve been in there before, and I’m trying to remember the name of that dealership. But anyways, yeah, so they show them the next day going to, because they think they’re stepping up and I meet Leo when they’re kind of going around, even before they said it, I’m like, okay, the six 12 Scalietti, okay, that’s a cheap car, you know, while I’m speaking, I go, and, but Hey, if it’s got a six speed in it, you know, Hey, you could do some cool stuff with that very subtle whatnot and get it, you know, but as we saw, it was a package deal for the six 12 F1 tranny.

I want to assume because that would have been because price [01:00:00] wise where they’re at and a four or five eight. So four or five eight, you know, just a basic Italian. So what names you want a special one, but those are going up in value because that’s the last naturally aspirated Ferrari eight cylinder they’re making they made.

And they sound beautiful. Oh, and it’s a fabulous car. And people rant and rant and say, Hey, that’s like the last pure Ferrari, because then you start getting into turbocharged stuff in the four eights and stuff like that. Now the six 12 is kind of one of those ones is a love. Hey, you know, I like them. I think they’re not, it’s a great touring car, you know, a big front end is V12 whatnot, 600 some horsepower.

It’s like the new four or five, six, basically. Yeah, exactly. It’s all it was is the upgrade from the four or five, six. It’s a great car, you know? And then they say it’s a package deal and you got to buy them both. Cause they’re like, well, we’ll just buy this one. So now you got to buy them both. 290, 000.

Yeah. Joy and I for both. And I’m like, I started thinking in [01:01:00] my head, I’m like, if, you know, and then the guy kind of says, oh, there’s some room there or whatnot, I go, if you can get those for two 50 to 65 for both of them, I go, that’s a pretty, not a bad deal. You know, because, you know, you break out that 458, depending on mileage options, what not, how is it done again, because you have no idea, but, you know, that’s 150, 000, 170, 000, right there, that 612, again, you’re in that, you know, 120, 130 range, you know, again, depending on miles, what not, so, and, that’s a retail number, not wholesaling them, but if you can get around there, that’s not a bad deal on those two cars, right?

But the scary part is, is what in God’s name are they going to do to these two cars? That’s where they leave you. Yeah. Cause you know, they’re, you know, they, they set that up to for them to, they’re buying the cars. I mean, it’s. If they start season six episode one and they come in and say, wow, we didn’t buy those two cars, I’d be like, [01:02:00] I’d be a little surprised.

There’s a moment of tension as they close it out, leaving us with a cliffhanger, going into season six. And to your point, it’s going to be one of these make or break situations. Either they’re going to buy the cars and they’re going to go both feet into this custom Ferrari spiderweb world, or They’re going to part ways with Nick Smith and, and both my wife and I were kind of like, those are the only options here.

And because season five was so rocky with the way they do business so differently. I’m like, I don’t know that I want to watch a season six where we perpetuate this behavior. I can’t, I’ve been saying for a while now, since the show sort of changed in season three, how do we get back to seasons one and two?

How do we get back to the red paper clip? How do we get back to that? Classic upgrade and trade mentality where they were scratching at, you know, 1, 500 cars and this and that. And, you know, jokingly, my wife says, that’s when you change over and you just keep watching Tex Mex motors because that’s what they’re doing.[01:03:00]

So, you know, and that’s a whole nother story for another day. And that, that show also ends with a Ferrari in their stable, a 275 Daytona. But we’ll talk about that another, another point. There’s this hardball moment between sort of almost come to Jesus between Nick and Mark, and they’re staring each other down like it’s the Alamo.

And Nick’s like, this is the game you wanted to play. And this is a direct quote. If you don’t dare, you don’t win. And I’m like, come on, man. And then it just roll credits. See y’all next year, right? Well, you know, here’s the thing too. And as you hit it, you know, in regards to the business model, you know, I’m bit surprised, especially, you know, if you’re going like that high dollar opening just out of the gate, you know, acquiring what cards you’re going to work on, you know, supposedly the business model is, it seemed like they all have an ownership stake in this because they split all the profits.

If that’s the case, then [01:04:00] it seems to me that he’s not paying these guys an hourly labor rate or anything. Hey, it’s all based on what we make on the car. So it’s like, you would think if I was in that position, I would have, want to have a big say in what cars we’re doing, how we’re doing it, because I want to be sure we’re going to get, you know, You know, I don’t want to bust my ass on something and make nothing or only make a couple grand.

I kill myself for a month. Exactly. And that’s part of the way this show is structured. Everybody else seems to have a day job. Like, let’s take Tony, the master fabricator at Gotham. So, Tony. Has his own gig. Like I feel like car masters as a side hustle, they get together for your point for a couple of months or six months or whatever it is, shoot the show, get these cars done as fast as they can.

And that was the other thing that Nick kept stressing. You got to get these high quality done as fast as possible. And I’m like, those two things don’t go together. If you’ve ever spent any time with a rest. restoration shop, you know, doing these types of things. It takes forever to get these [01:05:00] kinds of cars done to the level of like, not even SEMA quality, but even pebble beach quality.

You don’t do that in two weeks and then flip it for, you know, six figures. But the point is these guys seem to have, let’s say regular jobs. They’re taking time off to do this. So they’re getting paid on commission, which is totally fine. But when it came down to it at the end of season five, my wife and I kind of looked at each other and said, we’re still fans of the show.

We will still be fans of the show. But I think what we really want at this point is a show with Tony, Caveman and Constance, just We’re Those three. And then maybe those two other guys from Nick shop, the fabricators, cause they they’re pretty mild mannered and doing their thing. And they’re very good at what they do.

Right. These other people, the front end, the front of house where I’m sort of over it at this point. But that’s not to say I’m not going to watch season six when it comes out. Oh, well, no, I got it now. I mean, You know, it’s like, I think, you know, they, them talk about getting into the, you know, restoration and stuff like that.

It’s like, you know, I think you have [01:06:00] 2 choices in regards to if you’re going to get into high end exotic collectible cars into, I guess you’d say foreign ones, you know, you could either go into your cars that are basically late 80s, 90s and up, but that basically more entails. You know, engine modifications, slight, you know, exterior mods to it.

Nothing, you know, I mean, you could get a little extreme, but it has more to do with making them loud and fast twin turbo, dah, dah, dah, that kind of stuff. You see, you know, and go for it now. Then if you go prior to that, you’re talking your, you know, fifties, sixties, early seventies stuff. You know, that that’s going to say concourse driver, whatever, whatever level of person has got.

But I mean, you’re talking such a different set of skills between those 2 type of ventures. The only engine person that got his Constance and I, I mean, I don’t, you know, her dad was a drag racer or whatnot. So she’s working on, she probably got the knowledge, ability to slap turbos on and do all that kind of crap.

But I mean, you don’t [01:07:00] know, but they definitely don’t have the skillset to go into the early stuff. I mean, cause then you’re talking English wheels, stuff like that crap, you know, I mean, but that that’s an art and you know, so you definitely won’t see that. So it’s, it’s really going to be curious to see what they do.

You know, I think they only could, you know, and I say they got away with this one in season five painting the green and whatnot. But I think, you know, it would be a make or break in regards to if they, they acquired those 2 to 6, 12, You know, I think that’d be a make or break in regards to how they handle it.

Because if they do something as gaudy and tacky as that with both of those, and then they sell them for some stupid number, you know, I think it’s going to turn off a lot of people because they’re gonna be like, okay, this is staged. A hundred, a hundred percent. And they’re going to lose their audience and they’re going to lose their credibility because the cars they’ve been doing up until this point.

Cater to not [01:08:00] just a certain demographic, but they cater to a type of collector, right? The people that are interested in that SEMA kind of car or that cars and coffee car, or, you know, some of the other ones that we talked about, even on what should I buy? So there’s a buyer in their current market. And by them jumping out of that, and, you know, if we’re going to do Ferraris and Jaguars and all this other custom stuff, now the show.

What does it become? Does it become counting cars? Like I’m not trying to put a knock on Danny Coker, but you know, he’s got his own stuff going on and he’s been doing it for years and he’ll mod anything. And he doesn’t seem to really care. So is, and so we are wondering, is that the direction the show is taking?

Is that the direction the shop should be taking? Like, and it’s not questions that I need to answer or that maybe we will ever get the answer to. But it has lost its way. Right. And when jokingly we talked about in season. Three, four, when they built that, that shark of a Corvette, which I enjoyed the paint scheme on the [01:09:00] show, jumped the shark at that point.

If you go back and watch, you’ll understand what I’m talking about or listen to my review. It makes sense, but it has turned a page. I’m willing to hang in there. I hope that Tony Constance and caveman get more airtime. Maybe they get their own spinoff. It goes back to kind of classic Gotham garage types up because the three of them are, they have great personalities.

They have great chemistry on camera. They’re, they’re all smart and they get stuff done and they do good work. And they’re the ones doing the majority of the work at the end of the day. So I want to know more about that. I want to see more about that. But what I think we need to wrap this episode up with William is as.

You’re an expert in this space. The moral to the story here is When you take all these layers off, is there a room in the Ferrari marketplace, pun intended, for custom Ferraris? Not this one specifically, but custom Ferraris in the collector space. The one moral is don’t [01:10:00] send your Ferrari to Gotham Garage.

I, you know, again, you know, it’s all personal preference, you know, and like I, I was saying just before is, you know, you got this. You know, I guess you would say demographic where, you know, at a certain point, and I guess it has to do with coming up, you know, playing for that kind of stuff and having that on there.

Where these guys are just, you know, taking these cars, you know, they’re, I’d say 40 and under, maybe even earlier, forties and down, you know, as twin to drivers like that. It’s all about power and sound and the crackle, you know, backfire and all that kinda crap. I mean, a lot, some of those cars look good, you know, some of those cars are, are, you know, they’re a bit, I mean, I’m 53, so I, I’m gonna go on inside.

You know, it’s, that would just draw me, you know, I, I’m a, I’m a person that says, look, hey, I don’t mind a decent exhaust. So it sounds good. ’cause you know, especially with the flat, flat plate crank V eight. You know, I mean, you know, uh, Fox or eight, whatever, you know, sounds [01:11:00] phenomenal, you know, put it to be exhaust on it, you know, put something else on there just sounds good, but you don’t get to really extreme with some of the stuff and twin turns.

That’s just not my cup of tea. I’m more, you know, I like to have more stock aesthetic look, but you know, you’re definitely not going to do with anything early ain’t going to happen. You know, I could, you know, it’ll be interesting regards to say, you know, I could see it going from three sixties. You know, maybe a 328 308 still doing some really kind of weird stuff and kind of like, hey, what can we get away with?

Because they’re just an abundance. Kind of like that case swap 308 that we saw in the last couple of years. Exactly. You know, um. You know, I, and I seen like some guys, you know, doing their, you know, trying to, you know, do a carbon fiber buyout to kind of, you know, retro tribute to a two, eight, eight, that kind of stuff.

And, um, yeah, I, I think there’s a window there for that, but I mean, I think you have to, you can’t just be, I want to say, I don’t want to say subtle. So, cause that would mean like, Oh, Hey, paint the thing green and get these [01:12:00] gaudy things on there. You know, it’s more along the lines is, and not going to a complete like singer type level of a, of a build.

You know, but almost to a point, you know, it’s like, all right, you really need to improve on what came out of the factory to make it worth it, you know, so it’s like, you know, brand new interior, but take it to the 10th level, you know, and, you know, carbon fiber, everything like that. It’s like, I mean, if you’re going to do it, you’re going to have to take it to a level that’s justifiable, especially for cost or price.

You know, if you’re going to do it, but not what they did, there’s just no way, not, there’s just no way, you know, um, you know, and I just don’t see it, you know, it’s, you know, um, like I said, you know, then, you know, then take a new like four or five, eight, you know, four days, that kind of stuff and doing it. I mean, you really don’t see it all that much.

Ferraris you see with the Lamborghinis and Porsches, yeah and Porsches and you see a lot of stuff But you really don’t see that much and you know I don’t know how much so [01:13:00] much is just who the buyer is the demographic of people that buy them um I don’t know if they’re afraid to get cease and desist from Ferrari because Ferrari is Extremely particular about what you do with your car.

I mean they they could give to you know, what’s It’s hey, I bought it with my money. I own it. They don’t care. That’s their intellectual property in their mind And they’re going to dictate what you can and can’t do and you get too nuts You’re going to get a letter from you know, um, you know, so you don’t really know too much um, you know, I know I’m going to reference these dde guys because you know, um, I don’t the main guy and the other guy, you know, um, Dave and damon, you know, they’re kind of leading the show.

I mean, they’re all right they’re a little kind of honestly obnoxious, but Mike Essa, who they brought in, who’s the fab guy, drifting guy, everything like that. I watch it for him because I like watching his mind work in regard to how he builds the cars and what he comes up with and you know, modding these cars and that because I mean, he knows his you [01:14:00] know, and he really knows how to build these things, right?

So, I really enjoy watching his aspect of it and take it. Now, you know, they did that 550. Now, you know, they’re going to do up that 599 and what he’s doing, what they’re doing to it, you know, they’re going to that race car look. You know, obviously and it’s a drifting car, but you know, it’s it’s going more race cars.

Look, it’s not this gaudy You know all these appendages anything each each thing serves a purpose on the car. That’s the one key thing It’s not just for aesthetics, you know, it’s not to be obnoxious. It’s serving a purpose for airflow air for whatever You know downforce and what have you so it’s all serving a purpose now, you know They’re doing or I should say he’s doing because he’s the one doing it all You know, a great job on what they’re doing there.

But again, I think that’s the correct way to do it. And I think you can see that where people say, well, that’s not something obnoxious and crazy. It’s like taking it race car ish for the street. You know, that one’s going to be a complete drift car, but you know, I think it’s [01:15:00] going to turn out great. Like I know the one I just watched, like he just, he wants to fabricate up in the hood, just putting in the vents in the hood.

Man, it changed, you want to talk a thousand percent better look to the car with the vents on it, it looked phenomenal, you know, and just, that was a simple thing, they show them cutting out and doing everything like that, and again, it was cool to see it because, you know, they’re cutting into a, you know, 170, 000 car, 106, 000 car, you know, and just having to add what, like it’s nothing, you know, it’s just, it’s neat to watch, you know, and that was what they did at six B conversion on, you know, so that’s the other thing.

So it’s, um. You know, I think it’s going to go a certain route, but it’s not going to be something obnoxious. I just don’t, I don’t see it. I don’t see people want, I don’t see a market for it. I don’t see, I think people buy it. It’s just, it’s just a different type of buyer that buys Ferraris. Well, I think that kind of wraps up our rant on season five of car masters, but you know, William, I got to thank you for inviting me to come on the Ferrari marketplace podcast.

I’m looking forward to [01:16:00] being back on here, talking about other things and the new direction that the show has taken and you becoming part of the family here at the motoring podcast network. So this has been good. I hope the audience enjoyed it. Yeah, guys. Hey, I appreciate you listening. And yes, hey, definitely take a listen to the other, uh, uh, uh, podcast that we got here on MPN.

Uh, there’s some great stuff on there. Definitely. Let’s, you know, give those guys a listen. Uh, next episode. We got crew chief. Eric will be on that one as well because we’re doing a thing on the million million. We’re going to have also Jonathan Summers on here. Who’s a great historian. Uh, very, very knowledgeable gentlemen on it.

All things meal Amelia and a lot of other races and target floor and that stuff But we’re going to focus on the meal meal because of the ferrari movie that came out which if you haven’t seen it yet Go see it. It’s really really good. But remember it’s entertainment. It’s not a documentary I feel like there’s another episode in there too.

William. You got to do a review There will be another one in there as well with that So we got lots of stuff to discuss and chew on so but again, I appreciate everybody listening And you know take a listen to the other [01:17:00] Podcast on the network and hey, we’ll be back for more. And we have this set up now.

We should have a lot more of these rolling on a more continuous basis. So thanks guys for listening. Appreciate it. And have fun.

Copyright William Ross, Exotic Car Marketplace a division of Sixty5 Motorsports. This episode is part of Gran Touring Motorsports, Motoring Podcast Network and has been republished with permission.