Car Masters: Rust to Riches

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Mark!

Mark!

I know he hears me.

He likes to annoy me.

I mean, I love a junkyard, but, man.

He just disappears. You bring him here, and he's gone.

You know those leashes you put your kid on when you go to the amusement park?

I need a leash. God.

Where the hell... Are you kidding me?

Mark!

- -

Oh.

Are you seriously in a dumpster?

There's... Dude, you can't imagine the stuff that's in here.

-Oh, my God. Come on. -Like, people throw this away.

Dude.

Oh, come on. Are you kidding me?

It's a toy gun.

Shifter.

Wait, there's more.

-Let's go. You ready to go? -

They're just your size.

Oh, come... Are you done?

-Take them home. -I'll be in the truck. All right?

"Be in the truck"? I'm not done yet. There's still two more dumpsters.

Who would throw this away?

Oh... What did I just step in?

At Gotham Garage,

we've made our mark through upgrade and trade...

Yeah, baby! Yeah!

...turning junkyard rust...

This is a cool little gem.

...into six-figure works of art.

We've been grinding with this model for years...

Easy! Easy!

...and as our reputation grew...

Wow!

...so did our Rolodex of high-end clients with deep pockets.

- I'm looking for a couple vehicles. -Really?

It appeared as if our dream was finally coming to fruition.

Unfortunately, these new clients' expectations

didn't align with my creative vision.

I wanna transform it 100%, not 95.

So we decided to forge our own path.

We invested 120 grand of the shop's money

into a custom concept car and bike pairing,

all based on my original design.

The plan was to set the car world on fire by hosting our own virtual auction.

I got Dan at 175.

-There you are, 180. - 180 to Alex.

But the bids fell short, and I wasn't willing to settle

for anything less than 250 grand.

225. That's it. That's as much as I can do.

-That's not enough. -Two-twen...

Come on, man.

That did not sit well with the rest of the team.

Without cashing out on the concept vehicles,

we're basically all the way back to square one again.

I know what it's like to be at the top of this business,

and I also know what it's like to be at the bottom.

I'll do whatever it takes to make sure that we get through this rough patch.

This is a 1928 Essex.

I'm gonna pay for this whole project.

-And I'm not taking my cut. -What?

We'll start with this '28 Essex project

and work our way up from there.

Even if we have to scour the grimiest junkyards

to get back to the top of the mountain,

then so be it.

I know every single person in this shop is ready to go.

- Get her done, guys. Whoo! -

Beer break is over.

-Finally. - Uh-oh.

Go, go, go, go, go.

Go, go. Stop.

What is this?

So we went to storage, cleaned that out,

got a bunch of pretty badass hot rod stuff,

and then we went to, like, two or three wrecking yards?

Three wrecking yards. For three hours apiece.

-Oh, come on, they had dumpsters. -Were you dumpster diving?

-All day. -

Obviously, the sting of the virtual auction is still fresh.

But the good news is we have this '28 Essex project,

and Mark's not taking his cut when we sell it.

He's even letting Shawn keep his cut.

So you know he's feeling pretty bad about the whole situation.

Caveman! Look! You got a club. I got a gun!

- Oh, bitchin'! -That's not a car part.

But the truth is this one car is not gonna solve all our problems.

All aboard!

We've got a long way to go before we're on stable ground financially,

and since Mark is set on 250 grand or more on the concept vehicles,

it's gonna take Shawn a while to find the right buyer.

So this is a lot of stuff. But what is all this stuff for?

This is gonna be one of our infamous zero money builds.

I thought you were covering the budget on this.

-I am. That's why it's a no money build. - Aw.

But that means that everything is 100% profit divided by four.

-Yes. Yes! - Yeah, I like that!

I didn't think about that.

So what we're gonna do with everything here

is build one badass Gotham Garage rat rod.

- Nice. - Yeah!

A rat rod is a type of hot rod

that gets its look from using reclaimed and salvaged parts.

We'll take this badass steam trunk,

and we'll put the fuel cell in it.

We've got the lantern. We're gonna put an LED brake light in it.

We're gonna take Mr. Pop Gun and turn it into a floor shifter.

Cool.

It's actually the perfect

because when you don't have a lot of money,

but you still wanna build a really cool car, you build a rat rod.

Rat rods started in the '80s

as kind of a punk rock style of car building.

You take whatever you got in your garage, and you build a down-and-dirty hot rod

with an intentionally unfinished look.

On a rat rod,

you can't hide behind fancy expensive parts.

So the value on a car like this

all comes down to how you apply these reclaimed parts to the build.

The more ingenuity and creativity that you use,

the more valuable the car.

The good thing about a build like this is you can be so creative

and have so much fun with it, you know?

-I think it'd be cool to do a rat rod. -Yeah. We haven't done one in a while.

The trick with this rat rod

is gonna be taking all these salvaged parts

and working them seamlessly into the build.

First up, we're gonna take this old vintage steam trunk,

we're gonna mount it to the back of the car,

and use it to house our fuel cell.

We'll also install a vintage lantern on the back

as a single tail light.

On the inside, we'll use our toy pop gun as a shifter,

and we'll mount this old-school compass to the dash

as our high-tech rat rod GPS.

-Up-front, we'll power this monster... -

...with a 383 Chevy Stroker motor,

with a badass 471 blower on top.

Yeah, rat rods are hot right now, and especially a Gotham Garage rat rod.

I think I can get close to 30 grand for this thing.

Easy money.

-Easy money. -Right?

You know what's hard to do? Hard to sell the concept car and bike.

So you need to shake your tail feather,

get in your office, and find a buyer for that.

Yeah, that's job one.

Skip to my lou, my darling.

-I'm getting at it now. - Find two buyers.

You take care of this, I'll take care of the big money.

-Get us some money. -Yeah.

-Right, so let's get this thing started. -Let's do it.

The long-term future of this shop

all hinges on selling the two concept vehicles

for 250 grand or better.

Once that happens,

it proves that something straight out of my imagination

is worth big-time money.

It unlocks the door to a whole new brand of clientele.

These are the clients that show up, pay handsomely,

but they don't give us a list to follow,

and there's no micromanaging.

But the bottom line is, passing on the high bid at the auction

has definitely put the shop in a compromising position.

We've got a lot of the shop's money tied up in two vehicles

that are sitting in the warehouse just collecting dust.

So, at this point, I don't care how Shawn sells them.

We're selling the concept car and the bike as a pair.

Pretty interesting, man.

If he finds an individual buyer, then great.

If not, we'll bring them to an auction

sometime down the road, just like we originally planned.

This ought to be fun.

Caveman, you're so motivated.

I'm getting somebody else's props? Hell yeah.

But until that happens, we're going OG Gotham Garage.

Looking good.

Sometimes you've just got to go back to what got you here

to get you to the next step.

I bet this was full of gold one time, huh?

That looks good up there. Now the car's got a trunk.

You guys are gonna have to keep storming on this in the morning

'cause I gotta go with Shawn

to look at a car and see what it's all about.

I guess he's got some big plan for bringing more money into the shop.

-What kind of car? - I don't know.

-It's one of Shawn's "secret things." -Oh no.

-Oh, God. -Code for, "Mark's gonna hate it."

He's trying to fool you.

About as much as he's fooling anybody with that frosted hair of his.

- - Aw, let him have that one!

We all know he's going gray under there.

- Is it a Chevelle? Minivan? - No. No.

- Pickup truck. Airplane. - No. No.

Boat? It's another boat.

Oh, my God. You're not gonna shut up till I tell you.

-No, I'm not gonna shut up. -Okay. I'll tell you what it is.