Tonight I was surfing Youtube and video came up about the car show Fantom Works. According to the Dan Short, the owner of the shop in the show he lost his butt doing the show. He's starting up a Youtube channel which is going to be on a smaller scale.

From the beginning of the "Reality TV" show craze I, along with many others, knew the shows were all BS. No one can do a quality restoration or build a decent hot rod in a month. That is what most of the shows made it seem like it took. Also, there aren't as many willing dupes that will pay five times what a car is worth like the shows always depict. Short said the production cost him and his business a lot of money and stress trying to meet the demands of producing builds in the short times allotted by the shows producers and network.

Another "reality TV" car guy, Bad Chad also seemed to have the same type of experience. His girlfriend Jolene posted a video a week ago that pretty much said the show was pretty much staged. The "customers" that had Chad do cars for them were shills the production company brought in. Bad Chad had an arrangement with the production company that allowed him to keep the cars he built, they didn't really go with the "customer".

These stupid shows have done a lot to harm the car hobby. Short said that after he started doing the show he had a lot of people coming to him who thought the could have a complete frame off restoration for around $25K, most cases he said that just would cover the cost of parts. He also said his restorations took months, even years. An average restoration could be in the $80-100K range. I like Fantom Works, it was the most realistic show. What I did find hard to believe though was the amount of money the customers would spend on their cars. One I remember was a guy who spent over $80 on a '64 Chevy convertible, that didn't include the initial cost of the car. For what he spent on the car he could have easily bought two already done cars. Most of the customers spent more on their cars than they could ever get out of them. He also said he had quite a few customers game the system. They knew the production company only gave his shop a few weeks to do a restoration and then would have a show with a big reveal. At that point the customer would tell him they didn't have all of the money for the job but since the show already did a bid episode of them handing the car off to the customer there wasn't mush he could do to get the rest of the money.

The one funny thing Short said is he couldn't afford to have a car done at his shop. He has a small collection of cars but he said he put a lot of his own time in them and also used them for rooky employees to learn and practice on. He said none of his cars were perfect, all had some flaws in them.

 

I like watching some of them but I never liked Dan. He just hits e the wrong way. I have watched some of Chads you tube builds and it is better then the show was. I agree with your post too.

 

Yup, my neighbors who like to pull up a lawn chair and crack open some beers & shoot the s**t while watching me work on the 55 (or other projects) always comment about if only reality car shows would detail what goes into taking the dull turd you see roll into the shop verses the shiny gem that rolls out.

Last night is a good example, one of them was over when I was disassembling / cleaning the vent windows on the 55 and he said boy, you would never know it takes 2-3 hours to take apart, clean and prep a simple vent windows just to get it to the point to be put back together which takes another 30 minutes or so. he said these car shows just show the bright component being put back on the freshly painted car and life is good.

Some shows show more detail than others, but still not enough for the average person to understand the tons of hours that go into our hobby.

Jim

 

Long before the TV shows when I was working on prepping the body on the F-2, later on another project, I would prime the body, block it out, prime again and block again. I'd do it as many times as I thought I needed to do to ensure a straight body. My wife would come out to the garage and ask if it was the final primer. She couldn't understand why I primed and blocked so many times. People watch these shows, and the auction shows, and get taken to la la land of the automotive hobby. They think the rusty hulk sitting in the back corner of their property is worth as much as an auction car and that it would only take a few weeks to make that rusty hulk good as new. I've run into so many people who relate the value of the rusty piece of junk to the what they saw go across the auction block. Also, with the patina insanity sweeping the country they tend to confuse iron oxide with gold.

 

IMO, most of these car shows are no more real than “Finding Bigfoot” or “Ancient Aliens”.

 

The sad thing is all of the "reality TV" shows, no matter the subject, are all fake and are cheap to make and lots of people aren't smart enough to either know it really care. All they want is junk food for their brain.

 

And the subjects just want their 15-minutes of fame.

 

Wait! Those are fake? :P

I agree 100% with posts above. I don't watch any "reality TV" except for a select few car shows, and they drive me crazy, usually over timelines. We true "car guys" know how long it takes to do things, in particular due to waiting on parts. I love how they can "order a custom transmission" and have it the next day. . 99% of the time when they do the hand-offs, I think "no way I would take that as a finished project".

I always found the owner of Fantom Works to be abrasive and arrogant, but this could explain why he was like that. He was forced to do the work on these cars at their timelines and cost structure. And then everyone comes out of the woodwork saying how horrible he is to deal with and "I know a guy who was screwed by him...", etc. And they always did some sentimental crap from the owners of the cars sinking more money than the car is worth into a project. "My dad's brother's nephew sat in this before he went off to Mongolia for the Peace Corps, and I really miss him" or some stupid nonsense like that.

Richard Rawlings was another one with Gas Monkey. They kaboshed that show suddenly when he realized Discovery was sucking the life out of him and he wouldn't renew the contract (supposedly), yet he made MILLIONS from that show and would be a no-name car builder in Dallas without the 15 min of fame he got from it.

And don't get me started on the auctions. Mecum and Barrett-Jackson are solely responsible for the idiotic classic car market we see today, imo. I took an about face on these auctions when I saw a bone-stock mid-70's Chevy Blazer going for over $90K last year sometime. Nice looking truck, but there's no way to justify that at all. Maybe it's just me, but I get really irritated when I see Mopars and Chevies going across the block at stratospheric prices, but a gorgeous Ford rolls across the block and it sells for less than it's likely worth. Who drives that if not these idiotic TV shows (rhetorical question)?

 

When it comes to the "buyers" on the car shows and auctions I have to think for a person to spend this kind of money they had to be intelligent enough to make the kind of money to have that kind of money. But, if a person is that smart how can they be so stupid to blow their hard earned money on something as financially stupid as a car? I would think the super rich people would have people who know people who get them the cars they want for the fraction of what they pay for these show cars.

Funny how all these old rich guys that show up on the TV shows and auctions with their granddaughters hanging onto them who get all excited when grandpa blows their inheritance on an overpriced car.

 

Sorry if I ruined it for you. Maybe I should have posted a spoiler alert?

 

I like to watch American Pickers. I know that it is scripted and that they do not drop in places with out setting it up. But I do like to see the antiques and collections some of these hoarders have including the "junk" some have sitting outside around their property. I like to put it on pause so I can fast forward through the parts where they are talking in the van .

 

There was a post on the HAMB by a guy whose friend got picked. He said the production crew came to his friend's place one week and took inventory of his junk and set aside numerous items they found interesting. They had a stack of papers for him to sign, legal releases and other things. A week later Mike and Frank showed up the production crew with lights and cameras and "found" a few jewels.

At the end of the show if you do the make they really don't make any money on the stuff they pick. After hammering the seller on prices, "needing some meat on the bone" they usually double value of the items but even with that there is their time used, the cost of fuel and if they are far enough away from their homes, the cost of lodging. When they do coastal picking, far away from Iowa, they have not only lodging but the coast of shipping the sometimes very large items back home.

This Old House is just as phoney. First, many times when they meet the home owner they pull up in front of their house and you get two camera perspectives, one outside of the house when the host pulls up and then another from inside the house. The home owner always seems surprised when the host knocks on the door. I guess having a full production crew with bright lights, microphones and cameras didn't give them a hint that someone was coming to their house.

One of my favorite episodes included a trip to a Mexican tile factory. They went out into rural area where laborers gathered mud, placed it into a large tub and stumped the mud with their bare feet. The host said it looked like fun. They probably stumped in the mad cat for ten plus hour days for $2/hr and their skin probably cracked open all so some rich people in New England can have fancy overpriced tile in their bathroom.

"Reality TV" is anything but reality.

 

Be warned! This is exactly what I do to you guys. I love seeing your trucks and parts, but I also like to see your work spaces. I like seeing the baby food jars of small screws, washers, and brads with the lids screwed under a shelf. (My dad did that in his shop) I like the "truck stuff" like Abe's grille/hood badge display. I like the old signs, toys, milling machines, other projects, etc.




These things make it more personal. It's like sitting in your shop with you, having a cold drink and telling lies. I mean interesting stories.