Personal favorite: Graveyard Carz on MT Network. Sure Mark is a bit off the wall but you have to respect his MOPAR knowledge.

Also a fan of Bitchen Rides. Good designs with no compromise. I also like that both shops don’t rely on drama for entertainment.

Have seen new show Bad Chad. Some oddball stuff strange guy

Phantom Works is my favorite, and the one with Joe Martin in Texas a close 2nd (Iron Resurrection).

I liked the PowerNationTV shows that were on the Paramount Network on Sundays, Truck Tech and Detroit Muscle. They focus more on the work and not on the personalities. They are moving to the History Channel this year starting this weekend.

Fantomworks. Obviously these shows are all scripted and staged, but this is less so than most. It is the only one to show all the little (and some not so little) things that go wrong during a project. Instead of everything gleaming and spacious, the shop gets cluttered (not messy, just floor space taken up with tool boxes, equipment and car parts piled up) and sometimes dirty from rust and dirt falling off cars, fluid spills and such. In other words, like a real shop.

A friend just had his restore shown on Graveyard Cars. A 1972 Duster. I don't get the channel on my package so I have only seen the pictures he sent. He was 17 when he bought it new. It came out well. Took 3 years since he had it shipped to them and had it completed.

quote:

Originally posted by egregore:
Fantomworks. Obviously these shows are all scripted and staged, but this is less so than most. It is the only one to show all the little (and some not so little) things that go wrong during a project. Instead of everything gleaming and spacious, the shop gets cluttered (not messy, just floor space taken up with tool boxes, equipment and car parts piled up) and sometimes dirty from rust and dirt falling off cars, fluid spills and such. In other words, like a real shop.

My folks went on an East Coast road trip this fall. One of their stops was at his shop. After the tour my folks ended up sitting down and talking with he and his wife for a while one on one. Said he was very much like his show personality, had a lot of bad things to say about how the filming has impacted his business and can’t wait for the contract to be over.

I really like Bitchen Rides. They make some gorgeous cars. I have no idea what it would cost to get one, but it would be cool. I also liked Counting Cars. Fantomworks is good too. There is a new one called Hand Built Hot Rods. Really nice stuff there too, with none of that fake deadline reality show crap

I like Fantomworks because in many of the episodes they give some idea as to what the cost is for the work done.

Project Binky of course.

Bitchin Rides for the no-expense-spared possibilities. Fantomworks for the dose often reality. Iron Resurrection is something in between.

Hand Bult Hot Rods has Billy Gibbons doing the narration, which is cool.

Vegas Rat Rods for just the off-the-wall ideas. Roadkill for just the nuttiness. Sure-why-not kinda stuff.

I agree on Graveyard Cars... he’s over the top, can be grating, but no one knows more about Mopar.

I watch a lot of Motortrend.

Interesting take on the car shows from Car and Driver.

https://www.caranddriver.com/f...ures-huffman-column/

Failure Is Always an Option
Real life isn't much like reality television.
By JOHN PEARLEY HUFFMAN
Jan 11, 2019

It was going to be awesome. A 1973 Chevrolet C10 Stepside pickup powered by the current Camaro ZL1's 650-hp supercharged LT4 V-8 and riding on a custom chassis from Art Morrison. Big Wilwood disc brakes, ginormous Michelin Pilot Sport tires, BMW steering gear, and comprehensively tweaked bodywork. An old truck that swallowed a new Corvette Z06. Killer.

But it was a failure. For all the usual reasons. By which I mean one reason: money.

The project truck was my nephew's, and it started off so promisingly. There was about $60,000 worth of parts acquired, Chris Jensen at Central Coast Hot Rods in Santa Maria, California was doing some brilliant work, and I was having a blast throwing out ideas for the thing. Then my nephew and his business partner got testy with each other, the funds dried up, and work on the truck stopped.

Right now, there are at least a couple dozen TV shows about hot rod shops and another couple hundred people posting variations along the same line on YouTube. "Damn it," the shop owner inevitably yells at the lovable misfits who work for him, "either we get this car done in time for SEMA or I'll have to close the business!" Clipboards are thrown. Then new parts from often-mentioned sponsors show up, everything is welded together, the car comes out of paint right at the deadline, and the fat cat who bankrolled the thing sees it for the first time and says, "You guys really outdid yourselves. Wow." Then someone does donuts in the parking lot.

In the real world, practically every working hot-rod shop has at least one car that has been lingering in a corner, untouched for months, waiting for someone to pay the bills. It's covered in dust, the interior is filled with pieces accumulated when there was money to spend, and there are spots of surface rust developing on unpainted sheetmetal. Deadlines have blown by, a couple of SEMA shows have come and gone, and except for the accumulation of storage charges, it all doesn't matter.

Because it's just a hot rod. A hobby. Something fun. Not the center of a multimedia marketing enterprise. Miss a deadline, and nothing happens.

I'm as addicted to car-centered TV shows as anyone, but they are shows. The amped-up drama is phony: a structure imposed on events to build resolvable tension and keep casual viewers hooked. And things are happily resolved at the end of every episode. There's never a true failure, and the bills are always paid. It's TV the way TV has always been.

The essence of being passionate about cars isn't drama. Instead it's that Venn diagram where history, science, art, ambition, and inscrutable fascination overlap. Whether it's karts, Porsches, or Top Fuelers, the nature of car love is about, you know, cars. Everything there is to know about cars.

In real life, we learn from our failures and move on. A Facebook friend of mine, Eric Miller of Squarebody Specialists, bought the project at a whopping discount, put it on a trailer, and hauled it back to Minnesota. The chassis and LT4 will, if things go right this time, find their way under another project truck called Ollie that Miller is building for a client. The rendering is of Ollie, which has a confirmed spot for display at the 2019 SEMA show.

But if Ollie doesn't make it to the SEMA show next year, so what? Success is better, but failure is always an option.

^^^^I think that was directed at Gas Monkey Garage. Aaron Kaufman is a superb cat builder who didn’t want to deal with the BS.

quote:

Originally posted by SigJacket:
Bitchin Rides for the no-expense-spared possibilities. Fantomworks for the dose often reality. Iron Resurrection is something in between.

An accurate assessment. The newer show, Texas Metal, has yet to appeal to me. Their designs are often obnoxious - and their clients are usually rednecks or gangbangers with more money than common sense.

quote:

I watch a lot of Motortrend.

That and the next channel up, Great American Country.

And it always seems a lot easier on the TV than in real life. Can you imagine, thirty years from now trying to restore a Corvette ZR-1 ?

Watch the Barrett Jackson auction shows.
Everyone thinks those cars sell for a huge profit to the owners.
I would bet more than 95% net much less than they have in them.

The trend at Barrett-Jackson lately has been the restomods selling for more than the faithful restorations. The irony is it costs more to perform a 100% restoration than it does to build a restored with new mechanicals. My father in law was big into buying and selling classic cars. His advice, always let someone else pay for the restoration.

quote:

Originally posted by cas:
Project Binky of course.

Project Binky is my favorite car show, but I seriously doubt that it could be considered a restoration show.

My favorite restoration show is Wheeler Dealers, before Ed China left of course.

If I won the lottery, I'd have Kindig and Foose submit their visions for my sad old Ghia. I might have to get another because they both do great work.

I like most all of them and watch regularly Velocity now called MotorTrend.
Some I like better than others and some a bit less.

quote:

Personal favorite: Graveyard Carz on MT Network. Sure Mark is a bit off the wall but you have to respect his MOPAR knowledge.

^^ Graveyard Carz used to be a favorite as I am a big Mopar fan and well as respect for the painstaking detail of original restoration.
However, as brilliant on Mopar knowledge as Mark is the show has waned from actual work to way too much goofy stuff.
I respect his work but the show doesn't show enough of it being done, IMO.
I'll watch it but won't go out of my way to.

I still like Gas Monkey since Aaron left but his new show not so much.
It tends to bore me or maybe it's just Aaron who is very talented but not very entertaining.

MotorTrend channel and the Golf channel gets a big workout at my house.