Fast N' Loud F40 being auctioned again?

I agree! I cringed watching. Budget, time crunch, and lack of knowledge rarely make for a good outcome.

 

That was a bad day, on West 34th Street.....

To be worth anything this car should be completely disassembled and start over...…
It looks like a sad ending to a story that already had a sad ending......

 

I think in the original thread about the car, some members had concerns about what GMG did to the firewall in addition to other issues brought up here.

Rawlings did say on Rogan's Podcast this past week the shop does their builds in under 2 months where as Rogan countered that a lot of the builds he'd seen took close to a year to be done at minimum (Rawlings said his shop waits til' every part is on the ground before a build starts as explanation for the short time). Not sure if this F40 is considered one of those builds by him, but based on what members here who saw the car up close said about the quality, it would seem in line with such a short time frame compared to what a proper Ferrari restoration takes.

 

If the guys here on Ferrarichat were less than impressed with some of the repairs made to the car, as shown in the show, then you can guarantee that Ferrari, who will have seen the same footage, would be seriously concerned by them.

In addition, Ferrari would have concerns that one of their brand's legendary Icon models has been repaired by a repair shop that is not recognised as being a specialist Ferrari repair shop, and that they have had no opportunity to inspect the car themselves, or have a recognised expert inspect it on their behalf, in order to check the structural integrity of the car prior to any repairs being carried out, and the quality of the repairs after they were carried out.

The F40 is now an old car, but still capable of reaching 200mph, and still capable of achieving serious speeds very quickly when the turbo's wake up, and it wouldn't take much of an error in the repair process to make the car a potential death trap. Ferrari would much prefer the cars to be repaired by repair shops they know have the required expertise, and who they trust, rather than a completely unknown repair shop.

 

At the bottom line isn't how many months a build should or did take, but how many man-hours were spent on the car. If you've done a 1000hr build, that only requires 5 guys doing 40 hrs/week for 5 weeks (if your parts/supplies are in-house prior to install time). Or, your shop could be working on 5-10 cars simultaneously (which seems to be the norm) and drag it out to a year.

 

There was supposedly a Ferrari expert walking them through the entire process and I could be wrong here, but I thought they mentioned the straightening frame machine was the only one authorized by Ferrari.

Not sure what else is necessary from a Ferrari perspective.

 

Exactly. A brand new F40 did not take a year to assemble (the parts were all there waiting as well at the start). As long as all the tools and parts were available at the start, 2 months is not a big deal if they had multiple people working full time on it.

 

Isn’t that mostly just the reality tv show formula though? Every show has the exact same artificial drama...”...has to be done in 4 days for the big reveal..” “...OMG the chrome plating hasn’t arrived yet and there’s only 18hrs before it has to be done!” etc.

I’m not sure off camera that’s what takes place.

 

More $$$$ to Ferrari, of course.

 

Hope you are right. Remember the Boyd coddington show? They made his crew look like major idiots.

 

I think 2-3 of them probably got as good an edit as could be expected.

 

There’s a show filmed 10min from where I live (beside the Wendy’s I go to far too often) called “Guild Garage” and previously “Restoration Garage”...they’ll spend 20min of tv time to trouble shoot and replace a distributor cap and act like they were rocket scientists in doing so.
No shortage of gossip in our town about that shop.
They have a TR in their showroom that hasn’t moved in the better part of a decade, surrounded by rusty old bicycles. It’s an odd and underwhelming place.

 

I tune it to see what wig he will wear.

 

When I see these shows using the "Time Crunch" formula to stir up drama and tension, I can't help but think that it reflects poorly on them (from a client point of view). If their time management is THAT poor and they run on such tight margins, what other corners are they cutting? That may NOT be the reality of the situation, but the perception is certainly there. But..... I'm sure people are lining up to give these shops money so they can say they were a client.

 

When GMG took on that F40, I remember thinking they were about to be in over their heads. And it didn't take long. From what I remember from those episodes, most of the work was farmed out to another shop. Rawlings was basically ordering parts, nothing more.

In the end, he was so overwhelmed by the project, his buddy Dennis had to bail him out and buy Rawlings' interest in the car. From that point I lost track of what happened with the car.

I lost my last shred of tolerance for the guy after I saw his behavior at Pebble Beach when he showed his Packard. It was embarrassing......even for me, the viewer.

 

What happened at Pebble?

Didd't he sell the 645 at Leake? He should've put it through at PB.

 

That’s the takeaway I get too.
But I think they want the message to be “we are cunning and resourceful superheroes who find a way to get’er done, no matter what obstacles come our way, even though we pissed away a day smashing things or racing pocket bikes around the parking lot with blindfolds on, because we’re fun-lovin frat guys at heart!”

Damn, I watch too much of that crap.

 

He threw a tantrum when he didn't sweep all of the awards. Evidently he was under the impression he should have been handed EVERY trophy due to the fact that he is who he is. His buddy Dennis told him he should have been honored just to receive the invite....but that didn't fly.

He then dove head first into the rumble seat of his car, legs sticking up every which way. The whole time clutching that stupid beer he always seems to have on him.

I think that maybe he though HE was the biggest player there that day. That will NEVER be the case. I can only imagine what his behavior was like at some of the social functions.

 

Wow, I had no idea that happened lol, what a tool.

I respect his hustle, but sometimes coming off as the guy "who would sell his own mother", isn't much of a business turn on. Even more so to act like that at Pebble. I'm al for extravagance and being the black sheep, but over losing an award (the pinnacle of auto awards for vintage) just isn't worth it IMHO.

Sad that happened. Now I want to find video

 

Compared to the car shows that I'm sure he's used to, Pebble is where the big dogs run and play. His Packard might have cleaned up at some of the lesser shows he normally frequents.....but not this time. His car was beautiful but so was every other car that day.

I think you can rent episodes on YouTube for a few bucks. I'm not sure if past shows can be found on other streaming services or not (like Hulu, Netflix, etc) but occasionally those previous episodes we're talking about will pop up in the Discovery Channel line-up.

 

Yeah, I'd say Richard was out of his element at Pebble. Wayne Carrini does a better job at those concourses.

 

Exactly. There's a lifestyle that goes along with the Pebble Beach show (and related events). Wayne is part of that lifestyle. Rawlings?...not so much.

I'm certainly NOT part of the lifestyle, but I know when to act civilized and be well-behaved. Maybe if there was a wet T-shirt contest at Pebble, Gas Monkey Garage would fit in better.

 

With all due respect (seriously) to Richard, he's not a tech. He'd freely admit this himself.

There's a great divide between flipping a vintage Camaro, and an F40 with frame damage. And a lot of that depends on knowing when you're out of your area of expertise. I think Richard may believe that enthusiasm can make up for whatever technical deficiency there may be, but usually reality doesn't support this approach. And the exotic market is one of those places that it's quickly apparent who has the required skills, and who is simply the most .... kinetic.

 

You make a valid point. He's definitely not a wrench, which is why he relies on his lead mechanic so much (which is absolutely fine). Once he was neck deep in the F40 project, you could see the cracks forming in his "cool dude" facade. He'd never been up against a rebuild quite like this and now he was dealing in "big boy" kinda money.

I think his tools are more about networking and his phone.....which he's obviously good at. Hell, he now has TWO shows (where I have none) so that says something as to his appeal to the viewers. I don't think I fall into the demographic that the guy is shooting for, though. He's a hustler (and I don't mean that in a derogatory way) but his ego is a bit hard to take most of the time.

He's more of a "TV personality" than anything else, but I think his way of self-promotion just rubbed me the wrong way. I can't remember what started to push me over to the "dislike" column, but his behavior at Pebble was the nail in the coffin for me. I saw him for the spoiled brat that he was.

 

I remember a neighbor telling me about this car, as he had watched the show, right after I bought my 456M. I was like, "Say what?!"

I've heard of it a couple of times since, and here it is again. I wish it would go away or get restored to factory specs.