Quick Stats: Richard Rawlings Discovery’s Fast N’ Loud
Daily Driver: 2015 Dodge 2500 (Richard’s rating: 10 on a scale of 1 to 10)
Other cars: see below
Favorite road trip: his 2007 Cannonball Run
Car he learned to drive in: 1974 Mercury Comet
First car bought: 1974 Mercury Comet
While Richard Rawlings gets to work on a plethora of cool rides on Discovery’s “Fast N’ Loud” with his partner Aaron Kaufman at Gas Monkey Garage, his 2015 Ram 2500 ¾ ton diesel truck, which is also seen on the show, is his trusty daily driver.
“It’s a great truck, it has all the creature comforts of a high-end car and Bluetooth and all the computerized stuff and tall enough off the ground that I can get out of everybody’s way,” Rawlings tells Motor Trend.
There’s nothing Rawlings dislikes about the truck, and although the Dodge is his daily work vehicle, he keeps a handful of personal rides in his garage. “I’m in the car business, so I don’t get to keep them all, but I’ve got four or five that I won’t sell,” Rawlings says.
1968 Shelby Mustang GT350
Rating: 10
This convertible is also a fan favorite, first seen on Season 1. “I would put it as a 10 because we built it,” he says. “It’s a recreation of ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’ car from a Pierce Brosnan movie, so and it’s not a normal Shelby Mustang, it’s lifted, and got the top down and all that kind of stuff. What made it popular was it was a lifted Mustang with fog lights and big wheels and tires like a truck.”
A friend had Rawlings build it for him, and Rawlings got it back about five years later. “I didn’t want to sell it when I built it, but that’s the business I’m in,” he says. “I drive it pretty much every season that we have. You’re always seeing it.”
It’s a car that didn’t exist except for a few seconds of screen time in the movie. “It was pieced together, that they used for some shots, so we made one based on eight seconds of film and a couple of still shots. It’s a pretty wild ride. It’s different, it gets a lot of attention and a lot of people ask a lot of questions about it,” he says, adding the lifted automatic has a 302 cu-in V8, air-conditioning, and was significantly modified on all four fenders to accommodate BFGoodrich all-terrain tires.
“It has kind of a beach cruiser look to it. It’s got a full roll cage in it with four off road lights, then two more in front bumper area, killer sound system. It’s just a cool car,” he says. “What made me make it was I loved it and I couldn’t find it anywhere and anybody else that made one. I wanted to have it.”
1952 Chevrolet Fleetline
Rating: 8
Rawlings loves his 1952 Chevrolet Fleetline, but since it could use some work, he gives it an 8 out of 10. “It’s the very first car we built at Gas Monkey Garage and I had an opportunity to buy it back, so I couldn’t pass that up and went ahead and did it,” he says. “We were building the car to take it out on the road with us and show people our style and what our talent was and what we could do, so that was what we came up with and what we wanted to use as our show piece.”
It won’t leave his hands because it’s been a lucky car for Rawlings and his garage. “It really helped propel our business and I’ve actually sold it and bought it back four times,” Rawlings says. But he doesn’t get to drive it since they took the motor out of it in Season 3 for another car and have yet to replace it.
They chose the car not for the era it came from but for more practical purposes.
“It was just the style of car and we wanted to chop the roof on a car, so this one was there and we decided to put our efforts into it.”
1932 Ford
Rating: 10
Rawlings’ 1932 Ford 3-window hot rod is another prized possession. “This car’s pretty perfect, it’s 100 percent original,” he says. “This one’s original. ‘32 Fords to me are kind of what started hot rodding in America for the average consumer. They were cheap and plentiful and that’s where customizing and hot rodding and everything got its start here in America. It’s the quintessential hot rod.”
This classic ride is sure to turn heads when he takes it out. “I show it off, I drive it. I drove it today as a matter of fact, I took it around the block a couple of times,” he says. “I take my cars everywhere. That’s one of the benefits of owning a shop, if I break something, I guess we know how to fix it. Everyday, somebody’s always wanting to buy it, that’s for sure.”
1968 Shelby GT Fastback
Rating: 10
Rawlings has a 1968 Shelby GT Fastback that he says is 100 percent original. He bought it for his wife “It won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. It’s a perfect car, it’s 100 percent restored. A perfect red Shelby with a six foot tall blond in it turns heads,” he says, with a laugh.
Car he learned to drive and first car bought
Growing up in Fort Worth, Texas, Rawlings learned to drive by the time he was 14. “I just learned to drive everything, I started driving stuff anybody would let me get behind the wheel in so I don’t really have that story where grandpa used to always take me in his truck out in the field,” he says. “I’d just get in behind the wheel of anything I was allowed to.”
As a young child, Rawlings’ dad let him sit on his lap to drive, and later he drove whatever cars were in the house, including his grandma’s 1977 Chevrolet Monte Carlo. From the time he was about 10, Rawlings mowed yards, raked leaves, doing any odd jobs he could to save up money for his first car, which was a 1974 Mercury Comet.
One only has a first car once and now Rawlings wishes he hadn’t gotten rid of it. “I can’t find it, I’ve been looking for it. They’re pretty rare and I found a ‘74 that I bought in Arizona,” he says, adding it should be on the show this spring. “It’s a really, really good car, but it’s not the same color or anything that I had, so we’re going to build it on the show into the actual car that I had in high school because the one that I had in high school seems to be long gone, I can’t find it.”
It was his high school car and it wasn’t very common even back then, but he quickly made it his own. “It was a bench seat, column automatic, straight six, nothing for speed, just good reliable transportation,” he says. “I put some stripes on it, and some Mag wheels, and stuff as good as a teenager can do and that was my pride and joy for quite some time. I got made fun of a little bit for having a puke green Comet.”
The Comet was a California car and it had power steering, power brakes and air conditioning. “It was the first car I customized for myself for sure, and I got the bug there, and here we are. It was just a pretty cool car to me, and I enjoyed having it. They were good cars. They were phenomenal cars actually – drove well, got good gas mileage, you name it. It was an ugly pea green six-cylinder Comet, but it was my first car, so that’s what made it cool to me.”
He got rid of it senior year to combine it with money he saved, to buy a Bandit Trans Am and it wasn’t until later in life that he regretted selling the Comet. “I kind of wish I had kept it, but I’ve been through thousands of cars since then, so I’ll get it eventually. We’ll get it worked on and get it back out on the road. It’s not really worth anything. It’s more nostalgia, it’s just everybody like yourself asks me what my first car was and it’d be cool to say, ‘Well, that one over there,’” he says, with a laugh, although it won’t be the exact car he adds, “I’ll say, ‘Just like that one over there!’”
Favorite road trip
Rawlings’ favorite trips are going cross-country. “Anytime I get a chance to drive from Dallas to Vegas or L.A. or Scottsdale, it’s always a good time,” he says.
One fun childhood road trip memory reminds him of National Lampoon’s “Vacation.” “I always like to think that ‘Vacation’ with Chevy Chase, they stole my life because when I was young kid, they threw me and my sister in the backseat of a yellow Coupe Deville Cadillac with black leather interior and decided that it would be great to drive all the way through the desert to California and Disneyland. And pretty much everything that happens on ‘Vacation’ happened on that trip to us,” he says, laughing. “So as far as being a kid, that was a pretty good experience, pretty good time. The air conditioner broke, my mom’s trying to pack sandwiches on the side of road and stuff like that, and you’ve got the AAA maps, and you’re getting lost and everything’s breaking, just a full comical set of situations.”
More recently though, Rawlings’ favorite cross country drive was a record-breaking one he took in 2007. “I like crossing the country, so when I did the Cannonball Run was pretty cool from New York to L.A.,” he says. “We broke the record that had stood since 1979 when David Yarborough and David Heinz did it in a Jaguar XJS. We went from 34th Street in Manhattan to Redondo Beach, California nonstop in 31 hours and 59 minutes and that is considered the world record for the Cannonball that was done a lot in the ’70s.”
He points out that the record hadn’t been broken until he and Dennis did it. “That’s a long time, so we did it in a 1999 550 Maranello Ferrari nonstop – 2811 miles,” he says. “That’s what got us our first time on Jay Leno, was for recognition of that.”
Rawlings has also done the Gumball 3000 several times. “I’ve won it twice and those are always a good time,” he says. “It’s fun to get with a group of guys and go drive your cars and see the world.”
Although he did the Cannonball Run for fun and to see if he could beat the record, Rawlings did film and document it. “Hopefully we’re going to be putting it out here before long, I’m working on making a movie on it,” he says. “We’ve got quite a bit that should make a pretty cool little documentary.”
“Fast N’ Loud” Mega Week Episode and New Season Jan. 16
There will be a special two-hour episode of Fast N’ Loud on Discovery’s Mega Week on Dec. 8. “We’re going to be building another car for Hot Wheels, that’ll be out in December and should be really, really neat,” he says. “We were challenged by Hot Wheels to build a car that they haven’t done and that would make a good Hot Wheel.”
After being asked again by Mattel to build a life-sized Hot Wheel, this time a Red Line Club car, Rawlings chose a 1963 Ford Econoline truck for the build.
“We’re constantly upping our game, getting better at our craft, challenging ourselves more and I’m very blessed and happy to be where we’re at with the shop, and it’s growing,” Rawlings says. “It’s really cool that we’re not pigeoned holed into one thing – we’re not Camaro guys, or Mustang guys or classic car guys. We really do build anything and everything that comes to mind. So that’s been pretty cool.”
The new season of Fast N’ Loud premieres January 16 and Rawlings says viewers should be ready for some surprises. “We’re going to do a little bit of everything and it’s going to be a very interesting season, we’ll be building everything from Volkswagen bugs all the way up to who knows, maybe even a Rolls Royce, I don’t know,” he says. “We’re still building. We don’t make the show for a while and then stop and then take a few months off, we’re about eight weeks back and we’re producing a car every two to three weeks. We don’t do hiatus, we work year round and take a week off in the summer and a week of in the winter. We film every day. Everyday Monday through Friday, sometimes on Saturdays.”
When the show became a success back when it premiered in 2012, Wawlings had the garage for years already. “Back then everybody thought it was motorcycles, I had to convince them that we could build cars,” he says.
While there were motorcycle build shows back then Rawlings felt he could do a car show. “I’m an entrepreneur all the way. My drive to get the TV show was I’m a car guy – there’s nothing on television to watch with cars, at least nothing that I liked,” he says. “I’d watch shows and sit there and berate myself for watching them because they sucked, but they were the only things about cars,” he says. “So I just wanted to do better. I’m not trying to say I’m the best guy on the planet, but I think our show is a lot more entertaining and a lot better than the stuff that was out when we got started.”
He likes the way his show is done, compared to what was on the TV landscape when they premiered. “It’s just a really good set up, we tell a little history, we have a little comedy and we make it happen. And we built some incredible cars,” he says. “We didn’t want to have any of the negativity in it, we didn’t want to have any of the made up drama. Our show is true car guys having a good time, taking risks, working our ass off, going fast, having a good time. And the second this quits being fun, I probably won’t do it anymore.”
It had been hard work to get the show on the air, a journey that took nine years of perseverance, but it paid off and Rawlings’ theory about being able to put a good an unscripted car show was confirmed by its many viewers. “The show came across because I was calling, begging for people to pay attention to what we do, there was motorcycle shows, there was Jesse James, there was Orange County,” he says. “I just made some sizzle reels and kept pushing and kept pushing and kept pushing until got to the right people.”
Rawlings has seen his share of eclectic cars come through his garage over the years.
“I’ve had pretty much everything through here because I have a love of all cars and a lot of shops get trapped up in they’re only liking one thing or their specialty is one thing and we really are across the board,” he says. “As far as some of my favorite cars, I’m a number 1 car guy in that I like to find the very first ones, so I’ve owned and resold a ’71 Cuda, serial number 1, I’ve had a ‘69 Firebird, number 1, I’ve had a 1970 Camaro number 1.”
Viewers may also recall seeing his first and second 1967 Firebirds on the show as well. “Most of them I just found on the Internet or through word of mouth, chase them down. Sometimes it’s total BS and sometimes it’s exactly what it’s supposed to be,” he says.
In 2013 he bought all the 2013 COPO Camaros he could find, which were 17 out of the 20 that were made, and sold them. Viewers may have seen them on the show. “It’s what Fred Gibb, and Holman Moody did back in the day and, they just bought them all. So those cars are forever known as Holman Moody cars, or they’re known as Baldwin-Motion cars. These cars hopefully will be forever known as Gas Monkey COPOs,” he says. “They’re rare. There is nothing more rare in the Camaro world for 2013. We built one of them on the show.”
They built it in the plant at General Motors, which he acknowledged was a “pretty cool thing” at the time to do. “We’re the only people in the whole world ever to build our own COPO Camaro on the assembly line in Detroit,” he says.
Rawlings doesn’t have a favorite, adding that he wouldn’t build a car if he didn’t like it. “Our specialty is having fun with whatever you put in front of us and finding out what that’s car soul, so to speak, is about. Some need to be restored, some need to be hot rodded, some need to be crushed and thrown away,” he says, with a laugh. “So you just got to figured out what that car says to you and then make it happen.”
One memorable car on the show was the 1991 Ferrari F40, later sold at a Barrett-Jackson auction. “The F40 Ferrari was probably the hardest one we ever did and the biggest risk we’ve ever taken,” Rawlings recounts. “We had $700,000 in that car and we took a car that no one would fix. Ferrari got mad we were even going to attempt to fix it, and we built the car in nine weeks, we built it better than Ferrari did. It’s faster, it’s leaner, it’s meaner, it’s a better F40 and they’re still pissed off at us. They levied a $250,000 fine against the Ferrari dealership here for allowing the car to be inside the dealership after being told not to.”
But Rawlings looked at the Ferrari as simply being no different than a Chevrolet or a Ford or anything other make. “We bought a car, we fixed it and made it cool. But Ferrari seemed to see that a little bit differently,” he says. “We painted the car black for starters because all 190 of them are red. So I think it will forever be known as the Dark Horse.”
They rebuilt everything on the Ferrari. “We took a car that Ferrari themselves said could never be fixed period,” he says. “Not only did we fix it, it is better. We improved the suspension, we improved the braking, we improved the exhaust, we rebuilt the motor, we improved the turbo, we changed the interior and made it more comfortable and easier to drive with better seating capacity. We changed the entire wheel structure size and diameter and bigger tires. It grips the road better, it is better period.”
Rawlings’ determination to have a show can be an inspiring example of being able to live out one’s passion. “You find something you love and you never have to work a day in your life,” he says. “So I wrapped my business around my hobbies and I was very fortunate enough to make a pretty good little hot rod shop out of it. We’re hopefully very well respected in the market and we’re having a good time with it. It was a chance for me to do what I love and get paid for it.”
A special episode of Fast N Loud airs Dec. 8 and the new season of Fast N’ Loud starts Jan. 16 on Discovery Channel.
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The post Celebrity Drive: Richard Rawlings of ‘Fast N’ Loud’ and Those Dodge Commercials appeared first on Motor Trend.
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