American Outlaw - Jesse James [82]
“Tell me more.”
“What we should do,” I suggested, “is push the envelope. Get some of the best mechanics in the world together, and get them to build some Mad-Max, apocalypse-style vehicles.”
“War machines,” Thom said. “Bikes that spit fire.”
“Not bikes,” I corrected. “No offense, man, but I’ve got bikes coming out of my ears. Let’s make some cars instead: mutant cars.”
He nodded. “Sure, sounds great. But what the hell is a mutant car?”
“Like nightmare cars,” I said, thinking. “You know, like a Ferrari that can fly.”
“Ferraris already fly, pretty much.”
“Fine,” I said. “A Mustang that shoots missiles.”
“At who? The Soviets?” Thom shook his head. “Hate to tell you, the Cold War’s over, we won. Our grass was greener.”
“All right, then. A Mustang that can mow LAWNS!” I said, grinning as I pictured it. “Can’t you just see it? A freakin’ Mustang 5.0, mowing the lawn at a hundred miles an hour?”
“That sounds goofy.” Thom laughed. “Not to mention impossible.”
“Well,” I said, “if it was easy . . .”
“Then anyone could do it,” Thom said, nodding. “I get it. Drama. A bit of a challenge. Maybe we’ll even have some good fights among the crew during the build process. Hey, I think you have something there, Jesse.”
For the rest of the evening, we shot ideas back and forth. At first, there was talk of situating the show in some kind of Thunderdome, where the mechanics would have to grapple up walls and punch one another in the nose to get the tools they needed to modify the cars, but eventually, that idea was rejected. Soon, the basic premise was born: a crack team of professionals, led by myself, would strip down an ordinary-looking car, bus, van, or limousine to its barest essence. From there, it would be rebuilt from the ground up, until it contained one or more magical secret powers.
“Think about it!” I laughed. “A Mini-Cooper that shovels snow!”
“Oh, wow: NO! I know! A lowrider Zamboni!”
“Not bad, but what about slashing a U-Haul, so it splits open to be a wrestling ring!”
“Christ, that’s great! We’ll have a match in there, with turnbuckles and a referee and everything!”
“You guys sound like you’re having fun,” our waitress commented, refilling my water glass.
We grinned at each other across the table.
“Yeah,” I said finally. “I guess this sounds like a pretty good time. Thom, I’ll do it.”
——
For our first episode, we decided to go for the speed–lawn mower idea. Discovery presented us with a white 1990 Mustang 5.0, with a V-8 engine. A beautiful little car.
“Let’s trash her,” I commanded.
My crew, which included Bill Dodge, my buddy who worked in my shop; Mike Contreras, guru of the oil rigs; Carol Hodge, a tough-as-nails chick mechanic; and Bob Cleveland, a lawn mower engineer, stripped the Mustang of all its deadweight. We removed the backseat, unhooked the muffler, heaved it happily into the trash, then tossed the catalytic converter into a deserted corner of our warehouse.
“That was easy,” I said. “Now for the hard part. Let’s figure out how to get a huge goddamn lawn mower attached to the bottom of this car.”
I honestly hadn’t counted on there being all that much stress or suspense around the build process. But once it got under way, there was almost no end to the bitching and squabbling.
“Listen, we gotta reroute this fuel line, pronto! Otherwise we’re gonna have quite an explosion when we try to start this baby up.”
“Yeah, sure, but what about the exhaust system. Don’t you think we should tackle that first?”
Everyone I’d brought aboard was very talented at what they did, which made it that much worse, because as usual, every fucker thought he was right. In order to heighten the blue-collar drama, Discovery had planned it so we had to complete our task in under a week: typical reality TV bullshit tension, but it seemed to work.
“How are we gonna cut lawns if we can’t even get the blade apparatus to mount correctly on the door?”
“Well, we’ll put a pivot on it, if you see what I mean . . .”
“No way!