- This time on Roadkill, we go digging for our new project car. - It is the episode of the century. Buick Century. (engine revving) (hard rock music) (up-tempo, country-inspired music) - So Dave and I are here in Tennessee. It's Monday. We're at a junkyard with no name, and it's full of cars hidden
in bushes, and right now, we're going to find something
we can rescue by Friday. - [Dave] Where are we? - It's spelled Lebanon, but here they say Lebanin, Tennessee. Hey, Sammy. - [Dave] A couple months
ago, Finnegan was hanging out with some fans who mentioned
that they knew this guy, Sammy. - [Mike] Sammy's a character. I don't know this guy's last name, and it's debatable whether or not he actually wants to sell anything. - [Dave] And so this is where he ended up trying to find our latest
bit of junkyard gold. - Sammy, we're gluttons for punishment, so we like to go to
junkyards and then buy cars that haven't run in a long
time, or shouldn't run ever again, and try to get them running. What is this? - [Sammy] '67 Buick Wildcat Convertible. - [Dave] I can't even see a car in there. What is this? - [Mike] I thought he
was screwing with us. There's a nash in there? - [Dave] Oh, there is! - [Mike] I like Pintos. - [Sammy] Yeah, here's some skintos. - This one's got racing stripes on it, so you know it's fast. Is there a barn back there? - No, that's just a wall. - [Mike] What's the wall hiding? - [Sammy] Bushes. (laughs) - [Dave] Hiding bushes? What's your ultimate plan on this? Sell 'em, let 'em sit, enjoy 'em? - [Sammy] I guess I'm doing it. This is it. - [Dave] This doesn't run. I can tell. - [Mike] You sure? Let's do a compression check. - [Sammy] Car 54, who are you? - [Dave] Oh, that's a cop car. - [Sammy] I'm waiting for it to get older. (laughter) - [Sammy] What about a Crosley? - [Dave] Crosley's good, too! Little bit of rust. - [Mike] There's not much
left of that Crosley. - [Dave] Nope. - I want the van, but you have
to clean it out first, okay? - That's good storage. Ah, I'm not sure anything
here runs and drives within our lifetime, much
less within the five days that we've got to make this happen. Which I would like to
say doesn't scare me, but it kind of does. - Did you find any snakes yet? - No. Ooh, I'm liking the looks of this. - [Mike] Ooh, car covers. - [Dave] Car covers means good. - [Mike] Is this where
you hide the snakes? - [Sammy] Yeah. - [Mike] That's a Hemi
Roadrunner with a Hemi in it? - [Sammy] Yeah, that's original. - [Mike] Whoo, we can't afford that. - No, probably not. I like this place, because, like, Samurai? Superbird. - [Sammy] You got to have
something for everybody. - [Dave] You realize if
I had this much land, it would look exactly like this. - [Mike] What's in that barn? - More junk. (laughs) - [Mike] Somebody beat us to it. - [Dave] That's a little creepy. - [Mike] Somebody beat us to it. - [Dave] No motor. - [Sammy] Got a place for one. - Yeah, I didn't see
anything that looks like, "Oh, we can do this." - It'll be easy to narrow things down. - Yeah! (laughter) So we've been walking around
here for at least half the day, and this guy has a lot of stuff, and if you need parts, it's fantastic. If you're trying to make
something run and drive, I don't know if that's happening
in four and a half days. Believe it or not, Sammy has
some legit, really good cars that are completely
out of our price range. - [Mike] The rest of it is too far gone to get running in just a few days. - [Dave] So we came up with a scheme. This is a 1973 Chevy Corvette,
America's sports car. - [Mike] What if we take
a C3 Corvette chassis and then we take the very worst body parts of C1 Corvettes that
Sammy has laying around, and put them onto that
chassis with bailing wire and duct tape to make the
world's worst C1 Corvette? That could work, couldn't it? - That solves all, we'll use it. You're doing good. Maybe a little more to the left? There's pretty much no chance
that we're going to get this done in time without some
help, and so we brought in a buddy of Finnegan's,
Jeff, from Devious Customs, who owns an actual fabrication shop, but is no stranger to
hacking, Roadkill style. - He was parting this out anyway. I'm trying not to feel bad about it. - [Mike] I have no guilt at all. We paid top dollar for this bottom junk. - It's true. I feel like we're almost done. (tools whirring and clattering) (dramatic instrumental music) - [Mike] This whole car
is just glued together. - It's not good. But it looked good from afar. It's always a learning experience. I've discovered I never need
to own one of these cars, ever. Okay. - I believe this is called a cor-fail. - The cor-fail? - Yeah, yeah. - The cor-hate? - Didn't we already do
one of these on Roadkill? - It was really popular. (laughs) (thunder booming) (slow, bluesy music) It's raining. Yeah. - Uh, it's been worse on Roadkill. But yeah, it's raining
right now, but we're fine. We're fine. - [Dave] Because we're
way ahead of schedule, it started to rain so badly
that we had to stop wrenching. This is not going great. - [Mike] It starts raining
right about the time we realized Sammy didn't quite want to give
up the goods he promised us, so now, we need a new plan. - This is pretty good. - Our options are wide open right now, because every car here, the snakes are getting washed out of the interiors. So. (thunder rolls) (clattering of chains) (bird chirping) (swelling inspirational music) - There's a point in every
Roadkill where we're sitting around at dinner, going, "You know what? "The wheels are falling off this plan." And that happened last night. I think we all sat around
going, "Man, taping body panels "on this Corvette is not exactly cool." So we have a completely
new schedule today. - We're going to keep
cutting up that Corvette 'ti we have a rolling
chassis, but then we're going back in those woods, Indiana Jones-style, and we're going to drag out another body, and we're going to put it on that car and save two priceless works of art. - This had been the plan yesterday, was to take all of these
old Corvette parts, hacked off of various cars, and sort of hang 'em on our chassis. I don't know why it seemed
like a good idea at the time. I guess because duct tape was involved? But I'm glad that's over. You know what the thing is
that is nice about these is that they burn really good. (laughs) (grinding, guitar music) (tools whir and pound) This would be a lot easier if I was willing to touch anything in here. - Yeah, I don't blame you. - This should be really interesting. We're going to take the tow truck and try and use it to pull the body off. Does this seem like a
bad idea to anybody else? - [Jeff] Oh, yeah. (laughter) Ready? (drill whirring) - [Dave] I was waiting for that. - [Jeff] One down, one to go. - They're like, "Hey, jump
in there and cut that. "It's just dangling by two
tight 1E straps, it's cool." (laughs) I'm like, "All right, let's go." - Hey, Jeff. One more cable. Can you hit it with the
death roll real quick? - Got one more to go! - [Jeff] That was scary. I didn't like that one. - [Mike] With a renewed sense of purpose, we head out back to the yard. - [Dave] We've got a pretty
much naked C3 Corvette frame, and we've got a yard full
of vintage American iron. We're going to go shopping
and pick a car that has the coolest body to put on
top of our Corvette frame. What could go wrong? What is that? - [Mike] I don't know, that's cool. There's writing on the fender. - [Jeff] Yeah, what's it say? - It's a Peugeot. Or a Renault? What is that-- - Oh, it's mashed. - How angry would people be if we cut up a Corvette to put a Renault
or a Peugeot body on it? (laughter) - Very French! Can this be our last Corvette ever? - You know it won't. We'll have to restore
one for something else. Later on, when we sell
out to General Motors, we'll have to do a Corvette. Ooh, what about a car that
had the, was it a Buick? That had the name of the year
of the car on the emblem? - [Dave] '56 Buick? - [Mike] That was kind of sweet. - [Dave] It's a big car. This one I'd feel good
about rescuing, just because it's the only way that that
would ever see the light of day. - Check this out, though. Those are all thorn bushes. - You know, what I like
about this is no one else is going to rescue this,
and if we don't rescue this, this is going to return to Mother Earth. - But he's not lying about the thorn bush. Those are nasty. We need steel-belted gloves. - [Mike] That's Mother Nature's
barbed wire, right there. - We're getting ready to hack like we've never hacked before. We're going to do gardening and
metalwork all at the same time. - [Mike] I don't know
anything about woodworking. I think I know even less about gardening and home maintenance. - [Dave] Let's just call
this archeology instead. - Okay, I'm good with that. Which one is it? I don't even know. Maybe not so much over here. - [Dave] Ooh, this is good.
- Whoa. Hey, I have an idea. You go way over there,
I'll work right here. (pounding hard rock) (chainsaw roaring) - Don't hit the car! This might not be too bad. So, Finnegan broke the chainsaw. - [Jeff] Medic! - 'Cause he can pretty
much break anything. And so we're going to level two here. New levels of whacking off. (machinery grumbling) - So he says he only got
in there with shorts on. (laughs) (victorious rock music) There's a car in there! - The hood's not bolted on. The window's been down the whole time, so the level of ants I was
whining about in the Corvette-- - Snake, snake, snake, snake, snake! - Will be nothing, compared to-- (all burst out laughing) That was a good one. This is the weirdest start
to a project car build I've ever been a part of. Because Roadkill. (tools grind and clatter) Oh, look out! (bleep) (all laugh) No job too small, no garden too tall. - I've, like, found so many cars and done so many thins,
but usually in California, where you don't really
get this type of thing, so I've never hacked an old
car out of weeds before, vines or bush, whatever that is. This is new for me. - Hey. Well, we didn't get bit by snake yet. - It ain't over yet. - [Dave] By the time
we had hacked the Buick out of the weeds, we were
kind of attached to the thing. - How long has that
thing been in there, Sam? - [Sam] 25 years. - [Dave] And it became
just easier to overlook the fact that this thing is garbage. - [Mike] But at this
point, we're pot-committed. I mean, we're two days into this. We're building this Buick no matter what. Even if none of us are in love with it. Wow. - [Jeff] Where are you going with our car? - [Dave] I didn't know he was
taking it around the block. Call me crazy, but this
is kind of a project. - [Mike] We've still got three days. - This side has sort of a mold look, and that side has the rust look. Forgot to rotate it. Brown on one side, then turn over. (surfer rock) Okay, we made a deal. We own a '56 Buick Century. Now, we need to figure out how
to get it onto this Corvette chassis, and how to power
the thing, and to do that, turns out Lightning Rod's Speed Shop is right across the street here,` and they specialize in
LS engine conversions, so they've got regular
old small-block Chevys and Turbo 350s just
stacked up like hardwood, I guess, so we bought
this perfectly good engine with all the accessories
and the trans and everything for 800 bucks, and we're
going to use the tow truck to put it in the chassis, so that we can get the whole mess back home. Okay? Wow, that was good. - Nice work. Look at that, you parked
at the exact right spot. - [Dave] Really pro. - That's the smoothest engine install that's ever happened in
the history of Roadkill. And all it took was removing
the entire body of the car and having somebody else stab it in. - [Dave] Oh, man. There's still a lot to do here, 'cause we got to get all of this garbage back to Finnegan's house. And the best thing is, man,
I am just going to miss all of that, 'cause I
had a meeting with Dodge back in Detroit, and I
had to split for a day. Okay, so you guys got this covered? - Yes. - All right, bye. - Happy drinking. I mean, meeting. Meeting. - [Jeff] Nice vacation. - You know what that means? The inmates are running the asylum! (laughter) (energetic rock music) - It's Wednesday, and man,
we made some good progress! (car grinding up ramp) This is scary, man. I'm going to wait to get cut in half. Oh, wow. This is really crooked. I'm hoping the video guys
didn't get too close a look at our towbar install,
because we had way too much extension cord going to
way too gutless a welder to safely install that towbar
onto that Corvette chassis. - We should just Uber home. - [Mike] Can you make it hotter? (welding gun buzzing) What's the worst that could happen? All right, here we go. You ready for this? - 'About as ready as I'll ever be. - [Mike] All right. - [Jeff] Did you strap the car down? - [Mike] I thought you
strapped the car down. - [Jeff] Oh, we're doomed. - [Mike] Look at the tires. - [Jeff] Oh, tire's already stuck. - [Mike] Come on, whip back around. Nope. Okay, flat-towing doesn't work. - [Jeff] I think, flat tow: fail one. We can still see Sammy's yard. (laughs) - We may have set a new record for not getting very far on Roadkill. (relaxing, ambient music) - I think this might work. - [Mike] All right.
- [Jeff] Here we go. So far, so good. - [Mike] All right, all right. - [Jeff] Okay. - Oh, it looks like a tornado behind us. There's this dirt cloud. - [Jeff] We look like
the Beverly Hillbillies. - We do. (laughter) (car engine rumbling) Why is this 50 miles from
Tennessee to my house the most daunting thing
I've ever done on Roadkill? - Probably 'cause that flat
tow has never, ever worked. (laughter) Ever. - Yeah, that's true. - [Dave] Roadkill and flat towing. Yeah, good times. Remember when we tried to tow
the Prius behind the Gremlin and ended up spinning off the highway? Or how about that time
we picked up a '55 Chevy and parts were falling
off of it on the freeway and we gave the car back? - Today's the day, setting records! Come on, girl. Let's go. - [Jeff] There we go, there we go! - One Buick, one Corvette. We made it! Miller time? - Yes! (laughter) (chains rattling) - [Dave] I'm gone for a whole
day and nothing changed. This still has a bad
idea written all over it. One thing I will say is, like, coming back to this after a day, I have no guilt about anything we do to this car. It's garbage. - [Mike] I feel good about this. This is a great idea. - Make bad things happen. (car engine kicks up) Are you good? Jeff's good. Oh, this is bad. (laughs) (car engine snarling) Oh, this is safe. I like that. This is junk. - This is a car that will
never forget its roots. (exciting rock music) (vacuum humming) - [Dave] That's good.
- [Mike] That was good. - [Dave] Moments from
that was remarkably easy. - [Mike] That's where it needed to be. - [Dave] Yep. Yeah. (tools grinding and whirring) - We've cut all of the
structural integrity out of the Buick, rendering
the doors useless, and the chassis is still
stuck under the car. - Dropping. Aw, yeah. It wants to be free. So much hacking. (cackling) - [Mike] These tires need balancing. Done. - [Dave] Bye, bye. - How does it possibly
look worse than it did when we pulled it out of the junkyard? - Roadkill. Come on, dude. You know how. - Wow. That's really bad. (dog sniffing) This should be called project shipwreck, 'cause everything I touch looks like it came off the bottom of the ocean. (laughter) We're done ruining the Buick for now, and we're going to start
ruining the Corvette chassis, which has a wheel base
that is two feet shorter than the Buick, so we
need to add length to it. We're going to chop the
frame right behind the transmission cross-member, and take some four by four steel and just add the link that we need, so the
wheel base matches up. (metal creaking) (laughter) - That's awesome. - There we go! - Getting exciting, now. - How many angry people
are out there right now? That's what I want to know. This was a '73 Corvette with a four-speed L something or other,
eight and a half to one compression engine, and
we just back-halved it. - [Dave] Ow. That was bad. Yep, that's what happens. - [Mike] It did get you a little. - [Jeff] Little bit. That's just a scratch. (machinery whirring and grinding) - Remarkably, on Roadkill,
we cut a Corvette chassis apart, extended
it nearly two feet, and it's only an eighth of an inch out of square, measuring like this. Hallelujah. Holy crap. (laughter) (pumping rock music) Today was awesome. We fully gutted the Buick,
and we stretched the chassis of the Corvette, and I
think what we're going to finish up doing here is playing the frame and getting it ready so we can marry the two together sometime tomorrow. (chains rattling) - Beef, Titanic. Beef, Titanic. Today's the last day of
wrenching on this thing, and basically, I think what
we're going to get done is the body sitting on the chassis, we just have no idea how
that's going to happen. - [Mike] Maybe we should
have a, "You should "not try this at home" part, huh? - Oh, completely. You never want to do this. - [Mike] I got safety glasses on. - What could go wrong? I'm wearing gloves, I got shoes on. (triumphant rock music) Well, the issue right now is that after all of this sketchy
work trying to get this thing up on these
jackstands as high as we could, the inside of the wood
that's holding the jackstands is narrower than the width of the frame. - [Mike] So we looked
around at what we had left in materials, and decided we
had enough metal left over from our chassis stretching job to build an A-frame above the body. - Okay. This is the beginnings of a guillotine. What it does is you
strap a Buick body to it, and then you get under the Buick, and the strap breaks
and takes your head off. It's very French. All of a sudden, I have
a sense of security now that we've got that A-frame there. You got the ratchet strap
perfectly centered, right? Ah, whatever. Whee. Chassis's going under the body. Okay, pull! And stop. That's roughly it, but
we're going to have to cut the whole firewall, the engine is set back virtually under the dash. - [Mike] Ah, dude. That's for handling. - That's real bad. - You know, professionals measure all this stuff before they start. - [Jeff] We didn't even
have a tape measure. - Look how good it's turning out, though. - [Dave] Bad ideas, poorly executed. (bombastic circus music) - [Mike] We're about to attempt to lower the body down for the first time. All right, it's tilting to
the left, I don't know why. - [Dave] What just happened? Coming down. Ooh, looks tough already. - [Mike] I think the back is high. - Yeah, the back's still up. We're going to have to cut more stuff out. Every moment, as the day went on, we realized how bad this Buick was. It just got worse and worse. There was nothing we weren't
afraid to cut off this car. Everything's got to go. That's it, folks. We just went full Tennessee
chainsaw massacre. You know what, I started
to feel about all this and everything, 'til I
realized we can probably just flange this and Zeus
it right back in there. What's hanging it over here? Oh, there we go. There we go. That makes it much better. Ooh, now we're getting somewhere! Oh, yeah. This side's approved. - I don't care, like, how rusty a car is. You lay one out. It's some bad (bleep) right there. Oh, break time. Who wants a beer? - [Jeff] I guess we're done. - [Dave] We went into a
junkyard and rolled the dice that we were going to be able
to drive a car out of there, but instead, we ended up
with the world's rustiest Buick, the world's worst
idea, with the world's most clapped-out Corvette
chassis, but none of that matters, because this is just what we do. Because welding and hacking
and slashing is fun, and I have never hacked a car
out of a thorn bush before. - [Mike] We know what this car could be, given enough time, labor, money, tools, you know, all the things we
usually lack on Roadkill. And at the end of the day,
looks pretty cool, right? Want the parts we
used to build these cars? Visit Jeggs.com/Roadkill. Hey one more thing don't forget that episodes of Roadkill go live on Motor Trend On Demand . Com about a month before they get posted to Youtube and we have a new show that's only on Motor Trend On Demand that is called Roadkill Garage so right now check out this teaser for the latest episode on Roadkill that is live right now on Motor Trend On Demand we just ran into the rental car we did we're running out of gas yeah we're
running out of gas okay at this episode of Roadkill is live right now at Motor
Trend On Demand . com (fancy orchestral music) (hysterical laughter) - Ah, there was a snake. Yeah. I'm glad we're working
under trees over there with the Corvette, because, you know, you never know when you
need a snake down your back. It's like, hey, buddy. Go get the camera guy. Have you ever washed a Roadkill car? - [Mike] Nope. Oh, dude. It's working. The paint's turning beige. Oh, come look at this one. (laughter) Oh, boy. Here we go. Uh-oh. Come on, Corvette. - [Jeff] Uh-oh, uh-oh. Oh, it made it! It made it! - [Mike] Roadkill ain't nothing. (laughter)
That guy really didn't want to sell them a car. Not sure why he invited them in
Came for the hot rods, stayed for the gardening. That's what growing up feels like.
Awesome episode, even if they didn't get it running. Extraordinary commitment to a bad idea can have very promising results.
I hope that there's a follow up episode on this car. The concept looks awesome.
Pronouncing French names such as Peugot and Renault is certainly not one of their strenghts.
This reminds me of Chad Reynolds' 56 Chevy wagon, his car is/was a rust bucket that he dropped on another chassis (newer Caprice). He actually started CarJunkieTV with Frieburger, it was like Hot Rod Garage nearly 10 years ago. Sadly they couldn't keep it going and Chad turned it into Bangshift.
http://i.imgur.com/UhjAmLD.jpg
The car ended up looking pretty badass. I can't wait to see it run.
Holy crap that guy has got some really nice cars there just under tarps.
Kinda bummed that they didn't get the hack of a car running. I got to say though that car looks to be the sketchiest thing I've seen. I'd bet none of them wanted to drive so they didn't get it running.