Fast N' Loud

by Richard Rawlings

  DEDICATION

  Any success in life comes down to three things,

  and as such, I dedicate this book to:

  1.God—for giving us America, the greatest country in the world that allows me to do what I do!

  2.Family—namely my wife, Sue, who stood by me all these years, in success and in failure. And . . .

  3.Friends—especially my best friend, Dennis Collins, who took me under his wing and taught me the car business, and who has always been there with a cold beer.

  CONTENTS

  DEDICATION

  INTRODUCTION

  PART ONE

  THE “AUTO” BIOGRAPHY

  FIRST GEAR

  REVVED UP

  GUNS & MONEY

  ON THE ROAD

  OVERDRIVE

  NO MORE MONKEYING AROUND

  GEARING UP

  PEDAL TO THE METAL!

  PART TWO

  THE BIG SHOW

  ASSEMBLING THE CREW

  MEET THE MONKEYS!

  OUR FAVORITE EPISODES

  LET’S HEAR IT FOR OUR FANS!

  THE GROWING GAS MONKEY EMPIRE

  PART THREE

  FLIPPING OUT

  THE SECRETS OF MY SUCCESS

  FLIP TIPS

  AND IN THE END . . .

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PHOTO SECTION

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  CREDITS

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  COURTESY OF DISCOVERY COMMUNICATIONS.

  INTRODUCTION

  Whooo!

  Want to know what it feels like to do 150 MPH on a long stretch of highway? I’ll tell you this: it’s nowhere near as cool as going 207 MPH on that same stretch of road.

  There are a lot of people out there who’ve topped 100, and quite a few everyday guys and gals who’ve topped 120 or 140 in a street-legal vehicle on a public highway. But the difference between driving 150 MPH and driving 200 MPH is as big as the difference between doing zero—like, actually standing still—and doing 100. The roar of the engine and wind and road comes pounding through your body as the trees and lights and lampposts and even other vehicles become blurs of color and the adrenaline kicks every one of your senses into the highest gear possible.

  It’s f—kin’ awesome!

  Speed that close to the ground is scary as hell, though, so “Don’t try this at home, kids!” Going that fast without killing yourself or anybody else requires an unbelievable amount of attention, intensity, and focus. But if that’s what the job calls for, that’s what I’m gonna deliver. And topping 200 MPH in order to break a world record was exactly what the job called for on one kick-ass trip back in 2007 when my buddy Dennis Collins and I answered a bet and teamed up for the rally of a lifetime: the Cannonball Run. It was right in the middle of that run, on a lonesome stretch of Interstate 40, where the speedometer hit 207 MPH in Dennis’s 1999 Ferrari 550 Maranello—and we kept it over the 200 mark for a whole lotta miles in order to make up for some lost time along the way.

  Just about everybody’s heard of The Cannonball Run, the 1981 movie starring Burt Reynolds, Farrah Fawcett, Dom DeLuise, and a bunch of other big stars from that era. Well, that film was based on a real road rally called the Cannonball Run that was first run back in the 1970s, following a cross-country route from Midtown Manhattan to the Portofino Inn and Yacht Club in Redondo Beach, California. There’s been a tradition of less-than-legal road rallies all over the U.S. and Canada ever since, and I’ve run in plenty of them, but the Cannonball is the most legendary. Dennis and I set out to beat a cross-country record that had stood for more than twenty-five years: The original Cannonball winners made the Run in thirty-two hours and four minutes. No one had been able to touch that record in all that time, and a lot of people thought it was impossible to beat. In fact, a buddy of ours, Jay Riecke, bet us $50,000 that we couldn’t do it, and that was all it took for Dennis and me to give it a go.

  Armed with a stack of cash and a supply of beef jerky, we took off from the Red Ball Garage at 8:30 P.M. and rocketed toward New Jersey. We knew Manhattan traffic was one of our biggest obstacles, so I called ahead to a buddy of mine named Nassar who owns a limo company. We hired his whole fleet of drivers to get in front of us and briefly block traffic onto the bridge so we could get through without a hitch. We had drivers run ahead of us through New Jersey, too, driving fast and weaving around so that any cops in the area would pull them over and be fully occupied when we came speeding past them.

  For those who might be reading this with horror, thinking how terrible and dangerous it is to drive at high speeds on public roads, I just want to acknowledge that I didn’t take it lightly. A lot of guys had done this before us, and we were very safe about it. We thought about where we were, we didn’t goof around, and we weren’t running people off the road or acting like idiots. We were very respectful about what we were doing at every turn. Realize that a lot of people drive 75 or 80 on the highway as it is. Our average speed over the course of this whole route was 87.6 MPH. Not exactly crazy driving.

  We dropped down along the original route of the Cannonball all the way to Interstate 40 and then beat it west just as fast as we possibly could, only stopping five times for gas. Good thing we limited our meals to beef jerky and energy drinks, because those were the only bathroom breaks we made the entire time, too!

  I was married then, and my wife, Sue—with less than a day’s notice—flew out to Redondo Beach and grabbed a hotel room at our destination. She’s a computer whiz, and she actually created a computer model for us that would figure out how fast we needed to go in order to break the record. By checking in via cell phone with our location and time, she could tell us what our estimated finish time was, and how fast or slow we needed to go in order to make up for lost time. She also told us when we could hang back a bit so we wouldn’t get stopped. After all, the time it would take to suffer a single speeding ticket along the way could’ve blown the whole adventure.

  Dennis and I went a little nuts on the cop watch. This whole endeavor wasn’t exactly legal to begin with, right? So we pulled out all the stops. We had radar detectors and diffusers and jammers, everything in the world. We even had an Opticom, which is the device that changes stoplights from red to green when you’re on your way to the hospital in an ambulance and what have you. Believe it or not, it’s not illegal to own one of those devices. You can buy ’em on eBay. It is illegal to use one, so I’m not gonna say here whether we used it or not!

  The first half of the trip was exhilarating but exhausting. I think the only thing that got us through was the adrenaline and the camaraderie of making that crazy drive with a good friend. Once we got about halfway through, though, we started to feel good. We got lucky. We had good weather. It was Mother’s Day weekend, so we weren’t hitting a lot of traffic. I mean, we really thought we might pull this off!

  Fast N’ Loud wasn’t on TV yet, but Gas Monkey Garage had been up and running for a few years by then. Aaron Kaufman and I had a pickup and trailer that we drove to rallies all over the country, trying to let people know what we were all about. So when this thing started to look like it might happen, I called Aaron down at the garage and told him to drop everything he was doing.

  “Drive to Redondo Beach right now, man! Go!”

  I figured Dennis and I might make a splash in the press if we could pull this thing off, and having our Gas Monkey logo on the side of a truck parked right behind the Ferrari at the finish line certainly seemed like it would be good marketing.

  I could hardly believe it, but as we reached California, it looked like we were actually going to do it. We were set to beat the thirty-two-hour mark! There was just one problem: we miscalculated the Ferrari’s fuel needs. We must’ve bur
ned off a ton of gas during one of our 200-MPH stretches, because just as we hit the outskirts of L.A., we realized we were running on fumes.

  Pulling off the freeway and stopping at a gas station for even a few minutes might have done us in. We knew that. We flipped out! How could we get so close and then blow it with only twenty miles to go?

  That’s when I remembered: Aaron was on his way to Redondo Beach.

  I hopped on the cell phone. “Aaron, where are you?”

  Lo and behold, he wasn’t all that far ahead of us.

  “Get off the highway and get a five-gallon bucket and fill it up with gas,” I told him. With my wife’s help we picked a mile marker and had Aaron sit on the side of that road with that bucket of gas until we got there.

  Finally we saw Aaron up ahead. “Whoo-hoo!” I yelled as we slid to a stop and he dumped that gas in like one of NASCAR’s finest pitmen. Boom! We were off and running again on the bad-ass adrenaline high of knowing we were about to make history.

  Weaving through traffic and carefully blowing through stop signs, pushing right to the end—we did it. Sue was waiting at the curb watching the official time as we roared into the hotel parking lot at thirty-one hours and fifty-nine minutes flat. A new world record for the Cannonball Run!

  Aaron pulled up in the truck a few minutes later, and, just as I suspected, our feat got picked up in all of the automotive press. I was so thrilled, I shouted it from the mountaintops, man. I even caught the attention of a certain car buff named Jay Leno, who called us up and had us come on his show to share our accomplishment with the world. Remember, Fast N’ Loud wasn’t on TV in 2007. I was just some guy with a garage down in Dallas! Getting on a major TV show and getting press coverage like that was huge for my growing business!

  When Dennis called me up in 2012 to remind me it was the five-year anniversary of our Cannonball adventure, I walked right into a tattoo parlor and had them commemorate that feat permanently on my left forearm. It’s right there: “31:59,” inked into an image of a stopwatch forever on my skin.

  Dennis and I broke the longest-standing Cannonball Run record, and there is no one on earth who can take that away from us.

  Some people live by a “Go big or go home” philosophy. But for me, “Go big or go home” was never enough. Go biggest, go baddest, go raddest, go for broke, go for everything. That’s the way I live. That’s what brought me to TV. That’s what built the growing Gas Monkey empire, from Gas Monkey Garage to Gas Monkey Bar N’ Grill to Gas Monkey Racing and Gas Monkey Apparel . . . heck, by the time this book comes out, you’ll be able to buy Gas Monkey–branded tequila at bars all over the Western Hemisphere!

  If you’ve picked up this book, chances are that you or someone you know is a fan of my show on Discovery Channel called Fast N’ Loud. We’ve been on the air since 2012, but I’ve been flipping cars, building hot rods, and tearing up the streets for a whole lot longer than that—and I’m about to show you what I mean. The idea here is to let you run backstage when the security guard’s not looking to get a glimpse at what I’m up to behind the scenes. While we roll, I’ll share the backstory of where I came from and how I got here, and I’ll give you a little glimpse of where I’m going, too.

  I’m going to talk to you about the cars I’ve loved, the women I’ve loved, the traveling I’ve done, and the crazy twists and turns along the way as I built the Gas Monkey brand and reputation to the point that made Fast N’ Loud explode in popularity.

  Then I’m gonna take you through some of your favorite builds as I reminisce about some of the most popular episodes of the show you love, as well as my personal favorites. And finally, I’m gonna share a few tricks of the trade when it comes to flipping cars. Here at Gas Monkey Garage, we pull in a whole lot of cash every month just by buying and selling some really cool vehicles without hardly laying a hand on ’em. The thing I’ve found when it comes to cars is that if you love it, if you’re dedicated, if you’re smart and fast and make some noise, there’s no reason you can’t go out there and flip a few of ’em yourself. I mean, who wouldn’t want to make themselves some extra income while having a good time? Isn’t that what we all want in life? Cars are fun! Money’s fun! GYSOT, man: Get you some of that!

  Hell, if you really want to get dedicated, you can go out and make one heck of a living flipping cars. I know it’s possible because I’ve done it. Not only that, but I managed to turn my passion for hot rods into one of the biggest, most successful car shows on all of television—a feat that everybody told me couldn’t be done.

  So hop on in, buddy. I’m about to drop the pedal down and burn some rubber in the parking lot before we head out onto the open road, and I couldn’t be happier to take you along for the ride. Whooo!

  PART ONE

  THE “AUTO” BIOGRAPHY

  Me in my ’68 Thomas Crown Affair Shelby. COURTESY OF DISCOVERY COMMUNICATIONS.

  Me as a youngin’. COURTESY OF RICHARD RAWLINGS.

  FIRST GEAR

  I was born a poor black child . . .”

  Ha! I always wished I could start my autobiography that way. That has got to be one of the funniest openings from any movie in history. I suppose you want to hear the story of my own upbringing instead of a fictional one written by Steve Martin, but if you watch the show, you already know that I’m a fan of all sorts of great flicks from the seventies and eighties. Steve Martin’s The Jerk holds a place right up there with the likes of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, American Graffiti, and of course Smokey and the Bandit, the king of the revved-up car-centric films that rolled into theaters back when I was a kid. I’ll never forget what it felt like to sit in a movie theater and watch that black Trans Am tear up the streets. All I kept thinking was, I gotta get me some of that!

  Well, the story of my childhood might not be quite as riveting as some fast-moving Hollywood film, but I think it will give you a peek at where the earliest seeds of the Gas Monkey empire were first planted. So here goes.

  I was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in the infamous all-American year of 1969. Blame it on the free-love era, or something like that, but I was basically the product of too young a mother and too young a dad—a situation that led to a bit of a rough patch in my early years. My mom left us when I was two years old.

  That’s me as a baby, with my big sister, Daphne. COURTESY OF RICHARD RAWLINGS.

  My dad got stuck quitting high school in order to raise me and my older sister, Daphne. (You recognize Daphne from the show. She’s my chief accountant and all-around ballbuster these days, and has been pretty much from the start.) The thing is, my dad should have been out there living it up and having a good time like other young dudes in the 1970s. The first apartment we all lived in was like some swinging bachelor pad, complete with shag carpet and fishing nets hanging from the ceiling. A bunch of liquor bottles filled with colored water on the windowsill were the fanciest decorations we had. He quickly found that raising two kids put a major damper on his bachelorhood, though, and he was forced to straighten up his act real quick. The truly amazing and inspirational thing to me is that he did. He grew up fast. He put us first. He started working to support the three of us, and when I say work, I mean work.

  There’s not a time I can remember before I was old enough to leave the house when my dad wasn’t holding down two or even three jobs at once to pay the bills and put a decent roof over our heads. His primary job was down at the big local grocery store, where he landed a job as the produce manager. My sister and I would go down there with him on Saturdays and hang out at the store all day long because there was nowhere else for us to go. The job I remember most, though, was the one he took delivering newspapers. I remember it because I had to work that job with him.

  From the time I was about seven until I was probably seventeen, my dad would wake me up at three or four in the morning every day. He would put me in the backseat of his car surrounded by stacks and stacks of newspapers that needed delivering, and my job would be to roll ’em all up, one by one. I would
roll the newspapers for him and put them in the front seat, and he would throw them out the windows to all the houses.

  We’d get done with that at about five or six in the morning and I’d be able to lie down for thirty minutes to an hour before I had to get up and go to school while Dad went off to spend his day tending to lettuce, tomatoes, and, I suspect, the occasional lady shopper. I didn’t have one of those PTA-type moms dropping me off at the front door of school every day, either. My dad remarried, so we had a mother figure at home. She just wasn’t the type of woman who’d baby us. Daphne and I both had to walk to the bus stop no matter what the weather was and then ride on one of those rickety yellow busses full of screaming kids. Then I had to race home from the bus stop at 3:30 when I got out of school, because back then there was a morning paper and an evening paper. So my dad and I had a paper route to get to in the afternoon, too. I wasn’t able to go play with my friends or start my homework or anything until about six o’clock, when our work was finished.

  I suppose there’s no question where I get my work ethic: it’s from watching my dad. But I think that really led to another driving force in my life, too: I knew that I never wanted to have to work to the bone like he did just to make ends meet. I’m not afraid of hard work. Don’t get me wrong, I really, really respected my dad for doing it, but I didn’t want to spend my whole life working just to pay the bills and never really get ahead. My dad didn’t want that life for me, either. The three strongest principles he demanded of me were to be respectful of my elders, to be respectful of my family, and to work hard. Most of all, I think he instilled in me that he didn’t want me to have to work that hard. He thought school was important, and he thought that getting a good job with good benefits was important. I think he felt that he wasn’t able to do that because he didn’t graduate high school, so he insisted that Daphne and I stay in school and strive for something better.