Is Rawlings as big a tool as he seems on TV or is that just TV?

Joe Martin from Martin Bros. Customs seems much cooler and down to Earth. In case you don't know Joe Martin has a show on MT called Iron Resurrection out of Johnson City, TX.

I have never met Rawlings but I have been in the auto industry in some fashion for almost 25 years. There is a 0% chance that guy's money was coming from his shop. Either the network was paying for stuff or he had some sort of side hustle/big ass bank account to start with, apparently the answer is that he owned a company called Lincoln Press. In the first few episodes they were losing money on like 75% of the cars they touched, they bought cars that were really undesirable and tried to flip them and lost their ass (which is what every real car guy said as soon as they saw what they were buying to start with).

In later episodes I saw work being done that they should be ashamed of; there is no way on earth they were selling those cars for a premium with the work they were doing and if they did find some sucker to pay for them it would have ruined their reputation in no times. Everything I ever saw was customized corner cutting and, frankly, garbage quality. The dude with the hipster beard, however, has real skill and some serious creativity.

The stuff that Joe Martin does is orders of magnitude higher quality. In an odd twist I know his painter or, should say, I knew his painter pretty well when I worked in that area a long time ago.

I guess, put another way, if I had a car and 300k sitting around and you asked me which guy I wanted to build it...I wouldnt even have Gas Monkey on the list, even if they offered to do it for free.

I don't know anything about the cars or the shows. My wife and I did meet Rawlings and he was very cordial and funny.

Aaron Kaufman made that show watchable. A master/genius mechanic. Since he left, I don't watch anymore.

Richard is the showman and Aaron was the mechanical genius... lost interest and stopped watching several seasons ago. Is it still on?

I was on a DFW-DEN plane with him once. He seemed like a good dude. I did not talk to him, but he was cordial and polite to the folks that recognized him.

I had work done on an off road vehicle down the street from his place.(BaerTrax, now sold) So I wandered over and just chatted with them. They were friendly and I enjoyed just hanging out.

Can't really speak to his personality, but I'm convinced he's out of his element in front of the camera. He looks uncomfortable most of the time. Which is to say I don't know, and I've always doubted that their model works unless it's funded by a money-to-lose investor.

In talking to some other reno shops around Dallas, many have sort of a 'benefactor' that is usually someone in the auto industry. https://blackdogtraders.com/ This guy gets his funding from a Nascar guy and I think has some family money in it as well.

The key is being able to sell it for a certain price. With cars it's difficult to forecast. The shows most likely lock in a buyer before the work is performed.

My 'beef' with some of these places is they really don't understand the engineering that goes into autos nor are they qualified to do the things they attempt. So they throw together some ideas that might seem plausible and then a problem arises later and they are long gone. Sort of the used car sales approach to manufacturing.