OK BritEra. I've been watching two UK car shows on the plane. It says they're National Geographic shows, so maybe they don't even airproperly over there. Car SOS - charming, interesting vehicles and a blend of real challenges, fake/edited drama and legitimately nice people getting surprised with immaculately restored vehicles. The cast and crew are great, personable, expert etc. A bit saccharine but still fantastic seeing a really weird range of classic cars. Great! Well done.
But uh.... Supercar Megabuild? Ralph and Ronin seem pleasant enough. But the show's premise - that these two are given what should be interesting challenges - like turn a Jeep into a pickup, or create a boosted right hand drive Camaro SS or a drift-ready Rolls Royce.. I like the sound of all that. But we have to talk about Kahn.
1. What is the point of him? He doesn't really do anything except own the place, doesn't appear to have any special insight or skill - and his taste is all over the place.
2. His "top clientele" look like people you'd cast to play stereotypes but couldn't afford union actors - posh bird, soccer player, businessman.
3. Whenever he is injected into the "drama" his business acumen makes Shark Tank look like Warren Buffet. "I want to break into the US market!" Ronin "sneakily" mods jeep in Tijuana, and Kahn "realizes he's in Mexico not LA" because... he sees a garage full of Mexican auto mechanics in the background. That's like deciding someone must be in Italy because they're eating pizza. I know the cast and crew have
been to LA because they filmed a lot of it there. That means they deliberately ignored a bunch of really obvious facts and sold it back to the UK as an exotic drama. And the "champagne reception" to "debut" his Jeep pickup was humiliating enough to be in the Cringe Thread.
4. His ideas are so vague, with no actual customers in mind that I genuinely wonder what his income is derived from. The vehicles are sort of OK sometimes, but a scissor-doored right hand Camaro SS with a big enough horsepower boost to maybe accomodate the massive extra weight.
I know it's all scripted fluff and I shouldn't let it bother me, but the contrast between the two shows is really jarring when you watch them back to back and they both use almost exactly the same "time pressure oh no a problem" format, yet the end results couldn't be more different. If Kahn was like, even a mediocre concept sketcher, or able to source rare vehicles, or didn't look perpetually dead eyed and empty he could at least add value.
I'm sure he's a wonderful bloke. But man.