‘I wouldn’t mind a Citi Golf when I come to South Africa. You guys drive on the right side of the road,” said Tom Ford speaking about bringing his show Mud, Sweat & Gears to the country.
He and his co-host, Jonny Smith, are excited about the car show coming to BBC and spoke about their experiences.
“It’s quite hard to resist when someone approaches you to tell you that they will give you a budget which will allow you to buy any car, demolish it and modify it in any way you see fit. Then, after that, you have to drive the modified vehicles and see just how well they perform,” explained Smith.
“If we could afford this hobby at home, then it is exactly what we would do with our mates,” added Ford.
The pair get members of the public to form opposing teams and then they build concept vehicles from old cars.
“We have a wide variety of opportunities and the cars were never very expensive so we didn’t feel guilty when we destroyed them. We would wonder what would happen if you take off the whole body of a car and leave the engine and the wheels. We stop wondering and find out what would happen by practically destroying the car,” said an enthusiastic Smith.
The pair are competitive and it even came out in the we they talked about Mud, Sweat & Gears.
“It’s a friendly show where we all have to win, but we are all okay without winning. In each episode, we get 24 hours to modify and show, which is not a lot of time, but we have to make do with that. The car is already fitted with safety features before we touch them,” said Smith.
“We are very low-budget so you need to think about what it means to buy this or that in order to win. If you buy a cheap car, that means you have money left to afford other material that you will need to modify the car,” said Ford.
Each week a new challenge is given to the hosts so they always have to keep an open mind regarding their assignments.
“The trouble is, we never know what we are modifying it for so you usually end up with a Swiss Army knife, where a car is trying to do lots and lots of things. You also don’t want to spend a lot of time on a car and it doesn’t get used,” said Ford.
“We spent a lot of time on suspension and armouring so that the cars were faster. We pretty much dealt with repossessed cars so that we would not be seen destroying a classic Ford Mustang. We have respect for the classics. However, we play around with luxurious cars sometimes. For example, I had a stretch limo the other day and turned it into a pick-up truck. We build every car for any given terrain because we never know what the producers have in mind.”
The hosts agreed that inspiration for their creations comes from varied sources.
“I read and write a lot of science-fiction so I have many reference books. I believe in fact and all my designs are based on that. Johnny believes in unicorns and the mystic world and that comes out in his designs. Sometimes what we come up with works out and in other cases we fail dismally. It’s all part of the fun, really,” revealed Ford.
After investing so much time in the remakes, the hosts always hold their breath in the hope of winning the challenges. Whoever loses has their car demolished while they watch.
“Emotions did get the better of us at times. You invest a lot of time and build a car with a lot of people. Sometimes you fail the challenge not because of your own doing, but just that the other team had better modifications. One time I built a Mad Max kind of car and we lost, then we had to blow it and I was hurt. We have seen team members cry,’ said Smith.
l Mud, Sweat & Gears premieres tonight, 10pm on BBC Knowledge (channel 184).