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Automotive Lifestyle
AUTOS: Another Challenge For ‘Car Warriors’
After winning last week's 72-hour custom-car-building contest, the All Stars face a new team of home-grown experts.
Bob Golfen  |  Posted March 09, 2011   Charlotte, NC
The winning Ford F-150 pickup built by the All Stars features a patriotic American flag paint job, a 4,800-watt audio system and the look of a desert race truck. (Photo: SPEED)
The All Stars redeemed themselves in the eyes of the Car Warriorsjudges last week as they bested the challengers with a jacked-up race truck festooned with an American flag motif and equipped with a 4,800-watt stereo system.

All built in just 72 hours of non-stop marathon construction.

The All Stars victory contrasted with the brutal split-decision loss in the first episode of Car Warriors, when their custom Ford Mustang “gasser” lost against the Mustang street machine built by a challenging team from Texas.

The challenger team, lowrider builders from Phoenix, wait with host Mark Istook for the judges to render their decision. (Photo: SPEED)
Tonight at 9 p.m. ET, the All Stars face off again with a fast-forward custom-car project against a team of challengers that includes an engaged couple and a fabricator from France. The two eight-member teams will each have 72 hours after first setting their eyes on their subjects – a pair of 1986 Chevy El Caminos – to turn the cars into fabulous and prize-winning custom cars.

As we’ve seen in the two episodes so far, it’s an exhausting and frustrating experience for members of either team as they push themselves to the extreme in designing, fabricating, painting and finishing, working against the clock and against each other.

Amazingly, at the end of the three-day stretch, the bleary-eyed builders will have created two beautiful and functional examples of custom-car art. Then the three veteran judges – Mad Mike Martin, George Barris and Jimmy Sheen – get hold of them, poring over the details and taking them out for road tests.

In last week’s grueling contest, a team of lowrider builders from Danny D Customs in Phoenix, Ariz., took on the All Stars. The task was for each team to take a stripped-down 1999 Ford F-150 pickup truck and turn it into a beautiful custom car, working around the clock for 72 hours straight.

The two teams chose diametrically opposed designs for their trucks. The All Stars went for a lifted race-truck design with a “Tribute to the Troops” paint scheme and that mega stereo system designed and built by audio expert Scott Owens.

Car Warriors judge Mad Mike Martin expounds on the design and build of the challenger team's truck. (Photo: SPEED)
The Phoenix lowriders went in the other direction, fashioning a street cruiser with a body-lowering air suspension and a brilliantly colored geometric paint design.

“It’s like yin and yang,” Mad Mike Martin said. “You don’t know which one is going to win.”

The pickup projects turned out to be particularly difficult, with both teams facing unexpected challenges, plus some angry outbursts within their ranks. For the All Stars, there was the incident where the big truck nearly fell off a tall jack, threatening to squish one member.

For All Stars painter Ryno Templeton, there was the scary episode when he lost the feeling in his hand, which an attending medic told him was a symptom of a carpel-tunnel problem, possibly caused by the repetitious action of car painting.

“I can’t feel my fingers,” Templeton exclaimed. “It’s no good not having any feeling in your fingers if you’re a custom painter.”

The Phoenix lowriders also had their share of mishaps, mostly centered on clearance problems after they installed an airbag system to lower the truck into the weeds. The prblems caused lots of wasted time and conflict between the builders.

In the final hour, the All Stars seemed defeated as they struggled to complete the wiring of the exotic audio system, but team leader Rich Evans roused the troops and they all pitched in to finish the job, the first wiring experience for most of them.

In the last moments of the 72 hours, the stereo came to life with a boom of heavy metal, and they were finally done.

While it was a close decision between the two well-designed and nicely built custom trucks, the judges were unanimous in choosing the All Stars’ effort. The finely crafted paint job and the consistency of the overall build were the tipping points, they said.

“The All Stars just built a better truck,” Mad Mike said. “The interior and exterior were a perfect match.”

George Barrris faulted the challengers’ effort for leaving too many things undone, which is certainly understandable considering the extreme time constraint.

“The bottom line is that the challengers left too many details unfinished,” Barris said.

Bob Golfen, Automotive Editor for SPEED.com, is a veteran auto writer based in Phoenix, Arizona, who has driven and evaluated essentially every new vehicle sold in the United States, and is a lifelong car enthusiast with a passion for collector cars, car culture and the automotive lifestyle. SPEED.com fans can email Bob Golfen at
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