You may have noticed from the website that I am selling my company car, a 2005 Mustang GT. It’s not that I don’t like the car; in fact I love it. And don’t worry, I haven’t lost my love for internal combustion in general. I still have ten cars and seven motorcycles. However, I want to turn the Stang into a High Def television camera. Now where’d I put that magic wand??

I did a similar thing a little over a year ago when I turned my wife’s ’63 Falcon Futura convertible into a kitchen.

This was a beautiful little car but it had a three-on-the-tree, and after Ellen’s double knee replacement about two years ago, driving a clutch wasn’t all that much fun anymore. So she decided that she wanted a new kitchen more than she wanted the Falcon. She’d had it for 10 years and she’d had her fun with it.

Drew Alcazar, the owner of Russo & Steele auction house in Scottsdale, AZ is a friend of mine so I decided to give that a shot. I had never sold a car at auction (or bought one at auction, for that matter) so I didn’t really even know how to go about it.

I had to get it Scottsdale and my first thought was to drive it there. On the surface that seemed like a great idea! One last road trip in the car; just me and the Falcon. Fairly quickly tho, reality set in and I concluded that a 1,700 mile trip in January in a 45 year old car probably wouldn’t be the smartest thing I’ve ever attempted.

(more…)

Wow! A blog. Imagine that. But then, why not? After all, the new season is about to launch on SPEED, we’ve got a cool new website, and I’m zeroing in on my shooting schedule for 2009. There’s a lot to talk about, or rather, blog about. So here it is; my inaugural blog!

This is the 14th year on TV for MCC, but it is the first one that has been shot in High Definition. The cars look spectacular in HD, although I probably look better in standard def. The lead-off episode premieres on Feb 22, and it’s a good one for HD. It was shot last spring in Lehi, Utah at the UVSC car show. The show is held at a facility called Thanksgiving Point, and it is about as nice a setting as you could imagine.

The cars are all on grass, and the whole area is rimmed by snow capped mountains. The weather was perfect that day too. In fact, the biggest problem I had at that event was deciding what five cars to feature since there were just so many interesting and high quality cars in attendance.

We did manage tho, and I think the result is one of the best looking episodes we’ve ever done. We’ve only finished editing about four of this year’s 26 episodes so far, and they all look really good. Initially, I wasn’t all that thrilled about going to HD because of the increased cost, but I have to admit, it does look awesome!

As you can see, we have also done a radical redesign on the website. We’re a TV show, but our old site really had very little video on it. However, web technology has come a long way in the last couple years and we’re now able to offer fairly high quality video without ridiculous download times.

You’ll be able to watch clips of the new episodes, entire Eastwood Garage segments, and even some behind-the-scenes stuff. I’ll probably do an occasional video blog too. Bottom line, there’s going to be a lot more going on at the MCC website than ever before and I encourage you to stop by often.

(more…)