The Gotham Garage team has built everything from two 1960 Plymouth XNR replicas, to a totally unique concept car, over the course of the last few seasons.
Mark Towle and his team at Car Masters: Rust to Riches’s Gotham Garage have always had a propensity for out-of-the-box builds.
But Gotham Garage’s newest builds have helped Mark and the team to change their business model and level-up their builds in order to appeal to a more high-end clientele.
About Gotham Garage
Gotham Garage, which forms the backdrop to Netflix’s Car Masters: Rust to Riches, has quickly gained a reputation for building some of the most over-the-top trucks, motorcycles, hot rods and muscle cars to ever appear on television.
With Mark Towle in the driving seat, what else would you expect?
Mark Towle is the founder of Gotham Garage, which existed way before Car Masters: Rust to Riches even started airing. Mark got his start by building stunt cars and replicas destined for movie sets.
But he eventually realized that restoring cars and flipping them into one-of-a-kind works of art could be even more profitable in the long term.
5 details from Gotham Garage’s most outrageous builds
When Car Masters: Rust to Riches first started airing in 2018, it was quite evident that both the show and the Gotham Garage team were still trying to find their feet.
In fact, for most of the first two seasons of the show, Mark and Shawn Pilot spent most of their time trying to track down and finalize several trades, which did not prove to be a very profitable business model.
Fortunately, this all changed at the end of the second season of the show when the Gotham Garage team jumped head-first into a totally unprecedented 1960 Plymouth XNR replica build.
Although the Gotham Garage team had frequently come under fire for their perceived poor build quality in the past, this 1960 Plymouth XNR build ended up being so good that Mark and the rest of the team even received the honor of having it displayed at the Petersen Automotive Museum.
This build not only proved that the Gotham Garage team knew what they were doing when it came to precise restorations, but it also put them on the map for a few high-end buyers.
This allowed Mark, Shawn and the rest of the Gotham Garage team to switch their business model at the beginning of season three (which technically started filming early in 2021) to focus on custom commissions from high-end clients.
And of course, in true Gotham Garage fashion, this also allowed Mark and the team to take on even more outrageous builds, like a second Plymouth XNR and a truly otherworldly concept car.
A Car Masters: Rust to Riches timeline
The beginning of season three of Car Masters: Rust to Riches certainly marked a change in the outrageousness and creativity of Gotham Garage’s builds.
And, with Mark recently confirming that season five will be airing very soon, it may be worth your while to make sure that you are caught up on all of these over-the-top builds:
| Season | First air date | Episodes |
| Season 1 | September 14, 2018 | 8 |
| Season 2 | March 27, 2020 | 8 |
| Season 3 | August 4, 2021 | 8 |
| Season 4 | July 27, 2022 | 8 |
1. Details of the first Plymouth XNR concept car from Gotham Garage
Gotham Garage’s first Plymouth XNR build garnered the attention of fans (and quite frankly, of gearheads all around the globe) for many reasons.
To begin with, the original Plymouth XNR was designed to be a one-off concept car by designer, Virgil Exner, in collaboration with Ghia design house, and it was never meant to be reproduced.
Secondly, this replica turned out to be staggeringly close to the original, even though the Gotham Garage team had hand-built the metalwork with only old photographs and videos of the original for reference.
2. Did Gotham Garage build a second XNR?
The unveiling of Gotham Garage’s first Plymouth XNR certainly helped to propel the team to a whole new level, and it did not take long for them to recreate the magic.
Keen-eyed and -eared fans of the show may have noticed a few hints that Mark and the team were considering building a second XNR, just as they were finishing up the build of the first.
Season three’s premiere episode confirmed that they had built a third-of-a-kind XNR – this time with a darker grille and a Shelby Cobra-style dual-pipe setup.
3. Did Gotham Garage sell the second XNR?
If you were not paying close attention, you may have missed it, but the first episode of season three of Car Masters: Rust to Riches revealed that the second Gotham Garage Plymouth XNR replica did indeed have a buyer lined up.
Although Mark and Shawn did not give viewers any further updates about how much the car sold for in this season, the original Plymouth XNR fetched a final price of $935,000 at an auction in 2011. So it is likely that the replica was sold for a similar amount.
4. Details for the concept car that Gotham Garage built in season 3
The second Plymouth XNR build was not the only jaw-dropping build that came out of Gotham garage in the third season of the show, as this was also the season in which Gotham Garage debuted its very own concept car.
The idea for this Gotham Garage concept car had reportedly been swirling around in Mark’s head for nearly 20 years and used a 1993 Chevy Corvette ZR1 as the base.
From there, the team added a fully-customized fiberglass body (which was later painted a bright yellow shade), a unique convex windshield, and of course, the matching concept bike.
5. Did Gotham Garage build a concept car in season 4?
Sadly, the season three concept-car-and-bike duo proved to be less popular than Mark probably intended. Thus, the Gotham Garage team did not get to building a new concept car in season four.
However, after a few failed attempts, Shawn, Mark and the rest of the team did manage to sell the season three concept car (and bike) for $285,000 through a broker named Nick Smith.
