Cristy Lee was only the co-host of Garage Squad for a few episodes, but she has had a long and successful career outside of the show.
Not all of the Garage Squad team members that we associate with the show today, have been there since the beginning of the show.
Cristy Lee first joined Garage Squad in 2019, and has since moved on to other projects, including her very own real-estate restoration show.
The Garage Squad team
Over the years, the Garage Squad team has gained a reputation for turning all different kinds of forgotten car restoration projects into drool-worthy fully-restored classics.
Several of the team members, including Bruno Massel (the co-host of the show), Joe Zolper (the shop’s lead builder), Cy Kellogg and Ron Gregurich (the shop’s resident mechanics) have been with the show since its very beginning.
However, things have not gone quite as smoothly for the show’s female co-hosts.
Heather Storm took up the role of host for the first few seasons of the show, but she was eventually replaced by Cristy Lee, who was in turn, replaced by Sarah ‘Bogi’ Lateiner in the most recent season.
Other cast members, like Jeff King and Scott Ericson, have also joined the squad in the last few seasons.
Garage Squad Cristy Lee
Fans were skeptical when Cristy Lee first joined the Garage Squad team as Heather Storm’s replacement in 2019 for the sixth season of the show.
But it did not take long for this lifelong classic car enthusiast to prove that she knew her way around the shop.
Cristy’s love for the automotive industry developed at a young age and was really fostered by her father. He involved her in all of his own garage restoration projects and would frequently take her on joy-rides on his dirt-bike.
However, Cristy has admitted that what really turned her into the gearhead that she is today is when she bought her own motorcycle.
Cristy started her career in the automotive industry as a reporter, but her more than 18 years of experience as a motorcyclist and countless years spent restoring and building her own cars and bikes has served her well.
Not only as the former co-host of Garage Squad, but also on all of the other shows that she has been a part of since she joined the cast.
Cristy continues to blaze the way for other women in the industry today and judging by the photos that she posts on her Instagram page, it is evident that she still enjoys a challenging build and the occasional joyride just as much as she did when she was younger.
Other places where you might recognize Cristy Lee from
Cristy has pretty much done it all in her long career in the automotive industry.
And the chances are high that you might have already seen her work on MotorTrend’s other popular car restoration program, All Girls Garage, even before she joined the cast of Garage Squad. Garage Squad’s newest female co-host, Bogi, was also featured on this show.
If not, you might have also seen Cristy on MotorTrend’s Barrett-Jackson Live broadcasts (which started airing back in 2015) or even as one of the main reporters for the 2015 and 2016 X Games.
Why did Cristy leave Garage Squad?
As it always seems to go with these things, Cristy’s abrupt departure from Garage Squad in 2020, happened without any real explanation or announcement from the show or the star.
At the time, the rumors about why she had left the show ranged from conflicts with the Garage Squad producers to a well-earned break.
However, Cristy posted about a surgery that she had just a few months after she left Garage Squad. So it now seems very likely that she simply needed some time off from filming the show to recuperate and recover from her surgery.
What has Cristy been up to since she left Garage Squad?
Fortunately, it did not take very long for Cristy to recover from her 2020 surgery, and she has already worked on quite a few new projects since her split from Garage Squad.
Since leaving Garage Squad, Cristy has continued building motorcycles and cars in her own time. This includes her very first track car, which she only recently started building. When Cristy is not working hard in her own garage, she is usually busy filming.
Cristy signed on to do the Property Brothers spin-off series, called Celebrity IOU: Joyride, with Ant Anstead, not long after she split from Garage Squad and it is likely this influence which inspired the creation of her very own property renovation show, Steal This House, which started airing on HGTV in 2022.
