The Gotham Garage concept car, paired with the matching concept bike ultimately sold for more than the initial asking price after its disappointing performance at the auction.
Gotham Garage, which is at the center of the Car Masters: Rust to Riches show has gained a reputation for dreaming up and executing totally unique and outrageous builds.
This includes the futuristic Chevy Corvette ZR1 concept car and concept bike duo from the third season, which was eventually sold for higher than the initial asking price in the fourth season.
Gotham Garage’s outrageous builds
There is no doubt that when front man Mark Towle opened Gotham Garage all the way back in 1998, he did so with the intention of building all of the weird and wild classic car restorations that he had been cooking up in his head while working on movie sets and other projects over the years.
Over the years, some of the most outrageous build to come from Gotham garage include a Batmobile replica, a Hot Wheels tribute built on the chassis of a C4 Corvette, a VW Beetle Hot Rod and many, many more.
Car Masters: Rust to Riches – Here’s how much the Gotham Garage Concept Car sold for
Gotham Garage has certainly delivered some of the most jaw-dropping, unique and creative builds over the course of the first four seasons of the show.
But one of the builds that got fans of the show buzzing the most on various corners of the internet, was the Gotham Garage concept car.
Towle’s classic car-themed daydreams eventually led to him dreaming up a vision for a futuristic concept car, which he had been sketching for about 15 to 20 years by the time that the third season of the show premiered.
Eventually, the team decided that a 1993 Chevy Corvette ZR1, with its sturdy chassis and high horsepower output, would be the ideal base to build their concept car from.
However, after the Gotham Garage team spent considerable time designing and building the concept car’s fiberglass body (complete with a striking yellow paint job, eye-catching front splitter and huge spoiler), special front quad-headlight and hexa-taillight design, convex windshield setup, hinge doors, and an LCD-fitted steering wheel, they realized this build had stretched beyond its initial budget.
As a result, Towle decided later on that he could not accept the offer of $195,000 which the concept car and concept bike duo brought in at an online auction, and the concept car was placed on ice for the foreseeable future.
However, a season four update revealed that the concept duo was eventually sold to an unnamed client for $285,000.
Did Gotham Garage make a profit from the concept duo sale?
When Nick Smith, the owner of an online vehicle auction business approached Towle and the resident Gotham Garage salesman Shawn Pilot about purchasing the concept car and concept bike duo on behalf of one of his clients, they were asking $315,000 for the bundle.
However, after some haggling, they ultimately decided on the $285,000 selling price, which is still well above the $250,000 price that Towle was expecting to fetch at the initial auction for the concept car, which indicates that the team made a large profit from the sale.
The controversy surrounding the concept car
As with all reality television programs, Car Masters: Rust to Riches has been criticized for being overly produced and fake.
The concept car build only made the controversy surrounding the show worse, as many fans took to internet forums to explain why they felt the build was disappointing.
The criticisms for the concept car build range from sub-par workmanship, to the fact that the team only really changed the body of the car and not anything under the hood, to the fact that the selling price seemed inflated and have followed the show since its third season.
The other Gotham Garage concept car build
While the ZR1 concept car and bike build has been a hot topic on various gear-head forums for years, it was not the Gotham Garage team’s only endeavor into the concept car space.
Gotham Garage also tackled the challenge of trying to recreate the very famous 1960 Plymouth XNR, which was designed by Virgil Exner, but never actually went into production.
The Plymouth XNR has always been somewhat of a legend in the classic car-enthusiast world and Gotham Garage set out to create a full-scale replica of the car, which could actually drive.
In the end, Gotham Garage donated the completed build to the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. This replica serves as a reminder of what is possible when automotive designers break through the mold of industry standards.
