American Restoration left Las Vegas because the show fired Rick Dale and the team at Rick’s Restorations and moved on to five new shops.
American Restoration initially started out as a spin-off series of Pawn Stars and focused on Rick Dale and everything that happened at the Rick’s Restoration shop in Las Vegas.
However, the show underwent a drastic change in its seventh season and moved away from the team at Rick’s Restorations, Las Vegas, and the previous format, completely.
Though there were rumors about why this happened, no official reason was ever given.
The start of American Restoration
It is not very often that a consulting expert on a show like History Channel’s Pawn Stars, becomes such a fan-favorite that the network decides to give him his own show.
However, in the case of the restoration aficionado, Rick Dale, this is exactly what happened.
After Dale appeared in several episodes of Pawn Stars, the History producers decided to create an entirely new show around him, his family, and his Las Vegas-based restoration shop called Rick’s restorations.
American Restoration officially started airing on October 25, 2010, and slowly but steadily started growing in popularity from there.
Why American Restoration left Las Vegas
Over the course of the first six seasons of American Restorations, fans got to watch as Dale and the rest of the team used their combined experience to find and restore various kinds of unique and vintage items.
This format proved to be so popular that the show even started including a segment called “Rick’s Tips” in the third season of the show.
Unfortunately, though, fans who had become avid American Restoration fans by the end of the show’s sixth season tuned in to watch the seventh season premiere episode only to find that Dale and the rest of the Rick’s Restorations team were no longer featured on the show.
Somewhere between the end of the sixth season and the beginning of the seventh season, American Restoration had decided to leave Dale, Las Vegas and the regular format of the show behind in order to feature five different, new shops and restorers from other cities around the country.
Neither Dale nor History ever announced an official reason for why the show changed so drastically in its final season.
But over the years, rumors have spread that History decided to leave Las Vegas because they no longer wanted to work with Dale and because the show’s ratings had started to decline.
However, considering that Dale later encouraged fans to contact History to ask the network to hire him back, we can be sure that the decision for American Restoration to leave Las Vegas did not come from him.
How did the American Restoration format change in the seventh season?
It is fairly standard practice for shows to change up their formats to keep their fans from getting bored. However, American Restoration changed so much that its seventh season ended up feeling like a completely new show.
Instead of focusing on one restoration business like the show’s previous seasons did, the seventh season introduced five separate restoration shops outside of Las Vegas, and took on a more traditional reality television competition style.
Where were the other restorers from?
The new format introduced in the seventh season turned out to be less successful than History had probably hoped, and the show was subsequently cancelled soon after it started airing.
As sad as the cancellation was, it did at least give fans the chance to get to know five other expert restorers, including:
- Bodie Stroud (the owner of Bodie Stroud Industries in California);
- Dale Walksler (the owner of Wheels Through Time in North Carolina);
- Andy Bowman Jr. (the owner of Monkey Business in Michigan);
- Steve Hale (the owner of Steve’s Restorations and Hot Rods in New York)
- Bob Halliday (the owner of Bob’s Garage in Georgia).
What ever happened to Rick Dale and Rick’s Restorations?
Dale made a valiant effort to have fans air their grievances to History about firing him, his family, and his Rick’s Restorations staff from the show after the sixth season.
But this made no real impact and all of the parties involved have seemingly since moved on.
Since American Restoration ended in 2016, Rick’s Restorations website is still active, but the Google listing and reviews left on the business indicate that the actual shop has permanently closed or moved to an undisclosed location.
Dale is still very active on his Instagram and Facebook pages, though, which he still runs under the “Rick’s Restorations” name. Here, he still posts restoration tips and tricks from time to time, along with more personal content.
