while foraging for lunchtime tacos last week, i found myself at the drive thru window of a taco bell. a man approached my smart from the passenger side, and was quite enthusiastic about seeing a smart up-close-n-personal. admittedly my attention was focused more on the hot-n-tasty tacos being handed to me through my window, so i answered his questions in a somewhat distracted manner. as i set my snacks down next to me i spotted the small logo on the front of his shirt, being that of the company across the street, which i know performs the vehicle modifications for the mtv show 'pimp my ride'. i raised an eyebrow 'mr. spock style' as i knew this could go somewhere interesting... and chose to devote a bit more attention to the conversation. as i turns out, i didnt have to try hard, as he was not going to let me get out of there without agreeing to show my car to 'mad-mike' - the big cheese at 'pimp my ride'.
as it turns out the guy i met at the drive through window was 'adolph', the road manager for the show. adolph directed me across the street and down a ways to a big, black, obscured security gate, which slowly opened onto the set and production facilities of the show. he directed me towards one of the bays, where inside was one in-progress project: a really wicked quasi-convertible whose body was being laid up in custom frp molds. its recently milled wheels looked to be 26 inch. i said to adolph "you probably wont let me take pictures of that", he smiled and said no...
by then a handful of guys came out and were eyeballing the smart, poking and peeking at it top and bottom. i left the keys in the ignition, opened the back and said have fun, while adolph took me inside to show me the facilities and some more recent projects, like the mobile tattoo van, and the mobile rock-band van complete with guitars, drum kit, and amps, both trucks wildly customized, and the 100 or so assorted cars in the collection. customs, exotics, classics, barris, ratfink, you name it they had it. then he takes me to mad-mikes glass walled office, introduced us, and said 'you gotta come see her car'... we walk back outside and the guys are still sniffing at the smart, and mad-mike checks it out for a bit, i can only imagine what they have in mind, trying to think of just how wild you can get with a smart...
(theres more to the story of that day thats not so much smart-related, including a trip to the desert to look at a stash of around 700 classics, muscles, and other cool domestic and imported unrestored projects, but another time, another place...)
just keep an eye out for some kind of wild smart to come out of there.
Today
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