Six locals competing on 'Car Warriors'
New Jersey Herald
By DEREK PRALL
dprall@njherald.com
Six local men will represent New Jersey Wednesday, April 25, on "Car Warriors," a program on Speed TV, where two teams compete head to head in order to build a stylish, functioning automobile from a dilapidated junker. The catch is they only have 48 hours to do it.
"The entire time we were on very little to no sleep," said Tom Kuka, of Vernon, who handled the upholstery of Team Plum Crazy's build, "the clock never stops."
The team, named for Team Captain Jack Struller's body shop in Passaic of the same name, was pieced together last October after Struller received a call from the show asking him to participate. The members are all friends of friends, or know each other through the industry, Kuka said, although none of them had ever actually worked with one another.
The team flew out to Los Angeles in December where they stayed for five days. During their time, Kuka related, the team set three new records: Team Plumb Crazy is the oldest team to ever participate on the show, they are the first to represent New Jersey, and they were the first team to work on a Mopar (the automobile parts and service branch of the Chrysler Group) build.
Kuka recalled watching the show with his son, a college student at Rutgers, in the past, and remembers telling him "you would have to be out of your mind to be on it." And indeed, after participating in the competition, that sentiment has changed little.
"It's really not about how good you are; it's more about how good your MacGyver skills are," Kuka said, referring to the fast pace of the show, and the necessity to be able to adapt and respond quickly to changes in plans. He felt that creativity, technical know-how and flexibility all had to play together in a delicate balancing act in order to succeed. "It's really about being able to make things work," he said.
The high energy competition will debut on Speed TV from 9 to 10 p.m. Wednesday.