Troll Job: We Took the World's Worst Fake Ferrari to Monterey Car Week
To start this story we have to go back. Back to the summer of 2015 to be precise. That’s when me and a couple friends stumbled across an Ebay auction for what had to be the dumbest, worst and yet somehow the greatest automobile we'd ever seen.
We'd been making satirical car videos in our spare time and what we were looking at here was the ultimate expression of comedy in automobile form—unintentional comedy perhaps—but comedy nonetheless. While most would have been content sharing a chuckle at the car and moving on with their day, we saw the potential for something much more than that. We saw the potential for a series of events and adventures that would eventually lead to us entering one of the world’s most prestigious and exclusive car shows in one of the world’s crappiest cars.
We pooled our money to together and went to see the car in person. In the end we made the owner an offer he couldn’t refuse—which realistically was probably any amount of actual currency in exchange for taking the car off his hands.
The car itself started a 1986 Pontiac Fiero with a lethargic, tired V6 engine and an automatic transmission but somewhere along the line it was converted into one man’s extremely liberal interpretation of a Ferrari Enzo.
Anyway, when we got our hands on the car it had been sitting for many years and needed a lot of work to be made roadworthy again. With our limited time and budget we were able to do the bare minimum to get the car back on the road.
Once it was (semi) drivable we made a couple short videos featuring the "Fierri" as we'd come to call it, but all along we had a dream of taking this one of a kind machine to Monterey Car Week—a prestigious gathering of the automotive world's rich and famous, or at least those who think they are.
We knew we had to get our Fierri to Monterey Car Week some how, some way, and finally in the spring of this year we challenged ourselves to make this absurd dream a reality. Car Bros has always been a passion project that we do in our spare time, and given our lack of time and money we decided to enlist the help of our fans and viewers to help raise the funds get the Fierri to the Monterey Peninsula for Car Week 2019.
Not only would we need to help cover the costs of getting the car to and from Monterey, the lodging and the entry fees for all the different events we planned enter—the car was also in need of additional repairs before we could (somewhat) confidently embark on this adventure.
The campaign proved to be a big success, with 66 generous and perhaps crazy individuals contributing to the campaign and allowing for everything you see here to happen. Needless to say we were ecstatic to meet our goal, but it also meant it was time to start planning out our most ambitious project yet.
Fast forward to August and after months of repairs, planning and mental preparation it was time to load up the Fierri on a U-Haul trailer and head to Car Week. Along with plenty of just cruising around and having fun, we'd also officially entered the car in three very different kinds of events, some we would be more welcome at than others.
Among the events the car was entered in was The Quail: A Motorsport Gathering, which may just be the most exclusive of all the events held during Car Week. How exactly we managed to do this is a long story and one that's explained in detail in the 55 minute video we put together chronicling our experiences taking to the Fierri to Car Week.
Suffice to say, the car did wind up on prominent display at The Quail even if there were some rather uncomfortable moments along the way, but awkwardness and self-imposed embarrassment is is what this whole crazy idea was about.
Also on our list of events was an official entry in the popular Concours De Lemons show, which in contrast to the rest of Car Week is all about crappy, unloved and just plain bad automobiles. In other words, it was an event we'd be welcomed at with open arms, and it ended up being one of our most triumphant moments.
Last but not least, we somehow managed to get the Fierri entered into Exotics on Broadway which is free to to attend supercar gathering where you'll find thousands and thousands of rabid car spotters, YouTubers, exotic car fans and plenty of owners happy to soak it all up.
And along with these official events, we also had an incredible time just cruising around Monterey Car Week itself, rolling down cannery row, the windy roads of Carmel Valley and encountering plenty of fellow supercar owners in the wild.
In the end, it was hard to ask for a better result. Our venture taking this awful machine to Monterey Car Week was full of hilarious, uncomfortable and sometimes glorious occasions, and not surprisingly there were also some mechanical troubles we had to deal with along the way.
There's really just too much to be summed up in one article, but you can follow along with the whole thing from start to end in our video called "Once Upon a Time in Monterey." A language warning should be issued to those watching at work or with your speakers turned up.
In my 12 years of of working in automotive media, I've had the chance to see some pretty amazing things but our adventures at Monterey Car Week will truly go down as unforgettable experience that was realized through the efforts of a great many people. Here's hoping for more awkward and hilarious adventures in the future.
Don't worry, there were also plenty of genuinely great machines at Car Week 2019 as well, including the five cars we've profiled here.
