Eugene weekly., March 22, 2012, Page 11, Image 11

I
t’s Saturday and I’m standing in a garage in Springfi eld and the guy next to me
suddenly blurts out: “What is a euphemism for a necrophiliac for cars?”
This question, posed by a mechanic, isn’t rhetorical. No dirty punch line
hovers expectantly in the air. He’s just curious.
Necro-vehicularization? Auto-necrotic-eroticization? Hooptie-humping?
Piston-twistin’? Van-dallyism?
Whatever the term, the act itself — romancing dead cars — is about to put
Springfi eld on the map. Not your ordinary street map. No, we’re talking about the
only map that really counts these days, the cathode map navigating among Swamp
People, Cops, Hillbilly Handfi shin’ and Jersey Shore jerkoffs.
The map of reality television.
You see, outside behind the spacious garage at Welby’s
Car Care in Springfi eld is a graveyard. It’s here that
automobiles in various stages of disrepair form a metallic
maze where dented hoods are propped up like headstones.
This is not, however, where old cars come to die; Welby’s
junkyard is more limbo than last resting place. Don’t feel sad
for that demolished ’71 ’Cuda or grieve over the cute little
BMW beached by the fence. Magic happens here. This Spring-
fi eld garage is home to an oddball team of automotive experts
that specializes in restoring wrecked cars to factory specs.
Magic, yes, but no tricks. Refurbishing cars is exacting
work. Welby’s will take that smashed-up Barracuda and —
by painstakingly hammering out dents and sleuthing down
coded parts and matching paint tones — return this classic
beauty to its birthday suit, the condition it held right off the
factory line in 1971.
The dramatic process of rebuilding muscle cars is the basis
of Graveyard Carz, a new reality show. Produced by Spring-
fi eld-based Division Productions, the show will premiere at
8 pm on Friday, April 20, on Discovery’s Velocity Network.
It’s a gearhead’s dream job. Those sexy muscle cars are as
integral to the American soul as cheeseburgers and Mickey
Mouse. Welby’s traffi cs in the dream, but it’s long, hard
work, demanding patience and tenacity. Car reconstruction,
in fact, involves far more scientifi c precision and artistic
focus than the oily rags and torqued lug nuts of typical auto
repair. This is not horseshoes and hand grenades.
Welby’s technicians are surgical in their expertise, in a
sort of acutely obsessive way — Dr. Frankensteins bringing
lifeless cars back from the dead by salvaging the parts they
need wherever and whenever they can fi nd them.
THE PURLOINED CAMSHAFT
The Frankenstein analogy doesn’t quite hold. Mary
Shelley’s reanimate monster was bolted together from
random chunks of disinterred fl esh and bone. The Welby’s
crew revives vehicular corpses with found parts that are
perfect fi ts — matching the car’s original date, make and
serial stamps, down to every itty-bitty pin. This is more akin
to solving a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces were dumped willy-
nilly from an airplane on a cross-country fl ight.
Such revamping requires an encyclopedic knowledge of
cars, an expert’s eye, loads of available cash and an uncanny
feel for authenticity, not to mention the detective skills of Philip
Marlowe. It calls for a little crazy, and a whole lotta love. The
guys at Welby’s exhibit all of these qualities, and then some.
This “and then some” has translated itself, in Hollywood
verbiage, into star power.
Division TV marketing rep Thomas Lesh says he’s excited
to see what the national response will be to Graveyard
Carz. “Car enthusiast or not, I believe many people will see
themselves and people they know,” Lesh says. “There is a lot
more coming back to life here than just old Mopars. I believe
good, old-fashioned, American hard-work ethics, integrity
and a sense of who we are and where we come from in this
great nation is being restored, one Mopar at a time.”
Actually, audiences in this country will be latecomers
to Graveyard Carz. Last year, GYC debuted internationally
on networks in Italy, France, South Africa, China and New
Zealand, to name a few. The cast at Welby’s is now at work
fi lming the show’s second season.
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What gives Graveyard Carz its surprisingly high-octane
appeal is the cast — a swarm of working-class guys whose
wonky work routine has been spun it into television gold.
There’s something for everyone here: action, suspense, slap-
stick, drama, sitcom scenarios and a trunk-full of smack talk.
In Graveyard Carz, the precision work of rebuilding
wrecked cars collides head-on with the hilarious stuff of
guys goofi ng off. The result is a glorious boob-tube mash-up
of The Three Stooges, Sanford & Son, Antiques Roadshow
and Perry Mason meets the Lincoln Lawyer (if his other car
was a Chrysler). This is a new genre for a new age: the blue-
collar roast staged in the second-city junkyard.
DROP OUT, TUNE UP, BUY IN
The man standing dead center of Graveyard Carz is Mark
Worman, CEO of Welby’s Car Care. Worman is a lifelong
Mopar enthusiast. In layman’s terms, this means he’s a
diehard Chrysler guy — Mopar is the service arm of Chrysler,
making hardware for Dodge, Plymouth and, of particular
interest to Worman, those elegant Barracudas that embody
the American ideal of a whiplash-fast dream machine.
“I grew up on car magazines,” Worman says, noting that
over the course of his life he’s been reading about cars “to
the point where all that geekedness pays off.”
Born in 1962 at Eugene’s Sacred Heart Hospital,
Worman says he “was raised in Springfi eld and never left.”
He attended Yolanda Elementary and St. Alice School, but
then dropped out just halfway through his ninth-grade year
at Springfi eld Jr. High.
“I hated school,” Worman tells me. Having lost his
father to cancer at 12 and battling serious health issues of
his own, young Mark put his mother’s trust to the test. “My
mom toiled over the idea for weeks,” Worman says, “but
ultimately decided that if she forced me to go out the door
and to school, there was a chance I’d start skipping and get
in the wrong crowd.”
It was a risky move, but mother’s intuition paid off,
largely due to Worman’s interest in rebuilding small motors
of all kinds. “If I was in the carport where she could keep
an eye on me,” Worman says, “then how bad could it be?”
Through a program at Lane Community College, he earned
his high school diploma at 16. “Twenty-two As, one B and one
C,” Worman says. “Not bad, I reckon.” He also worked during
his mid-teens at Wonder Bread in Springfi eld. “When I would
be cleaning the shop as a kid,” Worman recalls, “I remember
thinking how cool of a hot-rod shop this would make.”
After spending years working in various local garages and
rising from pump jockey to mechanic to a position in man-
agement, Worman in 1985 started his own business, opening
Welby’s Car Care Center. “It was a small, three-bay shop that
ultimately launched my business to where I am today,” he says.
Where Worman is today is like déjà vu all over again.
Just a few years back, he relocated — or returned, perhaps
— to the stomping grounds of his fi rst job.
“It was just a big open shell,” Worman says of the former
Wonder Bread building. “When we tore it down, we had
enough lumber to build a house.” By installing, among other
amenities, “ten big doors, drains in the fl oor, a truck loading
dock,” Worman fi nally brought to fruition, 35 years later, the
cool garage he’d dreamed about as a teenager. “And here I
am,” Worman says, “full circle.”
PORNO FOR PLYMOUTHS
The shtick of Graveyard Carz is simple, though in a
complicated sort of way. Likely the show would sport
decent odds for success even if it casted morose mechanics
who collectively delivered fewer lines than Danny Trejo in
Machete. That’s because there is an unlikely but undeniable
element of intrigue in treasure hunting the relic-rare parts
required to rebuild munched muscle cars to precise OEM
(original equipment manufacturer) standards. In Hollywood
terms, Graveyard Carz is like CSI meets Sons of Guns.
Now imagine all that precision work in the hands of
Charlie Chaplin, George Carlin, Don Rickles, Denis Leary
and Jack Black. That’s Graveyard Carz — a modern
vaudeville routine performed by unreconstructed car
geeks, part blustery ballet and part good-natured bullshit,
and propelled by an unscripted avalanche of continuous
verbal sparring, spontaneous put-downs, endless insults of
endearment and the graceless physical comedy of Jackass.
Shot on location by a three-person crew of local fi lm
students wielding Canon DSLR-7D digital cameras and then
edited with uncommon sophistication, Graveyard Carz is a
self-contained and well-structured show, with the form and
fl ow of a sitcom featuring strongly developed characters and
an engaging narrative arc.
Moments of chaos do occur, as does the occasional
awkward mistake. The reality of this particular reality
show has the slightly anxious appeal of a comedy of errors
without the errors — of an accident waiting to happen. The
Graveyard guys might act tough, but it’s hard to believe
they don’t live in terror of being the idiot who, oh, let’s say,
misplaces that one crucial part that is a total bitch to replace.
“The dumb leading the dumb” is how Worman describes
his crew. As both real-life and TV boss, Worman’s role is a
cross between Ahab and Moe Howard — the beleaguered boss
and top Stooge. He also produces the series and is involved
every step of the way, from storyboarding to directing and
editing, to making sure everything revs along at a good pace.
B E H I N D T H E S C E N E S F O R T H E F I L M I N G O F GRAVEYARD CARZ SEASON TWO
EUGENE WEEKLY MARCH 22, 2012 11