Wheeler Dealers TV show news: it's going back to the UK

The Wheeler Dealers TV show is heading back to the UK, and Mark 'Elvis' Priestly (the mechanic on the spinoff show Wheeler Dealers Dream Cars) will be taking over from Ant Anstead.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwWk02fLjog 

I liked watching Edd and Ant taking on their jobs on the show.  Otherwise, meh. 

Looks like Ant lost his wife and lost his show at the same time....

However, he is staying behind in CA, and working on 3 separate shows... life is good.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-8911677/Ant-Anstead-jokes-job-wives-leaves-Wheeler-dealers-marriage-split.html

mr2s2000elise said:

Looks like Ant lost his wife and lost his show at the same time....

 

Ant can do a lot better.

Maybe we can get back to seeing interesting cars on that show that are not available here.  Which would make it interesting once again to me.

I liked the old UK show where they would go to small shops in sheds to get things done , 

Hopefully they have more of that.....

I thought that Edd to Ant was a downgrade, but understand that they were going a different direction with the show. I am hopeful with the Ant to Elvis that they will go back to the orginal show espcially since they are going back to england.

californiamilleghia said:

I liked the old UK show where they would go to small shops in sheds to get things done , 

Hopefully they have more of that.....

Check out Car SOS if you like that sort of stuff.  Its sort of like Wheeler Dealer mixed with Overhaulin'

If you have Disney+ its available on there for streaming.

Woody (Forum Supportum) said:

 

Ant can do a lot better.

Given he keeps getting dumped continously by wives, and he just coming out of a 28 day "recovery program," his wives think they can do a lot better themselves...

trigun7469 said:

I thought that Edd to Ant was a downgrade, but understand that they were going a different direction with the show. I am hopeful with the Ant to Elvis that they will go back to the orginal show espcially since they are going back to england.

Edd left, he wasn't pushed out.

BTW, Marc has a pretty good tube of U's channel that is all about F1.  He's a former mechanic for McLaren, and has a lot of good stories about his time there- won championships with Kimi and Lewis.

I think I would like the show better with any of the mechanics present but mike gone. He is a pretty good buyer.. but a lousy seller. Half the time he sells the car with the mechanics time worth less than $20 an hour. 

In reply to itsarebuild :

I see it from an enthusiast's point of view who fixes up a car and has a little fun with it before selling it on. That's why they show you how to DIY.

Unless the car is in prime collector territory, no flipper is going to make money taking a car to a mechanic being as thorough with the engine and suspension as Edd or Ant.

Not a fan of the long weird sequences at the end when the car is done. Show me more repairs. 

It quickly got to where I could predict the selling price a full minute before it was revealed. Scripted nonsense.

I preferred the cheap and dirty early seasons. Once they started having an actual budget it started becoming more predictable and less interesting.

In reply to 02Pilot :

This thread made me look for old episodes on MotorTrend on Demand, just watched one with a Capri.

They're definitely more low budget. Whereas currently they would have paid a shop to respray the car, Edd's shooting primer and paint from rattle cans. And the whole thing was sold for less than £1000. He still did the time intensive jobs like suspension bushes and fitting new gaskets.

Maybe they should continue the trend and do a season in France, then one in Germany, then one in Italy....

Obviously more expensive, but they could cut the builds back to being a bit more low budget.

In reply to j_tso :

I don’t disagree with it being an enthusiast show. It just seems like mike is great at haggling in the buy part, but folds like a deck of cards to the first sob story to show up to buy it.

It just seems demeaning to the person who actually did the work. And on top of that he rarely even lets the mechanic do any real driving of the finished car.

Now if mike fixed all the cars himself I would disregard all of that.... but he doesn’t.

In reply to itsarebuild :

I don't think Mike is good at haggling.  That's all scripted, not a real time interaction.  Mike and the seller have already agreed on the sale price before the cameras start rolling...

In real life I would imagine he's good at haggling for buying and selling, since he's been a car salesman all his life.  I agree it's always been scripted on the show.  He also has mechanical skills but again the show is scripted, so his co-host does that work.

docwyte said:

In reply to itsarebuild :

I don't think Mike is good at haggling.  That's all scripted, not a real time interaction.  Mike and the seller have already agreed on the sale price before the cameras start rolling...

More than that. We were almost involved in one that involved him "looking for" some wheels that had already been obtained. 

I like (loved?) the show with Ed.  I still like the show with Ant and the recent car-selection was pretty good, in my opinion.  The purchase & sale process is highly scripted, but I can overlook that because it's still 100x better than just about every other show on TV.  I like that they try to highlight the often overlooked maintenance issues and common failures on the cars they fix up.  They could just change the name of the show to "how to not lose your shirt and make your ill-advised project car super nice again."  Frankly, I also think they undervalue the labor and "sell" their cars for less than they should.  They could do without the mention of "turning a profit."  Those guys are getting paid by Motortrend...let's not kid ourselves.

As for the breakup stuff...both have been divorced and I won't speculate on what went wrong there.  I hope they're both happier apart. The early shows with Ant, and the promotions/social media presence, seemed to feature Christina a lot...which I thought was weird.  So the master mechanic married a HGTV social media personality...that is irrelevant to the show i actually want to watch.  

I always like Wheeler Dealer if you can fast forward through the first 10 minutes and last 10 minutes.  Basically anything involving Mike.

Edd was the man, Ant is actually pretty decent if he wasnt with Mike.  The scripting is terrible and there wasn't much chemistry between Ant and Mike.

It was always Ant's excitement, followed by Ant berating Mike for his choice,  followed by Mike showing off his car, followed by Ant accepting the car was a piece of junk, then Ant fixing it, then an annoying "quirky" test drive (the worst part) then the sale where they made a few quid.  

Keith Tanner said:

docwyte said:

In reply to itsarebuild :

I don't think Mike is good at haggling.  That's all scripted, not a real time interaction.  Mike and the seller have already agreed on the sale price before the cameras start rolling...

More than that. We were almost involved in one that involved him "looking for" some wheels that had already been obtained. 

Well, that's not surprising. Whenever Mike visits a vendor, they always seem to miraculously have the exact part he needs, right at hand.

It's TV, I know it's scripted. I enjoy watching Edd or Ant wrench, they have tools and ability that I could only dream of, even if they don't always do things "right". Like, "well, this ball joint is bad, so let's replace it and leave the one on the other side as-is", stuff like that. But again, I don't mind that stuff, it's all for TV purposes. I know what to expect. It's just like I never watched Top Gear for actual car reviews.

I DVR these and skip the beginning and endings with Mike.  There have been several cars (VW/Audis) that they bought for WELL under market rate.  Not sure if the seller really accepted that or not...