RISING TIDES AND SUPPORTING YOUR MATES

By now you may have heard the news that our favourite tofu-sculpting, internationally renowned yodelling ninja Moog has been given the opportunity of a lifetime: he got to drive Marty’s Mira after consuming two greasy KFC slop boxes!

Actually, he’s also been named as one of the three hosts of the new series of Top Gear Australia. But this is NOT the end of MCM.

More than 16 years since it kicked-off, and a billion views deep, the show we all know and love will go on, epic cars will be built, and amazing adventures undertaken. So, what’s all this Top Gear hullabaloo about?

In case you hadn’t heard of Top Gear, it is a BBC TV program where three people get to fang a bunch of rad cars all over the world, including some properly crazily expensive doorstops masquerading as 400km/h hypercars. But, why should we care for such folly when we love old nuggets that stink of soy and random bum sweat?

Because it is awesome our mate Moog has been presented this opportunity. There is an old saying that a rising tide floats all boats, and Moog now has a platform to represent the Mighty Car Mods scene to different people.

“It’s exciting because I get to represent MCM and car enthusiast culture to a new global audience of people that may not know a Super Turbo from a Mira,” Moog said to me when he told me the news.

After 16 years of MCM and over 1 billion views, I’m sure we can agree that being part of the Mighty Car Mods community means we all have a claim that we represent a decent slice of the global car community.

I’ve both worked in the automotive media for 20 years and known the boys for most of that time, and I’m stoked to call them friends. I can genuinely say this is like seeing a friend win the Daytona 500, Bathurst 1000, or LeMans 24-hour, and we should be stoked one of our brethren, a genuine car enthusiast, has been chosen to join a global hit TV show.

I’ve had some amazing times on various projects with MCM including helping write their books and helping on several car builds, but this is a different kind of exciting because it feels like now Top Gear will have someone speaking for me, and everyone into cars like me.

Marty agrees. After Moog told me the news I gave Marty, my brother in Liberty RS Turbo sickness, a call to see what his plans were and he was stokedus to the maximus.

“This is great for him because he’ll eat tofu in strange places and drive cars we just don’t have access to, and maybe he’ll bring an exotic nugget back to MCM,” Marty says. “Plus, it means I won’t have to deal with him trying to scrap my Gemini while I’m building it. I’d been wondering how I was going to get him away from the shed for a while so I can work on the Gemini, and this has worked out perfectly!”