The early throws of Summer heat are beginning to take their toll across the Nation. As the temperatures rise the crowds are quickly migrating towards the beaches for bikinis, volleyball, surfing, tans and the crashing ocean waters to cool off in. So, it comes as no surprise that this week's episode of Motor City Masters is taking us to the beach to explore the surfer lifestyle and design aesthetics associated with the automotive industry. I believe most of us have an iconic idea of what it is that makes up the traditional beach vehicle. We might imagine, perhaps, a 57 Chevy with a surfboard sticking out of the trunk as Beach Boys tunes float across the airwaves from the vehicle's AM radio and teenagers are crowded around the car in vintage swimwear dancing in the sand. Others might be drawn to imagining a similar surf party but with the Woodie concepts of the 50's and 60's being the vehicular centerpiece of the Beach Party. Continuing with this concept in mind Motor City Masters decided to challenge their contestants in this week's individual contest by asking them to create a Tonneau cover which would encompass all of these ideas while showcasing their own individual design flare. They were given two hours to complete the task using airbrushes on a blank white tonneau cover for a Chevy Silverado. This week the two designers that stood out above the rest to the judges were JoAnn who is a seasoned veteran of the airbrush painting world having not only airbrushed many a surface and won multiple awards for her work she is also a published author for airbrush design concepts. The other designer who stood out in the individual challenge this week was Darby, who had never even picked up an air brush before but quite quickly took to its use and created a very smooth surf aesthetic on her tonneau. It was quite a hard tie between the two designers for which tonneau best suited the task at hand but it was decided that Darby would be safe guarded from going home this week, making her the winner of the individual challenge. Teams were quickly chosen being that there was an even, and now lessening number, of contestants and the teams consisted of Darby choosing: Camilo, Doc Sab, and Chunner to work with her. While JoAnn chose Jameson, Bryan and Shane to join her team.

The two groups were then asked to create two Chevy Silverado pickup trucks that would epitomize the Ultimate Beach Vehicle. But, there was one caveat, they must incorporate a panel conceptualization into the design as being one of the more prominent features of the completed project. This again harkens back to the Vintage Woodie Cladding concept and quickly became the underlying theme of this week's challenge.

Darby's team got off to a very quick start and decided that they wanted to do a cladding that not only paid homage to vehicle design aesthetics of the past but pushed the paneling featured into a future mindset. In doing so they created this concept of a cladding exoskeleton that would actually wrap around the front end of the vehicle and glide back across the doors and continue up to the back portion of the truck's cab where two surfboards would sit on diagonal surf wracks allowing the truck bed to still have space to transport people or a cooler full of cold drinks perhaps. They chose a very bright color scheme of green paint for the main body and used our Vintage Flatz Blue on their ExoSkeletal cladding in order to make the vehicle really stand out and make a bolder statement. They dubbed the vehicle the "MMX" which stood for Motor City Masters ExoSkeletal and the overall design was very much a completed concept.

JoAnn's team got off to a slower start and bounced around several ideas about how the overall curvature of the vehicle needed to be extended and transformed to almost give it a Dune Buggy feel. Most importantly they were working under the concept that they wanted to create a social beach vehicle, a truck that could be the center of attention for those utilizing it for trips to the beach. They finally agreed on widening the wheel base, extending the fenders with flares, giving the front end a bigger presence and decided to incorporate a wood paneling sun deck tonneau cover with surf board wracks built in.  They then dubbed their vehicle the "Makai" which is Hawaiian for "to the water" a very rich name for their Ultimate Beach Vehicle concept.  After much deliberation JoAnn's team ended up talking her into lessening the use of the wood cladding on the vehicle and although their concept was a fluid and a complete package she knew this was the main focus of the competition and she was afraid it might end up costing their team a loss.

Trutv brought in a special guest host this week that also fit nicely with the Summer beach theme. Professional surfer, bikini model and beach clothing line executor Malia Jones. After introducing the vehicles and much deliberation after hearing each team leader explain the vehicle's concepts (notably Darby's presentation has obviously evolved to a better place since the first episode) . There was much interest in both vehicle concepts between the judges as well as a little bit of shared criticism. Darby's team was announced as the winners for their forward thinking panel concept that considered a design that would push boundaries outside the box. Finally it came down to a consideration of who would be sent home this week. It boiled down to a choice between sending Shane home or sending Joann home. This would be the third time that Joanna had been in the final elimination stage and ultimately it was decided that she would be sent home and Shane would stay which not only made for great televison it has sparked much debate between the viewers in the decision's wake. We're now down to 7 contestants gunning for Motor City Master and the competition really heats up next week as they attempt to design life sized Hot Wheels vehicles with a Chevy Impala as the design base. Tune in Tuesday night on Trutv to see the designs come to life at 10 pm EST/ 9pm CT/7 pm PDT (check your local listings for show times in your area). Thanks for joining us here at Vintage Flatz we hope you'll tune in next week for our episode recap!