Motor City Masters Season 1 Episode 5: Fandemonium - The Ultimate Fan Experience July 23 2014

Any sports fan knows that the tailgate party is the quintessential moment of sports fandom. In parking lots across the nation fans gather pre-game for hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill, ice cold beer in hand and celebrate the comradery of fellow fanmates with an energy unrivaled, stoking themselves up to cheer for the big game. It's the ultimate way to honor ones love for your sports team of choice and at its center lies the vehicle you tailgate around.   So, this week on Motor City Masters our contestants are being asked to create the Ultimate Sports Fan Experience in a vehicle designed for tailgating. Only six contestants are left to compete and both teams are running for a touchdown with their Extreme Chevy Suburban based Conceptualizations in this week's team based challenge. Who will be sent home this week and who will be immune from elimination?

In this week's individual challenge the remaining six contestants were tasked with (after having their names drawn randomly from a bag) choosing from a variety of sports equipment in order to be used as inspiration for a new concept car sketch that will give a fresh definition of the term "sports car". Chunner is chosen first and he decides to pick a Football as his design inspiration. Shane's name is chosen second and he decides to pick a Hockey stick as his inspiration. Bryan is next and chooses a pair of Soccer Cleats as his design inspiration. Camillo chooses a baseball helmet as his design element. Jameson chooses a tennis racket and finally Darby chooses a golf club being that it is the only piece of equipment that is left to choose. They are all given one hour to sketch a new concept vehicle based on these elements. After a little bit of deliberation from the judges and a short review of each contestant's sketch Bryan and Chunner are chosen to head up this week's teams with Chunner being immune from elimination for this week's episode. Bryan's concept sketch really epitomized Soccer with its use of cleats and shaping whereas Chunner's vehicle really showed off elements from football such as the front end looking like a mouth guard and the wheels having shapes that evoked that of Football Goal posts.

Next the teams are chosen and Bryan's team ends up consisting of Jameson and Shane whereas Chunner decides to work with Camillo and Darby. The teams break and get to work on their fantasy sports tailgate party vehicles. Bryan's team gets off to a fairly slow start. They decide that they would like to create and interior sports party concept very much having the seating set up like a limo, but after much conceptualization they realize the interior of the vehicle is far too small to have this sort of space. So, what do they do to solve this problem? They decide to create a roof that actuates out from the vehicle on hydraulic arms to open up the space and allow them to incorporate the space design they had previously discussed. They aptly dub their vehicle the GO standing for Game On. Chunner's team decides to use an actuator concept utilizing hydraulic lifts for thier concept as well to open up the vehicle and give them more space but in opposition are shooting more for an exterior tailgate party concept complete with summit peak stadium box umbrella shaded seating and a fold out astro turf viewing area coming out of the rear of the vehicle with televisions mounted on the side and top of the vehicle. They dub their concept the GTX standing for Game Time Experience vehicle.

Bryan's design ends up hitting a snag when they quickly begin to realize that their actuating portion of their vehicle is proving to be more complex than intended for the Auto Technician team to pull off and it ends up putting them behind for the first half of the show. Chunner's team, on the other hand, gets off to a fast start and their pacing never slows down. Both concepts end up hitting their fair share of snags during the fabrication process though and they really end up cutting it close to the three day time limit. Once completed both vehicles have their own separate "Wow" factor. Bryan's vehicle on the outside is very much a simple Suburban design, but when it parks and begins to open up you see that they have really expanded on the amount of utilized space within the vehicle by allowing one half of the side to fold out gull-wing style. Chunner's vehicle, however, has a very large outward appearance and extends even further when parked and opened. Both team leaders chose completely different color design schemes. Bryan's team went with a red and black theme whereas Chunner went with White and green to represent a field of play which would span all sports evenly. Our Vintage Flatz Flat Black was used on Chunner's vehicle as accents and our Vintage Flatz Satin White was used on Bryan's for the wheels and accents as well. The judges have a very hard time deciding which team to choose will win this week being that both designs were so well conceived and executed. And we end up with quite the surprise ending too. Just when you think that they are going to shift into an overtime match to decide a winner the judges conclude that this week's episode will be a tie and that no one will go home. Tune in next week where the contestants will be challenged with transforming the entire interior of a Chevy traverse and we will be one episode closer to finding out who will be Chevrolet's Motor City Master!