[Music] where's he going where's he going oh [Music] hey guys what's up it's sean autotopia la i'm giving you a warning right up front this video could be potentially considered graphic in nature we're not doing it to show you graphic for the sensational element i want to use this opportunity what happened last december to while we entertain you to also educate you a bit because there was a lot of learning cues on this video for any of you that followed the channel you know i was involved in an accident during a shoot a while back december 17th is the exact date and i'll never forget that date because it was an impactful day like any other day we went down to our buddy dean's socal classic car storage to shoot a video it was our first time seeing this car or meeting the owner russ and when he showed up it was a knockout car 64 mercury comet beautiful metal work on this car hundreds of thousands of dollars spent building a 1300 horsepower blown gorgeous mercury comet people always say uh so what what did this cost you i said 23 years 208 000 and two wives i built the car on my own out of my garage basically this is a 632 merlin big block chevy with a 1471 bds blower on it you're not going to the drag strip with this thing no it's too too much grief uh has been put into this to make this happen to put it into a wall or do something stupid so in the 23 year process something that didn't stand out to me at the time of the interview is he said he had done his breaks about 17 years ago on this car now the car hasn't been driven much but brake technology has changed dramatically over the last 17 years you know i've got a couple uh a a a couple things on my wishes probably should put bigger brakes on it at the time you know you got to remember 23 years ago no one had you know 700 horsepower hellcats and you know yeah a thousand horsepower to the rear wheels was what you know so we get all our beauty shots we get all the b-roll and we do our interview now it's time to go for our drive where we're just doing casual rolling shots our roller shots are typically speed limit or close to it you know nothing radical on our rollers and so we get in a car that has harnesses and i put on my lap belt as does for us we're just doing casual driving no big deal lap belt's just fine is it okay to put the should i just leave the harnesses and sit against them yeah that's what i do i just spread them i highly recommend going forward you guys put on your harnesses if you don't have harnesses i highly recommend putting them on here we go down the road right time to get some nice beautiful rolling shots of this gorgeous mercury comet we pull up to our first stoplight which is i don't even know if it's a mile away from where we've left from as soon as we pull up to the light i remember russ throwing the car automatic transmission throwing it into neutral and tapping the accelerator and he tells me the accelerator's sticking at a give or take at about 2200 rpms again not one we really thought about you know i've had an accelerator stick before you kick it you're all good right so we take off down the road nice wide road right you got three lanes on each side really nice for cruising along catching our rolling shots we drive uh you know give or take it's about a mile and a half two miles max from where we started to where we do our turn around and as we pull into this area to turn around we just start to drive and i tell russ man i smell a lot of brakes right now um he says yeah i've been having to ride them again you know this is one of those times you guys and i'm trying to build it to the point ultimately what i want to do while we entertain you here is i want i want to educate you because we've all been in a lot of these scenarios before and nothing happened you know like what happened on this day so we drive down the road you know another oh quarter mile or so we come up to a stop light so we pull up to the light car stops you know just like russ said he's fine he's got brakes yeah we smell brakes but we're fine it surges a little bit because that accelerator is sticking and then this is what happens really hold on oh [Music] there's nowhere to go look so we take off like we always do he picks up a little bit of speed 45 to 50 miles an hour except for now we see a red light ahead with cars stopped and russ puts the brakes on and then i hear him say no brakes i hear him say no brakes no brakes he's pumping he's trying to get brake there is no brakes we're looking ahead there's a red light there's cars stopped across two turn lanes three straight lanes and you'll notice russ swerves to the left his goal here is that those turn lanes are about to get a green arrow and he's going to float in behind them they don't get the green arrow now you'll notice we swerve back to the right all the while you'll notice uh definitely some sheer terror taking over my face because now i'm looking ahead of me and i realize we've got a couple of seconds russ is definitely focused trying to figure out something and the reality is now now we've got i don't know a second or two before we're gonna hit cars we're gonna hit stopped cars and that's what happened man we at about 45 miles per hour we hit a minivan we also lightly grazed off of another car because i was wearing the lap belt only my face smacked the metal dashboard to the point where i left teeth marks and a dent in the metal dashboard four new teeth later about 30 stitches to put my blown up lip back together russ straight armed at the point of impact natural response you know and completely blew out his right elbow i find it interesting that at the point of impact both of us just an uh an unconscious reaction within our bodies both of us turned our heads to the left and closed our eyes i wish closing my eyes would have made it all go away but it didn't and that's what happened man that's it was a brutal car crash a lot of damage to russ's car um both between both of us uh a lot of dollars in hospital bills there's points that i learned from this that i that i hope we can pass on to you guys because a lot of us i promise you don't even put the thought into this if your car doesn't have harnesses put them on there man i highly recommend it even if it's a shoulder harness just to give you something more than a lap belt that all it does is simply hold you for the most part in the seat i highly recommend whether or not you're 100 sure that your brakes work i can't recommend enough regularly tech inspecting your car they do it every time people go out to autocross track days any form of performance driving cars are getting tacked regularly tech your car even if you're not a mechanic like me take it to the guy that built your car take it to one of your buddies get your car tech inspected i highly recommend it another thing i recommend it's a rare thing to see on a custom muscle car is a handbrake i can't recommend enough yeah it doesn't look as cool on your center console no question about it a nice little button for a hydraulic e-brake i can't recommend enough a grab break right here had we had one who knows maybe we would have slowed up enough that the impact wouldn't have been as dramatic to either one of us to the person that we hit or to the vehicle that russ took 23 years to build so that's the bad the skinny the gnarly the nasty of what happened here the good news is as you can tell i've for the most part healed up i'm gonna for the rest of my life feel like i have a fat lip feels like i got popped in the mouth a couple days ago dealing with back pain but i trust that we'll get all the way through this and i'll get my back back to 100 but doing really good like i ride my motorcycle i'm active i'm back out living my life russ is doing great we saw russ a couple months back he came up here to the shop to hang out one day and he's doing really great you know his arm he had most of his mobility back was doing physical therapy doing well so gratefully both of us are going to get about as close as you can get to a full recovery from this the car at some point russ is gonna revisit it right now it's just you know it's all too close he's he's got a lot of things going on in his personal life so the car has been put on hold for now but at some point he's gonna rebuild that car get it back on the road and i look forward to believe me when it's ready to go i will get in the car with russ again we will put our harnesses on i know his brakes are going to be great and we're going to have a super fun shoot with him and we're going to get to show you just what an extraordinary car this 64 mercury comet really is the final thing i have for you is a massive thanks if you've made it this far into the video it means you probably like what we do and you probably regularly watch and support our channel and me and all the guys genuinely appreciate it especially given the difficult time it was to we had to put together compilation videos because we couldn't shoot we had to take a break completely from shooting it was about a little over two months mouth stuff and back stuff and data all that you know what i mean so a massive gigantic authentic thanks from all of us guys to you for hanging out watching what we do continuing to support continuing to help us grow this channel just appreciate you guys like i can't even express thank you and i will see you in the next episode all right man later