Two years ago, I saw one of Kevin’s earliest revival videos, the one that involved him chasing a pissed-off possum from the engine nest it had made on a Fiat 850 Spyder. Back then, not many people were doing automotive revivals and there was no doubt that the work was genuine because…well, who would go out of their way to revive a long-abandoned Italian sports car that smelled of old barn and desiccated turd? Give it time, and now there’s a myriad of automotive revival channels and one problem with many of them: the results are the same. At the end of the video you will either find the end of one chapter of a long story or the vehicle in question will start and move. Maybe not well, maybe on fire, but it’ll move.
You might remember that Kevin recently picked up two 1990s Ford wreckers. One was a 7.3 PowerStroke, the other, the black one, was a 7.3 IDI. Yes, there is a difference between the two. The red PowerStroke fired up and moved after some on-the-spot work. The IDI truck, on the other hand, is going to be a fight from the words “Run, that’s a wasp!” That’s always a great start to the day, but this isn’t a day’s worth of work. It’s more like weeks, with guest appearances, dead batteries, enough ether to jump-start a dead rabbit on the side of the road and probably 40 minutes of B-roll footage of Kevin screaming in pure frustration using the gift of Army-level swearing. If you’ve ever wondered if these YouTubers are taking the easy route, watch this. I promise you at least one of them takes the road less traveled. I just wonder if he’s all the better for doing so.
