Gabriel Iglesias is the VW Bus King – Who Knew?? Fluffy’s Garage Tour

someone's going to buy some of the junk here oh this one is ready to get stuck this one has wilwood brakes well yeah it's again you know like I said Gabe is really into cars and again. All cars are meant to be driven, so the front suspension has been built for drivability and, uh, safety, so you know you want to make sure it stops. This thing has a pretty big motor, again, for the distance, so it can just stand up. and we go, but it has to stop. Can you see the engine in this? Yes, I can open it.

Did you guys build this one? This engine is built by old Speed ​​Handicapped Russell, the owner and he makes all the drive trains. For Gabriel, he builds them for ease of driving and then obviously for safety. I noticed that this one has a changed Gene Berg style. Is it a five-speed burger without genes? I mean, Gene Berg. You know they do anything that's high performance. They make a five speed shifter, but this. it's just the regular four speed so this is one of his favorite cars here again you know he has input and everything you like about steel we actually mock up the door panels to see what color you like, what flows with the car, so everything is like that. premium like all the materials are so premium, so none of these had seat belts huh, some of them did, we should have them in all the cars, but some of them don't, and that's why I was in the options, which were never there then. no one cared, yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, I remember driving with my dad and I was in the front seat standing, yeah, yeah, that's how it was, yeah, but no, you know, some of them have seat belts and then.

There are seat belts available, which is your favorite of this group? My favorite, I mean, they're all favorites because they're fun to build, especially with him, you know, because he has a lot of input and he makes it fun, you know, it's not a stressful environment, you know? because the end result is great when they actually sit down and brainstorm ideas, you know because things are kept to a minimum every night and the ball is hanging so we ended up seeing something that they were physically involved in. and now it's a piece of rolling machinery, it's pretty exciting, but yeah, they're all my favorites.

I can't, you know, they're all, they're great. Is there anyone else you know who has a bus collection like this? As many as the number of buses he has, he has about 40. Are you serious, yes, how many are there here? Probably 20. Yeah, so where are all the other buses being refurbished? Yes, we have many projects underway. Look at the road. this started, I mean, he started this collection, he started buying them, but he quickly realized that what he was buying was not what he wanted, so he wanted his own style, his own brand, so we started restoring everything that he had before and then The other half are things he had bought just to restore and then he has a 1975 that appeared on his show and in that one he was installing a Subaru engine, oh that's going to be cool, yeah, cool, yeah, but No, that's mostly yours. the collection is not here, each car is basically a piece of him, you know the idea of ​​it, the vision of it and then we just articulate it for him.

Are there any of these that have been restored to their original here? It's a 61. This one, yeah, this one, okay. one is and you restored this yes, we restored this yes, this is early, this is 2016, I think several years ago the idea was to restore all the original 100 as close to the original as possible, but then when she changed to the chrome restaurant, yeah, that's perfect, yeah, it's a restaurant, so this top is all original too, okay, yeah, this is the original 23. What was the condition it was in when you first bought it? It was bad enough before anyone cared. about them, so they were junk, no one really cared for them, they got beat up, abused or they're rusty, so sometimes it's pretty hard to find something that's in great condition, especially the way these things were looked at before.

I know no one thought it was going to be a six figure car, yeah, so this is definitely over six figures, yeah, yeah, this is way over 60. How much do you think that's worth? Only your estimate depends on what someone is willing to pay at auction. You know. It could be 120, it could be 200, give me 300. Easily, the way this thing was restored and it's probably worth 150, which is crazy, yeah, but you could get in the auction, you don't know, someone could pay 300 for it. , yes, especially the problem, I mean. If you shoot down a little bit, you can see underneath how clean this thing is, oh, it's like new, yeah, all of it, yeah, it's almost like it's never been driven, uh, we did a rotisserie restoration and this.

It was actually 2013 when this was done, we did it, we did the best we could with what was available and again people weren't restoring cars to this level until recently until there was a Big Bear Jackson auction where this one was sold for almost 200,000. and since then it created a frenzy among collectors to have one, probably in this 2016 and when that happened or 15, but no one was restoring them to this level where it looked like this underneath, so you know. everyone is restoring it to that particular level because of the money, so what year is this?

I think 61. Me and I love the dish too yeah real twenty twenty three yeah that's amazing so like that you guys went all out. terms of finding new and old parts as well as everything we could, yes, remember, this is when they started restoring this thing. 2013, late early '14, yeah, we gathered as many original pieces as possible, like, for example, what about the glass? All this is original. the glass is original because you see some imperfection, you know it's not new and so people still make these stamps or yeah, yeah, you can get all this reproduction of the stamps and so on, obviously, you can get all that reproduction, you know, we have the original mirrors because they got the VW sign, so you know we built it with as many original parts as possible.

If we find something in the car, we just change it, since it is original, that's the beauty of the thing, if you find a new old one. stock that shows up and you don't have it, we can just put it on you, but most cars are built to have the original look, but with your color choice and your vision, that's the thing is you have to restore a lot of others. some for him right now, yeah, yeah, we're doing quite a few restorations for him. He has a camera crew from 1959 and everyone is doing it. He's going to be really cool, yeah, because he bought it.

The one he bought is a two year old Karma Gear built what they call low beam, the front nose is slanted forward a little bit, uh, it's a little rounded for you, only they build the convertibles called low beams, we're building one of those for him, thank you very much for joining me. around the collection a little definitely next time I have to go to your store I want to see a lot of these in the works I'm sure you have a lot of grills and things like that um in the works Gabe it shouldn't sell itself.

In short, in terms of knowing about these cars, he knows a lot about them, yeah, and you know, maybe next time we'll go on a cruise and then we can go deeper into certain cars that he likes, yeah. I mean, yeah, obviously he would be the best person to tell you which one is his favorite and which one he loves to drive, but like I said, he drives them all, yeah, he just gets in them and says there's no trailer queen here. he drives it um and that's why he has a collection to enjoy. He likes to enjoy his cars.

You know, he just doesn't like people who sit around. Yes, great, thank you. Okay, it was an amazing

tour

. There is a lot to see. I know what I really appreciate is all the moments you proudly display, like all the people you meet, all the sold-out venues, like the fact that you have everything so organized in terms of a good snapshot of your career. It's great to see everything in one place, everything is organized, either I'm very creative or ocd is next level, straight lines, people, straight lines, that's how, for example, your volkswagen collection is from oldest to oldest. new, true, yes. uh, the oldest one and I actually have an older one and that one right there in the corner uh, I have a 1952 uh, that one's not here, sorry, well, next episode, oh yeah, that's the thing, Next time we definitely want to see Henry's too. restoration shop because he says he has 45 cars or something right now yeah, it's not as nice as Henry's place.

There's always a work in progress because that's what it does, it's a type of restoration, so there's always something happening, something happening, yeah, but that's the point is like the work in progress, the texture, the roughness. , we all love chec

king

that stuff out too, he won't offer you bagels or coffee, just thought I'd let you know, so show up with your kit or whatever you know. your little thermos, well, thanks again, hopefully next time we have to go on a cruise, we will definitely go on a cruise, uh, you know, the rain put a damper on things a little, that's right people, it's raining, nor You don't even know, you're probably watching. this right now and it's terribly hot in your house it was raining thank you that's a summary