The first couple seasons of _Car Masters: Rust to Riches_ were absolutely great...if not a teeny bit overdramatized. The longer the show goes on, however, the less appealing it becomes. I'm now on Season 6 and this is probably it for me...assuming the show even does another season. (It seems to have taken forever for them to put a Season 6 together for some reason?) Maybe 15 seasons of _Fast 'n' Loud_ did it but for whatever reasons, _Car Masters_ now just seems like one big, melodramatic "wanna-be" car show that is completely bloated with stupid people and/or completely unsavory characters. Let me start by saying that I like Mark Towle, the owner and passion behind Gotham Garage. He's not the most dynamic or magnetizing screen presence, granted, but you can feel his passion for what he's doing and what he wants Gotham Garage to be. Apart from him, though, there's probably not a single other person that's part of his garage that I would want even polishing the chrome on my ride...much less trying to do any customizations. Take a look at that "head shot" of Constance Nunes and tell me that's a mechanic. I've never once seen her hands dirty or nails broken; on the contrary, it seems like any and every time they do a close-up of her, her fingernails are gleaming with fresh polish...and that's on the rare occasion the cameras shift away from her cleavage. She's (supposedly) this wowser, rocket-scientist, nobody-knows-more-than-Constance ace mechanic, but I'm guessing she's part of this purely for eye-candy...and with the extra poundage she's packing, that ain't much, I promise you. She wears tight jeans and low-cut tops and makes sure she's always leaning far over a hood or a fender, or bending over (when the cameras happen to be behind her) to make sure she's offering plenty for the male audience to supposedly lust after. _"Oh but go read her bio online...she's a real mechanic"_ you say...to which I respond, _"Go read Wikipedia...and tell me how much of THAT is feasible?"_ People can (and do) put anything and everything they want out there "on the ol' interwebs" (as Richard Rawlings would say) and I, for one, don't believe for a split second that she knows diddly squat about all these cars she's supposed to be so knowledgeable about. But I digress... As if she weren't stupid - and fake - enough, you have that greaseball shyster Shawn Pilot who is such a glory-hog that he openly admits, _"I'm glad Nick (the feeble attempt to break into the exotic car market) left; now it's squarely up to me to bring this place around."_ What a pompous fathead...with the negotiating skills of a Missouri mule. He's an arrogant meathead who refuses to get his hands dirty, thinks he's the brain AND the brawn behind Gotham Garage, and can't for a second allow anyone else to best him...although they often do. If you want ONE REASON for my dislike of him, watch the Season 6 episodes 4-5 and watch him go directly behind Mark's back and try to manipulate Constance into doing exactly what Mark said they were NOT going to do. Such a greaseball character, he is reason enough to stop watching the show...but then you have Michael "Caveman" Pyle who, on the first and second seasons, was so hilarious that you couldn't help but like the guy. But I guess he got word that people found him funny, and he turned on the nitro in a horribly bad attempt to push the humor through the stratosphere...and it backfires horribly. He has become nothing more than an annoying, stupid, _"Are the cameras watching me?"_ idiotic babbling moron that makes no sense and offers absolutely no reassurance that he knows how to do ANYTHING except tear vehicles apart with a Sawzall or other instrument of destruction. Let him touch my vehicle? Not on your life. With all the recent changes in the show, and the accelerated efforts of the entire (with perhaps the exception of Tony Quinones, who seems to stay true to himself through every season) cast to make this show "entertaining", they've had the opposite effect and the show is no longer pleasant to watch. If anything, it has become UNpleasant, and UNenjoyable. I'm trying to stick with it through the end of Season 6, but I think this is as far as I can go with this bunch. They're just not all that fun to watch, and too much of what they're trying to pass off just seems to be mimicking other auto/customizing shows...and they're not very good at it. It's a crying shame because they were really good those first couple seasons. Now, they just aren't.

I would comfortably call this a "mixed bag". It has its moments, including some really nice transformations, but you have to sift through a lot of average content. It's like someone wanted to directly mirror a standard TV car show, but without any.. magic.

It includes:
* Every time they plan on selling a car, they'll say one price on the phone, then when they actually show off the car they'll bump the price significantly and hope the buyer goes for it. If the buyer says no, they'll ask for something else in return, or move on to the next person. They call this "making a deal", but it just seems super disingenuous to me.
* They keep talking about "a big payday", but [spoiler]you won't see one in either season[/spoiler]
* In terms of actual car modifications: you'll see them find/receive the car, the initial teardown, the planning stage, a bit of scattered work here and there, and then it'll **always** jump to a quick spraypaint and then straight to a finished build, making it hard to see how they went from A to B. This is **very** unsatisfying and was a common theme throughout the show
* As mentioned in another review, they repeat the same things a lot. At the start of an episode, directly after the intro, and then every time someone says something while working, they repeat it sitting in front of the camera. If they're in the middle of working on a specific build, they'll walk you through the planned build multiple times, as if you weren't watching 15 minutes before. This is a Netflix show, not on TV where you might miss part of it.
* I actually feel that by [spoiler]splitting into two garages[/spoiler] for Season 2 [spoiler]they actually lost some of the overall charm because they were no longer a single team all coordinating with each other all the time[/spoiler]

Overall, it's an alright way to kill time, has some really fancy builds, and you won't hate yourself after it. I wouldn't watch a third season though.