Former Kamloops man making rust into gold

(via Corus Entertainment)

About a year and half ago, Mike Hall's story went viral.

The former Kamloops resident was drowning in dilapidated classic cars – in fact, his penchant for collecting them was the reason he had to leave the city in the first place – and he decided to put his 400-vehicle lot in Tappen up for sale. 

"I was born in ‘57, which was a real good year for cars," says Hall. "When I was a young kid it was the mid-‘60s, muscle car mania. You saw 'em all brand new, Boss Mustangs, Hemi Cougars, Chargers, Challengers, Camaros and Firebirds. That's what I grew up with. Once I started working and had money, I just started draggin 'em and filling up a yard. ... My wife had a problem with 'em so I bought a five-acre wrecking yard and filled that up. Then all of a sudden I woke up one day and said, 'What the hell have I done?'"

The story got picked up all over and soon Hall was fielding offers from across the world. Despite some serious ones, including a group from Switzerland that came and catalogued his entire collection, no sale materialized.

Instead, Hall eventually went with a different kind of offer pitched by Mayhem Entertainment: start a reality show about restoring the entire collection.

"I said, 'Are you guys nuts?'" says Hall. "What do I know about restoring cars? Just because I have 400, doesn't mean I know what I'm doing. I just love them. Low and behold, they did a little demo over three days and got funding to do a show and here we are. The rest is history, to pardon the pun."

The pun is that his new show, "Rust Valley Restorers" will premiere on the History Channel this Thursday (Dec. 6) at 10 p.m.

It follows Hall, his son Connor and the rest of the crew at Rust Brothers Restorations as they fix up, trade and sell Mike's collection of classics one by one. And every vehicle presents a new challenge.

"All these cars are from the '30s to early '70s," says Connor, who grew up tinkering on his dad's cars before working in his buddy's auto shop. "There's a lot (of damage) hiding under what you see, so you start stripping and tearing stuff apart and you find more rust, you find more broken parts, you find more issues. There's always more than meets the eye."

"You can go from a couple hundred hours to thousands," adds Hall. "The one thing we do know after this year is, whatever you think it's going to take, it's going to take more."

Not only are they trying to flip Mike's stockpile of hot rods and turn a profit, but they'll also restore cars for clients as well. In the premiere episode, they work on an old Lincoln for a customer, an experience that Hall says was the best and worst part of the year.

"The problem with working on client cars, is you look at it and it's not bad, then you give an estimate. But once you've torn the car apart and there's six times more work, now that you've got it stripped down and they don't have the money to finish it, what do you do? That's when the dream becomes a nightmare. We learned a valuable lesson this year, it was a steep learning curve.

"You know what they say, you cannot buy experience but it's very expensive to obtain."

It might have been a challenging year, but Hall was just glad the show came along and finally gave him the kick in the rear to do what he had been saying he would do for over 30 years, sell his car collection. But looking back, would he have rather have just sold his lot of cars and been done with it?

"Even if I had have sold the whole lot, I had another 30 or 40 stashed somewhere else," says Hall. "I wasn't totally giving up on my disease. That's why I built this shop on another part of land that I have, so in case someone bought the wrecking yard, I still had a little glimmer of hope."

"Don't let him fool you, he would've gone from buying $1,000 to $3,000 cars to buying $30,000 to $50,000 cars for projects because he would've had more cash flow," adds Connor.

The first season of "Rust Valley Restorers" features eight, one-hour episodes. There's no word yet on whether there will be a second season, so the Halls are hoping everyone will tune in and give them feedback, good or bad. 

And while cars that are completed on the show can't be listed for sale online until after the episodes air, there are a few from this season that still haven't been scooped up. Find out more about their cars HERE.