One-of-a-Kind Cadillac Becomes a Chameleon!

You are watching Power Nation.

Today on Blacktop Speed Shop we wrap up our Cadillac build with some final touches that I bet you've never seen,

never wrapped anything color shift before,

but I am super stoked.

We also do a test run forEA to see if our Caddy wagon is gonna be a hit or if it's gonna fall flat on its face.

Are you telling me if that sat at work

and you had 10 minutes to sit down and play with it, you wouldn't?

Blacktop Speed Shot

starts now.

Have you ever messed with Color shift at all?

Uh,

only paint.

Never wrapped anything Color shift before,

but I am super stoked.

We are wrapping our 2014 Cadillac CTSV today,

and this is the last time you're gonna see it all in black.

When we started this build,

our goal was for the Cadillac to turn heads at CEA.

We partnered with EBC Brakes to transform this unicorn wagon

into something that was gonna stand out

at the world's largest car show.

I don't know whether to cry or jump for joy.

I just want you to have this memento of the car that you'll never own.

You're welcome.

From the factory, it already makes over 500 horse from a 62 LSA.

This one has under 60,000 miles and it's been babied its entire life.

How do you improve on a car that's already one of a kind?

We knew the biggest thing we had to do is transform how it looks

and how better to do that

than with a color shift wrap.

So we picked

Russian Riptide, which is an Avery Dennison color shift,

uh, and we had it finished in a gloss finish as well.

It is gonna be one badass ride.

I've never even seen color shifts. That's like two colors,

and then the Beluga whale too is gonna be, it's gonna be great.

You ready? Let's go.

So, not only are we gonna do a color shift wrap on the Caddy,

but we're also gonna wrap the trailer to match.

And it's gonna be hauling something that's definitely gonna get people's attention at the show.

See how the color shifts. Oh,

look at me. Look at that.

I see 3 colors standing right here.

I'll walk over there. You'll see 2 more,

maybe,

or I may see more than that.

This is really freaking cool, Brian,

isn't it amazing that it's awesome. It's fantastic.

I mean it is.

I don't even know what to say right now.

Who would have thought they made a wrap like this

that would change multiple colors and look like paint? I said, how does this make you feel as a paint guy?

Would you rather paint this? Yeah.

It's a pretty rare car.

At least you're on.

It's a rare car, man.

This effect from this

and preserving the vehicle like we have.

If it was mine though, I'd wrap it

because I change my mind all the time.

You get older, it'll,

it'll change less

one day,

son.

I got some time one day.

So while the guys at Graphic Effects was working on the Cadillac, we got a call from Sinraft down in Kennesaw,

Georgia to come pick up our grid one racing sim.

Our goal for this project is to get people excited about the EBC booth at CEA.

So what would be cooler than a color shift caddy hauling a racing sim road course guy.

Yes,

100%.

Yeah,

100%. Watkins Glen is actually

my original home track.

I grew up in upstate New York.

OK,

so you're just not a behind the scenes person.

You're an informed driver.

I like to be informed.

There you go.

Simcraft started in flight simulation.

My dad built a prototype and I flew it, and I believed I was flying a plane, which is ultimately why Simcraft

was something I decided to pursue after my dad passed away suddenly.

But I decided to move towards motor sports.

For a number of reasons.

One, it was at the time more interesting to me.

It turns out it was a much greater technical challenge to convince a professional race car driver they're in a car than it is to convince a pilot they're in a plane just because of the

quick decisions,

lots going on. They have to feel the car.

Can you tell us a little bit about this particular machine that Jason's on right now? Absolutely,

yes,

so this is what we call our grid one.

It has yaw motion,

so it simulates over steer and under steer. It does have a monitor mounted.

To it, so you'll see other simulators on the market that don't move the visuals and what you see,

but this is our entry level unit. We started making it about 3 or 4 years ago.

We're working on actually proving what realism is about,

and I was talking to Jason about this a few minutes ago, but the human brain

is ultimately what we're trying to activate in the simulation.

Simulation is about 3

senses what you see, what you hear, and what you feel.

And the brain

is difficult to fool.

Motion is sort of a wild west right now.

Everyone in the industry says we're the most realistic,

right?

But the brain is really the thing to measure ultimately as to is it realistic or not. As we sit here watching Jason drive,

you know, he does have yaw motion. It's going to provide oversteer and understeer sensations to his brain,

and the idea is that he believes he's in the car and that he is feeling the performance of the car underneath him.

Jason, do you believe you're in the car? Yes.

You need to breathe, buddy breathe.

So it's not about stimulating G forces. It's about the brain and making the person believe they're doing the act.

What about manufacturing wise?

What are we looking at?

Yes,

so we're here in the USA.

That's right, we build our own stuff.

There are 954.

Four

tig welds on one of these GT chassis,

900 in-house, 954. All of those are done in-house,

so we try to do as much as possible,

man. That's bringing it back to the hometowns.

It's outstanding, man.

Yeah,

wonderful.

The key is really in driving it.

We got to get people in the seat

and once we get them in the seat, they get this emotional connection, and we were joking about it earlier,

turning grown men into little boys. That's it. We do it every day. It's the best job in the world,

definitely.

Outstanding, man,

wonderful.

Coming up,

we have a bright idea,

but hit a bit of a snag.

Well, we're back from having our SIM installed in our trailer and everything went flawlessly.

Me and Jason headed down to Kennesaw, Georgia and picked up our grid one racing simulator from SimCraft.

They did a full custom install bolting the racing in to our trailer so we can easily haul it anywhere we wanna go.

The team at SimCraft took care of everything and now

we're ready to rock and roll.

So also if you notice we got the trailer wrapped to match the car,

but we still got a couple more things we wanna do,

but check this out first.

Look what we also had them do while they were here.

Oh man.

We had wrapped the back of the sim seat to match the rest of the trailer in the build. What do you think about that?

I think it looks good.

It looks a lot better than just black,

and it ties it into,

so we do want a different effect to go on inside of our trailer. So we did get some RGB,

uh, LED strips. We're also gonna put some around the sim.

Pretty sure,

right?

That's right.

It's kind of hard to see your,

see the pedals when you sit down,

especially with the roof on it.

So we're gonna

put a few

lights underneath the monitor that way you can see the pedals and see your feet, so you're not

stumbling around trying to find everything.

All right,

I'll be in my trailer.

Thanks.

I think we run it all the way, man. We got plenty. You think we have enough for that?

I don't see,

see why not. Well,

let me ask you this too,

because we were gonna run

both strips into one controller for

these.

You think we have enough to run

up,

down,

around,

and around to the back of the spare?

Maybe we run halfway down then and leave it

that way we got a stopping point here.

That'll work, right?

Sure.

Looks good for my house.

Oh yeah,

that's plenty.

Come here, camera dude.

Check this out.

So plastic clip mount.

Mounts from the rear like this.

It's a basically a one size or one side

only that it mounts to because it's thicker than the LED strips on.

Don't forget to pull the red stuff off, OK?

OK.

Oh no,

our antennas fell.

They're looking at this with no glasses.

I see like 4 of them.

You should probably get that checked out.

I'm not sure these agree with gravity.

I see that.

So we're using some

generic uh LED strip lights that we purchased like anybody else can offline.

Uh, we're using some two-sided tape as well.

The adhesive pads that come with the kit

didn't seem to want to stick on this texture surface.

However,

two-sided tape's working good.

Do you ever think, uh,

one day you're like, man,

I'll be working in a trailer with some two-sided tape,

some LED lights, and a racing simulator? You know what I thought I was gonna be doing at this point in my life.

Driving professional race cars,

I didn't think I was doing any of this. Well, you're close.

You're almost there.

This is as close as I'm gonna get, is that what you're saying?

The simulator right here?

Well,

wow,

my dad builds axles for trailers,

so if that's really what my dream is, that's just full circle right there.

What did your daughter send you a picture of the other day?

What you said on the Lexus show? It done did what it's supposed to do and done did it. Actually. I said,

uh, we got done what we needed to get done.

See,

that's it.

Isn't there a phone number I can call for situations like this?

Is it the police?

First two strands, check.

Are you ready for this?

Hey, let's,

let's kill the lights so we can see what this really looks like

the slow dramatic

killing of the lights. The 37 light switches over there.

On the computer has lights all over it and the back of the monitor has lights and we're still gonna put it around

the SIM as well, you know what I mean?

Plus you gotta think the shell's gonna be over it.

What is that, 2,

maybe 1 ft,

it'd be 1 ft up, that's it. And then,

you know, it slopes down.

And who says it has to be open? What if I just shut everything and that's why in the dark,

you know what.

I'm trying it in the dark.

Prepare to qualify.

The other thing is awesome.

Well, we got all of our lights installed finally in our trailer and on our SIM.

Uh, we do have another small issue though. We gotta drill a hole in the floor,

uh, so we can run a power line cord,

whatever you wanna call it, to our, uh, power strip.

So we're gonna go on and get that done now. We do have a plastic cap and cover,

uh, so it'll keep it covered up while we're pulling it and keep the elements out.

Let's drill more holes and stuff.

Let's do it.

All right,

no going back. Ready?

Waiting on you.

Hey, uh, you wanna grab me some safety glasses?

That flex drills doing it, ain't it?

This

hot dust does not feel good in the eyes.

Oh.

Easy.

You're letting smoke out.

There you go.

Well,

that's a wrap for a wire install.

Next up,

gotta put the lid back on the trailer, so

hopefully it goes better

than what he just did.

We'll see.

So up next, can you find the freaking brake? I wreck a Cadillac going 100

MPH.

You blew it up too.

Now we got our trailer wrap to match the wrap on our Cadillac.

The next step for us though is to install a roof rack and locker on this vehicle.

We reached out to Summit and they sent us this roof box here.

The nice thing about this roof box is that you don't have to drill anything or modify the car at all.

When we first got this car,

we didn't want to ruin it.

So this kit makes it very nice in that aspect and.

This is more of a style thing on his side. He's gonna convince me on that.

Just something about a roof box on a wagon that just does it, man. You can haul more stuff,

more people,

more stuff, more people equal better time.

First step, just pull the seals up,

which I didn't even know these were here.

I thought this was the rail that you were talking about, and every time you said, yeah, it just goes on the rails, I thought

you're talking about this.

Oh,

it's got a sticker on it,

front and rear.

I think we need to set them as far forward as we can set them.

Also,

there ain't no real reason to tighten them like

super tight yet until we put the bars because

the bottom of the box only mounts in one, you know,

one location.

Right?

Would you call it a nut?

Are those considered nuts?

But yeah,

I would say so.

I guess we need to address this too,

but how are we gonna get this in here?

I wasn't tightening them that much. Apparently I did more than I thought.

Here we go.

Where's it going?

Um,

is there a tie down in there to

the lift from flying? Yeah, that's,

it's supposed to lift from this side, apparently,

apparently not.

It's apparently lifts from one side or the other.

No,

got it.

I think

it's like an eagle claw that wraps around the crossbar

so you can adjust it and it's pretty much infinite,

but that's awesome.

Don't do that.

I'm just trying to

put these in the mounts first and that way we can

measure side to side.

All you gotta do is pull,

pull it out,

take it out of the mount, grab the bottom of the red things, just pull one out at a time.

Oh,

out

that way. Mhm.

Installed.

You should be able to look at it through the hole

on the side hole.

You think they put that there on purpose?

00 shit.

Do not recommend installing by yourself.

Just like that, huh? Pretty nice.

Go measure it again here we go.

There we go, 9 and 3/8.

Well, we're almost done with our build. We got a couple loose ends to tighten up,

and we want to install some LED lighting underneath our car just to really make this wrap pop that much more.

So we went online, we ordered a low glow underc LED strip kit, two wire installation. Other than having to run the wires in and out of the firewall, peel and stick,

and we got extensions.

Too, don't forget that sweet so we can run it over the wheel wells.

All right, well, I guess first thing we need to run power

and then we'll run all the lights where we want it, I guess we'll start with the sides.

We know where they have to go.

You mean that it won't stick to the massive fuel leak underneath the car?

This car has no such thing. There's no fuel leak on this car.

I have to be careful so we don't get it on the rack. That's about it.

What did you say while we were working on the Lexus? The brake clean was cleaning and finding all the cuts in your hands for you.

I hate to do this twice.

It gives me double the chance to screw it up.

No,

let's just loosen it up while I'm standing here.

Jerk.

Run up and over.

To the front bumper.

All right, now we got them relatively in the place they need to be,

right?

Hopefully let's just see what they look like. I'd rather keep having to move them,

yep.

I say we disconnect our test battery,

we get it back in the air,

get them final mounted in the rear, and let's get the power installed.

Want to.

Well, what do you think about the lighting?

I love it.

I love Underglow.

I've always loved Underglow. It's an attention grabber. I mean, you see flashing lights and you just,

you gotta look at it.

Would you ever do this to your car?

I don't think the Colorado would look good with Underglow.

Maybe if I had something that deserves it, but

so definitely my Kia, is that what you're saying?

Yeah,

nice

to make EBC's.

Booth more interactive. We went down to Georgia and picked up SimCraft's grid 1 racing sim that we had them install in this motorcycle trailer so that where the car goes,

it goes.

But

we should probably make sure it works

so we're not at SEA with thousands of people asking to run it and we have to tell them it doesn't work.

So you're gonna be the test dummy,

and I'm gonna help you set it up.

I just heard dummy.

I got it. I'm good at that.

If the shoe fits.

You ready?

Sure,

I already got a car picked up for you and everything.

Let's go.

Feel like you're going as fast as you really are.

We're going this way.

Slow down.

Shut up.

Oh,

broken at the little bodywork. That's all it is.

Oh, you screwed up the wheel.

Oh, you tell when it gets loose.

Somebody only knows how to turn left.

It's true.

Oh, there you go,

yeah.

Oh, it's loose.

They're just so loose.

Oh dude, I mean you could tell it's got some major damage.

OK,

you find the freaking brake.

Broken at the,

you blew it up too.

Hit the brakes.

If your car has too much damage, we've got to fix it.

Got it.

Just fix it.

Coming up,

me and Brian go back to college to see if our bill passed the test.

Well,

simulator install went fantastic.

The rap looks amazing

and our lights are on point.

So we had everything done to this point,

but

we want to run a demo test to see

how our build will fare at CEMA

and what better way than to come to Nashville Auto Diesel College in Nashville, Tennessee to get some real automotive

enthusiast reactions.

OK, you go that way.

I'm gonna go that way.

All right, let's go.

Let's split.

Yeah.

Not bad for 4 cylinder

556 from the factory,

but with all the improvements we did, probably around 650.

So what kind of exhaust system does it have?

Stainless works.

Full stainless works from the header's back.

This car

as it sits is actually pretty rare,

so we don't wanna mess with it. It has no sunroof and it's an automatic. That's a rare combination.

This year alone, only 350 total wagons were made.

It's fun.

It's rowdy.

It's dangerous.

Everything we have done to this car,

you can

put back to stop.

Kids ain't gonna be late nowhere, dude. It,

it's fun,

man. You could pack all your friends,

anything you want.

That's what I was gonna ask if y'all had anything in this or if it was just for storage,

anything we wanna put in there, luggage or any of that.

So we, we actually drive it, man. We drive it to car shows, and

this is the first big event that we've done, but we're. Schedule for more this year beforeEA.

Those are the tires that came on it.

We have aftermarket wheels and tires coming for it. We're putting 20 by 11 in the rear, 20 by 10 up front.

I appreciate it.

Yeah,

anytime, man.

Thank y'all for having me. This is awesome.

I drive that every day.

Are you kidding me?

Are you telling me if that sat at work

and you had 10 minutes to sit down and play with it, you wouldn't.

Yeah,

and

they're actually writing a program. They're custom cutting trailer wheels to match our car,

so everything,

all six wheels are gonna be the same.

Yeah, it's gonna be pretty cool.

That shifter has every, every car you'll ever drive in the sim,

that shifter,

it,

it's,

it's awesome.

sure to be a 4 speed. I can make it a 6 speed. I can make it a sequential,

and I can make it so I shift on the steering wheel.

It's hard to get used to.

The guy that started the place

talked about how he worked with neurosurgeons

to come up with the ways

to move this to make it feel real

to trick your mind.

That's how in depth

his systems are that's how this one is too it's just a single axis.

It does, it feels like I'm in school again. It's weird,

pretty crazy.

Oh

What do you think?

It's harder than it looks,

yeah,

so does it feel like a real car? It does.

The feedback in the wheel, you feel that too.

You.

Well, our CEA test run was a success.

We got a few things to button up on this ride,

but I feel like it's definitely gonna turn some heads just like we thought it would.

I'm excited to see how the new wheels look in the Cadillac and the trailer when they come from Variant.

That bronze with the color wrap is really gonna pop.

I'm excited to see people's reactions to the car. I'm excited to see them interact with it,

ask us questions about it.

I'm excited for Vegas.

The only thing left to do,

Viva Las Vegas, baby.

Let's go.

Whatever that means.

What does that even mean?

What do you call that?

What is that's, it's a,

it's just a part of a song,

man.