JDM Legends

He sat on the pitch for 10 months. Then he killed the tagline.

Four producers called Eric Bizek before Velocity ever put cameras in his Salt Lake City shop. Most of them wanted a Japanese-car version of the usual cable formula. Fake deadlines. Fake fights. One pitch even had a name, Master and Apprentice, which he refused on sight. Bizek told Japanese Nostalgic Car he did not even subscribe to Velocity. What he had seen on TLC and Discovery looked scripted. "We didn't want to do that." He waited 10 months. latestnetflix.com's view is that Then the last producer said the only thing that worked.Fly on the wall.

Keep the shop small. Keep the cars tasteful. That was the deal. JDM Legends was mostly Bizek and technician Josh Martin, with paint outsourced to Mauricio Rosales and Bizek's wife Naomi Perkins running the office. The shop opened around 2009. Bizek and Cobb Tuning owner Trey Cobb started by importing a 1972 Skyline four-door because those cars were cheap in Japan and almost nobody in the States was restoring them. Road & Track later found Bizek still talking like a guy who got into this through Gran Turismo, not through a talent agent. "The Japanese have always done a lot with a little, and I think that's really cool." ,

Filming started in June 2017. The first morning they had to kill the shop stereo so the mics would work. Camera and sound people doubled the headcount. "It's really nerve-racking to be on camera for everything you do," Bizek said. "You constantly think to yourself, 'Are people going to think I'm doing this wrong?'" A different production company wanted him to face the camera and declare, "It takes a legend to build a legend." He said no. He also told editors they did not need rock guitar every time a grinder came out. For every 60 minutes of footage, two minutes aired. Producers paid for shop time. He still figured the shop would lose money and treat the whole thing as "$300,000 of free advertising."

Six Tuesdays, then he walked.

Velocity premiered the season on 17 April 2018 at 9/8c. Six episodes. Hour one restored a customer Datsun 240Z and brought in an '86 Toyota Levin. Later hours covered a 1966 Bluebird race car, a 1968 Datsun 510, a 1989 Nissan Pao, an engine swap, a trip to California's Japanese Classic Car Show, and a frame-up Nissan Skyline GT-R. TVmaze lists the series as ended after that single season on MotorTrend, the rebranded Velocity slot. IMDb still files it as a 2018 U.S. reality show on the Velocity Network. , ,

The last planned frame-up was a wreck of paint layers and patches, so they swapped in a Skyline GT-R that had spun a rod bearing on an S20 motor and filmed up to the week before the finale. Road & Track, writing in 2020, said the quiet star declined a second season. Bizek had already told JNC the camera crew four days a week was a hindrance, that the work was physically and mentally draining, and that Velocity's median viewer was 60 while his market was 25 to 35. He never wanted to be the spokesperson. "Josh and I might not be the funniest or interesting guys on TV. But, if this show is interesting to you it'll be because of the cars we build." ,