Smyrna's Dawan Malik is one of 10 auto designers vying for $100,000 on the new TruTV competition show "Motor City Masters."
How does he do? Although the show debuts tonight on the Atlanta-based network at 10, the results of the first person out is already out there on the Web.
Why? TruTV posted the entire first episode on YouTube several days ago and has been viewed more than 22,000 times:
Malik, who has been designing and customizing cars for eight years in metro Atlanta with a specialty in sports vehicles, didn't particularly appreciate how he was portrayed. On the show, he was assigned to fix up the wheels and the judges made it sound like he didn't do much for the task assigned.
"I think they edited it in a way to make me look like I didn't do anything for the three days but didn't include the fact we worked on the car for 16 hours each day and a lot of my time was spent working on the body of the car," he said, not just the wheels. "The wheels didn't need to be prepped and painted until the last day which is why I got hosed when they changed the color of the car" at the last second, he said.
Ultimately, "they didn't show or seem to care to make me look good or in a positive fashion."
He wasn't seeking TV fame and fortune. A production company told him they found him originally on Facebook. Originally, he was told the show would be about local auto shops competing in Atlanta. But the premise changed by the time he was cast. He suspects Chevrolet's active involvement may have shifted the landscape.
Malik has cars in his blood.
His father Rasool worked for a time as an engineer in Flint, Mich. for General Motors back when Detroit was thriving. But his dad hated the weather and moved to Atlanta, where he and his wife owned clothing stores. Malik was born locally. By that time, his father became a Mercedes man and instilled his love of cars to Dawan.
A Mays High School graduate, Malik attended Tuskegee University and received a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering. He worked for a commercial major real estate company but started a car customization business on the side in 2005, something he had done on an ad hoc basis going back to college. He specialized in Mustangs and advertised on eBay and AutoTrader.
With real estate going down, Malik decided to focus in 2009 exclusively on C2G Motorsports, out of Douglasville, then Decatur, where his cousin Bruce already had a repair shop. They offer customization and maintenance work in the same locale. "I've sold cars to people in Russia, Canada, Australia and Germany," he said.
Malik said of the competitors you'll see on the show, only four have hands-on car building experience, including Malik himself. Six of them are more like "art school sketchers" who have relatively little real-world experience and lack the engineering know how he has. But they appear to be the folks the judges on the show appreciate.
Unlike "Project Runway," where the designers receive no help from anyone, Malik said any cars designed on this show were supplemented by professionals.
He also felt like on the show, as an African American, some fellow designers instantly assumed he was a "ghetto" car customizer, only capable of rims. That is not the case at all. In the end, he just made the most of the opportunity and hopes it doesn't hurt him in any way.
Here's a video of Malik I did at C2G Motorsports last week:
And here's a quick profile from TruTV of Malik:
TV preview
"Motor City Masters," 10 p.m. Tuesdays (starting June 24) on TruTV
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