The 'Motor City Masters' Trailer Doesn't Give Me Much Hope

I won't hold my breath on "Motor City Masters" being a success, but at least now we know some more details about the car-designer reality show from the trailer that's been recently uploaded.

People have been butchering the classic "fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night" line from "All About Eve" for years now, and this isn't any different; the hostess, Brooke Burns, lets it out at the very end here. I can't think of a single time where this line has been used with clever context, and it's horribly cliche at this point.

As previously reported, the Chevrolet-tagged "Motor City Masters" follows a group of would-be designers everywhere but the Motor City as they design a product that Chevrolet will never produce. From the trailer, we know that ex-Ford designer Camilo Pardo is one of the judges, and so is Automobile editor Jean Jennings, whose involvement with the show is detailed in a recent post at Jean Knows Cars:

Executive producer Rick de Oliveira, whose background in reality TV goes back to the second season of The Real World, said Jean was chosen after being recommended by people in the auto industry who knew she understood the consumer. And in this regard, she has made a big impression on the contestants.

"They have come to really understand that she has a very strong voice," de Oliveira said. "And that voice: I don't care if you're the most popular designer in the world, you're going to be subject to the criticism, to the consumer's point of view. I think that's a really important judging aspect to all this. Jean brings that practicality. We're trying to relate this back to an audience that needs to be educated."

Yes, we're going to learn all about car-design through all the reality-show cliches omnipresent in this video, like close-ups of people crying and contestants with off-putting attitudes. Ho-hum. "Motor City Masters" airs on truTV this summer.