Issue 080

October 2011

One of the highlights of every season of The Ultimate Fighter is seeing the coaches rewarded with new, pimped-out whips. FO catches up with the men behind some of the best coach muscle cars

Ever since the inaugural show, The Ultimate Fighter coaches have rolled away from the last day of filming in pure high-octane, low-riding style, having been routinely rewarded for their efforts with top-of-the-range, no-expense-spared, luxury whips.

From Randy and Chuck’s blacked out Hummers in series one, through to ‘Rampage’ Jackson’s Dodge Challenger and the plethora of super-charged Range Rovers, the show is as synonymous with sick rides as it is smashing doors, drunken rows and octagon eliminators.

Car buyer, AJ Brown, has been hooking up UFC top brass Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta with their personal rides for years, so it was a natural transition for him to accelerate his relationship into the TUF fast lane. 

And after AJ makes the deal, the cars are handed over to acclaimed Las Vegas outfit Findlay Customs, to trip out each and every ride with the latest technology, rims and custom paint jobs to ensure every coach rolls away from the set on some serious fly dubs. 

“I’ve been working with the guys from Zuffa for years, but my first job for the TUF series was for series three, when Tito and Ken were coaching. I got two ’69 Camaros, Z28’s,” AJ Brown says. “And I’ve pretty much got the cars for them ever since.”

“The first TUF car we actually did was for Matt Serra in 2006 (TUF series six),” says Findlay Customs boss Joe Monaco, “we’ve customized some amazing cars for them.”

Similarly to the list of past TUF winners, every fanboy seems to have his own favorite coach’s car too, with Rampage’s ultra-personalized Dodge Challenger and Mir and Nogueira’s matching behemoth Lincoln Navigators appealing to both ends of the motor head spectrum. While, who could forget the farm-boy tractor picked by Matt Hughes after season six, and copied most recently by Brock Lesnar. 

Yet arguably the very best custom jobs for the UFC have come outside of The Ultimate Fighter coaching bracket. Dana White has a collection of supercars courtesy of the Brown-Findlay co-operative, while Chuck Liddel’ls Ferrari and Rampage’s Audi R8 were both simply gifts from Zuffa. Here, both AJ Brown and Joe Monaco take us through some of their favorite UFC and TUF rides…

Rampage Jackson’s Challenger…

AJ Brown: “Rampage got the Challenger and Rashad got the Hybrid Escalade after season 10 of TUF. Quinton’s Challenger was amazing then, but he’s even had a bunch of extra stuff done to that car since he received it too. It’s totally packed with extras now.”

Joe Monaco: “We tend to leave the audio pretty standard, nothing too crazy, with exception to Rampage’s Challenger. We actually did his in about a 24-hour turnaround, and that was wheels lowering, tires, full audio system and then delivered to him, all done inside at the most a 36-hour turnaround. We worked throughout the night but we were so happy with the results and he loved it. Normally for The Ultimate Fighter we do Navigators, Chevys and tons of Range Rovers. So to throw a completely different car into the mix, as in Rampage’s Challenger, that was definitely a challenge. Especially considering the time frame, but we love a challenge, so it was no problem.”

Rampage Jackson’s Audi R8…

AJ Brown: “Finding that black R8 for Quinton should have been really tough. At that time there were absolutely no cars, I mean zero, non on the ground at all. And finding a black-black one with all of the options on it, no chance. But it was fate. It just so happened that Dana gave me the call when, earlier that very day, I had just used that car for a manufacturer’s research event. I literally had the exact car, a complete one-off, in the morning at my shop and it went back to the dealer later in the day. Then Dana called me that night, or the following night, and I knew the car was still there and so I called the guy right back and said I would have it, otherwise we would never have had one. A total fluke.”

Chuck Liddell’s Ferrari F430…

AJ Brown: “This was probably the most difficult car to source. It’s definitely between the Ferrari for Chuck and the Audi R8 we got for Rampage. What was especially unique about the Ferrari was that the car had been out for about a year. Nobody could get one and people were paying stupid money over the window sticker for them. So when Dana gave me the call, I think it was a Saturday, he tells me he needed the car delivered on the Wednesday. Plus, he also wanted the silver on a 430 convertible. There were no convertibles around at the time even in the coupe and to find one specifically silver-black was like a needle in a haystack. That was a nail-biter, believe me. Thankfully, that was the shortest time I ever had to find a car for a coach too.”

AJ Brown: “For Chuck’s F430 we did a custom speaker enclosure in the back, we rebuilt the door panels with some new speakers and dropped in a few extras like radar detection system and stuff like that and he loved it.”

Ortiz and Shamrock’s ’69 Camaros…

AJ Brown: “The coaches don’t request their cars. It all started with me just taking care of Dana and from there Dana called and asked me to get him a couple of Camaros for Shamrock and Tito. The difficulty there was finding two classic cars the same. Luckily enough I found a dealership in Florida, but then I had to ship them over to our shop on the West Coast and then do the mods before getting them up to Vegas, all inside a two-week time frame. And, being that they were ‘69s, there was no warranty on them so we had to ensure that both these cars were running right and there was absolutely no problems. Literally, they had to just turn the key and drive the cars, like they were brand new. The guys just got to choose which one they wanted.”

Rashad Evans’ Escalade Hybrid…

AJ Brown: “That was the only Hybrid that I have done for the TUF coaches. It was a beautiful vehicle.”

Joe Monaco: “Rashad’s Escalade Hybrid was interesting. We’d never worked on one before and, actually, this was one of the first that even came out. Having a huge battery in there caused us a few issues but we overcame it and we worked it out.”

Dana White’s Ferrari 360 Spider…

AJ Brown: “The car I am most proud of actually isn’t one of the TUF coach cars, but Dana’s own Ferrari 360 Spider. That car, I actually did all the touches on myself and that’s one of the great things about working with Dana; he gives me all the latitude to do the touches on the cars, to do things I like and through my eyes. And yes, he’s been stoked with it since, but I did everything on Dana’s 360, everything from the exhaust to the suspension, to the wheels, the tires, the sound system. Let me tell you, there is not another one like it. It’s bullet proof, totally bad ass.”

GSP’s ’71 Chevy Nova...

AJ Brown: “We’ve never really had a fighter be unhappy because we always get them really cool cars. The only one that didn’t really seem to keen was Geroges St Pierre, and not when he was a coach but before that. We got Georges a ’71 Nova that was just totally modified and, if I remember correctly, it was like a nine-second car, it was quick. It was really cool-looking machine and I remember sending Dana some pictures and he said, ‘Yeah man, that’s pretty damn cool, let’s get it.’ But then when I got it to St Pierre there was a bit of a protocol to starting this Nova, and you could just tell that this wasn’t the car that GSP would be rolling down to the store in. Oh, and we got BJ Penn an awesome Mustang convertible, which I am sure he rolls around in now from time to time, but back then he was having a baby I think, and maybe the timing was wrong with that. But these are the only two times when I think the guys may of said, ‘You know what, this is not quite the car I would of chosen.’”

Dana White’s Ferrari Testarossa…

Joe Monaco: “The most unique car we’ve done for an MMA guy was for Dana, definitely. We’ve just finished it actually and it’s a 1990 Ferrari Testarossa. Typically, it was one of those cars he had a poster of sitting on a wall and he fell in love with it and, now that he can afford it and do it the right way, we did it. Kind of as a joke we had AL3 mix up a CD in there too, with the Miami Vice theme for him and we put some Dana White drops in for him too [laughs]. No, it was pretty cool actually and he really digs it. We put newer wheels on it, newer breaks, black and red striping, black and red leather and just basically modernized it so it looks more like the newer Ferraris out there rather than a dated 1990 car. It’s definitely a cool car.”

Mir and Nogueira’s Lincoln Navigators…

Joe Monaco: “Normally it is the same

car for both coaches. Essentially they are just carbon copies, just different colors. Which is good because, like when we did Mir’s and Nogueira’s, Nogueira’s went out of the country – or at very least it went to Florida – so they weren’t driving on the

same streets.”

Dan Henderson’s Range Rover…

AJ Brown: “All the TUF coaches cars are customized and on one occasion – the now-infamous incident regarding Dan Henderson’s Range Rover – one of the spark plug wires had gotten loose. That car had done less than 200 miles. It was literally a two-second thing to fix, but it went global because that was just when Twitter had become really popular and everyone had figured out what that was all about. Everybody tweeted it and even Dan put out something like, ‘Hey Dana thanks for the car, I hope it has warranty.’ But I took it back to him myself 24 hours later, it was a quick fix, and I timed it great too because he’d been out hunting and had this huge deer that he’d shot, and so I got to enjoy that. But that was probably the first time a lot of people, myself included, realized just how powerful this Twitter thing was going to be, because man that story was everywhere [laughs].”

Matt Hughes’ John Deere tractor…

AJ Brown: “This was undoubtedly the toughest vehicle I had to find. Matt Hughes had already been on The Ultimate Fighter, he’d coached on season two, and so he told Dana he didn’t want another SUV or a sports car, or any car for that matter, he wanted a tractor. He’s a farm guy and so that was pretty tough as I had to go back and think how, who, what, why and where… We started looking at what the tractors were and researching with Zuffa as to what type of farming Matt’s family did in order to narrow down exactly what type of tractor he needed. In the end, I spoke with a dealership close to Matt Hughes’ family home and the guy there, at John Deere, he knew the Hughes family and proved very influential in telling us what tractor to go for. Brock Lesnar also declined a car, he went for a tractor too.”

GSP and Koscheck’s Range Rovers…

AJ Brown: “Range Rovers have been pretty popular with the coaches of the TUF series. We’ve done more of them than any other car for sure. On this occasion we really looked at what the guys needed, what they were looking for and what really suited them. At the time, we were going back and forth on what they would be getting, but then it was decided to go with the full-on Range Rover full-sized supercharged, and I believe they both loved them.”