Car Masters: Rust to Riches is an American reality television series. It revolves around the Gotham Garage crew. This crew has built a number of props for movie studios and television shows. The upcoming 6th season of the series is all set to start streaming on 23rd October on Netflix.
Gotham garage is led by Mark Towle. This garage gives classic cars a modern makeover in order to raise their value and eventually earn the company large profits. The crew takes up one unique project in every episode of the series.
Mark Towle is a car mechanic, a car restorer and an automotive designer. He is the owner of a car restoration and makeover shop called Gotham Garage. It is based in Temecula, California.
Notable Gotham Garage rebuilds include replica of the Plymouth XNR, which is displayed at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, the Lincoln Futura, that was sold at the 2018 Grand National Roadster Show.
The first season of Car Masters: Rust to Riches had a total of 8 episodes. It was released on 14th September 2018. Following this, the second season got released on 27th March 2020, third season on 4th August 2021, season four on 27th July 2022 and season five on 13th December 2023.
Why was Gotham garage sued by Warner Bros?
Once, Gotham Garage had decided to build their version of the Batmobile because of which Mark Towle was sued by Warner Bros. Warner Bros claimed that the Batmobile was a character owned by DC Comics and Towle violated the copyright law by making it. The Batmobile is the car driven by the superhero Batman. It first appeared in the Detective Comics in May 1939, where it was shown as an ordinary-looking red car.
In the case, Mark tried to argue saying that the car was just a useful article and not a character, but the judge was not convinced and the Warner Bros won the case.
Warner Bros sued for 20,000 dollars. However, it was not a big loss for the Gotham garage as the two Batmobile replicas were sold for 90,000 dollars each.