It is 6 o’clock in the morning, the sun is not up yet, and @thatman.derek is sitting at an airport gate with a travel pillow around his neck and a friend on the seat beside him. “We’re about to hop on a last minute flight to Vegas,” he tells the camera, “to buy one of my all time bucket list car.” The text across the top of the screen explains how long this has been coming: “I’ve spent MONTHS Hunting for this car!”
Then he gets to the catch. “The worst part? We have an 18 hour drive home.” He admits he once told himself he would never pull a stunt like this again, and that here they are doing exactly the same thing anyway. His friend, in a white shirt, leans into the shot and mugs for the camera while he says it.
@thatman.derek
The clip runs a little over a minute and a half and moves fast. On the plane, the creator explains that he was not trying to sit right next to his friend for the flight, so he booked the seats in a way that put his friend across from him instead. That gets him a “What is wrong with you?”
The next shot is the terminal in Las Vegas, with rows of slot machines lit up behind him. “We made it to Vegas, bro,” he says, grinning, backpack on. His friend immediately wanders off in the wrong direction and has to be called back. “What are you doing? The train’s over there.” The answer is a sheepish “My bad.”
This is where the video shows its best trick. The friend has flown to another state without knowing what they are there to buy. Standing under a covered roadway outside the airport, the creator asks him, “What car do you think it is?” The first guess is a McLaren. The second covers more ground: “a JDM RX7 or an F80.” Then he spots something off camera, points, and asks, “My god, is it a Rolls Royce?” The reply comes back flat: “No, no it’s not.”
“Alright, we just pulled up to the crib,” the creator says next, now standing in bright sun on a quiet residential street lined with stucco houses. “You ready to see the car for the first time?” The friend asks if it is there. “It’s right there. It’s right there.”
The camera stays on the friend as he walks toward it. He stops, stares, and puts both hands on his head. “No way, no way, no way.” He says it again a few seconds later, hands still up.
“We’re driving this home,” the creator tells him. “We are driving this all the way home to Seattle.” The lines that follow tumble out on top of each other: “It’s manual, dude. That’s my dream car.” The creator is not finished. “Just wait till you see the spec. The spec is literally insane.” A moment later comes one more discovery: “Oh my god, it says boost. Is this car boosted?”
What the short clip never does is show the car itself or say what it is. The camera stays on faces from the gate to the driveway. The last few seconds cut indoors, where the friend still has a hand on his head, and yellow text on the screen reads, “NEW VLOG IS OUT! LINK IN MY BIO!” The caption on the post is just as tight lipped: “One of my ALL TIME Bucket list cars SECURED!” The final spoken line is “This is gonna be a fun drive home.”
That plan, the fly out and drive back purchase, is one a lot of buyers end up weighing when the right car turns up several states away. A few things in this video are worth copying if you ever do the same.
Bring a second person. The creator jokes about not wanting to sit next to his friend on the plane, but he still brought him. An 18 hour drive split between two people is a very different trip from one done alone, and a second set of eyes is useful when you are looking over a car you are about to pay for. If the car is a manual, as this one is, make sure both of you can drive one before you count on sharing the wheel.
See the car in daylight. The pair land in the morning and are standing in front of the car under a clear sky. Paint flaws, mismatched panels and leaks under the engine are far easier to spot in full sun than under a streetlight after a late arrival.
Ask about the spec before you hand over the money. The friend’s question, “Is this car boosted?”, is the right kind of question for any seller. Find out what has been changed from stock, who did the work, whether there are receipts, and what fuel the car needs now. All of that matters more when your first real drive in the car is a long highway run.
Give the car a basic check before you leave town. Look at the tires, check the oil and coolant, make sure every light works, and take a short test drive first. It is far easier to deal with a problem a few blocks from the seller’s house than several hours into the desert.
Sort the paperwork before the trip, not in the driveway. Confirm the seller has the title in hand, get a signed bill of sale, call your insurance company so the car is covered the moment you drive away, and find out what temporary permit you need to drive it home legally through each state on the route.
Finally, be honest with yourself about the drive. The creator says on camera that he swore he would never do this again. He also says, by the end, that it is going to be a fun drive home. Both can be true, and it helps to know that going in.