Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Downey’s Dream Cars’ On Max, Where Robert Downey Jr. Updates His Classic Car Collection To Make Them More Eco-Friendly

In Downey’s Dream Cars, Robert Downey Jr. takes various cars from his extensive classic car collection and has them modified to be more eco-friendly. In a talking-head segment given in his usual lightly-snarky fashion, “my priorities are in a completely different place now, and yet I still love these cars.”

DOWNEY’S DREAM CARS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Robert Downey Jr. walks out onto a tarmac and gives the cameraman the finger. A graphic says “Robert Downey Jr., Film Icon.”

The Gist: To make the modifications to his cars, Downey enlists Chris Mazzilli and his business partner Dave Weber, who have been restoring cars for RDJ for twenty years. The first project RDJ brings in is a huge one: “The Thanos Thumper.” It’s a perfectly-restored, purple 1972 Chevy K10 pickup truck. RDJ wants the truck, which has a Corvette engine that’s loud, gulps gas and belches out exhaust, to be converted into an all-electric vehicle.

Mazzilli calls in Rich Benoit of Electrified Garage, which specializes in converting cars with internal combustion engines to all-electric. The 500hp Corvette engine is going to come out, as well as the exhaust and gas tank, and a Tesla engine, new drivetrain, and two huge battery packs will be added. Every one of the car guys thinks that RDJ is insane to even touch this pristine restoration, but the movie star thinks this is a great first project.

While Benoit and his crew at Electrified Garage work on the truck, Downey talks about how he got interested in reversing climate change, and how he founded the Footprint Coalition, out of a frustration that tech isn’t being implemented fast enough to help fight it. He visits Fort Irwin, the Army’s testing ground for high-tech weapons and equipment in the Mojave desert; there, he meets the commander in charge of the Army’s new Climate Change office, and then drives an all-electric Infantry Squad Vehicle, developed by GM and based on the Chevrolet Colorado SUV.

After Benoit and his crew solve some space problems in the engine compartment — they decide to mount the motor backwards and have it run in reverse so it can line up with the drivetrain — RDJ tells them to drive the now-grey truck (the lighter color cuts down on battery use for the air conditioner) to Fort Irwin. The challenge: Can the newly-electrified truck tow not only the 72-ton M1A Abrams tank, but also the 48-ton transport vehicle it sits on?

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Downey’s Dream Cars has the exact same vibe as Rennervations, with the A-list star doing lots of side adventures while a crew does the heavy lifting back at the shop.

Our Take: Unlike Rennervations, which played things a bit more on the goofy side, Downey’s Dream Cars has an earnestness that felt somewhat off-putting. Sure, RDJ is funny throughout the show, whether he’s joking with his crew or just in the talking head interviews. He does joke through the opening scene, where he’s choppered to the awaiting Abrams tank that he knows the audience is there to see cars, not tanks. So there is quite a bit of self-awareness on the part of Downey.

But what makes us uneasy is that, unlike Rennervations, where Renner and his crew were converting vehicles then donating them to worthy organizations, Downey is going through the time and expense to transform his vehicles into eco-friendly footprints to make him feel better about his car collection. Does the planet benefit from it? Sure, in however incremental a way converting a few cars to electric or biofeul motors can be. But there seems to be a lot of ego-stroking going on during Downey’s part of the episode.

Those segments also make the episodes far too long, while skipping over a lot of the nuts and bolts of how the conversions are done. He spends time with Mate Rimac, who produced a $2.5 million EV sports car called the Nevera, as a demonstration of how powerful and fast EVs can be. That segment felt especially self-indulgent, and just made us want to go back to see how the crew at Electrified Garage solve some of the problems they came across.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: “Now what I need to think about is what to do next,” Downey says as we segue into the highlights of the show’s first season.

Sleeper Star: We certainly want to see more of Mazzilli and Weber; the two of them are so Long Island it’s almost comical.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Benoit and his guys, driving the renovated truck to Fort Irwin, get stopped by a military roadblock, Benoit says, “We in trouble?” That felt like the fakest reality setup of the entire episode.

Our Call: STREAM IT. While we’d like to see less of Downey in Downey’s Dream Cars, his presence is what got this show made. But a better balance of restoration footage and RDJ ego-stroking would make for a faster-moving show.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.