CarShowTelevision.com Website

As many people who know me know, I am an avid fan of cars.  A few years back I spent 3 years of my evening building my own electric powered Ford GT-40 replica which I have called the EVGT-40.  This led eventually lead me into creating High Voltage Hot Rods to help others build their own electric cars.  While taking my own car around to car shows in South Florida I was meeting a lot of interesting people and quickly discovered that there was a story behind every car that showed up at these shows.  Weather it was a classic car that they wanted as a kid, or one that the family owned, there was a story.  In many cases the classic and custom cars were the fruits of lots of love and labor just like my own EVGT-40.  These stories needed to be told.

Two months ago my friend and business partner, Alex Berry, a walking automotive encyclopedia by the way, decided that we were going to use our 20 years of experience in the broadcast and web industry to start a new web site and news gathering organization called “Car Show Television”.  We started going to car shows and gathering these stories along with great high def videos of the cars and putting them on the web site I designed.  CarShowTelevision.com was born.  So now every weekend you can find Alex and I out there at the car shows gathering peoples stories.

Part of the business plan for High Voltage Hot Rods was to acquire the needed resources to do both a television series and web sites that would both promote the company as well as educate people about the benefits of electric cars.  The company now has access to professional video, audio, and lighting equipment as well as state of the art editing and graphics systems.  There is also a small team of highly skilled programmers, social media experts, and artists in place that can develop and execute internet multimedia campaigns and web sites.  This equipment and team is being spun off as High Voltage Creatives to bring the same level of work that is being done for High Voltage Hot Rods to others in the business community.

This move was done to allow the team to grow and move into other sectors while still doing the work required for High Voltage Hot Rods.  This small team can be deployed to quickly produce web and multimedia resources from small brochure type web sites to full on web applications and video production.

Some of the services that will be offered include:

• Front and back end web design (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and PHP)
• Motion Graphics both for the web and broadcast video (After Effects and 3D Studio Max)
• Short Form video production (HD Video Rig, GoPro Action Cam, Steady Cam, Lighting)
• Viral Video scripting and production
• Video Editing (Final Cut)

For more information or to schedule a consultation contact Andrew McClary or go to www.HighVoltageCreatives.com.  (Our new web site is under construction and will grow as we have the time.)

January 13, 2013 Palm Beach Post

Thanks to the Susan Salisbury for a great article on High Voltage Hot Rods on the front page of the Sunday Business Section of the Palm Beach Post.

“Andrew McClary, Alex Berry and Brant Cohen, partners in Boca Raton-based High Voltage Hot Rods, which takes classic cars and converts them to performance-based electric cars, are out to educate people about today’s electric car.

The cars they are converting or plan to convert, such as the ‘66 Corvair, the ‘66 Mustang and the ‘57 Thunderbird, provide a nostalgic appeal to car buffs. They use either an old car, or a reproduction of the classic car. It’s also about speed. Many of the vehicles have the ability to go from zero to 60 miles per hour in under five seconds.”  Click here to read the whole article

Thanks also to Palm Beach Post staff Photographer Gary Coronado for taking a great photo.

Top – Alex Berry, Left – Brant Cohen, Right – Andrew McClary

Putting the finishing touches on a new website for Mark-It-Now, Inc. This really cool website allows you to upload your own artwork to the website and order your very own personalized iPhone case.  It was a new twist on the traditional shopping cart but has come out looking really nice.  Many of the stock iPhone designs on the site are also my artwork.

After being involved in the electric car community for the last 3 years, I have decided to take it to the next step.  i have formed a new company with a number of great guys to create cutom high end electric hot rods as well as do a television show around the shop.  The purpose of the show will be to demonstrate that the electric car has come of age and is ready for the world stage.

I have been making things all of my life.  Adam’s speech hits very close to home to me.  For me I got this bug to make things from my father who was always helping my brother and I make and fix things.  Legos and Radio Shack electronic kits were always favorite toys in our house.  As a kid we were never very wealthy but we had something that rich kids didn’t have.  We had a dad that could make things.  I learned as a kid that if I wanted something, I didn’t have to go out and buy one, I could make it.  It never mattered if I had the skills or knowledge to actually do it.  I could learn, and I did.

My mother today still tells the story of them coming home when I was 11 and finding me sitting at the kitchen table with my new computer in pieces on the table.  I wanted to upgrade it to 32k (yes 32k! It was only a 4k computer!) and I didn’t have the money for Radio Shacks expensive upgrade.  So I had purchased the chips and was soldering and wiring them in place.  A skill I had learned from an electrical engineer in the computer club I attended every month.  I was one of the youngest members there.  When we had to take my computer into Radio Shack months later for something the tech there told my dad, “you can’t do that” to which my dad replied, “well he did, its his computer, and it works.”

I continue to try to pass this desire to make and modify things to my own kids.  I have always included them in the projects I was working on.  When they would ask me how I knew how to do this or that I would reply, “I didn’t know, but I could learn.”  The word can’t is banned in our house.  It may be hard, you may not know how, you may have trouble, but you can learn.  When most kids are getting X-boxes and Wii’s my son’s Christmas gift, something he wanted by the way, was a Makerbot kit.  The Makerbot is a user built Arduino driven plastic extrusion machine.  I watched with a very proud grin as my son assembled it.  But it was when he began modifying it that I really beamed.  He too was going to be a maker.

So when you people ask me why I have built an electric car or some other thing, my answer is “because I wanted to, I’m a maker”.