High-end sports car. Faster than a Ferrari.

It's fun from the moment you turn on the key.

It's like being shot out of a slingshot.

Any place I'd go, they put it in front.

They'd move the Ferrari out and put the Roadster in front\n

The first time I hit the accelerator pedal, I couldn't tell\n

This is the car that made the dream happen.

The technology has reinvigorated the automobile industry.

Once Tesla sort of slowly lost the

Tesla didn't keep their word when it came to the quality of\n

The Roadster owners were abandoned.

A lot of them sold their cars because they just couldn't\n

I don't know a single Roadster owner who takes their\nRoadster to

Tesla, the company that made the damn car, to service it.

I'm Carl Medlock and this is our Tesla Roadster repair\nshop.

My dad and I worked at Tesla early on.

He worked on the service side, I worked on the parts side.

Carl is known in the industry as being the godfather of\n

He truly is an answer to so many people's prayers.

It's better for the community that we just get these cars\n

If it wasn't for Carl, I don't know if these cars would be\n

no one would be around to maintain them.

But instead, they're out on the road and they're still\n

Tesla Roadster came out in 2008.

You really don't have to say anything to sell one of these\ncars.

You just had to go take somebody for a ride.

The Roadster, in terms of electric vehicles, is the turning\n

It's the proof of concept that a car could be sexy and fast\n

The first electric cars, let's face it, looked like smart\ncar.

They were goofy and they were still expensive.

I think he thought, all right, if it's going to be\n

You had a technology team trying to put an electric drive\n

chassis. It just seemed like a one-off kind of modified\n

no one ever imagined that it would be what Tesla has become\n

I bought my Roadster new in 2009.

Back then, Tesla wasn't a thing.

The big dare was, I dare you to buy a Tesla and an\n

Tesla. If you really believe in the company, do both.

I mean, I bought my car when Tesla stock was selling for\n

None of us really believed in this company.

It was hard not to recognize that this is where the future\n

If you look at the client list of Tesla Roadsters, they were\n

The Google founders bought them and the first few hundred of\n

Microsoft and Google and Facebook.

This car used to belong to the lead counsel of Microsoft.

That was one of the original Microsoft 11 cars.

The yellow car here belonged to one of the guys who helped\n
The blue one here belonged to Sam Simon, the co-founder of\n

This orange one here belonged to David Vaskevitch, ex-CTO\n

If you ever watched the TV show Bewitched, this car belongs\n

The group of Tesla owners, especially the Roadster owners,\n

We're not just here to own a car.

We're here to support Tesla, support the EV movement.

They really have a passion for not just the cars themselves,\n

It's kind of a big family almost.

I've been a part of the Tesla community for probably seven,\n

Other Tesla owners were always open to talking, helping.

It's like we're a part of a movement.

The Roadster community is like taking that and 10x'ing

It took 22 months before my Roadster 282 was

delivered. One of the first 10 or so Roadsters that were in\n

We all even came to each other's deliveries.

I drive it a lot, and as far as I know, it's the highest\n

Its VIN number is 687 and its sister car, VIN number

686, is currently on its own orbit around the sun.

In the early days, we had this expression we call Tesla\ntime.

Whenever you went someplace, you had to add some Tesla time\n

When you buy a car like this, you have to expect to talk to\n

It's just part of the experience.

We spent a lot of time educating the public about Teslas and\n

We were very much advocates, ambassadors, even evangelists\nfor

I mean, a lot of them abandoned the Roadster for a Model S\n

When the Model S launched, the customers were afraid of what\n

to service for them because they weren't the priority\nanymore.

They kind of got back burnered.

Tesla kind of went from, this is our car, we will take care\nof

it. To, oh shit, we're making money for the first time on\n

line. To, yeah we still care about you guys.

It always saddens us when we hear that one is wrecked.

It's always kind of a moment of silence.

The fire down in Arizona that destroyed like 30 of them.

You realize that this species is in danger.

We figure that there is probably 1,500 left worldwide.

I would say probably 250 cars got totaled out just on poor\n

I was in an accident, a really bad accident.

It sheared off the whole front end of the car.

And the insurance company and Tesla, of course, wanted to\n

because they didn't have the parts.

They didn't have a way to fix it.

And we were able to find Carl that could put it back\ntogether.

The word got out there's people that are taking care of the\n

People knew my dad and they knew what kind of guy he was\n

Always have a tool guy among your friends.

The thing that really impressed me about Carl, the first\n

He just took care of everything.

He didn't even need to be told what's wrong with the car.

The level of customer service, it was above and beyond.

He's a smart guy. He's found a niche where he's the best\n

My family is through and through motorheads.

We love cars. My dad built cars.

We built cars together. We've all built our own custom\ncars.

We do just about everything from bodywork, paintwork,\nmechanical

work, restoration work, electrical work.

If you can crash it, there's a good chance that we can fix\nit.

When Carl first left Tesla and opened up his own shop, it\n

Most of the Tesla Roadster owners would continue a service\n

and then it all started just moving over to Carl's shop.

People just started sending us their cars from all over.

All over the United States, Canada.

We've got cars that are being put on containers coming over\n

And I even traveled to a car in Costa Rica.

We have now like 30 or 40 Roadsters that we have at the\n

I'm in Texas. I've had two cars sent 2,000 miles to\n

get worked on by Carl because I trust him the most.

He knows more about these cars and anyone else out there.

Early on at Tesla, we got to work directly with the\n

systems. And so we got a knowledge that others didn't get.

I actually helped write the shop manual for this car, and\n

Everything I do here is in my head.

This is my nemesis right here. This car has a very abnormal\n

you can disconnect everything in the system and the water\n

So it's got a wire shorted to power and I just haven't\n

In the meantime, it's just wiping the street with me and my\n

I saw him as this mechanic guy.

He's an electrical engineer it turns out.

We've had a few Tesla service centers call us up that have\n

And one of them actually said, look, we don't know anything\n

so we're just going to send it to you.

This is the brains of the Tesla Roadster.

It's the PEM, power electronics module.

It handles all of the drive functions.

These parts are incredibly hard to find and they're not\n

To make this board specifically, to reverse engineer it is\n

grand. These are Tesla Roadster battery sheets.

In a battery pack you have 11 sheets.

Each one of these plates denotes a series, so you got a\npositive

and negative. There's little bond wires here and it's what\n

There's 6,831 cells in one of these batteries.

Any one of them can short and cause a problem.

You have to know how to find it.

You would think that this toolbox would be full of tools.

It is not. It's full of electronics.

This is old tech when it comes to electric cars, but it's\n

Eventually, this will be standard, but there's going to be\n

The good news is nobody died and my car is worth more.

The top's good, if I ever need a new top.

I haven't told the owner yet, but there's a dent in the\n

And with that dent, they're gonna make me total it.

This car just left here four months ago.

Wow, that's frightening. But it's also encouraging that a\n

bad is survivable if you're in a good car.

Not so survivable. If you can save those, that's a miracle.

Oh, you haven't seen this picture.

Save all the green parts you can from my car in case I ever\n

Were you really good at Legos when you were little?

You know, people see crashed cars.

I see opportunities. I see a $30,000

job there, another one here and the parts right here to fix\n

The minute the last car rolled off the assembly line, that\n

I contact people all over the world.

I find out where the wrecked ones were, the last home that\n

Do you have any parts left over?

I buy stuff every day from people who have bought these\n

I could buy a parts car, and I did, for $5,000 three years\nago.

I could buy a parts car for $10,000.

I bought one for $15,000, and those were cars that were\n

Now I'm buying cars that are missing from the windshield\n

This car right here is VIN 767.

Was originally sold here in Seattle.

I bought it at the auction for $43,000 for a parts car,\n

crazy, but the battery's worth $25,000.

All the suspension. This is a $4,000 trunk.

$1,000 bumper. $2,000 trunk box.

This car was coming to us from Georgia, and I know it looks\n

part it is. But the transmission, at least the case would\n

I've had five or six calls from these cars from the\n

than a quarter and throw it in the front seat.

A clip, a bolt, a screw, everything on this car is special.

If I can just harvest one piece, I'll call it a success.

These are our hoods, we make a whole hood, including the\nframe.

Those are the last 15 good headlights up there.

Right side only, there are no left headlights available.

I'm going to take and horde every single thing I get my\n

It's the way I can stay in business to be able to fix the\ncars.

To fill that need we've built a lot of these carbon fiber\nparts.

We make pretty much every piece of carbon fiber that goes\n

We make all of these pieces that are on here, except for\nthese.

This is the factory Bilstein suspension.

It's the last new set we know of in the world.

We actually had custom suspension made for these cars.

We had this grille made for the 2.5 cars because the\n

Oftentimes these cars, he can make them a little bit faster.

He can make them a little bit more reliable.

He can make them last a little bit longer.

Back when Martin Eberhard was terminated from Tesla, these\n

hanging on his wall. I'm going to give these back to Martin\n

So I thought, what a nice gesture for the guy who created\n

A few more years, they'll start turning 20, the age of a\n

Values are going to go up, but it really is the maintenance\n

The difficulty of buying a Roadster was overwhelming.

For 2020 and most of 2021, the transactions were a listing\nthat

either got sold within an hour of being listed or a day.

So the values now have gone from $40,000 two years ago to\n

$130,000, depending on the car that you have.

Recently, one has sold for $182,000, another one sold for\n

We started seeing that median price jump from $68,000 to I\n

$112, $114,000, but with some really amazing examples of\n

And that tells you when a car has really arrived.

I mean, it's funny because it's what everybody was saying\n

collector car because if Tesla takes off, it's the first\n

first vehicle from a company that now obviously is really\n

For me, owning a piece of the original Tesla journey was\n

transition from EVs, in general, was important.

People do look at them as investments and the best part\n

You can't take your stock portfolio out for a drive.

You can't take your Bitcoin out for a drive, but you can\n

It's really cool, honestly, that so many people trust us\n

kind of become this big Roadster shop.

Now he's in this big shop and he has parties.

I remember last summer, there were probably a hundred\n

People flew in from France just to come and see the largest\n

of Tesla Roadsters on the planet.

I think somebody flew from Asia to come.

I was like, wow, I just drove.

On the way over here today, twice.

I looked in my rearview mirror and the person behind me has\n

car. This car is special and it still looks special.

People come up and say, that's a weird looking sports car.

What is that? And I say, It's a Tesla.

And they said, I've seen Teslas.

They don't look like that. Is that their new sports car?

It's like, no, no, it was the first Tesla.

You get all kinds of reactions from people.

What you don't get is I've never heard of Tesla