Aaron Kaufman Opens Up About Leaving Gas Monkey Garage

When we learned of Aaron Kaufman leaving Gas Monkey Garage and Fast N Loud, it left a lot of questions unanswered. I talked to the bearded former monkey and got some surprising answers.

Monday’s all-new episode of Fast N Loud will reveal the moment we have all know is coming. Aaron Kaufman telling Richard Rawlings that he is leaving Gas Monkey Garage.

While we will get some information from the show, in an interview with Kaufman himself, I got more information about his departure. His future plans, though, are going to make Ford guys around the globe dancing.

When I was offered up the opportunity to talk to Aaron Kaufman, I was not going to ask much about his departure. I figured we would all see enough on the new episode of Discovery’s Fast N Loud. I was more interested in his future and what he had on the horizon. Out of the blue, Aaron opened up about what was behind his exit.

"To be quite blunt, the Pantara build, you don’t see on the show, cars guys get it, but a lot of people don’t. The tipping point, that’s the bottom end of the type of cars I want to build. The difficulty level of the car. It surpasses what can be done on TV in time and budget. It was really only a couple weeks late and there was some follow up work that drug out and tuning that had to be done. It still is currently the most powerfull Ecoboost swap on earth, someone will do it bigger, someone will do it better, but right now we did it and we did it on TV. That was the rub, the crossroads there, I wanted to build cars that were that big or bigger, and then TV needed cars that were much smaller than that. On top of that there were some growing personal issues and professional differences of opinions and so I decided the time had come and I could see the fork in front of me."

In a world where everyone seems to be so careful about what they say, Aaron Kaufman was incredibly open. For fans of the show, it does make sense. As the show has matured, the builds have changed. They all have time constraints that make it impossible to build something that would be truly one of a kind. The detail and craftsmanship would be outside the interest level of many fans of the show.

With that, we moved to the topic that had me most curious. Is Aaron going to be returning to television anytime soon? What followed was an answer that gave more insight into his departure from Fast N Loud and gas Monkey Garage.

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"We are having conversations about TV, but if I do it I want to be ecstatic about it. I want to be very proud of the program and the parts that I make, so we are really looking at a fresh approach to making automotive television. If we go back to building cars on TV, it will be based on the premise fun with cars. Cars build out of imagination and of excitement and cars that move the soul and the body as well. Not cars built to go to auction, cars to make money, there are plenty of people who do it for a living, we are going to do it on TV and we are going to have a good time."

Any fans of Fast N loud know that Aaron is great on camera. For someone with his knowledge and skills, that is very unique. What the people at Discovery told me says it all.

"We hope to keep Aaron Kaufman in the Discovery family and are working on the future."

Up to this point of the interview, Aaron sounded like he was doing interviews just to make sure people knew the truth. When we got into what his future plans were, you could hear him reach through the phone. Kaufman has a passion for cars like athletes do their sport. It was something I did not understand until I talked to him.

In his immediate future, Aaron is getting ready to open his own business manufacturing parts for classic Ford F100 trucks. He wants to do for Ford guys what so many have done for Chevy’s. He has a passion for the 57-78 Ford F100’s and is looking to build a parts line for people to make it easier for people to restore them.

We went into detail about what he plans to do, but it will have to wait for its own article in a couple days. We spent more than fifteen minutes getting into what he hopes to do. As a Ford guy myself, I came away from the interview more excited about his future than his departure from Gas Monkey.

Next: Aaron Kaufman Speaks About His New Shop - ArcLight Fab!

As a fan of Fast N Loud and Gas Monkey Garage, I will miss Aaron Kaufman on the show. I am a car guy first so I am so excited what the future holds for Aaron and what he comes up with. If it ends up on TV or not, I have a feeling that we are going to hear a lot from Aaron Kaufman.

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