INTERVIEW PART I: Discovery Channel to premiere ‘One Car Too Far’ Sunday, Aug. 19

Discovery Channel has been taken over by sharks this week. But on Sunday, Aug. 19, the network leaves the ocean and gets into a car … but not just any car.

Gary Humphrey, former British Special Forces soldier, and Bill Wu, a southern California car enthusiast, are billed as reality’s odd couple. And after watching the series premiere of One Car Too Far, their new Discovery Channel show, it’s an accurate description. Humphrey and Wu are just about as different as they come, which makes their adventures around the world that much more dramatic.

The premise of the reality series is simple: Two guys. One car. These three components are dropped into different terrains — everything from the desert to the rainforest — and it’s up to the guys to survive and get the car back to civilization.

Recently, Hollywood Soapbox chatted with Humphrey and Wu about their wild experiences. Below is Part I, our talk with Bill Wu. Click here for our talk with Gary Humphrey. Questions and answers have been slightly edited.

You guys are a bunch of crazy guys. This is just a wild idea for a show.

It’s great. You know what? I am a real, real car enthusiast. To be able to have an opportunity to be put in a place where no one’s ever driven before, it’s kind of like an honor. It’s kind of like really cool. Most people, 99.9999 percent of the world, never get to do what we get to do in one episode. You know what I’m saying? It’s absolutely crazy, and it’s just like one of those things that’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing that I can say, ‘I did this, and I survived. And these are the things that broke down in the middle of nowhere, and this is how we survived.’ So it was kind of cool to think outside the box, and when you’re in the middle of nowhere, you really don’t have all these AutoZones and places to go to to get parts.

Were you hesitant in the beginning? Or were you gung-ho right from the beginning?

I’m kind of like an adrenaline junkie. If it’s not dangerous, it’s not fun. If there’s no risk, it’s not fun. So, you know, I’ve done the everyday thing of going to school and being a professional. I’m a chiropractor. … I’ve been doing the safe thing. You know, I’m really always looking for the next thing, the next fun thing. But it’s not really fun to me unless it’s risk. So that’s just kind of how I view things.

When did you film this first season? Was it last year?

It was this year, February and March.

How did they present each location to you? They really said, ‘OK, this week we’re going to Chile and we’re going to drop you here’?

Basically, they said, ‘You know what? We’re going to showcase some extreme terrain.’ So when they talk about extreme terrain, they’re talking about the four huge elements. … So I knew we were going to hit all four extreme weather geographic climate areas. So I was kind of prepared for that, but I kind of didn’t know exactly what areas we were going to. But I knew we were going to go to Chile first.

Could you talk about the friendship (with Gary) that you must have received from the show?

I’m friends with everybody. I talk to everybody. So I’m a pretty easy person to get along with. But then Gary, on the other hand, was kind of a little bit different. You know, we’re about 10 years apart, and he had this 17 years of military. He’s on a regimen. He takes orders. He gives orders. He’s kind of like this guy that’s in line, and … my mind changes so quickly. When I order something on the menu, it changes after I order it. I’m just kind of like, whatever, I’m just all over the place.

And so it took a while. Gary basically had to get used to that. He had to get used to my wishwashiness. You know I don’t like to take orders from anybody, because we’re both kind of like alpha males, and we like to give each other orders. And I’ve always worked for myself. … So we were complete opposites basically. It was kind of hard getting together. We got together. We knew we had a task to do. We both are goal-oriented. So if we there was a problem, we still could get through it, but it might be a little bit conflicting, might be some problems in the middle of it. We still are goal-oriented and were able to pull it through, and we had something in mind. We both are finishers.

Was there any particular episode or terrain that you were really terrified for? Some of this is scary stuff.

Every episode is super dangerous. There’s elements in every episode that could have killed us. But the one that was really, really, really scary was driving over the crevasse. … It was like a wine bottle, kind of like hollow underneath. You’re driving, and you see like a small patch where it looks like, oh, you have to drive over it carefully. But in reality you’re already 20 or 30 feet over this really thin part of ice, which could easily cave in and swallow the whole car and swallow us.

We could have been trapped hundreds of feet in the glacier. Dead. So it was kind of like unpredictable. We didn’t have anything tied to us or anything. … That was the part where I was like, whoa, this is really scary and this is really, really risky. I didn’t realize how risky it was.

How many cameramen are with you on these journeys?

We had two cameramen. … And we a bunch of these GoPro things that were in the car. We probably had like … probably about eight cameras that were attached. Mobile cameras that were underneath the car, inside, on top, like all around the car. It was like a Christmas tree.

What type of car is it? Is it a special type of car?

It’s a four-cylinder Jeep. Most Jeeps are six-cylinder or more powerful. This is the most basic Jeep you can get. This is the one you see 16-year-old girls driving to high school or at the grocery store. Four-cylinder, five-speed, manual. This has no power. The only thing that was done to it was a 2-inch suspension lift, and they added a snorkel and bigger tires. And there was a winch. … It’s the driver not the car, in order to survive.

Sometimes viewers question how much is real, how much is made up. But it seems like everything is pretty genuine from your expressions. … Are there any do-overs?

No do-overs. … (In the rainforest episode) we have to drive through a river, a deep river. This river is, I don’t know, 8 feet deep, or 10 feet deep. … And it’s shallow and then it gets deeper and deeper and deeper. And we had to get across this thing.

There’s really no do-overs. They just basically say, ‘You know what? We want you to try to get across this river. And we know you can drive. You do stuff to the car that’s going to help it be waterproofed. But we’re just going to go and see what happens. If the car fails and it drowns and you flip over, we’re just going to have to … end it there and have you walk out holding like a piece of the car.’ So they really didn’t know what was going to happen. Really. When we broke the half-shaft, the CB axle, none of that was planned. It just happened. We had to figure out how to put that together.

Is there a hope to expand this and go to more episodes?

You know what? It’s all about the ratings. They’re talking about it. So I’m excited.

Has this been a passion your entire life?

Not my entire life. In 2006, I retired as a chiropractor, and I wanted to play with my toys. Most people have weekends to play with their toys or once a month. I had every single day to play with my toys, and not just off-roading, but like drag racing, auto-crossing, road rallies, all these different car events that I had so much more time to do. And off-roading was just one of those aspects of having a bunch of free time.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywodSoapbox.com

• One Car Too Far premieres on the Discovery Channel Sunday, Aug. 19 at 9 p.m. Click here for more information on the show.