INTERVIEW PART II: 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 II, our talk with Gary Humphrey. Click here for our talk with Bill Wu. Questions and answers have been slightly edited.

How did you get attached to the project?

I was riding my bike to pick the kids up from school one day. I got a phone call and someone said, ‘Would you be interested in sort of working on a TV sort of reality car show?’ And they knew I worked for Top Gear, you know BBC car program in Europe. It just sort of happened from there. Initially I thought, well, it’s never going to happen to me. There’s all these auditions you have to go to. They’ll never happen. It’s one of these opportunities of a lifetime. … Next minute I’m in Chile driving a car, so it was a little bit weird. But it was an amazing experience — really, really cool.

You have an interesting background, coming with survival skills and many years in the military. Was this difficult for you or just second nature?

I would say the jungle phase that we did, which was the first thing that we ever did, was the hardest thing I’ve ever done since Special Forces … which is pretty tough. I thought it was going to be a bit more of a holiday and I thought I could cope with it, but that first night, it was my birthday, and I’m sitting there under a tarp. It’s raining … and I’m thinking this is going to be hardcore. I’ve ripped the sole off my boots. … This was cold. You know the side of a mountain, so it was high altitude, massive, old forest. And it was horrendous. I really did have doubts.

You know I hiked to Serbia at one point. I’ve never really experienced that where I’m so out of control. So to begin with, I thought, well, I’m not going to get through this. And that could have been a bit embarrassing, coming from my background. But we realized, it’s just a case of working together and … making sure that car didn’t break down. That was the biggest thing. If we could keep the car going, then we could get out of it. But yeah it was an amazing experience. And yeah it was a bit different than I thought it would be.

Some of the lessons that you learned in the British Special Forces, do they still carry on? Are they ingrained in you?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean I started off as a young Marine, back in the ‘80s. That’s when the Russians were going to attack Europe, so we spent most of our winters in Norway, you know with the sheep and a tarp and that’s it. … If you could live in the snow, then you can live anywhere in the world, or you can fight anywhere in the world. Because you’re active. You keep your feet, your fingers, you know your body hydrated. And that makes a difference. You can apply that to anywhere, can’t you? You can apply that to skiing. Hey, you can be in Utah and you can be in a whiteout. Can’t get off the mountain. You’ve got the kids with you. What do you do? You just dig into the snow. You dig into the snow, get out of the wind, temperature increases, and you can wait until morning until someone comes and rescues you. So I can apply those types of things to everyday civilian life, which I’m grateful for.

How was it working with Bill Wu? You hadn’t known each other beforehand?

When I first met him, I thought, well, who is this fella? But as you get to know him, you know you have to take everyone on face value. And he was out of his comfort zone so much, and you have to admire that because he kept smiling and laughing. … It was cold or wet. We were hungry. But he kept going. And the nice thing was he could think outside the box, and that’s quite special. So from an engineering point of view, you know when we did have an issue with the car, Bill would sit there for a bit. … I’d blame him for bad driving, which it wasn’t, but that’s the British humor coming out. And he’s say, ‘Why don’t we do this? Or, why don’t we try that?’ …

He’s a totally different character. The guy retired when he was 30. He’s a doctor. He’s a chiropractor and made decent money in his life. And now he enjoys life. There’s not many people, I don’t think, that have got his way of thinking. A lot of people make money and just keep making money. He’s made himself a comfortable living, and now he enjoys doing what he wants to do, which is driving cars and mucking around with cars. He’s a good guy. It’s nice to have a different type of friend. He’s a good mate of mine now.

Looking at some of the episodes that viewers are going to be able to see. For example, the one that I saw on the volcano, what’s going through your mind when you get stuck in that crevasse?

I wouldn’t say I was scared. I was concerned. You know we were on a decline, you know the mountain was dropping away. And we were committed with the car. And that’s the issue, you couldn’t go backward, you couldn’t go sideways, because it was just sliding. So we had to sort of face these crevasses, and to begin with they were quite small. And I wasn’t too concerned. I thought, well, we can just drive over these small cracks.

But I don’t know if you know about crevasses, but there’s sort of three types. There’s a parallel one that just runs straight down to the rocks below, which could be 100-200 feet below. And there’s one which looks like a wine bottle. So it’s narrow at the top and cavernous underneath. And then you got the funnel, which is wide at the top and thin further down. They start to get bigger, if you can imagine it, as the mountain peeled away. The ice started coming apart from each other, like you’re peeling an orange away. … We had gone over probably, I don’t know, 10-20 of these crevasses. And they weren’t too bad, but it’s starting to get dark, it’s starting to get cold. And the ice obviously changes with the weather, with the temperature dropping. So it started to get icy. And yeah some of them started getting a bit too big.

But our saving grace is, there’s a thing called an ice bridge or snow bridge, and that’s where snow accumulates at the top of the crevasse and you can actually use that as the bridge to drive across. It drops away either side, but that bridge helps you. … I was concerned, and I made a harness out of seatbelts. We used the winch rope for safety. Thank God we did, because obviously I fell down, which is a bit silly of me. … I was concentrating so much on Bill actually getting over the previous crevasse, I didn’t look behind me and flipped in. That was a bit naughty. Yeah, if I didn’t have that leash on, I would have definitely hurt myself quite badly.

How did the Jeep hold up? You guys use it a lot. When you first saw the vehicle, did you think that this was going to be impossible?

I was surprised. It’s a 10-year-old Wrangler. There were very few mods done to it. I think the suspension was raised a couple of inches, and that was it. We put mud tires on there, but she just kept going and going. It was amazing. We flooded her a few times underwater. She hit some huge rocks, taken some air. She had mass amounts of sand, you know, ingressed into the radiator. … She was brilliant. You know I’m quite attached to the little red car. We called her Ruby.

Would you sign up for more episodes?

Oh yeah, without a doubt. It’s an opportunity of a lifetime for me.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.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.