The Mechanic Who Crashed T-Pain's Drift Car Says He Is Getting Death Threats
Since rapper T-Pain posted a 27-part, 81-minute TikTok series on his experience with mechanic and drifter George Grob, Grob says his life has collapsed. Speaking to Road & Track via phone, he says that T-Pain's following has inundated him with insults, told him to take his own life, and sent him threats against himself and his family. More than anything, he wants to make clear that he knows he screwed up.
For the uninitiated, mechanic and drifter George Grob did some work on T-Pain's "Pickle Rick" themed drift car. When he crashed the car at an event, he took it back to his shop to fix it. After getting offered a spot on Discovery's Getaway Driver reality show, he asked to use T-Pain's car and, unfortunately (if predictably), crashed it again.
After over a year of back-and-forth, T-Pain released a 27-part series of videos on TikTok accusing Grob of letting his car languish in the shop, repeatedly telling him it was nearly done, understating the damage he had caused, and ultimately delivering a botched, cobbled-together car in worse shape than when it left T-Pain’s care.
"It was the wrong choice to do that, I'm not trying to fight that at all" Grob told Road & Track. "The entire process was all my fault. I don't want to fight any of that. I accept the blame for all of it. His car was never a priority for me, for a long time it was not. Because my main focus was, we had a huge payroll, we had giant overhead, we had a little bit of debt at the time, and we were barely breaking even."
Grob makes no argument with the core of T-Pain's accusation. But he clarified repeatedly that he was not attempting to take advantage or scam, only trying to stay afloat in a situation that he quickly realized he wasn't prepared for. He didn't have the money or time to make an engine swap work and admits that, rather than fully communicate the severity of the problem, he bought time by giving T-Pain deadlines he wasn't confident he could hit. The reason, he says, is that while he's a great mechanic, he was learning how to run a business on the fly.
"I'm not good at running the business, I tell people that all the time," Grob said, in a refrain familiar to many people who have been around the work of running and operating a car shop. Plenty of very accomplished shops close, year after year, not because of the quality of their work but because of the difficulties of managing the flow of cars in and out of their care. "I do the best I can, I'm not a business expert, I dropped out of high school my sophomore year. I know how to build the f**k out of a car, but I do not know how to run the business. I've been trying to get management in place for a long time, and I finally did, and that's when we started to get things done."
Generally, he owns that the lack of organization was his problem to fix, and says that the vast majority of performance shops in Atlanta that fail do so because they're similarly disorganized. He has no issue with being cast as slow, or at times overwhelmed. His real problem is with being painted as a scammer, because Grob said he absolutely stands behind the mechanical work. He notes that while T-Pain critiqued the wrap and the cosmetics, he didn't say anything about the mechanicals.
As for the shoddy wrap job, Grob insists that he told T-Pain that the car would arrive not fully wrapped as they waited for another roll of the wrap. While at SEMA, he says, he met with the owner of the wrap company to get it sent over quickly. Parts of the car were left unwrapped and, according to Grob, his mechanic took it upon himself to hastily wrap the mirrors and other uncovered components. But he notes that T-Pain didn't show the other panels that he says were done correctly by his girlfriend, Tiffany. He says that he explained the not-quite-there status of the car to T-Pain before it was delivered, but says that conversation happened over the phone. In the texts—which Grob confirmed as real—it seems like T-Pain believes the car will be finalized by the agreed date.
Either way, Grob isn't happy with how T-Pain handled it from there. He said that he considers T-Pain a "great person," "good friend," and someone for whom he has the "utmost respect." But he also called him a "bitch" multiple times, and that he had told his friends as much after finding out that T-Pain had publicly savaged him and blocked his number. When they spoke shortly after, Grob says T-Pain said something to the effect of, "now who's a bitch?"
"I didn't call him a bitch to try to piss him off, I called him a bitch because he's a bitch," Grob said. "He was handling the situation like a bitch at the time."
He was particularly hurt by the implication that the work was shoddy. He referenced multiple cars at his shop that he considers "SEMA ready" and noted a list of clients that, he says, includes billionaires, NFL players, and other celebrities. And he's upset that T-Pain would show no evidence of his work beyond a wrap, which he had no part in applying. Questioning him as a mechanic, Grob says, is disrespectful.
"I don't tell him that he's a washed-up old rapper that's not going to go anywhere. I don't do that because I have respect for him," he told R&T.
In general, he says he was disappointed by the fact that building T-Pain's cars didn't provide him much "clout" anyway and that this entire debacle is far more damaging than anything he ever got out of their relationship.
In fact, at least one person has pulled his car from Grob's shop GMG Automotive, as SMS Metal/High Tech Suspension posted a series of photos of a bare BMW E46 shell with a pile of parts next to it on Facebook on Wednesday, "This is 2 years and an obscene amount PAID up front gets you. Not including the paint work. (That was done by someone else and they did a great job) $------ for them to part out your entire car and then put it outside in the parking lot."
Most importantly, Grob wanted to clarify that T-Pain was not billed $11,000 for work on the Nissan, but billed that much for the work on the Nissan and an entire cooling system rebuild for his E46. He says that by waving around that figure, T-Pain is lying about the damage he did and undermining his reputation. He even suggested that T-Pain and his mechanic—who T-Pain praises and also was reportedly responsible for the poor wrap job on the mirrors—may have been trying to set up Grob. He had no evidence for this claim, beyond the fact that the mechanic quit shortly after this happened.
He always intended on fixing the wrap and finalizing the tune on the car to make sure T-Pain was satisfied, but he's not sure if he'll have the chance to do that now. As we spoke, he said the majority of his staff has quit, and he's out of state hiding out with his family. According to Grob, people were coming by the house and making him fearful for his life and family. He shared one screenshot with R&T of a threatening message from someone who appears to be angry on T-Pain's behalf.
"When he paints me as a fraud, that's when people get violent," he said. In fact, he said, he had just finished reworking their workflow with the help of a more business-oriented manager. The shop, he said, figured out its problem. It just took time, and, with T-Pain, apparently too much of it.
"I tried so hard to keep everybody happy because I'm a people pleaser. Yeah, it came off that I just kept finessing everybody. I wasn't trying to manipulate him, I was just trying to help him understand that I needed a little more time, that I had a little more money coming, just to be patient with me. And I know he was patient with me, but it wasn't long enough.
He repeated throughout the call, "I'm not a crook" and "I know I made a mistake." He knows that people are angry, and that he deserves criticism, but is struggling with how brutal people online have been. Grob said he doesn't expect his reputation to recover.
"I've invested my life savings into this business, and now there's nothing left."
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