Goodbye Rabbit.

7 years ago out of the blue I got a phone call from a South Carolina radio host and he had been watching vinwiki videos which we were just a couple months into making content so that was a huge shock to me that anybody of any note might have seen what we were doing but he in particular was very fond of a story that I had told about buying a Lamborghini Gallardo from kimy and especially about a way that I had used a joke to describe her Anatomy that she could take a break while hoola hooping and so his ask was that I might come on his radio show tell that story and a few more and obviously I'm bartering I said well would you mind then coming back down and telling some stories on the vinwiki channel and so I did that I recorded it remotely and it was a blast he was I mean just an obviously an amazing communicator and of course I'm talking about Robert Clifton Pitts and a few weeks later he returned the favor he came back down to vinwiki and at the time we were still filming in the big cold echoey warehouse and he and he sat down in the chair and he just wouldn't stop every story is the ones that have become so iconic with how he became rabbit how he became the eBay outlaw that honey poured over gravel voice and everything that is Rob rabbit pits over the years he's told dozens and dozens of stories and I think he's probably amassed between the short form cuts the long form videos and the syndication of the other platforms more than 200 million views out of the couple billion that we've had on vinwiki so more than 10% of what vinwiki is is Rob pittz and we became friends I know we became great friends with Travis Bell and many of the other vinwiki story tellers over the years and we shared not just the chance to come and swap stories but real friendship talking about car deals talking about life talking about love talking about the things that were good the things that were bad and it was always great to hear his voice on the other end of the phone or just show up somewhere with him and you know a couple things happened Rob changed vinwiki and vinwiki changed Rob and both very much for the better vinwiki changed because our storytelling grew up I cannot tell you how many people have come through my door and sat in this chair and just said I hope I could sound like rabbit and I hate to break it to them but they can't and I can't but every day we've gotten a little bit closer to the way that he builds the background the way that he delivers the plot the way that he ties the bow on at the end and the way he reveals every humorous aspect I mean there were so many times where I'm sitting there he's sitting here and he would go through something and I'd say hey you could say it this way and he'd love it and there were so many times that I told a story that he saw later on YouTube and he would call me say Ed you should have said this and I'm like man why are you not sitting on my shoulder the entire time and so vinwiki is what it is because of who rob is and the way that he could tell a story now when I got to know Rob what he really idolized what he really looked up to were these guys like Richard Rawlings and Chip fous and the characters of Automotive Television over the past couple of decades and that was the dream and what Rob did with the opportunity to have your attention and to be a steward of the audience's eyes was that he used that to become the very best version that he could Define for himself and about 3 years ago Rob called me and he said Ed I'm about to go shoot a pilot for a Netflix show I'm like Rob that's amazing what is it he said it wasn't called this but ultimately it became TexMex Motors and it was one of these normal buy a car fix a car sell a car flips they were buying cars out of Mexico fixing them in El Paso and then selling them around the country and into Texas in particular and he was going out there to shoot and he was kind of the car Hunter car buyer it was a perfect character for Rob because it was who rob really was that Hustler with the spiked hair and just everything you'd ever want him to be and the show ends up getting picked up Rob gets an even larger role in it it's extremely successful on Netflix it's trending for months on in now Netflix doesn't give you much in the way of analytics but it was a very very successful thing so much so that they immediately signed everybody up for a second season and last fall Rob went out to El Paso to shoot the beginning of TexMex Motors season 2 and that's going to air late in 2024 they're editing it now and he was talking about a few different plot lines and at the time I had just seen Rob at SEMA he had seen the Yakuza Diablo the gangster Diablo that we bought and imported out of Japan and he loved that plot line he's like I really want to find a way to work some of that in because spoiler alert not every inch of every story is exactly true on shows like that regardless of where they are aired and so he's like I want to find a Lambo that we could kind of like find rough and then paint and then have this big reveal and somebody's got to need a paint job for their Lamborghini they were not looking to purchase one and I gave him some names I said you know what Hannah with the ambulance that certainly needs needs a paint job the Jr garage guys have a rough Mercy right now that they'd like to have painted and so I said you know what sure I'm I here's some names here's some numbers but he never really called him and he went out there to shoot and it sounded like everything was going quite well now when he introduced the idea to me he's like well can we just paint your car these guys are amazing and I said Rob with all due respect and absolutely it is I don't really think that's the car that I want a Netflix quality paint job on and he understood that he said well you know if if you decide you want it it's all yours and I said okay well in January I got a phone call from one of the producers of texmax motors and he said Rob said we could paint your Diablo did he know okay so uh you know we make some phone calls and of course Rob is a very shrewd negotiator so after some back and forth we landed right smack dab in the middle on me doing exactly what he wanted and sending the Diablo out there to get painted orange and I was excited for it to be orange and anything was going to be better than its W so this seemed like a good win and I I wasn't worried about it I mean you can't hurt any of my cards cuz they've all been hurt plenty of times before or you're not going to make it any worse and everything can be fixed I didn't think much about it but I shot rob a text sometime in February and I said hey how's the show going how's to shoot you feeling good uh and how's to Diablo and he said you know what butd I'm not really doing that great and I said really you want to talk and immediately he called me and my world stopped and I'm not sure how much it's really restarted since that call in February and he told me that he struggled to sleep with a lot of stomach pain he' lost a lot of weight leading up to and during the show and so finally the crew convinced him to stop just popping Tums go into the ER where they did some x-rays they did a CT scan and ultimately they found a very large and something they classified as an inoperable tumor on his stomach and they said it was stage four stomach cancer so it hit me like a ton of bricks I said look man you mean I'm not to disparage the oncology talent in the El Paso area but why don't we try to get you a second opinion uh the same thing anybody would do like what can I do to help why don't you were just write into the script that I'm going to take over for you for a couple of weeks he still had three or four weeks left to shoot the show and they had told him at the time they thought he probably only had 3 months to live and I'm like well let's not use a third of our remaining life on make a Netflix show so let's get you the care that might help and he said you know what but I think they're probably right it's it's big it hurts and I I don't think it's going to get any better and I'm I'm loving doing this it's exactly where I want to be I want to finish it out I said well you say the word I'm on a plane I don't need anything out of it I am at their disposal to fill in for you if we get you there but as soon as it rra he headed back east and in the year prior he had developed a relationship with a lovely woman named Randy she had joined us to the trip to the UK for petrol headism and I'd gotten to know her and she is a PhD a proper doctor and Rob loved to say say that he had come out of a trailer park gotten a TV show and gotten engaged to a doctor and ultimately is married a doctor Rob has done a lot of amazing things in his life but a lot of things that were not likely outcomes and for that to happen I was so happy for both of them she got a good catch as well so she actually helped get him into a university health system to get a proper diagnosis and they concurred they said it's not something that could be cut out it's heavily vascularized it's right at the intersection of his stomach his esophagus it's metastasized to his liver they did more of an elaborate scan and found some evidence of it in his hip in his whole lymph system and they even saw some in his lung now for a voice that was heavily brought to you by Marboro Reds he had great lungs throughout the whole thing and he was very very proud to remind us all of that now they did some chemo a couple different kinds some immunotherapy and the thought was never that this was going to be a cure just going to give him some more time and Travis and I spent a lot of time with Rob over the last few months talking about life and about what he done how proud We were of him how appreciative we were of all the ways he's taught us to mentored us when he didn't know that's what he was doing and the impact that he's had on our lives certainly for the better and over those months he had some good days he had a lot of bad days and we did everything that we could to be there with him as many as often as we could and to celebrate with him just a few weeks ago we Braden the circle of people that knew about it a little bit and took a couple dozen people to South Carolina to have his 45th birthday celebration it was an amazing night filled with everything robed that you could possibly imagine and in all the best and the right bad ways and it was it was a great great time and I could tell he was hurting but I could tell he was happy to be there and and it meant the world to us to be there now shortly after that some of the internal bleeding got tougher to control and last week started to have some swelling and he went into the emergency room actually at a time when he was supposed to just go in to get a blood transfusion robs needed a lot of extra blood over the last few months and they immediately said you know look we're going to call in the doctor we're not doing the transfusion something bigger is happening and they did some x-rays another CT and they found a tear in his stomach and it was something because of the proximity of the tumor because of the size of it it wasn't something that could be surgically repaired in a way that he had any chance of surviving and so the decision was made very much with Rob's involvement and his consent was to move Rob into hospice on Thursday I went there immediately sat at his bedside for several hours talked to him talked to his mom they had finally gotten all his pain under control which was a huge blessing for everybody we prayed together Rob and I have had a lot of spiritual conversations over the last few months and um we talked through the nature of Salvation through Jesus the sin that he would always he was very fond of saying rob that I've done enough things in my life that it would make Ed boldly and defecate a him book not in so many words and you know we talked about how Jesus was enough for that too and and he knew that and I asked him if he believed it and he said he did and I'll tell you he couldn't have put my mind or his mother's mind more at ease when he said you know that almost makes the other side of this exciting and I uh it was for me too so I stayed there for a while and he was always surrounded by Friends by Family by the people that love him the people that knew now we had talked over the months about do we want to do a big thing bring the whole community in and not let this be the way that it gets revealed but ultimately he didn't want the condolences he didn't want to change it my my proudest thing in the whole thing was that he was so happy with the stories that were out there the Persona that he had created and how that was a true reflection of who rob rabbit Pitts was and and he was very happy with it to stay as it was and over the weekend surrounded by friends and family Rob went to be with the Lord and lost that six-month battle with stomach cancer I don't know what follows that I will say that tomorrow will be the first weekday in seven years that there will not be a new vinwiki video I hope that you'll spend the time watching his stuff continuing to enjoy his videos working on your own stories and thinking about what Rob meant to you and how he would tell your best automotive experiences because he'd be better than any of us had it there will be a funeral some kind of service the family's going to organize that and you are invited I'm going to put a link in the description of the video and I hope that you'll come I hope to see you there to continue to celebrate what Rob what rabbit what they both meant to us in their own very special ways but I know vinwiki will never be the same and I also know that you meant the world to him every time I was with Rob and somebody would come up with them and tell him about their favorite story their favorite thing he'd ever said it would brighten his day and uh and it should because he has impacted so many of you and me absolutely so you meant the world to him and he meant the world to me and I'm glad I'll see him on the other side