Sitcom stars and birthday-sharers Tim Allen and Kat Dennings are currently teamed up for the newest ABC comedy on the 2025 TV schedule, Shifting Gears, with fellow small-screen vets Seann William Scott and Daryl “Chill” Mitchell helping fill out the cast. But it’s perhaps not the human cast members that appeal most to the viewership demographic tuning in to see the Home Improvement alum back in car-restoration mode in primetime. [Grunts similarly to a car’s engine revving up.]
Allen’s Matt Parker owns his own car restoration shop in Shifting Gears — where a poster for the show hangs in the background — and the series premiere doesn’t hold back in showing off some of the vehicles being worked on, as well as the A+ ride (save for all the gunk on it) that Dennings’ Riley pulls up in. When Tim Allen talked to CinemaBlend about his big return to ABC, I asked if any of the cars that appear on the show are his own, and his answer did not disappoint. As he put it:
Sounds greedy, but all of them. We were gonna rent cars anyway and fill the shop up, and so the line producer came to my shop and he said, 'Can we use any of these?' I said, 'You can use any ones you want. I mean, you got to rent them someplace, might as well rent 'em ones around them from me. The question is, it's a process. You can't have a show of all restored cars. So we have to do this reverse-restoration thing that we're learning how to do. We're taking some of my brilliant. 100-point restorations and making them look old so we can take the old off slowly and make it look new.
How cool is that? At least in theory. Not only does Tim Allen get to show off his vast collection of restored classics, but he gets to make a little extra money by renting them off. A total win-win for him, I'd imagine, even if it sounds like a stressful situation to see those projects being dismanted, dirtied, and more for the sake of TV magic.
For instance, the car that Riley and her kids drove up in looked quite rough indeed, but was actually in pristine shape before its on-screen debut. As Allen explained:
We did it to my '71 GTO 455, which is very rare, and it's perfect. And it was real weird. It looks like a piece of crap in the opening scene when she drives in, and I'm going, 'Does that stuff come off?' Because I love that GTO. That took a long time to get it where it is, and that'll be her restoration of our relationship.
What better way for a Tim Allen character to re-forge a bond with his daughter than with a car restoration serving as a metaphor? Which sounds like a joke, but I legitimately can't think of one, unless we're talking about Buzz Lightyear, and I doubt we'll be getting any secret daughter reveals where Toy Story 5's storyline is concerned.
I really can't blame him for sounding sincerely worried after seeing the roughed-up verson of his GTO. And I bet it didn't take nearly as long to mess it up as it did to get it looking perfect to begin with.
Tim Allen talked about a totally different kind of classic ride we'll see on the show, and how all the work he put into was for naught once it was confirmed to appear on Shifting Gears.
Then we just did another Volvo '67 122S which has always been one of my project cars in my head, because it's kind of a weird little car. There's only so much you can do with Swedish performance cars; that's just the way it is, you know. It's a little four cylinder. However, I always thought it was duck ugly, but there's some kind of cool thing to it. So I've dropped it a little bit, put mini lights on it, and it's great, and then we had to take it all off and then make it look rusty and everything. And I'm still going, 'Does all that come off of there?'
No matter how many times he gets reassured that everything will turn out okay, Allen no doubt still makes sure each and every time that nobody makes the mistake of causing any permanent damage to his prized rides. I wonder if it's intimidating at all for the people responsible for faux-damaging the cars.
Tim Allen finished up his vehicular rundown by addressing a project that fans have seen him promoting in the real world, involving the conversion of a 1934 Ford Victoria. In his words:
Then we've got an electric hot rod I call The Vic, which we're halfway through in reality, and that'll be in the background. That's going to be a kickass car when he gets it. Always wondered what it looks like, a hot rod with electric motor. I feel like I'm crossing swords, and everybody's gonna hate me for this, but I did it.
Hopefully if the new show is big enough to hit a third season, the show will have Matt tackling some pop culture-friendly car restorations, such as the '60s Batmobile or Thomas Magnum's convertible.
While critics weren’t exactly glowing with Shifting Gears praise, that’s par for the course for Allen, whose TV shows and movies tend to succeed regardless of critical opinions. Let's not forget he's one of relatively few celebrities who had the biggest movie (The Santa Clause), the biggest TV show (Home Improvement), and the biggest book (Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man) all during the same week.
It’s still too early to tell how well the sitcom will do on ABC’s Wednesday night schedule, but the best way to keep it on the air is to watch new episodes each week either live or with a Hulu subscription.
