Beware: Plum Floored Creations....

Jim, building em yourself isn't an option for an oil and gas investor who couldn't change his own oil. I've never been screwed like this, maybe a thousand here or there on a car deal. But not $40-50k on a build. The vast majority of people are very capable and strong-minded when it comes to their work. Then, there's Ben Grasso. My theory is that he's a mild sociopath.

He told me over and over for a year that everything was 'right on track', making progress, going great '(keep sending those checks)'. I found out later the photos he was sending me were fakes. One week before delivery of the finished project is when he decided to tell me there was a problem (oh was there). Very little had been done. The money was gone of course. He claimed it all went to the car. Never saw one receipt, ever. Then I got in touch with other guys. Found out I wasn't alone. Really good guys and Ben screwed them over without a second thought. Just like what he did to Shappy120. The story continued with lots of guys.

Even when I'd arranged to cut my losses and ship the car to a real builder after 3 years of madness, he couldn't do that correctly either. The way he packed everything, windshield was broken and seats were slashed with broken glass. He'd backed into the car with his truck too so it was damaged. It sat unsecured in the open for weeks. I could list things on and on that are indications of his sloppy and unacceptable 'work'. You couldn't make up a story of a more miserable car building experience. A profound case of incompetence.

Once my real builder got into it, we realized that even what he did do was foul. So, we had to reconnect the two cars and dig out bondo everywhere (see pic). I'll finally have a car in about 2 months and it will be what I wanted initially. Orange was not my color. Painting it that early was a mistake that I paid for additionally. Still not sure about the motor, someone told me that Ben used my motor in some Mopar 1000 mile race rally so I'm guessing that's true and he thrashed it. Will find out the true nature of that motor in about 2 weeks. In any event, I've been fortunately successful in business and the money losses to Ben won't do me in. I was careless in that I didn't check references. I don't do that anymore.

I knew him for 3 years, very negative vibe. Like I said, I was trying to get out of this thing but one day I knew I would get back here with all the details. One reason: His website still lists Mutant Bee and Dark Runner as 'his' customer builds. Which means he's still living in a delusion and trying to screw people, unless he specifically tells people that Muscle Rod Shop built those cars and he was the organizer but that's not what he told me, he said he built those in his shop. Most of us have too much to lose to go after a person like this, and Karl's right, we all have our misgivings. I just don't wanna see another person be misled and lose money on Ben.