Footage of Mike Brewer has popped up on YouTube this week, in which he can be heard criticising Edd China for the way he left Wheeler Dealers.
In the video, filmed at the Klingberg Vintage Motor Car Festival in Connecticut, Brewer says Edd turned out to be ‘not gracious’.
“He did some very bad things,” Brewer said. “And when he did some very bad things it meant that Discovery channel just couldn’t work with him. So they gave him the option to leave, and he took it.”
“He wanted to go off and do another show anyway, and I’m waiting for his new show to appear. I think we all are,” he added.
Earlier this year Edd announced he was leaving Wheeler Dealers after 13 seasons on the show. Despite the move, the show was renewed for season 14, with former “For The Love of Cars” host Ant Anstead taking over spanner-spinning duties.
Brewer praised Anstead’s superior work ethic in the video, while also suggesting that Edd’s problem was that he let his newfound fame go to his head. “It’s much more back to where it used to be because Ant is a real mechanic,” Brewer said. “Edd became a TV star, rather than… Edd forgot his focus really on what he was there to do. He was a mechanic, and then he became a TV star.”
Brewer said that while Edd would moan and argue, eventually he’d get to work and the job would be done – but the issue was how long the process would take to get there.
According to Edd, his decision to leave Wheeler Dealers was due to the production company’s decision to ‘dumb down’ the very thing which made the show successful in the first place – in-depth coverage of the fixes performed on the cars in the workshop. Not only are these pieces rather difficult to film, but they’re also time-intensive and as a result more expensive.
This revelation angered fans, resulting in Brewer being on the receiving end of their venom – which even came in the form of death threats to him and other members of his family.
Brewer publicly countered China’s claims that Discovery planned to reduce the workshop aspect of the show in the upcoming season. “There’s no way on earth that anyone has ever suggested that the mechanical content of the show is going to be reduced,” Brewer said.
“Where that came from, I don’t know. It is not going to be reduced, Discovery channel are not going to change the format one iota.”
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