As the adage sort of goes, look before you Leepu — and that’s exactly what Steve “Pitbull” Trimboli did when a production company approached him to do a reality show about his Freeport, N.Y., custom-car garage. They introduced him online to Bangladesh-born custom-car designer Nizamuddin “Leepu” Awlia, he says, and, “I told him my thoughts, he told me his, and the next we know we’re doing a TV show.”
That would be “Leepu & Pitbull,” at 10 p.m. Tuesdays on History.
Trimboli, 46 — who owns two locations of Pit Bull Motors dealership and garage — had been wooed to do reality TV before, he says. But, “I make a nice living — I don’t want to jump on the first bandwagon. When (the production company) Raw TV contacted me, I Googled them and found they were a real company, very accomplished, and I liked how candid and straightforward they were.”
The London-based Raw had worked with the 46-year-old Leepu — the mononym by which the designer is known — on two programs in 2007 and 2008: “Bangla Bangers,” a pair of one-hour Discovery specials about his car-customizing business in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka; and “Chop Shop: London Garage,” a one-season sequel series that ran on Discovery overseas. Eccentric and comically animated, he would provide odd-couple counterpoint to the more laconic and organized Trimboli.
That dynamic impacted the way they and a group of mechanics, whom the producers hired for the show, handled things throughout the seven episodes.
In each episode, a Long Island car owner gets a humble junker transformed into a thoroughbred.
So, can two car customizers share a garage without driving each other crazy?
“Leepu flies by the seat of his pants,” says Trimboli, a married father of three. “No plans, no organization, no structure. When he came into town” — from Idaho, where Leepu lives with his wife and three children — “it was OK for a couple of days, and then we started working on things. I saw that he was like a little kid, without really understanding ramifications.
“It was a rough go,” he admits. “I had to adjust to his ways, as he did mine. The thing is, he’s a very likable guy. And as opposite as we are, we still had common ground” — a love of the cars they customized on the show, and a respect for the work.