Guy Fieri Says His Friend Pranked Him by Swapping His Famous Red Camaro for a Lookalike Dupe

The 'Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives' host was tricked by a twin of his car that had the same small flaw as the original

NEED TO KNOW

• Guy Fieri was pranked by his car-building friend when he asked him to create a matching car to his Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives Camaro
• The builder tricked him by constructing an identical Camaro with the same small incongruency as the original
• Fieri recently revealed the set for his new show, Flavortown, which features his iconic car

Guy Fieri was tricked by a car caper featuring his signature red Camaro.

In the opening of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, Fieri shouts an introduction while driving a red ‘68 Chevrolet Camaro convertible. One time, per USA Today, his friend built him a matching car that he was convinced was the original.

The celebrity chef challenged his friend Rory Allen, who works at VP SpeedShop, to build him two identical cars for Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives: Revved Up in 2022.

“I built mirrored cars. They’re identical cars,” he said to USA Today.

“I challenged him, and we made a show about it, to make me two identical cars. So much so that I couldn’t tell what the original was,” Fieri told the outlet. 

But there was a catch.

“I knew one thing about my original car that nobody knew,” he said.

He told his family about a telltale scratch on the driver’s side of the windshield. 

“When you see that scratch, that’s the original car,” he said.

A group of 150 people voted on which car was the original after looking at them next to one another. Fieri said that 130 people voted for the A car, while only 20 voted for B. The winner, however, was the A car, taking Fieri and his family by surprise.

The car builders told him, “we knew about the scratch in the windshield. We swapped them in the cars.’”

“Totally duped me on my own show,” Fieri said.

After driving a ‘67 version of the car for the first two seasons of the show, Fieri switched to a new-and-improved version when the show changed production companies, he told USA Today.

“Believe it or not, there’s a few times we broke down at intersections,” Fieri said of the original car.

The new car, USA Today reports, has its own trailer that carries it across the U.S. alongside Fieri. 

The chef’s friends recently reacted to the set of his new show Flavortown, which features the red car parked in front of a diner and the Flavortown mayor’s office.

“All of us, over the years, have had an idea about how the mystical Flavortown would look like,” said Maneet Chauhan, who is a judge on the new show. “This place superseded my expectations. It’s beautiful, and I think I want to move over here.”

The new show will feature contestants competing in various food spots inspired by Fieri’s life.

“Everybody's going to get a chance to see this mythical place that I've talked about for all these years is really coming to life,” Fieri told PEOPLE in a recent interview at the South Beach Wine & Food Festival in February.

Fieri also revealed on Elvis Duran and the Morning Show a throwback story about another of his idiosyncrasies.

He said when he arrived at the Food Network with “spiky blonde hair and tattoos and jewelry,” it was a first for the network.

“I remember Bobby Flay said to me one time, he says, ‘So are you a chef or a jeweler?,’” he recalled in a clip.

Fieri got the last word, though, when he posed the same question to Flay at the South Beach Wine & Food Festival in February.

“Bobby holds this really cool luncheon all the chefs come to, and I see Bobby wearing a big gold chain,” Fieri said. “And I've never seen Bobby ever wear jewelry. And I said, I just had to say it. So I said, ‘Bobby, let me just ask a question. So now, are you a chef or are you a jeweler?’ He goes, ‘All right, I deserve that.’”

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