Ant Anstead: The Last Man on Earth Who Still Knows Which Way to Turn a Wrench
Ant Anstead and the Global Decline of the Hand-Built Dream
By Lila Moreau, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker
If you’ve opened any streaming platform in the last decade you’ve probably seen Ant Anstead, the British mechanic-poet who restores vintage metal while wearing the kind of tight T-shirt that makes viewers briefly forget the planet is on fire. From “For the Love of Cars” to “Wheeler Dealers” to “Celebrity IOU: Joyride,” Anstead has become a one-man export boom for the United Kingdom’s second-most-important commodity after sarcasm: nostalgia.
But let’s zoom out from the grease-stained glamour shots and ask the truly international question: Why does a nation that voluntarily left the world’s largest trading bloc still ship us a bloke in overalls who lovingly reassembles E-Types while murmuring “brilliant” at every turn of the spanner? And why, from Lagos to Los Angeles, do millions watch as if he were performing open-heart surgery on civilization itself?
Answer: Because the rest of us have stopped believing we can fix anything.
In Germany, where precision is a national religion, DIY car culture is retreating faster than the Bundeswehr in a summer exercise. In China, EV start-ups glue batteries shut with the same finality Apple uses on iPhones; the message is clear—“do not open, citizen.” Meanwhile, across the rusted belts of the American Midwest, shade-tree mechanics have been replaced by YouTube ads for debt consolidation. Enter Anstead, smiling like a man who knows the carburetor is the last honest thing left in the Anglosphere, and suddenly we’re all paying subscription fees to remember what competence felt like.
Anstead’s global reach is measurable: “Wheeler Dealers” airs in 220 territories, which is 15 more than the number of countries that still recognize Taiwan. Discovery+ lists his shows in 14 languages, including Hungarian, where the word for “socket wrench” doubles as slang for “fleeting hope.” Ratings spike whenever Anstead rescues an abandoned DeLorean, presumably because nothing screams “late-capitalist despair” like a stainless-steel time machine that never managed to escape 1982.
Naturally, his private life has been commodified with equal enthusiasm. The tabloid hydra that chews on Anglo-American celebrity couplings feasted for months on his marriage to, and subsequent divorce from, Christina Haack, a woman whose primary talent is flipping houses the way traders flip NFTs. Their relationship was marketed as a transatlantic merger—UK craftsmanship meets California real-estate optimism—until it performed exactly like most mergers: synergies promised, value extracted, workers (i.e., their emotional well-being) laid off. The gossip columns treated the split like Brexit in miniature, complete with custody battles over vintage Lamborghinis instead of fishing rights.
Yet Anstead persists, now dating Renée Zellweger, an actress whose entire career is a masterclass in convincing Americans the British are adorable rather than quietly planning to repossess the colonies. Together they form a soft-power couple capable of launching a thousand think-pieces about the “special relationship,” most of which ignore that the actual special relationship is between streaming services and our dwindling attention spans.
What does it all mean for the wider world? First, that craftsmanship has become a spectator sport, like bullfighting but with catalytic converters. Second, that nations increasingly outsource competence to charismatic individuals who look good in slow motion. And third, that while the climate burns and supply chains snap, we find solace in watching a man tighten bolts because at least something, somewhere, still fits.
So the next time you see Ant Anstead caress the camshaft of a 1963 Ferrari 250 GT, remember: you’re not just watching car porn. You’re witnessing the final, televised rites of an industrial civilization that can no longer repair itself but remains desperately in love with the idea that someone, somewhere, still can.
And if that doesn’t make you laugh—well, the joke’s already been welded shut.
