AS THE SUN SETS OVER THE LAS VEGAS STRIP and the lights of Sin City start to sparkle , Alex Taylor is riding in the backseat of a Chrysler 300 from the black car service Motor Trend hired to chauffeur her around the city . She ’ s heading back to Harry Reid International Airport after a long day at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway , where she was the co-host of Dodge ’ s Last Call as a part of Roadkill Nights Vegas . The live event is where Dodge unveiled the Challenger SRT Demon 170 , the final car in its line of
“ Last Call ” models that mark the end of its current V-8 muscle car era .
Tomorrow morning , Taylor will be back in Southern California to continue filming the next season of HOT ROD Garage , the Motor Trend Network show she co-hosts with Lucky Costa . It ’ s been a jam-packed few days , and Taylor really hasn ’ t had a moment to take it all in .
“ I got a call from Dodge a couple months ago asking if I ’ d be interested in doing something for their Roadkill Nights event in Las Vegas , which was new ,” Taylor says as she tells the backstory behind her first live event . “ Didn ’ t get a lot of details , but told them I ’ m going to do it . As it transpired , I figured out I was co-hosting what would be the Last Call for the Dodge Challenger , which was really cool once I realized what it was .
“ Even up until a couple hours before , because it was such a top-secret car , I just knew very little about it ,” she continues . “ It was like , ‘ There you go , throw you into the fire .’ I hadn ’ t done a live event before . They told me there would be a helicopter involved and we didn ’ t get a trial run . I was like , ‘ OK ... no pressure . That ’ s intense .’”
Taylor jumped into the experience whole-heartedly , arriving in Las Vegas on Sunday to film promo pieces before starting run-through of the event on Monday morning . Over the course of the evening ’ s live broadcast , Taylor and co-host Chris Jacobs interviewed Dodge executives and engineers , as well as celebrity guests like Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Jay Leno .
“ I accidentally called Jay Leno a ghost , so that ’ s a thing that will haunt me probably for the rest of my life ,” Taylor laughs . “ I went up and apologized to him after . ‘ Hey , you have no idea who I am . I owe you an apology .’”
Well after the helicopter delivered the Challenger SRT Demon 170 to the starting line to make an 8.90-second pass at just over 150 MPH and the production went offline , Taylor had a brief car ride from the track to the airport to look back on her first-ever live hosting gig . Always critical of herself , Taylor immediately started looking at what she could ’ ve done better .
“ I ’ m messaging [ David ] Freiburger and Nick [ Taylor , her boyfriend ] and everybody like , ‘ Did I mess that up ? Did I sound bad ? Did I sound stupid ? I felt like I sounded stupid . Did I sound stupid ?’ That was honestly a lot of what goes through my mind after I do something like that ,” Taylor admits .
“ Then I realized we ’ re building a land speed car for HOT ROD Garage tomorrow , so there are people visiting us on the show . So now I have to get ready for that ,” Taylor continues . “ Then I had lost my makeup and I knew I was going to be late for the shoot tomorrow because I have to go buy new stuff . It wasn ’ t one of those things where I got to sit there and reflect like , ‘ Wow , that was really cool .’ In the middle of it , I ’ m like , ‘ One , did I suck ? Two , am I going to be an internet meme ? Did I do something dumb ? Three , I ’ m going to be late for our shoot tomorrow .’ It ’ s not as glamorous as it probably seemed .”
After the rest of Taylor ’ s week unfolded – which included test runs in the HOT ROD Garage ’ 55 Plymouth Savoy and a long-form interview with ISKY Racing Cams founder Ed Iskenderian – she sat down with Drag Illustrated for an indepth conversation about her journey as a drag racer and media personality ,
TAYLOR LEARNED FROM AN EARLY AGE TO DEVELOP AN ARRAY OF SKILLS . SHE ’ S APPLIED THAT TO
HER ON-SCREEN CAREER , AS WELL AS HER CAREER AS A RACER ,
FABRICATOR , AND ALL-AROUND MECHANICAL TALENT .
90 | Drag Illustrated | DragIllustrated . com Issue 181