Yahoo Autos Remembering Automotive YouTube Superstar Robert 'Rabbit' Pitts
Rob “Rabbit” Pitts made it easy to like him. He had a natural sense of story and a voice dipped in Carolina honey; he made the used car business an adventure. For those of us who knew him only through YouTube or Netflix, the loss is tough. For those who knew him personally, the loss is brutal. Travis Bell, his friend and fellow VINwiki conversationalist, is also my friend. I asked Travis to share a few memories about Rabbit with Road & Track.
“A lot of people liked ‘Rabbit,” Travis confides. “But my friend was Rob. Rabbit was Rob amplified. Still genuine, still him, but louder and better on camera. And I never met anyone who was better on mic than Rob. Rabbit was Rob Pitts on steroids.”
Travis met Rob on the set of the car-obsessive YouTube channel VINwiki and for the past four years have been friends. “We’ve done everything together since that day,” says Travis. “He was my best adult friend.” That meant car shows and stopping in small towns with sketchy diners for meals. It meant adventures in media and adventures spelunking through junkyards. “He shoved three lifetimes into his short time here,” sighs Travis.
“Rob didn’t drink, called his mother every day, and was always a solid character,” Travis continues. “On his Netflix show ‘Tex-Mex Motors’ they never had to write anything for him. They’d just point him at a car and let him riff. It was amazing. All I could think was, ‘How did you pick that cherry trivia out of thin air.’”
One of the first people to recognize the growth of classic truck collecting, Rob was accumulating old Chevy pickups when most of us were still looking for ways to push them off cliffs. “He was way ahead of us on OBS,” Travis asserts. “That’s Rob-talk for Old Body Style trucks.”
While Rob built the family business, Pitts Truck Service, into a success, he didn’t start out in comfort. “He was a guy who grew up in a trailer park and wound up married to a doctor,” Travis concludes. “And that wedding was just a few months ago after his cancer diagnosis."
Rabbit was Mayberry virtues and mechanical passion. It was stomach cancer that took him. Robb Pitts grew up in Greenville, South Carolina was only 45 when he passed away on Sunday while in hospice care in his current hometown of Seneca, South Carolina.
He leaves behind his wife Dr. Randi Foraker, a black cat named Webster, many close friends, and millions of friends he never had a chance to meet.
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