When Jeff Gordon and sponsor Pepsi Max teamed up to do ‘Test Drive’, a video showing Jeff Gordon pranking a sales person at a car dealership, there were many critics of its authenticity. One of the most vocal was writer and Deputy Editor with Jalopnik, Travis Okulski.
“The sales person was an actor and the guy that drove the car was a stunt driver not Jeff Gordon,” Okulski said. “I wrote three stories and made a couple of phone calls because it was one of those things where it was being passed off as true.”
“And it obviously wasn’t true,” Okulski continued. “It was a great ad and entertaining but it just wasn’t true.”
Given that criticism, Pepsi Max and Jeff Gordon decided to team up for Prank Number Two. So, in “Test Drive 2”, Jeff Gordon plays an ex-con taxi cab driver who took his fare for the day, Travis Okulski, for one wild ride trying to outrun the coppers who were hot on his trail.
“When you look at all the comments from the first video, I think that it was really the bloggers, the media, the fans, it was everybody really challenging us to go and do this because of their comments of saying, ‘Hey, Jeff wasn’t driving the car or this or that wasn’t real,’ ” Jeff Gordon said. “We wanted to go out there and show everybody how authentic and how real this can be.”
So, just how did Okulski feel when ‘convicted con’ taxi cab driver Jeff Gordon tried to outrun the law with him along for the ride?
“I thought I was going to die,” Okulski said. “I was really scared and was freaking out.”
“I tried at first to get out when the cab was stopped but the door was locked. That cab was a Chevy Caprice which is only sold to police fleets,” Okulski continued. “I figured it was bought at municipal auction and converted to a cab. So, I tried to get out of the cab and unbuckle my seat belt but that didn’t work.”
“Then I guess I tried to kick through the seat and knock the guy out,” Okulski said. “But then I figured that if the cab crashed, that would be bad thing to happen. So, I kept screaming and pleading but I tried to keep it polite too because I figured if I showed him some respect he might not kill me.”
“I didn’t want to end up tied up in his basement or something,” Okulski continued. “There’s only so long you can keep up screaming. So, then I tried to reason with him and then I just got quiet because I saw that wasn’t going to work.
“But I kept begging him to let me out.”
While Okulski can look back on the video now with a great sense of relief after having survived it, it is still difficult for him to see as he truly feared for his life.
“Obviously I don’t like watching the video very much because I’m too close to it,” Okulski said. “I find seeing myself terrified is not my best look. So, I’m not much of a fan of seeing myself frightened like that.”
“I understand why it’s funny but it’s just not something that I find entertaining I guess,” Okulski continued. “I’m being a good sport about it but I’m not like going home and watching it and thinking that’s really hilarious.”
Okulski admits that he really did not realize this was a prank until right at the very end when Gordon pulled the cab into a garage and the confetti flew.
“I was that terrified right up to the end,” Okulski said. “You look at it now and wonder how I would not know but in the moment, when you are there, it’s all very real.”
“Running from an actual State Police car is bad news, with sirens and all. It was so real and terrifying that there was no way you would think that was a prank,” Okulski continued “You watch Cops and Wildest Police Videos and that’s on it. This was the sort of thing that happens on those shows and there was no time to even think that someone was pranking me. I didn’t understand why anyone would want to prank me that much.”
“I figured it out when we pulled into the garage and that’s why you can see me laughing in the back,” Okulski said. “My day had just gotten exponentially better than it could have ever been. I only figured out it was Jeff Gordon when he walked around, opened the door and said he was Jeff Gordon.”
Okulski said that once he found out what was really going on that he was not mad at all, especially because he is a Jeff Gordon fan. And he enjoyed the face time with his favorite driver once the prank was revealed.
“It’s not often you get to meet your heroes and so it was pretty cool,” Okulski said “I hung out for another hour or so talking to Jeff and he took me for another ride when I wasn’t terrified.”
“He took me around the whole course which was actually wonderful because having a ride with one of the greatest drivers of our generation is not something that happens every day,” Okulski continued “I decided that I would be an idiot not to do that.”
“When I was riding in the car, I wasn’t thinking that he is a great driver but Jeff obviously is a fantastic driver,” Okulski said. “He was on the edge the whole time. He was flying and moving real good. I’ve always been very impressed with Jeff so it was great to get a ride with a race car driver.”
“I’m a motorsports fan for sure,” Okulski continued. “I raced go karts when I was a kid and have been into cars my whole life. I went to college, got an English degree and started writing about cars three years ago.”
“And I have the best job in the world and now I have a great story to tell.”
So, what does Okulski want Jeff Gordon and Pepsi Max fans to know now about ‘Test Drives 1 and 2’?
“It’s 100 percent real,” Okulski said of his wild ride. “It’s 100 percent terrifying.”
“But the first one is still not real.”
“We did it and we can now laugh,” Jeff Gordon said of the prank ride. “Travis can laugh about it and we can all enjoy the risk that paid off.”
