Photo credit: Jeff Topham, courtesy Corus Entertainment

By Erika Rolling

Entertainment

Lost Car Rescue Season 2 features Peace Country relics and restored WWII plane

Apr 20, 2023 | 12:53 PM

An extreme hobby turned into a job for B.C. native Matt Sager, and he is now the star of his own television show on the History Channel called Lost Car Rescue.

The show launched in February 2022 and is back for a second season. Sager and his team travel across Canada to Ontario and back to the Alberta Peace Country to look for lost cars and planes, with surprising finds along the way.

Everything GP had an exclusive interview with Sager before the launch of the first episode of Season 2 was made available to the public.

Heavily featured in the new season is the Peace Country, with the opening credits showing an aerial shot of the Dunvegan Bridge over the Peace River in the fall.

He says his home is on Vancouver Island in Mill Bay, but for his team and rescuing lost relics across the country, it takes a village.

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“We have a yard in Dawson Creek and over by Peace River. We have multiple trusted farmers and commercial people within Grande Prairie that help and support us in storing equipment and stuff when we are up in the region… it’s a great area.”

There’s a very short season for Sager to find forgotten vehicles from above, and he says now is the best time to do so.

“It’s a very small window, hugely around 25-35 days before the forest gets really, really thick and that’s the optimal time because we can see absolutely everything through the trees.. In the bramble, you know it’s the perfect window to hunt cars.”

He says he was hunting cars over the most recent Easter weekend in April, but the best time to recover vehicles is right before the winter season sets in.

Matt says his team travelled all around the region on the hunt in Fairview, Peace River, Hines Creek, Manning, Spirit River and beyond.

He says for people that live, work, and play in this area, there will be people featured in the show that many will recognize.

“There’s quite a few people we touch on, especially in Fairview. We stop by the Fairview Legion, we talk to quite a few locals in Fairview and we feature one of the most amazing still flying World War II aircrafts,” Sager touched on the restored Canso aircraft in Fairview which is featured in the show this season.

He says Alberta takes up three full episodes of finding lost treasures, as the province is a “mecca for the perfect recipe to produce what we need to have cars,” due to the many industries that take over our vast landscape.

Things found range from motorcycle side-carts, muscle cars, cars from the 1930s, and in particular, a favourite and milestone of Matt’s – a 1932 Ford Coupe, which he says “was probably the hardest vehicle I’ve ever recovered.”

He hopes this season will bridge the viewer gap between the older and newer generation of people.

“It’s much more than cars. It’s the freedom to have a job that isn’t just something you fear going to every day… but look at your watch and wish there was more, more sun in the day. I really hope it touches the younger demographic.”

Matt and the Lost Car Rescue team will be in Grande Prairie at the North Peace Bracket Racing Spring Spectacular Car Show and Swap Meet at Evergreen Park April 21-23.

Sager says he’ll be in and around town in the sky Thursday, on the lookout for more hidden treasures in the region prior to the car show over the weekend.