Exposing City Classic Crooks: My Experience Working for City Classic Cars

As a freelance video editor, I am continuously on the lookout for new clients through various sources, and that is how I stumbled upon Sabra Johnson and his company City Classic Cars (CCC). Little did I know at the time how my involvement with one of the largest alleged con artists in Texas would start as an innocuous reply to a Craigslist ad.

Sabra and I hit it off immediately. He claimed to be a former pastor and self-made millionaire who had found success by becoming the largest and best auto-restoration shop in Texas. He needed an editor for an upcoming reality TV show he was producing, centered around his shops, custom car building, and classic renovations. Despite my minimal knowledge of automobiles, Sabra’s passion for breaking norms in a predominantly non-minority industry drew me in. His company stood out because he claimed; it wasn’t just about cars; it was about breaking barriers and embracing diversity. He would often hire ex-cons and felons into well-paid positions. An act I saw as giving meaningful second chances where your work and character mattered more than your past.

For my part, I felt that Sabra liked the fact that I had a small part in 2005’s The Dukes of Hazzard with Johnny Knoxville and Sean William Scott. The film was number one at the box office that opening weekend and although I felt far removed from the world of celebrity I could see the allure of that world still very much appealed to Sabra. I feel that even more than my reel is why he hired me on the spot.

The work started not without some issues. The first red flag was how terribly unorganized the company was. There was no brand book or any sort of process where projects move down a production pipeline from inception to completion to approval. But the biggest issue was that Sabra had over three years of documentary footage of his shops and ranch with no discernible organizational structure. There was no way for me to find footage of certain types of cars, people, or events without manually going through each file, a process that could take days just to find one clip.

So I spent the majority of my time in the office, organizing footage into an easily searchable database. Car year, make, and model in properly labeled folders; people, processes, and events. And then after work, I would do the actual edits at home. I had this drive in me to help him organize his media department, make it more efficient and productive, and more importantly self-sufficient so that when I left other editors and media professionals who came after me wouldn’t be freaked out like I was at the level of disorganization. Concerns I voiced to Sabra and management several times, but I quickly understood that whether through hubris, vanity, or a combination of both, you couldn’t tell Sabra what he didn’t know.

The reality show project stalled, so instead Sabra moved me to editing a series of DEI films that his company had contracted with SEMA, the Specialty Equipment Market Association, which is the largest automotive organization in the world for the secondary car parts aftermarket. They also host SEMA SHOW, the largest car convention in the US every year, in Las Vegas. Sabra rushed me through creating the episodes, and I quickly understood that his expectations were unrealistic as he would often expect me to have a finished product done in a day. But after the edit, there is audio cleanup, sound design, and color grade. You would be hard-pressed to have that done in a week.

Once the SEMA episodes were completed, I didn’t really have a clearly defined purpose at the company. The reality show was still on hold, so what was there for me to do in the interim? Sabra decided to have me create content for his social media accounts. Now, I have never aspired to be a social media content creator or TikTok editor. My passion is in storytelling and creating the best narrative to benefit my clients. So I told him I would have no problem creating content as long as certain professional standards were met, which meant a longer timeline for completed videos than just a day. Now, professionally I’m proud of the quality of videos I created for City Classic Cars despite the challenges. I was able to increase the social media engagement of their Facebook page, which got 3 to 5 million visitors per week, by 15% through the videos I created for them. 

However, my discomfort was growing. Light paychecks and a hostile work environment that clashed with my values would culminate in a confrontation during a Zoom meeting, where once again I tried to bring up organizational concerns only to have Sabra dismiss those concerns and hang up on me in the Zoom call. I immediately resigned. 

Yet, even my departure was complicated by the fact that in the process of returning the footage I always brought home with me to work on after hours, he tried to file felony theft charges against me until my lawyer intervened and stopped all of that nonsense. That’s when I realized that the person that I looked up to as giving people second chances was actually a bully. He hired ex-cons and felons not to empower them but to control them because if they had a disagreement with him or they didn’t do everything that he asked of them he could threaten them by filing a police report, whether they did anything wrong or not.

It wasn’t until after leaving CCC that the truth unraveled. In talking to former employees I realized the depth of the company’s abuses towards its employees but it wasn’t until a former colleague shared a video exposing CCC’s alleged consumer fraud, that I was left grappling with a profound sense of guilt that my work inadvertently contributed to a facade that masked the company’s darker realities. Sabra would often brag to me about how this person called because of a video I posted or they closed this sale after someone saw a video I had done. And knowing I was inadvertently part of a process that duped consumers sickens me, to be quite honest.

Reflecting on this turbulent journey, I am conflicted. The work I created, once a source of pride because of the problem-solving it took to overcome substantial challenges, now weighs heavy on my conscience. I was initially hesitant to revisit this period of negative interaction with them, but I felt compelled to share this story—a cautionary tale about the company in hopes that shedding light on the situation will afford me at least a small measure of redemption.

- Dremaceo Giles is a freelance editor and artist based in Houston, TX.

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