Cease and Desist
It isn’t always about burnouts, trophies, and shiny shit. It’s about the chaos too — and if you’ve ever been to Summernats, you know there’s plenty of that. Cars blow up, people do dumb things, make themselves look like a goose and before the smoke even clears, someone’s already made a meme about it.
That’s where this story starts.
A Facebook group where everyone was roasting the fails — the VL with the transmission that fireballed itself, the “give us some space” bloke, and a handful of other classic moments. For a laugh, I stacked them all into one image, adding each “character” as they popped up in the memes. Just a joke. Nothing serious.
And then came along Billy Holloway.
“…I was three cars back on the left-hand side and ran down with my fire extinguisher. I might be fat but I couldn’t let someone’s pride and joy [be] burnt to the ground...”
Billy didn’t stuff up. Quite the opposite. When a car caught fire, he jumped in — thongs on, ciggie in hand — and calmly put it out, saving the bloke’s ride. The internet loved it, and in the meme collage it looked like he was putting out the doomed VL. That twist sealed it.
Pretty soon, people were saying: “Billy rocks, this needs to be a shirt.”
I reached out to Billy and we made it happen.
then Lawyers Came Knocking
Not long after — about 6 hours after the tees went up — the fun police showed up in full force. Phone and inbox blew up with calls, emails, and proper letters, all in heavy lawyer-speak like “on behalf of the people featured in the images…”
Meanwhile, I’m thinking: “This isn’t Summernats protecting their IP…Who even is this? The VL bloke who went bang? The ‘give us some space’ fella? Or someone else who had a rough day?”
Seems the guys who’d become memes because of their own stuff-ups were the ones chasing us down.
Billy was different. No fuss, no drama. He’s a humble bloke — not chasing attention, he saw someone needed help and took action.
He chose Rise Above, a local ACT charity that supports families living with cancer. Every shirt sold sent cash their way. So, what started as a piss-take meme suddenly turned into something awesome.
To cool things down, the original meme shirt came down. In its place, we made a fresh version focused just on Billy — no legal headaches attached.
Here’s the kicker: Billy made it onto the official Summernats 38 treasure map artwork. From quietly putting out a fire with a ciggie in his mouth to being acknowledged by the event itself, he’s now part of Summernats history.
So what did we learn?
Chaos makes the best content.
Some folks try to fight memes with paperwork.
The real hero never even asked for the spotlight.
We sold some shirts, raised money for charity, and dodged a lawsuit. Not bad for something that started as “just a meme.”
