212 - The Korean Evangelist (Bob Miller)
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Term
rear-wheel drive
In rear-wheel drive cars, the back wheels get the power from the engine, which helps them handle better when driving fast or turning. It's often found in sports cars.
Term
front-wheel drive
In front-wheel drive cars, the front wheels are responsible for both steering and moving the car. This setup is popular because it can save space and is often easier to handle.
Car
Dodge Caravan
The Dodge Caravan is a type of minivan made by Dodge. It's designed to carry families and their stuff, making it a popular choice for people with kids.
Car
Mercury Topaz
The Mercury Topaz is a small car that was made in the late 1980s. People often found it to be very slow, especially when the air conditioning was turned on, making it less enjoyable to drive.
Car
Ford Tempo
The Ford Tempo is a small car that Ford made in the 1980s and 1990s. It was designed to be affordable and useful for everyday driving.
Car
Buick Park Avenue
The Buick Park Avenue is a large, comfortable car that Buick made for many years. It's known for being a nice car to drive, especially for long trips.
Part
injector pump
An injector pump helps send fuel to the engine so it can run properly. If it fails, the car may not start or run well.
Car
Honda Civic
The Honda Civic is a small car that many people like because it's dependable and saves gas. It's also fun to drive, especially when going around corners, which is why it's often talked about in racing circles.
Term
five speed
A five-speed means the car has a manual gear system with five different speeds you can shift through. It gives you more control over how the car drives.
Car
Hyundai Elantra
The 2002 Hyundai Elantra is a small car that was popular for being inexpensive and reliable. It was one of the earlier models from Hyundai that started to gain a better reputation.
Car
Chevrolet Cavalier
The Chevrolet Cavalier is a small car that was made by Chevrolet for many years. It was known for being cheap and practical.
Car
Ford ZX2
The Ford ZX2 is a small car that was made by Ford. It was designed to look sporty and was popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Term
10 year/100,000 mile warranty
A 10 year/100,000 mile warranty means that if something goes wrong with the car, the company will fix it for free for up to ten years or until the car has been driven 100,000 miles. This makes buyers feel safer about their purchase.
Car
Ford Focus
The Ford Focus is a small car that many people enjoy driving because it's fun and easy to handle. It's also practical for everyday use.
Car
Ford Escort
The Ford Escort is a small car that was made for many years and was known for being affordable and practical for everyday use.
Term
clutch
A clutch helps you change gears in a car. If it's too small or weak, it can wear out quickly, especially in powerful cars.
Term
torquey
If an engine is described as torquey, it means it has a lot of power available at low speeds. This helps the car move quickly without needing to rev the engine high.
Term
manually operated transmission
A manually operated transmission is a type of car transmission where you have to change gears yourself using a stick and a pedal. It gives you more control over how the car drives.
Term
autocross
Autocross is a type of car racing where you drive through a course marked by cones. Each driver goes one at a time, and the goal is to complete the course as quickly as possible without hitting any cones.
Term
STF
STF is a category in autocross racing for certain types of cars that are modified but still can be used on the road. It allows drivers to compete in a fun and challenging way.
Concept
SCCA
The SCCA is a club for people who love cars and racing. They organize events where you can race your car and meet other car enthusiasts.
Car
Suzuki Swift
The Suzuki Swift is a small, budget-friendly car that is fun to drive, especially for activities like racing on closed courses.
Car
Toyota Corolla
The Toyota Corolla is a small car that many people buy because it's dependable and gets good gas mileage.
Car
Chevrolet Corvette
The Corvette is a fast sports car made by Chevrolet. It's known for being powerful and stylish, making it popular among car enthusiasts.
Car
Kia Forte
The Kia Forte is a compact car that looks good and has a lot of useful features. It's a great option for people who want a reliable car without spending too much money.
Term
foot pounds of torque
Foot pounds of torque measures how much twisting force an engine can produce. It's important because it affects how quickly a car can accelerate.
Term
four plus three transmission
A four plus three transmission has four regular gears and an extra two-speed option for better fuel economy when driving fast. It helps the car use less fuel on the highway.
Car
Chevrolet C10
The Chevrolet C10 is an older pickup truck that many people love for its strong build and good looks. It's often restored by fans who enjoy working on classic cars.
Car
Kia Rio
The Kia Rio is a small and affordable car that's great for getting around town. It's known for being reliable and has a lot of features for the price, making it a smart choice for many drivers.
Car
Mazda Miata
The Mazda Miata is a small sports car that has two seats and can have its roof taken off. People love it because it's really fun to drive, especially on winding roads.
Car
Bentley Bentayga
The Bentley Bentayga is a very expensive and luxurious SUV that has a lot of fancy features and a powerful engine. It's made for people who want the best of the best in a vehicle.
Car
Land Rover Range Rover
The Land Rover Range Rover is a fancy SUV that can go off-road and is very comfortable inside. It's popular among people who want a stylish vehicle that can handle rough terrain.
Car
Honda That Honda
The Honda That's is a small car made for city driving in Japan. It's easy to park and uses less gas, making it a practical choice for people who drive in busy areas.
Car
Honda Fit
LIVE
Hi, I'm Scott.
And I'm Seth.
And I'm Bob.
And we are Track Walking.
Tonight's...
Can I do the intro?
I want to do the intro.
Oh, shit.
Go.
Tonight, we have a winner of the Grassroots Motorsports Challenge, a multi-time autocross
Nationals shower-upper.
I would have slaughtered this intro, you're doing way better than I am.
Okay.
Multi-year, one lap of America driver, first one lap of America driver, we think to do
it in a Korean car.
He's like, he's, I would say internationally famous, but nobody knows who he is.
It's Bob Miller.
Hi, Bob.
Howdy, guys.
That's an intro right there.
I've been thinking about it all day.
I was like, we need Bob's high points.
It's like winning the challenge, high point, going to Nationals and like participating
in a middling thing, high point.
You did forget four years of Sunday Cup, you know, mediocrity.
I was going to say, if we're going to introduce him as a one lap of America competitor, I feel
like we need to introduce him as a Sunday Cup competitor.
As a roughly legal Sunday Cup competitor.
Hey, we were 100% legal at Laguna.
At one time, there was no dyno before Laguna.
I don't want to talk about that seven feet.
Oh, we're going to talk about it.
We're going to talk about it.
You don't have a say.
Oh, I know it.
I can tell you that there was about the 18 hours that I, that's all I thought about
when I wasn't driving.
It's like, oh, this is terrible.
That's the longest, longest drive home at that point.
So.
Well, Seth, you know, more about Bob's intricacies or oddities, however you want to talk about
them.
Where, where would you like to start?
Do we want to start with Yamaha three wheelers, Bob?
We don't go that far back.
I never owned a Yamaha three wheeler.
I had Yamaha dirt bikes.
My friends had three wheelers.
Yeah.
The first time I rode the three wheeler, I put it straight into a bush because
I couldn't turn it.
So motor sports goes way back to rural Indiana to the 80s.
Working on tractors and honey dippers with grandpa and dad.
So yeah, that we did all of our own maintenance and work and everything else for years.
So, you know, the whole mechanical thing was just kind of a, I gave and I was either going
to hate it or going to love it.
And apparently I loved it because I keep doing it.
So.
So how do you, how do you get from Yamaha dirt bikes to cars with your in rural Indiana?
I was driving on the street at 11 years old dad at 12 dad was teaching me how to take
a front wheel drive car into a corner to make the, the tail slide around.
When you say roads, when you say roads, what part of Indiana are we talking about
here?
Well, you're familiar with Putnam County.
It was the northern of Putnam County.
Oh, north part.
All right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Out around Bainbridge, Fillmore, that area.
I grew around there and I got to learn how to drive real-world drive cars on gravel
roads the correct way, which is sideways.
And front-wheel drive cars, dad taught me the finer points of, you know, car
control by yanking the emergency brake mid-corner.
As I say, what front-wheel drive cars were they?
Because I, because we're almost exactly the same age.
So we couldn't have been good.
They were not good.
They were the only front-wheel drive cars we owned.
We had bought my grandmother a Dodge caravan because she had bad knees.
It ended up being a two, two turbo automatic caravan.
Oh, my God, really?
Yes, yes.
She got a speeding ticket because we fixed the exhaust manifold that had a crack
and it replaced it and made it quiet again.
And so she wasn't able to drive off the sound anymore.
And she was going 75 and a 45.
The cop pulls her over.
Here's a 65, 70-year-old woman is like going just almost double the speed limit.
Like, man, you know, faster.
You're going, he's like, no, my son fixed the car and I can't hear the sounds anymore.
He's like, you're going 75.
Can you please slow it down a little bit and let her go with that?
And the other two cars we had were we had an 88 Mercury Topaz automatic.
If you've ever driven one of those, they have got to be the slowest vehicle
on the planet with the AC on.
Yeah, those are bad cars.
Yes, she vets with the AC on were worse.
Right.
And then the car that I actually drove all through high school
was an 84 Ford Tempo five speed.
That made the bestest jays in the school parking lot ever.
That's also a weird car.
Like there weren't very many manual tempos around.
No, no, they were not.
They were not very coming.
All I'm all I'm really hearing is that you were doomed from childhood.
Like, I mean, in all fairness, the car I bought to drive
when I turned 15, I bought a Buick Park Avenue.
350 diesel. That's not good.
Oh, come on.
That thing was a massive couch for a 16 year old guy who had no place else to go.
I mean, where else are you going to go make out with your girlfriend's?
Any field, literally any field.
I wasn't into the whole dirt and thing.
No, that's all right.
No. Yeah, you didn't not convince me of my statement just then.
So. No, yeah, they were they were terrible cars.
The the Park Ave blew an injector pump
literally a month before I got my license.
So back, you know, let's see, turn 16.
What year would that have been set?
What, 91? Yeah, yep.
Things things like AutoZone, Advance or Rally's,
they didn't exist, at least around us by that point yet.
So an ejector pump was about four hundred dollars.
I paid two hundred and fifty for the car
and four hundred dollars in nineteen ninety one on a 16 year old kid
that only works through the summer.
That's just not feasible.
So that's impossible.
Yeah, it was. It was impossible.
I mean, because you couldn't go anywhere but like that
after a car quest to get to get those things, right?
You know, it was just even the even the axles
that had to be placed on that stupid tempo,
which eight passengers, the long axles on that car,
you would eat the passenger axle after about 10,000 miles.
Now, maybe, maybe the Jays in the school parking lot
might have had some contributing factors to that,
but I'm just going to blame poor, poor craftsmanship.
I mean, it seems like Ford should have known
you were going to do that anyway.
I mean, it was a 175, 80 or 13 tire.
What else are you going to do with that thing and white and white walls?
Go off roading.
I mean, no, not really.
It was terrible.
That was the squirreliest car I've ever driven
on a gravel road.
It made an STS Civic seem stable in corners.
So here comes the SCCA talk to you.
Yeah, you're doing our transition for us at this point.
You're welcome.
Yeah, so I want to I want to skip ahead in time.
Bob goes to school to be a band director.
Bob sides school to be a director is a bad choice.
Teaching kids is not going to be a good, good thing
unless you want them taped up in a closet somewhere.
Right. So Bob does a good thing for society
and abandons that path,
works, blue collar Bob,
stories of exploding tires and giant machinery.
We could get into that or we could jump in
ahead to how Bob discovered motorsports as an adult.
Purely by accident.
I mean, the forums were still a thing back in the early 2000s.
And I got married in 2002 and decided that, you know,
having a regular cab Sonoma was not a smart thing for a family man.
You know, put kids in a car like that.
So we went shopping for a car and I bought my first Korean car.
2002 Elantra sedan, GLS car, five speed.
OK, we need to stop right now because in 2002.
Hyundai's were not I want to say we're not good,
but they were certainly not considered good by people who liked cars.
Correct. But people that were actually driving them
were realizing by that point that, you know, these are actually pretty good
because I cross shopped a lot of different stuff.
We were looking at, you know, something in that size range,
you know, the ZX2 at the time, the Cavaliers, they were all trash.
That would have been the 7th Gen Civic and those are garbage.
The little one seven D 17s that had no power, no torque, no nothing.
They were just horrible.
I mean, and wasn't the price point was terrible.
Wasn't the whole selling point of Hyundai back then, the warranty?
It was part of it.
Like, yeah, but like the 100 the 10 year 100,000 mile warranty,
like was the reason people bought those cars.
And the fact that they were about usually three to five grand cheaper
than their competitor.
So for me to buy a Civic at the same time,
the 7th Gen Civic sedan was like 16 grand and this car was 12, brand new.
You know, and I by this point, I'd been working
for the Honda dealership for about a year and change
and got tossed in a bunch of cars to drive all over the state,
dropping off small parts here and there and realize that these actually
aren't bad cars.
So when it's for a cross shop exact, there's just not a lot of good stuff
in that like price point, the Cavaliers were just
the the escort or focus or whatever happened to be.
But then they were just not good either, unless you got like an SVT.
But then you're talking about something that was out of my price point.
But then so it's like I'm offended because I bought a focus,
the X3, a two door focus during that time.
And I thought it was great.
Yeah, we thought a lot of things were great back then.
And we were definitely wrong.
It's OK. We were wrong coming from the guy who bought an Alantra.
But please keep going.
Hey, hey, I mean, that was a 35 mile per gallon car
that we put 180,000 miles on in 10 years.
So I can't complain about it.
I had no failures of that car.
It's weak point was a clutch.
I put I mean, that sounds like a failure.
Three clutches in that car.
It was they were they were small undersized.
And that era of Hyundai engines were torquey.
So they were they they made
a decent enough amount of power in places that you didn't worry about it.
So you would roll on the throttle hard, sometimes a little too hard.
And it would just slip because the, you know,
they put those little delay valves in the clutch to make, you know,
the ones that allow people that can't drive a man of transmission
to look like they can drive a man of transmission.
Yeah, they're terrible on clutches.
I realized that after the second clutch and went, hey, let's take this out.
It was much better after that.
You're not supposed to flat foot shift those on the street, either, by the way.
It didn't matter.
They were so slow and engaging.
It was just going to slip regardless of what you did.
Oh, it was terrible.
After that point, every car that they got,
I made sure that those little if it had that little spring and plate
in there, they were out the first thing just to get rid of them.
Yep. But no, we had it for 180,000 miles.
It was a great car, but I kept trying to turn it into something that it wasn't.
And Hyundai slash Kia hadn't gotten to the point that they were making
a car that was fitting my needs.
So I was trying to make something.
I replaced it with a 2010s Forte SX, which was the big two fours,
six speeds, and that was that was like the next evolutionary step forward.
It was a great autocross car.
It really was.
Um, STF was a class that they had for about six years.
It was so good.
Yeah, it was five years of nationals.
They had five completely different cars.
One. Yeah, I mean, you just it was a wide open class
that anything could win with the right option.
And my car was a solid mid packer with, you know, my mediocre driving
to go with it, and it was it was just good.
And the local events in that car were absolutely hilarious.
If I wasn't top 10 packs every single weekend in my own region of 100 plus people,
I did something wrong.
How did you how did you find autocross?
So anyway, back to the forums we all used to visit.
There were a couple of different launch reforms and one of them decided
there was wanted to do a group get together.
Some guys had a Fort Wayne, Detroit,
um, uh, Toronto area all came down to Fort Wayne to do an autocross at Grissom.
So they had met the night before and, uh, the wife and I went up on that
Sunday to go meet him at Grissom for an autocross.
I'm like, oh, well, we'll try this out and see what this is like.
This is like fast in the furious era, car meat,
two boys showing up to autocross.
It was like 10 of us that showed up.
And only eight of us actually competed because two of them were scared
to put their cars on because I might scratch it or I might get a dirty.
I'm like, you pansy, get out of the way.
They're precious Korean cars.
What?
Oh, yeah, they were just, they didn't matter what the car was.
We, there was always going to be those people, but no, we did that
autocross that first time and I went, oh, this was really, really cool.
Um, then that next spring, I started to do autocross with the
Indy region SCCA and then, uh, Kevin Butterfield, um, had started
something called, uh, winged warrior events to benefit Bradley children's
hospital and he would do, um, domestic versus imports.
And there are different classes depending on how they were.
And I, I did three of those, I think with them, uh, a couple with that car
and then my last woman in my old Suzuki Swift, but that got me into
autocrossing big time and I was like, oh, well, this is something
that I can do that's cheap and it doesn't cost a lot of money.
And I'm not really going to hurt the car all that much.
And just eating tires up, not a big deal.
And I get to go play race car driver for a while.
So I did autocross.
A lot for about 10 years straight.
Do you have a couple different regions you can run with during the
summer there or yeah, we've got.
So, um, Fort Wayne, INR, uh, up, uh, towards Chicago side, we
got Columbus and Indianapolis are all right here.
We got four regions in this area.
So you can run almost every weekend when it's warm up.
I literally can't run every weekend.
There's always from about April to, well, actually, I think
Columbus has got one in two weeks in November.
So yeah, they always do, they do, they do a February and a
November autocross is a cold, other ones.
They're, they're a little weird, but yeah.
So there's always something to do and it was only a day that I
was spending usually at a time and then I started doing the
two day events, which those are a little harder because the wife
wasn't all that excited about standing out that, you know,
Grissom, which is nothing but concrete pad and wind and rain
and just horrible heat most of the summer times.
So I don't know why people don't want to just stand around
outside for that.
It's just something wrong with that.
I mean, I do, but yeah, Texas though, we except I've
been to Grissom like there's Grissom is its own special
suffering when it's like really, really windy and yeah.
We have been there where the rain was literally coming in at
a 90 degree angle to the surface.
It was just like the wind was blowing like 50 miles an hour
and the storm was coming in.
The rain was going sideways.
You didn't matter what you did with an umbrella.
You got soaked and there was just no way around it.
And 15 minutes later, it was back to 90 degrees and 150%
humidity and we were all dying again.
So this wasn't enough fun that you wanted to do.
That's a couple of times you wanted to step up and do like why?
Why?
Why does anybody make that step?
Why did you make that step to deciding you want to do that?
Well, I was playing serious autocrosser, serious business
autocrosser and I decided that, you know, well, doing national
events, doing national tours and doing nationals, that's what you do.
STF came out and I decided that sounded like a lot of fun.
I co-drove with Brian Harmer in his old Corolla that very first year
actually made the deal for my forte while I was in Topeka.
It was a use, it had been sitting on a used car lot for six months.
It was sitting in Troy, Ohio, which is home of one of Honda's
largest warehouses and their transmission manufacturing facility.
At a GM dealership and it was a manual transmission Kia sitting on a lot.
I can see where nobody would want that.
Yeah, they had that thing marked down.
It had 18,000 miles on it.
It was two years old.
No, it had 14,000 miles on it.
It was two years old and they sold it from like 10 grand.
They're like, just come get this thing at this point.
Like, hey, you want to trade in my lunch or fine?
We'll give you two grand for that thing. Great. Yes, I won.
So we did that and that became my STF car because it was the big block car
that had torque and mid range, which for autocross was good.
And second gear on it in stock form was 68 miles an hour.
So you could do almost any good national level course in second gear
and not really worry about running out of gear most of the time.
And then I realized that the car was actually fast enough
that I was running out of gear.
So then I got it tuned and then it would run 74 miles an hour
in second year. Like God. Yeah.
No, that was that was a good car.
But I bought the Corvette and went
decided that I should have a Corvette and the wife was like,
you can't have four cars.
So what I'm going to go when we're getting rid of the truck.
So the Forte went and I missed that car for for many, many years.
I don't anymore because I have the better replacement.
But but you bought like the worst Corvette.
No, no, no, no.
The worst Corvette would have been 85.
OK, 85 would have been the worst.
This was an 88 at least had the operating suspension and brakes to it.
So it had the correct geometry.
Huh? Is that the C3? That's a C4.
C4. Yeah.
So 84 was the terrible crossfire,
but it had the super stiff springs and big sway bar.
So they handled really well. Right.
85. But yeah, I mean, it yeah.
You just never don't just don't lift.
I mean, it's kind of like a Sunday cup car. Just don't lift. It's fine.
But 85, they softened everything up and went to the TPI.
It gave a little bit more power, but they screwed the suspension up.
And then by 88, they had upgraded everything suspension wise.
The TPI was making three hundred and forty five foot pounds of torque
because it didn't make horsepower.
And then it still had that was the last year of the four plus three transmission,
which was basically a T10, a super T10,
with a dugmash two speed overdrive behind it.
That was such a weird choice for a transmission.
Yeah, it really was.
If you drove as a four speed and then just use the overdrive as a fifth,
it worked actually pretty well. Right.
But if you actually tried to use the other miscellaneous gears,
it got funky really because it's like the gear ratios got really weird.
It's like driving a semi at that point.
Yeah, but you don't know which gear it's like you would be like fourth,
but then it would be like third three high would be like up from that.
No, this is weird. So yeah.
What what was it about autocross and competing
that made you keep wanting to do it?
I mean, honestly, it was a cost of entry was was a lot of it.
We were and we still are very frugal at times.
So we're always trying to find a way to do the fun things without costing an arm and a leg
because our our goal by the time we realized we weren't having kids,
we wanted to retire early.
We're going to go enjoy our life without working before we got too old to actually enjoy it.
So we we do fun things,
but we try to find a way to do it cheaply.
And autocross was that easy button.
You know, I I would I volunteered for years as our tech chief in the Indy region,
you know, so I would go for a weekend across the 20 bucks for the entire weekend.
So tires would last an entire season of autocross
if you weren't trying to be national competitive.
And what I would do is I would use last season's tires up through about June.
And then I buy a fresh set and then take that that mostly fresh set with me to nationals.
So I could make a set of tires last a full year out of it.
So and it's not like brakes were a thing for autocross.
You don't use them enough to worry about it.
And yeah, because then when you go down that rabbit hole,
I want to be competitive and you start spending, you know,
1,500 bucks on suspension and then you decided to do, oh,
well, we need a different set of, you know, springs for these.
And now I got to get them revalved.
And I spent another $1,500.
And it's like, how did I just spend five grand on an autocross car?
And I really haven't bought anything.
But but the the original thing it got me in was and kept me in for a long time.
Was it was it was inexpensive.
It was good competition in the region for a very long time.
It's had a lot of really, really good competitors.
And I just made some good friends that, you know, it was forced hanging out for the weekends.
So did you know about track stuff?
I mean, yes, I had gone and flagged back when IRP was still doing road
course stuff. So I knew about it.
But it was always, you know, that's a car that's got to be
caged and logbooked and you've got to have your special license
to do those kinds of things.
And so I didn't really know about HPDE kind of things.
And of course, time attack wasn't really that big yet.
So I didn't really know anything about it until around 20.
15 2016.
OK. Finally got my taste of that.
I went and Andy got back into Putnam Park again.
They had been banned for a long time.
But I think there's a long there's lots of stories in there.
But they started doing that.
I'm like, this is this is a lot of fun.
I can take my actual streetcar and go do this kind of thing.
And it's not such a big deal.
And that kind of takes a little bit of the fun away from the autocross at that point.
It's like, I mean, I can go 60 miles an hour and dodge cones
or I can do like 110 going into turn one.
But just a little difference there.
You know, it's a different thing.
It's a different feel.
So yeah, that got me started on that path.
Yeah. And then, of course, I'd known about OneLab for several years.
And Tim had dangled a carrot in front of me in 2017.
Yeah, but I had bought the C10 that year.
So that was that was out, unfortunately.
So 2018, I did that.
Met the wonderful people that I'm here on this podcast with.
And I was broken forever.
Oh, 18 was your first year, too?
Yeah. Yeah.
And forgotten about that.
Yeah, it was.
Yeah, there's something about this.
I mean, I don't know what do you say about it?
You know what I mean?
It's it's a ridiculous waste of money that we just
can't wait to do again the next time around.
Well, that was that was going to be my question with with all the autocross stuff
with saving money and trying to budget and do all that stuff like the OneLab
is one of those events when you put down the number of laps per dollar spent.
It's a bad time.
That's not how I do the math for OneLab.
I understand.
So like what so so why the OneLab when you approach
autocross the way that you do?
Well, but even OneLab was honestly done from a cost conscious effort.
2018, there was three of us sharing Tim's car.
You know, the entry fees were a bit lower than so, you know, it was a thousand
dollar entry and then we were splitting gas and hotels.
So it wasn't that bad.
Tim had taken care of car prep, be taken care of, you know,
the tires, that kind of thing.
So that wasn't something we had to worry about.
And so, yeah, it made it a little bit easier kind of to get your foot in the door
when you had three people to split it with.
And it became one of those things of I know this is expensive
and I know I can't do it every year, but it's something that it's worth doing.
It's worth spending that money for.
And that's that's.
Yeah, that was how I justified it to myself.
I think for the most part was and then even even when I built the Rio to do it,
I mean, the Rio by the time we took it in twenty.
Two was our first was we did twenty two, twenty three, right?
So, yeah, yeah, we took it in twenty two.
My total investment in that car, including all the tires I had burned up
by that point was right at seven grand, including car purchase.
That was suspension, exhaust intake, upgrades, everything was seven grand.
And, you know, a set of tires for the two or five fifty fifties
are not expensive, six hundred bucks.
It's just a tires and it's a light enough car.
I can get a full season.
Hell, I got three seasons of rear brakes out of that car.
I got almost two full seasons out of the Southern G Lock R12.
So do you still justify your love of Korean cars as a cost thing?
No, not anymore.
Not not what the ones that I have now.
Yes. Yes.
But the older ones, yeah, it was a cost.
It was part of it was cost.
Part of it was the the.
I has to say to say wow factor, but more of the what the fuck factor.
When you go out and brawl time cars that you should not be raw timing
and you just see the look on their face of.
Well, and then you hear the chooses.
Oh, well, you know, my Corvette was too big for this course.
This must have been a me on, of course.
No, it wasn't. You're just bad at this.
It's OK that that was that was that was a lot of the draw for me because.
I don't do things everybody else does.
I'd like to do the weird thing.
It's fun because people ask me, you know, what did you do to this thing?
Not much.
And the two I have now is actually pure love, honestly, at this point.
The Rio has proven itself to me so many times.
It's just.
We drove.
Two thousand miles home with the CV axle that was ready to fall out.
Don't tell that yet.
That's part of the part of the but that the crescendo story.
But that's just one of the things.
I mean, this car just it just loves to be driven.
It loves to be beat.
It loves to have fun.
And it's.
It's endearing at this point to me.
And I would have never thought of, you know, thinking about
a little Korean shipbox like that is this might be my forever car
because I don't want to get rid of it.
Shit. Mixer.
Shit. Mixer.
Damn it, Brock.
So tell what year is your
is the real to 13 to 2013.
Kia Rio SX SX manual.
What an only year that happened.
What? Why?
What is the SX?
I just want you to like I want to make this into a Korean car
podcast tonight.
Oh, boy.
What is in that era?
The three trim levels for most all the all the key is where
EX, LX and SX.
EX and LX were your base base models.
One of them had, you know, manual windows.
One of them gave you power windows.
And then the SX was all the options, including push button
start so people like the KIA boys can't go stealing it.
Navigation, those kinds of things.
It had navigation in 2013.
Oh, yeah, I've used it.
And it's I mean, while it's super cheesy,
look at the little graphics because they're hilarious.
The little little burger signs for restaurants.
I mean, it's hilarious.
It's definitely not modern.
I can tell you that, but it's up to date for the most part.
And it works well as long as you can get your finger to push it
in just the right spot because it's old.
No, it was that was it.
It was top line, you know, power windows, door locks,
keyless entry, push button start, Bluetooth, you know,
all that fun stuff.
And the only year they gave it to us was in 2013 for those cars.
You got 400 and that was it.
Then they took the manual away from the top trim.
Yes, you could only get them in automatic,
which the automatic gear ratios are really actually way, way better
if it didn't have a torque converter.
Yeah, but yeah, honestly, I've driven this car
for thousands of miles and I didn't realize it was that fancy.
I mean, it's it's it's it's bougie.
That's it's it's much of a scathing
slam on that car and drove it for a round.
I didn't realize this was as good as these get.
Just I'm just saying, so how did you
how did you end up doing good life time attack stuff?
Like you've gone autocross, you did a couple of track days,
you did one lap, well, my good, my good friend, Scott and Becky,
needed somebody to tow their Miata down to NOLA
in November of 2020.
Oh, I remember that.
Yep. And and yeah, you were there, actually.
And I had another friend who you had to RV.
And I'm like, you know what?
Why don't we just grab your RV?
Let's tow Scott and Becky's car down.
They can drive my tip around, which was going to be my 2021 one lap car.
They can drive it down and they can use that as they want.
I'll drive it while we get there.
Well, I'll volunteer, work, read, do whatever.
It'll be fun.
And Pete said, yeah, dude, yeah, just talk to Jubey.
He'll he'll always say yes.
I'm like, OK, I don't know who Jubey is.
But this guy seems pretty cool.
So all right, let's do this.
Went to NOLA did the NOLA thing and went, holy crap, these people are awesome.
That whole idea behind.
Gridline, if at that era, especially, was just it was fun.
It was about fun.
You know, I mean, yes, there's always going to be people who are
you know, about serious going fast and this and that.
But the vibe was a familiar, happy.
Everybody's welcome kind of feeling to it.
No, that was no, it was so good.
It was so good.
They had the drifting competition on the cart track.
The team drifting competition on the.
Cart track, they had every morning and every night they had hundreds
of electrical trucks that were parked at the way far into the paddock
because this paddock is way bigger than you think it is.
Yes, because that was right after the the hurricane relief that was happening.
And there were fire ants and mosquitoes
and all the things that wanted to bite you.
And it was amazing.
It was amazing. That was a that was a great weekend.
It was the first time my daughter came to a track weekend
and she would have been 14 or 15.
No, no, don't say the words.
What her age was, because then we can't tell the other part of that story.
OK, well, I mean, it matters because she's like she's never
she might have started driver's training.
I don't think she'd even started driver's training at that point.
So she'd never driven a car before.
And but she'd been racing bikes by this point.
She'd been racing bikes for a couple of years by this point,
but she'd never driven a car before.
She'd clearly never been in a car on a racetrack before.
And we decide we're going to send her out
riding passenger seat in Bob's car, which probably there were rules
about things, but whatever she had a helmet on, it was fine.
Yeah. And this is back when you could do that stuff.
And so we sent her out for a session with Bob in the Tiberon.
Describe that, Bob.
You know, of course, what's going through my mind the entire session is
don't crash, you're going to kill his daughter, you'll die.
That's going to be terrible.
So but still, I'm driving and I think I'm doing decent.
You know, I mean, I haven't had a ton of track time by this point in my life,
but I have had enough and no, it's not a hard track.
I mean, really, it's there's a couple of spots that, you know, kind of catch up.
I absolutely love this on the backside.
That was just so much fun.
That in the Tiberon, it was just flat because the Tiberon was on two fifty
fives and coilovers and it just didn't care.
It's true. But yeah.
But yeah, so it was a fun thing.
I'm doing well.
And as we're coming back in on the cool down lap,
I look over to her and I said, oh, how was it?
She's like, huh?
Really? OK.
Unimpressed.
I just like, OK, well, that's that's fine.
I mean, she's, you know, she's Seth's daughter.
I'm sure he's probably done stupid things, so it's fine.
And I made some comment about, you know, how I did or something.
And then she was very, very quiet about it.
She didn't want to hurt my feelings
to tell me how bad I was driving a 14 year old girl
who's not actually honestly driven a car yet
didn't want to tell me how poorly I was driving on track.
So did she say anything to you before she said to me what she said to me?
Not really. She was very noncommittal for that way.
So they get back in and she opens the door.
She gets out, takes a helmet off and I said, how was it?
And she looks at me and she goes, he's early on the brakes.
First thing she said to me about Bob driving on track
about ever being on a racetrack is she's like, he's early on the brakes.
And I was like, all right, that's judgmental, but probably fair.
Definitely fair.
I mean, yes, but also brutal coming from a 14 year old girl.
Yes. Yeah.
So I mean, honestly, it doesn't bother me and it didn't bother me.
It was kind of funny, but it's like it didn't bother me.
I don't have that ego that a lot of people
that drive race cars seem to have like, I don't care.
I'm having fun.
And, you know, as long as we didn't hurt anybody
and I still come off grinning, I don't give a crap anymore.
So and she did have fun.
She enjoyed it like she she has since gone out and ridden with other people on track.
I probably will will someday
credit you with the fact that she doesn't have a huge desire to drive cars.
She's like cars are OK.
But.
Great, I ruined you think I ruined your daughter.
That's that's fantastic.
If you keep her from wanting to drive cars, I have nothing but thanks for you for that.
I was about to say
man deserves a medal at that point. Absolutely.
So you crack it's cheaper.
Yeah, so you do grid life for a while.
Yep.
And.
Then you decide to do.
The epic grid life road trip.
Yes.
Something I wanted to do for a while.
And this is what we wanted to talk to you about.
So we were whatever, like 40 minutes into this.
And now we get to where we want to talk about.
It's fine.
Now, when grid life did Laguna in twenty two, was that the first year?
I think it was I was just.
Giddy, because, you know, by this point, I've I've done a couple of years
of of, you know, volunteers with grid life and, you know,
it made some really good friends and, you know,
the people who were putting it on like this is something I could go volunteer
to go do one day.
Not not right then, but soon.
And I just.
Yeah, Laguna Seca is one of those places that people are age
grew up with PlayStation 2's playing Gran Turismo
and this wild wicked corkscrew that, you know, is this weird track
that is just looks awesome.
And then you find out it's real and you go, no, shit, that looks awesome.
But it's clear across the country from you.
How far is it from your house?
It was twenty three hundred and sixty two miles each way.
OK, so it's a long way.
It's it's a little bit. Yeah. OK.
So twenty four, I was wanting to.
I just could not get everything together in time to do so.
I was the same year we bought our property in Florida and did some other stuff.
So I kind of had used up all my time for that point for for vacation wise.
So I just couldn't couldn't make it work.
And I decided that twenty five, this will be the year I go to Laguna
and we are driving the Rio out.
Don't know who we is yet, but we are going to do it.
Full disclosure, Bob invited me and as as the bed friend that I am.
Couldn't be bothered.
Well, yeah, I couldn't be bothered.
But the time like Bob was serious about it.
Bob was like, we're going to we're going to plan this early
like we know when it's going to be, I'm going to set this up.
And I was like, I can't commit that as far in advance as you need me to commit to.
I have just other family stuff that might pop up
and Laguna can't supersede that stuff for me and I can't commit to it.
And so I was a bad friend and told him now.
So I reached out, I had been talking with one of my.
Team mates slash really good friends that we did the challenge with.
And Chris break, he's lived down in Florida now.
He's he's part of the reason why we're moving.
He got us hooked on the area and and.
We've done some vacation with him.
We went to Hong Kong with him in 2019.
So we know how to spend time together.
And he definitely knows how to party and.
He's like, you know what, as long as there's no hurricanes.
We're good because that's the beginning of hurricane season.
Like, OK, no hurricanes were good.
Awesome. So we just started playing it.
About a month and a half before I decided, you know what,
I just need to just go ahead and just do the whole tire trailer thing
because the car is not big enough to carry all four tires.
All the stuff we need to bring with this to people clear across country
at any kind of a comfortable manner whatsoever.
Because the Rio has sexy hips.
So it's not like a fit with this big square box.
It doesn't quite have the room inside that a fit does.
You can't just pack it full like that.
And so we did the tire trailer thing.
I bought a tire trailer, got it ready.
I did a test run.
Was it a few weeks before we went up to
Audubon and did some laps in a car.
And we just on.
Tuesday morning at 3 a.m.
Before Laguna, we packed.
We were already packed.
We just hopped up in the car and we took off.
In fact, a couple of morons for some relevance.
This is like this is an epic road trip with two friends
to drive all the way across the country to do laps at Laguna Seca.
Which sounds like something a couple dudes in their late 20s would do.
Yes. Yes.
I'm I turn 50 here in about a month and change.
Yeah, Chris is turning 40.
So we're not we're not kids anymore.
But we had alter it until your motives as well.
We had planned it so that we ended up in Vegas on Wednesday.
Fairly early.
We had a free comp room and a hundred dollar gift certificate
for food and some miscellaneous stuff.
So we got into Vegas at about three thirty four o'clock.
Free Valley parking.
So the Rio with his tire trailer was parked out front of Harris.
And its own special little combed off area literally at the entrance
because no valet is going to go take a manual transmission car
with a trailer with a trailer on it.
So this thing is sitting out there all night with
and they had literally put cones around it so that it had its spot.
This is where it's going.
Well, while they stuff the Aston Martin's over in the corner
and you know that the Bentley went over here like OK, this is this is hilarious.
So we we did Vegas things.
We played some games.
We went to Guy Fieri's burger joint and had a hundred and thirty dollar meal
that cost us nothing and then had some drinks in the whatever
the high roller of the big Ferris wheel thing they have there.
And in the middle of Vegas did the open bar version of that one.
So we're sitting there drinking all night long and we get we get back to the room.
It's like one o'clock in the morning and I'm looking out the window
looking right down on the valet's area and there is the Rio still cordoned off
in that little section by itself and here's an Aston Martin.
Literally a beautiful bright white Aston Martin stuck over in a corner.
Like, really, that that's how you do things.
I'm not arguing, but it's a thing I think they wanted to keep your car out.
So make it easier for someone to steal and try to try to get it going.
That may be true, too.
But Parked there.
That's probably the safest place you could have parked it.
You know how many cameras are on that area of that building at that point?
They probably don't care if it's eventually found.
They just want it to drive away.
But so, you know, so we we had that.
That was fun. That was a good time.
Got to Laguna.
I helped park trailers to make up the last little bit of money
that I didn't earn by by working through the summer for different events.
And Friday went out for that first session in the morning.
You know, by this point, I have but three, four hundred laps easy,
you know, on the games thinking this gets me some familiarity with it.
I set it up with Rio gearing and real power and real weight.
Try to get myself as close as I could to see what what I needed to do for certain things.
So I knew in certain places that if any of the physics are halfway
close on the games that I need to be doing X, Y and Z here or by the time
I get there, I'm screwed turn five had to be at least 60 miles an hour.
Because if not, I'd never make it over 70 miles an hour.
Before I got to the corkscrew, because that's just nothing but an uphill slog
and it's the wrong part of the part of the gear range for that car.
Trying to find out I could easily take it at 65 to 70.
And I was like, whoa.
So that first session, I was
on brand new tires that had not even had the mold released worn off of them yet.
I never said I was a smart man.
I was going to say that's a choice.
It was a choice.
It was one of those like I I had planned on when we got there Thursday
with Pophamon, Chris would have drove it over to the town
to get some miscellaneous stuff that we needed to pick up.
Mostly a big bottle of rum and something else.
But anyway, the necessities.
Yeah, the necessity.
And that was that was the original plan.
Well, we got there a little bit later than I anticipated.
The guy driving is there, missed the correct turn.
So we ended up on some little typical California,
northern California two lane up through the little mountains,
which was absolutely awesome, but it's not fast.
But she was a tire trailer behind you bouncing around on the road.
So we got a little later.
So we didn't actually switch over.
Chris ran over to the store on on the tires we drove out on.
And I never got to do the original idea.
So I'm already scared
because this is a big boy track that has big boy consequences.
And that drop, I don't know what that's going to look like.
I know what road to bird Atlanta looks like.
And that's scary.
That first time coming over the crest, you see nothing.
Then you see the top of a building that you realize four stories tall
and you still see the road and you keep going, going, going.
And I just I kept thinking this was going to be terrifying like that
after the first drop into the corkscrew.
It's like, oh, just this part isn't that scary at all.
This is actually kind of fun.
So of course, I didn't take the same dueling route
across the gravel hopping across either.
So maybe that was more fun.
I don't know.
You just need to break later.
I thought we've we've been through this.
I have break a little too.
I know it's breaking too early.
But no, I well, I also remember that I had to drive this car
twenty almost four hundred miles home still.
So I know that I hit my my best,
best lap.
I can't remember if it's the first session or second session
of the entire weekend.
Don't know how it happened.
But I know that when I went into five and five is a hard left
hander where you're compressing in the middle of it.
It's very jarring and I hit it hard enough to shift
the cradle enough on the car to make the steering wheel off center.
And I could not from that point forward push the car
that hard through there.
I just couldn't I just couldn't make myself do it.
I was trying to make up for that everywhere else instead,
because like I have to drive this home.
I have to drive this home is constantly going in the back of my head
every time I come up to come up to six up to six.
And it's just like, I just can't.
I can't do this.
So you got you got in your own head.
I did get my own head, of course.
The podium sprints was literally the session
right after drifters were out there
and we were the first cars out.
I did not clean off the OPR at all
because I'm not a smart man.
We've already determined that and the build up
was getting so bad by the time that third lap hit
going into four three and four all weekend.
I could hold 65 ish miles an hour through there at 55.
I was all that we had to keep it on the pavement.
I just had no grant whatsoever.
And I it privates my own fault and.
Yeah, it it was just a thing.
I I drove the best of that thought that I could.
But it just wasn't quite good enough.
I was I stayed third all weekend long until the podium sprints
and lost out by point zero seven three.
And you've calculated how far it is seven point three feet.
Ten point four feet is what that worked out to at our average speed.
Half a car length, half a car length.
I mean, the good news is that the first woman
to I think ever podium Sunday Cup, it is it is.
And she earned it.
She drove the wheels off that car.
She was pushing hard and I was happy for her.
I wasn't happy for me, but I was happy for her.
And, you know, the Sunday Cup group,
all of us were padded together all weekend long.
I mean, we all hung out together.
We all had time to fund together.
You know, we were played well on track together.
It was it was a good time.
And I couldn't think of a better person to beat me out of that spot than her.
She she did amazing.
I mean, it is what it is.
I was hoping to have my first ever good life podium,
but it wasn't meant to be.
And that's OK, because it made up for it that night as we were headed back.
We got to Vegas.
They gave away our room that night when we got to Caesars.
Also, again, Valley Parked out front of Caesars.
Parked between Bentley Bentayga
and whatever the newest Land Rover Range Rover thing is.
That's where we were literally sandwiched
between all night long, which is hilarious.
Get in there and she's like, I got good news and bad news.
And Chris is like, OK, let's give me the bad news.
And she's like, well, we gave you room away.
Kind of figured we didn't get into the midnight.
Fine. So the good news is I upgraded you guys.
Oh, cool to a 2000 square foot suite.
That's bigger than my house.
And I'm going to charge you a penny.
Not the twenty bucks that we were going to pay but a penny.
That's that's when you that's when you go around
and you invite like all the people up to your room.
Well, we only had five hours to get sleep.
That was not happening because the next day was going to be a long day.
Anyway, we knew that.
So because we were losing three hours of time on time zones.
And then it was another twenty three twenty six hours to get home from there.
So we got up at five a.m. and we're gone again.
But yeah, that was yes, I did use every every one of the three bathrooms
that were in there. That really is bigger than my house.
Yeah, three but only had one it only had one bed.
I'm like, it's a 2000 square foot.
But the couch in all fairness would sleep three people.
It was a big L shape.
No, I'm not I'm not kidding.
It was a huge L shaped couch that you could sleep two people like
in the end on one side and the person could have the other side.
It was it was massive.
Well, I had eight person dining room table in their wet bar.
It was. Yeah, I would imagine curtains were powered.
I mean, I would imagine most people renting that place
aren't going in on it with a bunch of friends.
Yeah, that was a party room.
I'll just say I did not want to bring a black light
into that place that would have just been a bad idea.
Oh, I bet they cleaned that so nice.
Maybe. But yeah, so we did that.
Just amazing at 2000 square foot.
Chris checked the price on it the next morning,
even at his Diamond Perk level, was still $1,700 a night
for anyone else. It was $2,500 a night.
Yeah, lost.
Yeah, I'm not doing that.
And then, of course, when we left, they were getting ready for F1
and we left out through the F1 track or part of the F1 track.
So we got to drive the F1 track in the Rio.
So Rio has been on F1 tracks as well now.
We can add that to its fame.
Amazing.
But yeah, we we about three hours outside of
Vegas on the way home, we started picking up this weird
vibration under acceleration at this weird speeds.
Couldn't figure what was going on.
We stopped several times, crawled in the car.
Really didn't see anything.
We shook everything around.
Nothing's really jumping out at us.
Like, well, we'll just take it as easy as we can.
I mean, we're either going to get home or we're not.
If we if it breaks somewhere, we'll either fix it
or we'll throw it on U-Haul.
We'll get home. Not a big deal.
Going up through the mountains.
We were down to second gear all the times.
That was I will tell you that Honda fit power
with Kia Rio gearing is a combination
that nobody should ever wish for.
You put it on like 72 in second gear, right?
Did you tell us that?
No, no, no, second gear on this car.
No, that was the other.
That was my old four.
This car stops at like 52.
Oh, yeah, that's right.
The third gear goes to 90 something
stupid miles an hour, like 96 or something, I think.
Oh, that's right.
The second, the two, three shift on that car.
Two, three shifts.
And going up the mountains.
So we Chris got caught behind a truck
with a trailer that was he had to grab second year for.
I'm like, we're stuck here, dude.
He's like, oh, no, we can get it.
He tries to pull out wine second up, grabs third.
Right back in truck.
We went we just stayed there because it was it was it's
enough of a gap that there's a bigger gap between two and three
than there is from three to six.
That's how big the RPM gap is.
It's just it's a canyon.
Did you know that means you should just always go fast?
Well, I mean, Laguna was literally one gear shift for me.
The last turn on the straight, which is a hard left-hander,
you grab second because you're going slow enough.
And that's the only time you shift gears.
And the everywhere else is third.
Oh, because I think the slowest I went after that corner
was like 46 miles an hour.
And, you know, with second gear stopping at like 52,
46 is you're there.
So it was enough to not even worry about trying to
trying to grab another gear.
Yeah, but yeah, thank you.
And I found out towing our little race
trailer on the one lap that year.
It's it doesn't take much of a trailer to really
have to work one of those cars much harder than it is used to.
I mean, in all honesty, though, we it did well on the Flatlands.
It would run all day at whatever speed you wanted to.
It would accelerate just fine.
It was just the mountains.
Once you got over about 8000 feet, it just there
wasn't enough power left.
It just was hurting it too much.
But we got like 33, 34 miles a gallon.
Most of the way home towing that trailer.
We figured we were right around 4,000
pound between the car, us, the stuff and the trailer.
So with 115 wheel horsepower, I'm OK with that.
It was fine.
That's solid.
So you are a Gen Xer, raised on video games,
raised on driving Laguna's sake on video games.
Epic road trip.
Did the road trip Laguna Las Vegas?
Did it did it all live up to the hype
of a nearly 50 year old man in his head?
Probably more than it was probably better
than the hype I had made for it.
Honestly, it was I expected to have issues.
I expected the trailer bearing.
I brought complete spare hubs just in case
because we all know those little tiny tires
running 75 miles an hour for hours on end.
And we were literally driving 20 plus hours at a time,
just expecting those to, you know,
explode a rate and they didn't.
We did one adjustment at the second fuel stop.
Chris tightened up one side, just literally one flat
of the of the nut.
And the temperatures never got over 10 degrees
more than ambient anywhere.
Even in the desert, it was like 90.
It was like at one point it was like 98 degrees,
the ground temperature.
If you hit the temperature probe to the ground,
it was like 115 and the hubs were at 112.
I'm like, that sounds good to me.
So, yeah, I expected there to be problems and there weren't.
We just, it was just a fun, long trip.
And I can tell you that those seats
that were the wife's old car war out seats,
they are not up for another one of those.
Finally, we're in the seats all day.
We were doing a math that that car turned over
136,000 miles on that trip.
Those seats have close to 200,000 miles on them.
Because they came out of her Rio with 140,000 on them
when we pulled them out, put them in my car at 89 or 90,000.
And now they put another 40,000 miles on them.
So they're pushing 200,000 miles on those seats.
And they weren't that great a seat to start with.
Sounds like time for a roll bar and buckets, race buckets to me.
And not that it's way more comfortable than you think.
It is.
Having just spent 10 days in them, yeah, I agree.
Yeah, I'm just not, I don't know that I'm there.
I've thought about it and I've run it over my head.
And I just, I'm not quite there yet.
Harnesses make a car so much better though on track.
Yeah, I don't want to talk about the amount of leveraging
my poor leg has to do to kind of keep me in that car.
I know all about it.
I've driven that car.
That was the first thing I noticed when I went on the track.
But you didn't even drive it that hard.
I drove it as hard as I could.
Here we go.
Throw in stones in a glass house.
Let's go.
Now, ergonomics is lap time.
Plain, flat, any time you put the steering wheel
in a better spot, you get more bolstering
to hold your body in better, more comfortable harnesses.
It's lap time.
I had four point harness and the Forte,
the first gen Forte that I auto crossed for the last two years.
And that did make, you could strap your ass literally down
to the seat and your shoulders upright
and your arms are no longer trying to hold you.
They're just now steering the car.
It's just so, so much better.
But yeah.
When we put a roll bar in a seat in Brian Civic,
I think we picked up two seconds a lap at Crescent
just from driver ergonomics.
So I'm just saying.
I'm sure.
I don't doubt any of that.
I am also trying to encourage you to ruin the car.
But I mean, that's what I do.
It's reversible, though.
That's the thing.
This is going to be, it'll be welded in.
So it's a little less reversible.
But she's almost getting to the point
where this is going to be in its life anyway.
So.
Yeah, I mean, it's a safety thing.
You're really just trying to be safer.
Yeah.
Well, I think it's that she's starting
to lose hope in cashing in on the insurance payout.
And so it's like, I guess, let's go ahead and make them safe.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's the.
I still enjoy that car on the street.
I mean, it's it's my daily is so much faster.
It's hilarious, but it this thing makes me giggle
because it's just stupid.
I mean, stupid little cars doing stupid things
just make me laugh.
I can't help it.
And speaking of which, you've now done one lap in that car.
You've done a bunch of time trial in that car.
You did an epic road trip to Laguna to do time trial
and back almost podiumed.
What is what's your future?
Not just with that car, but like, what can you see for you
moving forward with motorsports and dumb Korean cars
and things like that?
I don't know.
And that is an honest, honest answer.
I really don't know because in about a year and a half,
I'll be moving and I don't have any of those connections
to be able to do what I've done for all these years.
I'll probably make them because I know people
that are down there in those areas to make those connections
with, but it's just I'm not there yet.
I it's going to be different for me.
I don't I don't know what what the future is going to bring.
Does that make you sad when you think about that?
Like you've got a little great.
You've got this great car and you don't know what to do with it.
I'm not getting rid of it.
Well, we've had a discussion where she's like, well,
if you're not going to use it, just get rid of it.
No, that's just no, no, you you don't understand.
That's not happening at this point.
And it may still get the the turbo swap that I've always
wanted, make myself my own.
Accent and that we never got here in the US.
That would actually be the only thing that would make me get
rid of this car is if they actually brought us
the accident in, but Hyundai did not.
So I'll have to make my own.
And that would be just a fun street car at that point.
Like, what are you doing, Bob?
Where's your brain at?
It could be whatever you wanted to be at that point.
But what do you want to be?
An uncompetitive street car is street class.
I mean, I mean, honestly, does it does it matter for me?
I mean, look where I've always ended up for a year.
So in Sunday cup, I don't really care where I end up as long
as I'm having fun along the way.
Yeah, I we I talk shit and talk smack because that's just what we do.
You know, friends do that to each other.
But I just don't have that competitive drive
that I feel like I just have to win things.
And when I when I've done that in the past, I stop having fun
and then I stop wanting to do it because if I'm not having fun,
there is no point in this crap.
So I'm weird in that regard.
And I know that a lot of a lot of competitive drivers
don't understand that.
And I it's fine.
It's not for you.
You know, it's it's my thing.
But I just I want to have fun.
I want to go do silly car things, you know, drive the car
that nobody expects the amount of traffic
that car brought at Laguna absolutely blew my mind.
Like people stopping by mean like cool, cool real bro.
And asking about it and talking about it.
And it's just I was not expecting I actually got to meet Eli
who designed pretty much all of the upgrade stuff
that I've got Ori and putting on the car.
He has a B spec version of this car that he's, you know,
develop all the stuff for it.
And he he was a lot of fun hanging out with.
He's a super, super nice guy.
But it gave me some some pointers for where to take the car
suspension wise in the future.
But yeah, but the the amount of attention that it drew,
I was not expecting that.
I mean, you know, you you had the the Honda Boys
because Mike was right back right next to us.
So he had his civic with the hood open all day long.
Yeah, oh, cool, man.
There's a civic, you know, I mean, it was it was the fast
and furious vibe.
But then the people who stopped by the rear
were just like the people who are thinking about getting on track.
And it's like, dude, you can do it in this kind of kind of a feel.
And it's like, dude, any car could be a race car.
Just put it on the track. Go have fun.
So yeah, it was it was a fun, fun weekend.
And having all that free time was strange.
Yeah, because you did your work assignments
at the beginning of the weekend, right?
So you just got to to chill and drive.
And it's like I wasn't on my feet for 10 hours a day.
I'm like, I don't know what to do with myself here.
Now I can overthink things and screw myself up next time
I go on track with all that time, definitely didn't use it
to share video or data or anything.
Definitely now walk in all fairness.
I did not have access to the video.
It was not my camera.
OK, that's half of the equation, Bob.
What about the other half?
Hmm, I forgot about it.
Here he has a coach who's willing to look at the data.
And he's like, you know, see, I didn't want to use you for the freebies.
It's like, no, I want to use that for, you know, a time I really need it,
you know, like the next time I'll almost spend five minutes
wax poetic about how uncompetitive you are.
And you want to save it for the time that you feel like it get lost.
And here he's pouting about missing out on his podium.
And it's like you're so mad.
I don't know what to tell you.
I mean, Scott probably had seven feet of advice somewhere in there.
He probably had six feet nine inches.
That wouldn't have been worse.
I just I just would have given you Sonya's phone number
and have her tell you to break later.
And she probably would not have been wrong.
Yeah, probably probably.
So who do you need to thank, Bob?
Obviously, I got to thank my wonderful, wonderful wife
who has tolerated this amount of stupidity
and money burning for a long time now for years, decades of idiocy.
Yes, yes, the fact that she has not, you know,
buried me out in the backyard at this point is just in itself amazing.
Friends, family, you know, they've all helped me get to this point.
It's it's all I didn't get here alone.
And I wouldn't be able to do it without their support too.
So Chris break part of running with scissors racing
made all of it possible to go to Laguna without him helping me get there and back.
I would have just I don't know that I could have done it on my own.
I don't I'm not young enough to do that anymore.
I don't think so.
No, that's that's too far.
Yeah. So yeah.
And that's that got me where I was.
The friends, family and a wonderful wife who's tolerated this.
So and if you're interested in Bob's
oil services, we have we have our own Bob is the oil guy here.
Go to Robertson dash racing dot com and get your oil
analyzed by a guy who actually knows what to look at.
And you look at stuff and may have may have saved me a motor
a few years ago by telling me that the oil I was using was not great.
But it was expensive.
It was. And it comes in very cool containers.
Yes. Yes.
They have a great marketing program.
They do.
And they're metal and they carry more than typical.
And that's all I'm going to say about the break.
So it's it's great for somebody, but not for me.
No, they have it as a purpose.
It's like everything, everything has a purpose.
Yes.
Otherwise, we are at track walking podcast on all the things.
But the track walking Robertson racing discord is where we're hanging out
the most link is in the show notes.
And that's going to do it for us this week.
So Bob, thanks for coming on.
Really appreciate you sharing your shenanigans and weird love of cars.
Not that weird, is it?
It's pretty weird. It's OK.
Yes. So for the three of us, I'm Scott and I'm Seth and I'm Bob.
Have a good night. We'll talk to you next week.
About this episode
Bob Miller, a passionate motorsport enthusiast, shares his journey from rural Indiana to becoming a notable figure in autocross and time attack events, particularly with Korean cars. He discusses his experiences with various vehicles, including a Hyundai Elantra and a Kia Rio, and recounts his epic road trip to Laguna Seca for a Gridlife event. The conversation touches on the challenges and joys of motorsports, the camaraderie within the community, and the unique thrill of competing in a car that defies expectations. Bob's humorous anecdotes and insights make for an engaging listen.
Original notes
Seth gives the nicest criticism of the Rio... Scott can't make Bob help himself... and Bob does cool things with strange cars...
Bob Miller joins us to talk about Kia's and Hyundai's, three letter acronym SCCA classes, epic road trips, and doing motorsports in a frugal way.
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