Chris Ashton / Ruffian Cars

And there is a satisfaction of building something

with your hands and seeing something physical

in the real world.

And I'll tell you that 70 Mustang I finished in 2019.

I drove it to work last week and the number of heads

that it turns driving down the road

and the sound of it and the feel of it.

And it's such a cool thing that I still get

to experience that car, you know, six years later,

seven years later versus a video game

that came out seven years ago.

Nobody's playing.

It's just gone.

Mr. Chris Ashton, man.

How's it going?

It's good.

We just had our Monday morning meeting.

So I'm still getting started, but happy to be here.

Are you out on the West Coast?

Yeah. Yeah.

Callie, so Cal.

In the Mecca.

You guys have a lot of meetings you actually get worked on

because I feel like I generally just have meetings

and don't do any work.

Oh yeah.

Well, coming from the games industry,

I've always been, I'm used to meetings

and I don't like having meetings.

So we've always tried to have as few as possible.

We just started in the shop here.

We used to be like us, I think four people initially

and then six and now we're 10.

So there's just enough, I think,

where it's good for us to just kind of talk about

what's going to happen in the week.

So just once a week.

Once a week.

We do, we have overcast to be three meetings a week.

I feel like it's like too much.

I always have meetings.

So how is like, I'm thinking of, you know,

coming from like a game developer world,

how has that affected how you manage your shop?

Because I think of like game developer environment

and all the roles and everybody's got their jobs

and they're all working at different things.

This guy's working on textures.

This guy's working on modeling.

How has that affected how you run the shop there?

It's oddly very similar.

And I've actually, the stumbling that I've done

running the shop has just largely been

because of the differences from game studio to hot rod shop,

which is, you would think that they wouldn't have anything

in common, but they're very, very similar

as far as the overall process.

You know, when you're making a video game,

you have to imagine something that doesn't exist

and you have to pitch it and you have to sort of get approval

for that project.

And then you've got a, you've got pre-production

where you make concepts and you try to visualize

and you try to explain how this thing's going to work.

You make plans, production plans,

how are we going to actually build it?

And at the end, it actually has to work, you know?

And so it's the same, ironically, for a car

where we're trying to build a car that's never existed.

We're trying to do something unique

and interesting and different.

And we have to know what that's going to look like.

We have to get approval from, you know,

just even if it's just internally from team members

and everything to kind of all be excited about it.

And then we've got to figure out how to build it

and it has to work at the end of the day.

So it can't just be our cars are not like art pieces.

I mean, I feel like there is a lot of art in them,

but at the end of the day, they're a functional vehicle,

you know, so they have to work.

Function first is kind of our motto here,

like function first and then if it has to be there,

make it look as cool as possible.

Yeah, it almost, I'm thinking of like the more comparisons

of, you know, gaming development.

You're kind of like when you do, like for example,

the 67 Mustang has a lot of, it looks very trans-am,

kind of to me, like it looks dope, too.

My favorite car at SEMA when I was there,

did a reel on it, loved that car so much.

That's how I found out about you guys

was walking up to the car and being like,

oh my God, who built this thing?

And it's almost like if I was developing a game

and I had to come up with a sequel for a game

that hadn't been out for a really, really long time,

like it's almost like Marathon just came out,

but they also, Ungee did Marathon like decades ago,

but you know, you're carrying forward the name

and it's still got to be kind of like somehow tied to it.

There's got to be like some homage

that you have to be able to pay to the heritage, right?

Mm-hmm, yeah, I mean, and that car was extremely difficult

because people have had what, you know,

60, 70 years to mess around with Mustangs and make them cool.

And they're so iconic and you have the Shelby's

and even the Eleanor is very much a Shelby with a few tweaks.

So we, it's kind of daunting to take on a 67 Mustang

and want to do a version that is vintage,

like looking and feeling and inspired

by vintage racing and stuff, but not do Shelby.

Like that's really hard.

So we were pleased where we ended up.

You know, it's very inspired by Shelby,

but it's inspired specifically by the Cobra

and not by any other Mustangs.

So we just took a lot of Cobra elements and brought those in

and then that helped us kind of stay away

from what everybody else has done with Mustangs.

Yeah, and it's no knock on what everyone else has done.

You know, the path we walk on is paved by those

who came before us, right?

If you think of like Boyd Coddington or Chip Foos

and stuff like that, but I always wonder

why we don't do more like, I mean,

the thing looks really muscly.

And if I was going to build a Mustang,

it would be like a Trans Am, Panosport wheels, slam.

There would be no rake.

It would look like it's set up to actually drive.

You know, it wouldn't look like it's set up to do launches

and, you know, go to the some back alphabet road

and, you know, run one-on-one versus somebody.

I would build it like it was meant to take a corner.

And that's me, that Trans Am stuff.

Look, they were always just slammed too.

Just like on their nuts.

And that's how I would do it.

And kind of, I just don't understand

why we don't see more of that style.

It's like we can't get out of this rut

of that, of what came before

and be inspired by something else.

Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, I kind of feel the same way,

but motorsports is the most obvious place

for me to pull inspiration from.

And I'm the same way.

Like the 70 that I built was the first full build

you know, from a stripped down car to a full build

that I had done.

And that was entirely based off of a car

that was I think racing in Australia,

but it was in the same era, you know,

and had bigger fender flares

and so they could cover the slicks, you know?

So the cool stuff for racing for me is that

the race cars look cool,

but they look cool because they function.

You know, it's like they needed to be low

to lower the center of gravity.

They needed to have fender flares

because they wanted to run bigger tires for more grip.

Like there's all of these things, the 69, 70s,

they cut a pie slice out of the nose of the car

so that they could tilt the fenders down and get

and sort of cheat the arrow a bit.

And we did that on the 67 as well as the 70 Mustang

that we built.

It makes it more aggressive, you know?

It's more aerodynamic and they were quicker,

but it also makes them look more aggressive.

So we pull from all that stuff,

but then we bring in the element of streetability.

I've actually owned quite a few cars that were

that were built on real race cars.

And I've definitely been on the other side

where things were too, the cars were too hardcore.

And I got to the point where I never wanted to drive them

because they just beat you up so bad.

Everything's just got spherical bushings

and they're over in everything

and you just no rubber in the car anymore.

You just cannot drive it.

Yeah, yeah.

So we take as much as we can from motor sports

and then we temper it to where you can drive it on the street.

And where that line is is different for everybody.

I remember my girlfriend and I ordering a Lotus Elise

back in the day and everybody talking about in a Lotus,

like is that a car that you can drive every day?

Is it not a car?

Like is it too uncomfortable?

Is it too, you know?

And it's like everybody has a different threshold.

Like the benchmark of all the cars I've built

that thing's a Cadillac.

Yeah, right?

Yeah.

So we're talking about kind of like the point

where we are now, but I want to rewind back a little bit.

Put me in the shoes of Chris as a kid.

What was life like for you?

Were there cars around?

Did you do stuff with your dad, with your mom?

Like what was it like growing up for you?

And what else?

So one of the earliest memories I have

is walking through a parking lot

and telling my dad, seeing a cool car

and telling my dad that I wanted to take that one home.

And he got really confused.

And he was like, we can't take that home.

Like you can't just drive somebody else's car.

And I was like, but why I want to take that one home?

And he realized later that it was because

he was a car salesman and he used to bring demos home

all the time.

So I was kind of used to seeing like all these cars.

And I didn't really didn't know how the system worked.

But yeah, my dad was into cars

and was a car salesman when I was young.

And so I, whether or not it was directly because of that

or whether it was just, I was born with it.

But like, yeah, I always had hot wheels

and I was building model cars

and I was into that stuff my whole life.

Tell me about your dad a little bit.

I want to hear more about your dad and his car dealership

and what was he selling?

What was that, you know?

He just, I mean, yeah, they were,

my mom and dad married super, super young and we were poor

and they had three kids and mouse to feed

and dad just worked at, it's just what he knew.

So he wound up working at car dealerships,

it's just whenever, you know, selling, selling just whatever.

I mean, he worked for, I think mostly everybody, you know,

he worked when I was in high school,

he was working for Nissan, I think.

So it just, it just sort of depended on who was offering.

But he grew up, my grandfather owned a gas station,

one of the gas stations that has like a little repair shop

in it.

So my dad grew up working for his dad as a teenager,

repairing people's cars and stuff.

And this is, you know, when he was a teenager doing that,

this is sort of like when muscle cars were,

and a little bit earlier than muscle cars,

but when, you know, people were getting rowdy

and making a lot of power and stuff.

So he always has like cool stories of like the cool cars

that came into the shop that he got to work on and stuff

when he was a teenager.

But you know, they, my mom and dad divorced

when I was quite young and split up.

And so my mom kind of supported me through my teenage years.

And when I bought a car, I used my college money

to buy my first car when I was 15.

And she helped me do the first, it was a 67 Cougar.

And she helped me do my very first sort of maintenance

on a car ever, which was like changing the spark plugs

and stuff.

You know, she knew enough about cars

to help me do that stuff.

So beyond that, it was-

I think like people had to do that back in the day.

Like they had, like if you were driving a 67 Cougar

in, it didn't have electronic ignition,

you had to at least have some sort of concept of like,

oh, my points might be dirty,

or oh, I got to change my spark plugs more often,

or any of these, it's just everything's,

I mean, I'm sure there were people that just went

to their local shop and just had their points checked

every once in a while.

But I think way more people knew how to work on something,

at least in a really basic spec.

I remember when I called the lady that owned this Mercedes

and I found out, got her phone number and I called her

and I was like, hey, do you want to drive it?

You know, it's got a new engine now, it looks different.

You want to drive it?

And I'm like, well, do you know how to drive a stick?

And she goes, I'm 83 years old.

Of course I know how to drive stick.

So it's like this thing where I feel like

there was a little bit more knowledge back then.

Yeah, well, I think you had to have, you know?

And I kind of credit my sort of background

and the mechanical knowledge that I have of cars

in out of necessity, you know?

Because I always drove a car that was barely functional

and would break down all the time.

So I had to learn how to wrench just to keep the car going

just so I could go to school or go to my job or whatever.

So I wound up working on all kinds of stuff

just to keep them going.

So it's not really the case these days, you know?

You can buy a car with 150,000 miles and it keeps going

and then when it doesn't, you have no idea, right?

It's not the same as it was in the day, it was so simple.

Imagine back in the day when you were like,

sorry, I can't come into work today,

I flooded my carburetor.

Like, what is that even like?

Yeah.

So what was the, was that, did you love that car,

that Cougar?

Was that the, like, did that kick everything off

for you from there?

Yeah, it did.

And so I got that before I had a license

and I worked on it until I could drive

and that was my first car and it was-

Did you get it for yourself?

Did you save up your mom help or like, how'd that?

Yeah, my grandmother actually had put a bunch of money

into, it wasn't like a ton of money,

but I think there was like, I think it was three grand

that she had in a bank account that was, you know,

she had a bank account for all the kids

and every year she'd put a hundred bucks in it

or whatever, I don't know.

So I had like, I think there was like three grand

or something in the bank.

And I used that money, it was supposed to be for college.

I taught my mom into letting me buy this car with it.

And the car was right down the street at some little,

a little shack and they literally had two cars

and they were both Cougars oddly enough.

One was a 67, one was a 68 and the 68 was a lot worse

and more rusty, so I bought the 67.

And I drove it all through high school

into my freshman year of college

and then I sold it to a friend of mine at the college

and I bought a Volkswagen Beetle.

Looking for the best app for navigating your next adventure?

Look no further than Onyx Offroad.

With over 750,000 miles of trails

and comprehensive offline maps,

you can explore without worrying about sales service.

The app features trail ratings, detailed information

and a discover tool to help you find trails near you.

Onyx Offroad also includes public

and private land boundaries,

so you'll always know where you can legally off-road,

camp and explore.

Want to stay connected?

The app features a sales service layer

so you can plan your route with service in mind,

which is great for emergencies or just staying in touch.

And for added peace of mind, there's a wildfire layer

that helps you avoid active fires and smoky areas,

keep you safe and aware of current conditions.

With tools like route builder, waypoint marking,

real-time updates and route sharing,

you're fully equipped for any adventure.

Try it for free for seven days

and hit the trails with confidence.

Download Onyx Offroad today.

FCP Euro is an online retailer of OE, OEM,

genuine aftermarket and performance parts

for European cars.

From BMW to Porsche, Volvo and more,

their catalog is a one-stop shop

with over 275,000 unique products,

including expert assembled kits to make shopping simpler.

Actively building out the Volkswagen Audi

and Porsche catalogs from current to our favorite classics,

including the Mark I Scirocco Freeride car,

they are working to have every part you need

for all of your cars.

Plus, every product they sell is backed

by a lifetime replacement guarantee,

even wear items like wiper blades,

brake pads and oil filters, lifetime warranty.

With the opening of their distribution center

in Mesa, Arizona, FCP Euro is now shipping parts

from both coasts,

serving most of the country in three days or less

with free shipping.

We at Overcrest have been working with FCP Euro

for years and can vouch for them.

They are real people who are passionate

about what they do and the cars we love

while making sure to put you the customer first.

Check them out today at fcpuro.com

and take advantage of free shipping

on any order over $49.

All right, so what was that?

Was there any point where you thought

you might work on cars for a living?

Is that anything that crossed your mind?

You know, when I went to a junior college in Utah

and when I went to that college freshman seminar,

they ask everybody, what do you wanna do?

Cause they're trying to help you figure out your major.

And I didn't really thought about it.

I didn't know what my major was gonna be or anything.

And I told them I wanted to build cars, design cars.

And they were like, we don't have a program for that.

So they said like, but we think that you'll probably need

to be on a computer and we have this brand new

graphic design program in the college.

So you should probably get into that.

So I got into-

What was the software we're using?

What, like is this-

This was very beginning.

This is very early, like very early Photoshop,

Macromedia freehand, QuarkXPress.

Dreamweaver.

Dreamweaver, yeah.

I mean, the internet was new, you know?

So it was early times.

So where did the gaming thing go?

Like, how did that happen?

How did you go from like,

oh, I'm doing Photoshop and Macromedia and Dreamweaver.

Yeah, you know, I always,

I had those two loves my whole life,

cars and video games.

And I was either building model cars or driving RC cars

or I was playing computer games.

It was one of the two always as a kid.

I got into graphic design

and I started working for the school

doing their graphic design.

I did their catalogs and their posters

for the plays and all that kind of stuff.

So I was working as a graphic designer for the college,

which meant that I had keys to the computer lab

and I could go in there at 2 a.m.

if I wanted to and work on stuff.

So what that turned into was-

I'm like a lamp heart winning half.

Exactly, yeah, exactly.

So me and my buddies,

I would bring a bunch of boys over from the dorms

and we would play multiplayer games.

This was all a Mac lab,

so we could only play stuff that was on Macintosh

and there wasn't very many.

But it's funny you mentioned Marathon

because Marathon was a hybrid.

They were Mac first, I think.

Bungie was, it was called what,

Pathways into Darkness or something was the first game.

So we were playing Marathon

and Marathon came with tools.

Where you could make your own characters

and you could make your own maps and stuff.

So for months, we were playing the stuff

that shipped on the Marathon CD

and then I wanted to start, we got bored of that stuff.

So I started making levels and weapons

and new sounds and all that kind of stuff.

And we would been doing that for months

and my graphic design teacher at one point just said,

you know people make money doing this, right?

What you're doing?

And I was like, no, I don't know why I never,

it's such a weird thing as a young kid

to not realize that everything around you

is something that was created

by somebody that was paid to do something.

You know what I mean?

You just don't realize what our jobs

even though you're in college

and you're supposed to be aspiring to that.

So as soon as I found out the people made money

making video games that immediately set my path,

because I enjoy graphic design,

but it wasn't, I wasn't super passionate about it.

I was good at it, but I didn't love it.

I didn't like working for clients.

I didn't like designing covers for a bar of soap.

It was just like, it just wasn't fun or cool enough.

So yeah, I set my sights on video games

and I got an issue of like PC Gamer or something

and it said in the back,

they had listed all the game studios.

There was an issue is about trying to help people

get a job in the industry.

And I think they had, I don't remember, 100.

I know it was at least 100 game companies in the US

listed their addresses where you could apply.

So I set out and I literally sent out

a hundred resumes and portfolios all across.

What did you like to say like graphic design,

likes making maps, like what does your resume look like?

Well, yeah, fortunately I did put in

all the graphic design stuff, my artwork stuff,

but because I had been modding Marathon,

I had actual video cassettes of the levels and stuff

and gameplay that I built and us playing through that stuff.

I started working on, in addition to the multiplayer maps,

I started working on like single player mods

and stuff like that with other people over the internet.

So I wound up working on kind of a few pretty big projects.

In fact, Bungie later released like the Marathon Trilogy CD

and on that CD, it had the first all the three marathons

and they also packed in there a bunch of like total conversions

and I'm in two of those.

So it was kind of neat to be on like a published CD

from Bungie, have my work on there.

And it was, I was just a kid in college.

So that stuff got me out of a hundred game studios,

two of them called me and did phone interviews

and one of them flew me to San Diego to interview

and I got the job at Presto Studio.

So what were they making?

What games were they?

They were making adventure games,

Buried in Time, The Journeyman Project.

So this was back in the days of like MIST

that was adventure games were kind of a pretty big,

you know, point and click sort of like puzzle solving stuff.

And I actually had played Buried in Time

and I really liked it.

And so it was cool.

It was a company that I had already played

one of their games and they were just working on,

it was their first real-time 3D game.

It was called Beneath, it wound up getting canceled.

You saw the first game that I worked on for a year

and a half got canceled, which was a bummer.

But that was the first, it was a fully real,

real-time 3D game.

So it was cool, but still one out of a hundred

was just like that.

So I always told that to people,

people that were anybody that is like getting turned down

or struggling to find work is just,

it's like, man, if I wouldn't have sent them out

to a hundred studios, would I be where I am,

would I have had that experience?

I don't know.

So it was good.

So you did the adventure game thing

and then eventually you founded Turtle Rock.

What's kind of in between those two things?

Yeah, a lot.

We'll talk about Turtle Rock in a minute,

but like how do you get to that level?

Because that's, I mean,

that's working for a small adventure game brand

to like holy shit, Leopardette.

So like how do you get between those two things?

The big thing was while I worked at Presto,

I started playing a little mod called Counter Strike

and it was super early, super,

I think it was like beta one or something.

It was very, very, very early.

And I was making textures doing artwork for Presto

and it was high quality stuff, you know, it had to be.

And I had a good art director and really good artists

around me that were helping me get up

to speed really quickly.

So I was playing Counter Strike as a mod

and I was like, this is the coolest thing,

best thing, most exciting thing I've ever played

and I want to be a part of it.

So I messaged the guys that were running it

and said, hey, I'm a texture artist.

I want to join the mod team.

And they said yes.

And so I made all the textures

that was in the original DE dust.

I made a couple of maps.

What was that game like back then?

Like what kind of, are you playing on a T1 at a place

to go like have some sort of reliable internet connection?

Like college, it must have been really hard

to find a place to play.

Yeah, I think a lot of people were in college dorms

and there were internet cafes were a thing

where people would go to play

because your internet connection at home

was still like dial up, it was still too shitty.

So you had to go someplace

that had like a dedicated, a big connection.

So, and I was lucky because I was at the game studio

and they of course had fast internet.

And so I was playing, yeah, I was playing that stuff,

but it was just, it was so raw and visceral.

It was just such a weird, I'm thinking about like,

if you think about Call of Duty 4,

which is kind of where I think probably gaming started

for me seriously versus playing like Mario Kart, right?

So you go, you're playing Mario Kart on Super Nintendo,

you're not a gamer, you're buying Xbox

and then pretty soon you're playing Call of Duty all the time

and you're watching your gamer score and you're playing

and you're paying attention to your KD

and like all this stuff and you have buddies you play with

and you're all in headsets and you're all like jamming out.

That I would consider more of a gamer.

What period of time, like I'm not,

because as a console player, Counter Strike wasn't,

wasn't ever my thing because I played it.

But like what period of time are we talking about here?

When we talk about Call of Duty 4 original Counter Strike,

that kind of in the same concept a little earlier.

It's a good question,

because I was the opposite side, right?

So I was fully in PC games

and I didn't really play on console.

So a lot of stuff that was on console I missed like.

Nokia and Tires has officially launched their newest tire

and it's one we're especially excited about.

As is Taylor made for the type of driving

we like to do here at Overcrest.

It's called the Surpass AS01.

And what sets it apart is it's a high performance

all season tire.

It's made specifically for drivers

who want the most out of their cars

without sacrificing capability when the roads get slick.

We know all too well how unpredictable the roads can be,

whether you're out on one of our rallies,

one of your own adventures,

or just running to the grocery store.

And let's face it, a car can only perform as well

as the tires it's on.

That's why the new Surpass AS01 is so great.

It offers the grip of a dedicated performance tire,

but won't be stranded if the road or weather gets rough.

Not only does it come with a 55,000 mile warranty,

it also offers Nokia and Tires pothole protection.

If he happened to damage your tire beyond repair,

Nokia will replace it for free.

Check it out at nokiantires.com slash surpass.

A quick break to talk about our latest sponsor,

the Common Gear.

Now the story of your car matters

just as much as the machine itself.

Every seat, every late night fix, rally mile,

that's your car's identity.

But most of us have that history scattered everywhere.

It's in your glove box, it's on social media,

it's in a repair bill that who knows where it went.

The Common Gear fixes that.

It's a platform built by real car people, for car people.

It allows you to digitize everything.

Maintenance receipts, build photos,

records, provenance, where it's coming from,

where it came from, every mile that you log,

every oil change, and it's all organized,

all searchable, all in one single place.

And if you've got decades of paperwork perhaps

that you bought with a vehicle, guess what?

They have a white glove service.

They'll digitize everything for you remotely or on site.

You'll hand them chaos and they hand you back

a complete car history.

It adds credibility, it adds value.

Think about if you're gonna sell your car,

everything now you can show is in one place,

has records, is ready to go.

Go to thecomongear.com, make your free account,

and start building your car's digital legacy today.

I didn't get a lot of those.

I got a look.

Claude will tell me.

Okay, Counter Strike Original went retail with Valve in 2000,

with Half-Life in 2000, Standalone was 2003,

Modern Warfare came out in 2007.

So it's a little bit ahead.

Yeah, so I was working on it way before,

so years before Valve bought it.

So what happened was it was a mod,

it gained a lot of popularity and success,

and it was just a monster on PC.

It was a mod of Half-Life?

Yes.

Yeah, okay, okay.

So then Valve bought the rights to it.

By the time they bought the rights to Counter Strike,

I had moved on from Presto,

and I had gone to Westwood Studios,

and I was working on Command and Conquer franchise.

Yeah, I had to learn.

I played that.

Yeah, so.

I can hear the song right now.

What was the one character, she was a girl,

and she ran her own with a gun?

Man, that was such a great game.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I couldn't compete.

People got really insane with those games, dude.

Yeah, I worked on Red Alert 2,

and I was at Westwood Studios working on Red Alert 2,

finished that game, so I was there for about a year and a half,

and then someone from Valve called,

and they started talking to me about going up there

and working for them,

because they had purchased Counter Strike,

and they liked the texture work that I had done

in Counter Strike,

and they were working on some other projects,

and they invited me up,

and it was one of those sort of like,

being in PC games,

and Valve was really at the top.

I felt like one of the best studios in the world,

so it was a dream job for me,

so I took it and went up to Seattle,

and worked for Valve for a year,

and then I discovered that my love of video games

and working for Valve,

it sort of clashed with the poor weather in Seattle

and my car hobby.

So I was-

What was the thing you liked,

and what were you driving around this time?

I had a supercharged Mustang,

and I had put quite a bit of money into it,

and I was really heavy into autocrossing,

so I was running with SCCA,

and I was autocrossing quite a bit.

I did 11 autocrosses that year in Seattle,

and seven were in the wet.

So I was like, the first couple of times in the wet,

I had never even experienced that in California,

a wet autocross,

so the first couple of times I was like,

this is pretty wild, pretty fun, slippery,

but after that, I was like, okay, this sucks.

Are you telling me that the Turtle Rock Gaming Studio

was founded out of not wanting to autocross in the wet?

Isn't that fair to say?

Well, it's a crazy life.

There's a lot of moving pieces,

and it's complicated how things work out,

but when I was at Westwood,

Westwood got bought by EA,

so it turned into Electronic Arts.

One of the guys that I worked with there at EA,

after I went to Valve,

he started working solo on really getting into AI stuff,

and he wanted to start contracting

and working with other people,

and since I was at Valve,

I kind of put him in touch.

At the time, Valve was building Steam.

Steam wasn't a thing yet, but they were working on it,

and I was like, dude,

if you're gonna do some indie game stuff

or whatever you need to be talking to Valve,

because they're gonna have a way for you to sell your game.

And so he started talking to Valve,

and that turned into contract work

where he was contracting with them on Counterstrike

to build a bot for Counterstrike.

And so that was the CS bot

where you could start playing Counterstrike

and filling in empty slots on servers

or even play by yourself against bots

that were playing Counterstrike.

That job went really well for him

to the point where they offered him,

they said you should start up a game studio.

And at the time, they were trying to get Counterstrike

onto the Xbox,

and they were trying to make Counterstrike

a single-player game because it was such a big franchise,

but it had only ever existed in the multiplayer space,

and they felt like there was a whole group of players

in the world that were interested in Counterstrike

that knew of it, but didn't wanna get online

and didn't wanna try to compete with everybody

that had been playing Counterstrike for years and years.

So Mike Booth, he founded Turtle Rock Studios,

we call it 1.0, and I went to work for him.

I left Seattle, I had gone back to California

because of the car stuff.

I had worked at a game studio called Troika.

They were building a vampire, the Masquerade game,

on the Source engine, which is Valve's engine.

So me coming from Valve was kind of a shoe in.

And then I got that game to where,

I helped get that game to where it was gonna ship,

and then I left and I joined Turtle Rock Studios

to work on Counterstrike.

Again, ironically, having worked on it as a mod,

now I was back working on it,

and helping out with the Xbox version

and the single player version of Counterstrike.

And I worked with Mike at that Turtle Rock Studios

for six years, and we were kind of the custodians

of Counterstrike, like a lot of the versions

and updates and stuff that was all new maps

and revised old maps and stuff,

that was all stuff that our team worked on.

How does it feel to be part of the foundational upbringing

of the adolescent version of Counterstrike

that set the foundation?

Cause I mean, that game is still, if you look at,

if I go on Steam and look at Player Count right now,

that game has gotta be up there.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, it's still-

Not number one, I don't know.

It's probably number one right now.

Maybe Arc Raiders is nipping at its heels, who knows?

But that's gotta be a pretty crazy feeling looking back.

It was cool.

It's a weird scenario.

I wound up working on Counterstrike

even a couple more times afterwards.

I worked on Counterstrike when I was at Valve.

I worked on Counterstrike as a mod.

I worked on Counterstrike at Turtle Rock 1.0.

Were you any good?

There were times when I was good, but definitely not.

You know, that game is crazy.

It's just, I guess it's probably the same with other games,

but if you stop playing for even a month,

it takes a while to sort of get back to where you were.

You have to play all the time.

I worked on it again.

So Valve closed Turtle Rock Studio.

Well, Turtle Rock Studios did work for Valve

for like six years or something like that.

Then the last year Valve bought Turtle Rock Studios

and we became Valve South.

So then I was technically working at Valve again,

but in Southern California.

That only lasted about a year.

And then they decided to close the studio.

And then that's when myself and Phil Robb

and the people that were in the Southern California studio

kind of picked up the pieces

and reformed Turtle Rock Studios.

And then that time, and Mike stayed with Valve.

So then at that time, myself and Phil Robb became

the owners of Turtle Rock Studios.

And it was like sort of 2.0.

Same group of people, even the same computer equipment stuff.

Where did that come in?

Because that's one of my favorite games of all time.

Can you tell me a little bit about the conception

and the development of that game?

Yeah, that was during Turtle Rock 1.0.

It really kind of came about because of the mod community.

So ironically, well, maybe not, it's not very ironic,

but like a lot of game ideas come out of mods,

a lot of cool ideas that pick up steam.

We had been working on Counter-Strike

and developing the CS bot.

And one of the things that you could do with the bots

was you could give them different personalities,

you could give them preferences,

weapon preferences and stuff,

and you could also constrain them.

And we built that stuff into the UI

where you could set up the enemy team to only use knives,

for example.

And so it became kind of a mod that people were doing,

what was called bots with knives.

And they would just set up,

it would be like me and you and somebody else maybe

with M16s and we would set up on the other team

to have 20 of the terrorist faction

that only had knives, right?

And the bot behavior,

they would play to whatever weapon they had.

So if they had a sniper rifle,

then they would sit and skulk and sit in the background

and take these longer shots, right?

But because if they only have a knife,

they become extremely aggressive

and they just charge at you, right?

And so people are playing bots with knives

and we started seeing a lot of people do that.

And so we were trying to figure out like,

why are people playing this and what's fun about it?

And we started to play it in the studio.

And it felt like you were fighting zombies,

like these rabid zombies,

because they just came charging at you

and slashing at you and stuff.

And so we had, we were working on Counter-Strike,

we had the source code, we had the maps,

we had all that kind of stuff.

So we started to, I took like CS Italy,

which is like one of the most popular maps, right?

And I made it nighttime and I made it spooky

and Phil took some of the skins

and made them like zombified.

So they were still like the terrorists or counter-terrorists,

but they had like, you know.

Yeah, scan peeling.

Skeleton face and stuff like that.

And so we started playing it bots with knives,

but dressed up as a zombie game.

And at that time we were,

Turtle Rock was pushing its own game idea.

Valve wanted us to develop a brand new IP.

And so we were working on this other game idea.

And that kind of fell through.

And when that fell through, we were trying to think,

okay, well, what else, like what do we do next?

And Valve really wanted Mike and the studio to push on AI

and not do multiplayer,

not do specifically like team versus team

because they had Counter-Strike already

and they had Team Fortress.

Just leave it a thing

because we're talking about PVE really.

Yeah, yeah.

Was there much there in that genre at the time?

There wasn't a lot, not much.

And I think that was the resistance, the hesitancy.

So we started talking, well, let's do this zombie game

against AIs that are zombies, you know?

Let's do co-op against AI.

And it was a lot of kind of pushback on it

because number one, there weren't any big zombie games.

I mean, there was Resident Evil,

but that kind of is kind of zombies.

It's kind of different and it's only on consoles, not on PCs.

There really wasn't much by way of like big name zombie shooters.

So everybody felt like it was a risk.

And then the co-op thing was interesting

and we felt like we could do it.

And really the thing that kind of made us push hard on it

was 28 days later came out on DVD

and I brought it in to work and we watched it during lunch.

And Mike, who kind of owned the studio

and called the shots back in the day,

he had been seeing the zombies as the classic sort of shambling zombies and stuff.

Slow zombies, yeah.

Yeah.

And when he's...

There's also a battle, right?

Do you want a movie?

Can either be slow zombies or fast zombies.

I always feel like they would be fast at first

and then just get slower as their arms fall off.

Well, 28 days was kind of the first to kind of redress zombies as like a virus, you know?

And these were, they were super fast and super aggressive and it was a virus.

They weren't the undead, it was people that were infected, you know?

And it made it serious and I think it changed Mike's view of it was like,

oh, this could be actually, this could be intense and it can be scary

and people can take it serious.

And so really from that point on, we started to push on it

and we did, we spent a couple of weeks building a little demo

and then we showed it to Valve and they loved it

and we just started building it.

When you show a game to someone like that, do you get them together and go,

hey, all right, sit down on this keyboard mouse and play it?

Or do you show them someone else playing?

Like, how does that process work?

So it's different for different, like for most of the time for in the rest of the industry,

if you're pitching to a game publisher or something, you don't usually have a playable.

You're usually pitching ideas and you're trying to translate that with videos

or a slideshow or something.

If you are lucky enough to have done some development to have a playable demo,

then you'll talk about it and then you show them.

And then usually it's too rough for them to do hands-on,

but we really built all of our games,

kind of like what we were building our cars, like functionality first.

We were prototyping everything and we didn't really care what it looked like.

The point was to test all of the gameplay.

And so we had a thing of playable version and the early versions of the game,

by the way, were like, because we were going off of Counter-Strike,

you would, you were going into zombie territory, infested zones, and planting a zombie bait.

And then the bait would attract all the zombies out of the area and you had to exterminate them.

So it was definitely a riff using all the pieces that we had from Counter-Strike.

And so we talked to Valve about it, we told them what we wanted to do,

and then they started playing it, you know, and they had a group of,

I mean, obviously they had access to the source code, you know,

and they had a group of people up there that were playing it nightly

and then would give us feedback and had ideas.

And it just, you know, everybody there was really excited about what we were doing.

And so they basically funded us to keep going on it and build,

to build Left 4 Dead. That's what became Left 4 Dead.

And it's one of the widely, very widely acclaimed, man.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it's not like,

it's not like, you know, somebody had a grandiose, like, this is my vision

and this is we're going to execute on it, you know, I,

That's some knives, man. That's crazy.

Yeah, it's just this weird evolution of circumstance, you know,

and the ability for us to be in a position to where we could take advantage of it,

and we could, you know, grab on to opportunities that presented themselves and

prove it in the play test, you know, build it,

prove it in the play test, if it's fun, it's hard to argue against it.

So when I kind of look at like the tail end of the studio stuff,

um, when I, when I talk to AI or Google or whatever,

it seems like this evolved THQ situation comes up.

Like what kind of happened there and how did that lead to the end of

gaming for you and opening, uh, Rufian?

Uh, yeah, um, we, so after, after we kind of rebooted the studio,

um, we, we continued to work with Valve for a little while.

I think it was, I can't remember for sure, but I think it was roughly two years,

just a really, so I think we were 10 people.

So it was just, it was a bunch of us in a warehouse, um,

working on Counter-Strike stuff, um, they had, they had also done

Leoparded 2, Valve built Leoparded 2 internally and, uh, but then we built DLC for it.

So it was a fun, it was fun to get back into Leoparded.

Um, but at some point the Valve stuff started to dry up, the work started to dry up.

And so we, we had to like kind of put our big boy pants on and go be a real, uh,

independent game studio and go find work.

And so we put together a pitch for this game

and started pitching it around to different, um, publishers.

And most of the time when you pitch stuff as an indie studio,

the response that you might get is, oh, that's interesting.

That idea is interesting, but we have this IP that you,

that we want you to work on.

So the expectation was that we would pitch this game.

And that's something that's like already been established, already has sales.

Nobody wants to take the risk and stick their neck out for what was basically

original Monster Hunters kind of, right?

Yeah. So, um, THQ though was in a really tough spot.

Like we knew it going into it.

They were, effectively they were desperate.

They didn't have any multiplayer games.

They only had single player stuff and, um, they were really struggling

and they were looking for new IP.

And then here was this group that did a whole bunch of Left 4 Dead work,

um, and Turtle Rock, you know, sort of had that name associated with,

and so they were interested, um, and, you know, funded us.

And it got us through several years of development,

but eventually that sort of caught up with THQ and us, I guess,

in a way, uh, THQ filed for bankruptcy and they auctioned off all the games.

What was that all like, man?

That's rough. It's definitely a rough time in the studio.

You know, we had, we had hired on a lot of talent.

I think we were a hundred people.

Oh man.

Um, so you hire on all this, all this talent.

You move people from out of state to California and you're working on this thing

you're so excited about.

And then the publisher is in financial trouble and filing for bankruptcy

and everybody wants to know like, are we going to have a job next week?

And you don't really have the answers to it, you know.

Um, but we always told everybody like the game speaks for itself.

Like anybody can come play the game.

It's awesome.

We had had a really good E3.

Um, it was super successful.

We won like best of show at E3.

Like, you know, all signs were pointing towards the game being a really big hit

and being successful.

So we just kind of leaned into that and we just let everybody came and played the game.

So Microsoft, Activision, everybody, everybody, any publisher could come visit the studio,

look at our, our money situation, look through our, all of our documentation

and play the game.

And then all those people went to court and they bid and it sold to the highest bidder,

which was 2K.

So, yeah, yeah.

So, uh, how does you feel about that?

Were you like, this is, was it the right developer in your mind at the time?

Or I don't want to try to make two on earth.

Uh, I throw them under the bus, but.

Uh, man, I, it was, it was, it's tough because you don't, we had developed

a relationship with THQ over time, right?

There was no relationship with 2K.

Like we didn't, you know, we don't know them.

They're just, they're the highest bidder.

So I feel like there were definitely sort of worse situations for us to be in.

So at least, you know, at least the contract was moving forward and the game was going to

see light a day, which is, which is kind of the big thing.

It's a big one, right?

Yeah.

And everybody got to keep their job and so we just, we just kept going.

But obviously that's, that's a bit of turmoil, um, creatively, you know, to switch hands from

a different, obviously 2K is going to have a different idea of what they want and what they

need and timing with release and all that kind of stuff with all of their portfolio versus what

THQ had going on, right?

So it's going to, it's going to throw a big wrench into the works.

But, um, yeah, we got, we got through it and, um, release the game and, uh, we had some bad

timing on, uh, we had like, um, we had stuff available that you could buy in the store on

day one. Uh, and it was all cosmetics.

It was nothing functional, but, um, if you look at what goes on now, right?

Yeah.

So, but we got burned at the stake, you know, for that stuff.

And, uh, the game got such a bad name for DLC and for selling stuff.

If you had like, let's say you kept the DLC off the side.

Like a lot of times now the stuff is kept, right?

It's like, maybe developers learn their lesson from this, but the DLC is usually

kept on at the end of season one or the end of season two, the DLC starts to come, right?

Yeah.

Had that happened, do you think people would have not complained because they wouldn't

have known that this other stuff even existed?

Yeah.

Was there enough of a game there, right?

Well, yeah, I think so.

Um, it, it was, it was definitely bad timing.

You know, it was like right in, um, the community was, was just really upset.

And really at their, at their limit with games, um, with DLC, selling DLC, you know,

stuff that they considered being developed during, during the production of the, of the game and

then being sold later for extra money and all this kind of stuff.

So we kind of wound up unfortunately being the poster child for that stuff.

And it was crazy.

I had, I had friends of friends who weren't even gamers who knew about evolve just because

of that negative bit of story, right?

They didn't know how the game played or how it was reviewed or anything.

They just knew that, um, you know, they would, they would talk about us being greedy and

stuff like that.

So it was a

It was a fun gaming in general, man.

I mean, even, you know, Battlefront came out a little while later and that game has been

excoriated for many different things.

Mass Effect had a ton of DLC, you know, all these different games.

I think it was just like, I think it was kind of the corporate demand of how do we make

more money off of these games rather than just, and now I would say that's a critique

that I would lay out today.

And maybe you can let me know how you feel about in the, in this gaming chapter discussion,

like how do you feel gaming is today, the state of gaming from a guy who went through

so much and built some really incredible properties?

Where do you think, how do you think things are doing?

It's, uh, it's really tough place to be right now.

I think we're seeing the gaming industry in the worst place it's been and, you know,

that I, that I know of, um, all the game studios are hurting.

People are putting time and money elsewhere.

People are trying to figure out how to monetize like, uh, video games didn't go up in price,

which is part of my understanding of the problem is that, you know, the legend,

the legend of Zelda on Super Nintendo was like 50 bucks when it came out.

And, you know, people still were expecting games to be 50 bucks, but the, as the fidelity

of the games increased, the time it takes to create just the labor involved in creating

these more fleshed out, these bigger games, uh, the labor rate just increased and, uh,

but we weren't selling the games for any more money.

So now it meant that if you couldn't sell 10 million copies, then you are going to lose money.

You know, so it just, it just, it was this big bubble that was, um,

destined to run into something, right?

So then you inevitably start running into DLCs and season passes and all these other ways.

Like how do we make money?

How do we make money?

How do we make it just make our money back from what we're investing?

I would pay like when, uh, Grand Theft Auto comes out, people are saying it's going to be a

hundred dollar game, right?

It's going to be a hundred dollar game.

I would pay the money for the good game.

I would pay, I would pay seven arc Raiders was 40 bucks or whatever.

I would have paid seventy five dollars for the game.

It's great.

I'd pay seventy five dollars, a hundred dollars for battlefield six.

Just make the game good, make it right to begin with.

Stop giving me beta games and then having me test them for you and then fix them.

Yeah.

Everything's just so messed up right now.

It's so messy.

And, um, yeah, it's tough because the cost of production has continued to go up.

Unfortunately, it also.

Hackers are like brutalizing games.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, that's awful.

You spend so much money just trying to address that stuff and trying to protect

yourself against that stuff.

And even though, even the way that you, you know, you, you'll develop a game now to where

it runs on the server, you know, you stay away from client side stuff because this

client side stuff can be hacked so easily.

So, um, but then that means that you, your game has to run online and you're paying

dedicated server costs.

Right.

So you're to make your game more secure also makes your game a lot more expensive

because you're paying Amazon to run these servers in the background.

You're paying it for every hour that you're running that server.

So, um, it's, it's in a tough spot and I don't know what the solution is.

It's going to be interesting to see what Grand Theft Auto does.

There's been a few games that have tried to increase the price point, uh, and there's

been enough backlash from the community and stuff that they, they, they rescinded on that

and went back, um, Grand Theft Auto, uh, I'm sure they're going to release for higher

mounts, uh, dollar amounts and I'm sure people are going to pay it.

So maybe it opens the door to sort of a new norm.

Um, but right now everybody's struggling to figure it out.

So, so in with gaming, you're building things that you can't touch, right?

It's a digital world.

You are now building physical things.

Um, what do you get more reward out of?

Which one, which one is bringing you the, the, the good feels?

The physical stuff for sure.

I mean, that's, I think that's inherent to human nature.

I think we're, I think we're still all cavemen, you know, and, uh, that's the way things have

worked for, for thousands and thousands and thousands of years is like, um, you, you, you

plant seeds and grow vegetables and eat vegetable, right?

Like the things that you do with your hands have real results in the real world.

Um, it, it's different.

Like it's a, it's a different sort of, uh, it's a longer circle, right?

In, in video games where it's like, okay, well I'm building something virtual and that's

getting me paid and then I go to the grocery store and I buy food and then that's feed me.

So it kind of comes back around.

I'll kind of, it kind of works the same, but it doesn't feel the same.

And there is a satisfaction of building something with your hands and seeing something physical

in the real world.

And I'll tell you that I, that 70 Mustang I finished in 2019.

I drove it to work last week and the number of heads that it turns driving down the road

and the sound of it and the feel of it.

And it's such a cool thing that I still get to experience that car.

You know, six years later, seven years later, versus a video game that came out seven years

ago, nobody's playing. It's just gone, you know, it just disappears into the ether.

And that's years and years of your life that you've invested it, four years and evolve

to get that game out the door.

And then a year later, it's gone, you know, so I much prefer the physical stuff for a number of

reasons.

Like in the sand for cars, after all this stuff went down, was it, was that, was it a reaction

to what happened or are you like, I'm going to build a physical thing?

Is that where, why you did this or how did this end up, you know, becoming a business?

It was part of it.

But like I said, when I was trying to get into college, that's what I told them I wanted to

do. So it was like this, it was also this not, you know, this unrealized bit of passion.

And I built two cars while I was still heavily working in games.

And so I was doing, you know, working in the evenings and working on the weekends.

And if I had Christmas vacation, I was working on my car.

I got done with those two cars and I thought it would be like a hobby.

Like I've had other hobbies and they've come and they've gone, you know,

but I got done with those two cars and it's all I wanted to do.

I just wanted to do more. And I made a list of cars that I wanted to build in my lifetime.

And I also looked at how long it was taking me to build the cars.

And I was like, I can't do it. Like I don't have enough time

to build all the cars that I want to build. So either I got to be fine with that,

or I'm going to have to hire some people and build cars faster.

And that's kind of the direction that I went.

Cars on that list get built there for someone else as long as you built it?

Like is, or these, is this list for you?

No, I think definitely building it is a large part like that satisfaction of the whole sort

of creative process and having a vision and hopes and dreams and having that realized.

I think there's a ton of value in that.

I don't think that I need to keep them around. We're just doing this year,

we're working on half the cars we're building our client builds.

And so probably next year will be the first one that gets done that is for a client.

So it kind of remains to be seen, but I think because that might in my, in my head,

I know that this is a car for somebody else that I, I'm not going to have any

emotional attachment to it other than being proud of, of our work.

But it's, it's like getting a call to me like, Hey, I want you to build me a car.

For, for, I mean, for us, it's, it's incredibly exciting assuming that it's the right person,

you know, so right now when I get a cold email or a cold call or something,

I'm usually pretty nervous because I have to figure out, is it a good match for us?

You know, I don't want to get, we don't have to, we don't have to build a car for somebody. So

we're only going to take jobs that we're interested in and clients that we like working

with and stuff that we feel good about. It needs to be a good partnership.

What are the, what are the things that you won't do? Where it's, what's the, I guess, let me

say this, what's the, the flag that goes up here? Like, well, the same, the guy, not like traditional

don't say this in your email to Chris or he'll never build you a car.

Some of the stuff is just, and so one of the reasons, one of the strategies for us was to build.

So when we went to SEMA and you saw the 67 Mustang and you saw the 64 Galaxy,

the Galaxy is kind of like really wild paint scheme and it's on a full race car chassis,

like tube chassis. It's like very, very extreme and the 67 Mustang is very,

it's like very tastefully done. It's more traditional and very clean.

And, and so I wanted to have those two examples that we could show the world and say, okay,

here's kind of, this is Ruffian. Like this is the spectrum of Ruffian

with the hopes that the people that we did attract to us, like obviously for us racing,

inspiration, motorsports is a, is a huge part of what we do. So if you come to me and say that you

want a low rider with a full leather interior and, you know, a killer sound system in it,

I'm, you're way better off going to another shop, you know? So we've never put a stereo in anything

that we've built so far, you know? So it's like weird, oddly enough, stereo might be a,

might be a deal killer for us. If you want a stereo, you're probably talking to the wrong person.

I just put an armrest in my 911. Am I out? I just, I, oh armrest and like, man, this would be really

nice 10, 12 hours in the car driving across the country to scout for a rally. I need an armrest.

I threw it in there. No, I get that. Anything that you need for, that makes the car experience,

driving experience better, I buy into. I'm not opposed to like a seat heater or even seat cooler,

like, but that's part of driving the car though, I feel like, you know, so, and, and I've got,

you know, I understand I've got cars with that are, that are more comfortable or not,

not made for performance or whatever. I, I like cars a lot, a wide range of cars, but

as far as what we're good at and what we know and what we build is, is, is all that kind of stuff,

motorsports oriented stuff. And largely American, American brands, muscle car era,

partially the muscle car era because we're in Southern California and California won't let you

touch anything that's newer than 75 or you've got emissions problems,

but partially because that's what I know. I grew up reading Hot Rod Magazine. The first car I had

was a 67 Cougar, which is the muscle car era. Like, I know it really, really well and I can pull from,

we used to go to vintage racing and stuff all the time, I can pull from

all the stuff that these other people did before me and sort of crafted into something new.

But if you told me that you wanted me to build a, a bitch in like BMW European build, like,

I like BMWs. I think they're cool. There's definitely some,

ones that are favorites of mine, but I don't feel like I know, I don't know BMW engines. I don't

know transmissions. I don't know drivetrains. I don't know what parts would be cool to put in it,

what parts wouldn't be cool to put in it. I don't know enough about it.

You've already proven that you can learn though, because if like you look at like,

if you look at either of these builds, you had to have learned an enormous amount of,

of stuff to be able to put those cars together. So surely you could learn. Like,

if someone brings you a 3.0 CSL is like, Hey man, I want the, the you version of this.

I know. Yeah.

I think you'd figure it out. I think you would do it. Right?

It's, it's on, like a CSL is on the, is on the list, that list that I created,

the CSL was on there. I'd like to get to it at some point. I just, I don't,

yeah, it's, it's, it's not my comfort zone. So we're,

we're, we're starting to push some of that stuff a little bit more now trying to push the comfort

zone. But we've got a, what's that? If you look at that list in your head, what's the thing that

would surprise everybody that it's on there? Anything? I don't know. There's just a wide range

of stuff. There's a, like a 928. I'd love to build a Porsche 928 one day. I'd like to build a Ferrari

Testarosa one day. Now a bunch of people built Testarosa. So it doesn't seem so, so wild. But

like when I made the list, there weren't any, like nobody had taken and cut up and done like a wide

body Testarosa or anything like that. So yeah.

Like an old Yalpa or those old Lamborghinis that are kind of strange and weird and some of that

old exotic Italian stuff that nobody's ever heard of. Yeah. It's so tough because I personally love

that stuff. But, um, and maybe the Plymouth, we did this 35 Plymouth recently and it's done really,

really well for us. We're on the cover of Hot Rod, this issue, the spring issue of Hot Rod

Magazine, that Plymouth is on the cover of Hot Rod Magazine. We've been to a bunch of shows.

It's won awards. Like it's done really, really well for us and got a lot of attention. And I,

I didn't think anyone would care because people built 32 Ford's, you know, those are known.

Nobody builds a 35 Plymouth. Like it's just not a, it's just not a,

a thing for traditional Hot Rod-ing.

So like generally I try, I, I, we've been trying to stay with cars that are more popular and more

well known or whatever. And part of that thinking was like, okay, if you're on Instagram and you,

and you do like hashtag Mustang, because you like Mustangs, then maybe ours will pop up.

But no one's going to say like hashtag 35 Plymouth. Like no one's going to be like hashtag tag

Lamborghini Europa or a Lotus Europa. As you prove your, oh, that's, that's a good one, dude.

Yeah, I know, right. But as time goes on, people are going to be looking up hashtag roofing to see

what you're doing. Yeah, yeah. So I think that Plymouth kind of, the Plymouth is the one that's

kind of showing me that maybe it's okay to go down the road of like, I like different and weird

oddball stuff. That's why I like the 928 so much. I just love that the 928 pissed a bunch of people

off because it was front engine and it was a V8. And for some part of me, like I love V8s,

I'm used to V8s, American muscle cars. When I was in college, there was a guy that had a 928

in town and he had put glass packs on it. And every time I'd hear a muscle car go down the road

and I turned around and look and you'd see a 928 and I was like, what the hell? Like that's the

coolest thing I've ever seen. So I do like the redheaded stepchild, you know, models of a lot

of these car manufacturers and stuff. And what I'm hoping is that we'll get some clients that'll be

like, hey, you know, build me a AMX, you know, or I actually wanted to, I went pretty deep in this

project where I was going to buy a used Lamborghini Evo race car and then put AMC, the X3, I think

it's called, body on top of it. So it would be sort of AMC's version of the DiTomasso, you know,

an exotic muscle car era car. But a concept artist, Andreas, that I work with, he was like,

everyone's just going to think it's a kick car. And I'm like, yeah, that does kind of suck to put,

you know, half a million dollars into a build and then have people just like be like, oh,

it's a kick car. I don't even know what that is. Look at this thing. This is my favorite muscle car

right here. I've seen these at Road America and the Vintage races all the time. I mean, this is,

you know, this is almost as good as it gets for a muscle car for me.

Yeah, the Javelins are really good. They're another one where it's like,

it's definitely on the wish list. And there's been a couple of big high dollar builds. Ring

Brothers did one that's super gnarly. Yeah, those are, there's also, so I've been pining for a,

I keep, I'm in the, and I've mentioned this on the podcast before, but you don't know this,

but I am in the short stroke 289 algorithm right now. Okay. I get served

289 Mustang sounds almost as much as attractive women. So it's like half attractive women,

289 Mustang engines, which is a crazy ratio. What would you, if you were me, who's a guy that

loves old European stuff, what would you put a 289 engine in? Because I don't want a Mustang.

I mean, I kind of want a Mustang, but I don't want a Mustang. I want it to be,

like I put an S 50 in this Mercedes. So I can, I can do it. I can put it in whatever.

What should it go with? What should I, what would you do?

Uh, I don't, that's the thing. I just don't know them all that well. There's a little,

I don't know what it is, but there's a little tiny, one of the little tiny Mercedes,

uh, two doors. Like, uh, it's a little convertible thing. Yeah.

Um, it's, it's this thing, right? I'm going to pull it up. Like, I know what you're thinking.

These guys, this what you mean? Oh yeah. Yeah. Something like that with the 289 in it and

some fender flares on it. Be super rowdy. I'm, I'm, I want to do, I mean, how about, how about this?

You just, I'm, I'm just basically seeking for approval now is, um, I'm thinking, uh,

almost in that vein is, is this is where my head is at. Come on computer.

I'm in this world right here. The R 107 one body style newer cause these things are,

uh, like $10. Yeah. And the other one is like $50,000. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That makes sense. These are like free. They're borderline free and I'm taking the engine out

and throwing it in a trash anyway, where it belongs because Mercedes engines are absolutely

dog shit. Um, so this, this feels, this feels like the way to go.

Yeah. That would be fun. I, I, I guess the thing that you would want is to try to

try to lighten it as much as you can. You know, the two 89 is going to,

the, the more weight you can take out of it, the better. Yeah. For sure. What weight is king?

Always, always, always. Um, well last question, you know, you started with a cougar.

When are you building a cougar? It's weird. We've got, uh, so Drew, who works for me,

he's 18. He has a wide body cougar. It's a 68, I think. Um, we have a cougar in the shop right

now. It's a 67 that is Deans from SoCal classic car storage. And Mike, uh, a Mikey who works for

me has a 69 cougar that he's building, kind of like Trans Am style. So it's like, I don't have one

and I don't know that there's going to be a Ruffian one soon, but there are three in the

shop right now. So it's kind of a weird thing. It seems like it would be the natural fit for you,

man. Yeah. They're a little tough with the, with especially just the front grille. Like the grille

is so iconic and it's cool, but it's also so, um, old, like hard to get away from it being like

really vintage and old. So it's like, how do you restyle that and not lose the cougar,

but modernize it enough to where, you know, a modern chassis and stuff under it doesn't,

isn't weird. That sounds like a problem we're solving. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen some interesting

takes on it, but, uh, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Right now I kind of, I'm trying hard to get away

from doing Ford's just because we've done so many that everybody thinks we're a Ford shop

and I got to get out of that. So the Plymouth at least was, was one that got away from that

and we have a El Camino we're doing soon. Um, but we're also doing a 90 Fox, uh, Mustang for,

for Sean Autotopia LA right now. Um, that car's gonna, I'm really excited about it. It's a lot

of fun because I graduated high school in 93 and 93 was the last year of the Fox and it was, uh,

the local dealer had like, had like three, um, 93 Mustang Cobras on the lot and I,

I went there multiple times and drooled on those cars. So I've always wanted one, never had one.

Um, I might not still, I might still not ever own one, but, um, I'm at least getting to build

a Ruffian version of a Fox now. Thanks to Sean. That would be, that would be sick to Fox, but he's

always good. Um, Chris, dude, it's been really great talking to you. Your journey is really

incredible. I think it's really cool what you've built, um, from Left 4 Dead to my favorite Mustang.

It's, uh, one of my favorite games to one of my favorite cars. That's like two of my very well,

uh, I'm glad you were born. Thank you. Awesome. Yeah. I appreciate it. All right. You take care

of yourself. We'll see you around. We'll talk to you again in a few years. See where you're at.

Okay. That'd be, that'd be great. Cool. Take care. You too. Bye.

Chris Ashton / Ruffian Cars

About this episode

pre-production

Function first

SEMA

homage

67 Mustang

Shelby Cobra

car salesman

car dealership

Nissan

spark plugs

drive a stick

wrench

flooded my carburetor

wildfire layer

Onyx Offroad

FCP Euro

lifetime replacement guarantee

pothole protection

car history

autocross

co-op

independent game studio

indie studio

IP

publisher bankruptcy

E3

DLC

tube chassis

seat heater

Ferrari Testarosa

Request an Explanation

Want to learn more?

Help improve this episode

More from Overcrest