Damon Lee & Steven Bunker of Goodguys Rod & Custom

So good, so good, so good.

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If not everybody had an American-made car in high school.

That's true, too.

And they're still going to have you guys,

they're passionate and got some money to build a car.

My question is on the good guy side of things,

what do you do on the foreign side,

whether it's powered by American or not?

Your official role as of now is what?

Director of marketing operations.

Damon Lee and Stephen Bunker.

Thank you for having us.

From good guys' fame, drag racing fame,

when you do a road tour with a couple of vehicles.

Big breath of fresh air into the industry

and changed everything.

It was a massive, like, rejuvenation for the whole industry.

Even to this day, like, was it game changer?

Game changer for us.

Would there be an avenue in good guys

where you have a special area for first-time builders,

first-time exhibitors, where you just stack that

with first-time builders?

That's a good idea.

Those dropping bangers over here.

So I hope you guys realize the power that you do have.

It gives a customer a reason to build a car.

It sounds funny, and maybe, like, to Josh's point,

maybe you guys don't realize the power that you hold,

but when you set these things,

there are people that do build stuff specifically for it.

Well, that's the case, and just do one award.

Put everything all together.

The award?

Cars, trucks, four-wheel drive, all that kind of stuff.

If it's just about, like, build the best,

sometimes you do have to have a little bit of narrowing down

of genres and types and stuff like that.

They're narrowed down.

They're narrowed down enough.

You don't think there's any room for any of the later

muscle car stuff?

You're dancing on participation awards a little bit over there,

and I don't like it.

Welcome back, another episode of Oil and Whiskey.

This week, we have none other than Damon Lee and Stephen Bunker.

Thank you for having us.

From Good Guys' fame, drag racing fame, editorial fame.

We're doing it.

We're doing dual.

We're using fame in a really loose way.

Yeah, fame is just, you know, something.

That's what you do.

It sounds good to the listeners.

It's professional, right?

Yeah.

If you do it as a profession.

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Drag race here tonight. I didn't know that about you.

We got a lot to learn. We got a lot to learn in this one.

Three generations. Really? Oh, yeah.

They were drag racing three generations ago.

I have to admit, you're going to love this.

Because it was a faux pas on my part.

Okay. We were talking outside with Steven

and I saw him make a post not too long ago about his brother.

His brother is the crew chief for Cruz Pedragan.

Right? It's a pretty big deal.

And he just had this first win under him.

That was Cruz's first in with three years.

Yeah, 22 was the last time he won.

So big deal. We'll talk about it.

This is probably not the best way to talk about it,

but we're going to do that this way.

We're just diving right in. Just diving right in.

Well, because this is a Tony Hinchcliffe situation.

Okay.

I know.

I'm going to focus in on this.

So, you know, we wanted to get into the story about his dad

building drag cars and that's kind of what, you know,

it started all this.

And so I said, well, how does your dad feel about you

with your brother being a crew chief in the drag racing family?

And it came out like...

About like that.

And then it said, I didn't mean it that way.

And there was no walking it back the way I was.

I'm sure he's super proud.

You've obviously done it really well for yourself.

Great profession.

It's like, I meant it as like, you were in the family business

and now I've taken a different path.

Your brother is in that business.

I'm sure there's some banter that goes back and forth.

However, I didn't say it like that.

So I apologize.

I wish you would have been there for it because you'd have loved

to bust my balls about that, but...

He walked it back pretty quick, but I didn't think of it that way.

As soon as it was coming out, I was like, this...

No, just stop talking.

Stop saying words.

It's all good.

So we're going to get right into...

We're going to get the background of each of you.

So because there's so differences until we get into the similarities,

there'll be some quiet time for each other to sit and listen

to each other's stories, but that's fine.

Perfect.

You could also join in when he's telling a story at any point in time

to ask your own questions or poke as much fun as you would like.

Happy to do either.

Yeah.

It looks like you guys have brought a bottle along with, huh?

Yeah, so that's from our friend at Ethos, Jesse Greening.

Who?

Jesse Greening.

Never heard of him?

He's a brewer.

He's a brewer now.

He's a brewer.

He's still a liquor, huh?

Yeah.

That's what he does.

Greening distillery.

Distillery.

Ethos.

And so they teamed up with us on the Giveaway 44 that we just unveiled

in Columbus a couple of weeks ago.

It's a moonshine runner theme, so we need to have some whiskey in the trunk.

So I wanted to give you guys a bottle and bring one of those.

I appreciate it.

I think that the one, it was great for Jesse to be able to get his brand of alcohol,

liquor, whiskey, but great way to do that with the moonshine runner theme.

And it's cool.

The whole box is in the back.

It all came together pretty good.

It was Jesse's idea.

He reached out to us and obviously Ben York at Roosevelt and Custon,

that built the car.

He was happy to oblige.

And the whole trunk of that car is moonshine runner themed.

It's got the rubber mat that you lift up.

There's like hidden compartments underneath for moonshine.

It's pretty cool if you guys see it.

Jesse's just full of those award-winning ideas.

All right, so Bunker, we're going to get into you first.

You're going to tell us your background and story,

because we hear this all the time that good guys,

those guys don't even know anything about cars.

There's not car guys.

People say that.

There's no car guys that work there.

People said that.

That's the thing.

I don't pay a lot of attention as much as you do.

So I haven't heard that honestly.

Well, usually it's like sour grape stuff.

There's fewer.

Let's not say none.

There's fewer guys.

So if you don't win award, maybe then you're a little better.

People always going to have a gripe about anything.

I mean, if you think you have to park in a spot that you think

your car is not worthy of, then you're going to blame it on the guy

that that guy doesn't even know what he's looking at.

He's not a car guy.

You hear the shit.

But you're here to set the record straight.

Well, I don't know about straight, but just right.

Talk about.

Yeah, talk about a rich history in it.

Yeah.

Grew up at the drag strip right when I was born.

Third generation drag racer.

My grandfather started drag racing.

His wife's my granny's 55 Chevy in the 60s.

And that snowballed quickly into the early days of pro gas in

California, in California, Northern California, Sacramento,

Redding, down to Bakersfield and whatnot.

Raced a pro gas car, you know, straight axle gas or 55 Chevy for

20 something years, better part of 25 years.

And in the late 80s, when the pro-mod deal was coming around,

Charles Carpenter, Robbie van der Graaf, all these folks on the

East Coast, my grandpa and some guys out West were like, hey,

let's let's do that, you know.

And so took the car apart, kept the roof, quarters, built a full

tube chassis with it and blown big walk 1471 with a clutch

and a lingo and started doing pro-mod stuff.

Wow.

West Coast.

What year is that?

88.

Yeah.

So that car and that inception was born the same year as me.

That's the, that's the way I remember that.

And the family remembers it.

And that's a, that was, that was the profession.

He was a machinist by trade, worked in car dealership lots,

or a mechanic shop, you know, but it was always a mechanic and

whatnot.

My father worked for chassis works, Chris Alston.

Okay.

And he, my dad toured the country around the same age of when I

started doing this, you know, or mid early 20s, doing chassis

seminars on building Chris Alston's kit to chassis.

And then when Alston decided he didn't want to do the full

complete car build stuff anymore and just sell components,

my dad would open it up his own shop.

And so ever since 91, I believe my dad has been building and

race cars and still does to this day.

So you, you would probably argue with somebody that says that

there's not car guys there that you've probably been around a

few cars.

Been around.

Yeah.

But it was mostly drag racing.

Right.

And so when I, when I was in elementary school, parents were split up.

And so my dad would pick me up from high elementary school, take

me to the shop, I do my homework in his office on his desk and

then go out in the shop and I would just pick up a big welder

and just start welding scrap pieces and metal together.

Eventually that rolled into like building jig fixtures for his,

you know, tubing bender dyes and whatnot, just for organizational

storage racks, middle school, high school, all those years,

just kind of master on a dash shop, tinkering on whatever.

And then out of high school, I actually went worked for him

full time, 10 years.

And we toured the whole West Coast.

I was helping run a pro mod association.

We raised basically from Phoenix, four tracks in California,

Boise, Idaho, out to Denver and just running around trying to help

this organization grow while working at my dad's shop.

But that obviously allowed me to go to all these races, you know,

not taking paid time off or anything.

Yeah.

And yeah, it just got to a point where I,

sorry, it, uh, through racing and going to races and when I met

Mark Meadows, because Mark was running a pro mod car.

My brother was tuning Mark's car.

Okay.

And so when Mark would win a race, John Drummond would email me

and he's like, Hey, I need pictures of Mark's car.

I talked to Mark that way for like three or four years.

Hell is it?

That's quite the circle.

That's the circle, right?

So it's because my brother worked on Mark's race car and that's

the way they got connected.

Yeah.

And then my brother introduced me to Drummond.

Drummond and I talked back and forth.

And so to make this long story short, the way that I got into good guys

was basically through that relationship with Drummond.

Um, when Brandon Flannery left good guys, Drummond was like, Hey,

we need somebody to hit the road with us.

And I have this community relationship with you.

So are you interested in doing that?

How would your dad take that?

He was fine because I was working for him, like I said, for better

part of probably 10 years or so out of high school.

Yeah.

And his mentality has always been, um, he wants the best for us.

And so he's like, I can't provide you what they're doing.

You're 24 years old.

Go hit the road.

Go get it.

Go country.

Go do it.

You know, live it up.

When you went to work for your dad full time, um, right at high school,

what, what discussions did you have if any with yourself of like,

was there even a question?

Did you already knew that that was like, I'm just going to do that?

Uh, no, because I was dumb.

I was just the dumb teenager at the time.

And all I wanted to do was drag race.

It was just cars, cars, cars, drag race, drag race.

Like what do I have to do to go to race?

It was like, this is going to be the easiest way for me to travel

to country and go to drag races and work on race cars.

Um, but then when time got on and had a serious girlfriend thing about

proposing family, kids, marriage, life, benefits, health insurance,

all that good stuff.

That adult thing that comes out when I was like, okay, maybe

there's something else to look for here.

Yeah.

So you go to, you stay in California and go to work for good guys.

Yep.

Yeah.

I was always up in Northern California.

Yeah.

Um, community down this one.

Good guys was still in Pleasanton.

Uh, so the first five years, four years.

What kind of drive is that?

Uh, I didn't go every day.

It was, uh, a day a week and then it was two days a week and it was three,

but it was, you know, California time, two and a half to three hours,

but a hundred miles maybe.

So traffic.

She's fine.

But yeah, it was one of those things where if I was laying in bed

at one in the morning and not asleep yet,

I just hop in the truck and drive and sleep in the parking lot.

First, first, first person in the office was just knocking on the door

and they're like, Hey, get up.

It's time to get to work.

Yeah.

So what'd they put you on first?

Associate editor.

So just photography, writing captions, working on the Gazette,

doing car features, stuff like that.

Um, and then I was associate editor for four years until that good old

COVID time hit and, uh, stopped doing events and went into running that

fuel curve website for two years.

That's cool.

Yeah.

Digital media editor.

And then left this guy on the magazine all by himself and bounced

over to marketing and to where I'm at now.

So what year did you sign on with?

Good guess.

2015.

What's your one?

Wow.

10 years.

But 2000, the, the number 2015 doesn't sound that long ago

until you put the math to it.

10 years.

Yeah.

And 10 years sounds longer than 2015.

Sure does.

Like 2015 is just like, Oh, I remember.

Yeah.

We're at that show.

We did this car, debuted this and then like, Oh, 10 years.

Sounds like when you went to work for them, did you tell drumming

and everybody like, this is, this is easy.

So we just call up other people that hang out at cars and just get

the pictures from them.

We don't have to do anything.

Cause that's what basically what he was doing.

No, it was actually pretty funny.

It wasn't the easiest transition and it wasn't just a handed like

fell in my lap and given to me thing.

Like I got ran through two interview processes.

There was a guy, good guys that was against hiring me.

Who was that?

I'm not saying.

You almost, you almost got it.

Yeah.

That was good.

That's probably the best it's been.

It wasn't, it wasn't that.

Yeah.

But anyways, I'll always credit drumming for, for where I'm at

and everything that I've gotten through this industry because on

interview round two, he basically said, I'm going to rather, I'd

rather teach a car guy how to write than a writer about cars.

So true.

Yeah.

And it wasn't, it wasn't like writing wasn't like foreign to me

because I was writing race coverage, doing website photography

with Drag Race and everything.

So I still knew how to put.

You're building that organization too.

Trying to get it going.

It's very similar type things.

Like I worked with, like Westbuck with drag illustrated,

but a couple online websites, competition plus Drag Race

and online back in the day.

So writing about cars wasn't foreign, but I don't know

like the MLA format.

Well, let's be honest.

It's all car guys.

Nobody's really like hyper focused on the grammar.

Yeah.

Where the comment is like.

Hey, hey, hey, hey.

What a fucking big run on sentence.

Except Bill Goodall, who was an English literature.

Yeah.

That's what editors are for.

Exactly.

Say here's 95% fix the other.

You've used badass 13 times in that paragraph.

Let's change to sick.

So, so yeah.

So come in.

Move into marketing.

Your official role as of now is what?

Director of marketing operations.

Which means exactly.

Different thing.

See now this is this is what I was.

That's now we're getting to it.

So I still put her outer.

I still am involved with the marketing aspects of good guys

from the creative, you know, promo videos that we produce

for every event.

The digital ads and the campaigns that we run in everything.

Right.

When we go to a Grand National Roadshow or an auxiliary event,

you know, running a display booth about good guys.

And then the operation stuff comes in because any of the

indoor special displays that we do, indoor car shows,

the awards program, stuff like that at the events that help

the operation team just make sure the events run smoothly.

Right.

Well, 2015 in good guys was really kind of the start of

some very transitional times.

Like that was kind of the start of things.

I mean, they moved to Texas.

2020.

Or was it 21?

21, I think.

21.

Right out of, right out of, don't say COVID.

You guys say pandemic.

Pandemic.

Oh yeah.

They don't like that word.

Yeah.

But there was, I mean, there's things.

There's people transitioning out.

There's new people coming in.

There's also from the outside looking.

There's definitely a change in the audience.

I mean, everybody's being aware of, you know,

continuing to further down the younger crowd.

And you've got year changes going on.

There's lots of changes from 2015 even to now in good guys.

Marketing-wise, I've seen it a lot over the last two years.

As far as videos, the amount of them, the quality of them,

the cadence and how much more connected it is to like,

car guy stuff versus...

And this is not digs at good guys.

Times change.

Yeah, yeah.

Times change.

It's trending in the right direction.

It's 100% trending.

But you're moving away from a more of a bebop kind of thing

into HIPAA.

And you've seen that, you know, over the last 10 years.

Sometimes it doesn't go as fast as probably what anybody

would like.

But it is a natural progression.

And it's all for the positive.

It's a huge change.

Dave used to do it, so you're not really insulting him

except that he's right there.

No.

I'm not saying that you ever did anything,

everything was wrong.

Like you said, it's a progression.

I mean, there's music styles change.

And it's not like old music was done the wrong way, you know?

Well, some of that, I would say, I would credit Matt Kuchin,

our social media...

Shit, I don't know what his title is.

Director of social media.

Or director of digital media.

You know, he's been here for two years a little bit more.

And he's a younger guy.

And he gets it, you know?

And I think for good guys, for a long time,

like a lot of companies, social media was sort of,

it's somebody's extra duty.

And so it looks like that.

And so when you get somebody who's really dedicated,

wants to learn the stuff, gets to know the people,

wants to put some energy into it, it shows.

So it's cool to hear you guys say that.

That you notice it.

It's obvious.

Obvious change.

And it's good for the positive.

He's the tall, one of the better looking people

that you've got working.

That would be an accent, right?

Yeah, I was trying to put the...

You know which one I'm talking about.

OBS giveaway shirt.

Yeah, exactly.

You tell it, he's cool, he's hip.

He is, yeah.

He's a good guy.

He comes from...

Not that you guys aren't.

We all know.

To a certain level.

He's the guy on the camera.

Yeah, he's knocking social media out of the park.

But he came from, like, the rodeo world.

Really?

Yeah, like he...

I don't know how serious he is,

because he can't take half the things you say truthfully.

He says he always wanted to be a rodeo clown,

and I could see it.

But yeah, he comes from rodeo,

and then we hired him out of the power sports world,

where he was working for...

I would cover that face up with any fucking clown shit.

Supposedly, and I don't want to be talking about school,

supposedly the rodeo clown scene does very well.

With the ladies?

There's only a certain amount of cowboys to go around,

and there's a larger group of buckle bunnies than there is.

So the rodeo clowns do really well.

Really?

Yeah, if you care about that type of thing.

Yeah, I'd like to get a little behind the scenes

of what goes on in that very wild environment.

Oh, I can't imagine.

Yeah, there was like a...

Cowboy, carny...

Schooling that he went to.

Like, he honestly suffered a performance injury

towards ACL, and that ruined his rodeo career.

Full-blown athletes.

If you've ever watched...

I can see that.

The rodeo, those dudes are...

Yeah, you don't want to have an injury being chased by bulls.

No.

I mean, it's very similar to a good guy's show

when you do it like the buckle bunnies.

Right?

Like, you go back to the hotel, and it's like you're just...

Fighting them off.

Yeah, so it sticks, you're just beating them.

Yeah, that's the exact opposite.

They're like, oh, you guys are from the Roadster Shop.

I said, oh, wow.

They're just throwing themselves at you.

You could get an injury getting run down by a stare

and scooter somewhere in the parking lot,

but you're not going to get a buckle bunny.

Much more likely for that to happen.

Yeah.

We had Mike Good from PRI on this week.

We also had Tom and Warren on from SEMA,

and we brought this question up, and it's tricky.

They both took the corporate stance, you know, about this question,

and I'm going to ask it for good guys.

Short of full-blown ADA compliance, the scooter situation.

There's had to have been discussions about that,

and I get that there's absolutely a need.

We all, like, off-camera, have to admit that is abused.

Well, there's handicap, and then there's lazy.

Right?

Yeah, I was saying it nicely.

Oh, which is cut right too.

You're dancing around.

But you also, they touched on it.

You really can't say no, because if somebody says,

I need one, then they get one.

Yeah.

It's like how you can't ask for the papers of a service dog.

Correct.

Because we don't allow pets, but service dogs,

but you're not allowed to say, is that a service dog?

But if I park in a handicap spot without my blue hanger,

they don't ask me to give me a ticket.

They'd give me a ticket.

What about Dave and Kevdog riding wheelies through the show?

Heather, Dave and Kevdog.

You get away with that stuff.

That's when Matt takes video and puts it on social.

No, it is funny, though, the type of person that would say,

yes, I need one to your lazy point also has,

which it makes sense.

They have absolutely no sense of awareness.

Self-awareness.

Self-awareness or respect for a booth, a display, a car.

It's special.

A child's too.

It's special.

Yeah, like it's wild to see.

I just wish we could somehow create special lanes for them,

because that's the thing that frustrates our visual team,

is you got this great shot lined up.

And then you got like four scooters coming across.

How many off the record, how many cover shots

had that had to be photoshopped out of?

Not that many, really, but certainly a handful.

I mean, usually we shoot enough that we can take one without,

but it has killed a lot of shots.

We have quite possibly the best mobility scooter story.

Well, it wasn't a good guy's show.

It was at Shades.

Shades of the past, right?

No.

We had two customers, one customer who needed one,

and one customer who just wanted to borrow it.

An older guy, too.

You're not going to tell the customer's name.

No, we're not going to name names.

We're not going to name names.

Two famous customers.

Very famous customers.

Famous customer number one needed the scooter.

Famous customer two didn't need it,

but he just felt like borrowing it to go see a car

that he didn't feel like walking.

And as he comes back to the booth,

famous customer number two just fucking whiskey throttle hanger

coming into the booth.

And you can see it in his eyes as he rounded the corner.

This has gotten away from me.

Under the tent, this thing is pinned.

Somehow it picked up boost.

They'd only go 15.

Somehow this one was going 47.

It's like Mario Kart.

It was like kind of last minute kicks the foot out,

just thinking about maybe I could stop this thing.

Other than that, complete disregard just continues

with the whiskey throttle and just cranks the side of our rig.

I thought it totaled the fucking rig.

I mean, it was violent.

The scooter just flying up in the back.

He goes flying up over the handlebars.

And what was the response?

That thing got away from you, didn't it?

But then it was, Jesus, this truck's a piece of shit.

Yeah, customer two, he's like, this thing's falling apart.

Look at this thing.

Yeah, you just fucking hit it.

You moved the...

45 miles an hour.

The toater and the stacker over a foot, the entire thing,

with the tent and everything.

Yeah, it was a hit.

Yeah, whiskey throttle's never fun.

No.

I'll never forget that.

Yeah, sorry to get on the scooter thing.

But it's people that run the circuit know exactly

what we're talking about, and it's difficult.

I just think the fact that it didn't come on 10 to 15 years

earlier probably saved our careers.

Because if we were able to get on them...

Yeah.

And we got on some golf carts.

Yeah.

We wouldn't be allowed back at most of these shows.

There's another show that happens,

that it gets way more carried away at.

It's a more targeted demo.

Another show at another location.

Now, those...

There's that little switch that's under there.

There's a little red tab.

Yes.

That's fun.

Especially when they're all parked in line.

Click all those tabs, and then just hang back.

Is it like a neutral switch?

Yeah.

Lots of them.

No, it's the neutral thing to roll.

But so when they get in to go, it no go.

They're just sitting there revving them.

Watch about 15 or 20 of those that don't go

while you're sitting 15 foot away.

That is fun.

And also, the level of anger.

Because they have places to be.

And it's not working.

That's fun.

Fun times.

It's like, why the hell did we agree to do this?

I told you, are you sure?

You're going to need one with all this coughing.

I'm dying.

I'm full-blown dying.

Back to good guys.

So, talked about the changes, talked about the direction.

On...

I know this isn't exactly your wheelhouse.

It's the actual event planning.

But it's all part of the thing.

But from the event itself and the magazine,

talk us through the delicate balance

if there is on your different audiences.

Because on the event side, you've got car show bringers.

I'm driving my show.

I'm driving my car to the event.

Then you've got your builders.

Building cars, debuting cars, going forwards.

Then you've got exhibitors.

Then you have, this is an event.

I'm local.

I'm going to see whatever it is.

It could have been cars.

It could have been trucks.

It could have been big rigs.

Entertainment.

It's entertainment.

It's gate, right?

All of those have their own unique set of challenges,

their own unique complaints.

They also all think that their group is the most important group.

100%.

Magazine is somewhat same.

You don't have really the gate side of things, right?

You've got builders.

Well, I bought an ad and I did this.

The picture is only this big.

It should be this big.

When you're laying things out and you're trying to cater to all these audiences,

I'm interested to hear how much is that going through your head?

How are you cognizant of it?

How do you try to, or does it even matter?

I think it's all going through my head.

But at the end of the day, I've always felt that our role with Magazine is to

give a flavor of the event for the person who wasn't there.

So if somebody wasn't there, give them a good overview of what was there.

And there were some pretty good systems in place when I came on board,

and I'm pretty sure that Drummond kind of established those,

but that I feel like gives us a good way to kind of show a pretty good spectrum

of the types of cars and stuff that were there.

So, you know, we always do pretty consistent size photos

and a little bit longer captions for the Builders' Choice top 10 cars.

And most of those are going to be pro builds.

Those are some of your debut cars, you know, that sort of thing.

We like the fact that some of the Builders' Choice selectors,

and you guys did it, I think, this year in Columbus, you know,

you pick some home-built stuff or some maybe not the super, super high-end level,

just stuff that like trips your trigger, like this is really cool.

We like the treat it as a pick.

Like it's like...

That fucking van is also...

It should have your flavor on it.

Well, and I think that that's what good guys' awards have always been.

Most of our awards are called picks because it's not...

That's one of the biggest arguments we get in, I think,

with kind of the car show guy is the people who say,

like, well, I didn't see anybody judge.

You didn't judge my car.

Yeah.

No, you're right.

We did not.

We did not walk around the jet sheet.

You're right, we did not.

And I think that, you know, to my knowledge, that goes back to Gary.

You know, Gary was not like a huge awards guy,

but he wanted to recognize, you know, cool cars and stuff like that.

But you call it a pick because it's like,

you see that car from across the parking lot,

and you're like, that's bitching.

And it doesn't make...

You could also judge cars from across parking lots.

Yeah.

You're judging it.

It's just not...

I judged it.

You just look at my car.

No, I did.

I did.

I judged it accordingly.

But, yeah, so I think, you know, in that respect also,

a guy who doesn't have a million dollar car

can still get an award at a good guy's event

if it's just a car that sits right, looks right,

you know, just has a cool attitude to it, whatever.

But kind of back to the Gazette thing.

So we do, you know, we always do a couple of pages

for the Builders' Choice cars.

We typically do five pages for award winners.

And then we do, you know, anywhere from 25 to 50,

what we call car portraits that are just, you know,

the average guy's car or the car that maybe wasn't

in the Builders' Choice area that was just kind of out in the field

that we thought was kind of cool or got a good shot of.

And then we just, the rest of it, we kind of try and mix in.

It's like, well, you know, we get the model car make and take

or some vendor booths or, you know, things like that

to just remind people that there was stuff at the event

that goes beyond just the cars.

Is it hard to try to capture the feeling of each event

because a lot of them are pretty drastically different

and like give the person reading the magazine the feels

if they were high above it?

That can be a little bit challenging.

I think we all just sort of intuitively know some

of those differences and I think sometimes how we shoot

may kind of affect how that's presented, how it comes across.

And there are certain events where we, you know,

obviously the bigger events tend to get a little bit more space

so you have a little bit more room to show some of those,

you know, the parking lot at the crown in Columbus

or, you know, things like that.

Cruise an MPL all up or Des Moines.

Some of these events write themselves, you know.

It seems like the cover kind of like sets the stage

for a lot of them too and like, oh, you know,

this is the Rocky Mountain Nationals or whatever

the Colorado show is and that's in the background

and it just kind of makes you feel like you were there.

Yeah, that's the goal.

Well, and a good example is the October issue

that just came out.

It has our Des Moines coverage, our Heartland Nationals

coverage in it and the last few years we've had

the giveaway car on the cover of the October issue

so it didn't really matter that much

and this year we were holding that feature

for the December issue so it's just a really cool

cruising shot and, you know,

if you've been to the Heartland Nationals

you know that Grand Avenue is just a constant stream

of guys cruising and so it's nice to be able

to kind of bring that flavor and say, hey,

that's just a big summertime party in my mind.

On the event side, how does that break down

on laying those different audiences

in those different groups?

Yeah, so on the marketing side it's

participants and spectators.

Participants are the car folks and the vendors

and whatnot, industry people, spectators,

it's a gate, front gate, you know,

they're just walking out to look at cars today

and in our marketing efforts really go into that as well

because we make different creative video, digital,

you know, static banners and GIF ads and whatnot

for talking to the participants and the spectators

and, you know, we use our email database

to work with an agency and target all those people, right?

So we definitely have a hard divide between the two of them

because we're talking about selling, you know,

registrations to one group of people

and the other group, it's like, hey, come on out,

it's a family fun event, you know,

we'll push more of the free kids make and take type stuff

and some of those aspects of the families.

I mean, let's face it because this is a business.

You have to generate income for the business

to continue to go.

Like George always said, somebody's got to pay

for all this fun we're having, right?

So listening to all the individual, you know,

bitch and moan and complain and stuff like that is like,

well, yeah, we have, gate is important, right?

Marketing to these people, like this is,

you guys want a lot of things,

like we got to pay for all these things you guys want.

Well, and that's kind of the thing,

like some of the stuff the car guys don't like, right?

Like we do burnout contests at some events,

we get some complaints at Ottercross.

What car guy doesn't like burnouts?

I don't know, man.

You really get complaints.

Yeah, we don't do it at every event because

what is the complaint?

Like, is it a safety thing?

The smoke, noise, the loud, you know.

Well, some people complain because we have

rubber full through the air, landing on their cars.

Yeah, some people complain because the way we do it

is not the burnout donut box that some places can do it.

You're doing a burnout, you ain't doing enough burnout.

Stop doing burnout, do burnout is better.

It's not reckless enough.

I can't imagine.

But you know, some of those events and features that we do

are geared towards the spectator because we're trying

to justify them spending the money that they spend

at the gates of bringing family four out

to enjoy a day of good guys.

There's a fine line.

It is.

You're juggling a lot of different audiences,

a lot of different customers for a very similar product,

but the product is marketed differently

to each one.

It's interesting.

So coming into good guys doing your thing,

we're there now.

Now we've got to pick up Damon.

Like, you've been around this for a long time.

I have been.

Yeah, pretty much my whole life.

I mean, like Steven, second generation.

Car guy, my dad has been in the cars his whole life

and actually got my editorial thing from him as well.

He actually started freelancing for car magazines.

I'm going to get this wrong.

Somewhere around 1959, 1960, like while he was in college.

And the whole time I was growing up, he was freelancing.

And so I just was tagging along to car shows with him

as long as I can remember, you know,

picked up my first camera at 10, started taking pictures as well.

And so going to shows, being a part of the car world

was always the connection that I had with my dad.

Like Steven as well, my parents were split up

and my dad lived out of state for a while.

So our annual car show summer trip was probably

some of the most time that I spent with my dad every year

and was our ritual, our routine every year.

And never really thought that I could really go into it professionally.

I thought, well, maybe I'll freelance.

But I did end up pursuing journalism at college.

And a year out of college had the opportunity to move to Southern California

and knew a few people at, it was McMullen Argus publishing at the time.

McMullen Argus.

And this was 1996.

And so sent a resume out to, actually out to Tom Vogley,

who's the editor of Street Scene now.

And he was at Street Rotter at the time.

That dude has been around forever.

Absolutely, yeah.

And I had met him a few times before and he said,

well, we don't have any openings at Street Rotter or at Custom Rotter right now,

but Terry Cole down the hall at Super Chevy,

he's looking for somebody I'm going to pass along your resume to him.

So I interviewed with him and six weeks later moved to Southern California

and started at Super Chevy Magazine.

And then was at McMullen Argus and it became Primedia

and then Source Interlink for about 11 years.

And so was at Super Chevy, Classic Trucks,

Rod and Custom and Custom Rotter Magazine.

And then...

Custom, along with Custom Rotter.

Absolutely.

That was where I always wanted to be and that's where I ended up.

Custom Rotter was like, I always had a hard time figuring out like what exactly it was.

The goal for that magazine and it was, man,

it was always a hard sell advertisers to everybody else,

but it's kind of frustrating why it was a hard sell

because it was really truly an emerging market

because it was really supposed to be Street Rotter for 49 to mid 60s cars.

Big cars on the ground.

Big wheels.

There was a hard line in the sand on anything post 40 for Street Rotter or 48.

Yes.

Yeah.

At the time there was a hard line,

but the problem, the challenge with Custom Rotter is we were trying to please both

the white well and fender skirt guy and the 20 inch impala bagged impala guy.

And it was kind of a hard line to walk or a little bit of a hard balance

and especially because it was an every other month magazine

and it was limited page count.

I think if it were monthly and you could, you know,

fit a little bit more in and you'd appease more people.

But it was really, I mean, there was so much.

I mean, Rod and Custom at that point too,

there was so much content for Rod and Custom that then Custom Rotter,

you'd be like, all right, well, we got to have a couple of badass hot rods

and we got to have a couple of cool customs,

but now we've got like galaxies and all this just bagged on.

Every time I think of Custom Rotter,

I'm not going to say anything else.

I just think of like a Tim Strange feature in Custom Rotter.

Yeah.

Well, there was it was again, like 49 and it was big cars on the ground with big wheels.

Yeah.

At that, you know, late 90s, early 2000s push.

I loved it.

Yeah.

And it was it was my favorite favorite shoot.

Chad's Nomad.

Yeah.

It was one of the first.

Yeah.

It was one of the first builds to come out of you guys.

At Indy Roadster Shop before or right after we guys bought Roadster Shop.

At Indy?

No, I think you shot it in Elgin.

Yeah.

I remember coming to Elgin and shoot.

Yeah.

I don't remember how that came about.

That was Custom Rotter.

Yeah.

Right?

It was.

Yeah.

I remember watching at Indy when y'all were out in the parking lot,

watching it.

Yeah.

Chad's Nomad.

Before I even knew you guys.

Man, that's so fucking cool.

That's the Roadster Shop guys.

That was a cool car.

Those dudes are cool.

I wonder where that car ended up.

Turns out they're not.

Oh.

Bullshit.

Y'all are cool.

Bullshit.

Where that car went.

Does anybody know about how do you track that car down?

That was sold at Barrett's.

You don't have to get it through.

It just disappeared.

There are so many cars like that though.

Yeah.

Where is that car now?

Yeah.

Well, that's like I've reached out to you a few years ago to actually do.

I went to a local consignment shop in Sacramento and there was a black Chevelle that wrote

Shop Bill.

And I was like, I never saw it or anything.

Yeah.

I was like, how the heck is this thing out in Sacramento?

It was a couple million books.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

But they just end up everywhere.

Some of these cars just disappear.

Yeah.

We talked C1RS Corvette.

Sold it at auction.

Went to the guy on stage.

We're like, we'll meet you afterwards.

We'll show you how everything works.

He just looked at it.

Yeah.

Okay.

Turned and walked away.

And I think the car popped up on some tuner's YouTube page once and we hadn't seen it in

a little 10 years.

Snippet of it.

Gone.

Yeah.

Somebody's private collection somewhere.

So, Custom Rotter and Hard Cell, where are we at now?

So, when they pulled the plug on Custom Rotter, I actually went back to the Rotter and Custom

staff for a few months.

But about that same time, had an opportunity, had a couple of young kids, had an opportunity

to move back to Nebraska, get a job with Speedway Motors and doing PR marketing stuff back there.

That's where I'm from.

That's where I grew up.

Really?

So, took that leap and was at Speedway for 10 years, doing a variety of different marketing

type things.

And that's when they actually had like, they started having cool booths, Speedway Garage

and stuff like that.

I remember.

I'll take a little bit of credit for that.

I know.

Speedy Bill was still at the helm.

Absolutely.

Yep.

Speedy Bill was still there.

And then it's kind of funny to hear Steven's story, because John Drummond kind of plays

into my, me coming to Good Guys as well, because when, because he was editing the Gazette for

a couple of years, and when they really wanted to launch FuelCurve and kind of get into that

digital world, he decided he wanted to take on that role of the digital editor.

And so they're like, well, we needed somebody to edit the magazine.

And both he and Ed Capen, you know, had a pretty good relationship with me.

And they're like, oh, we kind of need somebody like that.

And so they reached out.

And at the time, I was freshly divorced and all that sort of thing.

And so I said, well, we'd love the opportunity, but I can't move.

You know, my kids are here.

So, and they were actually kind of prepared for that and willing to give it a try of me

working remote.

And so, yeah, I decided to leap back into the deadline world, which I'm still not so

sure about.

And how long ago is that?

That was spring of 2017.

So my first event as a Good Guys employee was Del Mar 2017.

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Never meeting them at the airport check-in saying, hey, I'm your associate editor.

Let's hop in this room and go to work.

Who's this dude?

You're my new boss.

Let's go.

John Drummond keeps coming up, which I'm going to throw something out there.

I'm going to say something that just I'm seeing it and tell me if this resonates with you.

I feel like John Drummond, for whatever reason, I feel like he's the guy that somehow you

run into him at like an all-inclusive resort like Punta Cana, or like you're in like Minnesota,

the Mall of America.

Hey, John.

How's it going?

John, maybe it's that I saw him somewhere weird, but he's just like that.

Not like John, because I'm not like, it's not just a weird thing about like, yeah.

Want to be surprised by that.

No, you wouldn't.

No, no.

Drummond's that dude.

I don't know what it is, but yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, John.

He just took a solo vacation for two weeks to Iceland or something.

To go fishing.

Yeah.

What is he doing?

Oh, I don't know what the exact title is or anything, but he's working for the bottling

company.

He's still with that.

Scott Halloween's Bottle Liquor Company.

Yeah.

Sailors, basically.

It's not liquor.

They do mixer.

They make the mixer juice.

Yeah, that's right.

To go in the liquor.

Yeah.

Yeah, John was instrumental in a lot of people's lives for all different types of ways.

Yeah.

He was just one of those guys that was so connected to so many people.

Oh, that's just yours.

Or is one of those guys, I should say.

Yeah, he stays connected.

Yeah.

He was a good guy for 22 or five years.

I thought it was 26.

He was out there.

It was a long time when he left.

Yeah, he's a.

His stories of the early good guy stuff is hilarious.

Yeah.

That would be a good episode.

That'd be a good episode.

I actually love to hear, man.

What would you consider the early good guys?

I mean, early 2000s, mid 90s, like what's the heyday?

I would say, well, when I think of early good guys, I think 90s.

But that's because that's kind of my introduction to good guys.

I would agree.

I'd say 90s, the 2000s transition.

Yeah.

Like I just remember the like the Adam's Mark in the era, the early 2000s was it

was I don't know if that was riding like right off like the biker build off air.

And it's like you almost felt like hot riders were kind of cool for that short

period of time.

Right.

Guys are doing fucking burnouts and your party in your ass off in the parking lot.

And it was that was her mother nature.

Crazy, colorful personalities.

Every single year.

That's still one.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

No, that was I remember.

I remember those those indie events were awesome because I was covering them at the

time at my previous publishing job and it was always fun to go to those.

And that's where so many builders were trying to debut cars.

Was it was it was it?

Do you feel when you think back when we talk about India a lot, don't you feel

like you were there?

You got up way earlier.

It was always misty and it was like five o'clock.

It felt like five or six in the morning.

You did.

Yeah, I don't want to like I don't want to go back to this.

But what happened?

We used to have to get up at like four in the morning to get in line to get into

the builder's choice.

And now you can roll in at like eight and get into the builder's choice.

Pros pick whatever.

Do you know why that changed?

And thank God it did because I'm not a morning person.

But I don't.

Good guys ending to me was never at the racetrack.

My first year was the last year that we did India at the fairgrounds.

So I don't have any memories of good guys.

Indies that the way it spoke about to everybody else.

But I think now, though, I think now, though, we've just at certain events,

we've just made the builder's choice areas larger.

That was one thing.

It was not that big.

Maybe the area wasn't that big.

I mean, call it or you'd line up at four o'clock in the morning behind all the stalls

there and you'd get there at four and then you wouldn't get into like eight

thirty nine o'clock.

I think everybody all at once said no.

We're not doing this anymore.

That's part of it.

Probably. Yeah.

I mean, since I was never there, do you think it could have been the boy

Cottington, right?

Fame and everything making the pros?

I mean, definitely.

Yeah.

But I don't know.

Some of this stuff is just memory, right?

Because it took.

It was so long ago.

I mean, you were talking 15.

No, way along with that.

18, 19 years ago.

Yeah.

But there should when you were talking about capturing the essence of a event in

the Good Guys Gazette, I think you should do a limited edition, like 2001 Good

Guys Indie throwback, soak that fucker in water and then tuck it in plastic bags.

Send them out.

So you just have this sopping wet.

Yeah.

The smell.

Praying on newspaper.

It's such a time.

It was.

You'd spend three quarters of the event in the rig because it was pouring rain and

the rest trudged through mud.

But people still showed up though.

That's what's awesome is, you know, we've, the last couple of seasons, we've talked

about how, how it's not the weather, the actual event weekend.

It's the forecast the Tuesday before that can kill, that can kill an event weekend

because people start seeing rain in the forecast on Tuesday and they start

canceling hotel rooms and stuff like that.

It's like, man, those Indie days and even Des Moines, I think to a certain degree,

you know, people just, and still now in Des Moines, but like they're cool with

rolling even if it's raining.

And then there are other parts of the country.

Yeah.

A little bit of sprinkled, right?

Sprinkle a little bit.

That one.

It was like 18 seconds.

Don't.

Columbus has gotten on a run to where it was, it's Sunday at like 150.

It goes black.

And you're like, this is bad timing.

Yeah.

Worst timing.

We're going to put everything up wet.

You got cars in line ready to go to the thing.

But that, that little storm that popped through Columbus was.

Listen to early.

Yeah.

That was a big one.

At least it was like a surprise.

At least it waited until mid afternoon on Saturday.

Yeah.

That's a lot.

That's the time that a lot of people start rolling.

Des Moines Saturday rain the week before Columbus was from 11 to two.

Yeah.

That's pretty unfortunate.

That's a, that's a kick.

Yeah.

We need that.

It wasn't super stormy, but it was just consistent.

Yeah.

It wasn't a flood like Columbus.

But yeah.

We got beat up two Saturdays in a row.

But that's the world of outdoor events.

That's tough.

You roll the dice on that stuff.

You guys are here specifically to do this podcast.

And just so happens to be a road tour.

Just because they like it so much.

Then they know that.

You got 75 other hot rodders to follow you down here.

Drive all across country and do just to do the podcast.

So that's pretty cool.

They're actually all, they're all everybody.

You can't see it on camera.

Everybody's off camera.

Hey, wave everybody.

There's risers over there.

So road tours.

We're going to talk about those a little bit.

What was your first road tour you went on?

2015.

It was when we went from Colorado to Bowling Green on back to back weekends.

Back to back events.

Yeah.

That was the first one for me.

Colorado to Texas into Bowling Green, right?

Yeah.

I think it just went Colorado straight to Bowling Green on back to back weekends.

Okay.

2015.

That was before they basically all ended in Texas.

Yeah.

We might have went through Texas, but we didn't stay at a Texas event.

Clip Texas.

That, we've talked about it a lot on here.

That's funny because we remember what we remember, right?

We're all similar age.

We're, you talk about, you know, early good guys were like, oh, late 90s, early 2000s,

right?

There's people that been doing this a lot longer.

I know that Gary was really big on tours, driving, driving, you know, you got to drive

them.

They drove everything.

And then there was a time as cars continue to get crazier and crazier and crazier.

That didn't happen as much.

You guys brought that back with the road tours and it really, for everybody that we know

in our group, especially for our company, right?

It really changed a lot of directions from customers to builders.

And I know it's changed the direction that we did specifically when you do a road tour

with a couple of vehicles.

Big breath of fresh air into the industry and it was changed everything.

I mean, remember the first few, like all of us saying the same thing of like, this is

the most fun we've had with cars in a long time.

Not that what we were doing was not fun.

You didn't look at it as like, oh, this sucks.

But when you do something like, I just want to do this, right?

Let's just build everything to do these.

Let's just do these.

And you have great time with the customers and stuff.

And it was, you think about how every team, every single one, the next car you're building,

you build it differently specifically for that.

It was a massive like rejuvenation for the whole industry.

Even to this day, like we'll be setting stuff back and forth on like Facebook marketplace.

And it's always like, dude, how cool would this be for like a road tour car?

You know, just your mind's always thinking of like the cool shit and how your style is evolved

and the way you build a car as a result of that.

That was a game changer, game changer for us.

I think it's a huge deal.

And, you know, to kind of further that point is, I mean, the people that do our Hall of Fame road tour

year to year, it's probably 80 to 90% people who have either done it before or the same people do it every single year.

And because they just have that much fun and want to do it, they want to do it again.

And, you know, obviously, you kind of develop a network of friends of people who do it.

And so you like to spend the week hanging out with those people that you maybe only see that one week a year.

But it's also, yeah, it's just, it's kind of what all this stuff was supposed to be about.

You know, when you think back to like the 70s, like the whole street rod movement in the 70s,

you know, they were called rod runs because, you know, a lot of times driving to that event was part of the deal.

And, yeah, like yesterday, we went from Mackinac City up over the Upper Peninsula down into Green Bay.

And the first five hours of the day was just driving.

And it was the coolest thing, especially because it was a scenic two-lane road and just lots of cool scenery

and, you know, an easy drive, not a lot of traffic.

And just, you know, everybody kind of breaks into clusters.

So you're usually running with, you know, three to five other vehicles.

But it's just so cool to be running through, you know, beautiful American scenery, back roads and that sort of thing

and seeing cool cars rolling down the road with you.

And, yeah, it's a lot of fun to be able to use them.

And then you're also, it's a sense of accomplishment and pride when you're building it to do the certain thing.

And it's comfortable to do it and it does it with no issues.

You make it to the end, yeah.

You make it to the end.

There's, it's not, it's a pendulum swing as well because there's so many different eras.

You can start thinking about, even in the custom Rotter days, when the custom Rotter was like on its heyday,

you were taking that whatever that car was, fucking Edsel, a bubble top, you know, a wagon.

Just put it on the ground, big wheels and tires, right?

Cool paint, maybe lace roof, some flames like that.

You weren't, you could drive it, but you weren't building that car to drive, right?

It would run.

It would run?

Yeah.

Same thing.

You thought, look at the heyday of street rods, as crazy as street rods got.

As big as in, you know, Detroit and all the street rod of the year and all these crazy...

That got significantly less in the driving and running side to...

100%.

On and off the trailer.

Yeah.

And because to chase the style and the trends and the magazine covers and the awards like

that, you had to push the envelope to a point where you, it was nothing about driving.

You put the components on, but I mean, let's face it, chrome rotors, completely chrome suspension,

no rock guard underneath, completely slicked out running boards.

No weather strips.

Whether it could do it or not, you did not build it to do that, right?

And it was probably not in anybody's best financial insurance for you to try.

Same thing on street machine of the year.

Street machine of the year, even before autocross, the stuff street machine of the year was a

different style.

That was a modern pro street, if you will.

That was...

Right?

And they weren't...

You used components to make them look a certain way, but you weren't building them to do the

things like they looked like they should do.

They were fairground cruisers.

Yeah.

Street machine of the year progressed from the pro street era, like the first ones in

the mid 90s, I think, 96, 97, were pro street tri-fives and whatnot.

So then, as the pendulum shifts, if it's from governing bodies like you guys, good guys,

if it's a group of people saying like, I'm trying to do this, I want to try to do this,

the pendulum shifts, and then sometimes you've directed it, right?

Let's talk about street machine of the year.

Talk about autocross.

There was a time, specifically, you were like, all right, you guys keep building these cars

like a certain way and say they're going to do these things, show us what they'll do.

That changed how you built cars.

Sometimes people had to catch up, right?

That went on for a little while.

So then you saw the style of the cars change to build for a certain way.

But then they get to a certain point and now you're like, oh, that's a full-blown race

car.

Now, you've pushed it and then you've got to swing the pendulum back.

It's really weird how sometimes, I'm speaking of good guys, specifically when I say you,

sometimes you're chasing and sometimes you're pushing.

What was the reasoning for killing the autocross on the street machine stuff, thought process?

Yeah, so the thought there was...

Someone had too many of the fastest times in a row.

Yeah, he could hang that.

Kyle sent a nasty letter.

He's like, this is over.

I'm never going to go back again.

Street Machine of the Year.

We got the top 12 program.

Two of them are very similar.

Street Machine of the Year, Muscle Machine of the Year.

And so we wanted to put some separation between those two awards.

So that one wasn't lesser than the other.

Before you get that the creation of Muscle Machine and Street Machine, what was Muscle

Machine supposed to be when Street Machine existed?

This is prior to my time.

I would think that it was a more obtainable way for somebody, a builder, up and coming

to compete with the car of that style, but not have to make the trip and the commandment

to go out to Columbus.

Because Muscle Machine's picked regionally.

Right.

Eight finalists throughout the year at different various events.

I wanted to know, and that makes sense, because for a while it was still super important.

Muscle Machine was kind of looked at as second place street machine.

Street Machine of the Year.

And that's not a bad thing.

I don't take that as a dig.

There was a lot of them there that if they didn't win Street Machine of the Year, they

would go for the next Muscle Machine finalist.

Know the game well.

Yes.

And that's the kind of the way it is.

So that's why I was asking how it started.

That became the thing, so you wanted to do a separation.

Put some separation between the two so that they could both stand their own.

So the Street Machine of the Year deal in Columbus on the autocross track was basically

just to see drivability.

Does it turn?

Does it go?

Does it stop?

And so we got them in the autocross racers.

They were carving an hour out of their day to do this.

So we're like, all right, we could prove that they turn, stop, and go in a different way.

So we do a parade lap and with the Street Rod and Street Machine of the Year contenders

now, we've done that the last two years.

It worked out pretty well.

I should be sponsored by a radiator company.

What's funny is that we've had some builders are like, this is more of a test of my car

sitting here idling for 15 minutes than running two 45-second laps.

Yeah, especially in Columbus.

But one of the other components on that, too, was that thought of not necessarily a pro

street car, but if you wanted to build for Street Machine of the Year a skinny front

tire car, stylistic-wise, it opens up the door so that it's not just all quote-unquote

pro touring machines.

Yeah, if you put that style of car on an autocross track, you're like, well, that doesn't fit.

But it still should fit the award.

Yeah.

And so on the other end of that, which I think has been an improvement, is the muscle machine

of the year is strictly performance.

And so they qualify regionally on the autocross track.

They got to make their three hits and then get selected and become a finalist.

Once they become a finalist, we invite all those finalists down to Texas, which is coming

up at the end of September.

We do a hundred mile around there, reliability run, make them autocross again in Texas.

Then we do the drag strip runs on Pitt Road, like we do with Hot Rod at the Air National.

And then they go on the track cruise.

And so it's kind of what I've tried to summarize it to some people that have asked me is like,

it's the Hot Rod of the Year for muscle cars.

Makes sense.

Drivability performance.

How much does this really usable car?

Yeah, make it usable.

I know these aren't points things, but how much, what's the percentage of each of those

individual components of that weekend add up to the pick?

I'd say it's a checklist.

Did you do it?

Got it?

Did it, you know.

There's style points involved.

If you're drifting, it's sliding around doing big smoky burnouts versus just kind of putting

around 25 miles an hour.

You know, put some effort into it for sure.

You know, you're not going to get points taken away, but you can absolutely get some bonus

stars.

That's a good way to put it.

There you go.

Yeah.

It's all like we're evaluating everything, right?

Everybody did it.

Yeah.

These three guys did this thing and this thing.

You just throw it and I have an idol through or whatever.

Like, yeah, that's a check.

Yeah.

It's a check, but it's...

Putting separation in between street machine and the year and muscle machine, that makes

a lot of sense.

I'm glad.

I think that was something that was important for us to talk about for people listening to

understand why.

Because we, you did hear, there are some builders out there that just don't stylistically build

what the street machine of the year car had become.

Yes.

And that's not that they can't build a good car.

It's just that's just not their deal.

So the fact that it's not there for other people to look at, they don't debut it because

it's like, no, I think that's important to kind of change that.

Did you guys see a shift that you didn't like particularly care for in the street machine

of the year style wise because it had been autocross heavy for so long and been performance

heavy for so long that we were starting to lose some of the glitz and glamour that was

street machine of the year?

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I don't think that that came into the factor like the style of the cars that are being

built like we're still looking for the top, you know, 54 to 87 or we go 99 on street machine

now.

So like we're still looking for the best car in that year break that fits that to come

out to Columbus and win street machine of the year.

So I don't.

Yeah, I don't think we were necessarily pushing back against the industry was doing like that.

Yeah, I think I think we just it was more of an internal thing in terms of how we separated

muscle machine and street machine.

It would.

Yeah, it was more to prop up muscle machine to bring it up because we kind of felt like

it in a kind of like redheaded structure like we're like, we need to bring this up.

If this is the top 12, like we need to bring this up to where it stands on its own two

feet.

So what do you guys see as the next exciting trend?

What's gaining traction?

What do you see in more cars being built in a certain.

We were going to ask you that.

We've got our own ideas.

Well, I think we have some ideas to ask.

So off of that, will it always and forever hard fast rule be the terrific 12 top 12?

That's a good question.

Drop 12.

Yeah.

Right.

Because that answer to that changes the answer to what you just asked.

So are you thinking it should expand or I don't see why you would take them away, but

it's been funny over just my relationship with different staff at good guys for the

last 20 years.

It's just that not it's a hard fast rule, but there's just that thing was 12.

Well, it could be 13, but it's 12 though.

It's unlucky.

You know, and it's like, but it could also be 13, but I know, but it's been it's always

12.

But what would you have to take away?

Well, you don't have to take away.

You can add.

It's always 12.

And that's not a dig again.

And it's just I'm really interested in having some of these discussions because I think

it's so many listeners have talked about these same things with either you guys or other

people or you just internally around the parking lot when you just spit balling, right?

I'd be like, oh, well, with this, well, it could be 13.

Why does that be 12?

I think we actually have had some of that conversation in terms of should we add something?

If so, what would it be?

Because we've changed a couple and rewarded some of the titles and whatnot.

We had conversations about adding and subtracting, you know, going down to 10.

And it just goes rules off the tongue.

Top 10, top 12, whatever, but we don't want to take away.

But we also just don't want to make a knee-jerk reaction and add something just for the sake

of adding it and then have to take it away in five years of that trend.

Is right.

Or if the cars don't show up or how to execute like the top 12 program is the top level for

good guys.

And so it's something that we, you know, a lot of thought goes into modifications that

we do with that program.

Oh, 100%.

And you've got your reputation, your brand, you get your name, you're putting on it.

I hope you guys, I would assume so.

I hope you guys realize the power that you do have, though, to give a look like we talked

about before.

Sometimes you're pulling and sometimes you're pushing, the power you have to do a little

pushing.

That's where I was going.

Like if there's another genre or two out there that there isn't a big award for, there's

not as much attraction to build those chicken and egg thing.

Or there's a lot of guys building them and they've got nowhere to show up with them.

Well, I think about that, like with four-wheel drives, to a certain degree, and we've had

a few truck of the year early and truck of the year late finalists that have been four-wheel

drives.

But then the question maybe comes up, is it fair to evaluate that lifted truck against

a lower truck?

That's exactly what we were thinking about.

No, that's two different builds.

Well, specifically the truck late and the truck early, put four-wheel drive here just

for a second that we're going to get to.

Truck early and truck late.

Truck early is a little easier.

Truck late now is a lot of different years and drastically different trucks.

Like truck late, it's not like they're like, oh, those are all like, those are the big three

and they transition completely different build styles, completely different level of difficulty,

completely different everything.

So even just truck late is hard.

Then you bring in truck early and truck late as hard as truck late is and be like, well,

what about four-wheel drive?

And make it even more difficult with truck early and truck late as diverse as those are,

and then add another diversity with four-wheel drive.

And we're speaking in such vague terms.

Four-wheel drive is just four-wheel drive.

You're not talking about stylistically wise, because you can take a truck early or a truck late,

make it four-wheel drive and run the gamut style-wise of which way you want to go.

Completely vintage, snap-co-look, or you want to do a more modern street ride,

everything done up build.

It makes it extremely difficult on your guys, but to feel like you got to,

you can't say, well, there's not a big enough market.

And we're saying, well, you make it and the market will come.

Like one sooner or later, it's got to be a push.

Because it makes a huge difference for builders like us, manufacturers for us,

for the customers and the people that are like, well, shit, they've got this.

Now I've got it like, okay, now it starts.

Now I can compete against vintage four-wheel drive trucks.

Let's build something fucking bitching.

And that's one of the other titles we did.

Yeah, it gives you a purpose.

It's just like the road tour.

It gives a customer a reason to build a car.

It sounds funny.

And maybe to Josh's point, maybe you guys don't realize the power that you hold.

But when you set these things, there are people that do build stuff specifically for it.

Even if they don't admit it?

Yeah, most of the time they don't admit it.

But plenty of them do.

Now they're going to pitch about the outcome.

So where do you see like Delmos trucks that he's built recently?

Those are crazy four-wheel drive, super detailed, super traditional,

like the 59 that he built.

How would that stack up against a lower traditional or street-rided 55 to 59 Chevy pickup?

Yeah, I mean, at this point you're bringing it out for truck of the early, right?

Like that is the option at that point.

And we have to just go with what we have right now.

I just...

Please don't take this as like we're pitch trying to pitch out.

No, no, no, no, I'm not.

This is an open dialogue of like...

No, no, no, and it's...

And I'm a truck guy.

So many nuances in the truck world is making...

I'm a truck guy and that's the world I live.

We'll be talking about this at the end of it.

The Delmo trucks, and you know what we were saying,

do you get more like style points when you're doing street machine and doing donuts and shit?

I wonder if Delmo's truck was there and you've got Eric Black smoking hand rolled cigarettes?

He wins every time.

In like a distressed leather jacket?

It's Eric Black.

Those are points.

You just give the award to Eric Black.

Walking.

No, no, no.

Then you have to build like dirt mounds for them to...

Yes, absolutely.

Do an off-road course while we're there.

Yeah, it's interesting the power that your event has specifically around the awards,

especially when the awards have become the topic of such contention so many times too.

It also has that much power to kind of shift, you know, directions of industries,

like exactly like you talked about with the road tour stuff.

The only other one that I would say when you ask about what's the direction,

four-wheel drive and truck light is like...

I don't have the answers to it.

That's the one that's like something to be fixed.

Go ahead.

Truck light, the Fantastic 14.

That rolls off the tongue.

Doesn't it?

Right, so you do the four-wheel drive and then the light light.

Where would you find the brake and light?

Because I don't think our light personally is too out of whack.

73 in later.

Okay, so square bodies and OBS is in their own deal.

When you...

Because there's that big of a difference between a 70 and a 77.

Well, square body and 67 to 72 is tough.

That's the same truck.

That's what I'm saying.

I'm like, you see a difference between a 70 seats in and a 75?

OBS, I feel, is pretty different, drastically different.

100%.

I think when you start utilizing a plastic of some sort on the exterior of any of the trucks,

it goes into a different category.

The next thing I was going to...

You said Fantastic 14.

Fabulous 14, maybe.

Yeah, Fantastic 14 is better.

It's kind of a marvel thing.

The light, but the light is not just trucks because...

We're just talking about genres, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So Fox bodies and Thurgen Camaros and G-Bodies.

Those are different vehicles to build against a 1st or 2nd Gen Camaro, against a Chevelle.

And I'm not saying one's better than the other.

It's just a different thing.

You don't put street rod and hot rod together.

They're different builds.

And that's a very similar way of...

Kind of different, but...

Yeah, yeah.

And I don't know what you do.

You're saying that the group is going to be like,

oh, what are we going to do?

Put a big-ass award and put three fucking cars in it?

I completely understand where you're coming from.

No, but I get what your thought process is.

The thing is, now you're cutting into the square body ears with the Irox and the Fox bodies.

So you can't go off a year break.

You're literally...

Yeah, on the car side.

Car restrict.

Well, yeah.

Street machine late.

Now we're going to...

Fantastic 15.

Is it 15 now?

The fucking 15.

The fucking award ceremony is going to go till 7.

We try to keep it under an hour as it is.

But this isn't specifically how you got to fix this.

You got to do an award thing.

It is an interesting thing because it's not like you're shifting the gap this way, right?

Because this down here, a tri-five ain't going anywhere because the guy's going to build a third gen.

So it's just getting like this.

It's just growing.

And we knew that crack in the door open.

Like we did that Fox body debut at SEMA to open the years to 87.

And then that was what, two years we did that.

And then we went to a roll in 25 for two years, which was rolled it up to 1998, 1999,

to get the OBSs in there.

And then it was to a point where we got to stop this at 99.

Like there's no more roll in 25.

It's just 99.

But it's difficult for a guy to come into a shop and be like,

all right, let's do a Fox body.

Let's throw everything at it, right?

Let's go try to win street machine of the year, right?

Dutch boys did it with a G body, right?

And that shows you what you have to do, right?

And that's not exactly, they're not standing on every corner of the street

to grab a third gen Camaro or a Fox body

and do something to that level to compete against.

Well, one argument on that though, is we had a really great,

and actually we've got one this year too.

We had a really great Fox body last year

in our muscle machine of the year finalists, you know, came down to Texas,

did the whole thing.

Blue Sky.

Blue Sky, yeah.

And then another one this year.

And I guess like the part of what you just said about like, well,

not built to this level.

Well, to me, street machine of the year is built to this level.

But that's where the muscle machine falls into play,

because it's like, okay, if you're not going to take a third gen Camaro

and build it to this level, you can still build it to this level

and be really competitive.

I guess when I meant level wise, it seems as though

street machine of the year level is here.

And if you're going to take Fox body, third gen, GN,

you're going to have to go to here.

Overbuild, basically.

Overbuild to even get, have a chance, because.

We'll see you with Troy bringing his third gen out.

That's been a long time coming.

Well, this dude, if you take 27 years to build it,

like it better be fucking perfect.

Yeah, anybody could do that.

He can build something perfect in a year.

Like if he's at 27, the thing better fucking hover.

I want to see Adam driving his, like, damn, look at that.

That's fucking awesome.

Put the air in it out to a new level.

It better, it better.

Wheels play flat comes up.

It should be hydrogen powered hover.

And when he parks it, he's just handing out the cure to cancer on the back of it.

Like, dude, not only do we build something about it, come up, get your pill.

Cancer's done.

We've solved it.

I will see it.

I think it's coming this year.

It is coming.

It might fall short.

High bar.

Yeah, you're setting the bar high.

But you see that's also, that's a third gen.

Everybody knows the level that that thing's going to be at.

To my point, that's a third gen.

That's the level that's way crazier than what most street machines not.

They're not built nice.

That it seems like you've got to go to that level.

Because it's a little out.

It's a little different.

It's a little out there.

It's not exactly in the norm, right?

It's not this.

I don't think this is supposed to be.

This isn't like an inclusive thing.

Like, if you want to fucking win it, then win it.

Right.

And you know that.

Bring it.

Like, the best car should win.

Ever.

Go out and get it.

Yeah.

If Dutch boys.

GN was like half ass or not to the level.

Was it when what?

But they knew what they needed to do with that car.

And they did it and it won.

100%.

So just do that.

It's easy, right?

Well, that's the case.

And just don't just do one award.

Put everything all together.

The award.

Cars, trucks, four wheel drive.

All that kind of stuff.

If it's just about like build the fucking best.

Sometimes you do have to have a little bit of a

narrowing down of genres and types and stuff right here.

They're narrowed down.

They're narrowed down enough.

You don't think there's any room for any of the later

later muscle car stuff?

You're dancing on participation awards a little bit over there.

And I don't like it.

I'll be honest.

I don't like it.

So throw third gen Fox bodies, Grand Nationals,

and any of that new stuff right in there with Street Machine.

There's three categories that one of those cars could win

with us.

Street Machine, Muscle Machine,

and then that most pigeon down in Texas.

What is the most pigeon?

It was America's most beautiful street rod,

which was picked out in Pleasanton.

And then we dropped street rod off of it

when America's most beautiful.

But then the beautiful word was kind of pigeon holding

too much stuff and messing with thought processes.

And then we went to good guy's most pigeon

and took it down to Texas.

So it's at the end of the year and it's the culmination.

It's the final top 12 award picked at an event.

Thought process behind that is all these cars

that have kind of two word throughout the year

like come down to Texas, final shots went to top 12 award.

Does Dave pick that award?

He does not.

They have to pay royalties for saying it.

So yeah, that's open to everything.

1999 and older.

It's there's no year, make, model.

Yeah, so last year's top five.

Dave won it last year with that Corvette with 12 hour.

But last year's top five was it was a...

Kid car.

Fucking politics.

Must be nice.

Must have been a TV show.

The top five last year was a Henry J.

Big shot.

Big customers.

Bunny X safari.

The Allen Johnson safari.

That thing.

An OBS truck.

Jason Hills red flame Tahoe.

That's a pretty wide spread.

Or no, it was a flamed OBS pickup.

Oh, it wasn't the Tahoe.

It wasn't the Tahoe.

It was a pickup.

And then the Tony army Chrysler 300.

Yeah.

That was a great car.

So it was a kind of a crowd bag.

What beat Johnson safari for a cruiser?

For he didn't get it.

He wasn't in the running for custom route of the year.

Yeah.

Because that car never went to a qualified event.

Got you.

I love that.

But everything's always average.

So everything's so on that.

Everything is always ever changing, right?

Like we evaluate what we're going to pick where and, you know,

where we need to recognize some of this stuff.

Or what went well with, you know, when we're,

especially with that award, which has gone through several

evolutions in the last three or four years, I think we get,

I think that one probably gets more scrutiny than anything.

Internally, like how do we need to tweak it?

How do we need to make it really maybe better defined?

Yeah.

But specifically, like with that Allen Johnson car,

first good guys, if it came to us Columbus last year,

we don't do custom route of the year there.

Or we didn't at that time.

We didn't at time.

We do now.

Because we're like, oh, we should probably add custom

rod to Columbus.

Do you tell him to bring it back?

He did win GM Iron Builder of the year with that car.

So he got the crate engine from Sharefile on that deal.

What's hot rod look like going forward?

Same as it has.

Yeah.

So reliability run, drag strip runs, all that good stuff in Nashville, Tennessee.

We had a great, a great turnout for hot rod of the year.

I mean, that, you know, for, you don't forget.

That wasn't, it wasn't made in derogatory.

No, no, no.

I know there's things like.

No, I, well, and I guess when I hear that question, I'm like,

well, nobody's building those early cars anymore.

Oh, there's, there's bitching ass fucking hot rods.

There was a great field this year.

We had a hard time.

There's some changes in Nashville, though, coming, right?

There are.

I don't think.

You don't want to talk about that.

We'll leave it at that.

That's fine.

I don't know.

I was, I was teetting it up.

If we don't go there, that's fine.

Not a problem.

I'm comfortable saying there are.

All right.

We are still doing hot rod of the year.

Still going to be hot rod of the year in Nashville.

Cool.

So we can say that much.

Yes.

No problem.

I, you just, you just try to probe and see if you can get

something that ain't there.

Then yeah, no problem.

We're not making you all wait long.

It'll be.

A few weeks.

Yeah.

October or so.

Does the traditional high rise.

It's kind of had a big.

Yeah.

This is just not coming up.

And I think, well, I don't know.

I don't know if it's had a big resurgence.

I think there's always been a consistent level,

but we had a really strong turnout this year of fresh builds.

And I think there's just continued interest.

It may not be where it was 30 years ago, but.

Well, the drivability, everything.

Like the reliability around the driving, everything.

I think that's part of what makes hot rod of the year.

You know, a special award for people try to win.

I think that hot rod of the year.

Forget about quantity of applicants cars.

Overall quality and enthusiasm.

I would say from the outside looking in is significantly higher than what

a street ride of the year has been over the last few years.

I think.

Well, I think part of that is that in my mind, hot rod of the year doesn't have to be

as technical, so to speak.

It doesn't have to have as much one off stuff or it doesn't have to have.

Yeah.

You know, I even see in some of that.

And the street ride thing is interesting to get into from minus this year's.

Yeah.

Well, again, right.

Must be nice.

Again, politics.

Yeah, politics.

Troy wins everything.

You can build a cooler hot rod of the year easier.

Right.

It's more obtainable.

Yeah.

I think it's more obtainable.

And stylistically wise, it's I don't.

It's street ride is interesting because street ride is again is a is a

it's a fairly generic term and you look at, you know, Troy.

And then you look at some of the stuff that Jesse's built on, you know, some of the

track nose stuff.

And I mean, John Hall's car, there's.

But traditional can be an early style.

Yeah.

Like John Hall's track T or it can be something like, you know, a West Rydell

fat fender Cadillac, you know, such such a

problem to get you on from a builder standpoint is like going down the path of

greening John Hall's track T.

You start getting in there.

And I've been there before where it's, oh, it's too nice for a hot rod of the years,

but it's too hot rod for street ride of the year.

And you follow to that pigeon hole and you're like, damn it.

Well, it's supposed to do like more like

rattle cam black or like supposed to make it like put fenders on it and make it like

it's a it's a difficult thing.

Did you ask Bill about fenders and hot rods when you did his interview?

No, we didn't get into that.

We had a little bit of that conversation.

Is he not a not a high boy guy?

No, not necessarily that.

But we had a little bit of a conversation in Nashville this year about,

you know, do hot rods look more hot roddy without fenders?

And of course, he brought a fendered car and the last two weeks.

Yeah, I don't think they could.

Like you look at Henry Steadfast, anybody that has an argument against a hot rod,

look at hot rod with fenders, look at like a steadfast.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's what it's hot rod.

As again, like stance wise, but as badass as it gets.

But flip it.

Can you do a fenderless street rod?

Well, Troy got.

Troy star.

I mean, I wouldn't.

Absolutely, I think you can.

Yeah, I think so.

You always wanted to do that.

Thirty seven wild rods make it a high.

Didn't you?

You're talking about like you had like a way of.

Yeah, he had a way that you were going to blend the where the fenders.

Let's find what?

Watch and see.

Smoothed it out into the watch.

That thing's almost ready.

You were even talking about like picking up that vintage style and leaving the mounting

holes for the rear fenders.

Exposed when we did it, when we bowtailed it, we did away with that.

We're going to leave the mold seam.

Yeah.

And then yellow fiberglass.

All right.

It's just a big fan of this.

Just wait.

Do you think we'll see a comeback with like the those cars?

No, 90 Street.

No, my God.

No, please.

No, I don't think so.

Where did they go?

Where the fuck are those cars?

Off the road.

Every single one of them.

There were a lot of them.

There is death.

The trap.

What were the Coast Coast Coast Coast Coast?

Wild rods.

OZ.

I mean, what do you think the total violence?

Yeah.

What do you think the total volume of those?

That 37 to 39 ish.

The fiberglass.

You count the trucks with it?

Yeah.

I mean, where we started.

350,000 of them made.

Bodies.

There's 350 vehicles built.

You know how long there's a dude, a lot of dudes right now that are putting the

finishing touches on that 37 wild rods that they've been working on in the garage since

like I still, I still think it looks fucking cool.

But I also know the sounds.

I when I look at it, I hear it.

What do you think it's even in a picture?

If I put it in a magazine, I look at it and like, oh, I hear it.

I hear the way the doors sound.

What do you think riding down a 65 I 65 on that on the way to the good guy show?

What do you think it sounds like?

Like riding in the back of a snap on truck going down the road.

That's what if you've ever stood in the back of a snap on truck going down the road at 70.

That's what it sounds like.

It's a road to her car, right?

Those barricade latches have the most unique

clank against the striker.

And you can't six inches of play when they're closed.

What does it sound like cranking up?

Oh, well, did the body make the starter shimmed wrong?

If you install whatever, putting that motor in that body, it like de shimmed the starter.

It just came with extra flywheel teeth.

Well, it's funny when one labored that much to start and then also never wanted to shut off

when it would diesel and run on.

It's like, dude, you didn't want to fucking start.

Now you don't want to stop.

It's like trying to get my son in the shower.

We can't get his ass out.

We have all had to deal with those.

We don't need that to come back.

I mean, lots of crazy cool pictures at the time and lots of cool paint jobs.

Cool paint jobs.

Very bright paint jobs.

And enthusiasts went on to a different car.

All right, back to the Fox body, Iraq, G body stuff.

Do you guys see that as like the next round of where cars are going, what builders are building,

how to get more people in the door with those cars?

I think so.

And I think they're I think they're part of the equation, at least anyway.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of what the industry does kind of forces that too, right?

Like when there's components and parts being manufactured for those cars.

Do you think there's any like inherent ride quality or strength issues with like the Iraq era,

you know, the I want to be familiar with that.

I've never driven one personally.

But yeah.

But no, I do think I'm throwing fucking law.

But you're not taking any of it.

You're not helping me out at all.

They got they got a lot of sponsors and a lot of vendors.

He's not taking a stance whatsoever.

He's been around for a while.

Yeah.

And you can't but it's like there was a problem that you think like a chassis would solve it.

I wonder if that would make it better.

I was going industry as a whole.

All we are from like most of our customers is it's what was cool in high school.

And as the population gets older, one end fades out as it gets younger,

a new generation comes in and that's like we're still kind of new to it.

And it's like, I don't know that build those, but you're seeing more and more people pick up with that.

And I feel like it needs like Josh had the push pole.

If it's being pushed from your end and there's more of those cars coming in,

it kind of develops that market keeps your audience growing, keeps new stuff coming out,

which then breeds more innovation, more products, more new builds.

Hot rod builders are always just looking for like the next canvas to do their creative thing too.

I feel like it drives the industry forward with just complete new build and new styles of cars.

I mean, you guys obviously done a great job.

You're in tune with it, right?

You've got the past three giveaway cars have been, I mean, FoxBody, the G-Body, OBS.

The SquareBody pick up to the SquareBody.

Yeah, yeah, SquareBody, OBS, G-Body and then threw it back to a 40.

But to your point, I mean, obviously you hope that that's the case,

but I feel like a lot of this industry is driven upon people putting money into these

old cars saying, hey, that's what I had in high school.

As you just said, the fear that I have with that thought process moving forward is

my generation.

I graduated 2006.

So that's kind of around where I'm at.

A lot of people are driving.

That's my next question.

They're not driving.

They're ubering everywhere and they're content with the...

It's just you in California.

Just me in California.

But I have concerns that there's not as many die hard gear heads that are my age,

that I want to invest the money in the cars because they have a soft spot for it,

because I had it in high school.

I don't think that that reduction is as significant as maybe you think.

I don't think it's even probably measurable.

My question is going to be that those cars that you had in high school,

as that age continued, not everybody had an American made car in high school.

That's true too.

And they're still going to be guys that are passionate and got some money to build a car.

My question is on the good guy side of things,

what do you do on the foreign side, whether it's powered by American or not?

And I mean, our year cut off applies to vehicles.

So if it's 1999 or older, it's open to a good guy's event.

It doesn't have...

That's why it's not just American powered.

That's why you see Volkswagen's and...

And we've started to see...

Dozens of cars and some things like that.

Fucking Ring Brothers built an Aston Martin.

That's coming.

But I think sometimes when you say things like that, like, oh, it's open to any car,

the traditional guy fears that like, oh, it's all going to be tuners now.

It's like, well, no, because when the bulk of the vehicles there are still American cars,

you're, you know, if you're socially aware...

Yeah, you're self-regulating.

Yeah, yeah, it's pretty well...

This is not a place for us.

Yeah.

And we get a handful of them.

And actually, most of the imports that we do get seem to fit right in are the types of things

like a Porsche Speedster or, you know, or like I said, a Z-Car or something like that,

that a lot of gear heads or of a lot of high-rides.

There was that wide-body Mercedes from 2022 with an LS7 in it from Boviesco.

Oh, the red pick, red pick two, like tribute type cars.

Yeah, that was like 18-kiss.

They just did another Mercedes.

Just got it done.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I think the cars are being built and it's not going to be a tuner takeover,

but anything older than 99 is welcome to do a good get show.

But back to the point on the on like the Fox bodies and third gens and stuff like that.

Well, I see more Fox bodies than I see third gens right now.

And I think that I think they were just a more popular car in the 80s as part of it.

But I also think so I graduated high school in 1990 and the the gear heads in my school

were still building muscle cars.

You know, they were still building like traditional 60s muscle cars, 70s cars.

If if if you were a wealthier kid, maybe you got the new Iraq.

So I think a lot of people in my generation still like that 60s and earlier stuff.

What I think is interesting to look at right now for us is I look at the

the next generation award winners at our event, which are, you know, 30 and older than 30 and

younger. And it's surprising to me how many of those kids are still building 65 mustangs,

75 square body trucks. Yeah, a lot of trucks back to what their parents were into.

And maybe what? Yeah. And I don't know if that's a function of maybe growing up in a car family,

what they're what their parents were into or that sort of thing.

Or if it's a function of there's some novelty with something different older than they are.

They're affordable. They're they're still affordable.

And they're they're easy to work on. There's less plastic.

They're less plastic or if the electronics is intimidating, there's less of that too.

So it may seem simpler. So and it's been interesting to me since we went to

later years, how many like 80s era vehicles that I see that are driven by an older person,

like the guy who bought that 86 Trans Am knew and has just babied it its whole life.

You know, that's that's some of what I see. But I also think the other challenge is that

I think there are some guys who still look at especially when they're looking at having

a pro built car, they may still be looking at well, if I build a first gen Camaro, I know

there's a market for it. It's going to command a certain price. And if I build a third gen,

is the market there if I need to sell that car? Is it is it going to go for as much?

And that'll change in time. But I think right now that might create that market.

That's true. I see I think the value value discussion is isn't like it once was,

even, you know, five or 10 years ago, they definitely don't have that that mindset,

the rich mindset is never even been a question, you know, at least with most of our customers,

you know, like it used to be where it'd be like, and I know I'm not I know I'm going to lose some

money, you know, but saw this one went for this, all this one went for this, whether they were

planning on selling or not, it was like that validation. I think the validation is came from

the industry from the shows from, you know, auction stuff, the notoriety. Now they've got

the validation. They plan on not ever selling it anyway. They don't need to have somebody

like tell them what the value is, or like, I'm gonna have what I want, possibly the,

you know, craziest one, it might win this award, it's gonna be in these magazines, blah, blah,

the values there, because it's one of the best. The we're going to get into standard questions

here in a second. But first, before that, what is something now that you we've talked through

all this different stuff, a lot of different topics? What is something that you wish you could

address that people you would wish people understood about good guys more, or a misnomer,

or a myth, or something that you could be like, no, I want to set the record straight right now.

And no parking sign actually means no parking by the sign.

That's, but that's like the city that does that good guys. They don't really care.

They said, man, got me. Yeah, I was going to say that's that's a hard one to,

you know, I think the biggest thing for me is when I talk to somebody who,

who's maybe not a good guy's regular, maybe has just heard about it peripherally, that sort of

thing, but is into cars, who sometimes thinks, well, either my car's not good enough, or that's

those events are only for a certain level of car, that sort of thing. I still like to think of it

as a, hey, man, everybody's welcome. And, you know, and we love it all kind of. Yeah, I mean,

Jesse, you brought a maverick there. I mean, if you let that thing in, then like, obviously,

it's open for everybody. Come on, come on. No, I mean, but that's it's pretty surprising. If you

walk through the spectator parking lot, you'll see six, nine Camaros and seats and trucks and

ballas and Mustangs and whatever out there. For me, you know, some people who, who aren't

good guys, regulars that do come, they have crossed that threshold into being a participant,

is they think it's so structured, but they have to park and do stewins if they brought a 32,

or they have to park in the Camaro Corral. They have to be in the Camaro Corral and

there's like, I don't want to go there. It's like, no, do you make this event whatever you

want it to be? Like if you, if it doesn't have a note parking sign and it's not a vendor boost

space, slide on in power parking. If you want to park with your buddies, yeah, over here. Yeah,

like if, if, if, if, if dad's got a 32 and you got a Camaro and your buddy's got a pickup truck

parked together, you don't have to do a special parking area. You said the key word there, that

when it's not a vendor's, uh, booth, because that happens a lot. That is the one. I'll never

understand it. That out of you have, I mean, how many parking spots do you think there are like

not as near as good as that one though, right there in our booth.

It is like right, like dead center in front of the tractor on our rig and it's always like the

39 Plymouth and that dude, he just only came in purple. I don't know why the 35 Plymouth only came

in purple and is absolutely appalled when you politely tell me you can't park there. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I, uh, that's fine. This happened in Colorado two weeks ago is we're trying to set

up our award ceremony and the band's playing at the stage and we need to set up some folding

tables, right? And there's this fellow park there and it's on Sunday. So we know how good

guys at Sunday is. And I asked this guy, I said, Hey, I said, do you mind moving your car? I got

to put some tables here, getting ready for award ceremony. And he's like, well, where do you want

me to park? I was like, I don't know. The grass right there. That one, that one there. Like I'm

parking spot within like, I could throw a rock and hit this empty place. Like you're still on

the grass. You're just over there because I got to coordinate this off for my tables.

And so there's that end of it too. Yeah.

A young and up and coming builder, right? Car builder only. He's wanting to get his name out there.

I think it's gotten way better. However, in the past, there was like you said that there's the

stigma of it being structured. Like I got to park in a certain place. There was a stigma amongst

young builders. We all felt it. We all talked about it. I got to, I just, I got to have a big rig.

I got to do whatever I got to do to show up and be on the midway. I'm not selling any parts.

I'm not selling any shirts. I've got the car that I just barely got done. I donated a bunch of time

in labor, but I need everybody to see it. What do you tell a young builder short of getting

his car done and bring it to the wards? What does he do to utilize good guys to the fullest to get

his name out there? Not marketing, like networking, networking, networking, come out there, talk to

all the manufacturers. If you've got vintage air in this thing, Walker, Rick love, if he's there,

someone at the vendor, but just say, Hey, thanks. I got this new car over here. Talk to any of the

parts providers, anybody that you know in the industry, just get your name out there.

Try to draw attention to the, the car. Yeah, I think, I think parking and builders choice is

the thing I always tell people is like, because that's where obviously the builders choice selector

is looking for stuff. But it's also where a lot of our awards team is also looking for award

recipients too. So that's, if you really want to get noticed and get on the radar,

that's, that's where you park. And I know, I know a young builder that I, that I can think of who

brought a couple of cars to Des Moines this year. And one of which was in bare metal unfinished.

And, you know, put them both in builders choice and just got a ton of attention, because other

revamped rock. Yeah. So he, you know, so he came out and brought and, you know,

got an award with a bare metal car and talked to a lot of fellow builders and started to get

his name out there. And it's, yeah, I think showing up is the first thing. And then when

you're there, not just capitalizing, yeah, not just sitting in a lawn chair behind the car drinking

beer. Yeah, it's, I think Stephen had great suggestions. Go start talking to the manufacturers,

just products you use, go introduce yourself to a builder you admire and say like, Hey, man,

always like your work, would like you to come check out my work, you know, and, and, and it's

cool to see the builder community, they start sharing photos of other people's rides like that.

And, and I think it's, I don't want to say it's not competitive, but I want to feel like it's,

you know, I think builders really like to support each other 100%. And, and so they'll celebrate

you if you're building quality stuff. Well, in breaking that up, like the, the networking and

not sitting behind your car just drinking beer, like you got to break that up, right? Because

network on Friday, park your car and build a choice on Saturday and make sure you come check

back because you don't know who's going to come by and look at your car and ask you questions.

So you got to break up the event. You got to work it. Don't overlook the hotel parking lot.

Yes. That's true. It is true. A lot of deals on the parking lot. Yeah, you're going to meet a lot

of people. Columbus is perfect example. Yep. There's more networking and hanging out and

fun conversations there than there are at the show. Yeah. Yeah, that's the key, man. Get out there.

Like you, I think you need to earn the beer drinking part. You know, you probably got to spend a good

like 10 to 15 years not beer drinking and sit there and represent your car and your shop well.

And when you're like a seasoned older builder and you have a shop full of work, like then drink,

you can kind of like hang out a little bit. You know, it's not all about selling, but that

the builder's choice to your point. That's that's the spot, man. Put your car there.

Be with the car. Be personable. I look at the guys like the blue sky guys have done it so good.

Yes. Great. So personable, repetitive conversations face with the name. It doesn't hurt that they're

bringing fucking bangers of quality cars back to back to back. But they're doing it the right way.

You know, you face with the name, you get to be at the right place, right time, a lot of places.

Like it's well, the other lot of places is the key because we've never shown them to one show

and then sold three car bills and like, all right, we're good for four years.

It's you got to keep going, keep going. The amount of times we've walked away from a show,

like, man, this sucked. We didn't sell anything. And then like six months later,

phone calls come in and oh, yeah, I saw you at Des Moines. And we thought Des Moines was a

horrible show for us for that year. And then you sell for your four chassis or one build or it

just kind of you got to see out there. So you're not a, I know your staff's not going to want to

hear this, but those builders don't have to buy a vendor spot. They don't, they should,

they should build a car. Some do if you have a product. Some do 100%. I agree. But I'm saying

this, the guy that it's him and his wife, or maybe a fabricator, and they've got the first car that's

out there, whatever, don't, don't get yourself like chasing something. But the other side of that is

that you can also, you can have a vendor spot, but it doesn't have to be a trailer or a rig. You

can put up a 10 by 10 easy up and park a car next to it and have your banner hanging behind it and

do it pretty, pretty affordably and pretty low key too. And that maybe, you know, maybe that's

a year or two. Maybe year one is just showing up. Year two is the banner on a small booth or

something like that. But then how do you monitor it? Because here's something, you know, we'll

just get this out there because it's something that's maybe a little or was a little frustrating.

I mean, now it's just whatever. There's a, there's an in between there. There's the guy who's,

he's young. He's upcoming. He's been busting his ass. He's sitting in the builder's choice

and he's marketing his car and his shop really well. There's another step of that, which is having

a booth. And then there's an in between. There's the guy who shows up and he's got his car parked

somewhere with some signage, a bunch of literature. He's handing stuff out. He's got a tent up with

his shop name on it. He's in the autocross. He's over here. And he's sort of a freeloader, you know.

How do you guys handle that? Right? Because then there's maybe this is maybe this is controversial.

I feel like there's the right, there's the right ways. It's that entry level way. It's the stepping

up to a booth. And then there's what I think is the wrong way of that in between section. Yeah,

one thing, and I'm not going to dodge this, like one thing I haven't done is work sales for good

guys. But I do know that they do treat stuff like that the same way of a commercial vendor trying

to get a swap meet booth. Yeah, and go out to the swap meet. Got it. So I know that it's it is

addressed in those. Okay, those loopholes do try to get fixed. I don't know what the remedy is or

what the conversations are like, but you know, we're aware of stuff like that happening. It's

yeah, I think that the best way to answer like you should be self aware and cognizant. There's

going to be stages in your career building cars. I'm not talking about manufacturers or anything.

We're just talking about guys that start a hot rod shop, gonna build a car and want to make it in

this industry. You're gonna build your first one, you're gonna show up, you need to you need to work

the shows, work builders choice, everything that you just said to do. And you're gonna, you're

gonna take, you're gonna be a taker from good guys for a couple of years. Then there's gonna be a

time where it starts evening out, right? And you're getting as much as you're taking.

You're getting as much as you're taking. And again, we can follow this again under the edit

zone. It's like a tops and bottoms thing is what it sounded like. Then there's going to be a point

in your career when things start shifting, right? And you're able to give back, just make sure that

you remember how much you got from good guys from any of their event that's made you, you know,

financially stable and got a shop and got some customers and all that. When it's right for you,

you start giving back at the appropriate level. Maybe it's the tent, maybe it is the rig, right?

And we're going to sell some merch and we got these few little parts and stuff like that.

Just making sure that you give back to the thing that made you get to the point where you could

give back. You're an asshole for that. That makes a lot of sense. It took you a while to get there.

Just let me get there. You got to make the point correctly. If you just get there faster and then

I wouldn't, I'm not gonna, I won't chime in like that. You got there was what you did. You made

a good point. You did. Yeah. And I'm the one that's not nice. Tracks. Fucking tracks. I wouldn't

do that to just anybody, right? That's, that's, I save that treatment exclusively for you.

An idea kind of based off of that. Would there be an avenue in good guys where you have a special

area for first time builders, first time exhibitors, where you just have like, say Columbus, the,

what do you call it, the little pavilion that's open on all the sides next to the bricker building

where you just stack that with first time builders.

It's a good idea. Those dropping fucking bangers over here. Yeah, that's a good idea.

Cheaper booth entry. They can afford it. It opens the door for a lot of

Yeah. Kind of like the new product showcase we do. And it's, yeah, it would be kind of a new

builder showcase. Yeah. Well, and to kind of add to what we were saying initially about how do you

get some recognition or how do you make sure you're playing the game right if you're a new

builder coming in. Part of that is just introduce yourself to the good guy staff, you know, whether

it's, you know, whether it's someone like Stephen or myself or someone like Sadie on the sales side.

And don't be afraid to ask questions. This is the same thing as you would do in any,

you know, business, like make sure you're asking questions. What was the marketing guy again?

What's his name? No, it's because they're probably going to go to him. I would say build a social

You know, what was the dude's name? Was it Kirk, Kirk, Kirk, Kirk. That's,

that's how it might be hard for your average guy to introduce himself to.

Never met Kirk. Wasn't the most approachable looking.

Silence all around. Never met him. Never met him. We have like a certain level of corporate here

that I feel like I'm dealing with. My God. They got, they got red certain rules.

There was a long list of rules. Yeah, Mark must be a tough motherfucker to work for.

All right. Standard questions time.

Um, first up, favorite car movie. First of all, standard questions is brought to you by HRE

wheels. The standard and wheel standard standard and questions brought to you by the standard and

wheel. Take it first. I think Damon's probably got a good, you got a lot of hot rod culture.

And you've been around. Yeah, well, I, I, I still, I mean, mine's the cliche American

graffiti. Thought so. And, and, and, and the thing that I've, the thing that I love about

that movie now watching it a little bit older is that it's not just a car movie. Like it's,

it's really about like, like deciding what direction you want to go in life and growing up

and all that sort of thing. So I love that about it. Pivotal decision. It felt like everything,

like the world is ending tonight. Yeah. Like shit tomorrow is how, how important are these

decisions? And, um, and yeah. And, you know, another cliche is, I'm, you know, I'm a vanishing

point guy. So yeah. American, your fee and days in the movie fused are probably the only two movies

that you felt like you were there all night. Like you were, you started early, you met up with your

buddies and you were there till the end of the time to go home. Literally sunset to sunrise. Yeah.

Yeah. And then you weren't a kid when the movie went off. Like it was like, once that's over,

everybody's adults, like in these go their separate ways in 10 years. Yeah.

So I'll go to, I'm going to, I'm going to give you one. That's my favorite car movie. And then

I'll go more pop culture, but funny car summer. Yeah. Yep. Follows Jim Dunn 74. Okay. And I like

that one. I got that as a VHS when I was a kid and there was old footage of him racing at Sackman

Raceway, which is a track that I grew up at. So that's cool. But a lot of listeners may not know

that one or have seen it. You know, American Free School got ties with the 55 Chevy and

everything like that. Side note what's cool is I got a picture of my son in one of the three

movie cars that still exist in Pleasant. Oh, wow. A couple weeks ago. That's awesome. What are your

ties with the 55? We did that 70 years of tri-five Chevy celebration. Yeah. But then you have the

personal tie with the with the bunker. Oh, my grandpa's car is 55 Chevy. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah,

that car is being restored out in Colorado. I tracked it down called the dude that's doing

the restoration. He brought it out completely unrestored. It was pretty cool. Wow. But a movie

drive it as a straight axle. No, it was it was her grocery getter that he started drag racing.

And then he just took it to him or fell there. Hard time. I'll show you some pictures. But

it's pretty cool. Gone in 60 seconds. If I'm flipping through the net cage gone in 60 seconds,

that one will stop me. Yeah, it's a good movie. Yeah, great movie. Yeah, those are good pulls.

That's the first funny car summer. That's the first time that's come up. I've listened waiting

for someone to say it. It's the first absolute first. There's a lot of other ones at six pack.

Nobody pulled that one. There's a heart like a wheel. I love that. Yeah. There's a lot of there's

so many that still haven't come up. The tales from the Crip was that was a deep fucking poll,

dude. Oh, wow. From Garrett's. Now, remember tales from the Crip? I don't as a kid was like a series

on what was it on USA USA. It was fun up all night. Elvira would come on and keeper the dude

that looked like a skeleton. Yep. And they were like 30 minute little shows. But there was one

episode that had some really bitching. It was 57 like gas and no bumper on the front of it. Right.

Yeah. And what the fuck else was Brad Pitt? Yeah, Brad Pitt young Brad Pitt in it. It was like

first moral killer car sounds. It was cool. And I want I thought I saw all those and I didn't

know that existed. Yeah, it was wild. Yeah. Horrible acting. Horrible. The Milner fight

scene. Is that a great is that great acting? No, but you still love it. Yeah.

Next up, let's see. Best piece of advice.

You take that one first. That's a tough one. Wow, that's that is a tough one. I think it just goes

back to for me, it's kind of give people benefit of benefit of the doubt. Like, like, and I guess

I'm thinking from the standpoint of being at an event. Somebody's angry about something.

Like I always try and take a step back and figure out like, okay, do they have a legitimate gripe

because sometimes the knee jerk reaction is like, you know, screw you get out of my face kind of

a thing. But I, you know, I try and take a step back and think, okay, do they have a legitimate

gripe? And if so, how do you know, how do you handle it? Or how do you just talk them down a

little bit? We've learned so many times that like sometimes you just need to listen to the guy

complain for a little bit, say, I see your point. I can't fix it right now.

You know, we'll see if that's something we can address or whatever. But, you know, I guess it's

just sort of being diplomatic. It's good. Yeah. This is something Drummond told me. And the first

year I worked for Good Guys was the year Gary passed away. So I got hired in February, passed

away in November. That following season in the spring, Drummond told me he goes, don't ever try

to stop impressing Gary. Oh, yeah. And I've thought about that for a while. That's deep. Yeah,

it's pretty deep, but it's something that that's good. Just once a year pops in my head because

this is what he started. This was his family business. And if it's going to continue, try to,

you know, yeah, keep pressing it. Yeah, that's cool. That's really good with how he ran things.

Yeah, just that tradition carrying on. Yeah, don't let it unravel.

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Hmm. And feel free to cut loose to we'll we'll deal with we'll deal with Mark. Yeah,

yeah. No, we'll deal with Mark. We've got some dirt on him. We can kind of leverage that the other way.

Man, I don't know if it's a favorite, but it's one of the most terrifying. Yeah,

most shocking, most terrible. Absolutely terrible. Like, yeah, you want to hear it? Yeah. How about

almost totally in Mark 69 Camaro on a road tour? That's a good one. Yeah. That was awful. Yeah.

Damon was riding past your seat. Yeah. Yeah. I remember that vividly. Yeah. We talked about it

two days ago. So I was supposed to drive the giveaway C 10 that Scottsville and got it home,

ran it for a little bit and then something happened. I couldn't take it. So what happened?

Was it chess related? Or was it? It was it was fuel fuel line burned and trying hard.

Punch you. It was a multiple podcast in one day is not good for you. Fuel delivery.

It happened the day before we're supposed to leave. Okay. So like I had a buddy that I was

going to take to is going to read from the fuel system and whatever, but I didn't have the time.

So Mark goes, All right, he goes, I'm going to send some people up to your house and they're

going to drop off to come around to you and drive that down there. So where was that tour? I drove

it from Sacramento to Salt Lake City to kick off the tour. And I think the yellow one yellow 69.

Yeah. And the tour went Salt Lake down to Texas. We ended up in Texas. Yeah, we wound through

Colorado and so we're zipping along some back road probably going your grand junction. Yeah.

No, not grand junction near Pueblo. Okay. Yeah, probably going 1015 over speed, right? Not all

in ass, but clipping along. And we're through a four lane small town that's got the middle of

the lanes where they could pull into the middle and continue their left hand turn. So it's me,

my buddy Bob, Harold Chapman was behind us and Steve Legans. And this lady comes out and she

nudges it out there, the nose out there, and then reconsider. So she stops. I'm like, All right,

cool. I'm gonna keep clipping along. Last minute. She decides to go for it. Just pulls out in front

of me. I locked this thing up, dude, four wheels and the acid starts coming around on me. And I'm

like, I'm wadding up Mark's car right now. Yeah. I was like, don't spin it out. So I let off the

brake because I'm like, if I spin it out, I'm done. So I let off the brake, started whipping the wheel.

I think I missed this lady's back bumper by a foot, 18 inches. Everybody behind us was

certain we were going to hit her. Everybody thought I was T boning the skin marks for

a hundred feet. And I pulled through that thing, a neutral shrimp shake. Yeah.

Hannah Damon, the keys, they all pulled over, gave me a bottle of water.

They're like, dude, calm down. Tracy Chapman was love, Tracy. She's like, sit down, breathe, relax.

Hannah Damon, the keys. I've never driven that car since then. Really? Yep.

Wow. Yeah. Wrecking the president's car. It's always on a car that I wasn't supposed to be.

It's always the car that, like, it's not yours. And it's always really expensive. Right.

I'm going to just chime in because I got a good almost wrecking a car through it.

We talk about GTs a lot, right? Do you know about the time when I drove Tim's GT?

Ford, did you also spin it out? No, I didn't. He fucking spun it out. But

Body of Mind gets a GT for GT 2006 GT, fucking cars, beautiful, low mileage.

And he's like, dude, take the car and we're going to go cruise up to Lake Geneva together.

And he's got a he's driving a Ferrari. So usually I would never take that opportunity

because I don't like driving anybody else's stuff. But I'm like, he's a good buddy.

But I'm like, dude, fuck, yes, yes, let's do it. We get on the route 12 and he gets out in front

of me, merge on the highway. And he just gets on it, dude. And then a sheet of like OBS board

or plywood or something blows off a dude's truck, lands in the lane in front of me and just like

goes airborne. And it's coming like right like a wall in front of this car. I must have missed

that thing by like that. I mean, it was a great evasive maneuver. And I'm like, Tim, did you

fucking see that? No, what happened? But that's just that's the way it goes, you know? Yeah.

It's like usually when you try to do something nicer, we've had it happen with the lending people.

Yes, some pretty high end cars that come back not so high end cars. But it's that's the way it

always goes. Dodge the board a party that fell off a truck driving the OBS truck. Did you roll

through LA? It just fell off. It was like three lanes over, but not directly in front of me,

but it was in the road. And I was like, well, I got to get around that. I was driving the 62

Corvette Black. Like I think I was at the week before Columbus. No, I had to be a week after

we had an interior in a four Columbus. Right at the corner here, I'm going to stop waiting to

turn right. A car takes a left and the tire, the whole wheel exits the car. And it's just like

rolling right for me. There's a car behind me. I can't move. And this thing just comes like this

and just curves hits the hits the curb hops up and goes off. Like, whoa, that kind of

you willed it that way. It's expensive. It's the problem when you're driving something nice like

that and you're trying to be so careful. That's when it happens. And it's out of your control

usually. What about you? Can I give two? Yeah, fire away. Okay. So the first one is I think it was

2001. And it was I think my first time to the West Coast nationals. I was still working in Southern

California. And my buddy Chris Shelton, who was working at Street Rocker. Yeah. So and he had a

bare metal 32 Roadster with a 327 and a five speed and you know, done really kind of 50 style.

And we just road tripped up to Pleasanton that week. And like fun and bombed around San Francisco

and like all the stuff living the fucking dream. Absolutely. Absolutely. And just so that whole

experience of that weekend, spending time in Pleasanton, spending time at the good guys event,

cruising around San Francisco. And then to the drive home, I still vividly remember the drive home

because we took, we took 101 coming home. And so there's a stretch of 101, like between Santa

Barbara and Ventura where you're running right along the coast. And it was, you know, midnight.

And we're running along the coast in this hot rod. And so you got the ocean on the right hand side.

And you know, and, and, and kind of the Southern California scrub on the left. And it was just

and you know, the small block ringing in your ears and the whole and it was just like kind of that,

that quintessential hot rod moment. And then the other time is, I think the first time I went to

the West Coast Nationals after coming on board with good guys, it would have been 2017. And

that weekend we wanted to have as many good guys vehicles out of the event as possible. And so,

you know, Mark was like, okay, pick a car out of the warehouse and, and you know,

that you want to take out to the show. And one of the car, one of Gary's favorite cars was the,

for me, was the 47 Plymouth guy. I'm a Mopar guy. And the fact that the president knows as a 47

Plymouth Coupe is a yellow coupe with red scallops. And he, it was, it was like his, or yeah,

purple scallops. Yeah. It's one of his not so well known ones. But he had built it in the, I think,

early to mid 90s. And it was a copy of his high school car. And I always thought it was cool that

the president of good guys, you know, had this oddball Mopar, you know, and it was, you know,

it's got a flathead six and a, and a three speed with overdrive and stuff like that. So I, so I

picked that. And so cruising in, in, in Gary's car, you know, that's a replica of his high school car

to the West Coast Nationals. That was just like a very good guys moment to me and kind of a good

connection. Gary, I'll add one more to this just because that sparked something. So

you guys might have been on this, you were on the road tour, you was Detroit speed

to Texas. And you were in the square body, your square body. We, we were in the whatever media

car from, from North Carolina to Texas. And that's the year that Greg Weld ended up driving

Gary's 32 sedan for a little bit on the tour because his car broke down or something like that.

And Mark goes, Hey, he goes, we got to get this car back to California. This is 2017. Like,

I'm with good guys for two years. I was like, all right. He's like, you want to drive it?

I was like, the logo cover? He's like, yeah. I was like, all right. So I hopped in that thing

drove, you know, two and a half days by myself. Stuff was wrong. Weapon right. Like no AC, no

radio. I had a Bluetooth speaker in the back seat like a road, not a road tour car. It's got a

ton of miles and it's well used, right? Like it's got these, and but then the neutral safety

switch was having issues. So I'd have to throw in park and put my foot out, rock the car and

fire and cart. And then I lost it. I lost a shock bolt and had to fix that in an app of parking

lot. But it was like my first like introduction, like really into like driving a hot rod. And

it was Gary's. And the whole time I was like, this is just Gary mess with me.

What are you going to do with this? Yeah. So it was cool, but it was for two

folds. So for doing that and then also driving, basically it finished a cross country drive for

North Carolina to California. That was,

didn't we go down to, went to New Orleans on the door? Yeah. That was the run we went.

Big old long grade. We were trying to catch it. We were going to bring it back to the parking lot.

There were two scenarios. One way or the other, bringing it back.

Dude, what is we sheltering up to these days? Just living his best life up in Washington, man.

Yeah, just still hot rod. Yeah, I mean, he's still got cars. I know he's still got his 32.

He's got some Volkswagen's that he's had forever as well.

Doing a little bit of freelance here and there and some other odds and ends too. I see him

most of the time when I go to Puyallup and cover that event.

Nice. Cool, dude. Next up.

I'm gonna die. I'm literally about to die. You can call in sick tomorrow?

No. Can't nothing. Take me out.

Famous last words. I'm either going to be here or you're going to get a call from Jody

making preparations. You got to speak. Are you serious?

Fucking asshole. I hate you. What kind of nice things did you say about me when I was on my

deathbed? You bring it up like every other podcast. I didn't say anything. I said what I told you.

Off-putting was the word? I said this is getting a little bit much and it's super

off-putting to go out and public with you. And I also said if you go this way,

do you realize what I'm going to say about you at the funeral? So breathing got too hard.

So we just quit. Couldn't do it anymore. Even that tube of oxygen.

That's how weak you were. You couldn't manage to breathe. You're right. Not nice.

He got better. He didn't have a choice. He didn't have a choice. I was helping you.

Let's face it. You would have went to the other side if I wouldn't have told you what would have

happened. Next up, we've got most memorable law enforcement interaction story.

In general? In life. Bonus points if it has to do with good guys. My most memorable one

doesn't have to do with good guys. It's just kind of the typical high school thing.

I was coming home from a football game in high school. Had a 68 Dodge Van. So like the flat front.

Shorty? Yeah, A100. And it was a 318-3 speed. So it moved pretty well. And I just bought it.

So I had like in transit tags. I didn't have plates on it or anything like that. And I wanted

to kind of show off to my buddy. I was in the left-hand lane to turn off the main street in my

town to a side street and was waiting for traffic to clear. And when it did, I dumped the clutch

and kind of spun the tires going around the corner. Hadn't really looked at the rear

mirror to see that there's cop right behind me. So I get half a block up and he comes right

up and flips his lights on. And so he ends up pulling me over literally around the corner

from my house. And he's assuming that I'm trying to get away from him. He has no idea that I was

just being dumb and totally spacey and didn't realize that he was behind me. And so he ordered

me out of the van, padded me down. Dude, what'd you think about that? That's cool.

And you know, shining his flashlight at my buddy and you know, looking in the van and stuff like

that. And the funniest thing was at the end of the day, like the only, you know, he read me the

riot act, yelled at me a bunch and so forth. But at the end of the day, he could only write me a

ticket for excessive tire noise. And which was, I don't know, 50 bucks or something like that. But

it scared me a bit. Excessive tire noise. I've never heard that. I think he might have pulled

it out of his butt, you know, it might have been one of those optional hand right in the infraction

at the bottom of the ticket kind of things. Yeah, so that's what I've gotten failure to make use

of the roadway before never excessive excessive tire noise gotten improper acceleration. And then

a blatant disregard for traction or there was something there was something about you couldn't

just say like you spun the tires. It was something that was written in a way of me. Just say spun

the tires because I spun the tires. Carly or just in general. Just in general. Just in general.

Okay. Unless it's got you on like a wanted list or you can't live like with a certain radius of

certain things. Just keep that. Just being a high school kid degenerate.

To me and two buddies were in his mom's Jeep Wrangler and we're shooting our friends with

airsoft guns at the local Wendy's because that was the hangout. Yeah, we're just shooting people

with airsoft guns out of the car. Nobody knew it was us because we're in mom's car. What year is this?

2003. A little little later in the time it should be for shooting people.

90s 90s was cool. 2000s. Oh, the same thing.

Airsoft guns smoking. Paintball, airsoft guns, yeah.

And watching people give the like. Yeah, they don't know where it's coming from.

It's something horrible. So we get a phone call from a buddy who let's just say needed us to

follow him home. All right, so meet him up around the corner. Cop gets behind him and we're like,

well, shit, we got to divert attention. So we start cutting the cop off and like drawing attention

to us to protect the buddy, right? So any availability lit up, pulled over in a parking lot,

cop comes up to us and sees the airsoft guns and all the just got an orange tip. That's the only

difference. He didn't see the orange tip. So it's gun drawn, get out of the car. Yeah, sweet. This

school and we're all 15. And so out of the car, line us up enforcement comes there's like three

or four of the cops, two motorcycle cops, full search of the vehicle and the cop comes over

with one of the airsoft guns, opens up his trunk, lifts up the mat and he goes, what's the difference

between that and this? We're like the orange tip. He goes exactly. He's like, you guys are idiots.

Gave us full dad talk, full dad talk. And let us go. Basically was like, you've got it got a curfew

like parents were called. Hey, kids around pass curfew. My buddy was driving with his permit

or wasn't allowed to be with people, but it was the biggest, hardest slap on the rest of ever

gone. That's good. Probably straighten you out though. Oh, yeah. It did its job. Yeah, guns

drawn 15. That's cool. Yeah, we did. It's funny when you remember the paintball. Yeah, guns drawn.

They freak out about things that look like real firearms. Right. Yeah, right. Right. Can't fault

them for that. It's funny though, 15 or 16. We've all had those, you know, you've all dealt with cops,

but then cops and guns drawn. And you know, instantly it's gone so serious because it just,

just 10 minutes before you weren't scared of shit. You own the world. We were scaring all

of our friends. We were like, dude, fucking, shoot this, blah, blah, blah. And instantly you're like,

all right, all right, all right. And you're making those deals. It's like, I'll never do this again.

I'll never do this again. Okay, just don't have peers fine. Absolutely. I'll go home. I will do

my homework every single night and just it gets real so fast. Dad might find out about this on

podcast. Next up, we're round in the corner to the end.

If you were doing anything else in life for a profession, what would it be?

Real easy. I'd be trying to chase in a trade world, race and professionally.

What type of race car? I like funny cars. I don't know if I'd be working on it. I think I try to

live in the business world, the marketing or the media side of things within HRA, but

yeah, that's where I wanted to land. Cool. What do you like funny car more than top fuel?

They're cooler. They're harder to drive. Okay. Yeah, they're fun. I've worked on funny cars. I

did the left side still under head on Mark's nostalgia funny car. They're just, they're just

super cool. That's a whole team atmosphere. Oh, I'm sure. In itself, so. Would it take you to

redo it head? Time wise on the nostalgia stuff. So that's basically think of it as triple a

baseball HRA heritage world. They gave us two hours between rounds and that's whether we had to

knock some pistons out or anything, but normal maintenance, just pull the head clean everything.

We pulled the broads and pistons or the, you know, rods and pistons out every time.

Check the rings, see the, you know, skirts and everything. If it claps, anything,

put it all back together for two hours. That's cool. In a trade world, it's 75 minutes.

That's moving. Yeah. What about you? Is this like pie in the sky? We don't have to

have the talent to actually do it. Of course not. 100%. It'd be something music,

something music related, because that's probably the other thing that I'm as into as much as much

as cars is music. So yeah, instrument. Any certain instrument? Well, I played saxophone growing up

and I dabbled in guitar in college a little bit. I'm, you know, kind of typical rock guy. So I

guess if, if I were to choose, it would probably be guitar and figure that out. Would you pick

guitar or drums? I played the drums. I know. I would love to play the guitar because drums,

like you can't, you don't play a song. Like if you're just jamming at home, you can't just,

you can't just play the drums on the front porch. You can somebody's like, oh dude,

that's stairway to heaven. I'm just like playing a beat, you know? Yeah. Last but not least,

this one's getting to be, we don't know if it's a fan favorite, but it's our favorite. Judging by

the interaction, it's a fan favorite. Stallone or Burt Reynolds? In what sense? Just life.

Overall, I've across the board. Burt Reynolds. Yeah, that's right. I'm going to go Burt.

Sorry. Sorry. It's just, I don't know what the tally is. Where did that come from?

In our argument between me and Josh. Yeah. And why? Which is short. Because it's honestly,

if you think it's pretty different, it is a pretty deep question. Well, I think there's a

case could be very different. Yeah. But similar. I don't know. Movie, roles. Burt got all the ladies

and the cool cars. That's a hundred percent right. It's been my argument from the get go.

It's body count. It's not even close. What cool car? No Hooper. Yeah. Well, that was another

Transam, I guess. Can a ball run? Gator? Yeah. What did he drive? A Dodge Van.

There was all kinds of cool cars in the movie. So Transam and a Dodge Van.

Just because Rocky, the character made some money and had some cool cars briefly sitting in

the driveway does not count. Because you want to put the Cobra? I'll put the Cobra in the mix.

I'll throw it. I'll put it up against the Dodge Van. The Mercury from Cobra wouldn't be allowed

into a good gas event. It's that bad. That's the worst car. All right. Shut up. Shut up.

What are your Burt Reynolds reasons? Why does he resonate with you? It's not. Neither one of them

directly just going off the fact that my buddy has a photoshopped sticker of his face over Burt

Reynolds. That doesn't count. So you're neither. Really? Neither. He's just got a funny sticker

that he passes out. So if you're an action star guy, like a 90s, 80s, 90s action star guy, who's

the guy? I like Mark Wahlberg. So does my wife. I'm sure. Yeah. Shooter. Shooter is a badass movie.

He's a fucking badass. No, he's not a badass. Oh, dude, he's great at everything. Like,

he's a great actor. I enjoy watching. I have to watch him a lot. My wives are extremely similar.

So I think you might understand. My wife will watch Shooter with me. Okay. I'm like,

all right, I can watch this. Shoot him up movie. Yeah. Badass dude. Tastes over and

she sits there and watches. But so my wife would rather watch.

Just just relook at the old Calvin Klein ad. What's the what's the fear? Fear. Yeah,

they like that one. Yeah, they'd like that movie.

Yeah. Interesting pick for action star. I'm not a big movie guy. What's going out there? Okay.

You're a big Van Dam fan, right? JCVD. Yeah. I want my black jeans today.

Guys, it's been an absolute blast. You're not going to get fired for this. No, you did a great

job. You told the toad toad the company line at the appropriate level, but also got into some

deep discussions that I think everybody would be interested in hearing.

That's been awesome being here, man. Appreciate you guys having us. Thanks for the opportunity.

Enjoy the rest of the tour. What's coming up? You got some breaking news about some things

coming up in the next few weeks. And what's the next show? Texas next week? Yep. Texas next week.

And then October is we're going to release 2026 schedule and some changes. And then we finish

off the year in November, going down to Pleasant's Inn for a get together today, get together out

there in Pleasant's Inn and then Southwest Nationals. No semen this year, right? No semen for us.

Congratulations to Paul Van Nuss on the trendsetter of the year. Yes, absolutely. Well deserved.

His place. Is that your pronounce at Van Nuss? Van Nuss. Yeah. So it's nice. There's no Y in it.

N. U. S. Okay. Yeah, Paul's done some incredible stuff. So yeah, well deserved. Killing it. Killing

it man. Absolutely crushing it. Good people too. They're just good people. Yeah. Yeah,

he's he's right now painting a fox body for us. Oh, nice. Solid. Doing a great job. How does it

look? It looks good. Fantastic. Nice. He's all the line that he's told this whole podcast. You've

seen like this. You're paying him. Absolutely great time, fellas. We have had lots of conversations

in the hotel parking lots and at the shows it was time we did it on air and hope you guys

enjoyed it as much as we did. Thank you, man. Thank you. Great. Thanks, fellas. See you again next week.

Damon Lee & Steven Bunker of Goodguys Rod & Custom

Edsel

Plymouth Coupe

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