Deep dive with the leading custom chassis builder Roadster Shop
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Car
Ford Mustang
The Mustang is a popular sports car made by Ford. It's known for being fast and stylish, and many people love it for its performance and design.
Term
SEMA
SEMA is a big car show in Las Vegas where companies show off new car parts and custom cars. It's important for people in the car industry to see the latest trends and products.
Car
Ford Fairlane
The Ford Fairlane is a classic car made by Ford, popular in the 1960s. It's known for its good looks and performance during a time when muscle cars were very popular.
Company
Roadster Shop
Roadster Shop is a business that makes parts for classic cars, especially the frames that hold everything together. They help car enthusiasts build or restore their vehicles to make them look and drive better.
Concept
chassis
The chassis is the main frame of a car that holds everything together, like the engine and wheels. It's important for how strong and stable the car is when it drives.
Concept
classic car
Classic cars are older vehicles that people love to collect and restore. They are usually at least 20 years old and are appreciated for their style and history.
Company
Ring Brothers
Ring Brothers are famous for making custom cars that look amazing and perform well. They are respected in the car community for their work on classic cars.
Term
road course
A road course is a racetrack that has lots of turns and straight sections. It's different from an oval track because you have to turn a lot, which makes it more challenging to drive fast.
Term
autocross
Autocross is a type of car racing where drivers take turns racing through a course marked by cones. Each driver goes one at a time, and the goal is to finish the course as quickly as possible without hitting the cones.
Term
three inch exhaust
A three inch exhaust is a type of exhaust pipe that is three inches wide. It helps the engine breathe better, which can make the car go faster.
Part
suspension
Suspension is the system that connects a car to its wheels and helps it handle bumps in the road. Changing the suspension can change how high or low the car sits and how it drives.
Term
10 gauge steel
10 gauge steel is a type of steel that is about as thick as a pencil. It's used in building things because it's strong and can handle a lot of weight.
Part
Tig rod
Tig rod is a metal wire used in a specific type of welding called TIG welding. It helps join pieces of metal together, and different types of rods are used for different jobs.
Term
ride height
Ride height is how high a car sits off the ground. It can change how the car drives and feels on the road.
Term
CAD
CAD is a computer program that helps designers create detailed drawings and models of things, like cars, on a computer.
Car
Ford Broncos
The Ford Bronco is a popular SUV that can handle rough terrains and is known for its strong build. It's been around for many years and has recently come back with new features.
Company
Icon
Icon is a company that takes old cars, like the Ford Bronco, and makes them look and work like new again, while keeping their classic style.
Car
Chevrolet Camaro
The Chevrolet Camaro is a type of sports car that many people enjoy driving. It's known for being fast and having a cool design.
Company
Rad Rides by Troy
Rad Rides by Troy is a company that customizes and builds cars, known for their creative and impressive designs. They are recognized in the car enthusiast community.
Term
DCT transaxle
A DCT transaxle is a type of car transmission that helps change gears quickly, making the car faster and more efficient. It's often found in sports cars.
Term
horsepower
Horsepower is a way to measure how strong an engine is. The more horsepower an engine has, the faster and more powerful the car can be.
Car
Chevrolet C10
The Chevrolet C10 is an older pickup truck that many people admire for its sturdy build and style. It's popular among those who like to fix up and customize vehicles.
Term
crate engine
A crate engine is a complete engine that you can buy and install in a car. It's ready to go, making it easier for people who want to upgrade their car's performance.
Term
EFI
EFI means Electronic Fuel Injection, which is a modern way of delivering fuel to an engine. It helps the engine run better and use fuel more efficiently.
Car
Mclaren 720S
The McLaren 720S is a very fast and stylish sports car that you can drive comfortably every day. It's designed to be both fun on the racetrack and practical for regular use.
Car
McLaren Senna
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Car
Ford Mustang GTD
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Car
Mercury Monterey
The Mercury Monterey is a big, classic car that people liked in the 50s and 60s. It's known for being roomy and stylish, making it a favorite among vintage car fans.
Brand
Aston Martin
Aston Martin is a famous British car brand that makes luxury sports cars. They are known for their stylish designs and high performance, often seen in movies and car shows.
Car
Lamborghini 400
The Lamborghini 400 GT is an older luxury sports car from the 1960s that many people admire for its beauty and speed. It's one of the cars that helped make Lamborghini famous.
Car
Porsche 959S
The Porsche 959 is a super-fast sports car made in the late 1980s that was very advanced for its time. It's rare and special, making it a sought-after car for collectors.
Car
Ferrari 550 Ferraris
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Car
Porsche 911
The Porsche 911 is a famous sports car known for its speed and unique shape. It's been around for a long time and is loved by many car enthusiasts for how well it drives.
Car
Porsche 928
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Lamborghini Sian
The Lamborghini Sian is a very fancy and powerful car that uses both gas and electricity to go fast. It's a new type of car for Lamborghini that still looks amazing and performs well.
Car
Mercedes-Benz SL
The Mercedes-Benz SL is a fancy convertible car that many people find stylish and fun to drive. It's known for being comfortable and powerful, making it a desirable choice for luxury car lovers.
Car
Chevrolet Chevelle
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Car
Fiat 600S
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Car
Ford GT40
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Car
Chevrolet Corvettes
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LIVE
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From all of us at Believe, have a Merry Christmas everyone, and a Happy Holiday!
Hello and welcome to CarCast, I'm at the Motorator DeAndrea. I'm here with the guys from Roadster Shop. It's good to have you on the show. You guys got a heck of a setup over there. It's a nice room you got, your own podcast room.
Well, thanks man. It's good to be on. Thanks for having us. It's a little bit funky being on the other side of this, right?
I'm sure you guys have done quite a few, believe it or not. You start wondering like, I don't know, maybe people just don't have a lot of interest in hearing about Roadster Shop.
We've done some other podcasts, but I know that we have never done another podcast in this podcast studio. So that's what's definitely weird.
You know, it's generally some phone stuff and shop stuff and offices, but this is the first time that we've flipped.
It's got a little of that wing.
We're on the back side of it this time. It's really weird.
Okay, so a little bit of backstory here. So you guys work with my friends, Mike and Jim Ring. They're okay.
Yeah, they're getting the hang of this hot rod building thing.
They're okay. I mean, they're starting to catch on with building cars, but you know.
Literally in the game would be in their 70s just now to be catching on.
Coming into their stride right about now in their late 70s, right?
Right.
No, they're the best that just met them years and years ago. I saw I think one of the first cars that they built the red Mustang convertible showed up at
like it showed up at an event in Scottsdale, Arizona at night.
It's like a Friday night or Saturday night car show at like a McDonald's parking lot, which is like a Home Depot and everything.
And somebody had the car there and I was looking at it and I was like, this is interesting.
You know, it's like, who built this car?
And I don't believe they were there. Maybe it was the customer's car was there.
And it was interesting and started looking into it.
And then eventually met the guys when I think Adam Kroll and I went and at SEMA and helped sort of debut one of one of their cars.
It was the fair lane.
The afterburner.
Afterburner. That was 15 years, 10 years ago.
I don't know.
It was like 2012 to 2014 era, something like that around there.
10, 12 years ago, something like that.
Yeah. So, you know, when I met those guys and I was like, all right, you're okay.
Now, we just, we just kind of hit it off.
And I think over the years, they've, they've been by our studio and brought a number of cars and been on the podcast.
And, you know, at a time when it was just kind of.
It was kind of odd, but like, hey, you know, who owns this car and who's sponsoring it?
And can we get it out to California?
And can we get you on the podcast and shoot videos for it?
And, you know, those guys were like, yeah, we want to do it.
And then it's like, but we got to ask our customer.
We got to ask whoever's sponsored hauling cars around Royal Purple or somebody like that at the time.
Let's, let's be honest.
I don't know what, like, what the listener base is on this or what we need to edit.
Maybe you can edit this, but it was more like, I ain't bringing that cocksucker out there for fucking free.
You fuckers, you fuckers are going to pay for this motherfucker.
Well, we did not pay for it.
They were great guys.
And we, we try to, we try to figure out a way to like go.
Are you going from SEMA to like Southern California for, for like a good guy's show?
Can you stop off in Burbank and can you do it?
And it worked out like we've done it many times and then it worked out.
And then I don't know if you've heard of this guy.
Jay Leno, he started doing that too.
So now everybody brings a car to Jay and I think they fly cars in for him.
Yeah.
Before we were trying to drag cars over to our shop to do it, but you know, now Jay's.
Yeah.
Jay's got a cool thing going and I always enjoy, always enjoy watching his reviews because he's
for such a knowledgeable guy and just so like sort of nonchalant and down to earth.
Cool.
Yeah.
Have you guys been out there?
Have you been to Jay's?
We never have.
No.
We haven't.
Now I thought you guys would have had a car on there because you've done so many great
builds.
Listen, Jay and Adam Corolla go way back from before the Tonight Show.
They were, you know, Adam was like doing construction on a house and the guy across the street was
Jay Leno and it was like how they met.
It was kind of funny story.
Like Adam was like swinging hammers.
He'd start early and then he would see this guy come out early afternoon, lunchtime, one
o'clock, fussing with his motorcycles and a car like in his garage and his driveway.
And then Adam went over and he's like, Hey, I'm, I'm Adam.
I'm doing work across the street.
He's like, Hey, I'm Jay.
Adam goes, I'm curious.
I don't go to work in the morning, but you're fussing with your cars at like noon.
He's like, what do you do?
He's like comedy and that kind of got Adam into comedy.
Huh?
Right there.
It seems like a good gig.
Yeah.
Jay's cool.
Jay reached out to us just randomly years ago looking for some information on a 32 Roadster
that he thought we built, which wasn't something we built, but such a nice guy just called,
gives us a cell phone says, give me a call.
Let me talk through this.
Josh called him and just like a normal dude walked him through like fixing his brake, neutral
safety switch or something.
Didn't you?
Yeah.
Something really down to earth guy.
Yeah.
That's kind of his M.O.
He's the, he's the sweetest guy.
He's been nothing but absolutely amazing to me.
Of course to Adam.
He's invited us to his place when we were doing our documentaries.
We'd always try to go over there first and screen it with him and a couple of his guys
and just get some feedback before we release like the final cut.
Just we respect his opinion.
So we've, we've, we've always had that opportunity.
And by the way, we go there and he's just like, I'll fire up the barbecue and we'll
make burgers or we'll just, we'll bring a bunch of like Chick-fil-A or something.
We'll just like, we'll eat and then we'll watch in this little screening room, which
I feel so bad.
But when we did the Newman documentary, which was the first one in like 2016 or so.
There's a scene in the film when they're talking about Newman and his brother and they were
like shooting or hunting or shooting skeet or something.
And there's a loud like, like shotgun blast in the film and a blue out Lennos audio system.
Oh, so I don't know if we were ever going to get invited back, but you know, the next
year, the next documentary came out, he invited us over.
He had a whole new audience.
I'm sure he's got a good audio guy.
Yeah.
He had a whole new audio system.
All right.
So anyway, thanks for being on the show.
I want to back up a little bit.
Tell us a little bit about Roadster Shop and what it is that you guys do for, for people
that aren't familiar.
I'm sure they've heard the name a million times because we've, we've talked about you.
We've been fans of you guys and what you've been doing.
But yeah, let's back up.
What is, what is the Roadster Shop or just Roadster Shop, right?
Sure.
Who wants to take it?
Go ahead.
Get after it.
Well, all right.
Roadster Shop.
Well, we don't build Roadsters interestingly enough.
We started off doing a lot of like thirties era street rods, hot rod stuff, you know,
in the early 2000s, we were chassis, small chassis manufacturer and really weren't building
any cars, just doing like local service work, stuff like that.
And yeah, grew the company tremendously over the years and our focus, our primary focus
is manufacturing chassis for virtually anything, any sort of classic car.
I mean, at this point, we're not really dabbling in the thirties, but I'd say anything from
like the fifties on into the nineties now.
And yeah, I think we just put a tremendous focus on engineering, the style, the performance
of the cars, the aesthetic, the ride, the stance of the car is sort of what the Roadster
Shop is known for.
Yep.
Agree?
Yeah.
Agree.
Agree.
So you take your car, you put it on a Roadster Shop chassis and it just looks sort of badass,
like being car builders over the years and, you know, working with guys like the Ring Brothers
or having guys like them as, you know, I guess sort of dudes we looked up to.
You know, I think we've just grown and grown and built some really sort of trend setting
cars over the years, which is different than a lot of other chassis manufacturers.
So we kind of have the vision as to how to set that car up, right?
And we incorporate all that stuff directly into the chassis.
That's a...
Yeah.
So we're one of the only chassis manufacturers that also does full high end car builds.
So we're using our product and refining it and staying on top of all the trends, staying
on top of what the latest engine transmission accessories drive, how all that stuff works
together, how it all packages in the car and how it's kind of used by the end product.
So we've got a ton of experience on building the cars and then that really only helps us
make our chassis product that much better for all the end customers that are building
cars themselves or other shops that are building cars on a Roadster Shop chassis.
Yeah.
Tell me about why you think the Roadster Shop, what have you guys done?
What's the magic recipe here of taking Roadster Shop and blowing it up to what it's become?
There are other chassis manufacturers out there.
There's some that have been around for a long time.
I mean, there was, and I'm not trying to pick on anybody else.
There's lots of great chassis manufacturers out there, but back in the day, it's like
you needed an Art Morrison chassis and still good, but now it seems like the best of the
best that are showing up are on Roadster Shop Chassis and explain to me like what is that?
Is that the chassis?
Is that the relationship?
Is it just good business acumen?
What have you guys been doing to make that happen?
Yes, to all those questions.
All of the above.
All of the above.
Relentless pursuit of perfection in every form of the business from answering the phone's
customer service to packaging, to the creating, to the manufacturing, to the car build side,
to management, to engineering, whatever and every.
If you focus on always trying to be the best instead of focusing on, we're going to be
the best at this, I guess that's kind of what we've always tried to do.
Yes.
I mean, at the end of the day, if you take all that out and if you were to just simply
use the product, then I believe the product speaks for itself and the reason it does is
sort of like what Phil was saying, I mean, if you've ever eaten at a restaurant, like
a famous restaurant where the chef doesn't taste the food, there's probably 75% of the
chassis manufacturers out there, they don't build cars or seldom do they drive anything
that's on their chassis and the ones that do, you know, it might be like that one vehicle
that gets built to launch said chassis every five to 10 years, whereas our business was
split 50-50, we were really cranking out a high volume of cars and using that to learn
and implement a lot on the chassis.
So when a customer gets a roadster shop chassis, I mean, that's something that it's not like
we just designed it 15 years ago and just left it alone and said, you know, this is
our sort of just classic product, this is the way it's engineered, this is what you
get, they've evolved so much over the years from what we've learned, driving a multitude
of cars, tens of thousands of miles and driving them in the way that they should be driven,
right, like driving the shit out of driving cars hard, road touring cars, driving through
some rough terrain, putting stuff on a drag strip, putting stuff on a road course, putting
stuff in an autocross and listening to what our customers are using their cars for and
then catering to that.
So when a guy gets a chassis, number one, it's going to ride really good, number two,
it's going to handle good, but the build process is going to be so much easier on that customer
because we design around like how we would build a car.
So it's not just that there's a center cross member in this chassis, it's, I'm heavily
involved in the fact that, hey, like this is, we need three inch exhaust, it's got to
go over the axle, where we run in the fuel lines, where the brake lines going, if a guy's
got to run ebrake cables, where are those going to go, if the tunnel's coming up into
the car, how much and where, and if so, can we make a tunnel for it that's laser cut and
just given a guy something that totally eases the build process, I think is really what sets
us apart.
Does he agree?
I agree.
How is the process of chassis building changed over the years?
It's, it can't just be, I'm bringing in some rack of a car and I'm measuring and measuring
and measuring.
There's got to be, I mean, now with the technology of scanning and 3D printing and automation
and laser cutting and water jets and, and, you know, the process, I don't know if that
process makes it faster or cheaper for you guys or just more accurate and precise or,
or again, sort of all of the above, but, I mean, if you think about chassis building
even 15, 20 years ago to now, it must have, it must change, especially as you're doing
high volume.
You were just talking about this the other day with the paper templates and the plumb
bobs and the measurements and stuff like that.
It's changed tremendously and we've, we've been in it long enough to have evolved with
it and started like kind of very primitive, I'd say, but that was, that was the way it
was done.
You don't even want to call it primitive because at the time we were pretty like advanced
and what we were doing was better tape measures.
Yeah.
It was really good plumb bobs and really accurate tape measures, but it was just that we would
take physical patterns like a, let's say, let's look back to the early 2000s and a guy
would want to bring in something that was a custom chassis that maybe we never did before.
So maybe it was like a 36 Dodge, which that's the kind of thing that would have come through
the door.
Right.
Yeah.
A lot of limits.
And you know, it would come in and we would just, the very first thing you would do is
pull the front rear suspension out of it and find an appropriate wheel and tire size
like diameter that looked right.
Stick them up underneath that thing and set that car truck down on blocks.
And you know, I might spend the better part of a day just shimming things with like little
half inch piece of plywood underneath this block, little quarter inch shim back here,
standing back and just looking at it to nail the ride height.
Once you get that, you scribble down some notes and then it moved into taking physical
paper templates.
So we would pattern out the entire existing chassis.
So we would take a frame rail pattern and then we would go over to our table where we
had about 15, 20 sheets, 15 foot long sheets of 10 gauge steel.
We'd trace that out onto that table and from there actually design it like to scale.
So knowing like ride heights, you'd start kicking up rails and there was tons of Tig
rod that laid all over that tail because the Tig rod, you know, you'd use like 16th rod
if you needed to make something sharp, three sixteenths, you know, if you if you really
just needed a soft bend and you'd start just creating sweeping profiles to step the front
rail, step the rear rail and then do the same with the top strap and the bottom strap.
And then we'd cut them out by hand and all of it was just sort of hand drawn.
We'd have hand drawn schematics and then you'd build them.
The assembly process is not wildly different than it is today because we'd build them off
of just a flat rotisserie, but really very little technology at the time.
But yeah, none.
Yeah, just a row of drill presses with different drill bits so you can go different sizes down
the line instead of changing out your drill bit automated.
Those are assembly line of drill presses.
Right.
And for the really high end stuff, you were doing something like really unique.
We did a lot of 32 crazy roadsters and stuff which stretch wheelbases and we're always
changing the angle of the rails and things like that.
We just build it on an actual table, like a flat quarter inch plate table where we
had designed the rail, put it at ride height and start like hanging.
We might like just put a spindle out here and start establishing track with and things
like that and sort of build to it and it's slowly evolved over the years, but it's to
the point now that there's virtually nothing done by hand.
It's all on the mock-up side.
On the mock-up side.
Yeah, it used to be that I thought you needed to physically see the proportions of that
car that it couldn't be done without seeing the ride height in person.
But the way we digitally scan cars now and the perspectives we get in CAD, it's so much
better than doing it that way because we can play with tire offsets, every single tire
diameter and width known to man, make minor modifications to the body to know what happens
when wheels and tires start running through their suspension travel when things are turning
and it's evolved just immensely and not everybody's adopted that.
There's still plenty of guys doing it the exact same way I described that we did it
20 years ago.
Well, as a builder, as a custom car builder with a handful of guys, you could have a nice
business doing two or three cars a year, but as a chassis builder, that's not a real
business model.
You can't survive on three chassis a year, right?
Not necessarily, unless we're building them for Andy Leach because we've got some pretty
damn cool stuff we're doing for him.
But yeah, good point, by the way, Andy, great guy, sweet guy, and just some amazing, amazing
stuff that he's doing.
Absolutely.
I mean, not to go off on a tangent, but the cars are amazing.
But even just the displays he builds to present the cars at events like the Riddler or something
like that or Roadster Show or the display costs as much money as most people's new cars,
I imagine.
Yeah.
Andy's a crazy talented guy.
I guess to tie that back in is where you're going with it.
You can't necessarily treat it like a car building deal, but mixed in with the high volume of
chassis that we build and even the high volume of chassis we engineer.
We sprinkle in probably two or three really, really over the top custom chassis to do stuff
that's taken care of guys like Andy or the Ring Brothers or all these just high level
builders.
It's probably significantly more than that.
You're probably talking five to six a month.
Well, the one that's like what we're doing for Andy now is pretty.
Yeah.
That's pretty out there.
How many chassis do you guys, how many chassis are you guys making?
What are you doing like per month or so?
We're probably around the 1300 plus a year.
Where are they going to?
Are there that many builders out there or are chassis also going to, I don't know what
the exact term is.
We have these builders that are doing sort of an assembly line of things.
To some level, Jonathan Ward at Icon, cranking out Broncos and then a handful of projects.
Ravology is doing must things.
I don't know.
Broncos are happening three, four a month at some of these shops.
They're starting to become turnkey things.
I see why they're trying to keep costs down and work out the bugs to have a drivable car.
Right.
Do you supply to groups like that as well?
All of them.
I mean, from the low volume production guys that are pumping out four or five, from one
model to four or five, six models, but then the end customer that's going to be doing
the spec Camaro or spec Mustang install himself in his garage on the weekends, maybe with
his son.
And then now after we've done it, we're actually getting repeat customers from those guys.
Like they did.
There was a DIY build.
Yeah.
They had a lot of fun with it.
They put miles on it.
Now they're starting their second or third or fourth DIY build and then everything in
between.
You know, all of your traditional shops that have been around, there's new shops popping
up every single day.
Younger guys are coming with like all kinds of ideas and all kinds of skill.
And then shops that were, you talked about Ring Brothers, we talked about, you know, Bobby
Allaway, we talked about Rad Rides by Troy, we talked about all the shops that we looked
up to when we were getting into it that are also our customers now, you know, and those,
they're all customers.
They're all chassis customers.
They all got wildly different styles, different needs.
And I think going back to the custom thing I wanted to touch on that is because I do
think that's an important piece of what sets us apart from the standards because we continue
adding to our standard offerings and applications, you know, and the core group of offerings.
But at the same time, we're constantly adding.
Unfortunately for Phil, we don't say no a lot or ever in the chassis build side of
things.
But because you want a six wheel van.
Yep.
No problem.
We can do it.
Which is that one I didn't say yes to.
But it was a cool piece to build.
But I think that that is because we have continued to want to do that and work with
the builder and the end customer on that custom project, you know, where we will get the vehicle,
we'll do a full 3D scan, we'll start getting stuff modeled, the builder and the customer
will fly out, we'll walk through that process and you're looking through, you're designing
the suspension, but you're also kind of getting the bullet points of the build, like this
is your wheels and tires, this is your back spaces, your ride height, this is what you're
going to have to do on your end fabrication wise to fit this, you know, DCT transaxle
and a seat like a human has to be in there and start going through that hand on exhaust.
You're going to do that because we've done that.
It's allowed shops to have the comfortability or the level of the level of comfort when
they're talking to the customer when the customer starts talking about have done a few cars
with you.
Let's do something wild.
In the past, it's been like, all right, we can, but like, what, how much can we take
on?
Well, when it's like, all I can reach out to the roadster shop and whatever my craziest,
stupidest dreams, they're going to at least within reason, allow us to get the suspension
and the main structure of the vehicle figured out and the packaging of it.
I mean, the byproduct of knowing what you're going to do, packaging headers, exhaust, steering,
motor, blower through the hood, wheels, tires and some of that, even if we're not building
those items, we're building the chassis.
You get that punch list beforehand.
You can start working on those items or you're not having to figure out on the backside and
start mocking it up.
That's a cheat code for a lot of shops out there like, okay, what else can you do?
Can you go ahead and mount that engine?
Can you go ahead and run the exhaust?
Can you go ahead and do the floors?
Can you do the tunnels?
Yeah.
But it's an important part of what and we've because we've done so much of that, we've
actually kind of treated the business actually got a different line.
I mean, we've got like a skunk works and customs line that those guys build just those custom
chassis because the volume is there.
So it's not any one of those is hurting the other pieces of the business.
How much of your business do you think is the DIY customer?
How much is direct to consumer?
You're sending chassis to people's homes or whatever they've got.
What do you think that is?
I'd say it's probably 25%?
I was going to say, yeah, 30, but 25 to 30 is a big amount.
Like before, if you were sending a chassis to me, I would start thinking, this is going
to be so much work and I got to know how to weld and I got to cut floor pans out and
I got to, like there's so much I got to do to get, you know, to get my Fox body Mustang
to sit onto a chassis like all this cutting I got to do and like it's just out of scope
for me.
Is that still the case?
It's got to be easier now.
Like you must be making it easier for guys like me to put a chassis under a under a Mustang.
Yeah, I feel like we kind of went from late nineties, early 2000s, where there was a ton
of DIY guys built in traditional street rods at home, a little older generation.
They were a lot more hands on, I would say, then it kind of shifted into some of the muscle
cars and the late fifties, early sixties stuff that almost seemed a little bit too complicated.
And then it kind of shifted to a lot more shops doing builds as we've taken on more
technology.
We've been able to make our chassis's just so much more user friendly and we've been
focusing like our spec chassis line, almost everything is completely bolt on.
So instead of buying bolt on control arms and a bolt on rear four link and then weld
on subframe connectors and trying to piece all this stuff together, we're able to put
together a complete package that I wouldn't say like any home builder can do, but anybody
with a little bit of skill and a little bit of ambition can build a pretty awesome car.
And we've taken all the guesswork out where all the suspension geometry is figured out
and that set you're not cutting on your floor and welding in front cross members and hoping
you're getting that straight and hoping you're welding in your rear four bars straight into
the body.
You're getting all modern performance, modern suspension geometry, we were no longer limited
to bolt on control arms to the original subframe.
So we're able to make a significantly better end product that's significantly easier for
the end customer to start the build on.
Some of these, we joke about it, if you're getting the chassis delivered to your home
when you're going to do the build at home on a, you know, Spexy 10 or Camaro, the logistics
of receiving the chassis and the crate is generally the hardest part.
So those are big, right?
If you can handle the logistics and the planning of getting that, you know, some help, then
you can, you can figure that out.
If you can handle that part, you can build the car.
It's a good test to see how resourcefully you are to handle a 15 foot long thousand
pound crate and thought process beforehand or how well liked you are, how many friends
you got to help.
A few good neighbors and a couple of cases of beer and boom, that thing's in your garage.
These days, I feel like if you can get a Levrack delivered to your house and you can build
it on your own, you could probably manage getting a chassis because that Levrack's a
cool system.
But by the way, when you've got to take that damn thing apart to try to move it.
It comes as one unit, does it?
I lifted the whole thing up with a forklift and moved it from one warehouse to another.
Probably not the best solution, but eventually I had to move it out of a warehouse and it's
like, ah, I don't want to take this part apart, take this damn thing apart, but the other
thing about the chassis that you were talking about is, is doing enough of them and building
cars there and driving the cars there, getting it to work reliably.
It wasn't that long ago where, let's face it, a lot of really good builders were building
cars that were constantly back in the shop.
It's not running right, it overheats, you know, it looks great, it's a great art piece,
and maybe the customer would go, all I got to do is try to make it through the Hot Rod
Power Tour in one piece and that's good enough for me, but I don't think that's good enough
anymore.
I think people would want to drive these cars or at least have some expectation going, I
want to be able to drive this car.
We used to co-off at that, we used to just go, you know, I want this thing to have a
thousand horsepower and daily drive it, and everyone's like, you're not daily driving
it, you're not daily driving it, like get that out of your head, everyone's like 900
horsepower, it's going to overheat, you can't daily drive it, and I know customers were
asking for that 15 years ago, and everyone's rolling their eyes going, good luck buddy,
everybody says they want that, but you can't do it.
Now everybody still wants it and you have to do it.
Yeah, but you can do it now, and like, I think George Poteet said it best with those kind
of cars, what do you call them, expensive engine stands, that's what they were, and
you know, we're guilty of it.
Back in the early 2000s, I mean, we did, you had a hard enough time making a 500 horsepower
car, like not overheat and not have little quarks, but we had guys come through with
like a 32, three window coupe that the guy wanted, like a fuel injected supercharged
tall deck big block, things like 1200 horsepower and through a radiator about that one.
Yeah, it's just simply not going to work, but the whole, I'd love to take credit for
that right and say it's all the chassis, but the whole industry has sort of evolved in
making all the parts better, that you can absolutely, you could daily drive a 1500
horsepower car right now, and we've got some that you can, like I just, we finished up
a 68 C10 with a 1000 horsepower Whipplecharged Wagner motor in it, and trucks got like 2000
miles on it now.
The customer flew in from California and I drove an hour and a half to the airport
in it to pick them up and an hour and a half back and bumper to bumper traffic, but the
windows up in the air conditioning on and didn't even think twice about it because it's just
got all the right parts to work, like, I mean, from the gauges to the transmission to the
fuel systems, but the chassis is what makes it enjoyable, but the industry has stepped
down. Yeah, the industry stepped up. We laugh all the time.
You've got to get the engine tuned and now these days, there's so many high power crate
engines with with sort of OE computers, every Coyote engine, LS engine, not to mention engine
builders have stepped up and going, Hey, to be an engine builder, I don't need to do a custom
thing every time. I can do what you guys are doing on the chassis side of going, we have a line
of 1000 horsepower engines, right? We do 800 horsepower supercharged crate engines, Coyote
crate engines, or we're doing twin turbo packages or, you know, and what I imagine what can be done
on the tuning side and and EFI like, you know, back then, you try to tune a factory computer
or you salvage something from from a junkyard, but now, you know, Ford and GM and so many
companies are offering these power packs and ECUs and stuff, not to mention taking
the EFI systems from the racing world and making them more mainstream and and the,
you know, the streetcar world, if you will, you know, you wouldn't, you wouldn't think
Motec was a thing like there's a lot of, I'm sure there was a lot of hot rod builders, engine
builders 15 years ago going, I don't even know what Motec is because I don't build racecar engines,
you know, and now you can, right? That has to be a big part of the equation as well as making
something. I definitely think it's multifaceted. I mean, it's not just the fact that, yes, the
industry and manufacturers as a whole have had to adapt. The customer's expectations have adapted,
technology and coming down from the OEs have has changed things. So it's all kind of,
it works together. We've talked, we've laughed all the time. We compare, you know, car shows and
building cars, you know, do a beauty contest stuff, you know, so it's the beauty contest was the
beauty contest and you'd, you know, you'd tape your boobs up and you'd do your, you know, all your
stuff. I wasn't doing that back then. I just know a little bit about the, you know, the beauty contest.
But when they start implementing different facets of that beauty contest, you know, you could, okay,
now you got a talent thing. When they started making it, they started making it like a triathlon
where you actually had to like go out there and run and perform and do these different events.
And then it just kind of changes what you're going to build for said beauty contest.
Did women evolve with that? You think like as a species?
Well, this, it's an analogy, right? So I don't, I don't think they ever got the, they were talking
about the automotive industry. So when you start having more road tours and you start having,
you know, autocross, you have to make the thing perform and the, you know, the laugh all the
time, chrome breaks, you know, and the big blower and the stuff that you do for beauty.
They, they have, they have start performing, right? Yeah. And the customer's attitudes changed.
The biggest change for us was like early 2000s, you were scared to death that your car wasn't
going to make it idling through the award ceremony line. Yeah. And now we'll finish a car with 25
miles and we'll go on a cross country road tour with it and bring minimal tools or anything to
work on it. Just building so much from having such good products, knowing what works, knowing what
doesn't. You got the confidence to get in and drive it halfway across the country, use it.
The secret though is the more tools you bring the less you're going to need. Yes.
If you just pack it all, you're going to need none of it. Yeah. I think all those parts though,
you know, I don't want to discredit the chassis, leave the chassis out of it because
you don't, you don't want to use a car every day if it doesn't ride good and perform well and handle
good. Like a car just tires you out and that was sort of our like relentless quest for perfection
is you're driving these cars and now people are starting to want to use them more. And if you're
in the car and it sort of is like exhausting that the ride quality is not great or like maybe it's
even the seating position, it totally spoils the whole car. So we pushed like hell on everything
from like anything NVH related, all the bushings in the chassis, the durability stuff. I mean,
that was early on just beefing everything so that you can go bombing down I-65 here in
Indiana, which is like running the Baja 1000 just blasting speed bumps and holes in the road.
And you can be confident you might bend a wheel, but you're not going to break a chassis.
And that's just done. I mean, unbelievable things, I think for these cars is knowing that you can
put something under the car that's going to be legitimately enjoyable, that you could put your
wife in, put your kids in it, go on a cross-country road trip and just know that the thing's going
to ride really, really well and be enjoyable to drive. It is a big component. I'm fortunate enough
to get to drive a bunch of new cars as well. And I'll tell you, there's some amazing, amazing
new cars that have so much sort of racing DNA put into it, but you spend a day in it and you're
just like, oh, God, my back. And it's just like the seat's terrible and the ride's terrible,
like amazing on a racetrack, like the McLaren Senna. The McLaren 720S is one of the most amazing
cars to drive. You can drive that thing all the time. It's great. I got in the Senna and it was
about 9 a.m. and by around noon, I'm like, I'm going to stop for lunch. I got to stretch. This
thing is killing me. It's killing me. But yeah, even then, it's as the OEs are trying to get to a
certain performance benchmark and it's tough to do. I think one car that you guys will actually
really like if you haven't driven it yet is the Mustang GTD, the Mustang GTD.
It's like I spent a day in it. I was tearing up in the mountains and you put it in sport mode
and it gets loud and the wing starts moving and it's incredible and handles amazing.
And then you hit some traffic, you put it in regular street mode, you turn the radio on,
you got the air on and you're like, oh, I can hit the cruise control and just
hit the, like it's, it's pretty, it's pretty cool. Yeah, I'd love to get the opportunity.
I'm glad to hear that review on the Senna because I was saying about picking one up for a daily
driver. A little concerned about the winters in Chicago, but if the seat's not comfortable, I'm
cool. Oh, what kind of dog? What is it called? The doggies get a doodle, a gold doodle. Yeah,
pretty bad. You can get a gold doodle in one of those driving glasses on.
My dogs go in every car that I got. They've been in all the cars. I have to clean them all
and give them back, but they all go back. Have you guys had an opportunity where you worked on
something not really knowing what it's going to be or what it's going to be worth? Like did somebody
go, hey, I'm working on an old Ferrari. This is the chassis. Can you make a new one? And then it
turns out to be at Pebble Beach and it's worth $100 million. Now, people usually like really
communicate. We're pretty damn involved in the project. So when somebody brings something in,
there's usually a lot of communication on what the vision is, what it's going to be.
And the stuff that we're doing, it's certainly not like Pebble Beach-ish. They're usually more
modified. Yes, restoration stuff. So no, I mean, we've done some really neat stuff,
but the rings are probably the best example of what a really high-end vehicle
that's sort of landing in maybe like a concourse level. Yeah, a little different
style of individual that I think has gotten to experience that. Right. A little fancier, but
yeah, like the rings, the Aston Martin, that's on a Roadster shop chassis. Yeah,
amazing car. We saw it up at Monterey car week. We were at the quail and saw them at their display
there. And I think they had a great time. I think initially they felt like a fish out of water,
but I think they ended up having a good time and doing well there.
Yeah, it's cool to see some stuff like that sort of leading over into that world because that's...
I mean, they've been practicing with the shirts for the last 15 years, so they had that down.
Yeah, that's a good call.
For sure. All right, I want to talk about some of the cars, but let's take a quick break and we'll
be right back. Hey guys, it's Matt again. I just wanted to give a big shout out to everyone who's
been coming out to our Bravago Hard Seltzer tasting events and ordering online. If you haven't
tried it yet, here's what you're missing. Bravago is lightly carbonated, stevia-free,
and bursting with flavor. And guess what? It's not just great on its own. It's a perfect
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Find it online at drinkbravago.com or at our next event. That's drinkbravago.com.
Okay, we're back. All right, so getting into the... We got into the chassis business. I felt
just to put a cherry on top of that. Go to the Roadster Shop website. You can see the
different versions of the chassis that you guys do. Off-road chassis, streetcar chassis,
custom chassis, the different versions of it, the options. There are some really cool features on
the website as well where you can build out and see, price it out, what it's going to cost,
what the options are, some really cool stuff there. And last year, so I want to talk a little
bit about SEMA as well, going into SEMA. I think it was last year you guys debuted the Fox body
Mustang chassis. Was that two years ago? Was it last year? Last year. Last year. I can't sometimes...
Yeah, they all kind of blend together. I've got to think for a second too.
I love that you guys are doing that. I've been yelling about Fox body Mustang for years and
years. We had a couple. That red one behind me there was at SEMA, probably 2017 or so,
2016 or 2017, displayed with Magnaflow. And I brought another one. It was just like a unibody
with some suspension and stuff on it in the Tokiko shocks booth. It was like a shell with a...
It had a Coyote crate engine with ITBs and a six-speed and an IRS and no bodywork or interior
or anything. It was a shell with that to show the suspension pieces. But
I love what you guys are doing with that car.
I think what's next is a late model Camaro. That's the 90s era car.
We're following that up with the third gen Camaro. That's going to debut this year
in the Roadster Shop booth at SEMA. That's a pretty unique piece. We're pretty proud of that one.
A ton of engineering went into that and kind of following off the success with the Fox body.
It was a natural fit to tackle that next. It's just a more challenging car.
You weren't really thinking about that when you're like, well, I mean, absolutely. If we did
the Fox body, third gen Camaro is next without really any detailed thought process on what the
packaging would be. I've always been nervous about that one because we did some... We were
talking earlier about these one-off custom chassis. We've done some stuff for a handful of guys that
have done perimeter weld-in chassis for the third gen. We've scanned a car. We've designed
around it. We've got something that's pretty cool, but it disregards everything out of your way
and weld the body to the chassis. Knowing those cars from the scan and looking around them,
that's a very, very difficult car to try to package something within the unibody that's on it.
I think these things, they sort of come in time. You tackle them as we progress as our
engineering resources get better and as we just get better as a team, you revisit them and then
you take it on. I think we tackled it at the right time because what we were able to produce with
it I think is, in my opinion, pretty spectacular. It's a very easy install that it's a little bit
trimming on some of the little tails of the front unibody rails. Drill a few spot welds,
cut a small section off. You clip a little section of the rear subframe, just small little notch.
Honestly, I would say in about four hours of prep work, you have that car ready to go onto this
chassis and there's nothing that impedes into the actual floor of the car. Nothing comes into
the interior of the car, just minor trimming underneath. It's essentially like a complete
bolt-on piece that it's pretty damn cool. It's made me a believer out of them. Anytime we build
something, then I want one. I know it's going to be a good product and I want one. Was this the
toughest one to make as a turnkey chassis? Thinking of first gen Camaro's Mustangs, Foxbody Mustangs,
the truck stuff that you guys are developing that you already have out. Was the third gen
Camaro the most complex to make it easy to install? That's the thing is you're
making a chassis that can bolt in and still perform and fit right and sit right and have the
stance. I'd say hands down because you look at the Foxbody and it's got a lot of good things going
for it to begin. It's already has a steering rack in it and people have copied the suspension and
street rods. It became the industry standard for like 30 years and they're popular in the
aftermarket. So guys have put big power to them. There's exhaust kits and things like that.
There's so many other issues in the third gen platform like you can't fit headers in them. You
can't fit dual exhaust in them. You can't fit a proper muffler in them. You can't really sit them
low. So trying to solve all those issues along with packaging a frame inside the existing
unibody just sort of added to the complexity of doing it all and then like pushing yourself to
it's always easy to sort of like just submit and say okay we'll cut it like okay we'll just
cut the front sub rails out of the car because it's easier but to kind of force yourself to think
about it in a different frame of mind and push yourself to retain it work around it and get
creative. It made that one really really challenging but everything we did ended up
I don't know like improving the product. So the sheer fact that we didn't want to
harm the front sub rails ultimately the byproduct of that was a really cool front suspension
that actually has a ton of performance built into it that maybe would have been some compromises if
we'd have just hacked it out of there and sort of just put like a standard spec front end or
something. So this thing sort of just evolved into a more high performance piece and it's
it's a hell of a cool product. We were able to focus on the focus on the bolt-in install side
makes it accessible to such a wider audience. You know coming from our skill set and talking
about a lot of the other guys that we mentioned earlier with the rings and Andy Leitch like
they can build anything from scratch right if you cut your inner fenders out cut your front
sub rails off they'll fab all that stuff machine it make one off but the average guy at home or
you know the average body shop they have no idea how to do that. So building the chassis that bolts
on saves them so much work and gets them a product they can get across the finish line quicker and
get out and start enjoying it. Yeah you know and you brought up an interesting point yeah there's
there's a handful of builders that are just amazing talents and have the vision and have
built a business to get the right clients but if you're sending you know hundreds of chassis's
out to DIY guys people's homes smaller shops body shops we've had several discussions on this podcast
about training about talent pool about people being hired about I mean even now
you know AI is is is blowing up but you know guys like Jim Farley from Ford are going but we need
more welders we need more fabricators that we even need plumbers and electricians like we need
all of them we need these guys what is it like for you guys are you at your shop and all the shops
that you're talking to is everyone still struggling to hire people or are we getting a little better
with that. We fired everybody and we just do it all through AI now. You guys are in a sales force
right the horse is lying we have 9,000 customer service people we just fired 5,000 of them
because we're getting heads. We rely very heavily on skilled talented individuals that's how we've
gotten to where we're at like our chassis builders our parts fabricators our frame rail builders
some of the best of the best and it is just old-fashioned skills right you got to be able
to weld you got to be able to fabricate and lay it down sure there's opportunities to use
robotic stuff that you could do some things but it's just not the way we operate and I don't think
that it's there's areas you can implement it but it's not the way that the industry is going to go
as a whole so we rely heavily on talent it's very very difficult to add to that sort of core team
because it's noticeable out there more so on the hot rod shop side like trying to find guys that are
sort of free thinking fabricators that can just sort of make something from nothing
it almost doesn't exist anymore I think that the pool the pool is probably the talent pool
in a better shape now than it was probably pre-pandemic but pre-pandemic I would say so now
the but a lot of that it comes to do with excitement level of wanting to get into it
not so much the actual talent in it so there's a lot more okay yeah you know what I'm saying yeah
so there's yeah awareness is there and enthusiasm is there and trying way more enthusiasm way more
people applying and wanting to do these trades than there was pre-pandemic it's just the problem
is the skill set hasn't gotten to the point that a lot of people need them to be well how much of
skill set how much are you looking to hire knowledgeable people versus what can you cultivate
like do you do training in house you bring on you know of eager enthusiastic people and say I can
help you you're going to start apprenticing or whatever you're going to start learning some of
here do you have to teach it well at in-house you know certain things will teach and to be
honest with you I'd love to say that we'll bring out a bunch of enthusiasts enthusiastic young
individuals and teach them and bring them up but the reality is is that that sort of sort of
doesn't work you know we've tried it a bunch okay and it's very difficult to find somebody that
truly has the work ethic and the enthusiasm that match I think that you know from a the outside
looking in maybe this looks like something that's really exciting and just it's cool it's it's cooler
than a lot of other professions but I don't know that a lot of guys have the work ethic
to to put it I mean we've we've gone down that road we've had some success with it here and there
but it's largely been unsuccessful I would say because guys just don't want to put the work
in to learn it or the extra effort that it takes to just sort of get past the apprentice stage
and really learn the skill and become an actual fabricator now on the chassis shop side we've
had some some great guys that we've brought in at fairly entry-level positions that have grown
with the company and it's the right fit it was the right level of enthusiasm and the right work
ethic and then it it does fit but kind of difficult to find I'd say yeah it's just it's not we're not
exactly set up to be able to invest it's on our business model we're not we can't set up to invest
in the future and teach them everything that they need to know then with coupled with the lack of
work ethic that it probably would take for them to learn you're not gonna allow you're not gonna
put that on the customer to say it's not their responsibility to pay more to pay more labor
rate or hours on to for some guy to learn right it's just not that's just not our business right
it's unfortunate because we want more guys but we're not at school and you know but you were
you were kind of touching on it earlier you have to create enthusiasm for it and awareness for it
I mean you think about you know in the 80s we all watched Top Gun and Top Gun had more you know
and all of a sudden the military had more people applying to get to the military than anything
because of a of a huge movie and even recently with some pretty good racing films from Rush to
F1 and and you know there's a couple you know Ford v Ferrari there's a couple good films there you
go I I didn't know that about this industry I didn't know that about the history or how things
were made and there's something kind of cool there I mean I'm not talking fast and furious
movies I mean the first one I mean we all watched them because they're you know big summer blockbuster
popcorn films and they're ridiculous but I don't know the last time you guys had a submarine in
Alaska but I that never happened to me so 2019 2019 we haven't made any cars
what chassis was it on you know like we made the chassis for the submarine yeah we're waiting to
do a collab with Elon you know and get something like that going and we'll see yeah yeah it's gonna
use you guys for the next uh framework for his rocket going into space probably that's a it's a
good point because everybody that we talked to that's kind of about our age came from our era
it was all Jesse James and West Coast choppers watching that watching OCC watching American hot rod
like that created the excitement in those reality shows yeah you know I mean when when I was growing
up you know we all looked at Boyd Coddington you know we looked at Boyd's garage you know
guys that like Brad Fanshawe who I do the podcast with who was president of that company for a long
time and in the cars that he's built over the years and you know by the way Boyd Boyd's company
also one of the probably the only or the first hot rod company to spin off and be publicly traded
like to try to create some attention in that space before any of the aftermarket companies were doing
that I think Edelbrock went public and then they went private again and now rolled up into another
conglomerate but uh it just wasn't really it wasn't there there wasn't enough happening
you know what did we have American graffiti before that you know you know uh you know that
films like that but more awareness and some interesting films and the the press that is
being created and YouTube now and how many YouTubes are or YouTubers are building which is
interesting because the recent uh statistic came out about the young generation they're asking them
what they want to be when they grow up and by like an incredibly wide margin like more than 50
percent was like I want to be a YouTuber or a tiktoker and then down the line still was
someone like wanted to be like a doctor or a teacher you know but it was just like this
scaled wildly off because I think if a few years ago if any kid went to their parents and said
I'm going to be a YouTuber professionally they're like that's not a professional I don't know what
that is but now it is for sure yeah yeah I mean maybe that's not a great thing I think it gives
kids sort of a false idea of what's possible like his look at some of those YouTube guys like
Whistlin Diesel I mean excuse me he's got a crazy following and he does some wild stuff but
what's the feasibility of like going and buying a brand new Ferrari and doing YouTube videos like
destroying it for most people like for guys it's so out it's so out of reach to get to that
these guys level you know a friend of mine Freddie Hernandez is Tavaresh you know he's
he tries to you know turn wrenches man and build cars and and he's done some crazy over the top
stuff with modern supercars but but him and he's got a handful of people that are helping him out
they're figuring out they're figuring out how to you know wire these things up and get them to run
and and do carbon fiber work and start welding and and and you know stitching interiors like
you're right like maybe this wasn't there before it was just sort of a finite profession you'd go
to a specialty school for but now some of these guys if they want to make money on YouTube they
got to learn how to do some of that stuff I'm talking YouTubers in the car space you know
obviously if you're you know if you're mr beast or something like I don't I don't
he's not turning any wrenches right he's selling chocolate bars so you guys work with here there's
a this is going to be uh I don't know maybe this is a tough question but as we head into SEMA of
course we'll see the best of the best out there cars being debuted you mentioned so many great
builders from Andy Leach and Troy Trapani and Ring Brothers and and Bobby Allaway and and and so
many others I was going to ask you guys when I was getting ready for the show I was going to say
who's who's who right now who's the best who's the best builder but I think maybe that's a little
unfair so I'll say top three who are the best three builders out there right now
I guess we're going to find out here you know at SEMA yeah we do the best top five and best on
the rs yeah yeah it's a good question right I guess I should just go to the event and find out who's
going to go there you go that'll be number one in the whole wide world uh what you guys have seen
in the last decade I mean I mean for me I think unanimously I'm sure these guys will probably
say the same thing but I think as a whole we all look to Troy you know from Rad Rides by
Troy as being just sort of he sort of lives in his own world he's so above everybody from a
detailed standpoint that even like there's some guys doing some really cool stuff but
I just don't see anybody on that level of fit finish ingenuity I mean he's got his own style
which maybe is not everybody's cup of tea certainly more vintage inspired really beautiful hot rods
but that for me that's the number one it's the closest uh that I've ever seen over a
specific to perfection yeah um when you're just talking about the the the craft and the skill
yep of what you're building there's there is uh
yeah there's no other answer I don't think yeah he's a shoe in number one and there's probably
25 shops that could be two or three yeah yeah for I mean I one and two like for me I think is easy
I mean I I truly believe what the ring brothers have done and where they're at today like the last
few creations that they've built that slides in no disrespect but you know end in the number two
slot in my opinion just because it sort of speaks to me some of the their style is just
they they push it they push the boundaries it's so unique and it like the Aston just has a
absolute beautiful look to it so when you put that side by side with Troy I guess that's kind of a
toss up because maybe it's not as highly detailed as a rad rides car but visually aesthetically
it's fucking beautiful man like really cool and what else has been done to that level
right I don't know and you're right and um Andy Leach does some incredible stuff Hollywood hot rods
Bobby Allaway there's there's a lot out there but I I think I think what the ring brothers did with
the Aston Martin is more significant than what than we realize maybe not you guys being in the space
but to the outside world just car enthusiasts first of all doing a car like that that hasn't
really been done is significant but also like having a customer come in and getting on board
with it or even pitching it I don't even know how I came in I mean I it's we look at so many of the
good builds that have happened over the years and of course those builds are also meant to influence
creative ideas you do a Fox body Mustang and go well I did this as custom this is custom you may
not like it but I'm getting you I'm trying to get you interested in in doing something like this
like do you have a Mustang or do you have a Camaro or do you have you know an old Ford or you have a
truck and you want to do some cool stuff with it so what happens is is when you go down that route
is a bunch of shops build a really nice 69 Camaro and then every customer is like dude I want a 69
Camaro right yeah and and okay I get it it makes sense it may seem like uh you know we're road to
shop we've done a hundred thousand of those want to pick something else but that customer is going
but I've never had a 69 Camaro so it is still special to me so I'd still like a 69 Camaro
and I get it but as a builder you want a customer to come in and go listen let's do something
different let's get creative let's get out of the box or have them go I grew up with you know an
Aston Martin you know the the podcast here that I normally do with with Goldberg as well Goldberg
is a big muscle car guy he's a Dodge guy but growing up his favorite car was a Jag XK
then he grew up and realized that he can't fit in one and he couldn't fit in it that's right
that's like he had the Jag the XKE I think he had the Jag and then yeah and then he became like
you know 13 years old he couldn't fit in XK he's a beautiful car I mean that's been
XK he's been at the top of my list for cars I want to build for a long time yeah what what you
just said about how important it is that what the Ring Brothers built I think is you're 100% right
a little inside baseball and you mentioned you know having that right customer that comes in
and how do you pitch a build like that stepping a little more in detail about how special it is
at the ring but what they pulled off those conversations happen way more than you think
all over the of country in the world with shops and a customer that wants to do something wild
that comes in as I want to do this this and this and let's do this those conversations
happen all the time the problem is the the level of honesty not being doing it in a bad way of
what that's actually going to look like from a financial lift yeah from the shop being honest
and the customer being honest with themselves what they're able to handle right that's generally a
breaker the other problem is they did that car in 18 months right so having the conversation and then
the customer being like well they need to stop doing shit like that hey we brought three cars
we're never doing that yeah I heard they used AI for most of it yeah I heard it's all robots over
there they made a time machine it actually took like 10 years but the honest conversations that
they came at the same age though that they had with that customer and his honesty of like yep
let's do it I'm all in and then them making the progress and bringing it to the finish line
I mean that is that is something special I think the important thing with doing cars like that it's
people need there needs to be some people out on the dance floor for everybody to get out there
you know so once you start having some things like that not everybody's a risk taker and it's
easier for people to just fall in line that they want a custom car well I mean there's a lot of
69 Camaros are cool we'll do one of those it seems safe but I think we could do something really
wild with it a lot of people need to see some of these types of cars being built at high levels
before they're comfortable getting out on the dance floor and doing it you know
but you know in my opinion issue so we had this discussion with the rings years ago they came over
Adam Corolla was a big Lamborghini collector and we've had several um in various stages
some done some projects you know we looked at like the 400 GT that we had there that was a shell
at the time and we're like would you guys be interested in doing this car and of course they're
yes it's a you know it's a 67 Lamborghini 400 like I don't even know what I would do with it like
let's just let's just start thinking about it um and then you know for various reasons we we didn't
we didn't end up doing it but you know back then the car is $80,000 now the cars are $400,000
that they're being restored and they're being traded at Gooding and and RM Sotheby's and and
that's that's part of the issue as well it's like
people can be definitely hesitant on going hey let's take a two million dollar Lamborghini
Mura and let's let's there's gotta be that because gotta be somebody someday please I mean
you link our phone number there just man look I mean maybe the way you know everything sort of
aligns on a project like that is is you know a mirror somebody finds a mirror that's been burnt
to the ground or it's been salvaged and the clamshell is gone or something and that it's not
numbers matching now you're really digging into the value of that car but you have the bones of
this car here you have something there to to to do it with um then then it maybe makes sense
look Bruce Kenapa on the different side of the custom car building world right Kenapa is taking
million dollar plus Porsche 959s and doing Kenapa 959s and selling for two point something
million dollars and honestly I don't know how many he can do a year maybe two or something
or whatever and he's backlogged because people aren't going oh that is interesting what you're
doing you're you're taking a 959 and you're making it what you guys have been doing making it
drivable making it not overheat making it comfortable to drive and and that's what's
sort of blown up in the high end car world with companies like Singer and so many others maybe
you're not familiar with Superleggera is doing 550 Ferraris you know and they're
they're taking a 550 and going we're redoing everything on it mechanically so it's reliable
you don't have to take the engine out every 3 000 miles and then we're doing a carbon fiber body
that looks like a 550 but it's got all the subtle touches to make it you know slightly nipped and
tucked here and it's a little wide body and the scoop's a little different and now you've got one
that you can drive you know but those companies you go to them with a donor car right there's
Lancia there's Porsches there's 928 there's 911 there's you know we saw Alfa Romeo's companies
doing that now Volvos the company Kyan's Sian is doing Volvos right so yes having
the custom car building world on your side of the fence you guys rings Allaway Troy like
having customers potentially go in there now and honestly this is why I'm saying why the
Ring Brothers Aston Martin is important taking the car you wouldn't normally think about cutting
up and bringing it to a group like you guys and going you know I'm okay with this let's do this
and if we create enough story behind it and present it well it can create value in its own
if somebody just does a really really nice Aston Martin that's cool but if you do a really nice
Aston Martin and you debut it at Pebble Beach and then you bring it to the SEMA show and you make
it the most famous custom built Aston Martin in the world now you've got something that is valuable
and you can enjoy so I think yeah yeah it is cool and there's obviously you're not going to find a
lot of these things on Facebook marketplace there's there's no like 60s Lamborghinis or Aston's
like floating around out there but there is a lot of cool unique sort of weird stuff that's obtainable
that maybe people will become more interested in you know like I mean I think this is Phil's
going to cringe but like you could do something cool with like a 90s SL 600 Mercedes that was a
cool ass looking car yeah you can modernize that you can do some really neat resto mod there's a
bunch of Mercedes BMW stuff I mean there's some neat cars out there that are still like we did a
chassis for a Fasel Vega was it like a 56 or something and that's going to be Miranda
built's doing that it'd be a resto mod with a modern gen 3 hemi in it and that's just fun it's
different and there's plenty there's cool vans and me and Phil look at stuff all the time on
bring a trailer and you're always like oh that would be kind of cool to tweak I just wish people
would step up and just and do it but the problem is most people are building something for a reason
it's a car that they've got some nostalgia with something they grew up with there's something
that was yeah not a lot of people aspired to have a Fasel Vega when they were in high school
you know right there's a story behind a lot of guys a lot of guys aspire to have a fox body
Mustang or a 69 Camaro or a 1970 Chevelle or saw it in a movie like you know for a lot of us I mean
we saw the cars on the wall right here the black and white 70 Chevelle from dazed and confused
we all grew up with it we thought it was bad ass and everybody our age would love to have one
yeah there wasn't a lot of cool sl 600s in movies I guess seeing Scotty Peppin yeah right
I I agree I agree with that and I I again I think the more that we that you guys do and the more
to get it out there put it on YouTube do the press releases just like as much media as possible
but you don't really think about in the hot rod world custom car world is like how much media
you got to do honestly you do because that's what keeps this alive we need to be excited about it
like we need to go see Top Gun Maverick and want to fly planes right we want to we want to see the
next you know a great car movie and want to build cars or go car racing or or you know restore
things and and that's what I you know what we kind of take away from right I think we need not just
movies now we have social media we have so much other so many other resources to make that happen
the move I mean it's more cool as car movies that go a long way I'd be curious to see what
like superformance GT40 sales were after Ford vs Ferrari if they had like I can tell you they were
very significant really and they they they ended up doing another line of cars it's called the movie
edition cars and they were basically like the replicas they weren't modified in in anyway so
yeah they they did they did very well superformance landstander they continue to do they continue to
do very well listen I I ask those guys all the time I'm like they go to Barrichax and Scott
sell to bring out sell out a bunch of cars and I always last Lance I go this is not inexpensive
for you to bring this rig all these cars all this display and he's like yeah but we'll sell
all of them usually you know we'll sell a handful of cars before we leave he's like
some of them don't even come home with us we just like here you go like yeah like
they'll bring turnkey packages because they don't want to bring those things home
again like the Levrack guys they show up at Barrichax and like buy the full bottle we don't
want to bring it home I'm fan to those guys which is why I bring them up but all right so before we
wrap up here what's going on in the shop the chassis building side you told us about
what's going on in the car building side because that seems to be super active
yeah the car building side's active we got some neat stuff going we're actually wrapping up
quite a few cars right at the moment so we've got sort of like back to back to back to back
survivor cars that are going to be rolling out so we'll be doing some more like driving videos
and getting some press you know some some media stuff up on that stuff but yeah nothing wild
some Chevelle's tri-fives kind of a cool was it a 50 Merc or 49 Merc oh there's 49 Merc that's a
cool survivor that's got a procharged LS3 that's kind of dialed up to look like a Makola super
charged Y block Ford okay but some of the higher end stuff we've got a 53 F100 that it's sort of
like a scratch built truck that we've been working on for several years for a good customer and that
one it's approaching being moved to the body shop so you know we'd probably be looking at a 2026 debut
on it some cool Fox bodies coming out and probably I mean one of the more interesting cars which
is right in line with what we were just talking about is a 71 Pantera yeah that you've done a
couple Panteras now we've done a lot of Pantera chassis but we've never actually built the car
so this is a it's a vehicle I've wanted to build as long as I can remember and we found a customer
that sort of aligned with our vision and it's going to be v12 powered with a DCT Transaxle
sort of modern supercar wrapped in like vintage sort of Trans Am styling and should be a hell of a
cool piece so we're excited about that one and a lot of cool mid-year Corvettes coming out the
pipeline and yeah we're I mean on the gas for sure just a question to get them all out there
yeah you know I was going to ask what was on your wish list of chassis to build or cars to build
but you guys got so much cool stuff going on in the shop I'm not even sure how much you had
time to think about something like that yeah like I told you the XKE that's been the XKE
and the Pantera have been two vehicles I've always wanted to build yeah so if anybody's
listening that wants to pony up for a badass XKE build you know reach out by all means I was um
you know we've had these conversations about the Lamborghinis because Adam had so many
and looking at Lamborghinis a Lamborghini that I think that can be given the right treatment
the custom treatment without spending $400,000 a million dollars it has a modern-day supercar
look it just wasn't a very successful car it's called a Lamborghini Yalpa yeah I know you're
familiar with it anybody that watched Rocky was it four oh yeah one of one of Stallone's many
badass vehicles that he owned great great car choice um I I just think it's a cool looking
modern-day-ish yeah 90s-ish 80s 90s kind of supercar that never really
you know maybe just didn't work well enough but I think it needs a I think it needs kind of a
treatment I think it can be done yeah I'm with you I've stared at that car before and they've
they pop up on bring a trailer every once in a while and there's a white one with white wheels
and it's man it's pretty because it's still sort of in that price range where you can do it now
it's not gonna it's not gonna sit there because what we always say here is the big brother brings
up the little brother right the the Colwing SL brings up the you know the the the 280 right and
it's like so because Lamborghinis are picking up again and mirrors are $2 million and 400
GTs and 350s are 400,000 plus now like if you guys get an opportunity scoop up a Yalpa even
if you have to put it away for a while and yeah but if you get one for under 100 grand 80 grand
something like that probably even high mileage thrashed ones for for even less than that
get it put it aside and then you know what sometime down the road maybe you guys decide to
build it or maybe just want to fix it up and sell it and you know W on it because you'll
you know of course you guys have the resources to be able to do the car work that's not like
terribly complex car like the Kuntas I mean those were v8 cars right yeah they were they were
carbureted I would imagine me they're 80s you know they might have had some kind of fuel injection
on it but again it's just it's not the same as it was back in the day you could rebuild that engine
with a modern day fuel injection and some good tuning and probably get it to work right yeah
the Kuntas engine I think Tom Nelson Nelson racing engines did a twin turbo Diablo engine on it
and to get that thing to work was he's like all the electronics need to go in the trash you need
to start from scratch and just do it with yep with the systems that he knows the fuel systems he
knows and then it's just a push rod engine at that point it's just an internal combustion engine
for him to go through and go I'm gonna make pistons I'm gonna make rods I'm gonna make everything
to the standard that he's making things so like can it end up being more reliable than than yeah
now I don't know how far he went into like does the Diablo engine have hot spots or heating issues
or poor cooling issues like provided those things are weren't really an issue then you could
theoretically build a modern version of of that engine that works yep I mean he's got one I don't
know if it's in a car running I think it sure looks cool I've seen it it's it looks cool right yeah
all right guys I appreciate the I appreciate the time I'm looking forward to our pleasure man with
you guys at the SEMA show as well and I know it's always tough leading up to the show to
break out of an hour hour and a half of time and sit around and and and do a podcast I'm happy to
do it man it's fun uh guys of course uh check out roadstershop.com and I'm sure there's gonna be
plenty of things coming out on on their social media coming out of the SEMA show so give them all
a follow and thanks for listening and until next time keep the air in the spare and the bag in the
wheel let's be honest the idea of buying a car is exciting but actually doing it not so much
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About this episode
A deep dive into the world of custom chassis building with the Roadster Shop, this episode features engaging discussions about their innovative approaches to chassis design and the evolution of car building techniques. The hosts share anecdotes about notable builders like the Ring Brothers and their experiences at events like SEMA. The conversation also touches on the challenges of hiring skilled labor in the automotive industry, the importance of customer relationships, and the impact of modern technology on chassis manufacturing. Listeners will gain insights into the craftsmanship and passion that drive the custom car scene.
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