Driven Radio Show #318: David Neyens of Motorcopia

Welcome to Driven Radio Show, your home for car talk covering the latest news to the greatest

views on the biggest names in performance, sports, and just plain cool driving machines.

Let's rev up the conversation.

Time for Driven Radio Show.

Hey, all you gear heads and car fiends, welcome to Driven Radio Show, your weekly

automotive happy hour.

I am Brett Hatfield here with my co-host and engineer extraordinaire, Mr. Mark Groves.

That's me.

Nice to show up in both the computer's work today.

That was weird.

I didn't know what to do and I was even running kind of late, so I'm like, ah, Christ.

And I, you know, I can drive it down here and you've already got everything hot and

running.

I was sitting upstairs on an exercise bike.

I've actually been riding my exercise bike.

I only have to take 19 pills before I do it, give my knees to shut up.

But I was driving my exercise bike, I'm thinking, wow, my laptop didn't work

last week and the phone wasn't real great neither, so maybe I ought to go downstairs

and see if I can get everything to talk to each other.

Maybe I ought to.

And you did, look at you.

Well, and I came down here and I installed security update patches and restarted computers

and did all kinds of stuff.

And like I told you a second ago, I turned on Spotify and I was just kind of in a

froggy mood this afternoon.

So I turned on Tramp's Disco Inferno and let it rip.

And I came back and it's playing R&B torch songs when I came back downstairs.

I'm like, oh, yeah, you know, it was always the DJ thing three fast and the slow.

Yeah.

Well, it played three slow and no disco when I came back by God.

Babies were made.

You went car showing this past weekend.

I finally was able to take Sibyl to an actual real honest to God car show.

Sibyl looked good.

You know what?

Yeah, she she takes a pretty picture.

Now I did.

I took some up close pictures and put that on the Facebook listing that I have because,

you know, there's two doors on the passenger side have a slightly different hue than the

rest of it.

Well, if you catch it at right three quarter, you'll never see it.

Yeah.

You know, the pictures turned out pretty darn nice.

And it was a great show here in Kansas City and just a lot of really cool people

to talk to.

Down in Westboro.

Yeah.

And I noticed in the pictures you took after I talked to you Saturday, I meant to come

down there in the Stingray and then I got sidetracked and you said there was only one

other Corvette.

Only one other Corvette.

It was a more modern one.

Yeah.

And I wanted to make him hate life, but I didn't manage to get down there.

I did look at your pictures.

Yeah.

And I got to a certain white 58 Cadillac El Dorado and I looked at that and I

saw the interior and the wear on.

I was like, I know that car and I know that owner.

You met Craig.

Yes.

I met Craig and the hilarious thing when you and I talked about it, I was like, there's

this guy I met, an unusual character.

Guy knew everything about Cadillacs.

I said Craig.

Super chatty.

And you, yeah, you said Craig and I'm like, oh my God, you know the guy?

Yeah.

And the funny thing was he and I even had lunch together because the show was

like 10 a.m. until 3 p.m.

OK.

And we went over to a restaurant right across the street.

I wish I could remember the name of it because it was amazing.

Well, we'll have to go down the little road.

It was so good.

But he and I were talking and chatting and I mentioned, you know, Driven Radio

Show didn't bring up your name though.

I was like, yeah, the host of it knows everything and I'm there for basically

comic read.

That's OK.

And he was, he's like, oh, really?

Yeah.

And then he got off on some other subject.

And that's that's not entirely true.

One, I don't know everything.

I know enough to know how little I know.

Never going to know at all because I learn new stuff every day.

And the other thing is, yeah, I've known Craig for quite a long time.

Small world.

I think I told you that I used to organize car shows at my grandfather's

nursing home, they would do one with my with my buddy, Jimmy Jack.

That's awesome.

And Craig would show up in his Cadillac.

Craig is a very unique human being.

Yes.

And a fun if I, you know, you better buckle in for a conversation.

So you need to be this tall to ride this ride.

And and here comes the safety bar.

You better not move it.

I think, yeah.

But I did learn a lot.

And we chatted about, you know, you'd mention clocks, fixing clocks

and vehicles like a 19 I think was a 1947 Buick that was actually

a long and surprisingly interesting story about what he had to go

through to fix post war GM vintage stuff, particularly Cadillacs.

Craig is a savant.

That's the guy who knows everything about all that stuff.

He's a walking encyclopedia.

He's also a very unique human.

Well, this this show had they lined up.

There was one other Cadillac, but they lined up six Cadillac.

Cadillac, oh, really?

His was at the back end of there's a picture.

If you go to the Driven Radio Show Facebook page, you can see these pictures.

Yeah.

And there was one that it's a shot of the lineup of these Cadillacs

that they put in this special kind of curved place.

And it went it went from like the what was it?

1985 Cadillac, the humpback.

Yeah.

And then there was another gentleman with a

civil opera late 80s Cadillac Square.

Not my favorite Cadillac.

Probably a plate would I love what he did.

Because that thing was pristine.

The red velvet look.

Yeah, brand new.

Yeah, this man had taken such care of this thing.

And then you went back.

There was a 1960 something Cadillac, a 1960 Cadillac.

And then his 1958 Cadillac convertible.

Well, it's a Cadillac Eldorado.

They didn't make that many of them.

The Eldorado's had unique bodywork, unique trim.

They were it was considered a very exclusive car.

They were not inexpensive.

They were if memory serves, they may have been close to 10 grand and 58.

Yeah, but you could buy a house and a cow for that much.

You could buy a house and another car for that much.

They were really, really, really nice cars.

And if memory serves, Craig's is 100 percent original.

It looks like it.

It's I think it's original paint and interior.

I think it's 100 percent original, say for like batteries.

You know how long he's on that?

Over 40 years.

I know he has because he had it when I met him and I've known him at least 30 years.

Yeah. And we're not tight.

We're not friends, any of that.

I just I run into him.

Yeah, Kansas City is not that big of a town in the same circles.

And he's a good guy to know.

He is. But when it comes to GM car gauges, especially clocks,

man, he really, really, really knows his stuff.

Dude has his niche.

Was he wearing white socks pulled up?

I don't remember because one of the things he did.

He's like, hey, you know, you know how old I am?

Yeah. How old do you think I am?

How old do you think I am?

You're 147.

I looked at him and he's like, he takes off his hat.

Look at my hair. Look at my hair.

Why do you think I am?

And I think it was my first thought because I'm an asshole was that,

you know, you look about Grecian formula old.

But I think that might have been his natural hair color.

And he's he's in his early 70s.

But I was like, I put you at 67.

He's like, I am 70.

I think you said 70 one.

I'm like, damn, you're right.

And here's the other thing I'll tell you.

And you're not going to believe me, but I promise you he's mellowed with age.

Oh, my God.

Yeah. No, I'm saying all this.

I did have a good time chatting with him.

Don't don't.

And he was anybody who doesn't get me wrong.

Why is it? I'm an asshole.

But he he really knows his own world.

Yeah, he really does.

And I mean, we were walking together, looking at some of the cars,

and he was talking details.

He talked a bunch of details on Sibyl that some of them I didn't know.

And I'm like, no, shit, really?

He's like, oh, yeah. You know who he reminds me of?

It's Richard Earl, Harley Earl's grandson.

We talked to him a couple of times.

He reminds me a lot of Richard

because he just has that encyclopedic of mine.

I always think of Jeff Goldblum on speed.

But yeah, I think you you've got it.

I don't think he could get any more close to that.

Just because you could do a thing doesn't mean.

Anyway, I was I was kind of pleased and

and a little shocked to see that you'd met Craig.

But you travel in car circles in this town,

you'll run into him eventually.

I'm trying to decide whether or not this coming by the time the show

hits the streets, a show here in Kansas City

that is super popular called Greaserama.

Go will be going on.

Go. Well, I'm trying to decide it.

No, it's a long day with you.

But my car misses the date by one year.

Yep. Well, I could take Corvette Corvette.

But then it's clean.

They probably give me the side.

Exactly. It's a it's a Rockabilly, Psycho Billy.

Yeah. Oh, so good.

So fun. I could take any one of the three Harleys.

They all fit in there.

They're they're too new, but they all look the part.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So these guys, I spent I have gone to that show.

I can't tell you how many times as a spectator.

There were a couple of years I went as a vendor because, you know,

I've got the word on your books and I'm seriously contemplating it.

It kind of depends.

Friday night, Saturday morning, how I feel.

You know, I'm watching the Zoom camera

and our guest has just curled up in a ball and gone to sleep.

You know, there's that.

And enough about me.

Let's talk about what you think of me.

Yeah, he's he's had enough of our crap.

Good night, everybody.

Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening.

Our special guest this week is David Nions.

He's a lifelong classic car and warbird enthusiast.

Dave earned a bachelor degree in history,

but credits that first copy of Hot Rod magazine.

He got in 1972 for setting his career path

following a decade in banking and financial services.

Why would you ever want to do that in the 1990s and 2000s?

Dave took an entry level catalog,

took a job as an entry level catalog writer for a nearby auction house

in early 2008, conducting research on specific cars.

Gee, what should I knew what that was like?

Yeah. Yeah. That's weird.

Conducting research on specific cars

and interviewing their owners, restores and drivers.

Dave has written thousands of auction catalog descriptions

and feature articles over his career to date.

Most recently, Dave has developed and launched

Motor Copia Newsletter and the Motor Copia Market Intelligence Suite.

Dave, welcome to Driven Radio.

Hey, guys, how are you doing?

Well, sir, it seems like you and I might have trotted on some of the same dirt.

Yes, that's right.

We spoke for the first time a few years ago

and we were introduced by a good mutual friend of ours.

Yes. And yeah, yeah.

Oh, it's nice to make acquaintance again.

We can say Cindy's name out loud.

We have and frequently do.

Cindy Mittle, who is fresh off of a really fantastic show,

two shows out at Monterey Car Week.

She did

the Paddock and Concorso, Concorso Italiano this year.

And inside the paddock, there was Radwood

and I got to help a friend transport stuff there.

And Cindy, if you're listening, sweetheart,

you did a fantastic job, very good on you.

Right on. That was a huge job.

So Hot Rod Magazine in 1972.

Is that one? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, you got it. Yeah, at the corner store.

And I was just blown away with what I was seeing.

I mean, you know, supercharged drag cars,

all the kind of the big names in the sport and drag racing and all that.

And in here, I was, you know, I was six at the time,

but I was already kind of OCD for anything motorized.

So I'm growing up on a farm, you know,

there are tractors everywhere, pickup trucks, stuff like that.

And stuff in the in the woods, you know, like my van and cars.

Oh, yeah, stuff to go play around in until you need a tetanus shot.

Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah.

And well, the funny thing is

there was a 55 Buick sedan in our in our our bush

that one of our harvest workers had,

I think the engine probably expired or something.

And he my dad dragged it out in the woods.

And then that that was our target practice

with a 22 rifle after that about eight years old on.

So oh, yeah, yeah, that was a lot of fun.

I used to drive my dad trusted me.

He threw me the keys to his new Chevy pickup

and I could drive around the farm with it when I was eight.

I could barely reach the pedals, the dirt roads.

You know, we had a field on a dirt road where we grew tobacco

and I'd sit on my dad's lap.

You know, it's the whole Bruce Springsteen song kind of deal.

I'd I'd hold the wheel and he'd work the pedals.

And, you know, that was just kind of that kind of a thing.

Where was this at that you were growing the tobacco?

Yes, in Ontario, right right on the north of the Lake Erie.

You could grow tobacco in Canada. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I thought it was just the ferns that in

but tobacco, no shit, no kidding.

Yeah, you've already worn enough.

Why quit now? Yeah.

Yeah, the weather, the growing weather is amazing.

The sandy soil is perfect for it.

Like it was just, you know, ideal.

And it's just a strip, like a plane of sand

that runs about maybe about 60 miles east west

north of Lake Erie and it's ideal for that kind of growing.

It's all ginseng now

and a whole diverse kind of thing of fruits

and and vegetables and stuff now.

But at one time, my area was nothing but tobacco.

Wow. Yeah.

So yeah, so it's kind of cool growing up on a farm.

And there was always, you know, tractors to drive, you know,

so like I got to do a lot of underage driving on the property.

You know, even if it was two miles an hour on a tractor.

A 10 year old kid, I drive my own truck and I roll my own smokes.

Yeah. Well, and that's the thing.

We had just progressed to process rolled smokes not long before.

My grandfather would be at the kitchen table, you know,

rolling a can of players tobacco from a John player.

And he'd be rolling his his own smokes up twice a day.

It is after lunch and after supper.

Wow. It was it was cool.

Yeah. Stuff you would never see today.

No, that's a lot.

So I'm kind of curious.

I I I have the OCD bug as well.

You know, the joke is I wish it was CDO

because then the letters would be in order.

But I can remember the covers

of the magazines that I liked most and read most.

Can you remember what was on the cover of that hot rod magazine?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was up.

Jack Crisman, the famous drag racer

in California, he had he built a sidewinder.

It was a 71 Mustang body, funny car.

And it had a rear mounted like a boss 429

or something or with a with a supercharger.

So it's kind of like Jim Dunn, big Jim Dunn used to do that with

yet a Challenger body car, not long after that.

And it seemed thing with a hammy in the back.

And they were they were they were pushing the envelope.

They were going from what was in the junk yards and making it

work for dragging drag strips or Bonneville.

And it was starting to become more specialized,

you know, right around that time kind of thing.

So yeah, I remember that totally.

In fact, I could I don't know if I could tell you what's inside,

but the cover for sure.

No, I just blew my mind.

I can remember about the time

I was starting to drive legally.

That being the operative phrase legally

because I'd been driving and running around in an El Camino since I was 13.

About the time I was starting to drive legally

is when David Davis came out with automobile magazine.

And there were several issues that had

like in in the in on the back couple of pages,

they do a really cool list like

best music to listen to in this car in this setting.

And I can remember what was on the cover

of those magazines like that one in particular was a five way shootout

between an Audi GT and a 944 turbo and, you know, several different cars.

And I just I remember individual magazines

that had articles in them I really loved.

And I could usually remember what was on the front cover.

So I wanted to check and see if it was just me.

Or if it's everybody else, too, you know what?

I've got I've still got that copy of Hot Rod

and it's in a page protector along with all my other copies of all these things.

I'm I'm always whenever I can get my hands on boxes and boxes of old magazines.

Current driver had an amazing editorial voice.

I met David Davis once and I was I

it was like I'd met like Dave Grohl in the food fighter.

Yeah. Like when I met him, it was just like,

well, what am I going to say that's going to mean anything to anybody?

It's just going to be like, hey, how are you?

I love your stuff. You. Wow.

You you're one of the people that inspired me to do what I do.

You know, it was just funny.

I went completely, you know, like a fan, you know,

but it was really cool because when I met him,

it was at the Hershey meet in 2008, October.

OK. And he and he gave a speech at the AACA Museum.

There was a dinner like a kind of a buffet kind of thing.

And then there was the David spoke.

And, you know, he talked.

It was funny because he in about 30 less than 30 minutes

and a lot of people were getting uncomfortable because they couldn't.

It didn't seem to be the attention span.

And I was freaking out because I had no idea that being there

that David Davis was going to speak.

And in about 30 minutes, it was like, OK, he confirmed

why I'm doing what I'm doing, the value of what I'm doing,

where it's going and why it's still awesome.

And and some of the things, the roadblocks, the challenges,

the hurdles he went through when he was putting together the car and driver,

you know, and he also he had a terrible accident racing, you know,

like so like there were a lot of life changing things for the man.

And but the message was strong and positive.

And and I was like, hell, yeah, you know, like this guy's

this was this was what I needed to hear when I was in grade 11, 12,

thinking about what to do after high school kind of thing.

You know, especially as one of two car crazy guys,

like there are hundreds and hundreds of kids that went through the shock program.

I was doing math, science, physics,

French, English, you know, just a whole mixed bag of stuff.

I didn't know what I was going to do.

I loved cars. I love again,

writers and columnists were my heroes.

You know, like when Phil Hill was doing,

you know, 200 mile an hour, the fastest cars

tests for road and track in the 80s, that just blew my mind.

You know, I was just like, I could do that. I should do that.

This guy's doing it.

You know, he's making it happen.

He made it happen way back in the day as one of the America's first racing

champions, and I thought, you know, these guys are doing it.

I remember reading in Car and Driver when I should have been studying for some.

Yeah, I was in the library in the study room.

I was reading the latest Car and Driver.

It had coverage of Rick Cole sell

doing an auction of George Barris's movie and TV cars back in 84.

And

sort of what the editorial take was on the experience,

because it was kind of a new thing.

There had been certainly collector car auctions in the past,

but this was sort of, you know, something that was staged and produced

and put together with some thought from a single collector or a single owner.

And it was interesting because I said, damn, I know I could do that.

I know that's something I can get involved, you know, but you

sometimes when you when you feel something calling you or drawing you,

you go, OK, that's something I get involved with when I've got a real job.

Yeah, or when I've done school or which is a bunch of malarkey.

You know, I had gone down there for pizza and a t-shirt to push cars.

Like, you know what I mean? Sure.

And California, you know, California was where I was happening,

you know, but, you know, sometimes your life, you know,

you kind of do something else.

And then you realize, you know, when I was in banking, it was,

well, you know, the guys, the people I was doing loans or mortgages for

usually when the smoke cleared and we got something done for them or we,

you know, we talk cars or we talk about, you know, OK,

I can help you to get ready to be able to get a loan

so that you can buy the thing you want.

But right now I'm going to give you this much

and you make your payments on time, then you can get the new thing.

You know, and so that's kind of how people kind of gravitated to me.

And also the whole idea of the conversation always came around to,

well, did you go to this show or that show or do you go to that cruise?

Did you see this or that?

And we'd always end up coming back to we love cars.

And it's something that just levels the playing field.

Everybody's, you know, can relate to one another.

Yeah, we're all the same bunch of idiots chasing the same four wheeled stuff.

Yeah, yeah, totally.

You know, and in my market, I was getting a lot of young, young guys

that were starting out in their jobs or careers or their trades.

And they all wanted a four wheel drive, Z71 Chevy pickup.

And so I can get back and yeah.

And then, you know, the next thing was, you know,

something bigger or newer or whatever.

And eventually, you know, I could help these guys, you know,

afford a home or something like that, you know, and kind of help groom

things for them a little bit.

And, you know, the loyalty was intense.

And so it was kind of fun because everybody at root of it all,

we're all just people that like nice cars.

And so there was a really good scene where I worked at the bank.

I worked at the, in that area, you had three major industries

and as well as a fishing fleet out of Port Dover and a whole lot of farms.

And so anybody, you know, it was it was really fun because you could

you could do something for them.

And and again, there were amazing cars like between Hamilton,

Ontario and say, Tilsonburg, there were all these small towns

along the North Shore Lake Erie.

There are so many people with so many great cars.

And so and growing up, it was like that.

You know, there's a guy from a nearby town.

He had a classic car lot.

Now, this is 1981, 82.

And so it was on near the local golf course.

And, you know, he'd have like a Coppo, Chevelle's,

Tri-Power GTOs, you know, Chevelle SS, Z-28s, early, you know,

69 GTXs, Emmy cars.

And they were just there on a lot with a small trailer

as his sales office.

The guy goes through a divorce, sells everything off,

moves to California and becomes a stunt driver for years.

So that's one of the one of the local local boys made good,

you know, making lemonade out of lemons kind of thing.

You know, it took you till 2008

to get to really get into this.

And, you know, you were already working in the banking world.

You were doing finance.

It wasn't a calculated move.

Was that something you did intentionally or was it a chance occurrence?

I know for in my instance, for me,

sports car market sent an email to all of their subscribers

and said, would you like to be an auction analyst?

Holy cow. Oh, man, I'd have been all over that.

Yeah, it was really strange.

And I let that email sit

sit on my computer for four or five days.

And I was talking to my wife.

She said, what are you doing? Send it in.

Worst thing they can say is no, and you're no better off.

And I sent it in and I didn't hear anything for a year.

And then they sent me, not all the subscribers, but me

and email saying, do you still want to do this?

And I said, yes, I really do.

And they said, OK, buy a camera, go to Dallas.

That was my training.

You know, then that's the only way you do it

is by just jumping in with both feet.

For for me, it was it was crazy

because I was incredibly stressed out at one point.

You know, you we were it was changing.

The industry was changing so much in financial services from

do its best for the customer

to put as much business as you can on the books,

whether or not they use the whatever you set them up with or not.

It doesn't matter.

We're just we're just channel stuffing,

just like car dealers were doing for a while

where the lots were full, they were financing them.

And then kind of well, if you sell them great

and if you don't, that's OK.

We can send them back to the manufacturer kind of thing.

And so when I was in that that rural branch,

we had 16 about 16,500 customers.

And I was responsible for I was it was a sort of a team basis.

So we had two or three account managers

and then the rest of us, three or four of us were like a sort of a team approach.

So anybody that was assigned to that that segment,

you know, we'd see them on a proactive or a responsive,

you know, as they come in basis.

And I can remember.

I forget how many people I was responsible for.

But it was I may be exaggerating a little from positive memory.

But in that setup, we could serve and if it made sense,

we could pretty much lend whatever was necessary to make the customer,

you know, whole like whatever they want to do if they want to buy a car.

They want to start a business by home.

Maybe somebody was divorcing.

And I was always I learned how to do this.

It was a terrible situation, a divisive situation.

And what I would do is I get them both both spouses qualified for their own home.

One could keep the home, keep the kids, they're in the same school.

Kids weren't fine.

And so OK. Yeah, it was it was it was awesome.

And but then things changed.

It became a if you don't score A, B or C on the credit application

on the computer and 20 words or less,

you know, it's it's dealer's choice.

And so around that time, I was able to do retaining the business

and getting more business as a sort of a special hybrid role

just to keep me interested.

And from that, you know, but then the cool thing is that was fine.

The layer experiences were when it was more standardized

and it became a very different animal.

So I was for years looking for something different to do.

And I was always going to a local auction auctioneers

to look at their restoration shop.

I was, you know, they did tours on Saturdays and Sundays.

I would go and I I'd go purchase old old catalogs from prior auctions.

And I'd look through that and it was like the greatest thing in the world.

I would pour over every page and, you know,

and I would agree or disagree with certain things that were sad or

but but the idea was I was seeing how they set up there

and formatted their stuff for the catalogs.

And then so I one day it was it was

my birthday was Boxing Day, 2007.

The kids are downstairs.

We had an air hockey table for them.

They're playing with this.

I'm playing House of Pains jump around on my my internet speakers.

We're all having a great time.

You know, I'm downstairs.

Mom's mom's upstairs making something delicious.

And and I I kept checking the the classified ads

because I really wanted to get out of the banking world.

And there was an ad and it said fancy yourself ascribe.

Question mark apply here.

Send us a car description of your choosing.

Send it in. If we like it, we might give you an interview.

Well, I did one.

I modeled it exactly on the stacks of catalogs that I have already from them.

I formatted it precisely.

I wrote about something that I thought was unusual and interesting.

It was a panos or a panos.

Yes. And I thought, OK, you know,

that's going to grab somebody's attention.

It's not, you know, your typical 5557 Thunderbird or Camaro.

And I thought I'm going to go for the gusto.

I'm going to do something I don't know anything about.

I'm going to model myself at what I'm writing after what I see.

Well, a couple of weeks later, I get a I get an email back.

Hey, we really liked your trial description.

Oh, cool. Our backs to the wall.

We've got unprecedented private collections and regular auctions.

Would you mind helping us out?

There's one that we need some depth, some help with.

And they ended up assigning me six cars and I did them and I sent them in

and they paid me and I was like, wow, you get paid for this.

I was pretty cool. I can make money.

Yeah, yeah, I can make money doing this.

And, you know, it's it's not it's not odious.

You know, it's not it's not silly.

You know, it's like I just I felt like, OK,

this is something I can do, but is it going to be in the volume?

Well, you know, meet our needs and stuff like that.

And my wife was working at a museum, an art museum in at the time.

And and then it all kind of made sense that we could do that.

And I could make a switch.

So yeah, that was great.

And I was there for well, actually, I worked from home for three

of the four and a half years.

I was with the company and I just come and go

hit their library, grab files and books and reference books.

And I, you know, put them back the next day or the next week

and start, you know, grab more stuff.

And I just, you know, as their main in-house writer kind of deal.

And, you know, and, you know, but the one thing was

the proviso was that when you join,

you sign a piece of paper saying we can let you go anytime.

Yes. Without cause.

Work it will pay.

Yeah, we'll pay you for a month after that.

And, you know, we can just if we don't like the looks you have, you're gone.

So eventually my supervisor left for another opportunity.

And I said to my wife, I said, Mark, my word, within three months,

my my time here is going to be done.

Yeah, I know it because she she was great.

She she actually said they're in today.

And this is like 2009 to 2012.

There's no reason in this day and age to have to be in an office,

in a cubicle, you know, driving back and forth.

Like, you know, it's so I could walk the kids to school

or drop the kids at school at the bus or the school,

pick them up at the bus stop, bring them home, you know,

give them something to eat, throw on some something good to watch

or something to help them with their homework.

And and you know, and if I had to, you know, after supper, I'd get back at it.

So it ended up being about 50 hour weeks or more.

And then I started going to

catalog collections offsite for them in preparation for catalogs.

So then I'd have, you know, fill up a notebook,

write down all the great details, gather whatever documentation there is

and sort of get a triage kind of process going and then come home.

And I'd go write that catalog.

And, you know, it was it was really cool, actually.

So I've been a lot of crazy places, museums that were closing

because of someone passed away or maybe there was

lack of revenue or interest or something like that.

So there was one in near Fort Worth, Texas, actually.

That was really cool.

The it was an oil, a guy who made his money in oil

and he wanted to do a public service by opening a museum

that highlighted technology from that part of Texas.

So there were all these models from Pan Am

and Convair aircraft and

art and great and cool vehicles.

So there was just a ton of really neat stuff.

Pierce arrows.

There was a DeLorean, a Trebonne, you know, like it was very eclectic.

And then there were a bunch of X U.S.

military aircraft sitting outside that were demilled

and then they were on display.

And then it was all Cold War stuff.

So I was nerding out on that.

And then there was a CF one and F 101 voodoo interceptor

kind of like before the precursor of the Phantom.

And it was in our Royal Canadian Air Force colors,

which was kind of cool.

So they we returned them when we were done with them.

And then there was one sitting there at this place.

So it was pretty cool.

Yeah, so it just, you know, auctions, swap meets.

So I also like the sort of the more grassroots stuff, like

like Hershey, I heard all these horror stories

about the Hershey meet every year, about how wet everybody

and how muddy everybody got and how gross it was.

And take your way to get there.

Yeah. And then I'm there.

And it's like everything's paved.

Everything's nice.

Everybody's friendly, you know.

And yeah, it's a little on the cool side,

but whatever I'm Canadian, so I can handle it.

Well, everything's paved now.

Yeah. Yeah.

At one time, I heard I hear all these stories about people,

like, you know, getting lost in the show field in the mud,

you know, like I was like, well, everything's pretty cool here.

That's all right.

So, you know, but then again, you know, there's just everything

from soup to nuts at these places, too.

It seems like the stories I've heard of Hershey

run parallel to the experiences I've had

at Bloomington Gold, the Corvette thing,

before they moved it up by Chicago

when it was still in Bloomington, Illinois.

And inevitably, while you were there,

it would rain its tail off at least one day.

Oh, yeah.

And you've got this massive show field

and most of the cars are out in the grass.

Well, guess what that turns into?

How many stuck Corvettes are there?

How bad has the show field been torn up?

How much rain did you get?

Yeah, I can only imagine the grief,

the collective grief that's going on

because you're showing something that's up for honors.

And then, you know, it's all, I couldn't imagine.

Well, the honor stuff usually, you know,

the real show stuff was usually inside the grand hall

and they'd have it indoors someplace.

But then you've got the other 3,000 of us outside

playing in the mud.

And one year we did the road tour

and I think it was.

19, 22.

Yeah, 8 zillion years ago.

But I still had that red Corvette

because that's how long I've had that.

Probably 99, 2000 in there.

And the road tour was 66 miles long, 33 miles of it,

doubled back on itself.

So all you saw coming and going

for a long time were Corvettes.

Kind of fun.

Oh yeah, I freak out.

Yeah, we did the road tour one year

and it rained and rained and it was just torrential.

And the two jack legs in front of us

brought a car that had no top.

Oh, man.

And we got to the end of it

and they had a couple of inches of water in the floorboards.

It just poured on them.

And my buddy and I, and he's not a small guy,

he's tall, he's at the time he was almost 6'3".

The two of us in a 60 Corvette of the top up,

not a ton of room to work with

and just trying to get the defroster

to keep up, to keep the windows clear.

It was a zoo, but we were better off

than those two yo-yos in front of us.

Oh yeah, just it's that next level.

But the thing is, that's the kind of story

you're going to tell for the rest of your life.

Story hell, we took pictures.

Kind of an adventure like that.

Yeah, we took a lot of them as proof.

Oh, that's funny.

Yeah, you know, there's...

Anyway, I've probably gotten off the rails

a little bit with my stories, but...

No, no.

Yeah, you know, it's really fun.

I work from home.

Well, it's 16 years working from home exclusively.

And it's been, you know, great

because, you know, clothing are optional.

Yeah.

You know, but having said that,

you know, there's sometimes there's a deadline

for a catalog and I'm in my robe, you know?

And I'm like the typewriter, you know, my typewriter,

my keyboard, it's just, I'm just, my fingers are just flying.

My wife tells me that sometimes I do this, you know,

I'm actually keyboarding in my sleep.

I'll put both hands up.

Oh yeah, I kid you not.

And I've never, you know, realized what I'm doing,

but my wife will say,

oh yeah, you know, when you're really busy

on a deadline, you're, you know, you're keyboarding

right in the middle of the night.

Sometimes it's like, I'm trying to figure out

how to frame, like organize a description.

Say it's for a bigger value car

and there's more of a story to it.

And I'm trying to frame things properly.

And it's like, you know,

getting to be eight or nine at night.

And I'm kind of like, okay, you know what?

I am going to just kind of put this

to sleep for the night.

And as I'm, I do this so much that as I'm sleeping,

pardon me, sometimes in the middle of the night

I'll wake up and I have to go downstairs

and get back at it because to finish a thought

because now I figure out how to frame

why this car matters,

what the racing program was for the manufacturer

at the time who was driving,

who had input into this car,

why they put this concept car out

that became a production car.

And I couldn't like pull the thread apart,

you know, when I was conscious.

And then in my sleep,

it sort of just works its way out.

I'll let you in on a secret,

if you promise not to tell anybody,

shh, nobody will know.

There's a reason I moved a stationary exercise bike

into my office.

And there's a reason for that.

You can ride that bike for 15 or 20 minutes.

And then you get off and eat something,

just, you know, something light,

something small, no big deal.

Eat something, have a pop,

some coffee, some water, whatever,

and then get back and then look at it.

You'll see it in a whole different light.

Totally, yeah.

I mean, that's a good way to go about it.

Or the weird thing is in my sleep

is that that's when it happens for me.

It's like when I was in banking,

I'd work out a solution to a loan

or a mortgage problem that seemed like a hurdle.

And 3.15 in the morning,

I, you know, wake up and go,

oh, okay, now I know what to do tomorrow.

And the other thing is you have to turn on jump around.

That works.

Oh yeah, that's the key.

That or sabotage by Beastie Boys.

Oh my gosh. There you go.

Absolutely, Beasties will get you there.

Oh yeah.

If you're something that's fun and offbeat,

kind of, you know, like niche.

Yeah.

No sleep till Edmund.

No, you gotta make, no, no.

You have to be able to go through

and repeat every lyric and she's crafty.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

Wow.

Which I can't do.

She's crafty, you'll do the trick.

But some music loud for a few minutes,

a little bit of exercise and just eat an apple.

Eat something light.

But then when you come back to it,

you'll find, oh wow, I'm clear, man.

My head is ready to go.

Oh yeah.

And that's been one of my secrets to first writer's block.

Oh yeah, that's a perfect, you know,

sort of a good three-step.

You're moving with the bike.

Yeah.

You're kind of feeding yourself a little bit,

you know, something that's nutritious.

It's a half hour break.

And yeah, just a little break like that

and then all of a sudden it's all good again.

Well, and, you know, what they say about it

and dolphins from exercise and all that,

that's not BS, that really works.

At least it does for me, man.

So yeah, just a little exercise,

a little something to eat and some loud music

because that is, I think that's the reset.

That's the breaker on that.

You just pop the breaker for a few minutes

and there you go.

Oh yeah.

For me, it's sort of a go-to kind of soundtrack.

I've got to have a couple of songs

from Van Halen's first album.

Okay, there you go.

Some Blue Aster Cult, which is just,

that's mental floss and then a little bit of,

you know, some Iron Maiden or something

and then I'm good to go.

I'm with you on the Van Halen stuff,

Blue Aster Cult, maybe, maybe not.

Oh, come on, Tenderloin.

Come on.

Okay, okay.

That's sort of a niche market, but you know,

it's, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Something just to, I call it mental floss,

just a little something just to clear it out a little bit

off you go.

One, upbeat, skinnered song.

Yes.

And then this is just me

and it's because I used to have a Bronco

that had the biggest frickin' sub in the back

that it would shake the windows in the truck

and it's a public enemy and anthrax together doing,

bring the noise.

That'll do it.

That's the reset right there.

But you've got-

Anything with flavor-flavin',

it just puts a smile on your face.

Yeah, and you got to have a big sub

because it's got such a great bass in it.

It just loud, way loud.

Loud.

Loud noises.

And then when you go back to writing,

you turn on Miles Davis.

Oh, yeah, yeah, some nice cool jazz.

Dave Brubeck 5, I take 5.

There you go.

Oh, you're nice.

Absolutely.

It's frequency, man.

Unsquared dance.

So you live in Canada, I'm kind of curious,

is there a great difference in car culture

just getting north of the border?

And for your car culture right now,

what's hot and what's not?

What's cooking up there?

You know what?

It's what I've seen is the enthusiast scene is huge up here.

So it's a lot of hot rods,

a lot of old school hot rods,

street rods, drag cars, slash street cars.

There's a great cadre of boomers that really,

they were drag racing in the 60s.

And so there's actually a great old school drag strip

in St. Thomas a half an hour from here.

I believe it was Canada's first quarter mile.

Cool.

Yeah, in 1962, Sox and Martin came up.

The surfers from Top Fuel,

all those guys, front engine dragsters,

there were match races.

Anyway, so now people are doing it because they love it.

They're not doing it because there's a potential

of winning a points chase at the end of the season.

And that's good and bad,

but the track is owned by a good group of people.

There's a family that are based around a man

that was friends of my folks.

He was a consulting engineer

that founded a consulting engineering house

in London nearby.

And they own Grand Bend Motorplex.

That's a long running, long standing drag strip.

They used to run IHRA championship events there.

It's right by Lake Huron,

about an hour and a half kind of north of us.

And so the car culture is hardcore.

There's a lot of people, a lot of street rotting

that's continued that's been handed down now

to say sons and daughters of the people

that were involved in the 50s, 60s.

It's really a cool scene.

It's a little bit regional.

It's based around kind of provincial centers,

kind of things.

So here, because we're close to Detroit,

there's that whole spin-off from Motor City.

Sure.

You know, when I was growing up,

I grew up an hour and a half southeast of where I am now.

And it was the Big A, CKLW in Windsor, Detroit.

And in the early 70s, mid 70s, late 70s,

it was a soul song, an R&B song, a novelty song,

two hard rock songs,

and then sort of a middle of the road rock song.

And it was just like, it was everything,

but they played Motown and Soul

when long after that had been already a thing.

And so, and in fact, where I grew up

and along the North Shirley Creek,

I'm probably speaking more than I should for other people,

but for me growing up,

I was more American and mindset

than I was Canadian and mindset.

I, you know, we had the TV station,

it was free day air before cable and satellite

and all that.

So we had Erie, Buffalo, Cleveland TV stations.

Oh yeah.

So we weren't stuck with CBC all the time,

which at the time it was pretty cool.

Actually, CBC was okay then.

There were other, in fact,

there was an American rock station from Buffalo

that said our transmitter or repeater

up about an hour from us

and just ticked everybody off

in the Canadian establishment.

But it was rock 102, it was, you know,

it was American station, American commercials.

It was so cool.

And we had friends in Detroit

and so, you know, they'd come,

they were all working in auto industry,

so these guys would come with Cadillac Eldarados

and Olds Torrent Auto Drive cars, you know,

from the 70s.

Oh yeah.

It was like spaceships, I mean, my mind was blown.

Okay.

And yeah.

And no, no, no, no, I have so many thoughts

about this and the first of which is

I'm thrilled to hear anybody

is preserving vintage drag strips

because so many of them are gone now

and so many of them have been torn down

or, you know, they've shut down

and now when David Freiberger,

like when he does his on the road stuff

or roadkill stuff and he goes to old drag strips

and you see that they're decrepit

and there's weeds growing out of everything

and I'm just, I'm so happy to hear

that anybody is preserving the heritage for starts.

Secondly, Mark was in radio forever.

He got into it about the same time

Christ was looking for his first job.

He used to call in.

He was a cowboy back then.

Yeah, he was.

Can you play more in excess?

Yeah, Jesus.

Get up Christ.

And anyway, when you started talking

about radio stations and all that,

you should have seen the look on Mark's face.

He got a little happier

and he was thinking about it too.

And so I'm waiting for the stories.

I'm just itching for it.

Well, I just, you know,

the listening to stations from other places

is pretty awesome from growing up with the stories

about Wolfman Jack blasting 500,000 watts

down into Mexico or actually in Mexico,

in the United States.

And then hearing that going on up there

just kind of gives me a smile.

I've got to work on a few big sticks

and it's fun for the places you could reach and help.

My first car was a 1955 Plymouth.

I'm 15 and a half, can't drive it yet,

but I would go out and sit and daydream

about dating chicks and it had a Filtco tube radio in it

that could pick up, you know, God's back thoughts.

And I would listen to WLS out of Chicago.

You get that reflection off the clouds.

Yeah, and this is in Branson, Missouri.

I couldn't pick up Jack S in Branson, Missouri.

I couldn't pick up Springfield stations

on that little AM radio,

but I could sit in my car

and listen to Chicago radio.

Yeah.

And it was just cool.

That's not that long ago

when I was going to McPherson.

And, you know, this is after the Navy and everything.

So I'm in my early 30s,

but I was running back and forth to here

because I had Marissa every other weekend.

And I would be coming back home looking for anything

and there's parts of the drive

between Kansas City and Hatch

where there isn't anything to listen to

and you don't have anybody doing repeaters overnight.

So you'd switch over to AM.

I'd start looking for Dr. Demento

or stuff like that to listen to.

Oh, I loved him.

And every now and then,

you'd get the skip from Chicago

and you'd hear stuff on AM

where you're like, where the hell did this come from?

And yeah, that's still happens.

Oh yeah.

If you have AM in your car

and not all new cars do.

And I remember my very first job in radio,

I was working for AM 1580,

KTGR in Columbia, Missouri.

And I was just a part timer in the mornings,

but I would have to turn on the transmitter.

It was a sunrise, sunset station.

Oh really?

Because there was a station in Canada.

I'd forgotten about this until just now,

station in Canada that was on the same wavelength.

Really?

And so we had to power down at night

for the longest time.

Eventually they worked out a deal,

we got licensing and I was the first

seven to midnight DJ on KTGR.

No kidding.

I was in college and yeah, it was awesome.

They had college back then?

Oh that would have been nice.

Yeah, we called it temple.

Sorry, I was itching.

Hey Socrates, fire it up, man.

Let's get this show going.

Nice room.

Yeah, digging the tunic.

Very nice.

Okay, I want your lead in

from any station you've ever worked at.

98.3 KFMZ, the home of rock and roll.

That was in, that was also in Columbia, Missouri.

That station doesn't...

Holy cow, that's burned right into your...

Oh yeah.

I loved working for that station.

Unfortunately, the guy who owned it,

he had a certain love too,

which landed him in prison.

I always thought that was his nephew.

And as awful as that sounds, it's actually true.

God.

So I, poor, anyway.

So they, you know, he was always nice to me,

but I was also a good looking young man.

Yeah, you were.

But that station and the people that I worked with,

oh my God, loved him, Sally Chase, Paul Hanks,

all of them just great people.

And what a good time that was.

They left fantastic memories.

Two things.

One, I love that that is so burnt into you

that you don't need any prep at all.

Oh no, no.

You got it right there every time you're done.

Right on cue, five hours every night.

All I gotta do is point at him.

And two, that the thing with the AM station skip,

if you've got, you know,

if it's a little overcast

or if it's quiet enough at night, you know,

if it's late enough that you can still get that.

And it's something you tell kids about

and they, you know, they look at you

and they kind of get a glazed look on their face.

But if it's the right time

and you're in a place where there's not too much traffic,

man, you still get that skip.

And it's fantastic.

And I just love that, that's something that happened

when I was, I, you know,

I remember that happening really early

because I got that Red Corvette when I was 18.

And all it has is AM.

AM, yeah.

So you'd be.

A lot of things have to go right for that connection.

It does.

And by the way, when you're dealing

with airwaves like that, that's, that's like,

there's something magical about it

that you don't get from just hitting a certain channel

on cable or satellite.

No, absolutely.

Well, and it, it seems like if you're between cities,

if you're somewhere in between, it, it works better.

I can't explain why that is,

but it seems like that's the case.

And for me, I love listening to live DJs.

Even, you know, the small town DJs

where we got our start, I love listening to them.

I love rolling through a town and hearing some voice,

you know, big Johnny DJ everybody.

And it's just, you know, I'm already,

I'm rocking and rolling here in blah, blah, blah.

Some guy who's halfway to Mickey Mouse.

And I'm like, hell yeah, kid.

You bring that up.

How does it keep that energy up like that, though?

That's a thing.

That's, that's a moment, right?

It may not be repeated.

I can tell you how it happened in the 80s.

Yeah.

Oh, one of the things, and then I honest to God,

I'll shut up and we talk about a car.

No.

One of the things that I, I would do

going into the studio is you just leave your,

your problems and your pains at the door.

You know what, they'll be there.

They're, they're packed up and ready to go.

So if you're feeling blue or sad or whatever,

you, you made the choice to leave that at the door

and you focused on one thing.

Back then we used to do like so many live phone calls.

This was in the mid 80s was when I got my start.

I was going to college and the,

you would just get into a mindset.

It's like, okay, it's showtime.

Yeah.

Nothing else mattered, but you,

some of the stuff that you had to talk about

during the hour and I would plan out my hours

for, okay, I'm going to talk about this at this break.

I'm going to talk about this at this break,

whatever we had coming up, whatever promotions, et cetera.

You also have breaks on a clock and, you know,

yeah, you've got that structure.

And then the phone calls were where the magic was

because you had a China marker, a little white wax marker,

a razor blade, a little block that had some angles on it

and a real quarter inch reel to reel tape

and you would tape your phone calls

and then you just clicked a shit on them

as fast as you could.

Use a little bit of this special kind of tape

to put it back together, line it up on that block,

put it back together, bam, roll that back,

crack your mic, hit it, go.

And you knew how long the,

how long the voice track was,

how long your conversation was

so that you could hit the post.

And that's why you'd hear DJs on, you know,

KCM Q.7, Columbia's hottest FM, bam.

And suddenly people are, the singing's going on.

You've hit the very start of the song.

You've talked over the instrumental in the front.

That's called hitting the post.

And if you nailed that, you walked away with a boner.

Yes.

Because it was just like, oh, I'm a god.

It was so much fun.

Did you see what I did?

Did you?

And between you and the callers and the energy,

now it did help that I,

I was a young, very young man in a college town

that would go from, you know,

60,000 people to 90,000 people with 30,000 of them

between the ages of 18 to 24.

And that did not suck at all.

Well, and also being a college town,

there were probably, you know, 37 head shops in the town,

so it was a busy and fun town.

I loved working with my listeners

and I loved playing with them.

And it, I have wonderful memories.

For the listeners too, because like I said,

CKLW, the big eight out of Windsor, Detroit,

it was just so much fun.

And then a few, about 10, 15 years ago,

there was some anniversary there

and they brought the old studio exists still.

And a lot of the old equipment is still there

and they brought the old jocks in and the producers

and stuff and they, and it's on YouTube

and they have these hours long things where, you know,

it was like the Johnny Rivers show all over again

and he hadn't been on for years, decades.

And, you know, or they'd have another DJ.

And it was, they actually like showed,

I think there's a video where they're putting the tapes

in, you know, or I don't know how many tracks they were,

but when they put the commercials in

and they were playing old commercials,

I can't believe they still have all this stuff

or they did.

And it's like, thank God they did

because that's part of my life.

You know, that was this, yeah.

I still have somebody cassette tapes left over

because that's what we recorded our shows on, the cassettes.

Do you wanna go in that next room?

The cassettes were set to where it would record,

you turn on the mic, it starts recording,

turn off the mic, stops recording.

So I've got various shows just,

and not, they weren't all the great ones, you know?

It was just, that was your air check tape

and then you would go in and within the week

and your boss would listen to the tape

and you'd go over your breaks

and how you're doing, et cetera.

And, but there were also, you made up your demos

so that you could go find other jobs.

And I still have a bunch of my demos

and some of the commercials,

between the commercials I did when I first started

and the commercials I did up until three years ago

when I finally left radio.

Oh my God, what a difference.

A little bit of change.

Oh my God.

A little bit of change.

But even my wife, okay,

I really promise I am gonna shut up.

My wife and I have been together

for 30 some odd years now,

but we may have met about four years

before we actually met.

She worked at the Columbia Mall in Columbia, Missouri.

And they had what they called the trend setters.

And it was their local, you know, modeling troupe

who would go out and she was in high school at the time.

And I was a 20, she's four years younger than I am.

So she was around 17, 18, that's right, she was 18.

I was 21, 22.

And I did a remote out at the Columbia Mall

that the trend setters all came in

and did a fashion show.

She was at that, her picture.

I saved the newspaper thing that was the Columbia Mall

advertising for the trend setters fashion show,

has her picture on there and down at the bottom says,

and Mark after dark summers live from KCM 297.

And when I found that, I'm like, oh my God, honey,

check this out.

We weren't, and she's like, oh wow.

And yeah, she and her friends remembered me

that they used to listen to.

I'm bringing that up to her next time I serve.

Yeah, how is Mark after dark?

He's a pain in the ass.

He's been a thorn in my side for 34 years.

One thing I wanted to say about,

what we were talking about just now, real quick.

And I don't ever want you to think

that I'm comparing what we do here

to what you did on the air for decades.

But even now, and we're, this is our,

hey, are you counting Mr. Groves?

This is our 370th show.

I know it says 318 on the thing,

but you gotta remember we did 52 road-muscle radios today.

So this is our 370th show,

every time we do it,

and especially when we have guests like Dave.

Yes.

I have a buzz on when we get finished.

And I've told you this for the last seven years.

When we get done, I got a buzz on.

Now, previously you thought it was

because I was drinking through the show,

and that could have been, but.

Ground royal and a straw.

Yeah.

And I may or may not have had a few beers also.

Yeah, what do you want for a mixer?

Ice.

Yeah.

Just, just ice.

Oxygen.

Just give me a straw and I'll be fine.

But you know, as well as anybody,

I just drink water and I have for a long time,

it's not, it's not anything I'm ingesting, man.

I have a buzz on because it's,

it's like what performers say about being on stage.

They don't feel well when they go on,

but they get that energy from the crowd

from what they're doing.

Now, please understand,

I get that this is nowhere near what that was,

but this is our, our little show.

And I still like it and I still get a lot

of doing this and I like recording the show

and I love the guests we have on.

And again, we get guys like Dave

who are actually interesting to listen to.

Not every show has been a 10 out of 10.

But I still have a buzz from this.

We get done and it takes me about an hour

to unwind and, you know, back to normal.

Back to, back to, you know, regular duck on the water,

just does everything smooth, but we get done.

I wanna go do something.

So I still really enjoy doing this.

And I get that from, you know,

I understand what you were saying about being on radio

and what you got from it.

I'm not saying that this is parallel to that.

But, but it is.

Wow, it's, it's so cool that we can,

we can kind of vibe on this because it, you know,

it's part of your life, Mark.

It's part of my life.

It just as a listener, but and an enthusiast.

And it's like, there are times where I just prefer to listen

to if there's something good on AM

because it just trips me right back to, you know,

the 70s and it was like, you know,

my little portable radio, you know,

my, I had one of those bikes, not the Stingray.

It was called a wedge.

It was sort of like the low rent knockoff

of the Stingray.

But it was so, it was bitching, you know,

the small front, you know,

I had the red line tires and the small front wheel.

And, you know, oh yeah, that was, oh, I love that.

Pedal chopper.

Evil Knievel.

Yeah, Evil Knievel was the man.

I mean, I remember getting entered.

I had so much Evil Knievel stuff when I was little.

I had, did you have the, what do you call it?

The Ideal Toy?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You wind it up and those are the best.

And if you haven't found him either on Facebook or Instagram,

there's a guy who, they started making repops

of the Evil Knievel wind-up cycle.

Yeah, yeah.

There's a guy on Instagram and Facebook

and it's just called Porter's Jumps.

Porter's Jumps.

Actually, that makes me like stop.

Yes, I will stop and watch those.

Oh yeah, I got to watch this.

Every time.

And I'm excited.

He took an electric drill to it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And wound it right up.

Well, did you see him with the drill

and he jumped his house?

Yeah, yeah.

Oh yeah, that's.

Oh my God.

Yeah, he jumped him all the way over his house.

It was cool.

Oh yeah, I love that.

And you know what, as a kid, the first time I,

you know, I was a little late

to the Evil Knievel Party, so it was about 73

when I first heard of him.

But we were, on being on a farm,

we would take sheets of plywood and drums

and make jumps, you know.

Oh yeah.

I don't know.

When you're a kid, there's some,

I don't know, flubber or something

that makes you flexible.

Well, you're rubber till you're about 19 or 20.

Exactly.

Yeah, and you could ramp and you could crash

and it was all good.

You know, and everybody's happy.

You come in, your pants could stand up

from all the dirt and mud you had gotten into and.

Well, my God.

And you understood the thought behind tough skin jeans.

Oh yeah, yeah, the brilliance.

Yeah, you're going to wear out the butt,

you're going to wear out the knees

and that's why, you know, the tough skins

when they were new would stand up by themselves

or so stinking stiff, but.

But you really needed those.

Is an element on the periodic table.

It's got its own atomic weight and everything.

BJ, Blue Jays.

Yeah, looking back on tough skins now,

you're kind of, you're, you're kind of curious

why they didn't have pockets for the body armor in them.

They should have, except when you were wearing those,

you didn't really need it.

You were made out of rubber.

That stuff was, was, was primo.

Well, actually talking about Sears,

I, I, there was two car shows.

There's one that had over a thousand cars close to,

and at times it's had close to 1500 vehicles.

Yeah.

And it's just in a local, like it's 20 minutes from me.

The Optimus Club holds this every year

and the local firefighters raise money

and there's like a, you know, a massive 50-50 draw.

Like it got to 50,000 something last year.

Jesus.

It was nuts.

Yeah.

And, and there's, every time I'm at that show

and then I was at a show called Bean Fest

in a small farming town called Zurich, north of us.

And wonderful event, wonderful community event.

It's unbelievable.

And, and, but there's a Kaiser Henry J

that always shows up to those two shows.

And it's, it's been repainted and reupholstered,

but it's, it's the actual real car.

And it's like, you could buy those at

through the Sears catalog.

Yeah.

When they were new.

I just, it freaks me out.

I love it.

And I love seeing that it's not a gasser.

It's just, it's just, it's just as it should be

as it kind of left the factory.

And I just love that vibe.

You know, you know, it could be a gasser.

You know, it wants to be a gasser.

Yeah.

But it's just, it's just the way it is, you know,

but, you know, Sears catalog.

I, I, well, people who aren't old enough

to have seen or remember Sears catalogs,

like every one of my, you know,

both my daughters and my 11th team granddaughters,

they, they don't realize what that was at one time.

You could buy a whole house.

Yep. And it would be delivered.

And then you just had to have the lot and put it together.

Yeah.

They would send it to you on a train

and you could buy a whole stinking house

out of the Sears catalog.

They don't realize all the stuff

you could have gotten out of that.

Oh yeah.

Along with the Kaiser Henry J.

So, yeah, very many blades.

You know, oh, I got a go cart.

I got a go cart when I was 10 years old.

I got a lime limo because it was a side by side.

Oh, cool.

Two passenger go cart.

And what's wild is a pair of them sold

on bring a trailer about a month ago.

And they were, they were absolutely mint

and they had to be made in the late seventies.

Somebody preserved two go carts

from the Sears catalog.

Who does that?

That's, I think that's really, like, you know,

I like signs.

I like petroleum, you know, like gas station stuff.

I remember seeing when the little mom and pop,

we used to have a lot of little variety stores

they were called and there'd be a couple of gas pumps

maybe in the front and, you know, you could,

you know, get some chips and candy and pop and stuff.

And they weren't like they are today,

these mini marts now or buckies or anything like that.

Oh, yeah.

Just little tiny and, you know, mom and pop

raised four kids or five kids

in like a 900 square foot dwelling

and two thirds of it was the storefront.

Yeah.

And we had friends that did that.

And it was like, that was like candy land for me.

I mean, I, you know, if my dad ever needed smokes,

this is how inappropriate they are today, you know,

my dad, I mean, my dad say to my mom,

hey, honey, I'm out of smoke.

So I got to, okay, else you're going to Margaret's.

Okay.

And then they buy me, you know,

I get maybe some candy, some fun dip or something

or some kind of candy and a magazine.

And then of course it had to be

car and driver, road and track.

They had car and driver, road and track,

hot rod, motor, trend and something else.

And they even had cartoons, you know,

the cartoon magazine and I, and I'll go

and all kinds of other stuff.

But, you know, and it was, well, you know,

something that is 75 cents, you know.

I used to walk downtown by myself, seven years old.

You whore.

Branson, Missouri.

Yeah.

I made a buck 50.

I would take a nickel, maybe a dime if I was feeling rich,

but I could take a nickel and go to Alexander Drug

on Main Street in downtown Branson, Missouri

and buy a nickel ice cream cone.

And they had, you know, Norelco products

on their shelves that Jesus used to shave

when he first started.

Is Santa Claus to go down the hill

in Christmas Town with one of those?

You could walk up and they hand-dipped the ice cream,

still had the literally the old soda fountain spigots.

Oh, that's so cool.

And it was just a great little place to go in

and they used to have a place called the Fudge Shop.

It just got torn down just a few years ago.

But that thing had been selling fudge forever.

And I'd get, if I didn't go get the ice cream cone,

I'd get a nickel's worth of white chocolate from them.

And it'd be just this big hunk of vanilla wax.

And so good.

This has really devolved into a walk-down.

Yeah, and I remember winning.

Well, that's why people collect the stuff.

And I'm enjoying it.

Oh, that's fun.

I'm really digging on it.

You know, you are really, really close to Detroit.

And you may even be south of Detroit

because we have such an odd international line up there.

But is it difficult being a car guy in Canada

because you've got to have some vicious winners,

I would think.

I know that Detroit does.

You know, we had, of course, the 70s, that was biblical.

I mean, you know, that was like-

Oh, yeah, 77 and 78.

Oh, man.

And the year before, we got a forte stuff at two even.

Do you know, the funny thing is,

so London would be the home of our school board,

our district school board.

And it's about the school board office

to be about 60 kilometers, about 36 to 40 miles away.

And they were shutting down the bus lines.

And you're even shutting down the schools.

There was one week

where I would think it was three days in a row.

We had clear, sunny skies,

not a lick of snow on the ground.

And London was under several feet of snow.

They called it snowmageddon.

And we didn't have any of it.

And we were laughing every day.

It was just like, we call it the banana belt here where we are.

It's very south.

The lake effect is nearby.

You can watch a winter storm build over, say, three,

three, four weeks, you'll watch it.

If the lake doesn't freeze,

that warm, moist air gets up there.

And you could just see that line of cloud building.

And you know it's gonna drop any minute.

The sword is over your head, but you don't know when.

And it could happen today, tomorrow, two weeks from now.

But you will get a snow storm, but it's OK.

You know, because our winters aren't really bad here where we are.

I've had winners where they had to bring snow throwers from airports

out just to open up the local highways kind of thing.

And there's be a wall of snow on either side.

I can remember snow will be a link through that stuff during the 70s.

And thinking that was just like the bomb, you know.

Well, yeah, when you're a kid, it's fine.

When you're an adult and you have to get to work,

and you have to clear the driveway and you have to do all that other stuff.

Oh, it's just tanks. Oh, yeah.

We get we get good.

So we're the nice cars start coming out on the first real nice day,

say late March, yeah, around here.

And they will, well, you know, people work all thing around here

on on between Christmas and New Year's, several years in a row,

which is kind of cool.

So the cars can stay out about eight months a year.

OK, there's only it's not that bad.

No, no, late, late November through mid to late March.

You're stuck.

And then after that, it's like it's golden again, you know.

So that's not that much different from what we get here.

I thought because I've never lived any farther north in here, except except.

Oh, God, I was so dumb.

I decided that it'd be a good idea to go through Navy basic

in January and February up at Great Mistakes.

Oh, up on the side of Lake Michigan.

And then I learned another lesson.

Don't ever volunteer for snow watch.

It's not what you think, stupid.

You did that on a ship on a Navy ship.

No, no, no, no, going through going through basic.

I thought snow watch was like watching the weather.

No, no, it's not dummy.

Here's your shovel.

Let us know when you're done.

Oh, jeez.

Well, yeah, in Lake Michigan, that's that gets wild in the winter time.

I mean,

and it meets up with Lake Superior.

That's the Edmund Fitzgerald wreck, you know, all that kind of junk.

Like that's that's heavy duty, man.

That's hardcore.

Great Lakes is a little north of Chicago, but boy, it gets hammered

in the winter time and right there.

The wild thing was going through basic

because you get people from all over, you know, you get people that

have all kinds of backgrounds.

And we had several guys in there.

No joke, who were from Alabama and Mississippi and had never seen snow.

Oh, yeah, that'd be a that'd be a trip.

And we'd be marching from one place to another.

And we'd get there and those guys would be frostbitten.

They just they weren't accustomed to it.

And, you know, that you're having that just just not acclimated at all.

Yeah, none, nothing.

We had we had three guys now out of a group of 90 some

three guys who had never seen a swimming pool.

Oh, wow.

Can you imagine?

And that wasn't it wasn't that long ago as well.

OK, well, I just kind of turned the turn the

pulled the curtain back a little bit, not that long ago.

It was only 30 years ago when I got out of the name.

I have experiences like that all the time.

I'm like, well, you know, kids, it's not that long ago when they're going,

dad, you know, it's not like that anymore.

It doesn't seem like it was that long ago.

Put it that way. Oh, yeah. No, yeah.

But we had it's we had three guys who had never seen a swimming pool.

And one of the first things they make sure you know how to do in the navy

because it's kind of important swim.

They want to make sure you know how to swim.

And they they had a big Olympic sized swimming pool at Great Lakes

and they take you in there and there's a 10 meter platform on it.

And they kick you off the platform into the pool.

Well, these three idiots did not swim.

And they didn't say anything before they shoved them in the pool.

Nothing pisses off a navy seal more than having to drag your butt

from the bottom of a pool.

I can't imagine what that'd be like.

I mean, that's, you know, it it seems like any more.

Well, there used to be pools, municipal pools in every town.

Even small ones around here. Yeah.

And then and then they got away because they wanted to protect people

from extreme heat, they got rid of the pools

and they went to splash pads.

And, you know, you walk on the on the splash pad and then the water turns on.

You can't learn how to swim on a splash pad.

Oh, gosh, no, you know, like a local, we had a beautiful local swimming pool

and it got vandalized one time too many.

And which was stupid.

I don't know why this is a service.

This is something generative and beautiful and think about that crap.

And and and it got messed with one time too many.

And what they did is they took the deep end out,

but you need the deep end to be able to learn how to swim.

Yeah, that's where you teach little kids how to swim

and go into the air and all that stuff.

You know, there's an element of danger makes it cool too.

And, you know, it just it's where you learn, right?

Yeah. And yeah, you know, but now it's a splash pad.

So I don't know.

Sometimes I just think again, a tangential conversation

just kind of steered off into the grass.

So about cars.

Yeah, how about those cars?

Yeah, Dave, do you still write descriptions for auctions?

Lots. Yeah, yeah, I sure do.

That's it's my full time deal.

And I'm sure you don't want to mention who.

But if you are writing.

There's a great difference in descriptions

between auction companies, and it really depends

on whose auction you're looking at.

Yeah. And what's starting to happen

is some of the auction companies,

some of the bigger ones have finally caught on.

They got the hint and they're starting to write

and do more research and that might be your fault.

But I'd like to think so.

As an example, worldwide, R.M. Bonhams and Gooding

all do a really good job of doing, you know,

the historical perspective on the car

and giving you a good look into its background

and where it came from and how it came to be and everything else.

And some of the other auction companies

are starting to catch on and they're doing

better background and better history

and they're doing a much better description on the cars.

R.M. Bonhams and Gooding for years

have done such magnificent legwork on those

that when I've been reviewing cars from those sales,

I'm going back and looking through the history going, God bless.

These guys did a lot of research for this.

This is fantastic.

And the thing is there it used to.

OK, so someone said to me a long time ago

when I first was in the business,

oh, that's that's a window dressing.

That's just a bunch of BS and how much

how much filler do you need to put in to make this layout work?

And I said, I don't do that.

I said, secondly, I interviewed the owner.

I interviewed the owner before them.

And then the family member of the late owner before them.

I was on four phone calls. Yeah.

And I made sure I got the story on it

because it needs to come out who redid the restoration on the car

because that can mean the difference between this thing being

a quarter of a million or $50,000.

Well, I have to thank you for making my job easier.

I really appreciate it right on.

Well, I'm I'm glad that you appreciate that because I know you're an insider.

Oh, hell, yes, I appreciate that.

Yeah. Well, that's the thing.

It's you. OK, so if I if I don't have to put a car into its historical context,

everybody knows what it is already.

And I don't and I don't have to say

sell anybody on why it's good or why you want a bit on it.

Then I go and dive.

And I'm totally encouraged by the auction companies I work with dive

right into the car offered, the history of that car alone

and and go from there and build on that.

But sometimes there's up and coming cars that

people don't know the story about how they came to be or how they even got

into production and sometimes that's the story.

Or sometimes it's it's the the famous driver

who helped the factory to develop it or start dialing the dial it in

or something like that.

And so there's some, you know, if there's room and it makes sense.

Great. And some companies, they have a very sort of

very strict, isn't the way to say it, a very defined

layout structure. Sure.

That's, you know, you work within that.

And basically the rule is you go with whatever the specific car is

as much as possible.

And if you have some room for background and why it's cool or why

it's valuable, great, go for it.

But and then there's other companies where they'll say, look, our format

is loosely based on 200 to 350 words.

But if you this is obviously something that's historical

and is really the, you know, the bomb, go for it.

Just we'll pay you extra.

Don't worry about it.

Just just right until you're done and we'll build articles and social

media out of that.

And so it's kind of fun because every house has a different

kind of style of doing things.

And there's certain little leeway kind of ideas where you can

expand or or keep it tight kind of thing.

I can think of two occasions.

When I was writing stuff up for sports car market.

That was awful.

I mean, really bad.

And it's got wheels and tires and and that's where it ends.

And as I'm writing it up, I'm thinking this one gets me fired.

I'm not going to have a job after this.

But what I thought of is a stinking funny.

I'm not letting it go.

I'm going to turn it in.

And on both cars, because they don't, you know, when you do

auction reporting and you do 50 cars from a sale,

they don't run every car.

They'll run most of them.

And so I'll do I used to do like one or two

for kickouts where the cars were just terrible.

And one of them was a custom car.

Meekum is about to sell this car again

from what's it called Larry's stuff or something like that.

They got an auction coming up in Larry's legacy.

Yeah, Larry's legacy.

OK, it's it's the Studebaker Ice Princess, that weird two tone

ice blue and pearl white custom that some guy melded together

from a couple of Cadillacs and a Studebaker.

It has two front axles. God, yes.

That it's it's horrible.

And I reviewed that from a lake auction in Scottsdale.

Or no, maybe it was a Russo auction in Scottsdale.

It's been quite a few years back.

But my opening line on the description was there's more

ugly on this thing than a Rolling Stones group photo.

And I figured and throw in the throw in the groupies.

Oh, and I threw in a lot of stuff after

and they cut some of the description out, but not much

because I made a reference to Timothy Larry, but.

They ran that close to verbatim.

Right on. And, you know, the magazine came out.

I saw it.

I called my editor editor and I said, are you out of your affin mind?

And he said, that was the funniest thing to come out of Scottsdale.

There's no way we weren't running it.

Right on. That's he that's editorial integrity.

Fantastic. And I've done it twice.

And I mean, I'll get a little sarcastic here and there.

But two of them, I thought, this one gets me fired.

Screw it. Let's see what happens.

And both times they ran him verbatim.

Both times I asked my editor if he was out of his mind.

And both times he said, I laugh so stinking hard.

There was no way I wasn't doing it.

So I pulled a stunt like that once for an auction catalog.

They put a buggy in like, and supposedly it was like an actual,

you know, circa 1860s buggy that someone had.

I don't know. There's no way to tell.

And how do you draw and they expected?

Yeah, how do you get provenance on that?

Yeah, they expected it.

Like it is not like going to be like a body tag

or a trim tag or something on it, you know,

or a fender tag like on a Mopar.

So the funny thing was, and they expected a full page layout on this.

And I was like, I don't know what to do.

So I just went the comedy route.

And I just said, and you had to come up with specs.

Even I said, do I have to put specifications?

And the catalog manager said, well, please,

because it has to be consistent with the rest of the catalog.

I said, it's impossible to remind.

And I said, OK, just to be stupid,

I held on to that one till the very end of my package

of what I needed to provide for this auction.

I and I and I said.

Horsepower one or two,

depending on the amount of whipping applied.

And they put it in the catalog.

And I said, I didn't expect you to do this.

Like now I'm going to sound like I'm like, you know,

the SPCA needs to come after me and give me a, you know,

a mind, a mind meld or something.

Yeah. But how many of the people who read that laugh out loud?

And I hope I hope a lot of people got a kick out of it.

And thought, well, it's good to see that they're not.

Completely serious to the point of not having a sense of humor.

Well, yeah, and that's the thing, you can be so involved

and so self aware and in a tunnel,

like half tunnel vision or being an echo chamber.

Where you're not relating to people anymore.

You're just pushing your own agenda.

And so that, that, well, the graphic designer for that catalog,

he had for years made a tradition of two or three times in a catalog.

If there were Chrome hubcaps, he would put a little layered image

of Arnold Schwarzenegger from the seventies, from Pumping Iron.

So be, if you looked real hard enough, you'd see it

and it'd be like a little Easter egg for fun.

And or say there was a road sign or something

or there was some kind of a something associated with the main image.

And they would he would put it was always Arnold

from Pumping Iron from the seventies or Muscle and Fitness Magazine.

And it was just the funniest.

There was once there was a body of water behind

all one of those panther watercars and somehow in the in the reflection

from the pool or the lake, there's Arnold.

You know, it was just bizarre.

I don't know how he did it.

Yeah, but it was just it was and I only learned of that a couple of years

after I started working with that company.

I I don't know.

It was like so every time you get the catalog, you're looking for it.

But now I'm looking. Yeah, I've got to see it.

Right. You know, I can't look away now.

I haven't pulled that stunt in a while

with, you know, finding a car that's awful

and then trying to have some fun with it.

The one of the other guys who works with me

is a guy named B. Mitchell Carlson.

Yes, B. Mitchell is he does have a rather

raucous sense of humor.

You just got to pull it out of him.

Oh, OK. But I think he did.

It was a new studs when they did them in the late sixties and early seventies

and they were making them on Jeff's style.

Yeah, when they were making them on GM platforms and everything.

I love those cars.

I think they're the bomb.

Yeah, well, I want one.

One of them I'm trying to remember.

I think it had like a gilded steering wheel in it.

Nice. And oh, man, B.

Mitchell let it let that car have it.

He just went after this.

He made several references to being a Pimpmobile.

And if you're out looking for your, what do you say,

hired horizontal help?

I wouldn't know what that is.

I've got to go find the description again,

because it was so good and it was so if you find it,

don't be afraid to send that to me because that's the kind of stuff.

I need that just to kind of just get real again.

You know, sometimes you deal with like multimillion dollar

Ferraris or something with a ton of history.

And it's it's a it's a it's a history project.

And then and then it's like something like that

just sort of cleanses the palate.

It's like an amuse-bouche just to.

Yeah, I'll I'll go find it.

Here he said the paint if memory serves,

he said the paint job rivaled your favorite bass boat.

And it was fantastic.

And I I was telling him about being afraid

that the description I sent in was going to get me candy.

He says, no, it won't go look at this.

You know, I think I think sometimes you're expected to put it.

OK, it's like when I was in banking, it's like

if you don't have one or two loans that go bad

or you're not trying hard enough, you're not doing enough.

OK, so you got to kind of it's weird.

Sometimes you just kind of like if the music's right,

the coffee roast is good.

There you go.

You know, I'm just sort of like in the zone kind of thing.

And and and all of us and I'm listening to something really obscure.

And then there's this that turn of phrase that just just cracks it by it open.

And, you know, and you're actually doing justice to it

because you're putting in some some content.

It's like I did a big collection of TV and movie cars.

And in and I always glaze over when I hear TV and movie car.

Because they're usually awful.

Yeah. And how many are fakes and how many are of sketchy provenance?

Oh, yeah. This one, this one was.

All but one was legit.

I mean, like they were they were TV and movie used.

They were, you know, there was one that George

Barris's crew built and just for it was for my mother, the car,

which is supposedly the worst TV show ever made.

And George, George and his crew made two of these cars.

And they in one had a false floor that could be removed.

And George would sit down.

He volunteered just because that's the guy the guy he was.

He volunteered to get in the car, sit down under the seat

in a false bottom, a false floor and steer the car.

There was an extra steering wheel brakes and throttle underneath the car.

Well, this one had it.

It there were two of these and this one had those things.

And so it was like legit.

It was the real one used on screen and so.

But anyway, the car had like I think it went for I don't if it brought

ten thousand dollars, that was it's probably all the money in the world.

Yeah.

But I liked it because there is so much.

There were two drag racers that worked with George to build the car.

And it was an original street rod at one time

and they they made it into something else.

And that's what these guys were doing.

So there's layer upon layer upon layer of interesting stuff.

The car in the end, not worth that much.

It's pocket change for most people that go to these things.

And but I loved it.

I thought it was my favorite thing of all, you know, there.

And there was the whole gamut of value in this 53 cars.

But I, you know,

one of the things you mentioned, too, is about a car that was so bad

that you had that kind of goof on and have a little fun.

Sure. So there was a clone of a

a non legitimate Torino that was a clone of a star skin hutch car.

OK. And the son of the owner

of the late owner insisted it was a real car because there's an article

from 1979 in a magazine showing it being repainted and they were claiming

it was a legit car.

So Kevin Marty produced a report.

All those cars came through like the Los Angeles for district sales office.

There and this one was sold new in Connecticut or Boston or something.

And it was originally blue.

And so it was just BS from the beginning.

Sure. But it was done up like the striped tomato of Starsky.

So. Cool.

In and of itself, you know, it's a clone, but let's have a little fun.

Let's loosen up a little bit and not be so serious.

So, you know, it's like it's not that funny, but I referred to

Huggie Bear as an urban information broker, which is what he said

in one of the in one of the shows.

Right. And and, you know, and I just said, let's, you know,

let loose and have a little fun with this. Right.

Or there's there's other there was a car.

OK. So Wayne Newton sold two or three cars

through an auction company a few years ago.

He was selling off his I think he had sold his home outside of Vegas.

He had a private jet airstrip on it even.

And Vegas vacation was filmed there.

And he actually had.

And so I think they made up a bit of a set for Chevy Chase

to crash into the building because he's jealous of Wayne Newton

hitting on his wife.

And so I don't think they did any damage to the real building.

But so I was asked to call him.

And I had the number given to me.

And I and it was OK to call and set up a time.

So we emailed back and forth.

His wife looks out for the man.

She's sort of keeping him.

He's so kind and so gentle and so nice that he needs barriers.

Yeah. And he's an interesting guy, super nice.

Well, I wasn't Starstruck.

We were just talking and it was business needed to be done.

I had a time for him to get these cars done.

One of his cars was a 380 SL Mercedes that was.

There was a guy who was a coach builder and a body specialist.

And so he's kind of between a coach builder

and a limo builder and a and a customizer

with a K in New York somewhere.

And he modified this guy's

he modified the Mercedes that Wayne eventually owned.

And there was somebody.

Are you looking that up?

I want to see a picture of it.

It's it's it's it's controversial, if anything.

It's it's I'm I'm going to see if I should see if I can find it.

It's it's a very controversial car.

And when it was new, it was modified.

And so here I am.

I'm a child of the seventies.

And I so I'm kind of like digging it because, you know,

every show on TV was a 380 SL, a 450 SL kind of thing.

Or, you know, and it was that was sort of like a car.

You made it.

You you had a sense of quality and taste.

So you bought one of those.

And and then this this body was quite modified.

Yeah, I can't I can't even I found it.

Is it? Oh, yeah. Oh, that's horrible.

And you know what the damn thing is?

I when I learned about who built it or who did it

and why they did it and and that it it was actually

somebody noted for quality work.

And you know, the design, I think was, you know, actually, I got

somebody from Heming's commented on the car

after it was posted and by the auction company.

And they went, oh, this is ugly.

This is terrible. It's an abomination.

Oh, my God, why?

And I went back to them and I said, well, actually, you know,

it was built by this guy who has the stellar reputation as a coach builder.

It the the it was I forget what the purpose was for the modifications.

Anyway, there was something to do with the original owner wanted it that way.

And and and I said, actually, the work is next level.

It may not be everybody's taste, but it's interesting.

Yeah. And I ideally the hell out of that every day.

I would just do it just. OK, we have a.

It is your body.

Yeah, we have a marina nearby sidebar.

Everybody's got their sea rays and their fishing boats and stuff like this.

I would love to roll in there with one of those great big,

you know, like a Rodney Dangerfield kind of boat and call it seafood,

like from Gatyshack and just go roll in.

But I give everybody rides and beers and we'd have fun.

Yeah, it'd be just so loud and obnoxious, but it would be fun.

And and so that's how the spirit I've got kind of like a national ampouli

kind of damaged brain magazine, you know, like from way back.

So I'm I'm brain damaged and broken from all that

because I just would sit there and laugh at stuff like that.

But look at it. It's a retractable hard top.

Yeah, yeah, like the workmanship and the engineering that went into this

is his next level.

It's not everybody's taste, of course. No, it isn't.

I would daily that thing.

I would go to the I just I would treat it well and I would give it a home

and I daily it just just because it is interesting to see that guy

that writes about Ferraris and Maston Martins all the time.

He lost his mind.

I would just like to see the cognitive dissonance

and people that watch me go by.

I would. Hi, hi, hi, hi.

Yeah, yeah, it would be worth it.

OK, so like, you know, these car shows and stuff,

there's people that have like fabulous cars

and wonderful cars and well presented cars.

And then there's some guy that goes by in a 75 Chevy Monza

that's got sketchy paint on it.

But they've got that tent kit that you could buy from the dealer.

And and more people are gravitating to that than, you know,

then then something that's like really super awesome, you know.

And I don't want it to just be a Monza.

I want it to be a Monza Mirage

with all the plastic bodywork stuck on it.

Me is a car crazy kid in the 70s and 80s.

OK, so we used to go to and from.

OK, teachers run strikes.

So we went to another school and you had to be bussed

way away from that from our home.

And there was a McDonald's.

No, there wasn't a McDonald's.

There was a Chevy dealer, an old school Chevy dealer

with the old school showroom.

You know, you put two cars in the showroom

and the rest were outside, sitting around.

And I go inside and I love the salesman.

I had to have the new brochures.

Yeah, check out is, you know, where's the turbo on this engine?

Like, you know, are you getting good feedback from the customer?

This is me at 14, you know, I'm just like nerding out on all this.

And that salesman is like, kid, I got stuff to do.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

You know, they were they were just like they were quite quite nice.

But, you know, it was it was it was funny.

But anyway, it's that sort of

there's sort of a type of car that's been customized or whatever.

It's not everybody's taste.

And it's like, yeah, but it was in rotten custom three times in the 60s.

And I saw it at an auction years later and so and so built it.

You know, and I'm like, therefore, it is valuable to me.

And I like, there's there's a there's a 1930 Ford pickup custom.

And it was called it had a name.

It was built by a guy in Colorado in Denver.

And then and it was like a show rod.

So it was like really cool.

And then it went through three or four iterations.

And then it became extremely cheesy.

I mean, cheesy like they they they took out the floorpans

and put plastic glass down and it had this heavy metal flake.

It was perfect, the first iteration.

And then it just got progressively goddier.

But I love it.

I want to find it and get it because, you know,

because it's been in so many magazines and there's the histories

locked down from day one.

And I'm like, you know what, I take that out and show it off.

And yet it is cheesy.

But, you know, for some reason, I like it.

So you can have a, you know, Ferrari 275 GTB for one auction.

And then you could have this this thing here, you know, this custom with a K.

And, you know, you'd probably get more people looking at the custom

with a K or the Volkswagen Beetle or, you know, then then the high end stuff.

People people kind of zone out a little bit unless they're in that space.

You know, they they they often gravitate to the the the weirder.

The unique kind of stuff.

Yeah. And sometimes it's not even that it's awful,

although if you ever go to Concord of Lemons, you'll see awful.

But it's something you don't see ever, ever.

And yeah, it might be a custom car or a hot rod.

I've I've seen so many exotics from all the auctions and everything.

Yeah, that's that's OK.

I'm usually looking at them thinking that's going to hurt my knees to get in and out of.

Oh, yeah. And there's so much of that right now.

Yeah, there's a lot of people that are like, you know what?

I have to have something with, you know, taller seats or any

to something that's not such a challenge to get in and out of.

Older Corvettes, you know, if you first and second gen Corvettes,

they're not as low to the ground as a lot of stuff.

I've got an easier time getting in and out of them.

So, you know, sometimes it's just that it's unique.

That draws the eye and you want to see what it is.

Again, you know, how many how many Lamborghinis have you written up?

How many Ferraris have you written up?

How many? Well, I find it hard to keep up with the latest ones.

The latest. I question one years ago.

Yeah, because it's it's like you get to a point where it's just, OK,

the only difference is paint and interior options.

Do you want Alcantara or do you want leather?

Well, and there's also the another consideration on them.

Exotics are great, but there are a lot of exotics that just prove

the guy figured out how to make a lot of money

versus having truly vintage cars that require stewardship

in order to answer it.

And I'm a lot more impressed when I see a super clean Mercedes Pagoda,

you know, a sixty four to seventy one SL

than I am when I see a new Lamborghini.

OK, that's great. It's really fast.

It's it's very low to the ground.

I don't know that after Mercedes Lagos, I can tell them

or Ed Bullion would kill me.

Mercedes Lago that I can't.

You know, I know I know an Aventador has got a more jagged look in front end.

But after that, I can't really tell them apart.

I can't tell you what they are.

Yeah, I got to look it up.

I hope there's a description in the windshield

because I just on on all the newer exotic stuff.

So much of it looks alike

from a distance. I and I'm the world's biggest vat head from a distance.

I have trouble telling an eighth generation Corvette

apart from a McLaren or a Lamborghini.

They all look so similar in the front end.

I can't really tell you that much.

Yeah. The styling is very similar.

The performance is similar.

There's so many similarities.

It's but, you know, like, again, being a car crazy kid in the 70s,

it's like walking into the dealer when we're getting an oil change or

something and, oh, my God, a 76 Corvette.

It's a 45 horsepower.

You can get a four speed. Oh, my God.

Yeah. And kind of suspension. Wow.

And that, you know, yeah, now there's so.

But a Corvette didn't look like anything else then.

No, that was the car.

And now it's well, you can get deviated stitching

and you can get the contrasting seat belts.

I'm like, I feel like a tool sometimes saying that it's work.

It's work. It's work.

So I've got my job is I've got to do the best

to make it as interesting as possible

or as appealing as possible

while telling it the story truthfully

and not and having facts to back whatever I say up.

But you, yeah, it is it is like that.

It's it's I find I don't have to do research on the older stuff anymore.

It's the brand new stuff that comes to option

that I really need to knuckle down with and learn more.

I do have a burning question in my head, though,

about Wayne Newton's 1981 Mercedes Benz.

Oh, I look it up. I see what it sold for.

Yeah. Well, actually, my burning question is,

does it smell more like high karate or bro cream?

I'm looking at rolling the warehouse

and I'm just like, I don't know what to think about it.

You know, it's a lot of wrong.

Both of those funds.

Oh, no, you're tripping me back now to both of those aromas.

Take me back to when my dad would get ready, you know,

with my mom to do something special.

They had the high karate.

It was what else?

My dad was a British sterling man with butch wax.

Oh, that's you.

That's my taste.

My dad was an English leather guy,

but grandpa Hattie was an Aramis guy.

Aramis. Oh, my God.

Oh, it was all mine.

I know the smell of Aramis, man.

That's leather, death and a little bit of vanilla.

Was that was that a Carl Lagerfeld scent?

You know what? I haven't any idea.

I use that in a past life once.

Yes, yes, I did.

So so when I was in university, I did a

I worked as an airport shuttle driver

and I was the youngest one in the fleet.

I was the one I think they could have three

aged 24 and less and under, and I was one of those guys.

And I loved it because you meet all kinds of people.

It was crazy.

Like it was really fun, like air crews from the cabin crews

and the pilots and stuff from the airlines,

travelers, business people.

There was a professor from the nearby university that was

while he almost got burned at the stake for the theories.

He was espousing and but he was cool with me.

Like we were just, you know, it was just we talked about everything,

but his whatever he was doing and it was fun.

And and but but I I I wore Aramis one time.

I had I bought it.

I thought I'd be really sophisticated.

It smelled good in the GQ pages.

And you could get I used to buy GQ and then wipe the stuff.

The pages. There you go.

Oh, yeah, I was I was a distinguished gentleman.

So you cheap, wonderful smell and bastard you.

Exactly. So it was Aramis.

And I remember that was a very edgy set.

Like it was like it would either land.

He'd either stick the landing with the with the passengers

or they think you just rolled around and, you know, in the barn,

you know, kind of thing. It was I found it to be very edgy.

But anyway, that's my my sidebar. Sorry.

Grandpa swam in it.

Oh, you could smell that with polo.

Yeah, you can't now.

Polo is too expensive.

Yeah.

Jovan musk or brute.

Oh, God. My first up.

My first. Her name was Cindy.

It was in high school and brute was, you know, her love language.

Oh, no. And I would frickin bathe in that stuff.

Yes. You know, they put extra pheromones in that.

Yeah, I don't know what they squeezed it from, but it worked.

They'd make it 60 percent of the time.

60 percent of the time it worked 100 percent time.

Yeah, 100 percent.

Fairly stings the nostrils.

You know, when you told me you'd do anything to get laid,

I didn't know you'd go that far.

Hell, yeah. Desperate times, comfort, desperate measures.

You know what?

Maybe there's a there needs to be a comeback of brute thirty three

if it's still on the shelf. Oh, my God.

I'm sure there is, but it's in a it's at an antique mall.

Well, somewhere there's a dead mongoose going, man, that guy smelled good.

Oh, Lord.

You know, before a wine of cougars coming after.

Oh, wow. Before we get any further into the weeds here, kids.

Dave, you've launched motor copia.

First of all, what's the name mean?

And secondly, what exactly is it?

Yeah, you know what?

I had a terrible cold in the spring.

I was down for half the day and fulfilling my duties the rest of the day.

And I said, I've got it.

I have a vision of something I need to do online.

So I I I I tried doing buyers guides or value guides online on my website.

And the readership was was next to no friends, family and people being nice.

One one post got a whole mess of hits, though,

because somebody on Reddit picked it up and it was a movie truck.

And it was just the most random stupid thing that I wrote about.

But I thought, you know, I'm just going to do this today.

And and anyway, it ended up being the most successful post.

So there was no logic involved.

I was trying to get a read on what people want.

So what I did was motor copia.

First of all, to answer your question, motor's obvious, anything motorized.

So it could be cars, trucks, boats, aircraft, RVs.

I was wondering if you were going to get aircraft in there.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, I love airplanes.

I'm a airplane nut.

And so things like that.

Like, you know, I found you could you can buy one of the prototype F4

Phantoms from 1959.

Yeah, yeah.

My dad used to build those back in the 60s.

Yeah. What was it?

Didn't they have a plant?

Wasn't there a McDonnell Douglas plant?

Yeah, it was up in St. Louis.

We lived in. Yeah.

God, what was it?

St. Charles and so cool.

He was a he did metal work for F4 Phantoms.

And then we went down to Atlanta, Georgia,

and he helped build the first C5A.

Oh, wow. Those are massive.

Big. Oh, yeah.

Oh, that's so huge.

1968. That would have been so cool.

Yeah. So you can buy like anything you want.

You remember, Ken, I'm on here looking at this

and you've got an F4 Phantom article.

I know that's crazy.

And it was used in a test program

that helped convince the Navy to buy it.

Oh, that's cool. Yeah, yeah.

So, you know, stuff like that.

So like, you know, what I found in this space we're in is

there's a market for pretty much anything and everything.

And it could be what I tell people, as I say,

it's an inch wide and a mile deep

as far as these these these markets within markets

and warbirds. Definitely.

That's one of them.

I mean, I brokered a deal

for a World War Two airplane that was raised up

from once the lake thawed in Eastern Europe.

It was raised up with air bladders.

I talked to the guy that did that.

He had to have a sniper on point

just when they were raising these airplanes

in case bears were getting too close

and he would be ready to fire them with a sniper rifle.

Crazy. You know, and I got to talk to the guy.

He passed away 10 years ago.

That was his second career was bringing up warbirds

from the old battlefields in Europe and Eastern Europe.

And so that's where this plane comes from.

Long story short, I brokered a deal

to to get it in the hands of the current owner.

He bought it and then had it restored.

He has a restoration shop yet another that works for him

quite a bit.

And he had a previous award-winning airplane

that he still has and he was able to swing this deal.

And it was restored with very little replacement parts

being needed to be used in the process.

And it won all the all the honors at Oshkosh

there a couple of years ago and it flies.

There's videos every now and then of the thing starting and flying.

And the guy the guy was a Navy F-18 jock

and he became a surgeon.

And but so the warbird thing is sort of a real deal with me.

I'd like to do more and I'd like to post more stuff on this website

because and the more unusual stuff that people can

that there are buyers for this stuff, you know, for this kind of hardware,

which is really amazing to me.

And so that's sort of where I was going.

And so I went from like a content standpoint

and a buyer's guide standpoint to

taking a hard look at what what what's lacking today.

And what I found is a weird thing

is I was working on sort of an algorithm

that would allow us to see what the past month did or the past week.

I'm trying to increase the cadence of posting.

So I'm testing on whether or not I can go weekly.

So last week, what the fear and greed index is

or the market sentiment is last week for the last time.

And I did this during Monterey before, during and after.

And so the idea is, where's the market?

Are we in extreme fear or extreme greed?

Are people hungry to buy or are people selling or are people sitting on the shelf?

So, you know, and holding.

So it's a it's a weekly thing where I put an index out.

And I think we're sort of in a cautiously optimistic sort of phase

right now in the collector car market in general.

Numbers out of mind, I would suggest that people are still hungry for good stuff.

Yeah. Yeah.

And the the consignments that we're coming through that I was seeing were better

and more interesting than in a couple of previous years.

And, you know, so there's a number of reasons why.

But, you know, the idea is that people are still buying

and people are still having fun.

And this is probably one of the the most fun ways you can buy something

that has value and may potentially be a store of value for somebody.

It's not about money all the time.

But what I thought was, OK, there's so many publications

that are covering and online properties that are covering enthusiasts stuff.

And and and I love all that too.

And I go to all these events too.

But I was thinking, who would want to know where the market has just been?

What the sentiment is and where the market's going in the next week or the next month?

I have another.

Yeah, I've got another algorithm that produces a report that says

this is this is what we're looking forward to in the next week or the next month.

And the expectation is good or or where there's

and I also do this for specific vehicles.

And so if the if I call it a so it's like a financial newsletter.

It's low on images.

It's low on pictures, but there are graphics inside.

And there's a chart that says, you know, I've got a graphic designer

working on something for me that'll be a cool indicator of where the market is.

And it'll be, you know, so is it a high conviction buy

or are people holding or are people cautious or are they selling?

And so it's that kind of an idea.

So it's kind of like a financial newsletter.

And so people would be able to join the membership or something.

I have to get a few other things locked down.

The process is down.

The algorithm is set.

And now I just need to run the data on a regular basis and find subscribers.

So that's the next thing.

I'm a subscriber right now.

So I would like it.

If you would let me know when you've got everything organized.

I have one suggestion.

It's going to be a ton of work and a huge pain in the ass.

But you might break out graphs by Mark.

Just curious to see, you know, is our Ferraris up down or lame,

you know, anything that you find interesting.

It's a consideration.

You don't have to do it, but it's an idea.

It's also going to be a royal pain in the ass.

Oh, yeah, I can only imagine.

I'm curious.

I don't know how you guys do what you do, though.

I mean, podcast is a major commitment.

It is an end.

It isn't.

I mean, it's a major commitment in that you always got to go find a guest

and you hope they're interesting and you hope that, you know,

you're not trying having to pull the interview out of them.

And we don't get that very often, you know, usually,

you know, if it's somebody I've met, oh, wow, we're chatting.

What a surprise.

But the other part is this show was Mark's idea,

but it was a brilliant idea.

And initially it was going to be a radio show and we set it up that way.

And Mark was still in radio.

And so we were recording at his studio at work after hours.

And so, you know, it's something that I think we both really enjoyed doing.

We're seven years deep and we're still doing it.

Oh, yeah, it's clear.

I mean, like I have talked to you on the phone before, Brett,

but not in this forum.

Yeah. And Mark, it's my first time getting to meet you.

And it's clear that you guys have, you know, you gel well together.

And we'd like to give each other maximum crap.

We're pretty good at that.

Whatever works.

Why the hell would you say that?

What's wrong with you?

Shut your bio.

What's wrong with you?

Yeah, you know, and so it's and it's a natural it's a natural extension

of your experience, Mark.

So it makes it makes utter sense.

And me as a writer, for me, doing this motor copia venture,

it's it's different because I'm I'm trying to deal with data,

which is not my strength, but I've learned over the years

how to interpret signals and signs because of a bit of a financial background.

Not as an analyst or anything.

But nonetheless, it's it's I think it's something that people

there's a certain cadre of people that will want to see it.

It's not for everybody.

And I don't want to be for everybody.

I you know, like I like I've done a little bit of exploratory

social posting when I drop a new post or a new report

and, you know, lands with a flood.

And I thought, well, why am I, you know, investing that effort

when I could just put it in to get the reports done more frequently?

You know, kind of an idea.

So anyway, back to your original question,

motor obvious copia is just the it's an invented word motor copia.

But basically copia being just the the broadness of of

enthusiast vehicles, expensive vehicles or collector vehicles of all types.

It could be a drag.

You know, I've got a post on a drag boat that's kind of local to me

made in California, but there's a guy near me that owns it.

You know, there's Eric, you know, that F4 Phantom.

Where is this? There's there's a movie truck.

You know, there's a whole lot of stuff in there.

There's up and coming collectibles like

the Chevy SSR, the Plymouth Prowler and the Chrysler Crossfire

really have not gotten any love and they seem to be range bound in value.

But there's and there's an abundance of them out there.

Well, wasn't the crossfire built on the SLK platform?

Didn't that come out of the the Mercedes and a Panistar, the Chrysler merge?

Yeah, actually, is the first new Chrysler after the the Daimler Chrysler

emerge and greatly you brought that up.

I'm a huge Volkswagen, a German car fan.

So Carmen coach works is a big deal to me.

Long gone. Now, I think in 2009, they stopped the the the cease production.

But the that's who made the the body.

So it's Chrysler design.

Carmen did the body and and the SLK is the is the mechanical basis.

Yeah. And there it is.

So it's at the bottom of age two.

I managed to buy one last year in the spring time

from the widow of the original owner, and it's an old four with six feet.

And I I was there to help her find a buyer.

And finally, the lady said, you know what, don't worry.

I know I could probably try to get a certain amount, but I'm not.

I got to liquidate my stuff.

I'm moving. My my mom is in long term care.

I I need to just move on with my life.

She said, you seem to like it a lot and you're going to give it a good home,

right? And I said, yeah, she says, here, this is what I'll I'll need from you for it.

These things are cheap.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.

You can buy a really, you know, a beautiful car, a beautiful example

for not a lot of money.

And and then, of course, they had the convertible and they had the SRT6

with the with the supercharger.

And you get a six meter and automatic.

And I just love that car.

I it's so what I can compare it to.

I had a five liter Mustang back in the 80s, late 80s, and it's almost as quick.

And it's it's it's actually a little faster.

Yeah. And and it's really fun.

And, you know,

and then the thing is when Chrysler was developing that car,

they they from the outset said we want a polarizing car.

We want to be like the air flow for the model.

Oh, yeah. I think they were fine with that.

It doesn't they didn't want if there's in the press releases,

we don't want everybody to fall in love with us.

This is what we're doing.

So there's a lot of cues that go back to the thirties in it even.

And then the way the rear window kind of tapers back to that hatch tapers back,

it almost looks like a stingray a little bit in some respects.

But I really dig it.

And it's been a lot of fun.

It's my first fun car in years.

So, you know, that's been a huge blessing.

Well, the grooves in the hood kind of have that air flow look.

Oh, yeah. So, yeah.

And then and then the the the lettering,

this the chrome letters on the hatch, they have those little

well, there's like little I don't know what to say.

They're the way they drew this the font.

It's it's right from a nineteen thirty five Chrysler air flow brochure.

So, yeah, and I didn't even know that.

And then I was writing an air flow and I went,

hey, that kind of looks like the script from the crossfire.

Well, you you've got, you know, you said you've got this crossfire in your stable.

What else do you have right now?

What do you have for fun stuff?

You said this was your first fun car, but in the same breath,

you also said you had an eighties five oh Mustang.

Those things were fun and still pretty visceral.

Oh, yeah, I love that car that now I wish I still had it.

I had it for almost 10 years and from new.

It was I bought it in eighty seven and I special ordered it first.

And then there was a car identical to the car I ordered

that came available from another dealer a couple of days later.

The same color, the same trim, like everything.

And I wanted just the five point oh hatchback.

I didn't want the GT with all the scoops and

flares and all that.

I wanted it.

Actually, if I what I what I really wanted badly was the

the police package. Oh, the notch back.

Yeah, that's the deal.

That was the one.

And then they started just offering them.

It used to be, I think in the mid eighties,

they developed the police package and then you had to, you know,

order them and stuff a certain way.

But they were just making them very much the same kind of car.

You know, by eighty seven, I think it was.

So I was down the clown.

I read all the all the test reports.

I said fourteen, six, fourteen, seven in the quarter mile,

one hundred and forty some odd miles an hour, giddy up.

I'm good to go.

So I got it and and it came.

Actually, the car I got was one that was already on a truck bound for another dealer.

So the guy, the salesman called, says, you know, it's here.

Do you want it?

I said, well, let's, you know, he said, we'll go for a test drive.

And the guy was a muscle car guy from the sixties, early seventies.

So the salesman, so I was in good company.

And, you know, we had a lot of fun on a nice test drive.

And it was just it was so tight and and good handling.

The mechanicals were so solid and dependable.

And I was the bad ass of my area for a few years until

till they put 200 horsepower in a Camry and then I was cut after that.

It was pretty fun.

It was pretty fun to be be kind of the, you know,

have the fast car in town kind of thing for a little while.

No, I get it. I get it.

Responsive and tight and such a nice car.

Loved it.

So the crossfires, what you have now?

Yeah, you long for your past Mustang.

Oh, yeah. Anything else fun or is it?

Here's something really strange.

I love I got a deal.

I have a sort of a mental block.

I love stuff from the nineties and the early 2000s.

So I remember being my wife and I were first married.

We're, you know, first had our first real jobs, you know, stuff like that.

I it was there's no way I would ever get one.

But road and track, all those magazines, they had the

the Mercedes Benz E class that they came out with.

I think it was 97 through 2001 or two with the

they had that sort of the oval kind of headlights.

Yeah. And I always loved that body style.

I always thought it was the bomb.

So one came, my son needed a car.

And so one came up at auction.

It was 1300 Canadian plus commissions and taxes.

So it was about 1600 Canadian by the time it was done.

Oh, wow. I so I got it.

And then the auctioneer said they called me and said,

OK, so it's time to pay the bill.

And so I said, OK, well, can you take

he transfer or whatever, or do you want me to come by the office?

And they said, well, you know, you can do it online.

And but the only problem is the car is in Sioux, St.

Marie, Ontario, which is eight hours away.

Oh, no. And I said, hold on a second here.

And I know these folks.

And I said, I'm not trying to put too fine a point on this,

but it said it was located

half an hour from me when the before the auction.

And I've all know that was a mistake.

It's it's eight hours away.

And you'll have to get a truck.

And I said, well, no, I printed out the listing before I started bidding.

And it said it was at your office half an hour away.

So long story short, I ended up having a they they covered the shipping.

Oh, and it was it was delivered a couple weeks later.

And and actually it was better than I expected.

There were a couple of little cosmetic things that needed to be done.

Like there's like a little at that price. Hell, yes, there are.

Yeah, you see, you can't go wrong.

I mean, so it got delivered.

It was in an enclosed trailer and everything.

And then it was nicer than I thought it would be.

And so it turns out the car had never seen winter.

He what happened was the the dealer

bought it from friends of mine, as I found out, I went through the trunk

and I found an old paper dealer plate, a cardboard dealer plate from Sarasota

from and it was from the dealership that a friend of mine

and his dad have that's where they bought where this guy bought it.

And then he instead of it was during code.

Instead of flying home, he bought a car for

thousand bucks and drove it home to San Susie on a dealer plate.

And so that's how it ended up there.

But there were friends of mine that owned it and had it on their lot.

And they it was their neighbor's car from new.

And the car fax is about seven or eight pages deep with maintenance.

That's all done to it over the years. No rust.

And so we have that here as well.

So that's officially my son's car.

But three point two liter, five speed automatic.

Yeah, not bad.

Oh, yeah, two hundred and fifteen horsepower.

It's it's all you need.

And it's it's it's still, you know, we had it safety checked.

Had the brakes done like it's still from the time when you can turn the brakes

on a on a on a lathe or the you know, the rotors and it's OK.

You don't like it's not like stuff today where everybody's replacing rotors

and and the calipers at every turn.

So it's got a lot of the old overbuilt Mercedes kind of in it.

But just enough quirks to keep keep it interesting as well.

But it's it's really nice to drive. Oh, my gosh.

Now, the interior got sun baked, you know, it's it needs a lot of love.

But it's it looks decent.

And again, it's it's super cheap and you drive down the street

and people are turning their heads and looking at you.

You know, I was surprised about that.

I thought, you know, nobody's going to understand why I'm driving an old Benz.

But so it has one hundred and seventy three thousand miles.

And I'd like to see now with proper TLC how far we can take.

Yeah, nice. You can take them a long, long way.

All right, Dave, you're in the crosshairs now, buddy.

What's the dumbest thing you've ever done in a car?

Oh, there's a lot.

There's stories that I was forbidden from telling the children that the statute

of limitations no longer applies.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know what?

I'm going to I could I could push this a little bit my way.

So we've got our adult children are our children are adults now.

And so I can tell the story. There you go.

OK, must with the Mustang Sprint first nice day in spring.

I'm on the the 401 are kind of interstate.

And for some reason, the speedometer, it was a new car to me.

So the speedometer is creeping up, creeping up, creeping up.

I'm not watching it.

And I see a really interesting car in the distance in the other lane.

And it's a a Lincoln Mark three.

And you don't see them much anymore.

You know, it's kind of a kind of a really off the wall cool kind of thing.

And as it turned out, we were doing 110 miles an hour.

Jesus. And of course, the Mustangs rock solid.

It had those Goodyear Gatorback tires, you know, and the Lincoln is just,

you know, he's just cruising and having a good time.

He waves at me and we hit a we go past Highway Overpass.

And it's all straight and nice and nobody's on the road.

It's early in the morning.

All of a sudden an OPP Constable, Ontario Provincial Police,

he's in the median strip and he's got his radar pointed out.

So he's got two bodies and we're way over the limit.

I mean, we're going to be in serious trouble.

Yeah. And, you know, and I don't need any of that kind of trouble.

So the weird thing was, this is like something out of the trucker movie

or something, an outlaw trucker movie.

So I slowed down.

I downshift from overdrive in the fourth and I'm ready to I'm slowing down enough

that I'm ready to grab third and just kind of pull off to the side

with my tail between my legs.

The Lincoln keeps going.

I don't even think he slowed down and he's gone.

And all of a sudden I'm looking out of out of my corner, my left eye.

The police cruiser is one of those big old crown vicks with the three

fifty ones. Oh, yeah.

And he and he's got traction luck.

Well, it's spring and the ground soft.

So he hits the gas and he's throwing up these rooster tails of dirt.

And his his rear wheels are going right down to the axle in the mud.

No, he's stuck.

So I went to bed. So sad.

I'm gone. So I'm out of there.

And there's not going to stop and help the cops catch you.

Oh, you know, you got it.

You got to you got to be packed.

You got to come after me now.

I mean, I'm not going to give up that easy.

So and I was just a good kid.

You know, I used to be an older boy.

I was a boy scout. I was an air cadet.

You know, like I I I don't know where this streak came in.

So I take off and I come upon shortly thereafter, two transport trucks

in the same company, and they're just kind of in a little tandem formation,

the two of them.

And I'm not a word of a lie on the Bible.

The trailing truck, he backs off and lets me into the hole in the middle.

And there was and there was a nice long off ramp.

And I took the off ramps and, you know, and I was and, of course,

the cruiser goes, the one is stuck.

And another one is coming with, you know,

I'm mocked to with his hair on fire, siren and lights.

And he's blasting along and I slip off on this exit.

It was like out of a storybook. It was amazing.

And you tiptoed home.

Yeah, you know what? I was on route somewhere and I tiptoed there.

And then there was actually a cruiser cruising the parking lot looking for me.

Oh, I don't know how they didn't find me because I the car was fairly unique.

It was like really stripped.

It was just black on gray.

And I thought, well, you know, I'm eventually he's going to find me.

One of these guys is going to find me and nothing ever happened.

And so I lived and learned I was stupid.

I shouldn't have done it.

I don't recommend anybody does anything like that.

Kids don't don't attempt this.

But, you know what?

It was just, I don't know.

I just there was just something that just said, I'm not doing this today.

I wasn't having nothing today, folks.

Dave, don't feel bad.

I may or may not have allegedly

out running Kansas State Trooper for four miles in a Honda CRX. So.

Oh, that's awesome.

Those are sweet. I love those cars.

You asked where you go?

Allegedly, allegedly.

Yeah, I can tell you for a fact that you can throw that thing into

a highway cloverleaf as fast as you want to go.

Because it's not things are on rails.

Yeah, they don't weigh enough to slide off anywhere.

You know, whether they weigh like 2,100 pounds, maybe.

Oh, yeah, featherweight. Yeah.

I'd love to find one like find the nicest one I can find

for a reasonable amount of money. Oh, good luck.

Yeah. And and or, you know what?

I I really foresee that if if if the younger crowd

really gets with it in the car space

and there's opportunities for young people, excuse me,

that cars like that are going to be there's going to be a restoration

market for those cars. There is. There is. Yeah.

They just somebody has to tell them

how wonderful they were and they were they were magnificent little cars.

And that's why most of them got driven into the stinking ground.

Finding a low mile example now is worse than trying to find hence, Steve.

Yeah, it's funny.

I didn't really get those cars back then.

But they were around me a lot like at at college university

and it's funny because you saw them, people had them.

They had a sort of a cache.

Hey, people like them. Yeah.

And but I didn't really get it because I was thinking for almost this

for just a little bit, it might have been about the same amount of money.

I could buy a 5.0 brand new. Yeah.

And and and really go to town. Yeah.

And and yet I drove a roommate of mine had a

an 85 Honda Civic sedan that was a real cream puff.

It had very low miles and the guy that had it was like a real

aficionado for it and he kept it in such a nice condition.

So a friend of mine bought it in 93 or 94.

It was their first car and they let me drive it one night

when my car was in the shop.

One of the rare times was in the shop and it was so nice to drive.

It was a revelation.

And I was thinking, what have I been doing, you know, before?

Because before that, I had a 10th anniversary trans am.

I had a Chevy Silverado that, you know, headers and duals,

Craggers, you know, and and I was like, this car is a revelation.

I don't care that it's got four doors.

I don't care that it's 1.5 liters.

I love it. Well, on on paper, it doesn't look like anything.

You're just you're just and you're like, well, who cares?

You know, it's got 95 horsepower. Who gives a damn?

And then you drive a little Honda Civic or a little CRXSI.

And you're like, OK, well, they figured it out.

Oh, yeah, this is magnificent and nobody knows.

But in when you finally do get your get your butt in the seat

and you drive one, you're you're like, oh, this is the best kept secret ever.

Why didn't somebody say something to me?

Oh, yeah. And that's that's why I'm so stoked

when I see like an online auction when they have one of these

and it's not like driven into the ground like it's actually got reasonable miles.

And there's there's, you know, there's documents for service and stuff.

I'm like, oh, man, I want one of those now before before I, you know,

I before I pass on to the other life, I really want one of those.

I just think it'd be just so fun.

I want my CRX back.

I just want to I want to show my daughter's how fantastic the little car was.

And it really was a spectacular little car.

And by the way, that state trooper did eventually catch up to me.

You can't outrun a cop in a CRX forever.

But if you've got some tight corners that you can take at speed,

that cop's not catching you.

He's not coming in today.

But this is also why I don't answer that question.

We ask that question of everybody we have on the show.

And a lot of people ask me, what's the dumbest thing you've ever done in a car?

Well, crap, I can't narrow it down to one thing.

I could probably narrow it down to a couple hundred.

And and one of them was attempting to outrun a state trooper in a CRX.

Oh, it's something that's so cool.

So that's one.

We've been speaking with David Nions.

Dave, please tell us where we can find you online and on social media

and also where we can find motor copia.

Yes. So motor copia is at www.motorcopia.com.

Exactly like it sounds.

Exactly. Social media.

I'm classic car Dave.

That's my handle on on Instagram.

And I'm probably going to get a motor copia kind of thing for that, too.

But right now, it's those two things right there.

That's where I can be reached.

Fantastic, Dave.

Thank you so much for being on with us.

It's a lot of fun.

Thank you very much, guys.

I really appreciate it.

All right, well, you're going to have to do some editing on this.

Hell, no, we were chatting.

Yeah, we were just alive.

You're going to have to spend and tell your kid.

OK, you know how I tease people about being chainsaw guests

and you fire them up and just get out of the damn way.

Yeah, I think he I think he all three of us are guilty tonight.

Yeah, true that all three of us are guilty of this crap.

We all are responsible for this.

When we're doing shows, I try to make little notes

about how I'm going to write the description when I post it.

Let's see the bullet points here.

So far, getting into writing about cars

and then the music to cure riders block radio stations,

Sears catalog cars, sailors who can't swim,

terrible customs and their descriptions after vintage men's

colognes, I quit listening stuff.

So just let's roll, baby. Wow, we go with it.

So, folks, here's the real bonus to this show.

And I've heard from a lot of guys and I've talked to a lot of people who say

I turn this on Saturday morning when I'm out in the garage working on the car.

Here's the upside to the show being as long as it is.

You ain't going to have to dig a duck out from under the hood

to go to the next podcast.

You're going to get that entire break line done.

Yeah, we're going to get everything done.

You're going to drink. It's all good.

You're going to drink an entire pot of coffee.

And probably start on the six pack.

You're going to you're going to make 17 trips to the John

and your wife's going to come outside three times and say,

are you still listening to that crap?

Nice. You're not wrong.

And and this whole show is just proof behind when we say we love what we do

and we wouldn't be able to do it without the support of our listeners.

Absolutely true.

So thank you so much for spending time with Driven Radio.

You can find us online at drivenradioshow.com.

I'll follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at Driven Radio Show

and on LinkedIn as Driven Radio Show podcast.

If you have a story you would like to tell,

no matter if it's longer than Homer's Iliad or not.

Or someone you think you would like us to interview.

It was the best of podcasts.

It was the worst of podcasts.

By God, contact me at Brett at drivenradioshow.com.

I am Brett Hatfield for Mark L. Groves.

Thank you for listening and we'll talk about Cologne next time

you see us on Driven Radio.

We'll see you next time.

Straight shooter, great communicator, honest mechanic, champion disco dancer.

One of these descriptions is a flat out lie.

The rest accurately described Darrell Ossopic, owner of Ossopic Automotive.

Now we've been teasing him for a long time.

Darrell has been a really good friend and a personal mechanic for me

for longer than I care about.

Geez, man, he's been working on my stuff forever.

I've taken my vintage Bronco in there.

I've taken my Corvettes in there.

I even have had the Schadenfreude Express in there.

You got him to work on that.

He's worked on that 99 Mercedes S600 and nice and done a really good job on it.

Mark's even gone to Darrell for car repair.

Yeah, that's 64 Dodge that I wind about.

He was the one that got it running and moving after I bought it.

And it ended up not running and moving.

It was a little different than the test drive.

Don't get me wrong.

It ran good for the test drive.

It was great then.

Plus he put the transmission in that I bought for that.

My 2000 Nissan XTERRA 4 by 4.

Ossopic Automotive does maintenance and repair on foreign and domestic

petrol powered autos.

He also works on some diesel stuff I've seen in there.

If he can do it, I'll tell you.

Yeah, if he can't, he'll tell you.

But I haven't found anything that he can't work on yet.

The guy works on cars.

He works on a giant offshore raceboat.

He can do about anything.

And he'll tell you up front what he's going to do, how we're going to approach

the problem, what he thinks it might be.

And if he can't do it, he'll tell you who can.

Yeah, he's an internal combustion whisperer who thinks running sucks for exercise.

But he rules behind the wheel.

And he's he's also got some fantastic taste in his own personal stuff.

Oh, yeah.

You would never guess it looking at him.

He looks like a mild-mannered mechanic.

Oh, he's got interesting stuff of his own.

Ossopic Automotive doesn't have a website, so you'll have to look up the reviews.

4.9 stars out of five on Google, 4.8 out of five on Yelp.

Called Daryl at 913-831-3613.

What's that number?

913-831-3613.

And you got to remember his motto, Ossopic Automotive, where they'll

fix your car, no matter how much it costs.

He's he's going to kill me, he's going to kill me.

I promised him I wouldn't tell anybody he says that.

Oh, and where is he?

So we know where to go to be killed.

5920 Merriam Drive in Merriam, Kansas 66203.

We've known Rick Hunter and the gang at Hot Rod Express

and Blue Springs for years.

We first saw their work at car shows.

And then we had to buff out the drool

that we left on their work at the car shows.

And we've had Rick on both Road Muscle Radio and Riven Radio

shows several times to talk about cars and projects

and the other cool stuff that was going on over at Hot Rod Express.

So when disaster struck in the form of the sweetest little lady

in Overland Park, she's a doll, God, you can't let your mom.

Who did I turn to to do the body repair

on my 65 Corvette Stingray?

Hot Rod Express.

These guys did a hell of a job.

They aren't the cheapest and there's a reason they're the best.

They made the body look better than it did before.

That is not an exaggeration.

And they even sourced the right emblem

so that it was model accurate.

Hot Rod Express is crawled under the hood to fix

weird and dangerous alternator issue

that tried to burn the car.

And they've recently installed new running gear.

Well, new suspension, both ends of it.

And it rides so much better and it drives better

and it's not trying to rattle my teeth out.

And I still have the fillings in my teeth.

Yeah, I was kind of happy with the ride we took in it.

That was nice. Yeah.

Well, I'm telling you, it's not quite as harsh as it used to was.

Since 1995, Hot Rod Express has been doing

Concord Caliber frame off restorations,

award-winning Resto mods and everything in between.

In fact, after they painted the Stingray,

they had it down at Bartle Hall for World of Wheels.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

My car won first place for domestic sports car.

Oh, my God.

So, so when we say award-winning rest

restorations, that's not an exaggeration.

I got one of them.

So if you can dream it on four wheels, they can do it.

Visit hotrodespress.com or call them at 816-224-9597.

Ask for Rick and tell him driven radio sent you.

Don't worry, he won't hold that against you.

They're super easy to talk to and they've never met a stranger.

Hot Rod Express on 40 Highway in Blue Springs, Missouri

at Hot Rod Express, then make friends fast.

Driven Radio Show #318: David Neyens of Motorcopia

Chevrolet Corvette

Cadillac El

Cadillac Eldorado

Ford Mustang

Dodge Challenger

Chevrolet Chevelle

Plymouth GTX

Chevrolet Camaro

Delorean DMC-12

Jensen Interceptor

Rolls-Royce Phantom

Cadillac Lyric

Ford Bronco

Pontiac Torrent

Ford Torino

Ferrari 275

Volkswagen Beetle

Lamborghini Aventador

Ford Cougar

Chevrolet SSR

Chrysler Crossfire

Plymouth Prowler

Chrysler New Chrysler

Mercedes-Benz SLK

Chrysler Air Flow

Toyota Camry

Honda Crx

Honda Civic

Honda S600

Nissan XTerra

Corvette Stingray

About this episode

Original notes