Driven Radio Show #333: Best of John Ficarra
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Car
1976 Range Rover six by four
It’s a classic off‑road SUV that was altered to have six wheels, with four of them powered for extra traction.
Company
Carmichael
Carmichael was a company that took regular Range Rovers and added another set of wheels to make them even bigger.
Car
Tyrell P34 six wheel F1 car
It was a race car that had six wheels instead of the usual four, which made it faster and more stable.
Concept
six-wheeler
A six‑wheeler is a car that has six wheels instead of the usual four. This extra set of wheels helps it drive better on rough or slippery ground and can carry more weight.
Concept
overlander vehicle
An overlander is a car that’s been changed to carry extra stuff and gear so you can travel far on rough roads without needing help. It often has a roof rack, extra batteries, and places to store food.
Part
bigger tires
Bigger tires are larger wheels that give the car more grip and a higher stance, useful for rough terrain or style.
Part
two-inch lift kit
A lift kit lifts the car up a bit—two inches in this case—so you can fit bigger tires and avoid scraping the ground.
Part
custom lighting
Custom lighting means adding special lights to a car, like brighter headlights or fancy interior LEDs.
Part
custom rack
A custom rack is a special frame that supports the car’s suspension, making it easier to lift the vehicle or fit bigger wheels.
Part
winch
A winch is a big cable and motor on the truck that can pull it out of mud or lift heavy stuff.
Concept
car track
A car track is a special road built for racing cars, where drivers race against the clock or each other.
Part
V8 engine
A V8 engine is a type of car engine with eight cylinders that give it strong power and smoothness.
Car
Porsche 928
The Porsche 928 is a classic German sports car with a big V8 engine. It was popular in the 80s and early 90s for its speed and style.
Concept
overlander 928
An overlander is a car that has been changed so it can drive on rough, off‑road terrain. The overlander 928 is a Porsche 928 that has been modified for this purpose.
Concept
parts car
A parts car is a vehicle you buy mainly to take apart and use its parts, like engines or brakes. It’s usually cheaper because the whole car isn’t in good shape.
Term
Euro motor
In Europe, Porsche made a slightly different engine for the 928 that produced more power than the one sold in the United States.
Car
Porsche 911
The Porsche 911 is a famous German sports car that’s been made for many years. It has a special engine behind the seats and is loved by people who like fast cars.
Concept
Baja Trophy Trucks
Baja Trophy Trucks are special cars that race in the desert. They have big wheels and can go over rough sand and rocks.
Part
off-road tires
Off‑road tires are special wheels that grip better on dirt or rough ground, helping the car go where normal tires can’t.
Part
roll bar
A roll bar is a metal frame you can put inside a car to help keep the seats and passengers safe if the car rolls over. It adds extra strength to the inside of the vehicle.
Concept
towing capacity
Towing capacity is how heavy a trailer or load a car can pull without overloading the engine and brakes.
Brand
Lamborghini
Lamborghini makes very fast, fancy cars that are usually only owned by rich people. They’re famous for their sharp designs and powerful engines.
Concept
endurance race
An endurance race is a long car race where the cars keep going for many hours. Drivers take turns and the team has to plan fuel, tires, and rest so they can finish as far as possible.
Car
Volkswagen Bug
The Volkswagen Bug is a small, iconic car from Germany that many people love for its simple design and friendly look. It was made for a long time, from the 1930s to the early 2000s.
Car
Corvette C3
The Corvette C3 is a version of the famous American sports car made by Chevrolet. It was built in the late 1960s and early 1970s and is known for its sleek look and powerful engine.
Term
V16 marine engine
A V16 marine engine is a big diesel motor with 16 cylinders in a V shape. It’s used on large boats to give them a lot of power and steady torque.
Term
twin turbo diesel V16
A twin‑turbo diesel V16 means the engine has 16 cylinders and two turbochargers that push more air into it, making it stronger and smoother.
Term
diesel boat motor
Diesel boat motors are engines that run on diesel oil and are used to power boats. They’re good at giving strong pull for moving watercraft.
Company
Fakara Classic
Fakara Classic is a business that repairs and upgrades old cars. They show their work on YouTube and Instagram so people can learn about classic car restoration.
Car
F-150
The F‑150 is a big truck made by Ford. It’s popular because it can haul heavy loads and do many jobs.
Term
hybrid
It’s a car that runs on both gas and electricity, so it can use less fuel and produce fewer emissions.
LIVE
Hello and welcome to Driven Radio Show. I'm Mark, and Brett and I are taken to knee this week. There's been a flu going around and it flew right into us. So with cough drops in one hand, mucinex in the other, and dreams of cool cars in front of us, here's the best stuff from August of this year with John Ficara. Check it out, and thanks for listening to Driven Radio Show. Our guest tonight, our favorite repeat offender, Mr. John Ficara of Ficara Classic,
he's an automotive historian, a marketer, and a walking encyclopedia. He owned a picture car company called Creative Film Cars in New York City and ran an illegal cross-country cannonball event called the 2904. He did that for a decade.
Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure the statute of limitations is running out. Thank God. He was the marketing director and then house a story for Canapa. He has been building and racing cars in the 24 hours of lemons for years. John, like I said, he owns Ficara Classic.
A company that researches, restores, and markets collector road and race cars. He's a regular guest on Vinwicky Car Stories on YouTube with over 30 million views.
That's three with a bunch of zeros. And he has his own YouTube channel that is growing by leaps and bounds. John's work has appeared in magazines, such as 0000, vintage race car, classic Porsche.
And on the Luka Gold website, John, welcome back to Driven Radio.
Thanks for having me back, boys. It doesn't seem like it's been that long since I saw you.
We were lucky enough to find a last minute beach condo from Monterey Car Week. Yes, in two weeks before. That's unheard of. You cannot do that.
And John and his cool friend Scotty drove down from Nevada City and stayed with us. In turn, John had me drive one of the strangest cars on the road to Radwood on Friday.
John, how far was the drive from Nevada City? Oh, probably in time, about five hours or so in distance.
In distance like 170 miles or so, I think. Okay. Alrighty. And how did you get invited to Radwood this year?
Cindy Miley called me up. And well, she wrote me. And she's a PR automotive PR person that I've known since Canapa. And she's like, what do you got in the stable? And I said, I mean, list them off for you.
I just fired them all off. And she picked three because she was doing the work for two different events, the paddock. And the other event was called the concurso italiano.
Very appropriate for you, sir. Oh, sorry. You don't have so many Italian cars.
So but inside the paddock event on Friday, they had a curated Radwood display. So only they had it be selected. You couldn't just like drive your Radwood car. And they're picked 50 of the best Radwood cars to be shown Friday night.
Yeah. And the car you had me drive over there, your name for that car, the strange rover. Okay. What is it? Where'd you find it? Who built it?
Give us the rundown. So the strange rover is a 1976 Range Rover six by four. So it has six wheels. And most people think, you know, when I drive it, they're like, oh, did you build this? I'm like, no, no, these.
There were a certain amount of them built in the 70s originally, there was a company called Carmichael that took that Range Rover sent the chassis over directly from the factory. Like this was as close to factory made as you could get.
And Carmichael would extend them and add a another axle to the rear and turn them into like small airport ambulances and fire engines.
And the extra axle is the whole the weight of the water tank or the medical equipment. And then a few years later, they realized it was the civilian version of this would sell.
So they started selling them to the Middle East. And for a brief run in the 70s, there were like three or four British companies that built these six wheelers in the most outrageous. Like we had custom vans. They built these six wheelers for these guys in, you know, the Middle East.
And they had falconing ones. So the whole rear roof would slide forward at the back. So you'd have like a really huge because they haven't got like an eight foot bed in them with the extension.
They had two chairs that would rise up three feet out of the room. And they would have a rack where they would have all their falconing things and the birds would live inside so they could go falconing or hunting or shooting from out back inside their range Rover with air conditioning.
And they were lavish and weird in 70s. And I've always wanted one. I'm a six wheel. I love six wheel vehicles. I mean, ever since my GMC motor homes and the, the, the Tyrell P34 six wheel F1 car.
Yeah.
You know, I always wanted like that's kind of my dream. So all of these were in the Middle East or in Europe. They were never ending the United States.
And I saw one in an auction that somebody sent me a link because I always get these six wheel links people sent to me. And they're like in Paris, there's a six wheel Range Rover for sale.
And this just happened to be right around April 1st.
Okay.
So what happened was I don't think the Europeans understand what April 1st is that it's April fools day here.
So they did they did their big publicity push for this vehicle on April 1st on the internet.
Nobody bit on it.
Because everybody was like and all like I've got copies. I made screenshots of all the different websites, you know, like Jalapnick and all that they're like hilarious April fools truck, you know, buy a six wheel Range Rover.
So I called the, I called up the, the auction house. And I'm like, what's the real number on this? You actually want to buy it? I'm like, yes.
So they talked to the owner. The owner was a Parisian art dealer and he would deliver art in the back of it because he needed a bigger bed. You're kidding.
Serious. That's what I'm in a drove around Paris for a good 10 years or so just delivering art. So who knows what was in the back of this thing.
And it was yeah, and I got I finally found like I got it. I didn't know what the hell it was or who made it or if it was a car Michael or if it was another company's car. I just had to have it.
And I got the history. I actually talked to the guy who bought it in England and brought it to Switzerland and converted it because they were all two doors. So all Range Rovers were two doors up until the ladies. Yeah.
And most of them don't don't know that that the four door was kind of created for the US market when Range Rover came into the US market in the late 80s.
And so the body on the car is actually in 1989 Range Rover body. So it's a four door six wheeler which are very, very few because that's totally custom. Most six wheelers are two doors.
The Swiss guy found this rotted out thing in England brought it over put a four door body on it did a nice job and sold to this art dealer in France.
And then I had to get it. And then then the story got interesting because I was kind of him in a hauling and like, should I get it? Should I buy it.
This Ed Bolian of Vinwicky was working on the one of his next car tracks season 10. They were going to do a bunch of off roaders.
And he's like, what about if I buy it and we turn it into a overlander vehicle.
So we got it, shipped it to me, mechanic Matt and I worked on it for a few months. Well, first we took it to Radwood as soon as it came off the boat, like literally like a week after that, we took it to Radwood here in California in one best truck at Radwood.
Yeah, right out of the box. And they hadn't even been, we didn't even do the overland stuff yet. And then we brought it up here, made a custom rack for the idea was to kind of make it.
Remember the old camel trophy trucks. Yeah, right back in the day, we try to do that. So I made a huge rack for the roof, which is actually two racks we put together.
Custom rack, custom lighting, two-inch lift kit, bigger tires, all kinds of lighting, a winch, we did everything to it. And I think we did all in like a month and a half.
And then we drove it down to, we took it to Monterey when they shot start car track nine because we shot nine and 10 back to back.
And then we took it up to Oregon and shot car track 10 where Ed drives it. And after they were done with it, I took it home. And then I was always kind of like, I just still want it.
So he was doing one of his collection sales. He just did one. I think he sold six cars on cars and bids.
And this was like a year ago, he did another got a clear that clear the decks kind of sale. So he put, he put that up on South of these motorsports. And we came to a deal and I got it. I bought it.
So it's now mine. It's now back here. And I've been driving it around for about a year. And it's been a blast. So it's, it's, it returned to Monterey for the second time last week.
So you mean to tell me that Ed didn't fall in love with that truck and keep it.
Oh, so this truck without a doubt is his most love with the vehicle.
And he eats this truck so much.
You, you just either, you either mention it or show a picture of it and you can see flames flickering in his eyes.
It's just like he did not have a pleasant experience with it during the filming of car track 10. It was just it's not a six wheel drive vehicle. So if you don't have it locked into four wheel drive, it gets stuck a lot.
It is woefully underpowered. It's got a 3.9 liter Rover V8 in it, which probably has a hundred and 50 horsepower.
It feels like it. So it'll do 70 all day long. We got 14 and a half miles a gallon driving it. But as soon as you see a hill, it just goes, oh, it starts slowing down.
Scotty drove it down from here and he did a great job. As soon as he started climbing the coastal range.
And I'm towing, right? I'm telling the 928 I'm blasting up the hill. He starts disappearing behind me as he's crawling like 45 miles an hour.
He's going forward going up the hills. So yeah, you know, Ed loves to put his foot in it. And he just there was no there's no power.
I mean, he's an LS swap and needs a six by six bill, which is why I bought it back as I kind of want it.
My goal really was to LS swap it six by six it and then fly it out and make him like it.
That was my channel.
I'm going to make you like the Range Rover, Strange Rover. He's like not a open hell.
Is that good?
Which is why I was starting to give him crap about it when we were standing there eating lunch.
I know he doesn't like that thing. And I just, you know, how many chances am I going to get to needle him about it?
Well, I think with 400 horsepower and real six wheel drive, that thing would be a hoot.
Oh, yeah, it would be real fun.
The one thing I learned driving that is conservation of momentum.
Yes. You know, you just when you see people slowing down in front of you, you take your foot off the gas and you just kind of hover over the brake pedal.
Please don't make me push it. Please don't make me push it. Please don't make me push it.
Just praying to God that you don't actually have to touch the brakes.
It's the only thing that that truck and Prius having come in is the hyper mile drive style.
Make the most out of the downhill.
Yes, just use that downhill, baby, use it.
All right, you mentioned the 928.
Tell us about the overlander 928.
What was the inspiration for it? Who painted it?
And what all you've done to make it off road ready?
Well, the hippie 928, hippie safari car.
That one, Radwood in San Francisco last year.
That was I had 4, 928.
I bought 1, 928 because I always wanted one of my life and I wanted a first year car manual, posh interior, European.
I had a whole list and I found it.
After I got that, I ended up with three more parts cars.
People just kind of threw them at me for cheap.
And this one was a 79 European car, so the same engine.
For those who don't know, early on in the 928's life, the Euro motor and the US motor were very different.
And the output was the difference of like 35 horsepower.
So the US was like 215 horsepower.
The European car was 240.
So European engine was much much better.
So it was a good parts car, but it was an automatic.
And we had a sitting in my driveway for like a year.
And every time we went to start it and move it, fired up, moved.
The other two parts cars, not so much.
And I'm like, I came a day where I'm like, I felt bad about scrapping it.
We start taking parts off of it.
I'm like, this car works.
I can let's do something with it.
And this is right before Rensport 7.
I figured just for fun, a Rensport, we should make some art cars.
So I painted my 78, well, I didn't paint it.
Kelly Telfer, the final artist painted it.
Pasha.
And we started getting that ready.
And then we took the parts car, the 79 car, automatic.
And we're like, let's do the hippie livery from the 1979 17 limol car,
which is one of my favorite livery of all time.
Yeah.
Bright green, bright bluish purple.
And we flew out, Christopher Michaels, also a Vinwicky fame,
but also worked with Hot Wheels for a while and a fantastic artist.
So he came out and he just started like, you rattle can, the bass.
And then he hand painted all the green shapes and the white outline.
I mean, in three days, he painted the whole thing.
He was out there all day, three days.
And the paint job came out awesome.
I mean, if you see pictures of it, it looks brilliant.
We were looking at it.
I'm like, you know what?
That's cool and all, but how do we make it even cooler?
Hold my beer.
You know, the safari thing is really big with 9-11s right now.
And I was like, let's safari it.
I have a front of mine, Greg at PRG.
He does suspensions for like Baja trophy trucks.
And he actually does conversions of cayans into off road vehicles.
So I called him up.
He's just down the road.
He's awesome, dude, and really talented.
Like one of those guys who could just take a lump of aluminum
and turn it into something, you know, he just goes, hold on a second.
He turns the machine on.
You don't know what he's doing.
It's like, you know, the wizard behind the curtain pulling levers
and things that outcomes apart and it's finished.
So he's like, I can custom make a lift, a two-inch lift kit for that.
And he said, yes, please.
And two inches is about as high as you can lift the car before you start having to change.
A lot of history on other stuff.
So he made a two-inch lift kit for it.
I got some bigger off road tires for it.
And then what was left over from the two racks that we built the Range Rover's rack out of.
The two or two ends of it.
So we put those together.
We made a rack for the roof.
We took the push bar and lights off the front of the cannonball ambulance and put them on the front.
Then we got some Jeep limerizers and put those on the rack.
And I just started coming together and then this guy pops up on one of the 928 Facebook pages of money.
He's like, oh, I got a 1928 roll bar.
I'm like, who has what?
I didn't even know it existed.
He's like, yeah, free.
I'm moving.
Anybody wants to come get it?
So I hopped in the ambulance.
I drove like a hundred miles.
Pick that up.
So we put a roll bar in it.
We stripped out the rear seats.
We kind of made a rear deck for us so you can put in.
You know, we had the traction boards back there and fuel tanks and all kinds of things.
It just started coming together out of spare parts.
And it got cooler and cooler.
And it ran great.
And we started taking it off road.
And honestly, it drives fantastic off road.
It's a stock shocks because they're so pulled out.
It just floats like a Cadillac.
Okay.
The only thing it really needs is probably the rear end needs to be regeared.
A little taller so it can match the bigger tires.
Yeah.
So it'll we just get a little bit more leverage.
But other than that, really.
We got the nice leather front seats out of one of the other parts cars.
So the interior came together really nice.
It was one of those just accidental cool projects.
And we've had a blast with it and people love it.
People like a run one Radwood.
We took it to Monterey last year.
Motor Trend named it one of the top 10 cars of Monterey in 2024.
Yeah, it's been a blast.
And it is now for sale.
Anybody out there who's interested in a hippie safari Porsche 928.
I'm afraid that's going to be kind of a small demographic.
Yeah.
You know, probably.
But for the right person, it's awesome because we went through the whole engine.
We like we did the the timing belt water pump oil pump.
We did all the stuff on it.
So all the 928 stuff has been attended to.
Yeah, it's been a great car.
Plus you get a custom Christopher Michaels paint job.
And you can go anywhere and you are the car.
I don't care.
Well, unless it's part behind the stranger over in which case.
It is a competition when they're next to each other.
God, look at that 928.
Holy crap.
What's that?
That's got six wheels on it.
This string.
Stranger over definitely almost caused like three or four accidents.
Yeah.
I know.
I know.
I know.
I was in it for part of it.
It is odd to see people's reaction when you drive by in that thing.
And they're like, hey, look at what the hell.
So yeah, you do get that a lot.
You also brought what wouldn't in any other crowd would be a really unique look in Porsche Cayenne.
Tell us a little bit about the Cayenne.
What's the car's history?
What's been done to it?
Does it make a good tow vehicle?
So the cayenne was the third vehicle they asked me to bring, which was perfect because I can tow with it.
So we towed the 928 with it.
It is a 2015 Porsche Cayenne turbo.
That was modified.
Excuse me for.
To drive this is just something that had been put together with his sponsored sway.
They built four of these things.
And what we were going to do was race from the top of Alaska, Proto Bay, Alaska, down to the bottom of Argentina.
And try to set the Pan American cannibal record.
So going north to South in North and South America.
And we had a planned out and we figured we could do it in 11 days, which would destroy the previous record.
And unfortunately storms and Columbia wiped out the roads and then politics got into it.
The people we had talking to at the State Department basically said, it's a no go.
You're not going to be able to do this run for a couple of years.
The guys this way pivoted and said, we got to do something with these things before they get to old.
And they tricked them out.
It's like stock suspension, but they got a lot of sponsors break given bigger wheels.
It was really interesting trying to get wheels to fit over the giant turbo breaks.
It's tricky an off road car because they had to be big enough to get over the brakes with small enough that you can have a side wall of a tire.
You have a big enough tire.
And that also can go 150 miles an hour.
So like there were only two tires that we came up with that could do that.
The wheels it had roof rack spares it had to spare on the back.
They were being they're being rigged up for this run.
So instead we did a a sponsored run to Prudobake to the Arctic Ocean.
So we drove them in 2023, two of them.
We raised from their headquarters in Montana.
Ed drove one with his team.
I drove the other with mine.
We ran up to the Arctic Ocean.
Jumped in the Arctic Ocean and said we're here.
We're turning around and drove back.
And Arctic Ocean a little nippy.
It is a little nippy, but it's the amazing thing is super shallow where we were.
So you can literally like walk out hundreds of yards and you're only up to your waist.
Oh, okay.
Oh, Dean, you're drowning in the icy water.
But it is it's cold.
It's cold.
And we were there in the summer.
We drove up there in July or August.
So this is interesting.
The Dalton highway is the run from.
That you see an ice road truckers that goes up to the oil fields.
And normally in the ice roads, it is.
The ice roads are beautiful.
They playing them out.
It's all gorgeous and flat.
And apparently you can make the trucks can make the run in the winter in like eight hours.
In the summer, it's like 12 to 14 because when ice melts,
it's nothing but ruts and holes and dirt and gravel and mud.
And we had the most fun driving these things because there's no cups.
Like you driving flat out as fast as you want.
The only thing out there are big rigs.
And we had CB's and we were like, hey, talking to the big rigs and they were cool with us.
And they thought we were, you know, we were being very polite with them.
And they say, as long as we're polite with them, they took care of us.
We blasted up that thing.
Like the just for Michael's phrases is running off the chain.
Like you just, you're like, whoa, there's no rules.
Like you just, there's no road rules.
You just fly.
It's like it's if you had your own private road on your land,
except it went on for 12 hours.
So we did that.
That thing was a blast after they finished with it.
And then they sat up at their place.
And I think Ed got one of them.
He got number 23 as part of his deal.
And then I called them up last year and said, yeah, have any of those left?
He's like, yeah, we got number 24.
I'm like, would you sell it to me?
And they're like, absolutely.
So they did.
They gave me amazing price on it.
And considering all the work they had done to it.
And I picked it up and it's been my daily driver ever since.
It does.
Yes, make an excellent tow vehicle.
One of the reasons I wanted it because a cayenne, that, that body,
which is also the Q7 and the Volkswagen.
Oh, that was a tour egg.
They're all the same rig.
They're rated at 7,700 pounds towing and 750 pounds tongue weight.
So that's pretty much most stuff.
That's a single car trailer.
Yes.
And the, the, the turbo's got 500 and something horsepower.
So it's got all the power to pull.
And it, it pulls, you wouldn't, I mean, literally it's one of those cars.
We never, you would never know there's something behind you.
Well, towing.
Oh, terrific.
It's effortless.
I mean, never feel like the trailer.
I was telling a 20 foot open single car trailer.
No, you were telling a very nice open single car trailer.
I was super jealous when I saw it.
Yeah, that, I got a deal on that thing.
That was, it was a COVID deal.
Gentlemen moved out from Oklahoma, bought a brand new, moved to Nevada,
not too far from me, and parked it.
And a year later, that's it, drove it once.
And then a year later, he sold it to me.
Yeah, about the only way you get a nicer open single car trailer
is if you get one of those feather light aluminum deals.
I don't, I like those,
but I don't like aluminum only because you have to have them cracked checked every few years.
And most of who buy aluminum trailers don't know that.
They, they require inspection every few years because they don't make any noise
and they just snap.
And I've seen a couple of the aluminum feather lights.
They make steel trailers as well, but they're aluminum trailers.
And not so much.
Yeah, actually, the coolest, the coolest trailer is that I'm afraid who makes it.
It's the one that lay at least flat on the ground.
Like you push a button and the entire deck goes flat on the ground.
Oh, cool.
And you just, you just, like, so you don't need any ramps.
You can drive a Lamborghini on there.
You, you push a button and the whole thing rises up.
Oh, I want one of those.
There's like 20 grand.
I'm sure.
And for the open one, if you want the clothes, they have a closed one,
which is even cooler, it was like a fabric closed body around it.
Oh, wow.
And that's like another 10.
That, if I had all the money in the world, I would, that's what I would buy.
But you're talking about 30 grand and that's another fun car.
Yeah.
I mean, in this trailer cost me 45 hundred bucks.
So I'm not complaining.
No, that's the way to do it.
Alrighty.
We haven't, we haven't done a shop update with you in a while.
So let's start with the, the, the one that's got me most interested for the uninitiated.
What is the Rocky Aoki 911 limo?
How's it progressing?
We started to talk about the engine the other day.
And then you and I got sidetracked by something.
So you have to tell me that story that you started.
The Rocky Aoki 911 is a 73 911 target limousine.
So it was cut and stretched or feet.
Because why wouldn't you have a target top limo?
So it's a twin target.
There's a target over both doors.
It also has a 959 fiberglass body kit on it.
And Rocky Aoki, who was the founder of Benny Hanna.
And also a real maniac.
Was into racing limousines in the one lap of America event, which was the,
which came after the cannonball.
The Brock Yades ran it in the 80s and 90s.
He reached limos.
So you could race went back.
So the original one lap.
One lap of America now is run by Brock Jr.
Who was fantastic and his events amazing.
And I highly recommend it.
But what it is is you race from racetrack to racetrack.
Yeah.
And you do and it's a cumulative time event.
And you do two.
The both ends are at the tire rack.
And it's a blast.
I did it.
I did it a few years ago and had the best time.
But when it started the one lap of America was originally a lap of America.
Rocky Aoki would go to four P drive his car to four different corners of the
nights of the continental United States.
Then set times.
And then you had to match his time as close as possible without knowing what it was.
And so a limousine made sense because you'd be in the car for days.
It was a real and car endurance event.
And Rocky originally did it and he was trying to promote Benihana microwave dinners.
So he had a Rolls Royce with a microwave in it.
And they ate Benihana dinners the whole way around.
Oh my god.
Oh my god.
Oh my god.
Imagine the gas.
That's kind of what I'm trying to picture.
Oh my god.
It was the car must have reaked of sulfur and cocaine.
That's all I could say.
That's one of the levels of hell.
I'm sure he had limousines built after that.
He had a Volkswagen Bug limousine build.
He had a Corvette C3 limousine built.
So this was one of his limos.
He used it in 1991.
And then it was kind of abandoned at a body shop to be restored in LA.
And then this artist bought it in Los Angeles and several lakes.
And he got it for years.
And every year or so, for about 15 years,
it would pop up on Craig's list and then Facebook marketplace for sale.
And it was kind of this ghost legend of the internet that this thing existed.
And a few, I guess it's been a year now that I've had it.
A couple of years ago, people sent it to me.
They're like, this is what you need to buy.
I'm sort of an expert on 959s or porcelain 9-11 guy or some a weird car guy.
No, I have this.
So Ed Bolian, another name comes up a lot in some bad decisions.
So he comes up.
He's like, he does seem to kind of encourage your behavior in the best in the best possible way.
And he's like, this, you should get this thing and turn it into a YouTube thing.
I'm like, yeah.
So long story short, I bought it.
I brought it home.
The amount of people that, when I posted it, were like, this thing's real.
Like you asked people about it.
And it's real. Really?
We took it apart.
And it is as dreadful as you can imagine.
1980s cocaine fuel limousine building techniques.
As you'd imagine, just like the worst welds, the worst construction.
The floor was like corrugated, galvanized steel from like somebody's shed.
No, the outside of the car was the rolling embodiment of the Peruvian marching powder.
Oh my god.
The 959 body kit is amazing.
So the goal is to restore it and build it a little, build it back better.
And so it's kind of sat for the past six months, maybe even eight months now.
Because I've had a lot of client projects in the garage, we had to finish up.
We had to complete it now that Monterejo right and get back to it.
But before we put it on to the side, I had this, I had a couple of things done.
One was I've bought a Porsche 930 motor.
And of course, that's a turbo engine.
Yeah.
I got some gate intercooled turbo motor from the crazy junkyard auction RM junkyard auction L.A.
We took it apart Tom Aiman, who is a master Porsche engine builder for, he's built two engines.
I asked him how many he's done.
He said I did two engines a month for 45 years.
That's right.
That's right.
You went and this is what we were talking about.
And I never, what was the, yeah, yeah, yeah, go on with the story.
But the end was, did you get to pick it up?
The engine?
Yeah.
So yeah, I'll get to that.
So we, we, we, we, we, we, we did the train.
Oh, that's, we got the transmission in the engine.
Transmission was still, it was still, it was the only thing in the car.
The car came without an engine.
Some mechanic was stolen it years ago.
The transmission, we rebuilt which has, and this is why this thing is so special.
The last four digits of its serial number are 2904.
You're kidding.
I'm not joking.
We freaked out for those who don't know it.
The 2904 was the cannonball event that John ran for a decade.
So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that was an omen that this thing had a cannonball again at some point.
So Tom and I rebuilt the 915 transmission.
But he has all these tricks.
He raced 935s and 911s.
So he's actually put 930 motors into regular 911s.
And he's like, we can build a 915 transmission
to handle 450 horsepower.
So we put some 930 parts on it and he rebuilt that and we tore the 930 motor down.
And he's like, this thing's in great shape because this probably has 40,000 miles on it.
It probably came from a crashed car because part of a couple of things were bent on the side.
And it was a junkyard.
So he's like, this is in great shape.
We took it all apart.
He's like, here are all the people to send it to.
So I sent out all the parts to be machine, the heads and all those bits.
And the machine is goes, yeah, how have these done in two weeks.
And that was five months ago.
So oopsies.
I picked them up.
I picked them up last Friday.
No, I picked them up this Monday.
After I got back from Monterey, drove back down the Bay Area and picked them up 151 days later.
He's like, not apologetic, just like, yep, that's how long it took.
And he's like, oh, and it's going to be more expensive because it was tougher to do than I thought.
I'm like, oh, my gosh.
Here's the problem.
A side note is that all these skills, these machinists and interior guys and fabricators,
just like this guy, Gary's like 73 still works.
Yeah.
10 flow hours a day.
They are going to die at their machines and they have had taught nobody how to do it.
And I've talked to like, I talked to Tom Aiman.
He's 70 now.
He's built tons of Porsche Motors.
Guess how many people were interested in learning from him?
Zero.
We can change that.
We can change that.
We can change that.
That's where the McPherson College connection comes through.
And I need to get you in touch with Amanda Gatera's.
And we can change that because there are kids going through that program who want to know how to do this stuff.
I, here's the, here's the problem.
There are some fantastic, but it is one school in the middle of the country.
We need a dozen of these schools.
Yeah.
We need one here in Northern California.
I've got, I've got enough instructors.
The retired guys alone that have left Canapa, that have aged out of Canapa.
Their interior guy.
He did, he does like four on the side now and he's, he's in his seventies.
On the side now, he does four couple of beach cars a year.
It makes $250,000 a year.
You know, and there's no kid that wants to learn how to do that.
If one of Bruce's fabricators, he's fat, he's fantastic.
He's a half an hour for me.
He's helping me with the, the Ioki car.
And he does side projects in his house.
No apprentices, nobody cares.
He loved it.
All of them are like, I'd love to teach somebody that.
Amanda Gatera's, if you're listening.
And she very well may be there are.
I think the problem is there are more shops than there are kids to send.
And I think it's, it's awareness.
I think kids have to know that this is an option.
When I was working at Canapa, giving the tours, I'd walk the kids around and be like,
guess how much this guy makes.
And because every kid.
He's like, what do you want to do?
I want to do a program or make $300,000 a year.
Like, yeah, odds are that's not going to happen kid.
But how about this?
If you're not some computer genius, and you like to work with your hands,
you can make $200,000 a year, specializing in something nobody can do anymore.
Yeah.
You know, like the, like the Doosenberg, the first Doosenberg that we restored.
Each part of that had to be hand fabricated.
It had a wood frame for the body.
Which is the first class they make you take in the restoration program as a woods class.
So, you know, how to do the wood frames and all the woodwork and pre-war cars.
It's a, and if you don't know how to do it, you know, if you don't learn how to do it,
I'm so happy that place exists.
But I think it's only the first step in, in keeping our cars alive for the next generations.
So anyway, I'm dealing with all these 70s and 80 year olds who take six months to do things
because they're working alone in their shops.
Oh, another guy I got a great was from, I was, I was reach out to a few people
because I had to build a new floor for the Aoki car.
You didn't want to go back or get it?
No.
And I found this old dragster guy who built dragsters.
Because I was thinking about like who lengthens cars, right?
Limbo people do it, but usually, awfully, they're just doing it on a budget
and they have to, this was a look good.
I said, who builds, who lengthens cars that have to do something?
And my dragster guys do.
They're always stretching because the longer it is, right?
And they build all these special gasters and things.
So I talked to him and he's like, oh, I'll build you a floor for that.
Is it great?
And he came over and measured a bunch of things.
And I said, okay, give me some drawings.
And I'd love to see the drawings.
And we're working on what the design is.
He goes, absolutely, sure.
Week later, he shows up with his truck.
And he's made the floor already.
Just by looking at it once, it's 8-inch steel.
And it has a boxed center section where you would have like a drive shaft,
but obviously have it.
That's where all the cables and shifting and everything goes through the middle of a 9-11.
It'll create essentially a box from the front of the car to the back.
It'll act as a third member to the rockers.
He's all, this ain't going nowhere.
He's like, this will be the strongest part of the car.
Because you don't need anything above it because the floor itself will be so rigid.
And sure enough, we put it in the car and it goes,
and fits perfectly within a 16th of an inch.
Wow.
I would have gone through three or four sheets of steel doing what he did without really looking at it.
So of course, I'm going to learn from these people, but I'm in my 50s.
I'm me learning this stuff is pointless, except for my own edification.
You know, a 20 year old, a 30 year old needs to learn this stuff.
We could send them out there to learn, but I understand all of them are figuring out how to put clutches and CR ones.
Stop.
You can start them right now.
Coming for you, so I'm going to punch you in the neck.
I told you I'd work it in.
Man, I hate that car.
I hate the C4 car back.
I'm so proud of myself for that.
Just waiting.
Just waiting.
It took a while to figure out where to get it.
Yeah.
So we're going to do it.
We're now the monitor is over.
We're going to start shooting videos again and start doing more content.
We'll get the 911.
Well, what else is in your shop besides that 930?
That thing takes up a chunk of room.
It's not a short car.
So I got that.
I've got a 66 911 that is has a RSR body kit on it.
So it looks like it's a short wheel base RSR.
It is a cookie little car.
Don't tell pet.
Fabulous seven S motor in it that revs to like 72 100 RPM.
Yeah.
Don't tell pet.
Oh, it's so cool.
I love it.
So I'm going to fix in that car.
We're selling that.
That's for sale.
I've got 996 cab that we just read the engine on.
That'll be for sale pretty soon.
That was belong to like a lifelong PCA member.
Do you like work on 996's on what you're paying?
I have no desire ever ever to touch a water cooled 911 again in my life.
Well, you got a 928, John.
You're kind of going to have to.
Well, you know what I'm talking about.
Yeah.
I'm going to talk about like a 911 a water cooled 911.
No, thank you.
No desire.
Anything.
I usually the rule for my shop is nothing with OBD2 or newer.
Yeah.
I don't want computers or anything like that.
So if it's if it's analog, I'll work on it.
It's much more fun that way.
But no, I'm no desire.
So we got that.
I'm getting the Suprona race car running again.
We got new turbo for that.
So hopefully you'll be racing that at the end of November.
It's a 1970 Toyota Corona.
That has the subframes from 87 Toyota Supra.
The brakes from a Mustang Cobra R.
And a one JZ turbo straight six.
And flared rear fenders made out of what license plates.
In fact, the front air dance made out of license plates.
The rear deck spoilers made out of license plates.
The front box flares have license plates on them.
That's been kind of the fleet.
The theme that just happened.
What's my friend?
What's the country had the license plates sitting around?
And you needed cheap metal or how did that happen?
Well, I've always used license plates because they're inexpensive,
quick aluminum things.
You can cut up and use the block holes and stuff like that on race cars.
And we just started getting carried away.
And then Travis Bell, my friend and Indiana,
who owns celebrity machines, you should go to their website.
They've got every.
Every license plate from every movie or TV show that ever existed.
So he's one of the kindest coolest people on the planet.
And I said, hey, I'm doing more license plate stuff.
He's like, say no more.
And he sent me a box of their kind of damaged license plates.
I once it didn't meet quality control.
And honestly, I'd say that 90% of them I couldn't even tell what was wrong with them.
So we, that's what we, so I've got license plates from on there,
from Caddyshack, Magnum P.I., Eaton O'Knievel, Rocky,
the Avengers.
Like I've got, it's so much fun.
That car's a blast.
So we'll be racing that hopefully again in November.
You cannot overstate what a sweet heart of a human being Travis Bell is.
Oh,
if anybody should win the Nobel Peace Prize.
It's Travis Bell.
For Travis Bell.
Like if there was an automotive category for the Nobel Peace Prize,
like the kindest, helpful, you know, he's just one of those people.
He's a hub of happiness.
Yeah.
And he just, he just helps anybody who wants needs help.
And he runs.
He's fantastic events at his house.
So he's having not this weekend, but I think next weekend he's having his holding.
Yeah.
Festival with his house out back in the Midwest.
He did the backyard 400 go kart race in the back of his house.
Oh, just all.
Oh, right.
It's because he just would like to have a good time.
And he's cannonball.
He built the best replica of the cannonball ambulance from the movie.
Yes.
I got to drive that in a cannonball attempt, which to this day is still one of my favorite
drives of all time.
We were blasting through New York City, leaving New York City.
I was driving.
Travis is running the lights in the siren.
And we're blasting through, you know, 31st Street heading for the tunnel in this 50-year-old
ambulance with the lights going, people looking terribly confused.
We had the jackets on from the movie, the whole thing.
Oh, anyway, I'm privileged to know him.
I think anybody else who's ever met him or worked with him knows the gratitude we have towards Travis Bell.
The world is a better place because Travis Bell is in it.
Did you see the news blurb online today about the movie Car Museum in Colorado that's selling off its inventory?
I did.
In fact, people were sending me that starting a few days ago.
Yeah, I did.
I did.
And I guess he's going to open up another museum somewhere else and do it again.
I don't know what the whole story was, but I saw some of his cars.
A few of them are respectable.
You know, most, most film car museums are crap.
Yeah.
You know, it's sometimes not even the right, like he's got a Ghostbusters thing that's not even the right vehicle.
Yeah, it's not a Miller meteor.
It's not close.
It's not a 59 Cadillac.
It's not, you know, but a few of them are pretty cool.
And I mean, if you just want something cool that you want to drive around, that's great.
And like, they're reproductions.
And if you can get some good money for them, that's fantastic.
You know, and I got to say, like, even the, the barris.
I think it was the barris museum in Tennessee, whatever that little tourist town is there.
It's got all this stuff.
And we went there.
They had this kind of crazy film car or car museum there.
And we went in there.
And this is all barris stuff.
So it's like the coffin dragster from the monsters.
Yeah.
Except it's not.
It's a really crappy.
I'm looking at it going, this isn't right.
And they've got a picture from the TV show behind it.
And you're like, well, this, this, this, and this.
And they've got, you know, they've got a generally.
And you can tell it's the wrong wheels are on it.
And if you're a geeks like us, this place is not a former film car guy owner.
I'm like, it drives me up a wall to most civilians.
They love it.
You know, they, they don't, they don't know any better.
Yeah.
But, but oh, man, this place is driving crazy.
I have no temptation to buy any of that stuff at all.
Have you ever been tempted to start another film car company?
No.
No.
You can only, film car companies only work in New York or Los Angeles.
Yeah.
You don't work any.
You have to have a density of production.
I guess they might work in Georgia now since production is really high there.
Or to it, or maybe an effect, maybe Louisiana, maybe.
But in order to, to, to be able to pay for all the vehicles,
the maintenance, the upkeep and all the hassle.
Yeah.
You need to be ours every day.
Like in New York, we were, we had jobs every day or two or three jobs every day.
And that paid the bills just fine.
But most cities, there's not enough production to do it.
Or they bring in their own team's big movies.
We'll have their own transportation divisions.
Yeah.
There will be vehicles in themselves.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, this is a question I've made you answer a bunch of times before.
So I will all narrow the focus.
What's the dumbest thing you've done in a car in the last couple of years?
Whoa.
That's always, that's such a hard question.
Because everything, well, because it's tough to narrow it down.
What it is, because I just do so many
questionable things with cars or buying cars.
Like, I guess one of those things is, is, is a purchase of a car
that I would say half people thought was a great idea.
And half people thought was a very bad idea.
I bought a 1982 Aston Martin Lagonda.
Did you really?
Yes.
It's on a container right now.
It should be here September 14th.
All right.
Did they have to ship the electrical manual separately?
So, for people who don't know, it was the first production car with a digital dash.
That's what you're making fun of.
And most of them failed.
They were cafe route rate tube.
The early ones were cafe rate rate tube.
The later ones were LEDs.
80s, 70s technology.
They spent a fortune creating these things.
Like, NASA level money to create these dashboards.
And when they failed, nobody could fix them.
And that was always kind of the people made fun of the Lagonda.
And Lagonda fell in price rapidly because of that.
It was one of the most expensive cars you could buy.
It was the ultra luxury sedan that anybody could touch in the late 70s and 80s.
But so for years, the 90s, nobody could fix them.
2000s, nobody could fix them.
But come the last 15 years.
And how inexpensive electronics are.
And how easy it is to program stuff.
And how inexpensive LED stuff is.
There's guys making the complete retrofit kits for those things.
No kidding.
Because that's been the hurdle on those cars for a long time.
So this car was the Geneva show car for Aston Martin.
And then in 2013, it was purchased by the National Automobile Museum of France.
They restored it.
And they had the dash completely restored before they put it on display.
Oh my.
So that's how I'm buying it.
Paint it interior was done.
The dash was done.
And then they put it in the museum.
So it was pickled and put in the museum.
So all I gotta do is unpickle the car.
And hopefully most of it will work.
If it doesn't, I've got plenty of resources to fix it.
And it's it is.
Either people think it's the ugliest car ever.
No list.
No, they're cool.
It's the same design language as the Lamborghini Kuntosh.
Yeah.
It was a study in what we call the folded paper design.
They can be.
Who did it?
Oh, I can't.
I'm horrible.
I should really know that by now.
But I don't.
I'll learn it.
It was a British guy who did it.
And it was it's just the way the Lamborghini is like a study in trapezoids.
This is kind of I.
And the wedge front and the pop-up headlights.
And oh, it's I think it's the coolest thing.
And this thing is it's lime green.
So if you go to the Wikipedia page,
the main photo is this car.
Oh, cool.
Is that the same one on car and driver too?
It has an 82 Aston Martin Lagonda on it.
That's.
If it's.
It's mint green.
That's it.
Yeah, it's.
Wow.
Isn't that fun?
Harjeet S. Calsey.
Does that ring a bell in his 1982 Aston Martin Lagonda?
Oh, that's the guy who.
He's an interesting dude.
He's one of the guys who.
He's a tech dude bought one,
restored it from scratch.
He knows nothing about cars.
Is taught him everything.
And he's one of the guys who created the new dash.
The entire wild.
Yeah.
He just taught himself how to build all that stuff.
And he's one of the resources people have now for those cars.
So that's definitely one of the most questionable things I've done.
Another questionable thing I'm about to do is.
And next week, I'm going to go pick up a.
V 16 marine engine.
And it's 917 horsepower twin turbo diesel V 16.
We think the engine weighs maybe 5,000.
Four.
What?
Well, one of my Porsche guys.
Again, one of the old guys.
He runs Pacific fuel injection in South San Francisco.
If you need a RSR fuel pump rebuilt or any of that stuff,
he has the original equipment.
Gus is amazing.
He's turned.
I think he's 80 81 now.
He does have an apprentice.
His shop is filled with the craziest stuff.
And this thing was sitting under some boxes.
And I'm like, what the hell is that?
He goes, oh, yeah, that's his old boat motor.
And he's like, do you want it?
Like sure, who wouldn't say yes to that?
Yes, I do.
So I mean, I don't know what I think what I'm going to do with it.
Because this is quite popular now is to turn blocks engine blocks into tables.
It's that's got a monster engine block.
That's got to be huge.
It's eight feet long.
And three and a half feet wide or four feet wide.
You could turn that into a pool table.
I'm going to turn into a giant conference table.
I'm going to get like an inch and a half glass top for the whole thing.
That's brilliant.
I love that idea.
Isn't that great?
It's a good score.
It's not putting in a car, obviously.
But it's like, yeah.
It's so close in your picture of it.
It's so cool.
And it's like a Porsche had its individual heads.
So a 16 individual heads on it.
That's interesting.
It's fascinating.
I've never really looked up diesel boat motors before.
But it turns 1800 RPM and puts out almost a thousand horsepower.
And I guess the later versions of it were like two or three thousand horsepower.
This is once from the 70s.
But I guess the ones made in the 90s made double that or more.
Oh, God.
I love it.
Are you sure you can't find something really stupid to put that in?
I'm like going to put a 5,000 pound engine.
I don't know.
Something big.
Believe me, I had the lemons question.
I'm like, oh, I just put it.
I make it a mid engine marine diesel van.
Right.
There's only a stack like way, way, way, way.
You didn't finish the thought though, John.
It has to have twin, duly axles in back.
Well, I handle the weight.
Yeah.
I'm putting it.
I'm not putting it in the strange rover.
No.
No, no, no, no.
No, no.
You get an old economy line.
And you stretch it and you put twin, duly axles under it.
And then you put it in the back.
I am a maniac, but I am not that.
I think that guy lives in like Wisconsin.
And like it's it's cold out.
And he that's always doing in his shed for three winters is doing that and swallowing
lining cougars.
Okay.
He's got, he's always got a keg of linies on tap.
And he's figuring out, oh, yeah, that'll go right in there.
Howard by cheese.
Those are some of the more questions.
That's freaking awesome.
I love it.
That's the fact that you're even bringing it home.
And you thought, you know what?
Table table.
You could put that under a snooker table.
That's monstrously large.
It's way too heavy to bring into my house.
So I'm going to literally have to like, I think a business or like
one of those car clubhouse places.
Sure.
Would love that.
Like, I know Bruce Canop is building a clubhouse storage place next to his place right now.
Oh, sure.
So I might pitch it to him.
I'm like, if you want a conference table of V16 conference table for car condos.
Right.
Perfect.
Absolutely perfect.
Serving your buffet on a V16.
Why not?
Do you get why I'm friends with him?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It all makes sense.
He ain't right.
And we bounce really horrible ideas off of each other.
And I like that.
I like that a lot.
I like that more than I should.
We've been speaking with John Fakara of Fakara Classic.
John, please tell us where we can find you online and on social media.
You can find me on YouTube at the Fakara Classic YouTube channel.
Also an Instagram Fakara Classic and Fakara Classic dot com.
And for all of those that's F-I-C-A-R-R-A Fakara.
Thanks always for being with us.
And also, thanks for coming down and splitting the condo with us.
We had a ball.
It was a lot of fun.
I explained the stain in the back seat of the truck to the people at Enterprise.
And I didn't seem to care.
I even told him.
It's all about the pie.
It was a little sticky.
That pie was sticky.
I'll tell you about that when we get down with this.
John, that was a lot of fun last week, man.
We should do that again next year.
We will.
And I appreciate your hospitality.
That was awesome.
John, thank you so much.
I appreciate it, man.
My pleasure.
Take care, guys.
So John and Scotty get down the Monterey north of Monterey.
We rent condos at this little place on the beach about a half hour north of Monterey.
I'm not going to tell you the name because then everybody will show up there next year.
Want cheap lodging.
And, you know, we got condo.
And not everybody wants to go out to eat for every stink of mail.
It gets really expensive doing that.
So we go to the grocery store and buy a bunch of stuff, you know.
Same with stuff and, you know, buy some beer and some other stuff.
And we're walking around in John's buddy, Scotty.
God bless him.
We're walking through the bakery.
And he picks up this pie.
I swear to God, Mark, the thing felt like it was made out of lead.
Okay.
It's the heaviest, most dense pie you've ever had in your life.
Right.
And Scotty, I'm walking by with a cart and Scotty goes, feel this.
That's the pie.
No, just pick it up.
I get to pick it up.
It weighs two to three pounds, easy.
It's a regular sized pie.
Regular, but it's heavy.
Okay.
And you look at it and it says apple pie and berry.
All right, whatever.
We buy it because, you know, why not?
You do it just to try it out.
And we had an F-150 for a rental.
And I'll tell you how much I dislike this F-150 later.
But we put it in the middle of the back seat just because, you know,
it's really dense.
You know, I want to get it squashed.
You know, I wanted to go anywhere.
Right.
We get back to the condo.
This thing has seeped fruit juice like fruit filling juice into a cloth back seat on this.
And it ain't coming out.
Oh, no, no, no.
And I'm thinking, I rented this damn truck.
I'm going to have to explain this to somebody eventually.
And we drive the thing for the better part of a week.
And that stain.
It won't dry up.
It won't come out.
It's not.
It's.
It is its own fluid.
So we get back to turn the truck in.
And I tell the people at the rental place, hey, listen.
There's a bit of a stain in the back seat.
It's not real big.
But I don't know if we did it or somebody else did it.
But the damn thing is there.
The guy takes one look and he goes, I don't problem.
And just walks off.
Nobody, nobody charged me a nickel more.
Nobody gave me any grief about it.
Nobody asked any questions.
Nobody said, hey, what the hell is this?
None of that is turning a car in.
Hey, no problem.
But this is the first time I've ever had a car.
I had almost 40,000 miles on it.
And it hadn't turned an easy mile among them.
This truck has been hammered on.
And there are scratches all over the bed inside and out.
Oh, wow.
Like somebody moved a king size bed without taking the frame apart.
That sort of thing.
Yeah.
And it was a hybrid.
An F-150 hybrid.
So it's, you know, gone.
Part electric drive and then the other parts.
I assume it was a V6.
It didn't make V8 sounds.
And really strange.
You'd get in the truck.
You get in the truck.
You put your seatbelt on.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it was a hybrid.
An F-150 hybrid.
So it's, you know, gone.
Part electric drive.
And then the other parts.
I assume it was a V6.
And getting the truck.
You put your seatbelt on.
So it won't bang at you.
Stick the key and turn it on.
It does nothing.
It just says ready.
You've got the dash in front of you is all.
It's not, they're not digital anymore.
It's all just electronic.
It's like an iPad in front of you.
Okay.
And then there's a second bigger iPad in the center of this dash stack.
There's no owner's manual in this sucker.
The owner's manual is in the dash.
You have to go through all the electronic crap in the dash to try and figure out how in the hell will work the truck.
Oh, God.
And there's a whole bunch of stuff on the truck that I wanted to change.
Like, you know, that thing where new cars do auto off at stoplights, which I still think is the stupidest thing anybody has ever come up with.
You can't turn that off.
It just does it.
Yep.
It switches between the hybrid electric motor and the gas engine.
But what you would think would be a seamless transition in the truck goes, don't.
And it's a really sharp jerk.
Oh, God.
So every time you don't want to be drinking anything in this damn truck, you would wind up wearing it.
And it's an F-150.
I've had a bunch of them.
I like Ford trucks.
I don't like these.
I'll quit buying them when, you know, that I'll figure out what year it is.
They did that and just buy nothing but trucks made before.
It's the F-150.
Yeah.
It's exactly that it's every every bit of that.
It just was so not smooth.
Yeah.
It wasn't a smooth transition.
Now, I assume it's because some, you know, it's been beaten on for the last couple of years and 40,000 miles.
I'm not kidding.
I've never seen a rental car with that many miles on.
The only thing I've ever rented that had that many miles on, it was a U-Haul.
True.
It just, and I wanted to like it because crew cab, you could stick five people in it.
You could throw all men or a garbage in the back and we did.
You can, you know, I figured getting, I've rendered a couple of pickups instead of cars when I've been on trips before,
because you get out of the airport and walk across and you get into your rental car.
You throw all your goddamn bags right in the back of it and you don't think about it at all.
You throw all your stuff in the back as long as it ain't raining and you're fine.
You know, as long as it's not raining and people aren't climbing over the truck bed,
it's stoplights to steal your stuff.
Yeah.
But if you, you know, if you pack like Rhonda does, good luck to them because they're going to wind up being fitted for a truss after work.
How about that, Hernia?
But anyway, I really wanted to like it because it, and it was a four-wheel drive, it didn't even ask for a four-wheel drive.
Pretty nice inside just lots of, lots of screen, lots of screen.
And I'm still, you know, I'm kind of like John, I still like analog stuff.
I still like ages with needles that, that are analog and, you know, do all that stuff.
Nope, nope, can't have that screw you.
No, not anymore.
Everything has to look like an iPad.
Yep, it does.
It does make me kind of sad because a lot of the older cars, even though I wind and bitch about civil, you know,
there was one electrical thing that was really odd and the rest of it is just like, okay.
And it's all mechanical or something doesn't work.
There's a reason for it.
And the rest is fire.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
I can't even imagine working on modern cars now, plugging it into something and hoping that.
Well, I mean, it guesses correctly.
Both the Corvettes, both the Impalas, all the stuff that we, between the two of us, you know, hell, you're, you're Xtera.
It's fuel injected, but it's still.
It's still pretty basic.
It's a five-speed four by four.
It's still, I mean, if you'll, it's not an insult to say that the things mildly agrarian, it's easy to figure out.
You can work on it.
It's not that bad.
Yeah.
I couldn't even figure out how to shut stuff off on this truck.
I couldn't.
Now, the one, the one really good thing I will say for it, it got incredible mileage.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Big full-size F-150 crew cab four-wheel drive 21 miles a gallon for the week.
No, kid.
Not too bad.
That's, that is a surprise.
And we ran the AC plenty.
Yeah.
And yeah, it got really, really good mileage.
So there's the upside to that.
The rest of it is Dave Kenny, who we talked to frequently.
And Dave gets a new F-150 every couple of years.
I saw him Thursday morning.
I was in that truck.
I said, hey, can you tell me how this works?
And he walks out to the truck like you're a moron.
I'll fall fix this thing right up.
25 minutes later, he's like, I don't know.
Did you reboot it?
I don't know.
What do I unhook the battery and hook it up again?
I don't understand.
Crap, man.
My luck.
I'll do that and I won't work at all.
So anyway, interesting stuff.
It was such a good week in Monterey.
Yeah.
This is the first time I've ever been to car week that I haven't had an assignment.
Yeah.
You went there just to see I didn't have a job that I was supposed to do.
And it was a lot of fun.
Yeah.
And all the stuff that I'd made that laundry list of that I was going to do,
did about a third of it.
We wound up goofing off.
We ate a lot of seafood.
We looked at seals that were making a lot of noise over on Fisherman's Wharf.
Ron just got a great picture of an otter eating off its belly outside of one of these restaurants
because right on the ocean.
Yep.
And it was really, really nice.
It was really cool.
The weather was fantastic.
We got to see a lot of friends.
Didn't quite make it around to everybody.
We just had a good time.
God, I needed a vacation.
Nice.
First non-working vacation in six years.
That's a way to do it.
So really, really needed a decompressed.
I'll probably be all messed up by next week.
And that's absolutely true.
Thank you so much for spending time with Driven Radio.
We love what we do.
We really do love doing this.
And we wouldn't be able to do it without the support of our listeners.
You can find us online at DrivenRadioShow.com.
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And on LinkedIn as DrivenRadioShow podcast.
If you have a story you would like to tell or someone who can fix my stupid laptop, please
contact me at Brett at DrivenRadioShow.com.
I am so sick of this damn thing.
Just have.
I am Brett Hatfield for Mark Elgros.
Thank you for listening.
And we'll see you next time on DrivenRadio.
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All right, all right, all right.
Be a lot cooler if it was exactly what you wanted.
That's what they do at Hot Rod Express at 5105 West 40 Highway in Blue Springs, Missouri.
They listen to what customers want.
It's kind of cool because you can go to Hot Rod Express, talk to any of them there.
You can go to their parts department.
They have a speed shop.
You can stop in and talk parts.
And they will help guide you to the ones that you really, really need.
And the stuff they only work with top notch components.
They listen to what you want.
They don't just try to turn your car into something that they like.
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About this episode
Mark and Brett are joined by automotive historian John Ficara, who shares his fascinating experiences in the car world, including his unique six-wheeled Range Rover and a quirky Porsche 928 safari build. The conversation dives into the history and restoration of these vehicles, along with anecdotes from car events like Radwood and Monterey Car Week. John also discusses his work on the Rocky Aoki 911 limo and the challenges of modern automotive restoration, making for an engaging and informative episode filled with car culture insights.
Original notes
On this Best of Driven Radio Show, Brett and Mark welcome John Ficarra of Ficarra Classic to discuss Monterey Car Week, six-wheeled Range Rovers, displaying multiple off-road dream cars at RADWood at The Paddock and Concorso Italiano, and what may be the strangest automotive purchase of his career. All this and much more on this week's Best of Driven Radio Show!
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