Driven Radio Show #337: Ted Taormina of Taormina Motorsports

Hey, all you gearheads and carpeans, 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.

We are coming to you from Driven Radio Studios where it finally turned to winter.

Yeah, it's cold and it stayed cold.

That was the different thing because some of these days it was starting real cold, but

then it gets nice in the afternoon.

Yeah.

Not today.

What was the last nice day we had, Monday or?

It was Monday.

Yeah.

I haven't left the house since then.

Screw winner.

I hate cold weather.

I'm not going outside.

This sucks.

Half every bit of this.

I'm going to sit inside in shorts like I told you upstairs.

Oh yeah, the first thing you say, guess what?

Three days.

It's three days since pants.

I'm not putting them on.

I'm not leaving the house until I got to.

Your pants have not raised from the dead in three days.

Yeah, screw this.

It's nice.

Cold weather is a plot and I'm sure it's a plot against me.

I'm pretty sure.

It's not paranoid if they're really coming to get you, isn't it?

It's so true.

Yeah, screw this noise, man.

I'm sitting at home.

I'm wearing wrinkled shirts and a pair of shorts.

Well, in this cold weather, you've got multiple convertibles, so what do you drive that keeps

you comfy?

Well, we're going to get into that in just a sec.

Beforehand, Thunderbird Chronicles, what's news?

Nothing.

I haven't done nothing.

There was this piece of foam that came with the Holley carb that kept up from bouncing

around.

That's sitting on top of the carburetor right now with the air cleaner off because I have

been so, forgive the vernacular, but I've been absolutely nutless about finally getting

over there, pulling off the current car because I'm like, if I pour gas down, at least it

still runs and I'm just a YouTube mechanic who's going to screw everything up, but I'm

like, yeah, you're going to screw it up, learn.

It's 19 degrees outside.

That doesn't help.

The garage ain't warm even if you've got a heater out there.

I've been a bit of a wuss and I absolutely admit it, but I finally got to the point where,

well, just go frickin' learn, jackass, and get her done.

If you mess it all up, you know guys who can fix it.

Go in, do your best, and if nothing else, if it actually works right and runs well,

et cetera, I can do a happy dance and beat my chest and shoot my gun in the air because

that apparently is a thing to do in the city I live in now.

Oh, dude, there was explosion the other night and a couple of gunshots, I'm like, no shit,

really?

So I went and I sat in my garage and listened to country music because at the time it was

modern country, but I just sat there and drank a Diet Dr. Pepper and was just like, okay,

let's see what happens.

Oh, wow.

And luckily it was calmed down.

When the weather warms up and I saw this on TV the other day and I thought it was kind

of fascinating when the weather warms up, go walk your roof and look for slugs because

apparently people shooting off guns and celebrating and stuff, you know, what goes up must come

down.

Yeah, those gutters, yeah.

I was watching a show that had a couple of roofers on it walking around and they were

taking like knives and prying slugs out of shingles.

Jesus.

Well, you know, I told you about finding that 45 in my gutter when we first moved in there

before I got them replaced.

What?

Yeah, I think it's a nine, but it might be a 45 considering the size of a bullet.

It was in my gutter.

I thought it was a rock because I was going up to clean out the gutters and it looked

This is exactly what I'm talking about, man.

And then I'm like, oh, that's not a rock.

That's exactly what I'm talking about is probably somebody celebrating God knows what.

It's sitting on my desk at home and I'm like, yeah, okay, this is my, this is my welcome

wagon.

Jeez.

Well, welcome to Raytown.

Here's some lead.

Welcome to Raytown Beach.

Raytown Beach, baby.

Living the dream.

Okay.

Well, if you're not working on the T-Bird, yeah, have you been looking for cheap bikes?

I have looked for cheap bikes and I was going to mention earlier before the show, but I'll

just spit it out here and then shut up.

There is a 1962 Dodge Newport that's been on it's been on Facebook for a while.

It has too many wheels.

The first time I saw it was like four or five years ago, World of Wheels and it's got kind

of all the low rider paint stuff on it.

Oh, so this is a nice car.

No, it looks really cool, but it is, it's definitely a Mexican blanket kind of, kind

of low rider.

Okay.

We did the inexpensive practical interior and the dude decided to cut out some of the

rust and then never cut any, you know, never put anything back in.

I'm like, I could practice welding and the whole point of all of this is the fact that

it has some really good looking Craggers on it, nice tires and I'm like, you know, if

it would cost me 1500 to get nice Craggers with decent tires on it that aren't the big

white walls that are on the T-Bird right now, you know, would it be really that much more

of an investment to get the whole damn car with it?

Eventually it'll look good on the street.

And then that way, if I, if I end up another thing that I could practice on and if I just

eff it all up, then we, what's the loss?

Well, we're about to talk to a guy who ought to teach us how to weld it would be nice.

I'm honest to God, I'd pay people right now if they would just learn me how to do it.

Oh, it would be worth real money.

Let's, let's get through garage business here real quick one, that 1990 Harley heritage

that I've been working on for Dave Sider.

Yeah.

I have, I grabbed Chris Claxon and went down to the warehouse last week and we stripped

a whole bunch of stuff off one side.

Dave, if you're listening, forgive me for this, but it looks like he went through the

Harley JC Whitney catalog and hung everything he could find on this bike and it's been on

there for a long time.

And I'm pretty sure Dave's the original owner, so he doesn't have anybody else to blame.

It's like a mystery man.

Is it a Harley?

Well, it's Harley compatible.

Well, it's hard, it's Harley adjacent.

Yes.

But I've been taken.

I've been taking all this stuff off so I could first of all get a better picture of

the bike, you know, a better idea of what I'm working on.

And I can, you know, I've done enough of these Harleys.

I can see through it.

I know what it is.

I know what it needs.

And so I'm just pulling all this stuff off and then we're polishing the hell out of parts

of it.

And I'm telling you right now, half of that bike looks really, really good.

Nice.

And the other half looks like it's got 35 years of dirt on it.

And so I'm working on it.

It's coming around.

I can see the potential in it.

It gets me excited.

Like I've said before, I don't want to own every Harley.

I just want to fix every Harley.

Yeah.

I can't, it's just Harley Nightingale.

I'm just hooked.

Hey, the Schadenfreude Express is currently over at Aristocrat Mercedes and

we're fixing some mechanical things.

I've been, I've been daily in that car for a couple of years now, but, you know,

every now and then you got to stop and there's some stuff to do and parts aren't

always real easily available, but we're getting some stuff done and I'll get it

back tomorrow and then next Monday, she's going to classic collision down on

Metropolitan.

We're doing all the body work.

We're fixing all the chips, the nicks, the dents, the scratches, the scratches,

the warts, the bars, everything on her.

We're going to put all that straight.

Then when she comes out of there, Driverside Seats getting rebuilt, wheels are

being refinished, she's going to stand tall, going to look like a brand new 27

year old Mercedes.

I'm going to keep driving that thing because you cannot find.

It's equal in just about anything else.

It's a sweet ride.

Well, the quality and plus a V12.

Jesus.

You know, it's funny.

I'm not a Mercedes guy, but riding in that thing.

It's like, you know, my ass said you should be.

Yes.

You should be a Mercedes guy because this is nice, dude.

Yes.

And the tunes aren't too bad.

Tunes are bad and that, yeah, that velocity coming off of an entrance ramp.

Yeah, that's fun too.

That's fun too.

Oh, that's the GeForce.

If you go back and you look up the old road test on those W140 S600s, they are as

fast from 50 to 70 as they are from 30 to 50.

It's the same time.

It's like three seconds and they just absolutely marched down the road.

Nice.

So I'm excited to get that done.

The car certainly deserves it.

And I'm not doing this just because the thing is skyrocketed and value the last

few years, although it has.

That doesn't hurt.

No, it doesn't hurt.

My feelings a lick, but it's such a stinking nice car.

And I think it's really deserved to have life breathed back into it for a while.

And I'm excited to get that done.

Nice.

Speaking of big Mercedes.

Yes.

Poor Darrell Ossopic.

Of Ossopic Automotive 5920 Merriam Lane, 91383 13613.

And I just love Darrell.

I was telling him today that we keep running ads for him on here and he's

and he just laughed.

I said, I know you're buried, but I don't care.

Just remember it.

And Ossopic Automotive, he'll fix your car no matter what it costs.

Thanks, but he's told me that enough that I'm letting the world know.

Anyway, he's got a 2000 W220 platform, Mercedes S500, that I told him I would

help him sell.

I think it's got about 45,000 miles on pretty low miles.

It's a mocha black.

It's like a blackish super dark brown black color.

Oh, it's a very German color.

Memory serves a black leather interior.

I'm going to go scoop that thing up for me pretty quick and start cleaning that

too, because I just don't have enough crap going on.

Man always needs more crap.

Yeah.

Well, 17 jobs ain't enough.

So anyway, that's all I had.

That's the garage report.

Don't have anything else to offer right now.

That seems like plenty.

I can't believe I keep picking up other people's projects because apparently

I ain't too bright, but you may not be able to believe it, but everybody who knows

he does this is OCD in motion.

That's all this is.

I look at something and I go, I know how to fix that, that car, that bike, that

whatever it is, that thing needs me.

Send it to Hatfield's home for recalcitrant vehicles.

Send me your projects because I'm too dumb to say no.

Our special guest this week is Ted Tarmina.

Ted is the founder and driving force behind Tarmina Motorsports, a highly

specialized auto repair and fabrication shop dedicated to high performance and

exotic automobiles, including Ferrari, Lamborghini and Porsche.

His expertise began early working exclusively on Ferrari and Lamborghinis

from an early age, quickly becoming a V12 specialist.

Ted has had a lifelong pursuit of speed after early exposure to Bonneville

salt flats racing.

Yeah, baby.

Very cool.

Ted, welcome to Driven Radio.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

Oh, we're thrilled to.

When did you first know you were a car guy?

How old were you?

Were you really young?

Did you have early influences?

Yeah, no, no real influences.

I just knew I was fascinated with cars and hot wheels and all that stuff.

And I'd put a long two by 12 board and divide the lanes and then just get a stick

and rest the tires over the edge.

You get a stick and just knock all the cars down at the same time to figure

out which hot wheels the fastest.

That's right.

That's how it starts.

Yeah, then I'd sit in my dad's 55 pickup truck that had a manual heater fan

switch on it and I'd flick this fan switch on and pretend I was driving.

And then my dad told me, you know, if you could, you could make it run,

you can have it.

So of course I opened the hood and started breaking stuff and making gas leak

and oil leak.

And, you know, I think I was probably nine or 10 years old and I just knew I

wanted to get in there and make it work, you know, so it was that and it was an

old Bonanza minibike that got me hooked on making noise.

And that was it.

I just knew, you know, I needed to have something with wheels.

I would, I would sneak my mom's, I'd pretend to be washing my mom's station

wagon and I take it for a ride down the driveway and put it back away.

All cleaned up and told her, yeah, it's all cleaned up for you.

You know, just move it in, move it out.

That was it.

But yeah, I knew that I just was fascinated with cars and anything

that I could see or watch on TV, Dukes of Hazard, stuff like that.

I got all around, I'm all around, all that stuff.

It just, I just knew I wanted to be part of that world.

I just knew it, you know.

I'm wondering if like Mark and I, do you watch whole TV shows and

movies just for the cars?

Oh yeah, for sure.

I mean, and it's like, you know, there's many times where I'm like, you know,

I got a car in the garage that would be way more attractive than the car

they've got on TV for this, you know.

Like Fast and the Furious and stuff like that.

I think the only car really, that really turned me on on the Fast and the Furious

was the Corvette Coupe that was all flared out.

There you go.

That was pretty cool.

And of course, the charger was a bad ass.

And it was like, I could relate to wanting that kind of power all the time.

And those are the only two cars in that movie that really turned me on.

But I like watching them and what they were doing with them.

And then, you know, in my field, sometimes I get exposed to see the actual

movie cars and they're not nearly as nice as you think they are on TV.

No, no, that's that's the way it's supposed to be, you know, and probably

probably a little bit of Batman got me excited too.

You know, the way that thing works.

Oh yeah, it was that kind of stuff that made me want to do something extraordinary.

I just didn't have the path at that age to get there.

I didn't know how I was going to get there.

I just know I wanted to be there.

So what was the what was the first car then?

When you graduated out of minibikes and motorbikes?

First car was a 66 Osmobile F 85 jet fire. Cool. Yeah.

A big, big long vote.

Yeah, I heard you mentioned Kragers earlier, and that was the only shiny part of that car.

Oh, boy, that's not a first.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

And I made sure they were shiny every damn day.

And then and I shared that car with my brothers.

And then after that, it was a it was a little Datsun 620 pickup truck

that had, you know, mini truck days.

I don't know if you remember that. Oh, yeah.

Hot Datsuns and Dodge D 50s and stuff like that.

So I had a flared out mini truck.

And once I blew that four cylinder up many times,

I decided to pull that L series engine out and put another L series engine in it,

which came out of a 240 Z.

A little hot on the other side of the radio on the other side of the radiator mount

and then put the fan on the front side, made some funky grill.

Look awful and put a Datsun engine in there and the little six cylinder

made that little truck pretty damn fast.

Not bad. Those trucks didn't weigh anything.

Wait, no, no, no, no, they didn't weigh anything.

And from that, it was Datsun Zeese.

I worked on Datsun Zeese for about two years.

And my uncle purchased a 72 Ferrari GTC four

from a dealer that was selling it for Sylvester Stallone.

My Datsun had three webers, three twos on it, webers.

And my uncle's car had six twos on it.

But the cool thing about it was the firing order for the Datsun

on the six cylinders was the same firing order on the Ferrari on each side.

So as you probably already know, Ferraris Lamborghinis always ran two distributors,

two fuel pumps, two coils.

So the only thing common was the crankshaft.

And the firing order was, you know, either 60 or 90 degrees apart.

Yeah, it's like two six cylinders working together in concert.

Exactly, exactly.

And to this day, even some of the Ferrari 812s, the F12s and the 599 GTBs,

they're running two pumps, two ECUs, two of everything.

So yeah. Oh man, two ECUs seems like it would make everything so stinking,

complicated.

It's really not, you know, they're very simple ECUs or Bosch, you know,

it's not a big deal.

Anybody can crack them.

It's easy also because you can always, if you have a diagnostic problem,

you can always see if you can move the problem from one bank to the other bank

to find out if your parts are good enough.

Okay, that's clever.

Make the Mercedes the same thing.

You know, you can, you can move your parts around to find out if you got a bad one.

Yeah, we're going to talk about Mercedes V12s in a minute.

They're cool.

They're super cool.

I have one.

I'm sure you heard us talking about it the head of the show.

I've got the very last year of the W140 platform S600.

Yeah.

She's showing a little wear, but she still runs really, really well.

Man, you know, as well as I do, you get everything right on one of those.

There's almost no better road car ever.

Oh, no way.

I mean, I've been a V12 addict for so long and I've driven the W16s and I've driven

the cool V10s and they're really cool, but nothing, nothing like a V12.

Yeah, love them.

So what was your first car related job?

I worked on Datsun Zs and MGVs.

That's what the shop specialized in.

Okay.

So I've done that and then from there, after my uncle purchased his Ferrari and I did some

a bunch of work on it.

I made a better, I put better coils on it, better ignition wires,

tuned the webbers and it ended up running really well.

And my uncle had a fender bender and he took it to a specialist, Albert Tony,

and Albert Tony that did the body work on it.

He said, hey, who worked on your car?

He says, oh, my nephew did, he works on Datsun Zs, you know, he's just a young kid learning.

And he says, you know, there's not too many people that could do what he did.

What did he do?

So my uncle told them all what I did.

My uncle said, hey, next time I go up there, I want you to meet this guy.

He might want to hire you.

You know, I was not even 18 yet.

So I went there and I don't know about you guys, but only Lamborghini I'd ever see in person

was on my wall or Alpine commercial post.

Yeah.

And I walked into this guy's place and it's in Gilroy.

He's in the middle of nowhere, right?

Garlic town, but he bought this property 40 acres and he built his dealership up out there.

And they allowed him to have a dealership license.

This was 1970 or 69.

Anyways, I walked into this guy's shop and I probably saw 25 coontages lined up.

Whoa.

And I'm like, you've got to be kidding me.

And I'm like, where are all these cars from?

And I was so surprised because the car was much smaller in person than I ever imagined.

Yeah, they really are not very big.

Right, right.

And the only other exotic car I think I'd ever seen in person that was a V12 was a Boxer Ferrari.

And that's when I fell in love with Ferrari, but the coontashes was something.

So the guy interviews me for, I don't know, maybe 45 minutes.

And he says, well, why don't we see what you can do?

You come by on Saturday and I'll let you work on a Lamborghini for me and see what you can do.

Oh man, how excited were you waiting for Saturday?

I was more nervous than anything, right?

Because I'm just, you know, half of my toolbox tools were from Costco.

So I'm like, I don't know what I'm going to do for this guy.

But I came up there with no tools and there was an ironing board that he modified that

had these big curved legs that went underneath the car.

And I would lay on the ironing board instead of denting the fenders.

And we ran these giant squirrel fans on the side of the coontosh because that's where the air

intakes were. And he gave me the rundown.

He said, as you start up the car, you take off all the linkage.

You set up all these webers.

So these little mercury tubes like they use on motorcycles, you balance the carburetor.

So all those mercury tubes are even.

Then you connect the throttle shafts, open up the throttle to 1500 RPM,

and you make sure your acceleration is the same as your idle and make all those mercury tubes match.

And he just kind of gave me this steps one through 12.

Otherwise, you'll just chase your tail.

Do these steps one through 12.

And by the time you get to the 12th step, it should be good.

And he left.

And I was there sweating, squirrel fans blowing.

And I'm trying to do, and every time I made an adjustment, you know, the mercury tube would

drop and I didn't know how close they had to be.

If they had to be perfectly even because with the idle and the cam,

they kind of bounced a little bit and it was dry enough.

So I finally, after like almost seven hours gave up, I went up to his house and he's smoking a

cigarette and he's sipping on a gray dog, which is a grapefruit juice in vodka.

Said, look, it's as close as I can get it.

And he says, okay, well, let's see what you got.

So we drove down his golf cart and he starts it up and he checks it and stuff like that.

He goes, well, let's get it off the rack.

Let's take it for a drive.

And I'm like, oh, never been in a V12 car in my life besides my uncle's Ferrari.

We put this thing on the ground and we're in the back roads of Gilroy and he is

roaring this car through the mountains, 8,000 RPM.

And I was like, never heard an engine like this.

I've never heard six Webbers open up behind my head and roar like they roar like they do.

And I was like, this, this is, I'm like, my palms are sweaty.

My heart's pounding on my chest.

His cigarette ashes are falling in his lap and we're all over the road.

That was an unbelievable experience.

Yeah, but if he's able to drive it like that and he's able to run it up to eight grand and

everything else, you must have done a hell of a job.

Good point.

We got back to the shop and he says, look, I'm only going to give you this compliment

one time in your life.

He says, there's probably five guys in the world that could do what you did and actually do it.

He hired me, hired me on the spot.

I had to put in my two weeks notice and then I worked for him for 24 years.

So it was, wow, we were importing Lamborghinis from Italy, Ferraris, 288 GTOs, Boxers,

because none of those cars were USA cars.

Sure.

So they came in, we put the proper lights on them, the beans.

We had five labs in San Jose where we would do the EPA testing there, the cold start,

the noise, all of that stuff.

So we would pass them there and we would do the DOT, which is the steel beams, the bumpers,

and all that stuff.

We mounted a lot of stuff.

So his majority of his business was all gray market cars.

Okay.

And when you do gray market cars, you've got to reverse engineer what the factory did

because it's not going to meet California missions for sure.

Sure.

And go back in, install, find catalytic converters that are efficient enough and small enough to

fit in the back and then play with the timing, play with the carburation, the fuel injection.

You got to tweak all that stuff to clean it up, to get it to pass.

And then you got your stack of papers that went in the 80s.

You walked into DMV and they'd want to see your EPA.

Oh yeah, they want to see the federalization and everything else.

See all that stuff before I could sell it.

And that's what we did.

So when it came to working on those cars, you had to install charcoal canisters.

I mean, there was all kinds of stuff and tricks that you had to do to make this car

not only pass emissions, but run decent.

Of course, half the cars that ran clean enough to pass would come back to us and we'd retune

them to run really good.

You could take all this crap back off.

Some of it we would disable.

Yeah, the funky timing curves, the solenoids that we would install for emissions and retard

the timing to get the cats hot enough, all that funny stuff, which cars come that way today.

They just program it in the computer today.

So did he ever give you that compliment again?

No, in fact, I would have all those carburetor mixture screws.

Remember, there's 12 of them.

Yeah.

I would make my notes and I would put the slot in the screw on a piece of paper like a clock,

right?

So this screw's at 11 o'clock.

This one's at three o'clock.

I'd write them all down.

So he'd come over and he'd listen to the car and he'd grab it.

He'd go, let me get a screwdriver.

He'd tell me that.

And he'd go over and he'd turn them one way, turn them the other way, and then set them

where he thought they were right.

And he'd say, now, now it's right.

And I'd show my piece of paper.

I'm like, that's exactly where I had it.

He goes, ah, bullshit.

You just did that.

Ah, bullshit.

Let's go take it for a ride.

So it was the school of hard knocks for sure.

He had an SAE engineering's degree without really going to school for it.

He just took the test and passed.

He was one of those guys.

He made his tooling.

He made boring bars.

He made boring plates.

He made all kinds of stuff because the aluminum engines with sleeves, you know,

when they overheat these Lamborghinis, they twist all over the place.

We learned that we modified a refrigerator, put a big gas heater underneath it.

We put the blocks inside the heater for overnight with a certain amount of heat.

So all the aluminum would relax and not move with heat.

Then we would go ahead and machine them, install the sleeves and do all the machine.

And he'd put warranty on his engines.

He'd warranty him for 12 months, 12,000 miles.

You would beat it to death if you want.

Wow.

That's fascinating on something like that.

He would save these engine blocks because as you know,

you're not going to find them anywhere.

No, you'd have to save what you had.

You know, so that's what we did.

And I was exposed to all this stuff as a kid.

And I'm just, you know, starting up the heater, put this engine in the block.

I really didn't know the method behind his madness until I was probably

eight, nine years into working for him.

And then I'm like, okay, this is why we're doing these things.

And his friend was Jim Fueling, who became a very dear friend of mine.

And he was the Bonneville junkie.

This guy wanted to go fast.

He was the guy that developed.

I don't know if you've ever heard of the Fueling W3 Harley engine.

No.

There's a Fueling W3.

So he, he was working with Bertone.

And we were trying to figure out some Harley days, right?

He's like, you know, we should build 150 cubic inch Harley motor.

And we're like, how the hell are you going to do that?

So we took basically the technology from a radial airplane engine.

It's got one single connecting rod, two link rods.

So it runs a Harley Davidson crankshaft and journal.

And then you drive three pistons off of one journal.

That is insanity.

I'm looking at it right now.

Yeah.

So it's 50, you know, everyone had a hundred inch Harley, right?

Everybody.

This is 50 inches a whole.

So it was 150 inches, uh, two, I think it was 200 foot pounds of torque and about 170 yours.

Yeah.

The beast.

So I've got two of those engines.

I built a couple of bikes.

I built some Harleys around them.

You know, I like Harleys.

You've got two of those.

I'm looking on fueling's website right now.

So the engine's out of stock and they're a hundred grand a shot.

Yeah.

So those are the, when Jimmy passed away, uh, the, those employees took a lot of stuff.

Well, now that, and I knew Jimmy's wife, so I actually have all the patents and paperwork,

which really don't matter anymore other than I have the original drawings.

But I've got two running bikes.

I've got two running engines now.

So I don't really need any of that right now.

As you know, the motorcycle market's in the toilet right now.

So there's no sense in building something like that.

But yeah, I've got a big, uh, copper plated bike with a three cylinder.

It's a chopper.

It's an Arlenes chopper cause he was, we did trades all the time.

So I built a Y2K chopper.

I fish mouth the down tubes behind the front wheel.

So the third cylinder can protrude right through that.

It runs Harley Davidson cylinder heads, three front heads instead of a front and rear.

So all the carburetions on one side and all the exhausts is on the other.

And you got three pipes running, running along the side.

Yeah, it's cool.

I want to see pictures of that.

I am, I am a giant Harley weenie and I've never heard of this engine till just now.

I've not heard of a fueling W3.

I mean, it's incredible.

It looks incredible.

I want to know how it runs.

I want to hear one run.

I was just thinking that I want to hear the.

It sounds like a fast idling Harley and a front.

It fires the front, the back and the middle.

So it doesn't fire like a typical V twin, but it does fire, you know, 20.

Well, stock Harley runs, the firing is 20 degrees apart or 120 degrees apart.

And then the other one.

So now it goes 150 degrees off.

And then it, it's pretty neat.

It just sounds like a galloping horse.

I was going to say it doesn't go potato, potato, potato anymore.

No, no, no.

It's like, you know, just, it's like that.

But the torque is just monstrous.

And it's basically a third of a radial airplane engine.

So when you look at a radial airplane engine, the crankshaft, right,

but the crankshaft has three main journals and each journal drives three pistons.

So you got a main connecting rod and then you got like these little mouse ears

with two link rods made by Carrillo.

And then you put pistons on.

That's it.

Wow.

Oh man, I'm fascinated with this now.

I want to know more about that.

Oh, newly W3s.

It's, it's, it's really cool.

Really, really cool.

You've kind of told us, you know, your first exposure to a Ferrari was your uncles.

And then your first exposure to a Lamborghini is when you went to work for Al,

when you tried out for Al.

What was your first exposure to a Cobra?

The Cobra, when I was a kid, I was walking home from school and, you know,

California, we had earthquakes and I thought our earthquake was happening.

But it was a Cobra pulled up next to me and I'm just, I'd never seen one in my life.

And I saw this blue car with these big white stripes, these big white side pipes.

And the thing took off like a giant leaf blower because the side pipes were blowing

the dirt all over the place.

And I was just like, infatged weighted with the, the emotional draw towards that car.

Sure.

While I was working for Albertoni, we worked on a couple of originals for some local guys.

And I was just fascinated by this, this car that just felt like it was going to suck my

heart out of my chest.

I mean, it was that it was almost like the same emotional feeling you get at a drag

strip with all the power that those cars have.

You're like, my God, this thing's going to inhale a person.

Yep.

I fell in love with Cobras then and then my first year into working for Albertoni,

there was a V12 engine sitting on the floor that we had picked up with one of the purchases we

did in Italy.

And to make the deal happen, it was a Ferrari GTC4 engine sitting there with a transmission.

It was a Ferrari test engine that nobody wanted.

And in order to make the deal with the purchases we were doing with cars, they threw that engine

in to make the deal happen.

So we shipped it home.

It was still bolted on the pallet.

Finest Connor, we were working on his Daytona coupe.

And Finest Connor came over with Phil Hill, who was a rider for, or a commentator rider for

Road and Track.

And they looked at that engine.

They're like, what are you going to do with this thing?

You know, we're like, wow, we don't know.

So they called us back later and said, can you put it in the Cobra?

So we did.

We put a side-draft V12 4-cam engine at a Cobra 5-speed.

Road and Track did a big article on it.

Phil Hill did the ride up on it.

Phil Hill drove it around Danville, California, which is up near where I live.

You could ask for a worse test driver.

Yeah.

And Phil Hill was just, he was in love with it.

He was in love with the car because it just had the feel, sound, and RPM of a Ferrari in a

light-bodied Cobra.

So he had a blast.

He had a blast.

And that car, Finest Connor, kept for some time.

I think he kept it maybe four or five years.

And then it went up for auction in Monterey one time, and I haven't seen it since.

It went from red to yellow last time I heard.

And I think if you Google Cobraari Pictures, you might see a couple shots of a V12 6-car

engine, and that's the car.

Now, is that the same car that's getting ready to roll at Barrett Jackson?

No.

So being that I was in fact your way with the best of both worlds, and everybody was

abusing the name Hybrid, I said, and I told the Hill family, because I got to know them

real well, I told them, I wanted to build one.

They said, Phil Hill, love that car.

If you build one, we'll get your costs out of it, and we'll take the proceeds and put

it towards Parkinson's with Michael J. Fox and Phil Hill.

And that inspired me to do something creative, so I was on Bring a Trailer.

I saw a 599 GTO engine, which is the same as an Enzo V12 on a crate, and I called the guy,

I talked to him for a while, and it was a warranty motor from Ferrari.

The car over revved by downshifting.

They paid a guy to rebuild the motor, the guy that does a lot of challenge motors.

Ferrari challenge engines in Nevada, a great engine builder.

He updated everything.

He put better rods.

He put all new Ferrari valves, valve springs, everything, put a new timing cover, timing chain.

Dino, the motor, Ferrari called him up and said, we don't need the motor.

We finally got one under warranty.

So they let him keep the engine, so they paid him for his services.

The guy put the engine up for sale on Bring a Trailer.

I still think you could look it up on Bring a Trailer.

It came with the alternator, the wire harness, and everything.

I bought it from him.

He says, I'll warranty it.

I did a leak down on it.

It was zero leak down.

He'd run it on the dyno already, and I'm like, this is going to be the engine.

I get into a Cobra and a Cobra.

So then I went to the drawing board and decided to change the shape.

So I took an Aston Martin from the 60s and 50s, Ferrari 250 Testarosa's, Cobra,

and I laid them all over each other like transparent so I could see him.

And they all were very similar in shape.

I decided to take the front half of a 59 Testarosa and morph it on a Cobra body.

So I got a guy who's an amazing guy, Jeff Hafer.

He did a lot of stuff for Apple and Google.

I said, hey, can we do this?

He goes, yeah, I've been doing car modeling my whole life.

But I took big cars and made them little cars.

I said, well, now it's time to make this into that.

We started working with shapes and stuff like that.

We called a team in.

We painted a Cobra white with a roller and a brush.

We scanned the whole body, made a file, gave him the file, and then Jeff took that file

of the actual scan of a Cobra and started changing the body and shape of the front

of the Cobra to make it look like it should.

A year later, we came up with our final shape.

And then what you do is you take it from there.

You send it to a guy that can machine access, print it on a five-axis printer out of Styrofoam.

So we printed that car a quarter scale on surfboard foam.

So you can primer and paint it and see your reflections and your proportions

as a real model instead of clay like they used to use.

We did that and it came out amazing.

So that's it.

So we made it full size, the front end.

And because we scanned the car, the Ferrari surfaces that I created matched up to the Cobra surfaces

within a millimeter.

Where the front end started to blend in from the front wheel to the door,

we put those Ferrari GTO vents on the side just to make that transition look like it was made for

that.

So even had a compliment from Pininfarina.

They said, it's beautiful.

They loved it.

The Ferrari guys loved it.

You know, they, I really didn't get any negative anything in regards to that car.

The surprise was it worked.

It worked.

Yeah, I took the helmet diffuser from Ferrari Design, Aston Martin, Jaguar.

They all used it.

And then the little bubble around the steering wheel that Ferrari used.

And I put all my gauges behind the wheel.

I used some of the gauges off to the right in Cobra style.

And I just, I made it, I blended it and it worked.

I'm online looking at pictures of the car while you're telling me all this.

And the thing is gorgeous.

It's pretty cool.

Did you, you just made the one?

There's just one.

No, no, no.

Well, yes, I'm in the process of making another one.

Are you really?

Yeah, but the people that, the people that took on the, the V12 that I had were very,

very, very intimidated by six twos, six 48 millimeter IDAs.

They were very intimidated by that.

And the car just pulled like a freight train.

You know, the gearing was a little bit tall, but the RPM, you know,

you're 72 miles an hour in first gear.

I didn't have to shift to do it for the 60 times.

So a lot of people intimidated by that power and it really reflects on,

if you look at the market, there's more people after four, five, eights than there are after

F12s and 5.99.

So it's the V12, just even Mercedes, the people just back off the V12.

They just feel like it's too much.

And I don't know why it's the, it's a beautiful thing, but the next one in a

build will be easier because I will put a four, five, eight engine in it,

normally aspirated.

Okay.

Drive, of course.

And I'll put, I'll put, I'll put webbers on it and that's it.

I'll run it.

God, that's a powerful little engine too.

You know, it's almost 600 horsepower.

This first one is gorgeous.

What a pretty interior is in this thing.

Yeah.

That's a distress buffalo.

So I got a high to that out of Italy and I brought it home and I'm like,

this is exactly what I want in this car.

And I took it to my upholstery guy and we mapped out the pattern.

You know, it's a tuck and roll kind of pattern, but it's pleated like Ferrari did it.

So I wanted that old school feel and, you know, the more aware on that kind of

leather, the better it looks to me.

So I said, Hey, I'm going to do it.

So, you know, the car is going to bear it with 5,000 miles on it.

And I've had the car at 190 miles an hour.

It feels great.

I even sent the uprights to Barani in Milan to have them make me the proper Barani wheel for

that with the right offset.

And if you know this, but any Ferrari or Lamborghini that has a Barani wheel,

there's a, there's a number on the side of that rim that they stamp in there that

applies to whatever model it is and the proper offset.

So if you had to order a wheel for an old 250 GTO, they say,

give me the number off the side of the wheel that you have that's destroyed and we'll send

you a new one.

And that's what they did.

So the Cobraire has its own unique Barani stamp on the, on the side of the rim.

How cool is that?

Yeah, that's pretty neat.

And they laced it up and they did the, they did that special powder coating on the wheel,

that silver powder coating matte finish, which strengthens the aluminum and keeps it solid.

And they sent me the wheels back.

You've said it pulls like a freight train.

You've said you've had it 190 miles an hour.

So obviously the damn thing is fast.

It'll do 72 miles an hour in first gear.

But what's it feel like to have your butt in the car?

What, how does it drive?

You know, I used a good, really good shocks made by TK Engineering.

They're really good guys out in Nevada.

They build a lot of NASCAR stuff.

And when I built my Italian job car, I needed a real stable, stable shock that's going to

be able to, for me to adjust it for a light car with a lot of power, awful aerodynamics,

as you know, it's a, it's a brick.

I needed something for stability, for salt, for airport runways and for street driving.

So they engineered me a really cool shock.

It was a pricey shock, but it was, it was, it was badass.

It really was the savior of keeping that car stable.

So I was able to adjust the absorption and everything in it.

And the super performance chassis was a purpose built car.

So I was pretty confident with that.

And with the right shocks and the right brakes, I mean,

you'd be amazed at what you can accomplish out of a driving emotion.

So there's no vibration.

There's no shaking.

Bumpy roads could be absorbed by changing the dampening on the shock.

And I learned, you know, I wrote down my numbers for airport, for highway passes,

when I'm doing like tour de force in Idaho.

And there's all different settings I have accomplished with that.

And it was mostly by feel, feel the seat of your pants.

So with the Cobraari, you, you, you accelerate in first, you go into second,

or even third on an on ramp.

And, you know, it's, it's like that sound that we like to hear.

You just like to hear that RPM go from 3000 all the way to 800.

And you're just like, my goodness.

And you know, while you're intoxicated with the sound and the smoothness

and the pull of the V12, like, like you're just going to end up on the moon.

In third gear, you're looking at your speedometer, you're already 140 miles an hour.

Stuff started to go by me pretty fast.

I was waiting for that part while you're intoxicated with it.

The cops are trying to catch you.

Oh yeah.

I mean, you know, I mean, I've been pulled over a few times and they're like,

what are you thinking?

And, uh, and they're like looking at the car and they're like, what the hell is this thing?

And we get into the story of that and they let me go.

I mean, they've been very kind.

Of course, I wasn't putting anyone's life in danger, but my own, but, um,

but, uh, wasn't causing a lot of problems.

The rate of acceleration, the stuff, that's the kind of stuff we're addicted to.

This is how we do it.

You know, this is why it comes on like a time.

Did Lance Stander have anything to say to you?

Lance Stander loves me and I love Lance.

And anytime I'm doing something cool, like my next project,

he's just chomping at the bit because when one of my cars or two of my cars go to SEMA with him,

he doesn't know what to say or what to do with it.

He's just like blown away by the amount of attention that, uh,

like my Italian job got, uh, the super legera model that I came up with,

which is now part of what Lance owns is the, uh,

the design that I came up with for my Italian job car.

You know, all of those things that I come up with, he's very excited about

because I'm the only one doing this stuff on my own dime.

You know, and, uh, and I'm doing it out of passion.

I'm doing it out of fun.

I'm doing it out of, I want to accomplish something.

I want to take it to the next level kind of thing.

And that's, that's just the kind of guy Lance needs

because they're not doing it in South Africa.

They're waiting for me to come up with something cool.

I'm looking at a shot of the passenger side of the engine

and just pass the valve color cover,

looking at the headers coming off that thing.

It looks like a bundle of snakes on one side of the engine.

Oh yeah, cool.

They were, they were done in sections of three.

And then at the end of that section is like that, that braided steel flex flange

because V12s and high revving V8s are notorious for cracking welds

because of the resonation, the, the, uh, the resonation

that you get out of it and the vibration.

So, um, you use that flex tubing so it doesn't do that.

And when you don't tie six of them together,

it allows them to do their own thing.

But on the, on the dyno, you know, on the chassis dyno,

I've had those things blown red and they're easy to get in and out,

believe it or not.

When we come back, I want to talk to you about your other cobras.

You've got some quick stuff.

I'm sorry.

I'm a little stymied here.

I keep looking at pictures of that car.

That sucker is just so sexy, man.

That is the best looking car.

It's got curves.

That's for sure.

Have you seen the Italian John, the white one?

We're going to ask you about that in just a second.

We'll be right back with more from Ted Taramino.

Let's take a break for some commercials about cool car people stuff.

Driven radio show will be right back.

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practicing voodoo that brings vehicles back from the dead.

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And now back to more Driven Radio Show.

We're here with Ted Termina of Termina Motorsports.

You can find him online at www.Termina-Imports.com and www.TerminaMotorsports.com.

So that Cobra build is coming up for auction at Barrett, Jackson, Scottsdale.

And like we were discussing in the break, people ask you how you can sell that and you say it's so

I can build another one. You also have, is it your white car or your silver car?

Which one is the, is your super fast car?

The world's fastest Cobra is my white one called the Italian job.

And that car was, was my childhood dream to build the fastest one in the world.

Okay.

When I learned how to build stuff and then I learned how to do some things at

fabrication and stuff like this when I was working for Albert Tony.

My first trip to the Bonneville Salt Flats in 1991 was like life changing moment for me.

Watching these guys go out there and run their cars that fast and working with the guys that I

worked with that had no fear and there were no limits. I knew when I got home, I wanted to build

world's fastest Cobra. So I immediately looked up to find out who went the fastest because we were

out there running Osemobiles like the AeroTech car with AJ Foyt, you know he ran 287 miles an hour.

So I've seen what that looks like. I've been in a few cars out there over 200 miles an hour,

a Lamborghini Qutosh and I was hooked. I was hooked on going fast.

So when I got home from that trip, I knew I wanted to build the world's fastest Cobra. I looked up

who went the fastest. It was 198 miles an hour by Dick Smith and that was my that was my benchmark.

So once I got my own business going, I called up Lance and I said, I want the car this color white.

I want one green stripe and I want one red stripe.

And he said, are you kidding me? And I said no. And I said, and I'll send you the leather for the

interior and a friend of mine is a shoemaker, Michael Toskey. And he ordered these bright red

hides from Italy and I shipped them to South Africa and cost me 400 bucks to ship that.

And I had him do I had him do the whole car in red leather. And they called me up and they said,

what color do you want the carpet? I said, I didn't say anything about carpet. I want the floors

leather. So we did the whole thing that way. And when it was finished, Lance sent me pictures of it

when it was in South Africa on the on the rollers. And he goes, everybody is in love with this car.

And I said, you know what? You ain't seen nothing yet. I was building a I was building a special

427 for that car. So I could go fast. So we built it. We're in the car arrived home. There was a

guy also trying to break the record name. Oh gosh, I can't remember his name, but he was out at Mojave.

And he ran a continuation Cobra at 199 miles an hour. And that's a big deal guys. It's a big,

big, big. No, that's Holland. Yeah, I mean, it's it's Holland. And in a car like that,

it doesn't feel that great. No, no, it does not. Well, those and that's what I was wanting to ask

you about. Those things are not real aerodynamically stable. No. So how do you prep one to go that

fast? After driving a few other Cobras I built, I hadn't finished my Italian job yet. The reason

we called it the Italian job is that when parts would come in for it, my guys would say, Hey,

what are these parts for? Like it's for the Italian job. It's for the Italian job. That's what it's

that's what that's how it got its name. All my cars have a female's name. So that car's real

name is Stephanie. But the Italian job car at high speed was all over the place. It felt like

a breeze from the side or the front made it want to move. So of course, I was in my car and I took

a square piece of wood, which is just a little two by four. And I held it out in the wind out the

window. And I just kind of tilted it moved it certain ways. And every time it would turn one way,

it would push back the other way. It was awful. And I'm like, this has got to be what these guys

are feeling while they're driving these cars at high speed. And when I'm driving them high speed,

I don't feel any better. So I'm like, I got to get this car to plant itself a little bit better.

So I started off with removing the windshield and putting a helmet on. And it felt great. It

felt really good. The car didn't want to push around as much. So removing that big windshield,

and it's quite big. That made the car feel pretty good. And then I felt all this wind in the passenger

side of the car. So I built an aluminum panel that covered that half of the car. Then the car

started getting smoother. Then I said, Okay, let's create a little downforce. I put some little

canards on the front. And the front felt a little bit better. It felt pushed down and it didn't go

left and it didn't go right. It felt pretty good. But the back, the back of the car felt terrible.

It got really, really, really light. So working on a 456 Ferrari, in the back of that car, there's

no wing on that car. So a car had come in one time and it had a check light on for the rear

spoiler. And I'm laughing. I'm like, there's no spoiler on this car. So the spoiler is underneath

the car in the back. So at 80 miles an hour, just below the mufflers, there's this long body panel.

And at 80 miles an hour, it drops and catches the wind from under the car and pulls it down.

And I thought, Wow, that's super cool. That's easy. I could make one of those and not have to make

some body part. So I took some aluminum and made a tray that caught the air and I'd put a little

kick on it underneath. And I put little diffuser, diffuser panels underneath it. So I had a spoiler

on the top side and a diffuser on the bottom side. I took it out and ran on the San Mateo

Bridge 170 miles an hour and this car felt great. I could be sipping coffee right now.

So I went back and I'm trying to figure out how much downforce I had. So I stuck a GoPro

on the fender to see how much downforce the body would go over the tire. And it squished out about

three and a half inches to where the body was past the rim. I'm like, Holy shit, I got to take some

angle out of this. So I took out some wing angle and got it down to squat, maybe two inches at a

high speed. Same with the front canards. Before I knew it, I was out doing 200 miles an hour in

the middle of the night on the San Mateo Bridge because it's flat and it's quiet. There's no

inlets and there's no traffic cameras. Are you waiting for the cops to show up and say,

you lunatic? What the hell are you doing? Yeah, so there was one night where I was doing a few

runs and then I go back to my shop and do some work and then I go back out for one more run and

then I put it away for the night and, you know, think about it. So I was coming back to my shop

and a highway patrol was following me and I'm like, oh, so he follows me in and he goes,

what you doing? I said, I'm just doing some last minute tuning and stuff like that. He says, you

know, my beat is the San Mateo Bridge. And I said, Oh, really? He says, yeah, he goes, you wouldn't

happen to know anybody running a really loud NASCAR on the San Mateo Bridge this hour, would you?

But I laughed at him and I said, well, it's not a NASCAR, but it might be something else.

I don't want to know what you were doing. I don't know how you were doing it. And I don't even

want to know how fast you were going. But all I know is I don't want to see this car on my bridge

again. So then I started tracking down other places to go, which was like the Mojave Air

and Spaceport. They had these, these had these little competition things out there. So I went

out to those a few times. It was only a mile. And I was running, you know, 180, 175 in a mile.

And the car felt great. So I decided I needed more road. Jesus Christ. So Mojave opened up to a

mile and a half to another group of guys. So I signed up for that. And I went out, man, all I could

get out of that car guys was 186, 187. And I'm like, something's wrong. So I went back and I put

the car on the dyno and it made lots of power. And I said, let me ask you something. Can I run this

thing for 30 seconds with the Eddie Curb brake on the dyno? He goes, I don't know, never ran a car

that long. So usually they'll make a horsepower pull, make a measurement and they back off the

throttle. Well, I needed to hold throttle longer because I felt like something was happening when

I'm wide open throttle for so long, 30 seconds, a long time. So we did it for like 20 seconds.

And I lost fuel pressure. Oh, so I needed to get more fuel volume from the tank to the carburetors.

They were Webbers, six Webbers. So new fuel pump or what did you do? I ran a two separate fuel

systems like Ferrari did one for one bank and one for the other bank. So now I was delivering enough

fuel. So I went out there and I ran 191, 198 and then 201 and 202 the other direction. So I got the

world record in 2017. And then I got really excited because I knew I just had more meat on the bones

somewhere. So I went back and dyno the engine and got maybe a little more power out of it, maybe about

15, 16 horsepower. But if I want to do anything near 210, I needed another 100. So pulled the engine

out, changed the camshaft, changed valves, gave it a little bit more compression, went to 12 to 1

and went out to the Sun Valley Tour de Force. And I didn't run, I was on the dyno with the Webbers

and I wasn't sure I was limited to power. I talked to a bunch of Weber guys and I'm just like limited

to 650, 670 horsepower. It's all I was going to get. So just for fun, I put this giant carburetor on

there, a big Holley 1150 and a modified intake plannum for that 427. And this thing made 740

and 730 torque. Now we're talking. Now it's somewhere. Coincidentally, a lot of cars that run at the

salt flats, they run a big 4 barrel. They need that big tall manifold to scavenge air while it's

below the carburetor in order for it to deliver all the potential it could possibly have. So

doing that, I put that same engine, the same timing, same everything. I dropped that thing in the car

and I went to Sun Valley Tour de Force. No, sorry, I went to Spaceport America in New Mexico.

And in one mile, I was hit 200 and I had way more to go. I was running out of runway. So I ran out

there and then left Spaceport America. I got out on the open highway. I pulled the car out of the

trailer the same weekend and I got two miles a road. I went down the road maybe six, seven times

to feel how smooth it was. And I said, guys, I'm coming back. I'll see what it runs. And I ran

211 three times. I was so excited. On the open road. Yeah. So I said, I got to find some place

that's got more than a mile and a half for me to really unleash the beast. So Sun Valley Tour de

Force opened up their little run that they do in Sun Valley and it was $2,500 a pass for charity.

I paid for three passes. So my first pass was $194 and I was a little bummed out because I

thought I would do faster, obviously. I came to the guy that was done at many times. I said,

where am I going to find 30 miles an hour? And he says, you're going to find it before the turn.

The turn is not a turn. As you come into it, don't psych yourself out. You're going to find your

extra speed there. So I said, okay, so I went back up the hill. My next pass, I was looking at my

speedometer. I watched the video from the GoPro from the first run and I was at 130. So I'm like,

okay, I got to be 30 more miles an hour faster in the turn than I was on the last run. So

approaching my turn at Sun Valley Tour de Force, which is just before Phantom Hill,

I looked at my speedometer and it was sweeping past 155. And I'm like, this feels great. It's

not it's not a turn. Like he said, it's just the bend. So I just dropped the hammer. I came around

the bend and pulled it into fifth. And just before the, just before the, the speed trap,

I hit 223.2. Good God. Holy. That was, that was, that was all in the mail. So that day,

McLaren's, Ferrari's, Pagani's, one Bugatti, and a lot of Porsches, that little super performance

car was the fastest car out of 65 exotics. Jesus. I can't even imagine going that fast.

Fastest car of the day. You can see that on YouTube. Yeah, it's something.

When you're going over 200 miles an hour in a car, in an open car, no less, does the same thing happen

as when you're north of 150 on a bike, does your field of vision tend to tunnel and you're just

watching a little spot in front of you and everything else is a blur.

Everything's a blur, which actually makes things feel slower, believe it or not.

So the blur takes place. Everything kind of feels slower and you're so in tune with every heartbeat

of the road, of the engine. If there's anything that just like a misfire or, you know,

a burnt valve or something like that, you're going to know. Yeah.

You know, it's not like you're listening to your radio or anything. You're so dialed in.

Your ass is in the seat. Your body's connected with this machine and the wind and the sound

and everything just becomes a blur. It's like this hyper-sensitive moment where you hear and

feel every little thing that happens, believe it or not. Through all that noise, you feel the most

in tune when things get to that moment. That's the amazing thing and that's when I was at the

salt flats, the same thing happened in the Lamborghini. Everything just got kind of slow

and peaceful for a second and all you're thinking about is getting that RPM needle because, you

know, speedometers and all that stuff never makes sense. So it's that RPM needle versus your

gear and your transmission. That's your calculation. And then when that needle sweeps past your goal,

you know, you know you're hitting your numbers. You know it. And the other thing, and this is

just my personal experience, it may be different. It seems like if everything is right on the car

or on the bike, north of about 120 or 130, everything seems to settle and it gets smooth.

And like you said, the wind noise, it's just, it's almost like white noise on a TV. You're

not really paying attention to it. Everything around you tends to blur and you're just focused

on that spot in front of you. And if you have the guts enough, you occasionally glance down to

see what's going on on your tack or, you know, if you, if you waste the time, look at the spot.

The tack and it's your finish line flags. That's it.

Yeah. Oh, and like you and I discussed earlier today, hey, Dad, I'm sorry I know this.

I mean, you know, my parents, God bless them both and they're still here. Don't really like

that part. But I told my dad, I told my mom, I said, look, this is what gets me out of bed in the

morning. This is what makes me think and dream about the next piece of cool technology or

modification that I'm doing to a car. This is what gets me out of bed in the morning. And that's

my reward, breaking a world record, proving that what I'm doing is worth it. And it's not worth

it to anybody but me, you know, and as long as I can pay my bills and live my passion and have

fun at it and make a living on it, I think I'm living the dream. I really feel that way. I think

it's a good thing and no, they don't like it. You know, I mean, my mom's old school Sicilian

Catholic. So I mean, I must have a, I can't tell you how many church services my mom was paid for

before I go to a thing. This is, you know, you go to a Catholic church and they say,

oh, this sermon is dedicated to Tetra Amina, you know, I'm like, mom, you know, I'm going to walk

in and everyone's going to ask me if I'm okay if I survive cancer or something. I'm just going to

the runway, I mean, break. Yeah, that's why you tell her after the fact, you know?

You know, I've got three other brothers and, you know, the cat got out of the bag one year

and my mom's phone calls and rose three beads and all this stuff I need to put in my pocket.

My pocket, you're going to slow me down. I'm not going to end my records. So,

but, you know, it's, they know it's what I love and they know it's what I do and I enjoy it,

you know, and if I can share that with somebody or inspire somebody and to go outside of the box,

yeah, go outside of the box. It's a great place. So you've run on runways and open roadways and

everything else and that's where you set your record. But you've also run at Bonneville.

I mean, other than the obvious, you know, the difference between asphalt and salt,

what are the differences between running high speed on pavement and running at the salt flats?

The salt flats you don't feel is planted. Okay, so you're not really locked in with

tire adhesion like you have on a runway. So that's a great feeling. The tire adhesion that you have

on the runway is very secure feeling where the salt's a whole another animal. The beauty about

the salt is, is that just endless space. Also, with a Bonneville car like the, like the Cobra,

you know, I'm required to put an 800 pound steel plate underneath that car. They said,

look, we don't want anyone taking off. We don't want anyone airborne. You've got plenty of track

to run your car. It's not a quarter mile time. It's not a zero to 60 time. It's to get that car

up to speed safely and keep you on the salt and not taking off in the air. So that's really the

bottom line. I've seen some guys run out at the Mojave Desert, the dry lake beds, and they start

floating on the dirt and some of those cars that don't have enough weight

start floating and they get out of control and they just tumble and tumble and tumble. So

my next car, my next super car that I'm building is going to have an NHRA nice roll bar set up.

It'll have a plate for those long five mile track at Bonneville. It'll have Bonneville wheels and

tires and it'll have 568 inches and the shape of it isn't quite cobra. So I don't even know if

it'll be considered a cobra class, but it's more personal for me. It's more personal for me to go

this fast in the car and that's it. No windshield, just a helmet, helmet diffuser, a little windshield

brake around the steering wheel and that's it. So how much time do you have to spend in the gym

working on your core to drive a 220 mile an hour car with no windshield?

Three days a week, one hour a day. So I'm 59 years old and I'm keep up with most kids that are in

their late 30s or early 40s, so it's okay. I'm fine with that. Health is wealth of course and

if there's any kind of handicap that's ever going to slow me down from doing what I love,

I think I'll be devastated. So the answer is to stay in shape. I know exactly what you're talking

about. We'll be right back with Ted Taramina to discuss the difference between working on classic

cars and late models and how we're going to transfer all the knowledge that these people have to the

next generation. Let's take a break for some commercials about cool car people stuff. Driven

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Hagerty.com, the best of car culture right at your fingertips. Welcome to the House of Hell,

yes. Casamigos at 159th and Merlin serves up some of the best Mexican food this side of Mexico.

It's a Driven Radio show favorite for after the show and before. Yeah. And something during if

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159th Terrace in Olathe, Kansas 66062. Authentically awesome. And now back to more Driven Radio show.

I'm Art Groves. He's Brett Hatfield and we're talking with Ted Termina of Termina Motorsports

which you can find at Termina-Imports.com and TerminaMotorsports.com.

God, everybody should hear all the cool stuff we were talking about during the break. Yeah. And

let's just put a cap on it real quick or put a bow on it. Ted, repeat what you just said about

what you got to get from the car. Like I said before, it was something that Enzo Ferrari said

when somebody asked him about his favorite car. It didn't matter how fast it was. It was whatever

car gives you the emotional transition of being happy and having fun and enjoying yourself in

the drive. And that just means forget anything else that makes you fall asleep. Forget what's

boring. Forget all the automated everything. Let's go back to analog. Let's go back to three

pedals and send that person out in a car whether it's a Cobra, an E-Type, a Qantas, a BMW 2002,

whatever it is, grab the stick shift, push the third pedal to the floor and go out and have fun.

And that emotional transition is something that we want to try and bottle. We want to capture.

Oh, absolutely. I think that the emotional transition of happiness and driving a car like

that will make anybody fall in love with cars the way we have. Every single day when I was able to

sit in that modern day Cobraari that I built and stick that car in the first gear and just run

that revs to 8000 RPM, I'm like, there's no car today that will give you this experience at all.

Nobody makes one that'll do it. No one makes a stick shift V12 that'll run like this,

a 2400 pound car that pulls the 8000 RPM. Oh, wow, that thing only weighs 2400 pounds.

You don't even have time to change your mind, let alone change gears. So you grab the next gear

and you're off to the moon again. I mean, you'll be blowing past Mars before you know it.

But that emotional experience that you get of the sound, the feel, the engagement of the third

pedal and grabbing the stick shift and making all these things happen as if you're playing this huge

organ and church, that feeling, that emotion is like beyond words. It's beyond words. Yeah. And

it's why we fall in love with this stuff. That's why everybody falls in love with this stuff.

It's 100% visceral feeling everything that's going on in the car. Not just what the car is doing, but

it's feeling everything around you and smelling, you know, you can smell the gas, you can smell

the exhaust, you can smell the leather, all the cool things that are going on all at once.

Like you said, you can't find that in a bottle anywhere. It's just the best feeling.

How many people have you heard when you start up an old car go, wow, I love that smell. Yes.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard that statement, whether it's a Cobra, a Cobra or any

other hot rod that I'm building, you know, Ford GT40 or I've got a Daytona Coupe over there. You

know, these are all fun cars and these people are just like, wow, I love that smell. You know,

it's great. It's great. Yeah. Aside from the McPherson auto restoration grads,

who is going to be working on the old classic cars and classic exotics? Do you have anybody working

for you who reminds you of you? Have you found a way to pass on your knowledge to younger mechanics

and fabricators? I have one potential gentleman and his eagerness to find that edge, that trick,

that piece of old school knowledge of where it started and where it is now. And you could kind

of try and find the in between of diagnosing the problem that you're having or how to blank it or

how to fix or whatever it is, the problem that you're having. And I bring that up. I've got a 3.0

CSI BMW here and the guy brought it in with these two big Xenith carburetors and he goes,

hey, I want Wevers on here. I'm like, yeah, no problem. So we're putting the Wevers on and I

just kind of turn them loose and he's that one guy that wakes up in the morning and he goes,

I just want to do this perfect. So all of his carburetion, the hose routing, the arms, the bolts

are all facing the right direction. I mean, he's the guy that really pays attention to detail.

But you've got to find that guy that's got that feel. And I have to say it goes to my old boss.

He goes, look, I got one of the most accurate ass dinos in the world. And he can tell you whether

something's wrong or right when he's driving it. And I got to tell you, you know, when we would go

off for a ride, you know, I was that kid that was hungry. I didn't make a lot of money. But you

I was trying to feel what he felt. And eventually, I don't know if it was sooner than later,

but I really understood the language he was speaking to me. And I'm trying to pass that

on to him. And, and, you know, he's a young kid, right? So I when I was around, it went from

carburetors to Kjetronic to Posh, you know, you watch the felt the transition between

carburetion and injection, you know, I know where it started and I know where we're at.

And they don't know that they don't understand that a Weber is not sucking in fuel. It's works on

pulse. It's not a pulse. It's not a vacuum carburetor like a Holly. It's completely different.

They don't really comprehend that, you know, they don't understand how that is. And passing that

torch on is is going to be hard. I want to I mean, you know, if I'm in this 15 more years,

I mean, I'll be lucky to bend over a car and start tuning the screws, you know, that, you know,

my, my guys come in and they'll do a cobra insulation and I got, I got four twos to tune.

So they get it close. And then they just go over to my toolbox and hand me my magical screwdriver.

I said, it's not Disneyland. It's just common sense, you know, this does this, this does that.

And I try and explain to them what all these components physically do. And I'll say now,

give the engine what it wants. And that's the part they don't understand. I even got to the point

to where, okay, well, let's see what the engine wants. Well, how do we know that? Well, pull the

spark plug and find out if it's happy. If it's brown, if it's white, if it's this, is that black,

corroded, wet, foul, let's, let's see what it wants. So you can pull plug and go, well, that ain't

what it wants. You know, I said, if I get a car right, I can get the jetting and the

carburetion, the timing so good that you can go up for a 10 mile drive, pull that spark plug,

and it doesn't even look like it's fire. It's brand new stuff. And I'm like, now you're given

the car what it wants. There's no, there's no magic here, guys. It's, you've got to feel it.

It's like driving the stick shift. You push the clutch in, you put it in gear, you start to release

the clutch pedal and you start to feel the car move. And then you know, if you're going to

dump it off or give it more gas or whatever, it's all feeling, feeling out, feeling out.

And he's getting close. He finished this job and I really didn't have to do too much to it,

but I was chasing one funny idle problem. And so was he, even though the carburetor was brand

new, it was screwed up. So I got a new carburetor coming in. So he's on the right track. So I would

love to pass the torch on to somebody. No one passed it on to me, but I think that if I'm in this

10, 12 more years, which I will be tuning old Ferraris, Lamborghini Muros, you know, all these

cars with, you know, three, three Venturi Webbers and stuff like that, I could pass that on to

somebody and they could pass it on to somebody. I don't even need to sell them my shop. Guys,

you can have it. What am I going to do with all this equipment? Sell it? Forget it. Put it to use,

make a living out of it, have as much fun as me, number one rule, have as much fun as I did,

and do something you really enjoy doing and make a living out of it. So you can have it. I'll give

it to them. I honestly will. Honestly, honest to God, I'll give it my shot. I think I might have

to contradict you on one thing. You said nobody passed it on to you, but wouldn't you, wouldn't

you say that Al kind of passed it on to you? You know, I'll tell you about one tough SOB.

Nothing was good enough for him, but the funny thing is that after he passed away in 2014,

I couldn't tell you how many people showed up to his celebration of life that told me,

you know, we all thought you were his son because he was so hard on me. We all thought this and we

when it came to passing the torch, right, which he said he was going to do, he wanted a million

dollars for it. And I laughed at him. I go, I worked for you. I don't have a million dollars.

How the hell am I going to do that? And one of the guys I worked with, Steve Leener, another great

guy, and he's got his own Lamborghini shop and he's very successful at it. He and I were both

waiting for this moment to happen so we could just take it to a new level.

Old school Sicilian just cabasched it, you know, he just didn't throw it out. He wanted the money

and maybe he didn't feel like we deserved it. So Steve and I eventually won our own ways. And

so he did pass on the excitement. He exposed me to absolutely no limits. You take a guy like

his best friend, Jim Fueling, who developed the three valve heads for Mercedes, three valve heads

for Ford. He created and developed the V10 for Ford. The guy was an engineering marvel. He did

the Harley Davidson W3, which was unique about the Harley Davidson. It took all Harley cylinder heads,

took a Harley crankshaft and a Harley transmission. All the bolts bolted up to it. So all you had to

do with these big baggers that weigh like 900 pounds is put a W3 in it and you won't blow the

engine up trying to get it to the next bar. Being around these guys, they exposed me to no limits.

That felt kind of personal. Well, you got no limits. So when they both passed, I thought to

myself, you know what, if I don't know what to do or how to do it, what the exposure that I've had,

I know who will tell me what to do and how to do it. I grabbed that torch and in 2010,

I opened up my Tarmini Motorsports shop and then I started pursuing things that I wanted to do

and do it my way. Here I am 16, 17 years later and I'm having a blast. I met again,

met some amazing people along the way and yeah, I'm still learning every single day.

You know, we don't know it all. But if I get everything on to somebody and give them a life

and a lifestyle that they absolutely love, that's reward enough for me. I just forgot.

I think Mark's ready to come be an acolyte of yours. I know. I'm just in here and from Team America,

the light's going through my head, you've got balls. I like balls. I'm like, damn, dude.

Yeah, I want to work in your footsteps. I got projects here that people scratch their head and

go, where do you even begin? And it's like, I'll tell you where to begin and this is what we're

going to do this week and this is what we'll do next week. And after about 10 weeks, you're going

to be like, holy shit, we're almost done. This is great. And you know, you start to see that,

you know, when you're talking to guys like Jim Feuling and he says, hey, well, forget the

two cylinder shit. We're going to make it three cylinders and I'm looking at them like, are you

going to crack? So yeah, he went over, he went over and he took these connecting rods, cut them,

welded them, bolted them into a Harley, bored a hole into a stock Harley case. And I'm there for

a month, getting all this stuff rigged up, literally rigged up. And he ran it on the Harley dyno

and made like, I can't remember what it was, like 170 horsepower. It blew up and he goes,

this is great. It's going to work. And I'm holding my head like, there's oil all over the dyno

room. But he knew it worked. And he went to his guys that had boundaries. He cast his own case.

He made his own gear driven third camshaft for the third cylinder. And everything else drove off

off of the Harley engine. Everything else was stock components. And Harley's ego was so big

that when he went to sell it to him for like, I think it was a lousy nine million bucks,

they could be the only three cylinder dealer in the world that would put S and S out. That would

put all these guys out of business because they're the only ones with a three cylinder.

And they said, nah, we're good enough. We're selling enough Harleys. We don't need it. And then,

S and S and all that stuff. They're selling engine like crazy at that time. This was the

early 2000s. I bet they'd like to have that engine now. Oh my God. Well, 17 years later,

the patent's over. So you watch. It's going to pop up somewhere. You watch. I'm sure. It's always

going to pop that thing up because it's got the sound that we love. It's got that funky misfire

that we love. And it's got torque. And it's got all the magic that you could possibly want

instead of an inline four or some funky Indian thing and stuff like that. No, this thing has got

sky's the limit. I mean, you get a three cylinder that's 150 inches. That's two and a half liters.

If you build that right, you could make easily 210 horsepower and another 280 foot pounds of torque.

And they're selling that road glide, that super duper road glide for $110,000 now,

and it doesn't have that power. Yeah. But that's an old bike that Jimmy had built in one of Jim

Fueling's frames that the employees, they took like four bikes, I think. And that's one of them.

That was done by Jim a long time ago. Those boys that are doing that out in Mojave don't have

the brains or the balls to produce more blocks and build the cylinder heads with

extra long cooling fins and stuff like that. They don't have the finance to do it.

Somebody's going to do it. And it should be Harley. It should be. It should be.

But they're hardly right now is focused on the wrong stuff to do that. They're not going to do

it. It'll be somebody else. And when they do, they'll, they'll open up a whole new world.

You work on vintage stuff. You work on some of the coolest vintage stuff.

You also work on new stuff. In your mind, what's the biggest difference between working on classics

and working on new stuff, aside from the obvious plug and play diagnosis, the OBD2 and all that

garbage? I mean, what's what's the real difference between working on the two?

I would say the the neat thing about the new technology, and we're getting a lot of horsepower

per cubic inch, and just about all the manufacturers in the world. Some of these high

performance Ferraris and Lamborghinis, the arrow, the active arrow and stuff like that.

Seeing all of that in play is very fascinating to me. But it's so refined. Like let's take a

McLaren, for example, you got the 720 s and you've got nannies, babysitters, aunts and uncles and

grandpas looking after you and keeping that car on the road and stable. You got everything possible

to keep you from being a bad driver. So you could take that car to Laguna Seca and you could be

rated at a number eight and a half driver around the track. Well, you shut all those systems down

and get back to a two driver that you were when you started. What that means to me is the cars are

so highly technological that people are starting to separate themselves from the machine and the

reality of what's happening. They have no feel. You take that guy out of a Lamborghini Aventador

and you stick him in a go kart and he's going to be scared to death. Scared to death because

that go kart is going through your body. You're shifting. You're doing all the mechanical things

that his car is doing for him automatically. So then you take him out of that. You put him back

in his Aventador and you send them around the racetrack and they won't even get out of second

gear because they're afraid of what's going to happen and the go kart is going to happen in their

Lamborghini. Now they have a reality of what the car is doing for them that they're not doing and

they don't have a feel for. So let's look at another picture. You take a McLaren 720S and the

guy is out breaking all the rules in the world on the road and all of a sudden he loses control

because the reality and the laws of physics take over and you got a 140 mile an hour car going around

a corner that's never going to make it. But for some reason the driver thought he was going to make

it because that's how the car makes him feel. Yeah. And also the accident is catastrophic.

The car's in two pieces. The engine's over there. The front end's over there. The guy,

you know, God forbid something happened to him. But some of these high tech car accidents are

catastrophic. Yes. To where we were in our little Datsun 240Z and we slid off the road and we screwed

up the upper and lower control arm or something like that. Like, oh shit, we got to fix that.

Imagine having all of that at four times the speed you were going. It's really, really bad.

Somehow we have to take the old school and connect them with the new school so these people

have a reality of what they're driving and doing. The technological car advances are fantastic. I

fortunately have taken some of those advances and applied them to a 65 Cobra and broke the world record.

So those technological things that advances that we've made, if we can apply them to old school,

our old school cars will be more fun. But we need to have people learn about what they're actually

doing and what they're actually driving because I think there's a huge separation there of the

reality of it. Well, there is because most of them haven't driven any of those old school cars. They

haven't driven anything with any visceral feel to it. They haven't had to decipher what the car is

doing from their butt. They don't know how to read what's going on in that car. Whereas you take,

you know, I'll use an example that's near and dear to my heart. You take a 65 Stingray. You're

listening to everything. You're feeling everything. You're learning everything that goes on in that

car. To that end, I drove that car home to Kansas City from Monterey. I got 2,400 miles to learn

everything that car was telling me. And so by the time I got home, I had a pretty fair idea. You

know, I'd spent enough time in that seat that I knew what was going on in the car. New cars

separate you from all that. You don't feel what's going on underneath you and, you know, you don't

hear anything because the car's so muffled and you're so isolated from what's happening.

There's no way to know what's going on. And that's also the way, I mean, all the nannies

are the way they can sell these cars with 500, 600, 700. Take the new Corvette ZR1,

that's 1,064 horsepower, or the ZR1X that's 1250. If you didn't have those nannies there,

that car would be instant lawsuits. Yeah, can't control it. Cannot control it. There's no way

performance driving. Oh, there are several like our friends. Before you get your car registered,

well, your insurance company insures you. How about that? New Corvettes, I think all of them,

except for the Stingray, they come with a free driving school that goes along with them. I could

be wrong about that. But I think it should be mandatory. It should be. But did you see the

video they had this week? Chevy put it out. It's a ZR1X. They've got it at a drag strip

and they got the thing to run an 867 quarter at 159 and change. Oh, wow, that's fast. That's a car

that if you got enough money, you can buy it. You do not have to be qualified and that's terrifying

to me. That's terrifying. Sure it is. And you know, the guys, my customers, 99% of them that have

a La Ferrari, Enzo, the new SP3 Daytona, these are all super, super, super cars. You know,

and the funny thing is, is none of them, none of them have the experience to take that car to

20% of its limits. Oh, no, of course not. It needs to be mandatory for the dealer to send them

somewhere for a course. So when they get into that car, they have respect for it. Yeah, at least

have respect, not take it to its limit. Just be respectful and understand what you're driving.

And I think that would increase the sales and increase the desirability of an exotic car because

now they're, they're getting more in touch than they were when they just wanted the ego boost of

buying a expensive car. Sure. What would you like people to know about Tarmina Motorsports

that we haven't covered or isn't on your website or social media?

Well, first of all, my business was built on passion. And I think that I just want people to

know that, look, if you think you want to be a part of something like the car culture, classic

cars, exotic cars, stuff like that, feel free to come down, have a cappuccino, and I'll have a chat

with you about what you think you want. I'll talk about what experiences you have, the most

impressionable car you've ever been in, and kind of take it from there. I'll try and feel you out

and fit you into something that you want to get, whether it's a Cobra, a Daytona GT40, a BMW 2002,

Lamborghini Diablo, something like that. I'll try and suit you into something to where you get

into your first experience of a car that you think you want. I want it to be as close to the right

car for you as possible. And that's kind of my goal. When I build a custom Cobra for somebody,

we paint panels for them. I give them interior samples. Tell me your favorite colors. Tell me

your most impressionable car. Would it feel like to you? I could describe to them my most

impressionable cars. If they tell me about a most impressionable experience, and it was in a Porsche

928, I think, okay, well, maybe I'll get them into a Cobra or a Daytona Coupe that's got that V8

torque feel in the seat of your pants that they fell in love with at the first time. And then just

suit it up for them and give them a car that they don't even not sure what they want, but get them

in a car that they absolutely love. When I go to work and I love to do what I do and drive what I

drive, that's great. I want my customers to get into whatever we built for them, get into their

car, and just get out of it and say, man, I love driving that car. Not afraid of that car, not the

guy that puts 500 miles on a custom Cobra that I built and sells it back to me because it's just

too much. I don't want that response. I want someone who's using it. It's like that favorite pair of

jeans or that favorite leather jacket. Yeah, wear it out, wear it out, drive it. That's what I

want them to know. That's what we do. And that's what I want to do for them, really. Nice. What's

in your personal stable right now? What's in your garage? Boxer, Daytona, Coupe, two Cobras,

a Super Cobra project that I'm working on, 66 pickup, 57 Cadillac with a fueling V8,

454 in it, an engine that I built with Jimmy when I was a kid. I helped him out for a month,

and this guy came in and said, I want a 57 Cadillac that'll do 100 so I could visit my parents

from Palo Alto to Hollywood. And he came in my shop six months ago and he says, hey, I want to

liquidate this Cadillac. I don't know what to do with it. And he gave me pictures and I was eating

my lunch looking at the pictures. And the engine I built with Jim fueling with these fueling special

heads for a 454 was in the car and I knew what car it went in. And I pulled them up and I said,

I was with Jimmy when we built that engine. And it was a pretty nice car, 40,000 miles. But the

tranny and engine were not stock, you know. And he goes, man, this car belongs to you. He gave it

to me for $5,000. Super nice guy. So that's another car on my table. I've got a W3 all-copper

plated Arlen S Y2K chopper with a fueling W3 in it. Yeah, that you're going to send me pictures of.

66 Corvette. That was belonged to a gentleman that bought his dream car

restored. He bought a restored 66 red Corvette with five miles on it. He drove it 500 miles.

And his son called me up and said, I don't know what to do with my dad's cars. He sent me the cars

full of dust to store them. And I said, what do you want to do with them? I want to buy the 66.

I put the 66 up in the air and it's a 454 car sidepipes, but it's not the big

tripower and all that. It's just their, what the heck is it? 390 horse car. Everything's brand new.

Brand new. So I called them up. I go, what's the story with the red Corvette? First of all,

it's the wrong red, but who cares? And he says, I don't know. I just know that my mom and dad

fought about it all the time. And he wanted that car and he finally got that car and it was in the

garage. And all he did was put 500 miles on it before he passed away for a guy. So

that's in the stable. And that's it. So I'm looking to sell the Cobraari, obviously, and build another

V8 Cobraari. And then my personal car will be a black version of that Cobraari. And it'll have a

Ferrari FF V12 in it. So that'll be super fun because the Ferrari FF cylinder heads have the

injector right behind the intake valve. So I'll run real Weber carburetors on top, but they'll

only be used for the butterflies. That's it. The injectors will be underneath those directly.

It's direct injected into the cylinder head and I'll run a Ferrari FF engine, which has 730 horsepower.

So I'll put a Ferrari FF and my own personal Cobraari if everyone's afraid of V12. And that'll

be my personal ultimate car for me. Well, 700 horsepower and 2,400 pounds. That makes sense.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's legit. Yeah. All the V12 music you could possibly wish for.

And then in my Super Cobra, the one I'm going to take the Salt Plats is a whole other beast.

That's 900 horsepower. And that car will be, I don't know, I think it's going to be,

it'll be driven by me on the street for sure, but it's going to mostly travel the world

as an iconic super fast car. There's one sponsor that's going to sponsor it. So he gets to

ship it to whatever show he wants to do and put it on display and stuff like that. But

the Cobraari will be more of my daily personal driver and fun car. I don't care if I put 1,000,

100,000 miles on it. I don't care. It sounds like a fun time. Yeah. The final question we ask

everybody and, man, we get some of the best stories out of this. What is the dumbest thing

you've ever done in a car? And make sure you give us all the details. You know, hooking up GoPro

cameras on Defender of a Cobra to find out how much downforce I'm making and running the car out

of the bridge in the middle of the night at over 200 miles an hour is probably the dumbest thing I

ever did. And when I kept driving through the toll booth with my helmet on, the guy collecting the

toll leads out the window. He goes, what are you doing with a helmet on? And I said, it's kind of

cold outside, so I just want to stay warm. Running over 200 miles an hour on public road on the

San Mateo Bridge, probably the dumbest thing I've ever done. Christ outrun the cops one time, but

it's not too tough to do it to bills. I don't think they're going to chase you very far.

Yeah, it's like a guy on a high abusa, right? The cops are back there and he just rolls on the

throttle and disappears and the cops are like, he'll either kill himself or wreck somewhere.

This will solve it. So I may be guilty of doing something quite similar to that.

We will discuss it when I'm not on here. Again, my dad listens to the show.

Yeah, I don't need him knowing just how dumb I really am. So we've been speaking with Ted

Tarmina of Tarmina Motorsports. Ted, please tell us where we can find you online and on social media.

Social media on Instagram and Facebook. You can find me at Tarmina Motorsports. Just go to that.

And then you can find me in Northern California, Redwood City. Visit any time. I've always got

a cappuccino for new friends and visitors. In Northern California, Redwood City, you can also

find my address on Tarmina dash imports.com and Tarmina Motorsports.com. That's T A O R M I N A

Motorsports. Please check him out, folks. It's a really cool website and boy, you're going to be

hard pressed to find more neat stuff in one place. Ted, thank you so much for being with us.

Appreciate you guys. I appreciate you. All you do. Thank you.

Alrighty, so the show ran long, but I'm starting to enjoy them when they run long. I also

am starting to enjoy it when we get away from the list of questions that I have for the

because I kind of like steering into the weeds anymore. Yeah, it's just going four wheeling

in conversation, you know. Well, you've got the you've got the road that gets you where you need

to go. But sometimes you see that track over there and you're like, yeah, let's go. Let's see

it's like the show we did with Hot Rod Holly and Mike Wallen. Oh, yeah.

When we wound up talking about the Eolene's Testicle Festival. I couldn't even believe that

went there for the show. I think it was with David Nions. Didn't we wind up talking about

vintage men's colognes? I remember something about that. Yeah, because it was probably some

stupid thing. You said something about high karate. I think it was my dad with high karate

and British Sterling and well, and my dad wore English leather and my grandpa wore Aramis when

we wound up talking about it. And I enjoy that I just because you find out really weird crap about

people. Ted, I was excited to talk to him because I knew the Cobraari. I had seen it in pictures

before. I'm very smitten with that thing. I'd have to sell my house to buy it. Yeah. Yeah.

But it's God is that a cool piece of hardware. And before tonight, I'd never seen the interior

and the interior with that distress buffalo that is as beautiful as it can be. He did an amazing

job on that. And it sounds like he really knows his stuff. And I got to have a conversation with

somebody else who knows all the weird crap that happens to you north of about 130 or so in a car

or on a bike. And you can certainly tell he's been there. And he brought back a lot of memories

of really dumb stuff I've done. And, man, this was even more fun than I thought it was going to be.

And I figured it'd be a pretty cool show. So, Ted, thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Very,

very cool stuff. And part of the things when you guys were chatting about some of the vehicles,

and I'm like, I got no idea what the hell you're talking about. I jumped onto

tarminas-imports.com. T-A-O-R-M-I-N-A. And clicked on the sales tab. Jesus. There's a, you know,

and I love corvettes, but they're not my, like, chosen one. No, but there's a black corvette that

is so ridiculous. Black 57. Oh, my God, the meat on the back of it. There's a blower sticking out

of the hood. Tell them what that blower's attached to. It's Mopar, baby. When he said that, I'm like,

okay, I am in- Freakin' sacrilege. Yeah, it's blasphemy that's so fun. Oh, absolutely. And I

can't remember what did he say it was, a 303, 383? No, it's a 383, I think he said 383 Hemi.

Yes. With dual quads, a tunnel ram, and it's sitting on top of a pretty healthy blower. Jesus,

it looks so stupid sticking out of the hood, and I'm like, I am in. It looks like one of the money.

It looks like one of the MPC models you would have gotten when you were a kid.

That's what he was talking about during the commercial break. I was chatting with him.

Yeah. Well, I had to run off to the bathroom. I wasn't going to say that.

Because Dr. Pepper does what Dr. Pepper does. He needed an appointment.

This car, actually, he built for a customer who literally brought in a model car.

He had a car that he's like, I want it to look like this.

What? I wanted to have this, and I wanted to have this. And one of the things was

having the Mopar power in it. And Termina talked about it and said, you know,

I tried to talk him out of it. And the guy was like, no, no, I got, no, let's do this.

Alrighty then. And they put it all together and made it beautiful. And now it's for sale.

It is beautiful. And I would drive it. My only hope is they didn't butcher a numbers car to get

there. And I don't think Ted would have done that. No, the body panels they bought. And they bought

the basic, the whole body with a slightly thicker fiberglass so that it wouldn't crack as quickly.

Yeah. So when it's rattling and shaking and making a racket twist in that frame,

man, it's a custom frame, et cetera. It's pretty much custom from the ground up.

Can you imagine the torque on that coming off the line sticker footing in it?

And you know, it's pulling the passenger front tire up.

This is a three quarter shot. You can see the meat it's got on the back of it.

Well, furthermore, slotted mags, really? It's a 57 Corvette convertible.

It's got the structural rigidity of one of those Yankee clipper runner sleds.

And structural rigidity of a bowl of cold oatmeal. And you know, the thing is going to twist and all

that, but hell, I'd drive it. It looks like fun. It looks like a ton of fun.

Well, that was also the cool thing that he talked about. But if you take it to NCRS,

expect to have your nuts tacked to your forehead.

Not the only thing you could fit into it is, you know, a bag of groceries and a gallon of milk.

Maybe. But you could drive it there. So, you know, with all the toys on top of it,

he said it could be driven in traffic or taken out a little faster.

Although I will say this in a very similar car, my 60 Corvette, Ronda and I brought home a,

is it eight by 11? A big ass area rug rolled up, put the top down,

stuff it in a passenger foot well, hang it out the back of the car.

And fortunately it had one of those cardboard tubes in the middle, so it was slightly rigid

enough that it wasn't laying on the bodywork. It was just sticking up in the air. But man,

did we get looks in traffic and people honking and waving and all kinds of crap?

It's, you've never seen a prettier moving truck.

Now to go get the two by fours for the porch.

I have done, in the blue Corvette, I've done a half a dozen studs, two rolls of insulation,

and a couple boxes of deck screws. Sometimes a man's got to do what a man's got to do

in a little blue Corvette. You grow up in a lumber yard,

and whatever you're driving that day is a truck. And it doesn't matter if it's a Harley or a Honda

or a Corvette, that can be a truck. And that is something I learned from my dad. So thanks for

that dad. Hey, as long as we're thanking people, and I did this last week and I was trained to be

as sincere as I possibly could be at the end of the show every week when I thank you all for

listening to the show. We really mean it. Yeah. This is not some prerecorded thing. I do it,

you know, we do it live every week. But we really do appreciate everybody who listens to the show,

everybody who downloads the show, please. I haven't said this in about a year or anything, but

download the sucker. Let's see the numbers, because our podcast provider doesn't count

streaming numbers. Yeah. So if you're streaming it off the website or, you know, from iTunes or

anything, iTunes doesn't count any numbers. But please download it for us. We'd really appreciate

that. We really appreciate you spending time with Driven Radio. We honestly got to do. We love what

we do. God, I love doing this. It's too stupidly fun. We wouldn't be able to do it without the

support of our listeners, and that's you. You can find us online at drivenradioshow.com,

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 or someone you would like us to

interview, and yeah, the gentleman who sent in a suggestion a couple weeks. I'm damn sure working

on that. I haven't got an answer back yet. But if you got somebody you would like us to interview,

please contact me at Brett. That's B-R-E-T-T at drivenradioshow.com. I am Brett Hatfield

from Mark L. Groves. Yo. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time here on Driven Radio.

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. They make your car, your truck, your SUV, become the dream vehicle

you've always wanted. At Hot Rod Express, they listen. They figure out how to make it happen.

And the coolest part, you drive a home happy. Now, that's why they've been in business for 30 years.

Hot Rod Express in Blue Springs, Missouri, call 816-224-9597 online at hotrodexpress.com.

Hot Rod Express, they make friends fast.

Driven Radio Show #337: Ted Taormina of Taormina Motorsports

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Harley Heritage

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Mercedes-Benz S500

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