Ep15 Brian Scotto

All right, welcome back to another episode of Car Stories.

With Soun King and Amelia Hartford, and.

Today we get to talk to an old friend of ours, Brian Scotto, one of the founders of Hunigan, and just had an illustrious journey in his life from wanting to be an engineer to being a journalist and eventually founding one of the most influential car content.

Media houses today. You know, I've known Brian for quite

some time and he's always been such a huge supporter, but I don't know that I got to hear his story to the level that we heard it in this conversation.

Yeah, and we got to talk about inspiration, inspiration one leaves on this earth before we.

Go away, Yeah, and also the different eras or chapters that he feels he's had in his life, and also what's to come.

All right, Well, so enjoy this conversation with our old buddy, Brian Scotto. So, Brian, speaking to driving, Let's start with

the seed that got you into.

Cars, Like, where did that start? Getting my background?

I grew up in New York City and as you know, it's like the capital of driving cars. Right, No, absolutely

not like a lot I still have friends who are in their forties that never got their driver's license because like the subway is great and like ride bikes, like you don't really need you don't really need cars. But

my grandfather he was like a rags to riches story.

And when he did make money later on in his life and like his like sort of like mid fifties, he just spent it all on cars.

So he actually passed away when I was eight.

But when he passed away he had I think like eighteen or nineteen cars. So for me, like having this

like huge horde of cars is like kind of just normal.

That was sort of like what I grew up around.

And he had like a really weird mix of stuff.

He had everything from like Auburn's and like a bunch of other like you know, and then pre war cars.

But then he also had he had two core of bets are actually I guess he had three corvettes. He had

a Dolorean, which like you have to understand, like as a kid, like.

You don't remember this time because you're you're a youngster.

Don't no, no, I know you know what it is, but you don't remember when Back to the Future was in theaters.

Okay.

As a kid, like that was just the coolest thing, and that car felt like it was the future.

It felt like it was the coolest thing. Ever.

He only had it for a short period of time because he bought it and was like, this thing's junk.

And that also kind of crushed me because my Grandfa's like this car is trash, Like I don't want it.

But but I got to like be around all that.

And I think I was like six and I was in the passenger seat of his fifty seven that we were like on this two lane road out in the Hampton's and uh, we were his buddy like went to go past him because he was like kind of driving slow with me, and my grandfather like just dropped second gear and like broke the tires free and like the car was like all over the place. And he turned

to me and he just said, don't I tell your mom about that. And it was just this moment that

like after that, I was like I want to do that like that like that seems like so much fun.

So yeah, that kind of just stuck with me. And

then from there. When I was young, I was really pragmatic,

so like everybody else that was into cars I knew were like reading hot Rod magazine all that when they were like thirteen fourteen, and I was like, I can't afford a car now, so you know, I can't even drive on the ability to get a license.

So I got really into like RC cars.

I was like heavily into that, Like I started my own RC car club and like I started like making my own like parts and stuff like that. And then

and then as I got older, I was I was also really into snowboarding, skateboarding, riding BMX, and cars became this important thing to like get to the skate park or get to the mountain to go ride or do something like that. And at that time in the mid nineties,

like Volkswagens kind of were like sort of at the forefront of that. I felt like like every they were

doing commercials with K two and Trek and there was this huge community of people in the snowboard world who all had like Volkswagens and Audi's. So I ended up

getting into that and then like super fell into it, started my own car club, and you know, it was always it was always that like hobby side, so but like that was it was a weird one for me because none of my childhood friends were into cars. It's

like all like it just wasn't a thing. Like for

the longest time. Cars was sort of this like secret

hobby for me, right, Like I was writing graffiti and like doing all this other stuff like riding bikes and all this stuff with my friends. I like that's what

like a normal New York City life was. But I

also like really really enjoyed car culture, and it was just it felt hidden for me, Like, you know, going to the New York Auto Show was like the only thing that felt like I was like a part of car culturehen I was a teenager, you know, Otherwise it didn't really exist, Like I lived in a neighborhood where people didn't have fancy cars, Like cars were just were just transportation.

Yeah, it sounds like, well, anytime I speak to you, you know, like you would have been a great like class president, great at like organizing people together. Yeah, where

does that come from? Is that from the grandfather or

your dad?

I think it's from my mom, my mom.

Both my parents are scientists, and my mom has very much like that leadership kind of administrative personality.

That's just like how she is.

Yeah, and actually my mom is the reason I started a car club because I bought this Volkswagen. It was

a four door Mark three slammed like way too low even back then, and I was like sitting at home and it was like the summer, and I like I just was complaining to my mom. I'm like, yeah, just

like a bummer, Like I don't really know anyone who's into cars. And although a few people I've met, like

they're all Honda guys and like I just didn't like have akin to them. It was like a different world

from the VW side. My mom said like, well, why

don't you just like start your own car club.

It was like nineteen.

I'm like, oh, like how would I do that. She's like,

I don't know, go figure it out, Like just I'm sure you can figure it out. And I did that

start my own car club, and within a year later, like we had like thirty members. But what was the

important part was like we started doing events. So we

started doing a monthly cruise. So we did this thing

called the car club was called auto Creek and which like loosely translates in German too like automotive competition or something like auto wars whatever.

When I was nineteen. It sounded great, but we started it.

It was like this small group of people who were like basically lived in like New York City and a little bit of Long Island, and at least we started and from there we started doing events, and we came up with this idea which like I look back at it now as an adult who has like things that like people could take for me in a lawsuit. And

I realized, like how little wyability like we had on any of this.

But we'd started this cruise.

We found a bunch of windy roads out Long Island, which realized, like growing up in New York, like it's a grid, so like there was no fun roads to drive.

So there was obviously a street race.

Community that like operated a lot in Brooklyn and Queens, but I wasn't really into that. Like I went and

I enjoyed watching it and it was kind of like fun to be a part of that until Fast and Furious came out and ruined the entire city.

We'll talk about that later, But.

I was more into like the dynamic element, right like corners and like driving.

Canyon style roads.

Well, not that we had that in New York, but we did have some windy, like you know, forest roads out Long Island, so I like I went, I found them all and we started doing this event. We called

it Full Moon Full Throttle, and the idea was the Friday closest to the full Moon.

We would meet in a like a rest area.

Off of the Long Island Expressway at midnight and then we would go drive the roads for like two and a half hours and then go home. And like, it

started with twenty cars and by the time we did the last one, we had one hundred and seventy five cars show up.

Wow.

And I was like twenty years old trying to organize this with like walkie talkies and like, and like we through all of it. We only had we only had

two accidents the whole time, and they were like minor, like you know, slide off, hit a rim or hit a telephone pole. No one else ever got hurt, but like,

it was amazing that we did them for I think we did twenty three or twenty four of them. So

we ran it for two years as a monthly event.

So I went from feeling like there was no community around that to sort of creating something that became this hub for all of it, and then we also did a car show event because at the time, like car shows were like really really stressful, Like back then it was like you have to be here rollins at six am, like you've got to be and you can't leave till four pm and blah blah blah blah, and and you got to be standing by your car for these four hours so when the judges come by, like you can walk them through the car. And I was like, that

wasn't what I wanted. I just wanted this like cool

hangout experience, and we created it. We did this event

called Dub and Grub, and we made it like people's choice so that way, like people didn't really get that stressed about like judging, like just come and hang out and like it's.

Pot luck, like bring your own meals.

And by the time we got to like the third or fourth one, like people were like cooking pigs and like bringing full pigs to the event. Like it was

this like amazing experience because you also think of like how culturally diverse Queens is, which is where we had the event, So it's like the amount of different types of food we had there was like awesome. So it

just became this like rad like feast for all these people in the car community, especially in the volks like nowity it started to grow bigger than that later on to do and I think that's when I realized, like, as much as I enjoyed cars myself, a big part of it was like the community around cars and like all of that, and and you know, you fast forward from there and two of the guys who were in my car club like fifteen years later stood next to me at my wedding. So yeah, to me, the car

community part of it was always the big part of it, and like being able to tie that into like going driving and doing all of that. So yeah, that was

I don't know, I kind of spot you asked me one question when my grid got back here we are now, So yeah, that was like and that was at the time.

It's crazy because so I was going to school and I'm sitting here like bailing on class so I could like plan these events. And it's funny because at the

time I was like I knew how just like irresponsible that was, but like I just was, I was enjoying it so much. But now looking at where I sit today,

I'm like I should skip more classes and learn more of it because I was learning more doing all that.

And I was also like using things at school to be able to like design flyers, like I'm going into like the computer lab and like using the equipment to like do stuff for my car club. And at no

point while I was doing that that I think that this was going to be my career. Instead, I saw

it as like this major distraction from what I was trying to do in school. And put all of that together.

Why engineering, where'd you start there?

Calculus all of that stuff like was second nature to me, So I was like, oh, you know math really well, then you should go and do engineering.

You know, you take your aptitude tests and you're like, oh, I.

Should either be an underwater welder or I should be an engineer. And it was like I hate swimming, so

I was like, I guess I'll be an engineer. And

I liked I wanted to design cars and build stuff, and that's where I thought my engineering degree would go.

It's still like how my brain works and what I really enjoy is like making things, and that's even how I approach content and like creative is like the I enjoyed the building of things right, Like, that's the thing I really enjoy and and I think it was very obvious to me early on in engineering program that like, I was never going to be one of the best, I was going to be someone else's number monkey, which meant I was never going to get to like lead design and like and be that. Instead, I'd be the

one helping someone else do it. That made me lose

a bit of interest in it. I mean, this ends

up being an entire podcast about my college career.

But did you get your degree?

I did not. I'm six credits short. I ended up trading.

I ended up like third year, three and a half years in, I take a journalism class, and like I fell in love.

I was.

It was the first time where I wouldn't miss class.

I loved it and it was one of my favorite things.

And I also had a fantastic professor because she actually because it was my elective, I didn't take it as seriously as a lot of my other stuff, even though I enjoyed it. But when it came down to finals,

I was like more thrashing on all these other classes that one I was barely showing up to and I.

Needed to study for and this class. I thought, like,

I like, I'm doing well on it, it doesn't matter.

And I handed in my final article late and she gave me a D.

And I was like, oh, this sucks.

Like I wanted to do the minor, but like now I got to go back and take this class again for it to apply for my minor. I was like, oh,

I guess I'm not going to do it. So I

ended up backing out of the program. And she called

me and said, hey, I saw that you. You know, I

saw that you backed out of the program. And she

basically gave me the story of like, look in journalism, if you're late, it doesn't print, so it didn't happen, right, but you're but she kind of gave me that pep talk of like you have a really good knack for this.

I don't want to see you drop the minor, like I will retroactively fix this, but you need to go and you know, maintain a grade of whatever in the rest of the program and do all of this. So

uh's toughly kind it was, but it was in the end, it didnematics when I ever got my diploma. But what

mattered was in a world of like I had only ever been applauded for my scientific side of like thinking.

She was the first person to ever say like, you're good at storytelling. You understand this, Like this is something

that I think you really should chase after. So then

I started taking film classes and you know, and all these different media classes and everything shift, and all of a sudden, I was like really interested to go to school again, and I really enjoyed it. This has been

a bit of a decided I think this isn't car stories.

It's not like college stories.

But no, cars are the connective tissue of what brings us all here.

Yeah.

Yeah, and you're a story Like your trajectory is so clear to what you do and what you've built today, from organizing a car crew to entrepreneurship to engineering essentially building with your hands to ye.

In a weird way, it all like lined up like when it was happening. I don't think I was like, yeah,

I'm on this great trajectory, like well it's happening. You're like, oh,

this just didn't this didn't work out, this failed out.

You know.

There was certainly a period of time where you know, I got that talk from my dad which was like, you know, maybe school is not for you, Like maybe you should, you know, join the labor union, maybe should go do that, you know something something, And and you know, my dad came from from like a blue collar family, so he was like, maybe that's maybe like what you need to go do, because like you're not enjoying school and I wasn't. And then it all just sort of

turned around and I realized that like the things that made me happy. And my dad used to always refer

to it as like pink collar, which was like I enjoy the white collar work of creative, but I need to touch it and be a part of it. And

like even when we're on set filming, like I always talk to the grips because like I enjoy building erector sets to mount cameras to think.

I love that pink color. I'm gonna borrow that.

Pink Essentially, what you do today is storytelling from I mean literally storytelling with content creation, but also building cars.

Every car is a story, Oh.

Yeah for sure, Yeah sure, And that's like such a big part for me is the story of cars. Like

we we always talk about this internally attunigans, like cars need to name because once you name them, then like they stand out and they have a personality alive.

Do you have a name for Sienna?

No, I've been you know, after you talked to it.

That's probably. Well, I have two cars that I don't.

Have names because you're really good with naming your vehicles.

Yeah, well you know cause I but I can't name them until they have to. I have to have my

hands on it and I have to spend time with it.

But at the same time, you don't want to build the Siena up because you and I have talked about this, like why don't you have wheels on it?

Because then it's I don't you like the practicalness of it?

Right now?

That's what it's low key, like I'm invisible. Yeah I

can if it's all pimped out. I can't park in

front of like your house, just sleepy.

Like what is with those big little different? How different

his thought process is on cars than mine and yours?

Set Like we're sitting there being like, all right, how much power can the tank before I put a window through the block? Right, He's sitting there going can I

sleep in the back in Beverly Hills?

Well, wake me up exactly?

But the windows dark enough that they won't see me, but the cops won't pull me over. Like, what's that threshold?

This is where this is where his brain's at. This

is my favorite side of you. You're like, oh yeah,

Sun Kang, Like, oh yeah, that's my buddy. He like

sleeps in his van, like outside of the people's houses.

You know him from Fast and Furious. Yeah, No, I

know him as the guy who sleeps in a van.

He's that guy.

I'd love to see the neighbor just walk out and knock to be like, who's sleeping around here?

And it's you that crawls out of the of the seattle.

Well, I'm sure that he.

There's been photos of him on next door where people are like suspicious, man, he drives around a mini doesn't meany kids, There's something wrong with this guy.

It's funny.

Is that either people really love the fact that I drive a minivan, right and they're like, you d have a minivan? That's so awesome, or it's complete disappointment.

Right, it's not the yeah, the fact thought it was going to be. Yeah, they don't.

They don't. They don't want that. Yeah, show up to

Valet and they're like, I come out and they're like, oh my god, and they're like, what are you driving minivan for? And I try to explain to him. I'm like, hey,

man has eighteen couples thirty six miles a gaunt.

Oh, I get it.

There's certain like I'll go to meetings and I know that, like as when I show up, people can be like, what did you drive?

You're like, if.

You don't drive something fun, then like then like you lose that perception thing. So sometimes I'm definitely like sat

in trafficking cards. I don't want to drive to go

to places, and then you get there and you're like, oh, no one even cared what I drive. Yeah, like I

could have just driven something with air conditioning and a.

Not so stiff clutch, yeah exactly.

Or something I didn't have to stop three times slightly cool down on the way there.

So I want to talk about legacy, you know, when you guys built out hun again, like do you did you feel like this is going to be your legacy?

And how do you feel about that now?

It's interesting, I legacy is like such a weird, weird thing to think about. I think there's a quote somewhere.

I don't know if everyone's seen it. Or is in

something that Ken was like, I hate the word legacy because if you're talking about my legacy, it means I'm dead, which like hit really hard when like you're watching that afterwards.

But I think when you are building something saying, when you're in it, you're just kind of in it and you want to build something great. But I think once

it starts to become successful is when the legacy thing starts to creep in. Like when you're just building it,

you're just trying to make something right, Like, I don't think when I was building Zero to sixty, I don't think there was ever a moment in my life where I was at no point because we were still The magazine died early, so it was like, you know, it died because the print industry died.

So like I don't think we.

Ever achieved any kind of greatness with it, right, But I'll be places and people will be like, man, I love Zero to sixty. And I realized like there was

this small little legacy that we built. It wasn't really intentional.

It was like we were just trying to make something great and trying to make something different, and we really loved that magazine and we poured so much into it as a team, everyone who was involved with it. And

I think when we were doing Hoonigan, I don't think I started to think about the legacy of like what Hoonigan was and you know, and then like what it had done and like what the culture change and shift around it until probably a couple of years ago. And

I think you actually start to do that as like the company itself shifts. People leave and you know, and

you realize, like that's like an era that just ended, you know, And that's I think a hard thing for people to understand is I think when you watch Unigan from the outside, you know, you think about it as like a group of friends, like at the end of the day, like it's employees, and like people do different things in life, and sometimes people either you know, want to go do their own thing, they don't want to do it anymore.

You guys both know.

This, and I think this is something that is hard for people to understand who don't understand it. Is like

fame affects different people differently, right, and some people enjoy it, some people like really come to life, some people that changes their personalities, and other people hate it, right, and they really don't want to be around it. And I

will tell you in my experience, the people that you think love it actually hate it because they're kind of acting the whole time and then they turn it off and they don't want to be around it it anymore.

And I think that like a lot of that happened to Tune again, is we started to really sort of explode, Like twenty sixteen to like twenty eighteen was sort of this like just we just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and all of a sudden, like you're getting recognized in airports and it's not even a car events anymore, Like you know, you're out to dinner and people are recognizing you.

And I think.

For a lot of us that was there was an element of that and hurt and I used to always joke about this, which was like we're famous, but we don't have famous money. So like you're famous, but you're

sitting coach next to somebody who now is talking to you NonStop and you just like want to watch your movie and like not deal with that, you know. And

I think when that started to happen, I started to realize we were never going to be the company we were anymore, Like when we stopped making Daily Transmission. I

think that was maybe the first time that I started to think about like I say, I don't know if I put that word on it, but I realized like that was an end of an era, like we were never going to go back and make that again. And

at a certain point, yeah, yeah, that was like the show everybody loved and everyone enjoyed it. But I think

at a certain point, like the crew just didn't enjoy making it anymore. And that came through, you know, and

you try to like make it work, but it doesn't.

And then we went and did something else and we all did the show's comeback Labs, and we loved it.

It was so much fun to make that right.

And and you know it's like bands like you love your you love a band's first album. You just love

that first album and you just want them to go back and make that first album. But when they were

making that first album, like they didn't have the things that came with the second album, the third album. They

you know, they did it in a rented studio from a friend or you know, they they lie cheat steel, you know, they did whatever hook or crook to be able to make that album, and you lose a lot of that energy once you become successful, and then it's not as easy to get back to that stuff, and then it starts to become disingenuous. And I think as

I grew something like Cunigan and even with Ken Block, you start to go back to things where you're like, we don't enjoy this as a group to make this as much as we used to. We want to do

something new, and then the audience doesn't always want that new, so you kind of were like in this weird world of like you're trying to deliver something that maybe doesn't serve for you. You know, I love new things, so

like for me, and there's a famous quote I think on the Amazon Prime thing from Ken where Ken was like, if it works, we're going to keep doing it. But

Scotta wants to do something different just because he's bored, and like there was that for me. Like for me,

there was this really exciting era and our audience jokes about it a lot because it's like they always like, oh, another new show, because we were just launching like all new show ideas. Because I just wanted to build and

build and build, and once I realized that like YouTube deleted the gatekeeper and I could like just make TV style shows and put them up on YouTube. And I

was able to find enough funding to be able to support all of that. We went for it. We're all

of them good. Nah, some of them were okay, but

some of them were really fun. We did the show

called Build and Battle, which was fantastic. We did we

did a bunch of adventure stuff that was great. We

did come Back Labs, which I loved. We launched a

whole content series around Ken, which like he fought me on because he didn't really want to do it. But

there was a lot of stuff that we did that was like a lot of fun in that era, And once the error is behind you, you're like you realize the value of it later on. I think it's very

hard to understand the value of it when you're in it, And I think if you worry too much about the value of it when you're in it, then you're like looking at the wrong reasons to do it. But I

think there is definitely there's definitely this balance of like serving an audience and making them happy, and there's this big joke that's like my title is chief creative officer, but I get called two other things. One is chief

complication officer because I just complicate everything because I enjoy complications and chaos. And the other one is chief comment

officer because like I read a lot of the comments from the audience, right, and I know some people don't like to Do you read your Do you read your comments?

I do you do?

I if we're talking YouTube specifically, I'll read the first couple of days, and then after that I kind of don't really go back.

I really only need the first six or seven hours because like that's where you get a lot of it.

But after that the comments kind of change because now you're getting outsiders who aren't really your core audience anymore.

So you do read them. Yeah, I was wondering because

some people.

Don't I try to respond to them.

I mean, I I have my phases, like sometimes I just really won't be in the mood to accidentally stumble across something that it's.

Super negative or get toxic, so then.

I won't put myself in the situation room. But I

enjoy hearing the audience's feedback because it's always going to be honest.

Yeah, I mean I think you always have to look at it like an outlier situation. The super super super

positive stuff just ignore it, like they will just say everything's coat right. And the super super negative stuff that's

like weirdly toxic. They've got a problem with something else,

just ignore it and like find that stuff.

In the middle.

I used to not even read them.

I think anyone who's female in our space sometimes gets really fucking creepy shit, but also like some like unnecessarily fucking toxic.

Boy.

Oh yeah, I actually think it, replied to one on yours one like stuff, the fuck you need to check yourself real quick.

I never like to play the female card.

No, I know, I know. But at the same time,

it's like people say things I'm like, you wouldn't say that to me.

Yeah, oh yeah.

The criticism that I get because of my gender versus someone else, like I have to put I always feel like I have to work twice.

It's hard to get half the respect, for sure.

I read a great comment the other day that just made me laugh. They had some video of me and

they were like, oh, it's it's it's on And then this guy wrote, it's like man Han is turning into Chai on fat because my face looked a little fat and actually.

Made I spit up my drink and I was like, this guy is super clever.

Commenters will get a good knock and you're like, oh, it's pretty fit to sit. Am I getting a little fat?

Maybe I need to exercise a little bit more. Oh god,

it's hilarious.

Well, because I like, obviously, for me, the big joke is like most my cars don't run. I bought that

farm and someone named it Avascato because it's avocado farm, and.

I was like, that's pretty good.

And then it was like Avascotto Farms, and then someone added ava Scatto Farms in Salvage because I have a bunch of I was like, this is great. I was like,

I'm just going to steal all your guys names.

It's fantastic, Avascotto Farms and salvage. It's funny, like at

the end, salvage is great because you're like, what, so, yeah, I got a bunch of cars parks on the property.

But anyway, where were we before the Yeah? I know,

I mean, look, obviously I dealt a lot this year with like the legacy of Kem Block. I mean that

was something that was very much you know, in front just front of brain. I mean it was front of brain,

probably earlier than it should have been. Like I was

still dealing with and trying to like understand what it happened, but also thinking about, like how do we message this right like like we have to do that and I and then you know when on the first day, like I couldn't even deal with the situation I had Ron.

I was like, hey, dude, you need to.

Like ron Ziras, who's like always been like my second hand and work directly with Ken for years.

I was like, I need you to do this because like I can't deal with this right now.

And like, I think we had some we had some fun moments in that cause we were I don't say fun funds of the wrong word, but we had moments that made a smile, which was we had this thing of like if we had to send this to Ken right now, would he even approve this or like he just like rip us apart for this, you know, And that kind of kept kept him alive in a way for us. But like I think you look at the

legacy side of it, and it became very important to like a lot of other people around him. Obviously Lucy

and the family, and it's like, well, yeah, how does Ken, you know, how does Ken get remembered through all of this?

Right?

And like the things that like I knew were like really important to Ken, and like what Ken wanted to see?

You know what what mattered to Ken? Right?

And I think you know the thing is like Ken will always be famous for the Jimcna films, but like Ken loved being a rally car driver, Like that was a thing he loved, but he also loved being like the marketing person and like understanding the audience. Like I

think all of us, you know who knew Ken from the automotive side, don't realize that, Like he'd already had twenty years of like being a very successful businessman in the marketing space, and like that was a big part of his identity, right, And it's like for me, that's like what my identity is, right, Like I'm not a race car driver, like Mike can stitch together a decent time on a track, but like that's not who I am.

And that's like and like he didn't become that till later.

He didn't start racing until he was thirty six, right, so he already had this like very successful thing that he did with eight ball and drawers and dub and obviously DC shoes, you know, and all that. And he

had all these other people who like in many ways owe their careers, you know, in many parts to him, right whether and like Legends, right, Rob Deerdic, Danny Way, all these people who like Ken was the person who helped them go chase these really big ideas, right, And Ken was that for me too. And I think it's

weird because like as we walked away from like all of this, and we had this memorial for Ken, which was really amazing. It was really difficult, but it was

really amazing, and like there was just this constant thing that we're here. It's five hundred people who all knew Ken, right,

Like everyone here had either worked with him, worked for him, was friends with him, his family, and so like these are the people who like really knew Ken, right, this isn't just the people who knew him from Afar. It

was like this one thing that just kept repeating, and it was like Ken was so good at creating opportunity for people. He never gave it away for free, Like

you had to work hard for it. It was never

free but he could like spot things in people and then like basically expect it from you, right, And I was like, that was what he did. And I think

about like what I want Ken's legacy to be, and you know, and I don't really think about my own, but I like, I hope I'm remembered well. But like

I think in Ken's legacy, it's so easy for people to be like, oh, he was this amazing driver, right, and like Jim Kanna and like all of that, and like that's like very superficial.

And I think that's a very simple one to look at.

But if you look at it more of like, well, Ken created this opportunity for so many of us because like he rewrote the paradigm of like, right, this word is overused, but like he disrupted automotive motive sport, like he already disrupted automotive marketing in motorsports one hundred percent.

I remember how people couldn't understand why we did things the way we did, Like we were working in WRC and the FIA, and they were like threatening to find me because I wasn't sending out press releases and I'm like, why do I have to sound on a press release?

Like we're going to do this on Facebook, that we're gonna speak directly to our audience. We're going to reach

more people than our email list. They're going to get

to like why does this matter?

You know?

And it seemed normal for us, but it was really like taking a different approach at it. And you know,

so like I think, in a lot of ways, I hope that right now, you know, it's it's not even been a year, and I think everyone it just misses him from like what he gave the community to me.

I hope that in ten years from now, if you look back and you know, someone does a you know, a retrospective or a doc on like the importance of Ken.

I think a lot of it.

Is that I think he really helped kind of usher in like a different way of like the automotive world sort of looking at like entertainment and like the value of marketing and doing things different and bringing all of that in and and I think that that, you know, in a way, like I think he would be happier with that legacy than just like, oh he was the guy that did Jim Kana, but like it was more than Jim ConA. I mean even just the idea to

you know, to create some you know hoonigan and to to do all of that.

I mean, we were.

Very much were kind of at a forefront of when all that stuff was happening, and then in a way I think paved a path for so many other people before the Jim Conna films, BMW or Porschal, Like they weren't asking for cars to be slid around in commercials like that like changed the way that people saw cars as exciting. And like you talk to people in the

Hollywood world and they'll be like, oh, yeah, we changed the way that we did stunt driving after we saw the Jim ConA films, right, and like so like that was this cool inspiration behind it. But it's like it's

not just the films. It's like what did the films

effect that created this longer lasting change.

I mean, and it sucks to.

Say this, but like there's this thought of like, man, you wish you could hear what people say about you after you're gone, Like if Ken could just see the amount of appreciation that he has now that like maybe he didn't.

Realize was there while he was alive.

And I think like that's like what like real legacy looks like because it wasn't just the thing he made.

You can make a great film where you can make a great statue or whatever, but like, but how did that inspire someone else? Like I think that's the important

legacy because if you just did something that was really cool but it didn't make someone else do something really cool out of it, well, then then what is that that I think is a real legacy versus just being like, oh, they were the best at this, that's cool, but like, were they the best at it and inspired someone else to be better?

Like that's kind of cool because.

I'll hear people sometimes like, oh, these guys are like they're way better than you now, And I'm like, yeah, but I also know that, like they've told me that, like we like helped pave the way for them, so like I hope they're better. Because if you do something

and then the person who comes up behind you doesn't do it better, like although you you bushwhacked, the next person has to clear the path, and then the person after that has to pave it, and the person after that puts in some railings and then some lights and you know, eventually have a nice little sidewalk right and it's like, but everyone has to improve that.

Path, especially if you went down at first, right, And.

I'm not saying that we were entirely first, but we were pretty early on a lot of it, and you know, I think that that's part of that legacy, is like being.

A part of that community side of it.

I think you definitely in what you guys have built over and have inspired so many people, you know, and that just you know, not just in the car community, but what you said early on, which I think, you know, it's stuck with me this whole conversation and it'll take away is you know, just.

Go figure it out.

To my mom said, shit, don't be an asshole. Yeah,

what a great lesson. Figuring it out. Caron is such

a great thing from both the content side of this, even just like how to how to make something work on a car and you're like, I don't know, I guess I'll just I mean, the amount of other people's YouTube stuff I watched to make my own YouTube stuff is incredible and it's a.

Good tool to have to just learn how to figure things out. You don't have to be right, but it's

taking the initiative to get out of your comfort zone.

Oh yeah, for sure, for sure.

You were talking about different eras being different things that you enjoy at the time in your life. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

I was gonna ask, what are you enjoying now?

I don't know if I've thought about today. I definitely

have thought about, like what are some of the peak moments for me right like just in my career. I'm

in my forties, start to think about things like that.

But like zero sixty magazine was like a really big peak.

It was so much fun and it felt so adventurous, and we had no idea what we were doing and we were just faking it till we make it, and that was super fun. Obviously, the similar thing in early

hunigaan daily Transmission era was great. I think something else

that's really interesting for me now is I'm watching like a major shift in content in the space, you know, so like looking more at like what the future of Hoonigan can be in like a short form space, and also being like more collaborative with other people right now is like really where like my interests lie instead of you know, kind of for a long time. I will

say like Honigan had its collaborative years, but we also very much had like our sort of like Rock of Solitude style.

I've always seen you guys being very collaborative and supportive of other careers.

We're definitely supportive, I think. I think if I have any.

Regrets, is I wish we would have pushed harder, and not that we still can't, but like I wish we had like worked harder to like have just done more like things like let's just do a show with Amelia that, like you know, like that I think is where I really wanted to get to more earlier on.

And we did a bit with some people.

But I.

Look at the space now and I think that the more collaborative of the whole space can be, just the more powerful we all are as a sort of like maybe you want to call us influencers, creators, what the hell it is, But like I think there's a lot of value in that.

Well maybe that's the next are Yeah, maybe.

That's the next err And like I said, I think that that's the part I'm kind of excited about now is is that stuff.

And I love like the.

Energy of like a lot of the young, you know, like sort of up and coming creators. Like let's just say,

like the sub hundred thousand followers like that because they're still still new and exciting for them, and you know, that's there's something really there's a great energy there and.

Like I don't I don't totally lose that energy.

And I think this is the thing that frustrates a lot of people sometimes is like I have a new idea and I get excited about it, like it's the first idea I ever had, right, and like that I like, but I also want everyone else to have that level of excitement too, And I think sometimes you know, you you need to shift things up and have and work with different people on that. And I also think that

other people need to shift their things up and work with different people. Like like Hurts a perfect example. I

love her. He's like a brother to me. He was

like employee number four and now like he's going and chasing something new. He's still friends and family with Hunigan.

We'll still make content with him, but like he's chasing this whole other thing on his own and stuff he's doing with Tea Pain, and it's like that's rad.

Like people need to go do that.

They need to kind of like go break up the model of doing different stuff and you know, and I that to me is kind of exciting, is to kind of watch like what happens with sort of that the extended family. And I think it goes back to what

I said at the beginning of this conversation of like the Auto Creek side I went to my car club, there's only twenty five of us in it, but we would have all these other car clubs that would come out and do everything with us. And I really would

love to like make sure that we like shift more back into that and get more on the like, hey, come, you know, we want you to be a part of this.

We want you to do this, like let's make some cool stuff together. Because the broadness of that is to

me what makes everything has always been the fun part of Hunigan. And then the other thing I've just been

enjoying kind of like fully embracing my own weirdness and the stuff I like and just dealing with that instead of, like, I know, you know this, instead of making stuff for the audience, making stuff for myself and then hoping that an audience shows up, Like I've really leaned back into like my Volkswagen roots.

I enjoy it. I know it's not exactly.

What everybody in the audience wants, but like it kind of makes me happy, and then that that helps me drive the other creative that makes the audience happy. It's

this weird thing. You got to do enough stuff that

like you still kind of enjoy that. So I think

right now, it's an interesting it's an interesting time, And a big one of that really is like just looking at like how everything is shifting and social and the whole space we're in. We can get into a whole

conversation of like I kind of think social media is ruining the society, but the same time, we all work in it as a business, like trying to kind of lever and live in between those. And I think you

do obviously know that, you know, and like mental health is a big part of like your you know, I think your storyline and everything in there, and like, you know, being the piece on social that's the positive part and not the negative part. And I think it's like super

important for us in the car industry because like we shouldn't be the negative part. We should be the part

that makes you excited to go build and inspire you to do stuff and that make you feel bad about yourself kind of thing.

So I'm excited to see what comes in your guys' next chapter, your next era.

We could talk forever.

Yeah no, I know, thanks for thanks for having me

Chevrolet Corvette

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