Ep4 Matt Farah

Hey, everybody, welcome back to another episode of Car Stories with Song.

King and Amelia Hartford.

All right, we get to.

Sit down with a mutual friend of ours.

Yes, a podcast.

Guru Wikipedia man himself who knows anything in everything there is to know about cars.

Yeah, he did give us some pointers on how a podcast works.

I also loved hearing your guys's love of minivans.

It's great to meet someone who is pro minivan because I meet a lot of people in the car community the hate on minivans.

They haven't taken one around a track yet to really appreciate it.

We're just driven one around the neighborhood. Eighteen cup holders

is a pretty big deal.

Matt also gave you Song the fabric that he has inside of his Safari.

Not a lot of them, the upholstery and the public transportation in London, and.

He has eight yards left of it and it's mine.

Song has called DIBs on this for his Hatchie build.

So, without further ado, mister Matt Farrah, where did you gather your like Wikipedia of car knowledge?

You know everything about everything?

No, that's not true.

That's very kind, but you could talk about literally I referred to you as the Wikipedia of Cars.

That's sweet, Amelia, thanks uh magazines.

When I was younger, reading the stats and the reviews and the magazines and memorizing that. I have an amazing

memory for things that I'm actually passionate about. So before

I could really drive everything, I would read the stats and memorize them. And then you know, I went to

work for our friend Rob Ferretti in the middle two thousands, which was he owned an exotic car rental company. So

we had Ferrari three sixties and four thirties, We had Lambeau Mercies and Guyardo's, and we had the V ten powered BMW's, and we had Corvettes, and we had gts, and we had SLR McLaren's and nine to eleven turbos.

And I got a lot of experience driving those supercars for real distances under sporting conditions for like two years.

And not only that, you know, rental cars they get the shit kicked out of them. So I learned what

would break and what what which ones were built well, which ones were not built well, what would fail on this and that? And so that was such a jump

start for someone of my age who was capable of taking all that information, processing it, organizing it, and and then spitting it back out in a in a video in a way that didn't sound dumb.

That was in New York game.

Yeah, that was an east Co twenty for twenty three twenty four.

Wow. Yeah.

And then I made my first video when I was twenty five, which was two thousand and six. And then

me and Rob had some old school videos of doing some wild shit. His his YouTube channel is called super Speeders.

But he was very well positioned because he was making videos before YouTube and selling DVDs.

What a hustler, So he was selling videos on DVDs.

Dude, he was selling. He would get a booth at

the New York Auto Show, the LA Auto Show, the DC Auto Show, the Chicago Auto Show and go around with boxes of DVDs and it was just it was a table like this with a flat screen monitor playing his like and he would like run from the cops and shit like it was like crazy gumball stuff and like you know, like exotic car crashes and all this crazy stuff from the rental company. He'd use the rental

cars to do all this crazy content and he would just play the loop and you'd go to the Auto Show and there'd be like one hundred people watching these, you know. It was like a before YouTube. This was

like a big thing. It was like everyone's just standing around, going,

this guy's out of his mind and give him forty dollars for a DVD. Wow, he was moving units, amazing

serious units like in those right before YouTube. Oh four

oh five. This dude was selling thousands of DVDs in

a week at the auto show. It was wild. So

I was in some of those videos with him. There's

one that still gets circulated around once in a while.

That's we had a contest to see who could go intentionally get a ticket first, which is one of the dumbest things you could ever do. And it was like

the most white privileged thing ever, Like just like two rich white kids like fucking with the cops intentionally. It

is like, it doesn't get much more privilege than that.

And so we like went out on the New Jersey Turnpike or the Garden State Parkway or something and like tried to find cops and.

Get tickets and we both did. Who won, so.

Honestly, neither of us, we were both big losers that day.

But he had the videos, so he won. I was

just in it with a reckless driving dick. He actually

sold the DVDs, so he won obviously, but we both got reckless tickets. I passed a semi truck in the

shoulder in front of a cop at one hundred miles an hour in a Mercedes SLR McLaren so I got pulled over for that.

I'm on the side of the road.

Rob was driving his turbocharge C five Corvette with a giant like GT three wing on it.

Car would be right at home in Fast and Furious.

Side exit exhaust fire holes cut in the hood, it said, student driver like across the whole back of the thing, and he did a flyby at like one forty like fucking top gun while out. The cops stand next to

my car, and the cop threw my license back at me and went and chased him. The video is still

out there, and there's like a thirty second clip that gets circulated. I probably once or twice a month someone

tags me in it on Instagram and it's like grainy, shitty video, like it's old school from from two thousand and five or six maybe, But the whole clips, I got whole videos, like a half hour long of us doing this, it's insanity.

So essentially it's Grandfather of the Street takeovers.

If you will, Rob Dude, Rob was.

We did some.

We did some really wild ship back in the day that I do not recommend.

You could not. You'd get in a lot of trouble

if you did it today. I don't. I mean, we're not.

I don't know.

They'd shut down whole intersections in Hollywood and like hit people with cars.

They get it. I don't fucking know. What do I know?

I'm the old guy. Yeah, it's all right. Yeah, it's

just a rough forty one. I spent some years. Look

at me, I look forty one. I look fifty one.

The sweater forget, and I haven't shaved this week.

Wait when I get home, I am going to send you a photo the sweater almost wore because it is identical.

I'm following this guy on Instagram now big fits on Instagram, and this is the dude.

The dude dresses like this. This is his outfumit love

it and I'm just on it.

I love it.

I don't care how how to gets. I'm wearing his cottage.

Okay, So I want to go back to before or even.

Shit, this is weird. Usually I'm interviewing this, that's weird. Yeah,

supposed to be interviewing you the fuck.

But the love for cars, man, yeah yeah, always just born born with the love for you.

Yeah.

When you're a fat kid who can't run very fast, you look for a vehicle. I couldn't run very fast,

but I was real quick in a go kart. Even

though I was like the heaviest kid. I was always

the fastest when we went to the go kart racing.

I always understood driving, and I always was passionate about getting better at it and driving as many different cars as anyone would let me drive. You know, I could

drive a stick when I was like twelve. And then

it was just reading the magazines and watching you know, videos, the DVDs or VHS's whatever. And then I saw top

Gear for the first time. Because when you were when

I was a kid reading those magazines, the people writing, you know, about driving some crazy Porsche on the nurburg Ring and Germany, they they seemed like superheroes to me.

It wasn't like, oh, that's a job I could get, and I didn't. I didn't enjoy like writing the way

that I do now because there were like rules to it, you know, it was like school writing and like writing about something you don't care about. And so but then

I saw top Gear and specifically it was the if you guys remember is very iconic top Gear film of when Jeremy Clarkson drove the Aerial Adam. Do you guys

remember this? You ever see it? It's one of the

best car reviews ever produced and packaged. Go find it

on YouTube. And because you know what the Aerial Adam is, right, No,

it's a car with no body.

It's like a giants like an exoskeleton type of car, and it's it's a pretty crazy thing and like you are, you are fully exposed to the elements.

It has like a ladder chast see basically.

And so he's like an older guy and so he was driving it and his face was like flapping like George Bush when he went skydiving, and just the the delivery of it. And so once I saw that film,

I was like, oh, this is this is my calling is to do that. And YouTube allowed that. You know,

there was no there was no barrier to entry. No

one had to put you in a movie or put you on TV. You could you just needed a little

bit of money and some cars and a channel, and you were there. That was it and it could be done,

you know, pretty much on merit.

But how come you sound like you're a trained journalist the way you speak, Because.

I've been doing it for twenty years. I mean, I've

been doing it for a long time.

So now now you're you're very well spoken. But it's like,

this is how I how I know you if I had.

If I have any natural talent at all, it's to talk without sounding completely dumb, and to be able to ignore cameras. You know, not everybody has that. You an

actor have that probably were because you could. You can

play a and as if a camera isn't right in your face right.

A long time.

It took a long time, right, But and some people never get there. Some people are this way around their

friends and family and then you put a camera on them and they're a completely different person. Either they freeze up,

or they overact or something they ham it up.

That's just how do you find that out?

Though I have no idea.

I'm going to go back.

I don't think I hated being behind a video, You know what hate?

I was a photography major in college, and I wanted to take pictures for the same reason I learned to cook.

I learned to cook so I wouldn't have to do the dishes. I learned to be a photographer because if

you're taking the picture, you're not in it. I hated

looking at myself because I grew up the fat kid.

People were making fun of me. I didn't like how

I looked in pictures, and I went, if I'm the photographer that gets me out of the pictures, it's sad, but that's what I was thinking at the time.

Right.

But around the time I left working for Rob to start my own business with my friend Larry, the car wash.

Right just in the six months before videos, I lost one hundred pounds. Oh wow, I went from three hundred

and thirty five pounds to two hundred. You lose so

much weight a food plan and working out for two hours a day. I mean, there wasn't an easy way.

It was horrible. It was really really hard.

And I've lost one hundred pounds once, fifty pounds twice, and forty pounds three times.

So it's just this is my life.

But either way, losing one hundred pounds, I finally liked how I looked in the mirror and in camera at that time, and I just all of a sudden felt okay being in front of a camera. And that's when

I figured out that I could talk to a camera by being comfortable. So if you go watch those early videos,

I'm not very good, but I'm very thin.

I'm going to go back and watch.

Are you comfortable watching your cellphone camera?

You?

No, I am, But as of recently, I found it harder to watch my acting. If I'm being myself from

hosting or whatever, that's easy. But the acting, for whatever reason,

I've started to struggle with. But I know it's important

because I know I need to watch it to learn and from it.

I can't. I can't watch myself. I get super depressed.

Even if someone sends a picture of me. Like let's

say we take a picture and Amelia will send like a picture of the three of us.

I instantly you get depressed.

Really, I don't like how you look. It's in security.

Yeah, so I should stop sending you photos.

I hate photos of myself.

Man, Like you have to drag me in to go watch like any of like a fast movie, they have to drag me in and then I'm like angry and depressed while I'm watching it.

Why all of it? I look at myself and the ugly.

Your voice, your face, your acting, all of it. It's

and I'm still trying to figure it out.

But you know I was. I was the fat kid

too growing up.

And then you know you're picked on and you know, so I still it's still it's still a thing.

Yeah, no, it doesn't go.

Away, actually, and and sometimes it gets worse actually with the internet, where where if you're open about this kind of stuff and people hear it and then they don't like you, they know your shots, they know how to bother you about it later.

But it's so I.

Don't want to do what they say because you're fat when you were young, because I'm fat now.

I mean, but uh uh, the that one period in the beginning of feeling really good and going I look good now, that gave me a very early confidence to stand in front of a camera.

You know, one thing when I study your podcast smoking tire right, thing that I come out of there going, I go, how does he have this consistency in his life?

Because you just you just keep churning them out. Oh

were you always like that as a kid, were you consistent in the things that you were passionate about.

I have a I have a sign that hangs on my desk in my office and I actually think it's a quote from either that I think it's maybe the CEO of Southwest Airlines or something. It's but it says

we have a strategic plan. It's called doing things. And

so I just know that like you do by doing how do you? How do I do it? Well, you

start by doing it. And the consistency As a consumer,

you know, if you like if you like a podcast, or you like a radio show, or you like a television show, don't you.

Appreciate when it's on every Thursday? You know?

If then if they I love John Oliver, and when John Oliver takes a week off, I'm like, God, damn it, no John Oliver to this week?

Fuck? You know.

And so being on the side of a consumer and on the side of a creator, I know that that the consistency is really appreciated. And it's also fun. I mean,

you guys like doing radio, don't you.

I've I didn't know that I would like it as much as I do.

Yeah, I love getting to know people more like I was telling me, like, I want to get to know Matt, like the man behind.

The behind this very stylish CARDI.

I texted that too, the man behind the go to and all over.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, if you're talking about a topic that you're passionate about, and you're talking to interesting people and it's fun, it's fun, and it's a good it's a good excuse and a good reason to hang out with people that I either like or I'm interested in hearing from or learning something new from.

And it's cool regardless of like putting aside anyone else's preconceived notions and just letting someone else share their story about you know, how they become the person they are today.

Is I think, what's so fascinating? That's cool speaking of

in your story and.

Sure what you want to know me?

Well, I feel like I you and I have been good friends for a long time, and I feel like I know a lot of your story. So I don't

want to be asking redundant questions, but I do know there's a lot of people listening who want to get to know more of the man behind the goate.

Who's the real mad I'm forty one years old. I'm

married and I have four cats.

No kids, no kids, no cats.

Is your wife into cars?

She is kind of.

She is into the subcultures.

She's into meeting the people.

She doesn't care about going fast, she doesn't care about race tracks.

She likes quirky, weird cars.

I bought her two imported Japanese cars for her birthdays, which I bought her a poo, a Nissan Pow.

What's that?

Come on, I don't know that.

You know what Nissan Pow is? Yeah you do. It's

you know what a Figaro is.

Yeah, it's the It's the hatchback version of a Figure Out. Ok,

it's awesome. It Watsonab's like it's sick.

Yeah, it's sick.

And she has a Delica a van the Mitsubishi for four van.

God.

She likes obscure.

Yeah, weird shit, weird shit.

Yeah, see you he's the Wikipedia Carslica.

Yeah you know, I mean, you know, you know, Delica is like what you'd get picked up from the airport in Thailand in one of those you know, It's like, yeah, they're funky, Wow, it's super cool.

Trick question. How many cup holders does a Toyota Siena have.

A Sienna ship probably a lot, probably got like sixteen.

Eighteen eighteen.

Wow.

We once had the most America truck. This truck was

wild single cab Chevy thirty five hundred short bed duly.

It was really a two seater, maybe a three seater, but it had eight cup holders for two people like you each have four fucking beverages?

How much are you drinking in? This thing?

Went for the bottle that you're going to spit your chew in.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't. Uh.

I am extremely pro minivan, though, I mean, are you pro minivan?

I drove a Ciena you do as a daily really? Yeah,

it's my favorite.

Car for you.

Yeah, I bet I believe you're thirty six miles a gallon.

Oh it's a hybrid.

Yeah, yeah, I'm a big I'm a pro Honda Odyssey.

I had a Honda Odyssey that I really really liked.

I traded my Ford Raptor for a Honda, yeah, because it was a what I My Ford Raptor was supposedly my film crew vehicle. It's a horrible film crew vehicle.

Yeah.

And I and we would fly around and we'd rent minivans, and I was like, why don't I know.

You can also walk your gear inside of it versus an open beddrink.

Yes, yes, exactly.

And uh so I bought a hand I used Honda Odyssey and that ship was fire.

I loved it.

Did you see I bought a So you bought.

A black Wing? How great is my god?

I love the car and it's fucking fast.

Yeah, they don't modify it.

I don't think I'm going to everything else.

Stop. Let me take my luxury car and make it

so loud my ears.

Keep the fact fact. Factory cats, factory cat back. Don't

touch that, just touchheaters. Why because I like the little

bit of of note that it gives it. I did

that on my Stinger and I loved it.

You take the turbos off your zero six? Yeah I did?

I did did?

Yeah?

Yeah that was that was good for the lulls.

But that's exactly what it was to say I did it and to show we can and it's possible. But

I just like the naturally aspirated sound so optimal.

What did you drive here today?

It's not good?

Well, this morning I reviewed the new the new Lotus Emera, but it had to go back. They were collecting it.

At noon, and I drove the Polestar two bst Edition to seventy.

It's fully electric, right is electric? What's charging that? Like it?

Chinese car Deely, which is Chinese owns Volvo and Polestar and Lotus and Lotus. Yea, Volvo spun Polestar off into

a it's pure EV brand. Okay, Volvo for the time

being is doing mostly hybrids.

Wikipedia.

Man, this is literally my job.

By the way, this is my job sounds so good, I know, I like, I'm good at explaining shit to people.

So Polestar is the is the ev Volvo brand. But

that's what I drove here because it just was convenient.

Otherwise I would have rolled my vespa.

Ooh, you would not have driven that the whole That sweater is as sweat. Totally bro very European. I love

my vespa. It's a three hundred, so it's a it's

a fast or faster vespa. But yeah, I would absolutely yeah, yeah, yeah,

it goes eighty five. I can recogne on the freeway

all the time.

Of great.

It's also I don't know why the thought of that petrifies me.

Most people react exactly like that when I tell them but it but it's most vespas are one fifties, and a one fifty is like eight horsepower nine power and goes like well max out at sixty miles an hour.

And for someone your size, Milia, that's fine when you're my size. The three hundred is is a fifteen percent

larger vehicle. It's actually physically big, bigger, so it has

you you wouldn't really notice unless you put them next to each other, but it is bigger, so it fit.

I don't look totally stupid riding it. It has bigger wheels,

it has better brakes, it's water cooled, it's not air cooled.

It has so it has a radiator with fans it has.

It has like better suspension for heavier duty stuff, and it goes eighty five miles an hour. So it's like

reasonable to ride on the highway.

Not only is he a Wikipedia of cars a vespas.

Yeah, as you know when you talk about cars and vestpas, like there's so much passion behind the words. So I mean,

after all these years on you know, doing YouTube content, have you noticed the difference between successful content makers and the ones that like, you know, they last like ten episodes of their asp Well, yeah.

I mean there's there's all different kinds of creators, right, there's people who really get into their analytics and study like every little thing. Oh, the audience watched this video

for six minutes, but this video for nine and a half minutes, So I'm gonna make more content like that, And the audience clicked away at the very moment I did this one thing, So I'm not gonna do any more of that, right, And I've usually, just like I said before, just kept going. I've made some really big mistakes,

like what like when I started doing the podcast and I started putting the podcast on video, I went, wow, I have this YouTube channel, which at the time had six or seven hundred thousand subscribers, and I now have this podcast that's on video.

I should put the podcast on the YouTube.

Channel, intem making it its own its own channel. Yeah.

Common sense at the time was like feed the people more common and the audience is already there and they'll watch it or they won't. But what I didn't understand

was YouTube was transitioning to a place where the percentage of your content uploaded that got watched made a big difference.

So like at the time my car I was doing two car review videos and two podcasts a week. Right,

the car review videos would do two hundred and fifty three hundred four hundred thousand views. The podcast videos would

do twenty thirty thousand views, which for a podcast was good, but still the YouTube software would go, well, fifty percent of your content is getting ten percent of the traffic.

Of fifty percent, your audience is not interested in you anymore.

I'm going to stop serving them your content. Right now, today,

about sixty five percent of my traffic comes not from my subscribers but from YouTube's recommended videos section.

And that's why titles so important so much.

It's more important. It's all.

Yeah, people can click subscribe and do everything that they can do as a viewer to get YouTube to serve them your videos, and the software might still not. You know,

there's people who go who send me messages like I subscribe, I clicked the little bell, and your ship is still not in my subscription mode.

It's like, it's just.

Very common, very common.

It's a fickle system.

You know, in the beginning, the metric that was important was the number of subscribers you had.

Anymore, they're always moving the goalposts.

What's really hard is you know, getting people like like platforms like Instagram. It's it's getting hard to promote YouTube

videos on Instagram because Instagram is getting wise to content creators strategy for trying to get them off the platform and onto another platform. So a lot of times if

you use software that's like scheduled post scheduling software, I'll like, probably one out of three posts that we use scheduling software for will get shadow band.

Really, what's a shadow band?

The shadow band is where the software just won't show your post to people.

Yeah, it just won't come up in the seed.

Yeah, and they won't they won't tell you why, they won't flag it and say, no, this is the wrong kind of post.

We're not.

It's just like if my average post gets three thousand likes and this one gets one hundred and fifty, and like, no, my average post gets sixty comments and this gets one.

It's just that it's that's a shadow band post. Take

the post down, repost it manually back to normal.

Yeah.

So that's just something that's been happening, and it happens probably one out of every three times. And they sometimes

if we put the words link in bio in the text, of the post, it will get shadow band. Yeah, they

don't want you soliciting people to leave the platform and go somewhere else.

I can understand that. I personally haven't noticed that, but

I guess I don't do a lot of that either.

There's no way You're never not gonna be chasing after this.

You know, if you're creating content and you have social media, and social media is how you promote that content, You're just always gonna be chasing these little things. And that's

why it's very important Amelia knows this. Some other very

smart people know this to have another income stream, because sooner or later, the algorithm will come for you. You know, eventually,

I'm not gonna be a guy who makes videos. I'm

gonna be a guy who parks cars eventually, And I'm okay with that because I'm prepared.

Now, Wow, that's great.

It like the algorithm.

It doesn't matter how fucking famous you are, it doesn't matter how huge your numbers are. Eventually the algorithm will

come for you in a way you're not prepared for.

So be ready to do something else that's not related to YouTube or TikTok or Instagram.

Well, I think like anything in life, you shouldn't have all your eggs in one basket. You should diverse by

I have different streams of income and and whatnot.

Just to be saying, one thing you have going for you is that because of your consistency, you're like an institution too.

That's true, right, I mean.

Like when I need to like do research, I go, We'll just go to you.

Thank you.

No, I'm serious, I.

Mean because you because and that that speaks for the consistency and also the type of content and your like, you know, your tenacity, and.

It's it's like legit ship.

Well it's very car mean, but what happens with you, Amelia when that's because your primary, like I mean, your your number one passion is acting where you know, Matt doesn't have the side gig dream, right, so he hasn't.

I mean he goes to work for a road and track.

He doesn't go off to a movie or a TV show for six years. Yeah, and if you get cast

in something like significant, you're gone, Like you night, you were working Monday through sometimes Saturday.

Well that happened, didn't it. You had to go somewhere

far away from it.

It did for Grand Turismo when I was in Hungry mind you. I was there for two months, eight weeks

and I post a video week, so that was in my eyes. I was like, I need to somehow film

eight videos of content before leaving, just to break even.

So when I get back to get back on the grind for the vlog Miss December, try to crank out a bunch of content again. So I don't know, I

feel like I'm learning as I go of how I'm going to balance this. I do love the automotive industry

so dearly, though, so I don't see it ever going away.

I think it's just gonna be, you know, maybe pivoting a little in terms of the content that I produce.

But fortunately I was able to still put out video week when I was abroad, so at least it's hopeful. Yeah,

do you read all your inquiries?

I try to. I get a lot of like dms

and emails, and yeah, I try. I try to.

And some of them are great, and some of them are questions that I try to answer thoughtfully, and some are questions that have a quick answer and I give them a quick answer, and some are total fucking nonsense and I don't do anything, and some are some are really mean, block them around.

I've never understood someone going out of their way to send a very mean email.

I don't either, But I think there are a lot of angry people in the world sadly, but they see someone doing something that they love and they're not doing that, and they're just angry and they just want to take it out on.

It's not that they're not successful. I find it's that

they're not. They want to do it, and they don't.

They're too scared to even try, so it's easier to hit on someone do it, yeah.

Or they're just angry people.

Yeah, angry people, Yeah, yeah.

I get messages every day, just like the people blast in me.

I had a guy write me a DM and it was like one DM after another on Instagram and it was like I remember because it was eleven days apart, and it was like message one, like dude, you're fucking killing it. The podcast is so awesome these last episodes.

And then like the very next message like it came up as two bubbles right next, like you're a fucking piece of ship.

Like wow, this is like eleven days apart. I went

from like.

Biggest impact, like you're fucking loser like whoa.

And then you then you go and like go click onto their what. Yeah, it's like it's blocked. I mean

it's private.

Yeah, it's like no no posts, no fall.

Yeah, it's you know, like so twenty pictures of unicorns.

The BRONI hate me again.

I'm trying as I used to be, really like I used to get really angry about stuff like that.

I try to not anymore.

It's not always successful, but I try to not get angry about stuff like that.

But it hurts.

It does, Yeah, it does, because you're like, what are You're trying to put some goodness out there and somebody just blasts you.

You know, it's it's the alternative is to not have to not speak your mind. Right, if you want to

make car videos and regurgitate press releases and whatever and not have an opinion and not try to change the world a little bit and not try to speak your mind and not try to speak your your truth, then you won't offend anybody.

Yeah, but then you get called to sell out and it just.

It feels better. It just feels better to speak whatever

my truth is and and whatever the consequences of that are, you know, so be it.

Well, said, yeah, Yeah, you got to put yourself out there. Yeah,

I mean, and not everyone's gonna like you, you know what I mean.

But as long as you have good intentions, you're a nice person, that's all that matters.

Yeah, trying to give consumer advice should you buy this car or not?

That's it.

But I also, like you deal with a lot enough people, you get it to start. You can get annoyed at shit.

You know, I recently got pretty annoyed because people regularly ask me this hypothetical question that doesn't exist in real life.

Just like if you had to buy the new Corvette or a Porsche Cayman, which would you had to like someone's got a gun to your head, Like this is a scenario that's happening.

You must spend one.

Hundred thousand dollars only on one of these two cars.

No other cars exist, no other budgets exist.

That's a very common question.

That's fucking stupid. That scenario does not exist.

If what you mean to say is I have narrowed my choices down to these two vehicles, which do you prefer?

Just ask that I will give you an answer if you had to buy one of these two I don't you don't.

No one does.

But Corvette, of course, did you finish your What car were you working on? Weren't you working on another's.

Doxy with the stock L twenty four?

You finish it?

It's at the motoring club.

Oh cool.

Yes, I drove it to Vegas to to go out with Peter Brock and Johnny Burn and they they signed it for me and then they drove it back and they never will drive it again.

That was that a long drive today? You know it's

cool on paper. Yeah, in your head, yeah.

You're like, ah, I'm gonna put these like we Carlo seats in there, yeah, you know, and then it's gonna have these like headers and it's gonna sound like this, and then you drive it, you.

Go for six hours gets hot.

We were just talking about this on the podcast that the concept of like clout chasing and suffering for your work when you're in cars means like building a car that presents as something really cool and enviable but that you actually hate driving and you're forced to drive it all the time because you need the social media posts and coverage about it and all this shit. And we

were looking at a picture of someone's like, uh, like wide super wide body Ferrari with like a GT three body kit.

I wonder who's.

Then it was like, you know, this is like the most Instagram ready car ever, And I was like, god, it was drive like straight garbage.

It wasn't your car.

But we were talking about just this concept of of making yourself suffer by driving either some super slammed or super loud or gutted interior.

Different being in la versus other states. So because Elliot,

it's like you go anywhere you're sitting in traffic and that's not comfortable. But yeah, other states with open roads

and twisty's turney's like I could, I could get I get it. I ut in Indiana like I'd drive a

Ella swapped straight pipe two forty x every day.

Yeah, because you're on a you know, I know you're on a decent road and moving.

Yeah, yeah for sure.

And you're younger.

I was younger.

I know you are still younger. Like I get out

of these cars my back.

Yeah.

And then also I don't put.

Comfort seats in my portion, like I'm not fucking around like no buckets.

Yeah you didn't get the buckets.

No, I did from the competition seats in my sting ray to the GT two, which are are a wider, more comfortable seat in the Z six.

Yeah, I love that you get the faster version of the car and you like you're like, no.

No, comfortable, Okay, Well, in my defense, the seats are also lighter from what I've heard.

That's funny.

And I need I need GPS and heater, yeah, and I need all like you know, phone charger, Like I run around.

Errands in an electric Ford and it's it's quiet and it's fast, and like you don't have to warm it up in the fucking driveway for ten minutes.

And yeah, it's funny.

Okay. I do have one thought that I've been curious about,

and it's what these hybrid cars. And the thought came

about driving this two nine six. Huh, was I have

enjoyed the fact that you can transition from fully electric to to hybrid or to just a gasoline power let's say.

But it's nice because it doesn't make the neighbors when you back it out and then you can go and drive.

But I was, I put it in the hybrid mode.

When you step on it enough, it sees so much TPS percent that it kicks from from just electric to its gas.

Yeah.

Right, but the engine's cold. Yeah, it is bad for

the car.

So when you start that car ice cold, you pull away in electric mode and the engine kicks on.

It has a limitter.

Okay it I didn't step on it enough because I'm like, I'm like, I just like being a car person. I'm like, oh,

it's cold, I shouldn't do it.

So it's a dry sump, so it has a pre oiler, so when you're cruising away in electric, it's pre oiling the heads.

So there's that.

But when metal gets warm, it's still expands.

It has a cycle that it runs through when it's cold.

That's not a one to one with what you need.

So yes, it knows that, and it is designed to save itself.

I don't like.

You don't like it.

I like. I like the idea of having a little

bit of full electrics so I can leave my house at five in the morning and not wake everybody up.

And I like the power that you get from putting it in kill mode and having the torque fill of the battery. The fact that it is a hybrid doesn't

bother me. I just don't like the hybrid mode where

the engine's turning on and off all the time.

The actually, unless I needed to be quiet, I.

Just man, the one is the Artura. The mclareny I do.

Want to raise the two nine six is like, technically, I think a car and driver got like a tenth quicker to sixty and maybe two tenths quicker in the quarter.

Huh.

But you that's you can't feel that when you're driving them.

They both just feel fucking fast. But the Artura is

four hundred pounds lighter, and that makes a difference in a.

Lot of other ways.

Yeah, so it got it gets right up on the Ferrari acceleration wise, but with two hundred less horsepower, and they and identical hybrid systems. The emotor and the battery

pack are identical cars. Yeah yeah, same supplies. Ferrari is

about one hundred grand more.

Did you see that Liberty Walk F forty at Tokyo?

Yeah?

I did.

So what is your what are your thoughts on?

Because this is I mean, I'm not taking anything away from Liberty Walk or the doing, but when you get to meet the people behind a McLaren car or a Porsche or a Ferrari, these guys know what the fuck they're doing they do right, and then you get a bodykit artist or whatever like chop it up and make it look.

Like a you know, a cartoon.

Celebrity. I don't.

I don't think cars are inherently sacred, Okay, you know, I don't think you shouldn't put a bodykit on something just because it's a Ferrari. And if someone has the

money and the desire to put a body kid on an f forty, fucking have at it. You know.

I don't. I don't.

I don't really give a ship. There's plenty of them

out there, and you know, it's not sacred. It's a car.

My taste, I don't like some of the bodykits that they do. There's other bodykits that I've seen that I

thought looked pretty cool. And I've put over fenders on

a car before, so I'm not throwing stones in a glass house. I did a Fox body that had over

fenders on it. I do think there is when you're

gonna wide body a car, there's a right way and a wrong way to do it, and some people do it the wrong way in terms of just doing super wide offsets and deep dish wheels without modifying the suspension appropriately, and they can just wreck how the car drives, where if you look at one that's been done right, they lengthen the control arms, they move that rotating assembly out and it's not a big offset, and then the cars drive beautifully. Then they drive really, really good. So I'm

not anti bodykit by any means. I just think that

there is a lot that goes into making those cars drive well. And if you're just gonna change the wheels

to some fucking crazy size that's not really meant to be on there, you're gonna make it drive worse. I

don't need to drive the car to tell you. I

can see by looking at the wheels, like I can look at the car and go, that's gonna drive fucked up.

You're you're expensive as Ferrari's gonna drive like a dump truck.

Congratulations, you know. So I don't I don't care what

anyone does with their car.

And I don't care about people taking risks with styling and and and I don't think any cars in particular, I mean, unless there's like, you know, five in the whole world or something, you know, I don't think anything is particularly sacred unless it's an important piece.

Of history, So you wouldn't wide body McLaren f one.

Now McLaren's are really you really shouldn't fuck with a McLaren.

Yeah.

I've never in my life seen a McLaren that was messed with and it wasn't wrecked. There's a dude named

Mitch who has a company called m Engineering, who does an amazing ECU tune.

For that car that actually adds.

Protective layers beyond McLaren's factory tune.

He's a genius drop in oil pressure.

Yeah, because you know McLaren's don't have oil pressure sensors stock.

McLaren's don't have oil pressure sense I actually did not.

That's why they're either running fine or there.

That's just an important safety age.

So he adds, I took a seven twenty to attract day once and I'm an okay driver. I'm not the best,

but I'm fine. I get around all right. And that

this car in McLaren seven twenty, it slide so nice, so that infield section where it's flat at Auto Club Speedway, I'm having a couple of nice little slides there. And

I had a guy come out to me afterwards with another McLaren seven twenty. He goes, dude, what were your

attraction settings at I was like, off, Why, He's a you.

Turned trash control off? That's crazy in this car, can't

but you do that? Like, yeah, you know it's it's

you get used to it and whatever. Okay, and he.

Goes, you know what, you gotta try my car. I

got the one hundred octane tune. I'm making two hundred

horse power over stock and I'm like, so, let me get this straight.

You are afraid to turn off traction control.

Stock, so you but you.

Thought it needed two hundred more horsepower, Like the car is not even giving you all the power it has.

You know, you have one of my favorite shintiers I've ever seen.

Yeah, the bus fabric on the sofar that that was fucking clutch.

I love. I have three yards of that fabric left.

How much can three yards do.

Most of an interior?

You could certainly do inserts on seats if if you have an idea. There are very few people that I

would that I would part with this fabric for. But

if you had an idea and you wanted it, I don't have any plan for it in the near term, you.

Know, So Nikai is making a rw hachiroku for me.

Really, maybe we could put in there. That would be fun.

What color is it?

Black and white?

Oh? It would work. If you want it for that,

I will give it.

I'd be cool because I love that. I love the

story and it's coming for me. It'd be super cool.

It's fucking awesome fabric, but it's like it's it's like rough, like commercial grade. But you feel it and you go, yeah,

that's a bus It's not like a luxury material.

It's designed to be like vomited on.

But you know what else I did with it was I took a really high resolution photo of it, and I have I had a suit made and the whole inside of the suit is that it's not the material.

It's printed on silk, but it looks like.

It's that's cool, It's really awesome.

That must look awesome.

It does. It's rat It was my wedding suit.

I got through and through.

Hell yeah, and think about if I think it would be fun to give you the fabric.

I think it would be too. I fully support those.

For RWB HATCHI, that's awesome. What did it take to

get him to do a non Porsche.

Well, you know, you know, his first buddy kit was on a hot you Oh really, I know, so that he started with that and then he went into the Porsche stuff, and so he didn't talk about THET because it was like a cheap car.

Yeah yeah. Now all of a sudden, they're very collectible. Yeah.

So I was hanging out with them in Japan and he was like, hey, so do you want to do a Porsche like r W B.

And I'm like, that's not my thing.

I was like, what about a Hatchi Roku And he's like, actually, you know that's my that's my history way.

And I was like, oh that's perfect.

Oh well you gotta have it.

You gotta got I must you're not a story of it.

Yeah yeah, yeah, that would be awesome because I love.

It looks cool with a black and white car, would look brad, That would be fun.

Sure it's sold for zero.

Awesome making history. Thanks for having me, guys, Thank you

so much, appreciate you

Chevrolet Corvette

Slr Mclarens

Tesla Semi

Mitsubishi Delica

Toyota Siena

Honda Odyssey

Ford Raptor

Porsche Cayman

Mclaren Artura

Mustang Fox Body

Mclaren F

About this episode

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