Episode 239: F.A.T. Ice Race Co-Host Sam Byrne

The automobile is one of the most important inventions that revolutionize the modern world.

In America, the rich history of car culture runs deep.

Technology continues to shape the future of the industry.

Jason Stein is here to share the stories of people passionate about cars,

from industry leaders and innovators to car obsessed celebrities.

Buckle up as Jason takes you inside the boardroom, onto the track,

and around the bend on Cars and Culture on SiriusXM Business Radio.

Welcome into episode 239 of Cars and Culture with Jason Stein,

here on SiriusXM Business Channel 132.

It's great to have you along for the ride again this week with us.

There are places in motorsport that are more than tracks.

They're touchstones. They're memories.

There were generations of drivers, engineers, fans, and builders first fell in love with racing.

Willow Springs is one of those places.

For more than 70 years, Willow Springs has been a proving ground for drivers,

a laboratory for engineers, and a cultural landmark for American motorsport.

But like many historical institutions, it reached a moment where preservation and progress

had to be reconciled.

Where the question wasn't whether it should change,

but how to evolve without losing what made it matter in the first place.

That's where today's guest enters the story,

not only at Willow Springs, but also on the ice.

Sam Byrne is the co-founder of Cross Harbor Capital Partners

and the lead steward behind the new chapter of Willow Springs,

as well as the FAT Ice Race in Montana.

He's not there as a speculator, nor is he a developer chasing yield,

but he's there as a long-term owner committed to preserving the soul of Willow Springs

while investing in its future,

and while also investing in a concept on ice in Montana.

The future for both Willow Springs and the Ice Race

is all about a new experience for people

and those who want to participate and love motorsport.

Leadership in this space is rare.

It does require capital,

but also patience, taste, restraint, and a respect for history.

So what is it about car culture that impacts both Willow Springs as well

as the FAT Ice Race that takes place later this month in Big Sky?

Sam knows, he knows about the future,

and he knows what it means to be a caretaker of all things.

This is Cars and Culture.

Welcome in to Sam Byrne.

Good morning, Jason. It's Sam Byrne from Cross Harbor Capital

and Willow Springs International Raceway,

and this is Cars and Culture with Jason Stein.

Today's guest bridges the worlds of investment,

automotive culture, motorsports, stewardship.

He's not just a collector, he's an investor who's taken a bold step,

and we're going to talk about that today.

It is great to have you on the program.

Sam, welcome in.

Thank you. Great to be here, Jason.

Before we get into Willow Springs and your vision,

take us back a little bit.

Are you a car guy? Were you a car guy?

Have you always been a car guy?

I guess I've always been a car guy,

having had to keep them running when I was a kid

to be able to have one to drive around.

But Cars sort of came later in life to me the last decade.

I've become an avid collector and motorsport enthusiast

through a whole bunch of different venues,

and that's what ultimately led me to Willow Springs.

But largely right now, I'm a collector a little bit by default.

I always loved Porsches and found my way to collecting

a few of those that have become more than a few over the last decade,

and ended up buying a warehouse where I'm sort of trying to create

the ultimate man cave of Porsche culture.

Oh, well, let's hear about that.

What did you start with? What do you have now?

So I started with 993s because I was always a huge 993 fan

and have run the spectrum now from stuff as early as the mid-1950s.

1957 Wilhoit Speedster 59, traditional 356, 62 and 64, 356s and 911s.

Mid-60, late 60s, 912.

Really cool car that I have at John Wilhoit's right now being restored.

A couple of early 70s cars, a first year 930 turbo,

and then working my way all the way up into much more modern stuff,

including a bunch of off-the-press Porsches that I've had built over the last couple of years.

Wonderful. That passion was always there, wasn't it, for you?

It was. The poster on my wall was the 930 speaker poster when I was a kid,

and obviously it was an aspirational thing for me,

and they've always been sort of dream cars for me.

So even in my 50s, that passion was still there, and I wanted to exercise it a little bit.

Did the early passion lean more towards the emotional experience,

the design, the sound, the feel, or the competitive side of cars and racing?

I'd say the former, I'm more into the art and design,

been a photography collector all my life, and was always fascinated with car photography.

For me, it was more the artistic design, the lines, the beauty of the execution.

I'm a big RestoMod fan, so I have some stuff that's classic.

For me, the project cars are the most fun and most interesting,

and so I've always got one or two builds going at any particular time.

For me, I love the process of building and putting them back together,

and I spend way too much time of my day looking at videos and photographs of things that we have in progress.

Wonderful. You're a business leader and a car enthusiast.

How do those two sides of you inform each other?

I don't know a business leader, but I've been running a private equity and investment business

for more than 30 years, and we haven't intersected frequently with automotive or auto sports

until really the last decade, when a number of times people have asked us to look at financing

private clubs or racetrack operations that they have wanted to develop,

and have basically been underwriting business plans in that space for almost a decade,

trying to come up with something that we think made it a lot of sense,

and really in the last five years started getting more interested in doing something ourselves,

if we could find the right property under the right circumstances,

and that was something that really we found very, very difficult.

I had sort of given up on the idea that we would ultimately be a principal in the space

until Willow Springs came along.

And that's that explosion of those automotive places, tracks, clubs, museums,

they have a certain value in the cultural sense, but how do you think about them as an investor?

And maybe what was it that switched? Because we've had many guests on this program talk about

this notion, whether it's the Concourse Club or it's a collection of

folks gathering to share those cultural experiences, but you looked at it from a business perspective,

too. Absolutely. And I think most people sort of have to at some level,

unless they're purely an avid collector and they're trying to create maybe the tax advantages of

having a museum or something along those lines. I think most of these deals need a business case.

I couldn't underwrite many of them in terms of being a pure investor, but it's unclear to me

whether all of them will work well. I think you have to have deep pockets to be able to undertake

any of these business ventures because it's a long ramp up relative to either a membership model

or to build out a facility that is capable of holding large scale public events and finding

a place to do that. I think there's a lot of challenges with the industry in that regard.

There are a number of enthusiast-oriented ideas that I think hold a lot of water in terms of

clubs and storage that there's tremendous demand for. In the last decade, there's been more

million-dollar cars sold than in all of history combined prior to that. And we can look at the

great reflation of the economy both after the GFC and then also what happened during COVID as

something that drove a lot of demand in the high-end markets of the world. But it's an undisputed

fact that there's a tremendous amount of interest in high-value motor sports and in the enthusiast

collector of high-value cars. And so there's clearly a lot of demand for storage and for people

that want to get together and share that passion with other like-minded enthusiasts.

But where was the tipping point in it? Because people have been collecting cars, Sam, for decades

and decades and decades. But all of a sudden now it became cool to collect cars, store them in a

location, create a man cave, run them on a track, have lavish parties in the middle of nowhere.

And all of a sudden you have the thermals of the world. And all of a sudden,

why didn't this happen earlier? Well, there's been a tremendous explosion in wealth

in the economy that has people spending money on things that maybe in earlier times they wouldn't

have. I mean, thermal has been on the, I think thermal was founded more than 15 years ago.

That's not necessarily a nascent business plan there. And there certainly have been track operators

all over the country historically going back into the 1950s that have leaned into the culture,

mostly around racing, less so than culture. I don't know about lavish parties. Certainly

people who are more urban have less opportunity and less availability of space to store. Not

everybody can buy a warehouse and create their own car storage. So I think there's just demand

generally for storage for people that have collected multiple vehicles and they want to use them

at any given time and need a place to store them effectively. So the storage piece is one thing.

Certainly part of the storage thing that is going on is this idea that you want to be around other

people that are like-minded and want to share in their passion for the automotive culture.

And that's very much a big part of our overall business plan at Willow, but certainly in smaller

formats with anything from, you know, in California there's any number of places that you can store

at different levels. I spend a lot of time during the winter in Montana and it's remarkable how much

car storage at the very high end there is in Bozeman and Missoula, Montana. Obviously because

of the tax advantages of having cars there, but there's a lot of demand for high-end storage in

the car space. And I think naturally coming with that is the idea that people that want to gather

want to get together and talk about motorsports, their cars, and their general passion for the

industry. Yeah, let's dive into really one of the most important stories in the United States

this year, the acquisition reimagining of Willow Springs International Raceway. Walk us through

how that all came about. What drew you to Willow Springs? A track that's been around since 1953,

one of the oldest, if not the oldest, permanent road course in the U.S.

Why did it resonate with you and Cross Harbor?

As I shared earlier, we've been looking at business plans for various iterations of different types

of track developments in the country and there are several that have gotten off the ground.

We talked about the Concourse Club, we talked about thermal, there are others. Some are pure

real estate driven, some have no real estate, some are a combination of real estate membership and some

OEM activity. And in all of those cases, I sort of developed a thesis that to be successful,

you needed to have a very large facility. To be successful in the way we want to be successful,

all of those are successful in their own right. But we didn't want to necessarily have a real

estate driven model. And when looking at other business plans, it was clear to me that you needed

someplace, if you were going to do this thoughtfully, that was around a large MSA. So you had at least

12 or 15 million people within a three hour drive. You had to have more than 300 days a year of high

quality driving weather. So the temperature had to be right, you didn't want to have too much rain.

And you needed the scale of something that had multiple tracks. So at least two

significant road courses, plus the ability to have carting and then land to be able to create

amenitization and event space as well. And so that limited you, if you think about all those

criterias to a pretty small window of places within the United States that it would work

effectively, where you had great weather and you had a lot of people and you had a large

piece of land that could be developed into a racetrack and the zoning would allow for it.

I had sort of given up on being able to find such a place. We had looked in South Florida and we

looked in Southern California and nothing really met the bill. It's very difficult to get a new

motorsports facility permitted in most places to the extent that you can. It's probably in a place

that's pretty remote and doesn't have a lot of people. And largely I had given up on the idea

that we'd be able to do something to Nova or ground up, particularly given if you did find

that piece of land, say it's 500 plus acres in an urban area like that, it would probably be

exorbitantly expensive and there would be much more valuable to somebody to build an Amazon

warehouse or housing on. So when Willow Springs came to market, it was somewhat surprising to me.

I think people looked at it as the location being fairly remote, but there are 23 million people

within a three hour drive of Willow and there are 18 million people within a two hour drive.

Those numbers don't exist anywhere from what we can tell in terms of a place where you already

had a big existing facility. It's more than 600 acres, had multiple tracks, had protected zoning

based upon its use, was a California historic landmark and comes with some protections,

does not have any operating restrictions because of where it's located and had a unique history,

storied history from a motorsports perspective. So that's really, when Willow came on the market

from my perspective, it met all of the things that we thought would be required to ultimately

be successful. We still have to execute, of course, but that was what drove us to Willow

when it came to market and had not been on the market, had not traded hands since 1961 when

Bill Hooth purchased the property. And so that's a long time, it's before I was born.

And we were super excited by the possibility from the day it came on the market and we flew out there

and met with Chris Hooth and the family. Deep history, once hosted IndyCar, IMSA testing,

even an occasional Formula One usage at one stage, but its appeal faded. Why is that once you dug

into it? So underinvestment is the simplest thing. I think Bill Hooth was a tremendous character

and had big ideas, got older, didn't invest in the track and then after he passed,

I think the family's interest in it was, you know, there was some disputes within the family

about the property and there was a lawsuit, I understand. And I think people's interest in it

from an operating perspective faded and it really became pretty tarnished in terms of what was there.

There was a little bit of money put into it here and there, but it certainly wasn't

in the standard that it would have needed to be for modern, thoughtful operation and for cars to

be safe and for drivers to be safe out there. Many enthusiasts were concerned that a private

equity acquisition could lead to the track being closed off or turned into something exclusive.

Excuse me, you have been extremely clear that's not the direction that you want.

Maybe you could talk a little bit about that and why public access to Willow matters to you so much.

So I'll take the question in two parts. The first will be about private equity.

I think it's really important to note that this property doesn't sit in one of our

private equity funds. So it's not a three to five year make money proposition.

It is owned with permanent capital, ours and a group of enthusiasts that understand that they

put money into an investment that's permanent. So there is no end of life fund that drives

decision making here. It's not necessarily IRR driven. So that's the first point is that we're

in it for the long haul and it doesn't sit in a traditional private equity fund model.

And a lot of our investments now are in that case. They just simply require

more than the traditional five to seven year hold for an investment to be successful.

And if you look at our club business, that's very much been the case. We've owned

the Yellowstone Club for 18 years now and we'll continue to own it for another decade

as we build it out. And that's like much of our business in Southwest Montana.

The second part of your question about why public access is important,

from my perspective, it's important from a business standpoint. So actually

running public access track days and the utility of the track is fundamental to being able to

generate reasonable cash flow to support the business. And so one of the three legs of the

stool for us is that there would be meaningful public access, which would include track days,

driver education, driving schools. Ultimately, we'd love to see some hospitality out there

so that people could spend the night out there and events like Willow Springs Reimagine,

that was a kickoff event that was put together on very short notice. I think it was

a remarkable success considering that we started working on it less than four months prior to the

event. And I think it proved that there is a big demand in Southern California for the motorsport

enthusiasts to get together and have shared experiences. And so from that perspective,

public access is very important to us. Our partnership with the Peterson,

their intent to build a significant amount of car storage out there and be able to jointly

sponsor events with us is very important. And there is a whole host of different public access

programming that we intend to roll out over the course of the next few years. There's no place

in the U.S. where we see the high-quality motorsport gathering that you see in Europe.

And we think some of that can be brought to the U.S. very successfully and no better place than

Southern California where we have great weather and an amazing history of car culture.

And there's a balance there that you have to maintain. You've got grassroots culture

and you have higher-profile racing opportunities. Your vision includes a broad appeal,

supporting car clubs, public carding, potentially reengaging with professional

racing series. So how do you make that all work? Because it is two distinctly different things,

right? Grassroots versus high-profile. Yeah, I don't know how different it is. I sort of use

the analogy that if I meet somebody else who owns a 73 RS Lightway and that's the only thing that

that person owns, I view that as a sort of grassroots conversation, but I'm just as interested in

spending three hours talking to that guy as I am talking to the CEO of Porsche if I get that

opportunity. So I don't know that there is far apart as some on the internet sphere would like

to make it. In terms of those groups coming together, I think it's perfectly normal. We

saw some of that with Reimagined. You had Bruce Meyer there with two of the most valuable cars in

the world. You had probably a dozen singers there that cost over a million bucks and you had people

that paid 20 bucks to come and see all that and found it fascinating and wanted to get close to

that experience and much beyond that. We had two-liter racing going on that was

something that's accessible to a lot of different people and I think we've proven that

those two things are not mutually exclusive. The grassroots car culture can certainly get

along. We've seen if you consider what goes on at Goodwood where they put 300,000 people

in a weekend together with the highest end automotive manufacturers and everybody's fascinated

with the whole experience, I think that proves that the two don't need to be separate.

Yeah, agreed. In some of the reporting, I believe it was in Racer, you highlighted the challenge

of maintaining what makes Willow great while making it safe and fun. What are some of the

concrete changes that you're most committed to, safety upgrades, preserving character?

I think in that order. It has to be safe and you'll have different opinions about what's the

safest both for personal safety as well as protecting the value of whatever you're riding

or driving on the track, but we're working with Alex Wertz who is a Formula One pass

driver who's in charge of the FIA safety committee and is very involved in WEC and Formula One and

as a track designer. First and foremost, we need a place that people feel that can be safe.

We want all of our tracks to be FIA II compliant from a safety perspective. We're already there

on the streets and we're there on the carting track that we put in as an interim fix to carting

there. Ultimately, the big Willow in all its configurations needs to be FIA II compliant and

so that's where we start. We start with making sure that we keep people safe. Secondarily, we

make it safe for your equipment and so if you're going to run off, you're going to run off in a

place that's not going to rip the bottom of your car out. I was talking at a mutual friend of ours,

Zach Brown had a dinner during Monterey car week and I was sitting with Danny Sullivan two years,

talking about Willow, and he said, we didn't leave Willow testing because it was necessarily

unsafe for an IndyCar driver. We left because we were ripping the bottoms out of the cars every

time we went off the track and fixing things like that seems like an obvious one from our

perspective. In terms of preserving the character of the place, that's probably a little bit more

challenging. What's so cool about it is that it still exists in the 1960s, but that's also one

of its challenges. We want it to look and feel like a facility that leans into its history and

the culture of the 1960s, 50s, 60s, and 70s, but it also needs to operate as a modern place and

have modern conveniences. Balancing those, I think, is our biggest challenge and biggest

opportunity. If we can create buildings that fit into that environment, that fit into the California

car culture, architecture, and have a nod to the 1950s and 60s, but provide a modern experience,

I think that will be success for us. After the break, I'll continue my conversation with Sam

Byrne, who is co-founder of Cross Harbor Capital Partners and also co-host of the FAT Ice Race.

To see more cars and culture interviews, visit the Cars and Culture YouTube channel.

Subscribe, comment, check out hundreds of conversations with the creators, collectors,

and culture makers who are driving the industry forward.

to share the stories of people passionate about cars from industry leaders and innovators to car

obsessed celebrities. Buckle up as Jason takes you inside the boardroom onto the track and around

the bend on Cars and Culture on SiriusXM Business Radio. Welcome back to the program. I'm your host

Jason Stein. Great to have you back listening to Cars and Culture. Now the continuation of my

conversation with Sam Byrne, FAT Ice Race co-host. To see more cars and culture interviews, visit

the Cars and Culture YouTube channel. Subscribe, comment, check out hundreds of conversations

with the creators, collectors, and culture makers who are driving the industry forward.

Sam, a key part of this story is your partnership with Singer, Singer Vehicle Design. We've had Rob

on, we've had Mazon, we've had Raj Nair. It is known worldwide for its reinterpretation of 9-11s.

How did that collaboration come together? What does Singer bring to the table?

Sure. Well, I'm a huge Singer fan and I have a Singer and I have two Singers

presently being built and I just loved the whole idea about it. I spoke earlier about my passion

for sort of rest-o-mod and for the process of builds and I think nobody does it better than

then what Rob envisioned and what Maz and Raj have executed on. And so as a partner, I think they

fit into sort of my philosophy around car culture and their pursuit of excellence. What they bring

to the table is they have 700 plus unique customers who have all committed to or invested over a

million dollars and have something that they all are passionate about and they share the same culture

and so they have a unique audience for us to tap into, to hit one of the veins of what we're

trying to accomplish out there which is to do very cool public events and so Singer will be

deeply involved in our public event programming like we had them at reimagined earlier this year

and we will again next year. They'll also be branding the public club and they've made a

material investment towards that and so I'm sorry the private club. There will be a component

of a private club there where people can go and gather with club members and always have a track

available to them. It won't sit on top of the the need to continue to have public access so these

are two distinct legs of the stool but that will be there and Singer's brand and the quality of what

they do will be associated with the private club and there are partners in it and so in those two

areas alone they're also going to build a delivery facility out there. I would always you know sort

of razz, maz about the fact that I you know you spend a million dollars or a million and a quarter

or or up and you go pick up your car in a parking lot in Torrance, California. Yeah yeah

I mean at least we know it's not going to rain that much although that hasn't been the case

recently. They're going to throw you the keys in there. And we're actually talking to other OEMs

about the idea of you really should have your if you're going to have a what is effectively a modern

supercar or hypercar or an amazing rest of mod you really should get to pick it up someplace

where you can experience the car safely and with instruction so in a perfect world you'll go to a

Singer facility at Willow Springs along our what we're going to call our OEM row. We have eight

parcels of land designated for manufacturers and industry members to have permanent facilities

out there and so here we'll have a facility out there where they do testing out of they host

customer events they do deliveries they do service and repair work on on their own cars and so that

will be something that will happen early in the life cycle of of Willow Springs. It's amazing

and a very European concept actually to go through the whole pickup whether it's in Wolfsburg or in

or in Munich to make it part of the fabric of what that OEM is doing. Do you have other

potential ideas around even major racing series returning to Willow Springs someday say an IMSA

or an indie level event how realistic is that Sam? I think it's realistic we're going to have to

decide you know how it fits into programming. I'd love to see one or two real events there.

I also think that maybe something that is a little bit more novel like you know would it be

really fun to have a NASCAR legends race there you know where you brought out

you know 70s and 60s cars if you were at reimagined you would have seen that I own a 1951

very winning NASCAR race car and I used it as the pace car for our our our our celebratory race

that we did during reimagined. I think it would be a lot of fun to to deliver on something that

leaned into the cultural history of NASCAR as an example. I do think we'll also be doing

probably more classic racing out there than maybe you know an IMSA or series but the question is

it remains to be seen if there's demand and if we can service that demand appropriately out there

and make it work economically but we'd love to see it. I don't think we want to build a racetrack

that's solely focused around racing. Our goal is to create the great car enthusiast location the car

uses a tagline and that does certainly include having some racing but it doesn't mean that that's

what our our our first and foremost focus is. There it is there's the tagline perfect you've

hired a lot of experienced partners from track operations to design in order to support this

reimagination. What are some of the key milestones you're targeting in the next 12 to 24 months?

The first was to get operating with a safe track so we are presently we're still running the schedule

that the Hoots had previously committed to and we're booking new track days on both streets

and on on the Big Willow. The big milestone was to it was to renovate some of those facilities so

that we could start to host operators out there that had certain requirements and and we've done

that we built a significant temporary clubhouse at streets. Streets has been completely renovated

and made safe you know we spent north of 10 million dollars on streets over the course of the summer

getting that to FIA II compliance and and it's a great track. People have loved the experience

out there. We have a fleet of 718 club sports out there that people can go out and utilize.

We're going to be adding BMW M2 race cars to that fleet. I think they've been held up in the

US Mexico tariff challenges but hopefully we'll see those cars fairly soon and then we have

some more advanced cars that people can go out and use and those will be both for people that

choose to join as club members but also will be running the ability for people to do public events

and go out and have for example a corporate outing you know a bachelor party something like that and

get in a fleet of 718 club sports and have proper instruction and a safe track. So that was the

first thing we needed to get done. We wanted to get the track operating for the various business

verticals. I'd say the next big achievements are going to be the starting on the renovation

and the expansion of Big Willow. So the big track it's a it's a pretty significant build if we were

going to do it all at once we would have to shut the the Big Willow down for at least 15 months.

I think where we're leaning right now is we're going to shut it down each summer for the next

three years and do it as a progressive build and it's a it's quite extensive if you've seen the

plans for what's going to be built there there'll be multiple configurations the track will be able

to be run in both directions there's a tunnel that goes into the infield and we'll actually be able

to actually run it in two configurations simultaneously as well in a smaller format for

for various different purposes and needs in the future. We are keeping the original Big Willow

layout there will be some slightly different cambering and things in some of the turns to

make them safer but we will continue to have the original layout that will be run. I don't

know that it will be run that often because it's a pretty high performance track but

but but it will be still it's it will still be there. So I'd say that's a big one getting a larger

temporary clubhouse and event space built probably on the up at the balcony building.

It was surprising to find out that the balcony building has no permanent power

which is something that you know is all being done right now and the improvements going in there.

Getting the carding track open and getting a viable carding program out there for us was a

was a big accomplishment this summer improving the quality of the food and beverage experience.

In fact I think the food the food's remarkably good at the diner out there but the building was

suffering a little bit and cleaning that all up and making it a little bit of a better experience

was important as well and so yeah those are the those are the big plans in the works. We need

car storage badly. We were planning on building temporary buildings for car storage but given

the timeline of getting them up of seven to nine months and the ability to put up

permanent buildings for car storage of 12 to 15 months we're we're leaning towards the ladder

and so we'll start on that fairly quickly so that we can have conditioned space that people can

store cars in and we'll be building similar space for Peterson who who needs space for their collection

as well. It's a real balance isn't it of heritage with modernization. You want to keep the soul of

the track but make it 21st century compliant and and a motorsport destination. Yeah it's it's

those two things at the same time. Yeah I think we can get there. We won't you know when we first

looked at this in terms of like putting up some you know four bedroom cabin product where people

can come and spend the night. I'm now leaning more towards everything being generally single story

kind of preserving the view where we'll soon announce with a prominent artist

a very cool sculptural add to the facility which we think will become something that's

quite iconic out there. I think we've got the right the right vibe. We've certainly got great

planners in Hart Howerton and Alex Wurz and his family in terms of figuring out how to make the

track work with the various amenetization and buildings that have to go around it. So we feel

pretty good about having the right people. Wonderful. You mentioned karting for a moment

and youth programs. What is that side of the plan look like and why is it important for the future

of the sport? Well I mean clearly it's where so many drivers that and you know eye racing get

their start that it's it's sort of fundamental that we have an entry point for young people young

boys and girls to get involved in motorsports. So karting is that is fundamental I believe to the

success long term success of the sport and to creating more people that are enthusiasts to all

automotive culture. So can't understate that and so we needed to get something up quickly. We

ultimately will build a larger karting facility there but we've basically taken the old design

which was a good design but had been in tremendous disrepair and completely redone that. We've had

a number of events out there. We're working with Mike Manning out there presently to basically run

open karting and we can book people for events. Beyond that we we brought out the FAT series

which we are I think it's this week having the world championships out there for the FAT

karting league which is a collaboration between Ferdy Porsche some investors and Williams to create

electric carts that are a rental cart effectively where you buy a license for the season and you

all get the exact same cart and then they have Williams racing level telemetry that feeds back

to every cart around the world that's in the league and they can assess the quality of people's

driving with that and they hadn't they had a full day of karting going on with the reimagined it

was fascinating to see and that's meant to be to be able to provide people with more affordable

access to karting. I think the subscriptions start as low as five or six thousand dollars a year

and so FAT has got events booked out there and we'll build a whole karting program like you've

seen with you know some of the larger operators out there we're going to we're going to run it

independently for ourselves for the time being but you'll you'll see more opportunity to do

karting on the Jensen Button Karting Circus circuit wow yeah which Jensen European Karting

Champion F1 Champion recently signed on with us now that he's retired he was on a close friend of

ours his wet team driving you know for Team Joda for the last four years and now that he's retired

he's going to be working with us being a track ambassador and we've renamed the Karting Circuit

after him wonderful wonderful final thing when you look at your the vision of Willow Springs and

how Willow Springs will function in Southern California's automotive culture how does it

compare to maybe some other venues or some other week-long festival environments we've had a couple

of those folks on this program too but yeah well you step back and you say okay well how is Willow

Springs different well I think it's it's it's different because of where it is you know the

California car culture is just it's it's unique and it has its own personality when I think about

some of the places where I've had great experiences Le Mans the you know the sort of crowd experience

there the the energy and the enthusiasm good wood for festival of speed for revival for

members meeting I think they all have different personalities but if we if I envision success

it would be creating that type of experience a few times of a few times of the year at Willow

but anchored in the California car culture the the 1950s 60s and 70s where you know there was

there was a tremendous amount of innovation and enthusiasm around motorsport in SoCal

and right now I don't think there's a place where people can kind of express that that

enthusiasm there's so many so many places have shut down some people have done amazing

cultural events if you look at you know what Pat Long has done and with Luft and and some of these

other events around Porsche culture what the PCA does with their various events during the course

year and at Monterey I think that type of experience would be would be success for us

if we can create a mixture of of some of those experiences with the energy that you see at a

place like Le Mans classics or the energy that you get from the festival of speed at Goodwood

I think we'd be I'd be ecstatic with with with that result

and what does it mean to you personally Sam?

Well I want to be successful I want it to be successful as a business I want to create a culture

of you know 300 or so club members that all have the same level of passion as I do for the sport

and for the industry and so success for me is something that works as a business but we also

create a lasting place that you know it's been there for 70 years let's let's hope that in 70

years from now it'll still be a place that people look to and can be proud of and continues to

celebrate automotive culture and the enthusiast. Wow this show is called Cars and Culture you're

creating cars and culture in one location we greatly look forward to what you have coming up

with this facility all of your plans I know this is this is not easy and a lot of moving parts

probably a little more than you bargained for if you take it in its totality. You know it has been

it has been a little bit but I also would tell you that since we closed the amount of people that

have come out of the woodwork that are excited about what we're doing there and are supporting us

both with investment and with ideas has been extraordinary and so there's a lot of people

that believe in what we're trying to do there and I think that will only you know only make our

success happen more quickly and and with more vibrancy. Open in 1953 and an hour north of Los

Angeles it has a new life what was once a popular venue for amateur racing and even filming of TV

shows now will have a wider appeal for decades to come and we thank you for coming on explaining the

story and under your direction I think not only Californians but folks around the world will get

a taste of what Willow is all about. Well thank you Jason it's been a real pleasure to be on the

show and I'm sure I'll I'm sure we'll have opportunities to speak more about some of the

events and things that we're going to be doing in the future out there and I'm super excited about

it. Thank you so much Sam. You're welcome. Thanks again to my guest today Sam Byrne. To see more

Cars and Culture interviews visit the Cars and Culture YouTube channel, subscribe, comment,

check out hundreds of conversations with the creators, collectors and culture makers who

are driving the industry forward. That's Cars and Culture Episode 239. I'm your host Jason Stein.

We'll see you down the road.

Episode 239: F.A.T. Ice Race Co-Host Sam Byrne

About this episode

motorsport

Willow Springs

Porsche 911

Porsche 356

Porsche 912

911 930 Turbo

Porsche 930 Turbo

restomod

project car

automotive culture

IndyCar

IMSA

Formula One

track days

driving schools

driver education

Peterson

Goodwood Festival of Speed

FIA safety committee

WEC

FIA II compliant

Singer Vehicle Design

OEMs

NASCAR

car enthusiast

FIA II compliance

Porsche 718 Club Sport

BMW M2

karting

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