Gary Ragle of Ragle Design

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Live Loud.

I don't want a fanboy out, but I am a big fan of your work.

Thank you.

Anything, it's funny, anything I see that I really love, it always ends up that you're

the dude that designed it.

Oh, thanks.

Like I go back and I'm like, oh shit, that's why.

Yeah, Gary Ragle designed that.

That's awesome.

I started my career at Mitsubishi like I mentioned, and while that's not a glamorous car company,

especially for a hot rod guy at heart, it was the best place for a young designer to

work.

It's the two worst combos too, because the modern Mopar motors and superchargers are

the tallest of any of the big three manufacturers.

And then the 60s and 70s Mopars that you're putting them have the smallest belt line that

there is.

Like it's the worst possible scenario.

They're asking you about the car, and we're all like, yeah, you know, we want it to look

like a concept car.

Well, now we're like, you feel stupid saying that, you know, that's a real like, that's

a fun concept car.

It's that's often, I mean, you the rings, you guys fucking killed it.

That was the best compliment that we could hear.

We heard it a number of times at the quail and I appreciate you saying that.

Welcome everybody back to oil and whiskey.

This episode is presented by HP tuners.

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That's every single one of them.

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Kind of kind of know what they're doing this week.

We have the man behind many, many a crazy ideas and some of the biggest builds from

the best builders in the industry.

We got Gary Regal from Regal Design.

Gary, I've got quite the little spiciness on my S's for some reason.

Do you?

Yeah, I don't like it.

I don't like it at all.

Is it just in you?

I'm not hearing it.

Maybe it's just in my headphones.

He's psyching yourself out with this.

Somebody is messed with my headphones.

Gary, this was a long time coming man.

I'm glad we could put this together.

Me too.

I'm stoked to be here.

Yeah, great to have you.

I mean, I'd say I'm shocked we have never like really formally met other than one evening

being slightly over-served at a Roadster shop.

Yeah.

Seema party.

I think we may have met.

I'm not sure.

I was a little fuzzy.

I know.

It's almost by design.

Sometimes I wonder that, you know, I think Mike and Jim maybe keep you a little closely

guarded.

I'm surprised that you were even allowed out of the house.

It's kept under lock and key, but here you are.

Yeah.

Well, they didn't introduce him.

He came up and introduced himself.

Well, they introduced him at Seema's.

What was it?

Barry Bagel or Gary Bagel?

Yeah.

They're always good about saying, you know, who worked on the design of the car and then

Mike says, lose his number, never call this guy.

He sucks, et cetera, et cetera.

So, well, the poor of some whiskey.

Yeah, this is going to be a good one.

We know of your work, obviously, obviously, but you know, we'd like to hear some of the

story and, you know, kind of do the, you know, seems cliche thing, but I think it's good

to hear kind of like what your background is and how you got into this, you know, especially

to the path to making a living doing this.

And I'm interested in some stuff too.

I was just doing a little poking around on the Instagram this morning and just going

back and so what struck me is you're the pushing of the envelope and so many crazy designs

and then your personal interests like all over the board.

As far as like cars, you know, like saw this at a show.

This is cool.

You know, front engine dragsters and vintage stuff, which is great.

Like that's, but I'm really interested to hear more on that story of like, how do you

get your mindset?

Everybody has, you know, biases and interest in personal things and, you know, stuff like

that.

But, you know, with an art like this, it's open to interpretation.

So it's going to be fun.

And it isn't like it's hard to argue when something just simply looks cool.

You know, that's all I would say.

And, you know, I hate to, I don't want to fanboy out, but I'm a big fan of your work.

Thank you.

Anything.

It's funny.

Anything I see that I really love, it always ends up that you're the dude that designed

it.

Oh, thanks.

I go back and I'm like, oh, shit, that's why.

You're a regular design man.

That's awesome.

You can fanboy all you want.

Yeah, you want me to keep going?

Yeah, we got a couple hours, right?

And then remember that cootie?

You did?

That thing was awesome.

With the side and the scoops and like, fuck yeah.

I was a little nervous to do this.

My wife said, don't worry about it.

They're just going to spend a couple hours talking about your favorite subject, you.

She's hard.

Perfect.

But yeah, my, my background is maybe a little bit different than some of the other designers

that might, might answer your question on some of those, those concepts.

I'm, I started in the OEM side of the industry.

I was a concept designer for car companies.

I spent about seven years at Mitsubishi Motors Studio in Southern California.

Spent a lot of time in Japan.

So the Japanese whiskey is appropriate.

It is very appropriate.

Spent about a year in Ford in Dearborn working in the Lincoln studio on exterior.

And, but I've always loved hot rods.

You know, my dad is a hot rod guy.

I was brought up in it like, like so many people were.

And yeah, so I was always doing the hot rod or pro touring type work on the side.

And it got to the point where that was more fun than, than the day job.

And there was a lot of interest there.

So what made it more fun from the day job?

The day job was, it got to the point where it was what I called warehouse filler.

And it's the best job in the world, but you have to separate yourself from it emotionally,

which is very difficult for a creative person to do.

You put your heart and soul into creating these concepts and do a full scale clay model.

I did a couple of concept cars and then it was always just great.

Thanks.

Now we're on to the next program.

And it just became making models for warehouse filler.

And that's the nature of that job.

And it's totally fine.

It's still, it's an awesome job.

You just got to grow a thick skin to it.

And you know, it got to the point where it was just getting, it was getting hard to do

that for me.

And the hot rods, custom cars at that time, this was about 15 years ago when I started

doing this full time, they were getting to the point where they were the, the budget

was there and the level of modification was there that they were basically concept cars

on in their own right.

They just looked like a vintage hot rod, which for me, that was the perfect, perfect mix.

So that's kind of why, you know, a lot of those may concepts may be more wild, like

the things that you've seen.

I still, you know, my, my favorite cars are traditional hot rods, which is why, especially

the sixties style drag cars, spindle mounts, ET threes, all, I'm in all that.

So when it's my own builds and in my garage, I've got a shop with my dad and we tinker

with our own stuff.

There's nothing in there with anything, any wheels bigger than 15 or 16 inch.

And part of that is because it takes me so long to get a project done.

I don't want to do anything trendy.

So just do the standard, that'll still be cool in 25 years.

Maybe put, maybe put like 22s on it.

It'll come back.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

It's great advice to a lot of builders out there too when you're starting in on a five,

67 year built.

Right.

Yeah.

That's stuff's cool.

That that that vibe right his gut, you know, he's got a bitch in 27 turbo back and he's

into a lot of nostalgic hot rods.

And yeah, it's funny what guys' interests are versus like what they do.

I mean, the stuff you're doing is obviously wildly modern and crazy techy, but yeah,

but could be some of the stuff couldn't be further away from, you know, traditional

spindle mounts and, you know, traditional hot rod stuff.

So it's it's interesting to have a personal, you know, direction or interest, you know,

and then still be able to push the envelope and have these ideas.

Yeah, that are just a wild cutting edge.

Yeah.

I mean, if it's if it's got four wheels, I'll work on it for the most part.

But I find that the traditional hot rods, as much as I love them, designing them

is not quite as fun because there's a there's a box to work with.

There's a box to work with in with all of these vehicles.

Is there the box is smaller?

I think because everybody know there's a box.

The boxes make it good looking.

Right.

Well, it's almost, you know, a traditional hot rod.

Oftentimes it's almost like a Chuck Taylor sneaker.

Yeah.

You know, it's like that's just how a sneaker.

So like a lot of people have screwed with it and I want to Josh wears them.

So I hate I don't want you to take this as a compliment.

Right.

Don't worry.

But like, you know, what are you going to do to it?

That's going to make it look any better than what Converse did.

And if you are going to make it, you sort of like maybe you'll emulate what was done

there, right, which is traditional hot rodding.

Yeah.

There's I mean, yeah, it's it's in talking about the traditional hot rod stuff.

There's there's envelopes been pushed in that world.

Obviously, you know, you look at we always bring up pinkies, right?

You know, pinkies done some great stuff, you know, loaded and, you know,

hemorrhoid and some things like that, that obviously it's stylistically

inspired by traditional hot rodding, but they've pushed the envelope, right?

You've machine some stuff.

I mean, you got even stuff that Simon and Garfunkel from Adam and Troy, you know,

that you know, there's you can stay down.

I use the terminology like guardrails, right?

There's there's some guardrails to go down a path, right?

You don't know where you're going to end up, but you're not going to veer too far

off the road.

You can bounce off again, you know, off of them and stuff like that.

But you're right.

There's more of a the traditional stuff has more of a body of work or the amount

of times that it's been done.

You know, you like if you think of a truck, right?

A truck is a certain way.

A truck looks a certain way because it's that's the way a truck is, you know,

like you said, a truck, a truck, Taylor looks like the way it is.

I mean, a 32 roadster like.

Kind of looks like it needs to look like a 32 roadster, you know,

69 Camaro now should look like a 69 Camaro ish, but it could also, you know,

take on a mind of its own and become its own creation.

Yeah, there's kind of I find myself getting two different types of projects.

One is the beloved vehicles that the customer wants to do something with,

whether it's mild to wild, 55 Chevy, 69 Camaro's, you know, these are iconic

cars that you as a designer, you need to be really careful about what you modify

and what you change.

You can still change a lot, but you just have to be careful and keep it a 69 Camaro.

And the other cars are the ugly ducklings or the lesser known vehicles

that are a little bit there's no rules.

Yeah, there's no rules.

You didn't like it when they were new.

So there's exactly 48 to 54 Chevy truck.

Who would have thought of that, right, to do what you did with it?

But it yeah, it's not.

It's a fine truck just like it is.

Yeah. But if you're going to start modifying it, like what do you do?

Yeah, that AMC Marlin keep bringing that one up.

Yeah, somebody's going to build a cool Marlin one day.

I'd love to see it.

It's going to happen.

You would not need to be scared with that one.

Do whatever.

There's got to be at least two Marlin guys out there who are like, I fucking ruined it.

Kill the lines. Right.

The Marlin Club.

But it is it gets it allows the juices to flow that much harder.

And yeah, yeah.

And I love both types of those projects.

Both are their own challenge.

And I kind of find most of the work is can fall either either one of those two camps.

Yeah.

When the beloved, you know, iconic builds that you just went through,

I assume to those there's opposite ends of the spectrum from the, you know,

the end user, the customer that's paying the bill in the shop that's building it.

You know, there's the a.

It's already a, you know, 55 Chevy, right?

We're building a 55 Chevy because we like a 55 Chevy like, but but it's

tweaks and things.

Let's do some things that are, you know, make a little nicer.

Make a little.

Then there's the we want to build the baddest one ever.

We want to do something nobody's done before.

And then it's like, right.

Well, a lot of people have tried a lot of things and nobody does it anymore

because of a certain reason.

Exactly. Right. Exactly.

Yeah, it's a lift off hard top full time roadster.

Right.

It's cut the fins off of 57.

Put fins on a 55.

Not all ideas are good.

Watch, I'm sure you got to deal with a lot.

Right.

I've I've yes, I do.

And I try to I usually I can steer the customer my way and I just let my work

speak instead of instead of my mouth.

You know, I always tell all the my customers at my pencil is much smarter

than my brain is.

And if they have an idea, you know, I'll always sketch it and give it my best

effort. And then if it's not working for whatever reason, I'll give them my

proposal as well.

And nine times out of 10, they see it my way.

And sometimes, you know, I've had customers that have come to me with the

most hair brain shit that I've ever heard of.

And I sketch it out and I'm like, you know what, that that is really cool.

That works, you know, Mike Terzic with his carbon fiber 37 Woody.

Oh, yeah.

That's what they cook.

Clay cook.

And had one of your chassis.

Yeah.

He came to me and that was one of the first projects I did as a as a freelancer

when I started doing this full time.

And he's like, I want to build a carbon fiber Woody.

And I didn't know Mike.

He's a character.

And I was just like, dude, I don't know if this this doesn't make any sense.

He's like, I want a stock silhouette.

I just want to replace the the wood with carbon fiber.

And I did a sketch of it.

And I was like, you know what, that's pretty cool.

Like that that could work.

I've had that happen a number of times.

I try to keep an open mind with all the customers.

You really do.

I experience that all the time.

Like if you get set in your way, I mean, I'm not a designer, but I built a

lot of cars and certain things were, you know, a customer has an idea.

And you're like, I don't know.

Like even I'll tell you the wheels on that square body crew cab out there.

You sort of get in a groove where I was just going to put the standard hubcap

wheel we use because I know it looks good.

And the customer, he's actually a good friend of mine.

He's like, bro, we got to put fucking those old school, like American racing

style wheels on their bro.

And I'm like, dude, those wheels suck.

And I'd be sure.

And yeah, we ended up they look.

I think they look bitching.

I mean, I was not for it originally, but as a finished product, it probably

couldn't look better.

Yeah.

So every once in a while, you got to check yourself.

Yeah, absolutely.

Some great ideas.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah.

And some not so much.

You just got gently, gently steer them the right way.

And yeah, like I said, most of the time they see it.

What's harder?

Not enough ideas and input from the customer or too many?

Too many.

100%.

Yeah.

It's most of the time I deal with the shop owner.

So they kind of serve as a filter between the customer and myself, which I am

very grateful for in a lot of cases.

You know, the customers are great, but I've had some that have a, you know, have

a lot of ideas.

They're as bad, you know, as bad as I would be.

I would be the worst customer ever to build one of these cars for, because I

would just want to have my, my fingerprint on everything, which they have the

right to, you know, this, the whole process should be fun for them.

Right.

But yeah, when they have a lot of ideas throwing at you, it can be a challenge

because you just find yourself kind of walking that line, trying to talk them,

talk them into seeing it your way, having conversations with the shop owner

and trying to, you know, yeah, manipulate the direction of things.

But.

Back to, you know, you started talking about warehouse filler work and you, you

have enough side work to kind of maybe make that move.

How.

How'd that conversation go?

So like, you know what I'm done, I'm going to, I'm going to break out into this

and make a go out of it.

I was at Ford at the time on a nine month contract and in the middle of doing a

full scale exterior model for a Lincoln SUV and they wanted me to come back.

They wanted me to renew the contract.

And I just told them, I was like, you know what, I think I'm going to move back

to Cincinnati, which is my hometown where I'm from and design hot rods.

And they thought I was fucking nuts.

You know, they, they were like, good luck.

Yeah.

Good luck.

Dude, nobody leaves Ford, right?

You know, especially to go do that.

Um, and I think now, you know, I've had a couple of the designers.

You know, tell me that they were a little jealous of the projects I get to work on.

And, you know, I've kept in touch with a lot of my friends there.

And, um, it was, it was not a difficult decision for me at the time.

I, I started my career at Mitsubishi, like I mentioned.

And while that's not a glamorous car company, especially for a hot rod guy at

heart, it was the best place for a young designer to work.

There's, there wasn't a lot of designers there.

It was a small company.

At the time they were building a lot of cars, Chrysler owned them.

And I just got to get my hands on everything.

And there was, there was none of the, what I call Mr.

Potato car where one guy does the headlamp design.

One guy does the body side and one guy does the back end of the car.

There was none of that happening.

If you're, if your theme got picked, you were doing that whole exterior.

Oh wow.

Which is pretty cool.

Virtually unheard of for, for OEM studios.

So I was fortunate enough to do a couple of concept cars when I was there for

the Detroit auto show, did a SEMA build and did a whole bunch of advanced

production type work.

Spent a long time in Japan working.

It got to the point after Chrysler sold them.

They didn't have quite as much money.

So they, they started shipping designers instead of shipping models across

the world to Japan.

So, but that was a fantastic experience.

I had to be cool.

It was awesome.

I lived in a hotel room that was probably smaller than this studio.

I could almost touch both, both walls at the same time for about three months at

a time to go over there and do, do models and did a concept car build over there.

That'll keep you in the studio that much longer.

If that's what you get, it's like, let's just work.

They are a work hard play hard.

Let me tell you, we'd be, we'd be there until, you know, eight or nine

o'clock in the studio and then it was off to the, to the bar, you know,

karaoke or whatever and until midnight and then, you know,

back to last train and right back at it in the morning.

So that's a place I always want to visit just because it seems like I can't think

of top of my list.

I think anything else that would be more culture shock because it seems from,

I mean, pictures, it seems wild.

It's, it was incredible.

It was incredible.

So it was the studio was in Nagoya, which is a big town, maybe kind of like,

I don't know, Cincinnati or Cleveland type size town, not Tokyo,

but it was just outside of Toyota city.

So Toyota has an actual Toyota city that is all Toyota offices, factories.

How about that, Henry Ford?

Right.

Yeah.

So Mitsubishi was kind of in the shadow of this giant over there, you know,

but it was, it was awesome on the weekends.

I would travel around, take a train, go, I went one time to, oh, shoot, it was out

near, near, it was in the middle of nowhere.

I forget the name of the city.

Oh, Motegi, twin ring, twin ring Motegi to see a super GT race, like the,

the Japanese touring car race.

Okay.

And it took me like two days to get there on all these different trains.

And this, this place where this racetrack was, was literally the last stop on the

last train, like it was the dead and one train car, just kind of chitty,

chitty bang, bang along the track.

And then I get out and there's a lady like cooking fish, like on a barbecue right

there.

And I took a cab to, to the racetrack and spent a day there.

And it was just, just by myself, it was awesome.

That's cool.

Yeah.

I'd like to go there and find wherever those dudes, there's like Elvis looking

dudes hang out.

Have you seen all that whole culture?

I've seen them online.

And I never, it's like Japanese dudes with huge pompadours, like, and they're

like, they're dancing in the street.

Like James Dean or something.

Crazy shit they do.

There's a lot of similarity.

Even, I mean, the Japanese culture, there's a lot of similarities to like the

40s and 50s American, you know, culture of, you know, you work, you dress a certain

way and you do this.

And then there's, there's very much some similar standards.

Yeah.

It's on top of my list.

Yeah.

You mentioned Henry Ford though.

He did some pretty wild shit.

There's a couple.

He had a forest right in the Amazon.

Didn't he at one point?

He did have some of that.

The, because they were manufactured.

Yeah.

But the shit he did in, in Detroit with his, some of his houses and, and hidden

houses and the hidden tunnels and like secret boat houses that you come and go.

And then there's tunnels under the water that would like go from the factory, like

into a garage and stuff.

I didn't know that.

Yeah.

He was like running some different, you know, women.

And things and stuff in and out.

Okay.

Even like some like for long term, like families and stuff.

They're crazy shit.

The amount of money spent into, uh, yeah, doing some of the things that was some

passageways and interesting.

Yeah.

Cool.

That'd be pretty cool to find somebody that's got some insider info on that.

I mean, there's some, I've read some books and stuff in its while.

But I'd imagine during Henry Ford's, uh, rain, they're probably not a big fan of

the Japanese timeline.

Yeah.

There was a lot of people.

He was not a big fan of.

Yeah.

That's what I have heard.

Sorry.

The quotes still look cool.

I see you the like, the ask you customers what they want.

They'd say faster horses.

Yeah.

And he, hell yeah.

And he Henry, which is really funny because now that was another shot going to

Ford after Mitsubishi, they did so many clinics on design models at Ford.

Really?

They would show models to a focus group and get their opinion on it.

I kept thinking about that quote.

Yeah.

Like Henry Ford would not want to show these people this or give them a choice.

You know, it was.

Yeah.

Different time.

Highway or the highway.

Yeah.

But I mean, anybody that's, that's going to be that, um, that driven and have a

mind to work that way to do those types of things.

You're bound to have some, uh, fire out their opinions, whether you agree with them

or not, that's just part of the, like we always say, there's no, there's no, no

free ride.

There's no, you got to give up something.

You can't be, can't be a great person, super talented and good looking.

Yeah.

Uh, there's going to be.

It's hard.

You're going to have.

You're going to have some skeletons in the closet somewhere.

That's just, it's just haven't come out yet.

It's just the way it is.

Yeah.

There's no, we've all seen that picture at Elon and his bathing suit, right?

I mean, he does a lot of bad ass stuff, but yeah.

Yeah.

We don't win at everything.

He's also, he's an alien, so he's going to look a little different in a

pain suit.

Well, you're at being at Ford.

Do they embrace that heritage?

I mean, is there any sense of that working within orders?

It just so at the time, at the time that I was there, it felt a little

disconnected.

Um, I thought it was really cool because the studios and the courtyard where

they show the models had not changed.

They've, they've since remodeled it all and it's all different, but I've seen

photos of clay models for 65 Mustang fastback in the same courtyard.

That's cool.

I was looking at a model and, and, uh,

remember Greg Metros was talking a little bit about that.

He's coming back on and we're doing round two or whatever in a couple of weeks.

So we'll have to ask about some, uh, some of the, this is secret, secret

hidden Ford stories where the, where the bodies are buried.

But yeah, it was like walking on hallowed ground there.

I really enjoyed it.

A lot of the designers were, you know, they were ready for something new.

It wasn't a particularly creative environment, old brick walls and, you

know, but I thought it was awesome.

Yeah.

Just because of that.

Yeah.

That's a tough, gotta be a tough job to your point.

You're talking about like you're designing these things and where do they

go and who appreciates them?

And you think, think that it's like a, like a kid working their

ass off on their science fair project and then it, like it just never goes to

the science fair, right?

Nobody sees it.

Nobody, there's a, there's probably a certain, you probably don't do this for

living for that, for the praise, but you know, human nature, you sort of want to

be like, Hey man, that's right.

Pretty damn cool.

Yeah.

Exactly.

And it's, you know, when I started at the, at the companies, it was about

doing a cool rendering.

You know, that, that was the goal.

And I always looked at, you know, looked to some of the older designers and got,

got demos and, you know, worked my ass off to develop that technique to make

good imagery.

And then it was to do a scale model, to get your design picked to move on to,

to a scale model, because it's always a competition.

Everybody does their theme and you'll get it picked or not.

And then it was to do a full scale model.

And then it was to do a concept car and then a production car.

And it's just always kind of at the end of the day, we're making cars.

You know, we're not here to make models.

We're here to make cars for, for that people will drive.

And that's what I love so much now about doing the hot rod work is that, you

know, every, every project I work on, almost every, turns into a real car that

runs and drives and makes an owner happy, hopefully.

And it's, it's really satisfying that way.

I mean, yeah, most of the time they're not blank sheets of paper.

You're doing kind of a facelift to one level or another because it's based

off of an existing vehicle.

But at the end of the day, like I said, we're making cars.

And that's what is the most satisfying to me now.

For sure.

Yeah.

You see that much more now.

You know, obviously you see it.

Most of the stuff getting rendered nowadays, the higher percentage of it's

getting built, if you go back to like the mid 2000s, I feel like it was like

everybody was so quick to render something.

I mean, it was like people were like render racing on in the forums and stuff.

It was like, check out the new Camaro, check out this and nothing ever got

before you even bought a part.

You got to get a render done in insert.

But it's interesting you don't have to, you know, the different, the different

types of people of, especially on the creative side of things and not getting

to see the thing get created, right?

And there's, after doing this podcast for so long, we've talked to so

many different types of people and designers and makers and creators and

business people and all walks of life.

It is interesting here in that that everybody's like it's just scratched

a different way, right?

So a lot of them, the design side of things, you have gone through those.

We've had designers on here and the art and the thing that they want to do is

what they're getting to do, right?

Whether that creation gets built or not, they're being satisfied with coming up

with the ideas, putting pen to paper or honing their skills on getting to clay

and then do a Dinoch rap and getting to see that.

And then it's on to the next thing and they got so many ideas like they're

being fulfilled by being able to get paid to design cars.

Whether or not those cars get built or not.

And there's other people on the creator side of things.

It's like, no, I just got to see it get built.

I'm, you know, think you're probably the same way.

Like there's ideas and I enjoyed the process.

But if as much fun as the process is, if the thing doesn't get created, whatever

it is, like the thing doesn't happen.

Like that's a, it's like a sneeze that you didn't sneeze, right?

It's like, it's got to, it's got to come out.

Like I've got to see it and then it's interesting on to the next thing.

But everybody's, everybody's kind of built a little differently and, and

they're say, they're appetite satiated in a different way.

Exactly.

I've, I've always been a little bit more of a gear head that can draw versus

an artist, you know, a lot of designers in their spare time, they might do

an oil painting or, you know, have some other type of creative outlet.

I never do any of that.

You know, I'd, if I have spare time, which I don't right now with young

twins at home, but I would go in the garage and work on my car.

Right.

And it was just, you know, that was my avenue to be around cars and create cars.

I had just enough skill that I could draw them and had an eye for it.

So that's probably why it bothered me that they never actually got to be cars

or so rarely got to be cars.

Whereas for a lot of folks, like you say, just creating the, the art and the

creation is enough for them.

Yeah.

Every, I mean.

Not to go down too far than rep, but like I've said before, all, all of life

is transactionary.

Every, nobody does anything because they just want to do it out of the kindness

of their heart.

It's all transactionary, right?

It's a, it's a dopamine rush.

It's a transaction.

It's a, it's a psychological thing.

You're going to donate money to a, to a charity.

You get it.

You feel good and dopamine rush.

Let's be honest, it's a tax right off.

And it's a tax right off, right?

It's everything, everything in life is transactionary.

You're doing something for the feeling or this in exchange or whatever it is.

Job is no different.

Right.

Whatever that, whatever the transaction that you're getting, right?

You're going to go to a certain point and do a certain thing unless you're not

getting that transaction anymore.

And you're going to go off to another thing, right?

And every, some people could just draw all day long.

Some people could, you know, would have to see it created.

Some people have to do everything.

It's all, you know, across the board.

Some people just love being in the business and working their way up to

executive and like, this is great.

I've made a great life.

My transaction and my dopamine rush comes from what I do on Saturdays and

Sundays, right?

I take this money and I trade it in for this next thing, right?

That makes me feel good.

Everybody's, everybody's different, but I, I, my hangup has always been, we've

had the same discussion with a bunch of different designers.

My hangup has been like, yes, but if you know that that idea is cool and

everybody said it's awesome and then when it gets built and you see it on the

showroom floor and it's not what you designed, how that would be my, that

would be my last day.

Like I, I wouldn't be able to, but I, but again, I'm from a creation standpoint,

like that's where you know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

Wouldn't you, you'd be the same way.

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Yeah, probably if like you're like, this is, this is the way this is awesome.

Everybody's in and then it gets cut and cut.

Like, well, we can't really do the hood like that.

And you know, this needs to be this and then a little vanilla.

It'd be tough.

It would be.

Unfortunately, that's a lot of hot rod builds go that way because it's budgets and such.

Yeah.

Well, we're still building cars.

Yeah.

Like you're getting, when you're doing a design with a customer, right?

And you're starting, you're having that first conversation.

You're trying to get the background on what they're doing.

You know, most of the time it's, I'm sure it's repeat customers and you have your

own design language and, you know, short,

little short hand that you're talking back and forth.

You know little bit of this that along the bill along the design phase

with newer customers.

How much of functionality is coming into play if they're saying like no, like lower,

like wheels bigger or like do this when you're kind of like I get what you're trying.

You're trying to see a cool picture and it would look better that way.

Maybe.

But it won't work.

Yeah.

Or it is like that's.

That's for the builder to figure out, not my problem.

It does look cool that way.

Yeah, a little bit more of that.

Maybe if I'm being honest, I'll steer them towards the builder.

And like I said, it's typically the builder that is my client,

and we're building it, working together for the customer.

But I try to make sure all of my work is grounded in reality.

I'll cheat the wheels an inch or two

and make it a little bit lower.

But I understand that it has to be a driving car

at the end of the day.

So if I see that they're going that way and need to be checked,

I'll bring it up or I'll refer them to the builder

and be like, hey, I'm sure they can make it sit this low,

but you just completely change the budget of your build

because now new interfinders have to be made

or floors got to be cut out.

And you have to make all these concessions for it

to sit that low.

So yeah, I'll usually refer them to the builder.

I mean, when we had Sean Smith on not too long ago,

we talked a little bit about because there's

a time for selling the excitement

and making sure that, holy shit, this gets the juices flowing,

this gets the customer excited, and it gets the money flowing.

Like we're building this thing.

And then there's time for the blueprint.

Then there's time for, all right, well, specifically,

how does this interact with that?

And it's like fashion.

You go fashion show stuff, whatever.

It's like concept cars are pushing the envelope.

It's not to say that this car will be built this way.

It's to.

Yeah.

Well, you sure as hell don't want to be safe.

Yeah.

But I'd say when you look at a designer in my eyes,

somebody that you want to work with,

it's almost like working with an architect.

If that dude designs, so you spend a lot of money there,

if you design something that simply can't be built,

like what the hell was awesome, dude?

It looks fucking super cool.

But if I can't build it, what the hell's the point?

And being that it sounds like you're a gear head,

you've built a lot of stuff, you can fabricate,

you can create things.

That's probably super helpful.

I mean, that's the type of guy I want to be working with.

If we're in engineering, you just met Mike O'Brien.

Mike can build it.

He can physically build it.

So he knows how to design it so it can be built.

Probably pretty helpful.

Yeah.

Your start, your steer in the ship.

It all starts with you.

So you've got to start to get them off on the right foot.

It's a fortunate place to be.

It's a real blessing because the designer's role

is usually one of the first steps in the process.

So everybody's still excited.

Everybody still has money to spend.

The budget's still wide open.

Whereas I always kind of feel for the upholstery guys

that come at the end.

The paint body and upholstery guys are.

Yes, where it's coming down to the wire,

they always go over budget, and those poor guys kind of

have to, they're the bucket at the bottom that a lot of stuff

funnels into sometimes.

It's a good place to be for sure.

And I always try to keep in mind that the sketches,

the renderings, it's not to say it's meaningless,

but we're building a car.

Like that is just one step on the way to building a car.

So I never get hung up on anything.

We can always make any changes.

I'm always open to it.

I think a lot of creative people kind of get

locked in on their particular answer or their way.

And it happens to me, but I try to keep in mind

that we are trying to build a car together here

and whatever it takes to get to that car in the end.

So if things have to be raised, or if the supercharger,

if I wanted a nice flat hood and that's not gonna work

with the supercharger package, you will work around that.

I just need to make smaller superchargers.

That's the biggest problem.

Smaller superchargers that make more power.

Yeah.

Super easy.

I don't know why you guys keep making them bigger.

Because everything has to have a thousand horsepower, right?

Yeah.

Just go back to nitrous.

Just fucking screw a little nozzle in there

as much horsepower as you want.

Be way easier on our chassis engineers.

The motors keep getting taller.

I know.

Or you deal with like the Mopars.

Well, that's what we walk through that

because that comes up a lot with our customers

because we build chassis and everybody wants it as low

as you can get it.

You want the most power you can get

and it sort of stacks up.

It's the two worst combos too

because the modern Mopar motors

and superchargers are the tallest

of any of the big three manufacturers.

And then the 60s and 70s Mopars that you're putting them

have the smallest belt line that there is.

Like it's the worst possible scenario.

And you've dealt with it now on the rings to the Cuda

and they get the charger, which are both cars

that you rendered.

How much, how did you handle that?

How much did you struggle with it?

And how did you just tackle that being that it's

it's sort of fixed based on our chassis and that ride height.

Where the top of that supercharger is.

Are you like, fuck these chassis guys.

Like, God, how am I gonna make this work?

Motories to go down some more.

Well, that's the first question.

Can we do a dry sump?

And then the answer is no.

And I say, okay, that's what I figured.

Now I'll figure out a hood.

And there's always tricks.

You know, that's, I learned a lot working

within the engineering package on new cars.

Everything I worked on was a front wheel drive shit box,

you know, a CUV of some type.

So there's visual tricks that you can,

you can employ to kind of disguise

the ugly areas of the car.

So for example, if there, if there was a big, big hood

offset that we had to deal with to clear this supercharger,

you can kind of do a layer cake type approach

where there's a couple, like a step on top of a step

to kind of disguise the added height, sneak it up on it.

So we're gonna come up a little here.

And then once we get down there,

we're gonna come up a little more.

Exactly, exactly.

If it's a muscle car where graphics are appropriate for it,

that's another thing, you know,

you can play with a darker color,

tends to recede a little bit.

So there's always tricks that you can do.

Oh, you just paint it bright pink

and then everybody's looking at the paint

and they're paying attention.

Exactly.

Another trick.

Yeah, those were bitchin' cars.

I mean, I love both those cars.

You did a hell of a job with them.

I know that's a challenge

when you deal with that hood height.

The Cuda wasn't as bad for some reason that the charger was a,

I mean, it was like we needed like an additional four

or five inches on the hood,

which is totally common with that Hellcat motor.

You got any recommendations for me then,

or you think maybe like do like step up,

do with some sort of a graphic?

Tell you what.

Do some graphics on the pants.

You think so, a little more.

Yeah.

Step up on the soles a couple of times.

You do platforms, yeah.

You don't want to do it all in one place.

You need to spread it out.

Got it.

Okay.

Now with all those renderings,

I mean, we've worked with you, you know, with the Ennio.

And you certainly, you take a much different approach

than a lot of guys do.

You're not simply drawing a picture.

You've designed that car, I mean,

almost 100% in solid works, right?

What type of program are you using?

Alias is the name of the software.

Got it.

Where do you start with that?

Is every car done that way?

How do you approach that?

Not every car that I do.

If it's appropriate for the build, yes.

I think getting into the CAD modeling,

it just enables you to do a level of planning

that you can't otherwise.

Whether the parts are gonna be made out of CAD,

or carbon, or old school metal fab,

that kind of doesn't matter.

If the build is going to that high level,

if it's a million dollar plus build,

it just helps you plan things out more in advance.

Like, so for example, on Ennio,

Adam, your engineer was able to give me the wheel package

for the front of that truck.

So those front tires, we've settled on a wheel

and tire size offset and everything.

So he gave me kind of this sphere shape,

which was the tire in every conceivable position.

And you can tuck everything up.

Exactly, so full droop, full compression,

left, right to the lock,

kind of creates a ball that you have to work around.

Now it was right after the fact, right?

We gave you the right chip.

I'm just making sure nothing hit.

That one didn't have any fenders.

Yeah, that one was a little easier

because it didn't have fenders.

But did the same thing on the Aston.

And that had a more modern kind of wheel to body relationship

where the wheels weren't tucked

and you're trying to get that fender gap as close as possible.

So we were able to kind of work around that sphere.

And that's just one example of the amount of planning

that you can do with CAD like that.

It's not always right for every build,

but like I said, there's higher end ones

where the investment is there

and you're making a lot of body modifications.

It helps a lot.

Now the Aston would probably be a better example

because when I look at the Aston,

that's definitely more of a,

I mean, it's a very sexy car.

The lines are beautiful

and you know, it's more just in your face, bad ass.

Like I could see how you can get away with

designing that exclusively behind the computer screen

on the Aston.

Was that a challenge at all to get to make sure,

like when you're just looking at it right in front of you

in 3D versus what that perspective and proportions is.

How that comes out, you know,

when you're looking at it in real life.

Is that a challenge at all?

Are you confident in tackling it that way?

Uh, I tackle it.

I'm not 100% confident that I'm gonna roll the dice.

Because there is scaling issues always

coming from computer to reality.

An ideal way to do it would be to mill out

a full-size model kind of evaluation.

Is there nothing in VR that you can do now with?

There is.

And that helps.

Is it pretty close?

I think it is.

I haven't used it a lot to tell you the truth.

But I've heard good things about it.

I know a lot of the studios use it now.

And I think that does get you a little closer.

And you can actually like walk around it.

Yeah, I mean, everybody's got that,

that first, you know, side, get the front three quarter,

then you kneel down, you know, squat.

If you can do that in, you know, VR with your render,

I would,

Absolutely.

Obviously milling out a buck would be, you know,

that's obviously the fastest way to do it.

But we're not always, you know.

Yeah.

Although the budget is there on some of these builds,

a clay model wouldn't be totally out of the question

for some of them.

But most of the time I'm aware of the things

that will have scaling issues.

And I'll even print out like a full-size mockup,

just to double check myself and catch myself

with a lot of those.

But there's always things that you miss on the Aston.

As soon as I saw it in the flesh,

there was a couple of body side sections

that weren't quite, you know,

crowned like I would do minor stuff.

Cause I've done it quite a bit at this point,

I kind of know, you know, what's coming.

Are you seeing it all during the fab side of things

or did you see it finished first?

That was the first time I saw it when it was finished.

I see photos of course, but yeah, they had it in the,

so that car debuted at the quail during the Monterey car week.

And the first time I laid eyes on the finished car

was in the garage at the house that we were staying at

in California there.

So, and it was like a emotional moment for me.

That one was a real...

Meetin' your twins for the first time.

That was a special, special car.

It's gotta be such a cool feeling, envious honestly,

because we've talked about that so many times

because at the end of a build,

when you've been living with it for so long,

like I love my wife.

There's been some long weekends where it's like,

I'm done with seeing you, right?

And that's the same way.

I mean, everybody, it's trying to be funny,

but you know what I'm talking about.

It sounded pretty serious to me.

Everybody that's lived with a build,

because these cars kick your ass, right?

They kick you in the nuts every day

and you come back for more.

They fight,

especially with a car of that level.

The tension and the stress and that big of a stage,

Jim and Mike aren't seeing it with your eyes, right?

They're like things in one fucking piece.

It's shiny.

It's gonna wipe down.

It's probably gonna make...

That's their bar, right?

But to see it, like the customer sees it,

and to see it with fresh eyes and like, holy shit.

Very envious of that, right?

Because there's been times, we've joked about it,

that you've built a vehicle and years go by

and in happenstance you either see it at a show

or something like that and it's coming at you

and you're like, holy shit, look at that.

And then it instantly dawns on you, like,

oh, fuck, we built that.

And then you finally get it.

You're like, oh man, that's cool.

I actually got to like the thing.

Not that you don't like them, but...

Sure, yeah.

Do you think that's that sense of accomplishment

that you missed at the OEs?

Does that car sum it up in that scenario?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, that car was to the level, I think,

of a concept car.

Yeah.

And you're right, that is exactly the feeling I have

when I see those cars.

Every time, it never goes away, even though I've been...

You suck.

Yes.

Even though I've been staring at them on my computer for,

you know, I was looking at the Octavia,

the Aston Martin for two years.

The build process was about a year, a little bit more,

but I had started my end of it a good year ahead.

So I had been staring at that car,

helping to create that car, but then seeing it in the flesh

was like the first time I'd seen the thing.

And it's always that feeling.

It's fantastic.

It's...

And I'd...

At one point, during a photo shoot or something,

Nancy asked me to drive it.

And I said, first of all, there's no way.

I'll help you.

I'll dust it off.

I'll help you load it in the trailer,

but I was like, I cannot drive that car.

I don't want to be responsible.

But really, it was I get so much more of a sense

of accomplishment of seeing it drive.

That's kind of the first time you really see a car

is when it's driving from a distance.

Of course.

And for me, that's the best part of the process.

So to tag along for a photo shoot or anything like that,

that's my...

It's my favorite thing to do.

I'll get up at four in the morning every time

to go to one of those photo shoots.

That's awesome.

That car, you know, I've said it before,

but that is an absolute game changer.

You talk about that, like this industry evolving

to almost making concept cars.

And that truly is like that.

That is a full blown concept car.

I don't think there's been anything done

to that level or executed so well.

And that look, I mean, guys have put a ton of labor hours

and stuff before and spent a lot of money,

but the finished product, I don't think it's ever been

that beautiful.

And it's just, it's awesome to see.

Because we've all, I mean, we've all had these fucking

interviews for the past 20 years of like, you know,

when you win a good guys award or something earlier,

they're asking you about the car and we're all like,

yeah, you know, we, you know,

wanted it to look like a concept car.

Well, now we're like, you feel stupid saying that, you know?

You're like, you know, we made a few billet switches.

You know, we're like, yeah,

and I stole them off a fucking GT.

Not a concept car.

Or a GT anyway, right?

That's a real, like, that's a fun concept car.

It's, that's awesome.

You, the rings, you guys fucking killed it.

Yeah, that's, that was the best compliment that we could hear.

We heard it a number of times at the quail.

And I appreciate you saying that.

That's, that was the goal all along is to make something

that looked like Aston would have made it.

Yeah.

And even driving it, I mean, I was forced to drive it,

which I, you know, I didn't really say no to.

And driving that car too, it's like, it's not a hot rod.

Really?

These car, these hot rods, as much as you try to perfect them,

there's always little things, you know,

that make you realize there's some,

there's some old car aspect about it that you left untouched.

I mean, that car, it's, there's nothing left.

It's just, it's about, it's about as good as it gets.

Yeah.

Besides the Ben Gaysmell, I mean,

it's just like a modern car.

Yeah.

But you know what I mean?

That's just, that's just, right.

It's just the drivers.

Yeah.

The speaking on the concept car stuff.

So 15 years ago, you mentioned, you know,

getting into the pro touring stuff is kind of when you,

you know, made the jump to get in.

So follow along with me.

This is, you're going to understand this, right?

So.

If we got to follow along, if you're saying this.

It's not going to take that long.

Except if you have limited attention span, you know this.

I know.

So.

Just try hard.

Try real hard.

If I, when I lose eye contact, that's when I'm.

You're already losing contact now.

Well, there's a lot of technology and a lot of

advancements in skill and the ability to do a lot of things

in the last 15 years.

I think the biggest has been in the interior, right?

So 15 years ago, whether you were doing it the best way,

the right way, there was ways to get around a visual thing,

right?

With either a painted surface, a carbon surface, you know,

or a plated surface, you know, a flush fitting glass,

wide body, like you're seeing mostly paint.

You, there's CNC, there was machining.

There was even 3D printing on some stuff, you know,

albeit new, you could create the exterior really,

really damn close, if not exactly to the interpretation

of, to the rendering and nail modern super car concept car

level quality.

The problem was the interior, that technology and ability

and at least our ability to access that type of look

and quality, albeit some great interiors that were done,

you could not get, I mean, if anybody's been in this long

enough, you remember the massive leap in going from a flat

door card to getting some dimension and what that took

for the industry and the trimmers and the, you know,

interior shops to take it that way, right?

And then be able to take it where it was an actual,

not a 150 pound, you know, door panel or something

like that where-

Because you could do it, it just needed like a hinge pin

upgrade.

Right.

And I'm not, this is not to talk shit.

I know what you're getting.

That's the thing that was lacking.

Like you could have the suspension.

You could have the brakes and you could have plating

and PVD and crazy glass and you could have carbon

and you could have paint and body.

You could have the best guys out there and that thing

would be slick and you could tuck everything.

You could create the stuff that like, but to get an interior

to way that would level that, you know, that would be at the

level of a super car or even just to match the renderings,

let alone trying to get to concept car level.

That had to be difficult on your side of things.

I would assume because being in this long enough

and knowing what we went through, I'd say we is the industry.

Trying to get there.

That was the one thing when you'd see a rendering of a car

and then you'd see the interior and you'd see the rendering,

I mean, you'd see the rendering outside,

you're like, oh, fuck, the outside looks,

and it's like, I see, they did what they could.

Right.

I think there's a couple of things that explain this.

One is with these cars, we're all modifying

existing car.

Well, most of the time on some of the more high end ones,

you completely scrap the interior

and you're starting from scratch.

You're not doing that on the exterior.

You're adding rocker treatment or chin spoiler or hood,

but you're basing it off of an exterior

that's established that you're not,

typically not radically changing.

Then, oh shit, we got to put an interior in this car

and you just have a void, a big metal void

with a transmission tunnel to work around.

A big one.

Exactly.

They're gonna need light.

Yeah.

So the level of execution just hasn't been there.

Either early on, it was some big swoopy center console

that didn't match, kind of left over

from the street rod era of things.

And now I think, if I'm being honest,

that the technology is there

and the craftsmanship is incredible,

but a lot of interiors I see look overly CAD built,

look a little stiff.

The materials are beautiful, everything.

I'm not knocking anything,

but if I'm being honest, you can tell a computer did it.

So that's, I think of the challenge that we have now.

It's swung almost the other direction.

I really wish people with particularly 50s and 60s cars

would leave the interiors alone

a little bit more where they can.

Some of these cars have gorgeous dashes.

And IPs in them.

Yeah.

You know, it's a matter of.

Well, what's a shame is the talent

of some of those interior shops and tremors,

you know, 15 to 20 years ago

in their ability to stitch and foam and carve a seat

in the things that they were so good at.

And then the thing of not being able to catch up

because of access to 3D printing or CAD

to get the door card, the door panels

and integration with the dash and stuff like that.

If those two technologies would have been combined

at that point in time,

you had some really great interiors.

The problem is, as to your point,

is as the technology has advanced

and so many great interior shops have pushed the envelope

and continue to get better and better and better.

The thing that is lost is that artist in craft of the foam.

Yeah.

Crafting and knowing how to,

I mean, there's some great interior shops out there

that because of technology,

they don't know how or they don't have to even stitch or so.

Right.

And that's difficult when it comes to a seat.

And a seat, I don't know if you've driven any cars before.

You sit in it.

All the, the whole time you're driving,

that is your interaction with that vehicle build.

Yeah.

I think I'm gonna start doing this podcast.

It's just like, you know.

It's just like,

it's being more like most of the fucking seats.

Yeah.

Sit on it instead of in it.

Yeah.

Motherfucker.

Yeah.

Let's focus on sitting in it.

It's a double-edged sword because everything,

everybody focused on that of like,

let's create, let's be able to do everybody,

everybody that's been in this industry

for the last 10, 15, 20 years, right?

We've all had the same exact conversations

because we were about to give that speech.

Have we tried to build like a concept car, right?

And we're trying to replicate that one silver.

I just feel stupid about that comment.

We were all trying to do what we're,

well, you try, you know, you try to replicate

that one silver, you know,

anthracite style finish that the OEs were doing, you know?

And you finally got that down.

You're trying to do this stuff.

The thing that you couldn't get is like,

you knew what the interior needed to look like

and you knew you had the rendering.

You're like, no, like a little bit of this on,

like why can't we build the door panels like that?

You guys are the interior shop built it.

From the designer standpoint,

like I think you did the Johnson's 32, right?

Yeah, the pink one.

And that's a car, like just look at the interior.

I mean, it's fucking perfect.

It's just super crisp, tight.

There's nothing over the top there.

It's just well executed.

I mean, that's, I'm assuming that you sketched it up, right?

Yeah.

And you could have gone, I mean,

those things could have been 3D printed.

You could have had all sorts of shape.

You could have done whatever you wanted, but you drew it.

You designed it the way it should.

It was executed.

That car, yeah.

Yeah.

You know, the way it.

A lot of it was just how good Alan is.

You know, it's that car.

That car is so cool.

That's the grease monkey princess car.

Yeah, yeah, Mackenzie.

So there, Eric Mackenzie's dad is a friend of mine.

He's there out of Cincinnati also.

He's like a lot of beers together.

Oh, yeah.

And he came to me with the idea for that car

and wanted me to do a rendering to show Alan

before he had presented Alan with it.

Oh, because he was trying to talk him into that pink.

Exactly.

That's a perfect example of the wacky customer request that,

at first, I was like, dude, you want to put black flames?

Like, what is this, 1994 here?

Like, we can't do this.

And then as soon as I did the rendering, I did it pink first.

And I was like, yeah, it's cool.

And I put the flames on it and I loved it.

Like, it was he was 100% right.

And Alan had the same reaction.

Like, when he saw it, he's like, I'm on board.

Let's put it on.

I went deep into this thing earlier.

When I looked at it, I thought the same thing.

Because you look inside, you're not expecting that.

Because just to your point, like, the first thing that

comes to mind is like that could have, that's like an 80s,

that you could have totally massacred that.

But somehow it works.

Yeah.

It just does.

He spent a lot of, Alan spent a lot of time

getting the right shade of pink and doing a lot of spray

outs that was part of it.

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Super overwhelmed with like the correct pigment

or the color when you're at a show or something like that.

Things don't, that generally doesn't become a thing.

And especially doesn't come a thing with pink.

It's just not a, you like some of the brighter, crazier colors

or something like that.

I just pink ain't for me, right?

At Columbus, when I saw that the first time I saw it outside,

like I kept coming back just to get close and look at the color.

It's amazing.

It is an amazing color.

And now like there will be something

that I'll have to have painted in that color.

Obviously not a car, but there'll be, it's just such a,

it's such a good color to look at.

But what's weird is for being bright pink,

there's something tough about the car.

It's super hardcore.

That's why we didn't put hubcaps on it.

I think that was a maybe a controversy at Grand National

Roadster show that it looked unfinished

because it didn't have any hubcaps on it.

But that was 100% intentional.

That sounds something too, but like Bobby Allaway would say.

I rendered something dumb.

I don't know where it came from.

That's gonna go over good.

I rendered the car both ways.

I did it with white walls and that, you know, that was too much.

And as soon as we did the black steelies with no caps

and the black wall tires, it needed the aggressive,

the toughness to offset that color.

So it gives you that vibe of, you know,

that like 70s front engine dragster,

even though I can't put in my mind a pink dragster ever.

But it gives you that like the bright crazy,

but still tough and hardcore.

Exactly.

Yeah, every that was kind of the default.

Any time a decision came up in the build of that car,

I would default to bad ass, maximum bad ass to offset the pink.

So it fits her perfect, too.

Yeah, she's maximum bad.

She was ready to throw hands at the party that time

when she wasn't allowed in.

I miss it.

I heard about it.

She's ready to take on like three big bouncers.

I think she would have won because she was ready to go down.

Yeah.

You said you're a big six.

Like you like 60s hot rods.

Yeah.

Are you a Tony Nancy fan?

You were following his stuff like from front engine dragsters.

I've seen the dragsters and the upholstery work they did.

Yeah.

And everything.

Again, it looks like that car with that sort of like crisp ass.

Just it's simple.

So simple, but there was something about it

that was just well executed goods to see.

The Seahorse, right?

Yeah.

And it had the diamond tub.

The upholstery in it.

That was probably to be honest, that was really all I designed

on the interior was just, you know,

I knew Alan would do a fantastic job with everything.

And it was a traditional 32, you know, traditional 32 Ford

Roadster.

But the diamond tuck kind of going into police.

That was taken from a Bugatti.

They do that on some of their models.

And I thought it would be really cool for this.

And Mackenzie loved it.

So great.

It was a great car.

Yeah.

Do you when looking at that with the hot do all the designers

share the shifter design because Chris Gray, every shifter he

does is just a gentle arc.

Oh, really?

Eric Brockmire, every shifter he's ever drawn has always been

this.

I think that's in the toolbox of all the things.

It's whatever.

It's just drag it.

Just drag it all over the shift.

There's a button in Photoshop that only we are privy to.

Only the pros.

Yeah.

It's also funny too on because I know it's done

because it works and it's the best.

But there's certain vantage points or view points.

You know, driver side front three quarter, right?

The same front three quarter from the from the interior.

Like there's there's there's standard vantage points that

most everybody uses.

And I've always said like all somebody has to do is just throw

one from the passenger side.

Like you would stand out as an artist because you would be

doing it from a different direction.

Yeah, there's on interiors every now and then I will flip sides.

It kind of depends on whether the steering wheel covers the

cluster portion or not.

And what we're trying to show in the design on the exterior.

It's it's interesting that you mentioned that.

So I always do.

I always show the driver side of the car, especially if it's a

profile view or a front three quarter.

Most everybody does.

Because most people are right handed.

OK, so when you're sketching the cars, you're pulling from

the front to the to the back.

Yeah, I've I've worked with some guys that are left handed

before and they're drawing the passenger side and I can't even

look at the profile.

Like it screws me up so bad.

Yeah, so it's like profile this way.

You're going from small to big.

Yeah, when you when you sketch it out, you start from the front

of the car and the line typically will flow towards the rear of

the car. So because I'm right handed and most people are,

that's that makes a lot of sense.

Interior is a different thing, but on the exterior.

The yeah, I can look at the stuff all day, dude.

This is there's so much cool shit on here.

So much cool shit.

Thank you.

You've seen the different versions of that and, you know,

is it's kind of neat having been sort of a part of it.

It's cool to see how it evolved.

Yeah, it's and, you know, I.

I kind of I pride myself with surrounding me with people who

are better than me.

So I am not a CAD modeler.

I did not build those CAD models.

I worked back and forth with with Kevin, a guy who's super

talented on those and work with some different people that I

have contact with at the OEs here.

So that, you know, alias modeling, particularly when it comes to

to bodies, interiors, that's a career in and of its own.

Yeah.

So that's I leave that to the pros, but we worked real closely

back and forth, trying to get everything right.

Yeah.

When before we get into in you, because it can be a conversation

of its in and of itself, the you were hopping back.

You made the jump, right?

You're going to leave forward.

You're going to do this full time.

What was the biggest you had some jobs, right?

You had some stuff.

What was the first big like?

Oh, see, I should have done this a long time ago.

Now I can pay the bills.

This is going to be a big one.

Probably the Woody for Mike, the carbon fiber Woody for Mike

Terzic.

How did he find you?

You know, I'm not sure.

OK, how he found me.

Because you didn't know him?

No, no, I didn't.

I didn't know Mike or Denny.

Did you know who Clay Cook was at that point?

Yeah. OK. Yeah.

Because he was so close to Cincinnati.

And I think my dad had bought some

Pull Max dies from him or something.

So everybody knew everybody bought Pull Max.

But at that point, so when I was at Mitsubishi,

they closed that studio.

That was in like 2008 when that financial crisis hit

and kind of pulled the rug out from under us

and closed that studio.

And it was during that time I was searching for other jobs

but needed money.

So I started doing the hot rod stuff.

And that's really when I picked up Mike as a client, I think.

And we just were at the beginning phases of that Woody.

And then I got the gig at Ford, went and did that

and was still doing the hot rod stuff on the side.

But that was really that Woody turned

into a pretty involved project.

So that was the first one where it was doing some CAD modeling

on it and really designing it, not just.

That was a long term build too.

The thing was like five or six years, whatever.

Yeah.

It was.

I'm not sure that's what Mike Teresic had in mind.

But that's just what happened.

No.

I mean, it's.

There are some ups and downs with that when I recall.

And I love Clay.

Clay was a good friend of mine.

That's one regret I'll have is we

were never never able to have clay on the podcast.

Yeah, super talented guy.

Great stories and great.

Oh, yeah.

Just yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, he would have been a good one to have some chats with.

That's a huge loss to the entire industry, the wealth

of knowledge and experience that he was.

Yeah.

And I kind of feel like he was just getting started.

That was the first real turnkey hot rod that he put so much work

into getting the shop kind of where it needed to be

and putting everything into place.

Like you're right.

It was just like about to get.

But at the same time, again, love Clay,

his own worst enemy of how talented he was.

Because, you know, even going up to the shopper,

he was on our trailer there for a long time when he was doing

he was launching the product, the Seacook design stuff

and the valve covers and a lot of the things.

You know, we every show he was there, you know,

he was, you know, co-opping out of the booth and doing stuff.

Me and him would talk for hours and then do dinner and stuff.

And, you know, you go to a show, he's like,

hey, I'm setting up this thing and I've got, you know,

the power hammers and I've got this, you know, so, you know,

I'll be ready to start rock and roll into.

Three weeks later, you see him in another show and you're like,

hey, what's going on?

I didn't like the way, you know, the platform was doing.

So like I machined these pieces of wood and then do these

stringers and he's showing pictures and it's like.

Super fucking talented.

That's awesome.

You also need to get to work.

Like that's the, that's the craziest, craziest, most elaborate

foot control that I've ever seen for, you know, that Yoder.

But how about getting to work?

Perfection is the enemy of completion or whatever it is.

It's I catch myself in that trap sometimes too.

I think it's a common thing for people in our industry.

It's the level of everything has been driven up to such a high.

Yeah, when you're a standard that talented, that able and that

much of a tinker and that much of a like.

Literally, he told me like there's stories coming into the

coming into the shop one morning and like going to work and then

like the door handle or the hinges or something.

And then he spent the next like three days like remachine in the door.

Hey, he was a sort of a freak of nature.

Right. He's he had something going on in his head that nobody else had.

Like he was just going to build this engine block from scratch.

And he would do it. I mean, he had it.

He was I spent a lot of time at his shop.

You know, he sort of he taught me a hell of a lot and like just the things

he would dig up and show it like, oh, check out this old tool here.

And like pull this thing. You're like, how the fuck did you create that?

It was all like one of them was to stamp like the recess on a round air cleaner,

something that was like this whole like phenolic die set thing.

Yeah. And you're like, dude, like by the time it took you to perfect that die,

that trend of that thing was gone.

Like you just yeah, I love going to his shop because like you say,

he would pull out all kinds of little little gems and show you that.

I'm not even a fabricator, you know, but I could still appreciate what he was doing.

And yeah, it was his shop was really cool.

I mean, a lot of everything.

He had so much equipment crammed into this little space and it was so well

organized and like even his like bathrooms, you know, there were everything.

There's like little machine things here and there and there's lists on the wall

and like yeah, he was probably his own worst enemy.

Yeah, after it really missed. Yeah. Yeah.

No. So anyway, pro rides, Terzix, Clay Cook, the carbon 14, Woody, big build.

Long time, you know, coming to completion.

Did you go to Detroit when it debuted? I did. Yep.

Forget what year that was.

Maybe 15 or 15 or 15.

That was before that wasn't it?

I don't know. It was. Yeah, it was a good.

Yeah, project for me. Yeah.

Maybe 14.

That was the over 13.

But that was the one we've told the story before here where there was a road

particular roads. I was going to.

I was wondering if you'd bring that up.

A ploy that almost just sort of ended its debut.

There wasn't there almost wasn't a debut.

We had to be here helping out, clean some things up.

Guy that used to work here.

What was his name?

I can imagine. You don't need to mention that's not important to the story.

He's walking through the booth.

And remember that was like on that split thing.

Yep. And he trips and it's like as he tripped,

he was just determined that the only thing that was going to stop his fall

was the grill on that car.

And I think Phil was standing right there and like grabbed him.

It was like this close to that would have been the biggest fail.

I walked up like 30 seconds after it happened and Phil is white as a ghost.

He was explaining to me what just almost happened.

Oh my gosh, I never heard about.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know if anybody saw it that we've told this.

He would have.

The car would have came off the stands.

Not his only fail at Detroit.

No, that was one of the things.

That was the car then that I mean, did it just set the stage for you?

Did it were you all of a sudden?

Were you an overnight sensation or how did the roll out happen?

How did the career ramp up?

I don't feel like it was.

It was more just a slow burn.

I was fortunate enough to never have to do a lot of hustling or marketing for myself.

It was just one thing led to another and and, you know, Mike had some other jobs

for me after that one.

And it just kind of took on a life of its own.

You know, I started doing Instagram and that was fantastic for me and introduced

myself to Mike and Jim at Columbus one year and had good timing.

Right at that time, they were starting a new project and needed some help.

So well, obviously they had to meet you there because it sure as

it wasn't on Instagram.

I mean, I don't think they have Instagram for typewriters.

I like that one a lot.

I'm not going to bite the hand that feeds.

No comment.

That's all right. We'll take care of that for you.

Yeah, I wouldn't want to bite that liver spotted hand either.

You know, you know what's funny?

Is Mike sometimes makes me feel old because, like I said, I'm really into

traditional hot rods and he has no appreciation or understanding for him.

He he makes fun of me when I start talking about 32 Fords or whatever.

He says things like space shows.

They all look. Yeah, they all look the same.

And why are you into those old man cars and all this and that.

And I keep telling him one day he'll grow up and mature and appreciate a real hot

rod, but I don't buzz and buy them when they're riding around a horse and

buggies. They don't like those little model T's or race cars.

So Instagram back at it.

Yeah.

Instagram obviously helped start getting.

Yeah. Thanks, Roland.

Yeah.

He got my work out there and in my name and yeah, just kind of

when started ringing, but I don't feel like it was overnight.

But what was the first project that Jim and Mike had you work on?

It was the Blizzard Mustang, the 66.

Oh, the white one.

So that was just a smaller stuff, you know, doing a front valence

and bumper treatment and graphics and things like that.

And then it kind of went from there.

The first real big one was the Javelin, the AMC Javelin that they built for Preston.

So I went to their shop to check out the car and kind of start the, you know,

brainstorming process for the build.

And that car really benefits from that wheelbase stretch, like that thing

from the factory.

It looks, you know, it looks like you hit the brakes and the body

slid forward on the chassis.

The wheels are completely in the wrong place.

So we talked about stretching that wheelbase and Jim asked, well, how would

how would you make that fender?

What do you suggest with the fender?

Because it's a really sculptural piece on that car.

It's not just square, like a CUDA or, you know, Challenger, Camaro.

And I said, well, the way I would do it would be to 3D scan it.

We can build it in the software.

You make a mold for the carbon.

And I didn't I thought it would just go right over their head or they would say,

you know, no way.

And they were he was just like, great, let's do that then.

And I was like, shit, well, OK, no, I guess I got to go.

Yeah, let's do this.

But that that was really the, you know, they have so much trust in in me.

And it's it's I know sometimes it puts them in a hard position because that

control over those parts leaves their shop.

It's it's often the ether somewhere in my computer.

And then it goes it goes from there to the carbon supplier where they're

machining the molds and everything.

So there's a long period of time where they're waiting on parts.

They're sitting there with one of your chassis, probably, and waiting on all

these parts to show up for this model kit that, you know, doesn't exist.

So it takes a lot of trust on their end.

And, you know, it's not lost on me.

I really appreciate that.

But that was the first car that we really kind of took to that level.

And from there, it's kind of each one just snowballed.

It's snowballed if the customer is there for it.

The car was bitching.

I mean, that's a very difficult car to do.

But the tail pan on that car was one of my favorite styling elements.

I just loved how well executed that was.

Yeah, thanks.

I'm sure that's a love it hated car for most people.

Yeah, it's you know, it's a body style that's to some, it's probably only

face of mother could love rights.

Right. What you and the rings did with it was pretty cool.

I think that's a good example of a car, one of those ugly ducklings, where you

can just pinpoint what's wrong with it and fix that.

As soon as we did that wheelbase, the thing looked bitching.

Yeah, all the rest, all the rest of it was just, you know, cake decorating

after that and just details.

But that wheelbase completely fixed the proportion issues on that car.

And it looked fantastic after that.

Yeah, AMC, they've got a wheelbase issue across the board.

Yeah, because we did it in AMX.

Yeah, we're just it's sort of just about getting ready for paint.

And that's another one that the like it's just the wheelbases wrong everywhere.

Like they're just it's odd.

Yeah, it was awkward.

It sort of it was like they took a gremlin and made it like 25 percent better.

Yeah.

But we flared it and changed some things around and it definitely put it in

check. I mean, the proportions of it are cool.

Yeah, no Marlin. But no.

Yeah, I don't know what you'd do.

How would you tackle the Marlin?

I crush it.

Yeah, right.

That big, big glass you could do so much cool shit with.

Yeah. And it's slab slided like it's like the early gen chargers.

It's got some cool lines on it for sure.

It's one of those suckers up there.

Didn't they do one?

Was that I'm thinking of the Rebel machine?

Rebel machine had all the red, white and blue

with a little bolted on hood scoop.

Now I've always wanted to.

I've always thought that a Marlin in all wheel drive but rear engine would be the

thing because I'll see that motor under the glass.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Let's have a look at this.

Masterpiece.

Hmm.

Yeah.

I don't you could put the most beautiful motor under that glass and it would still.

But that's bad profiles from from this side of things.

You could do.

Yeah, you know what I do a lot.

I will try to do a search and find some of the original design sketches

for the car from the era.

See what the intention is.

You can see what they were thinking.

And there was some incredible artists back then, just the force perspective

and the renderings that they would do.

And a lot of times you can see exactly what they were thinking before the bean

counters and production production, messed it up.

So that would be one thing I would do on this and start there.

Like like like any car.

I always start with the profile and kind of just I'm not saying it's a beautiful car.

I'm saying it's an it would be such an interesting car to do something really

wild with because of how unique it is.

But there's some profiles that.

I mean, that's.

Yeah, that's a cool thing to hear.

I do that all the time, too.

We're starting on something I always look.

I start googling to see because to me and you've been in that space,

which is cool to hear to see, because I'm curious what the guys,

what the designers wanted to do and what everybody then told them can't be done

because they had the concept cars always look right bad ass.

Right.

And then they cut most of it out like the 0506 for GT is probably one of the

very few cars that sort of adhered to what like the concept drawing maybe was.

I don't know what else.

Maybe the Lincoln Blackwood second to that is.

Another.

What are the crates?

But that's.

Well, the budget was there on the GT.

You know, that's a limited, fairly limited production vehicle and the cost is high.

So that gives you a lot more leeway, you know, to do that stuff.

They a lot of it is crash, pedestrian impact.

Hoods have to be so high, you know, and over the engine or over any hard points,

that hood has to have a certain amount of clearance.

So if you run into a pedestrian at five miles an hour and they flop down on the

hood, the hood deforms to a certain point before it hits anything hard.

So with a front wheel drive vehicle, that's hard because the nose is so short

and that engine is there.

So then you have to have this long overhang and there's, there's all kinds of issues.

And I've been out of it long enough now that I'm sure there's a whole crop

of new issues that I don't know.

I'm sure about the eight assets in there now and two in the heights of all that stuff.

Yeah.

So it's I'm I honestly, I try not to judge new cars that much, especially

until I see them in person in the flesh on the road.

You know, there's the talent level that these designers have at these different

studios, you know, and a new Audi comes out and we all sit around and talk shit

about it, like, dude, those guys, those guys know everything.

They've been down that path.

There's a reason it looks that way.

And it's it is funny.

Tell me we've talked about a couple of times on not all the time, but a lot of

times some of the more polarizing design changes, you know, rolling model design

change, some of the polarizing things, whether it be the new GM seat pickup

truck, when they change, you know, a big grill design or headlights get even

bigger or it gets even more fucked up looking, whatever the path you want to

take her.

I mean, think of BMW when they went to the large kidney beans.

Right.

And they went to the big one.

That's the first thing that came to mind.

It's we all every.

I don't know anybody that liked it.

And now we don't sort of just like, were they right?

And we're just not.

We don't have a good that consumer doesn't have a good enough eye.

I think we're all fucking stupid and we just bitch about change.

We're like, we're like zoo animals that you I still got the food and water.

You just moved it six inches over to the right.

So I'm going to bitch about it.

Yeah.

And then you become accustomed to it.

If you moved it back the other way, I'm going to bitch about it too.

Yeah, you become accustomed to seeing those things.

And now you see the BMW era that you thought was the best one.

And you're like, oh, that's the old one.

Right.

You just those big kidney beans.

Now you're just like, oh, from a design perspective, though.

I mean, you're looking at it through different eyes.

Is that the right move?

Is the was that big ass BMW grill?

Was it truly better?

And we just didn't.

The general consumer didn't have the vision for it.

I think or did it?

It truly suck.

In in in that particular case, there's there's good, in my opinion,

there's good and bad executions of it.

They did a couple of concept cars where it looked incredible

and I could see where they were headed.

And I think it works on the M cars.

Well, like on the on the M3 or whatever, where there's enough

other things going on and the car sits a little lower so that

thing's not way up in the air.

And there's a lot of other elements there that help that grill

on the normal three series.

I don't particularly like it and it hasn't grown on me yet.

OK.

Whereas when do you remember when the old seven series came out

with that weird back end and everyone was so pissed off about it?

After six months, I loved that thing.

And today, I think it looks pretty cool.

Yeah, I think.

And even when the Dodge Ram came out back in the day, like in the 90s,

that was the first one that had the semi truck styling.

Yeah, that upset a lot of people when that was 94.

Yeah, something like that.

Yeah, 93.

And that really grew on you.

And it was a sport truck, too.

And right when the ones that they had, they were killing it back then.

Right. Right.

But at first people were straight up a huge.

It was a I mean, I was also Dodge trucks had the same front grill

for like 37 years.

And it's just and then they said, you know what, fuck this, right?

Let's go to the Peterbilt looking thing and drop the headlights.

And then people were pissed.

Yeah.

But it was also, you know, 10 percent of the truck buyers, too,

because they were getting killed so they didn't have a choice.

Right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Like I guess my point is most of those designs that

everybody so strongly opposed fast forward 34 years.

And we sort of all like I can't think of any now that I dislike like the BMW.

You look at the M series cars now and they they look the old ones now must look weird.

The front of the seven series, though, a little bit of time to not for me.

Took a little bit of time to fall in love with it.

But, you know, maybe they're just.

On another playing on another level.

Like when you look at look at interior designers and architects and stuff

and you're looking at that stuff, you're like, I don't know.

But but I get what you're saying that maybe that either that much better than us

or a little too eccentric. I don't know.

But why, first of all, I think there's a difference in saying like

where the designers are right.

Because of the acceptance rate, you know, taking longer,

taking longer than what we think it should be.

But the.

The BMW, to use that example, BMW, kidneys, beans on the front,

you know, being too large and that was it sent ripples and shockwaves.

Right. You talk about the Dodge thing.

There's times that that happened and then time goes by and it just becomes

the new Norman standard because you're used to it, whether you like it truly

or it's just what's there.

Right. And it's the newer version than the old version.

But then there's times that a brand new style comes out with a vehicle that you love.

Right. And you're like, Holy shit, that's fucking awesome.

Can't believe they built that. Can't believe they did that.

So what.

Which one?

Like, it's not that they're always thinking ahead.

There's just some things that catch a different group of people than.

Yeah.

But you're also looking at cars that.

Who gets super excited about the new Santa Fe that comes out?

Oh, the tail lights are pretty cool.

Well, you know, some of the other crossovers are like, Oh shit,

you're not going to believe what they did with the traverse.

Look at that front end.

Well, again, from you as a designer looking at new car stuff,

what impresses you and what do you look at?

And you're like, Oh, hell, were you guys thinking?

For me, I I always value something that looks good over something that looks new.

Like, I think a lot of designs now because they're all just cars.

They're four wheels engine.

People go here.

The silhouette on new cars is established.

It's either a sedan, which there aren't many of anymore, or some random size of C.

U.V. Yep. You know, there's just a hermaphrodite right now.

Yeah, it's just a size.

So it's a bean.

Yeah. So the wheels, the silhouette, you know, when you start one of those programs,

you get a package drawing from an engineer and that silhouette is the same,

you know, almost no matter what what brand it is with modern with modern vehicles.

So it's a tough job.

They have to kick, decorate and skin that thing and make it look

innovative and different from all the other brands out there.

It has to have brand character of their particular brand.

And they're working five years ahead.

So that's something that a lot of people don't understand is that they're starting

on a program five years before that car hits a road.

Yeah. In this day and age, a hell of a lot can happen in five years.

So, yeah, you know, that's that's a difficult job.

But you can go from everybody fired up about

EVs to nobody wanting to be exactly.

Exactly. So it's it's a tough job.

But for me personally, I value I always try to sit back and just say,

is this a good looking car?

Or is this just trying to be new and different?

Yeah. And there's a lot of them out there right now that are just trying to be

new and different.

You know, body sides look like they're caved in for whatever reason.

And highlights are weird and that's not a beautiful car.

Portion 9 11 is a beautiful car, no matter what trim level you get,

no matter, you know, what year it is.

And they're not innovative design wise.

But for me personally, I value beauty over newness.

Got it.

Which is probably again, part of why I'm drawn to the old cars.

And I had I have that conversation a lot with customers.

I say, let's let's make change for improvement, not change for the sake of change.

Love it. Yeah.

And I want to be different.

I want to be different. Right.

And it can still be radical.

You can still make improvements and and make it as crazy as you want.

But, you know, we all love these cars.

You chose that car to build for some reason, right?

You must love your 69 Camaro or your Marlin for some reason.

Let's keep it what it is and only make change for improvement,

not for the sake of change.

So it's kind of the same thing.

I value the beauty of the new cars over just newness.

What do you think the max infotainment screen is going to be?

I think there's going to be a backlash to all of this.

And I think you're kind of already starting to see it.

Who's going to be the first OE to start going the other direction?

I don't know.

I hope Ford does it with the Mustang.

Because that that one killed me when they brought the new.

He was a giant.

Yeah, Mustang has to have that double hump.

Yeah, it has since the beginning.

You also have to have a nice one to buy.

Yeah, but you can't.

Have them all just as entry level cars.

I get that you can have it, but you've got to have the one

that somebody would aspire to go by. Right.

Yeah, that's an interesting topic to bring up.

Like I got in Mr. Lee's.

Also, what is that thing?

She is the other Shelby GT 350, the new.

So I hopped in the past.

You see that it's a fast car, you know, performance car.

And you're sitting in there and I'm like, this I don't pay a lot of attention

to those cars, but you're sitting there.

You're like, what the fuck is it?

It doesn't feel like a fast like a muscle car.

It doesn't feel like a performance car.

It's this looks like fucking wife's SUV.

It's a panoramic giant screen.

It's just weird.

Yeah. Yeah.

But I think it's going to be good for our industry

because I think I really do think there is going to be a backlash to some of this.

And it won't be everybody.

The people that use a car as an appliance are always going to use that car.

And hell, it'll probably get to the point where they're renting it, not even owning it.

And it's just, you know, a different one shows up in their driveway.

And they use it like those scooters you rent in the in the cities.

But I could get behind that.

I think it will be good for our industry

because it will drive a lot of people to us.

A lot of people that like cars as as cars evolve and they no longer have

the the visceral kind of emotional connection.

You know, you ride in a Tesla and they're the fastest thing on the road.

They're they're bad ass.

They look great, but I've never owned one, but I've ridden in them.

And by the third pole, they're they're doing with that acceleration.

You're almost numb to it.

Like it's incredible the first few times.

But then it just becomes because it's only engaging like one of your senses.

You know, there's no there's no sound.

There's no smell that things are banging through the gears.

And then you realize you're in a Tesla. Right.

It's kind of like, right, fuck this.

So I think those people, you know, the part of the the public that likes cars,

that's enthusiastic about cars, I think they will find their way to us.

And we just need to be there with something for them that's not

700000 dollars, you know, something that normal people

can afford. And, you know, it's getting the point now where we can pass

emissions with, you know, some of them, some of the stuff, you know, the GM

crate systems that they have and everything and fuel injection.

And I think I think we can can provide them with something that could be

pretty interesting and minimal infotainment.

Yeah, you know, I think people are kind of, I don't know.

Maybe I'm just I'm an old soul at heart.

So I might be just wishful thinking here.

But I'm with you a hundred percent because to me,

technology absolutely peaked in 1995 with the OBS Chevy pickup truck,

like three knobs on the dash.

You know, they had probably like the techiest thing on that was,

you know, in the center console, you flip the back and it had that little CD holder.

That's all like that is all I need.

Yep. And it's just gotten so out of hand.

Like it has. And I'm, you know, technologically challenged.

No.

I mean, these guys, yeah, Josh knows it.

But like I get my wife's cars, I won't even I'll have to just communicate

with her to change the climate because I don't want to learn it.

I don't don't even tell me just do it because this thing is this giant screen.

You got to slide it and then it's got haptic feedback or it doesn't.

And you go to this screen, you go to that screen.

Yeah.

I think you're spot on with that.

And I think to me, the company that is so interesting,

I don't love it because it's electric, but that slate.

Have you been the little truck? Yeah, it's so cool.

You check out the new one, the REO.

What is that?

It's the guy in Texas has bought the REO Speedwagon rights

and they've got a truck coming out.

It's going to be 21500 dollars.

He's a real estate investor.

Gas and gas.

That's for me.

That's the only thing in my mind.

Like it's got a neat design.

It almost has like a square body blazer kind of look to the SUV one.

But they've taken everything out of it.

It's just there's no frills.

It's got crank windows.

You can put a Bluetooth stereo speaker in the dash if you want.

That's cool.

And just it's got it's got just too much Eastern European,

like Slavic stand.

I didn't know they built vehicles.

It's just there's a sliver.

Yeah, it's like the country that you see that comes on the World Cup.

You're like, where's that?

I've never even heard of that one.

Maybe a little lift and some wheels and tires.

Yeah, we can marry.

I can look. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, no, I'm the same way.

I'm I guess I'm an old soul or boomer at heart.

I hate all this stuff.

If you give me air conditioning and I can listen to my phone

through the through the stereo, that is all the tech I need.

And, you know, I I'm almost to the point now, I think I could do without a radio.

Short of if we're doing long trips, if I want to listen to some podcasts.

I found myself lately, probably in the last 67 months,

like so much stuff going on.

We don't have a long drive.

It was probably 10 or 12 minutes to home from here.

And I've found myself for the probably last six or seven months.

I don't even listen to music on like in the ride.

Like my I'm not thinking about sounds.

I'm not turning it on.

Short of the.

Like your settings, like knowing that the seat is in its position

and the steering wheel is in its position, like from electronics, jumping in it

and everything is where it needs to be short of that, like.

No radio, a steering wheel and a shifter for for like transportation.

Yeah, just.

Yeah, I think there's a market for it in your your trucks, your legend trucks.

I think hint at that.

You're giving them, you know, modern drivetrain.

I'm sure there's a ton of sound deadening in it and a vintage air system

for their air conditioning, but it's it's still a truck.

100 they can they can work on it themselves.

They can change the oil.

They can, you know, diagnose any issues with a simple,

exactly, ODB to or whatever it is.

And there was a lot of.

Years of deliberating and back and forth on opposite ends of the spectrum

about the legends truck and what it should and could and be

from, you know, trying to take it to I mean, Jeremy, rightfully so,

trying to take it to like the.

What that demo, what your proposed demographic probably would be in the.

When you start with the.

Trying to nail the ride quality and the NVH and stuff like that

to what their baseline is, whether it be, you know, a G wagon or a new Chevy

truck or something like that, then the natural progression is well,

they like those things and they probably need maybe an infotainment

like this and maybe need this stuff.

But rightfully so, there was a departure.

Yeah.

I mean, selfishly, I built that for me because that's exactly what I wanted.

I just wanted to cut all the bullshit and be able to get into something.

You know, I wanted to look cool.

Square body trucks look cool.

It's the quintessential truck.

I just don't want any of the bullshit.

I'm perfectly I want AC because I don't want to sweat my ass off.

And you get in, you got a couple of sliders on the dash and you got a volume

knob and a column shift.

That's all I need.

And it's like that some people it totally appeals to and they get it.

And I'm happy with it because I love it and I drive the shit out of it.

And every time I drive it, it reminds me how much more I like it than a new truck.

But then you get it's like split right down the middle because you've got

like the other camp that's like, it's not a solid axle front end and your IFS is

shit, you can't you're not muddin with no IFS like it or it's not for the work

in man. It ain't no work truck.

Like, well, dude, we just posted a video recently on a blazer version of it.

And people are saying that same thing.

Like, dude, how many guys are working in their Denali in there?

Well, no, not well.

Probably more so in their Denali than they are in their square body solid

axle blazer. What type of work are you doing that warrants going to work in said

square body blazer? Right.

And they talk about this like bullet proof front.

There is nothing bullet proof about this.

I hate the fantasy of this old American iron and this thing is like a fucking tank.

Right. It is it is not.

Well, I just you can fix it.

Yeah, you can fix it difference.

But you're still going to have to fix it.

I think the more the thing that we kind of collectively all

came to conclusion is you're always going to have that that side of things.

Right. Of the guy.

It's like, oh, it's too much money and give me a carburetor so I can work on it.

You know, in my eyes close and, you know, I don't want a straight ax on site.

That's fine. They're enthusiasts.

The ziastic about their their subset of that side.

That's not who we're building it for.

Right. Exactly.

And and no offense, most of those guys, it's that's not the price point for them anyway.

Right. So say all the things you're going to say, justify whatever.

Then there's the upper end, right?

That's the guy. It's like, well, you know, where do I put my leather gloves?

And, you know, I need to, you know,

doesn't have a power retractable tailgate.

It's also not for you.

Yeah.

If you can't I tell you where you put your leather gloves.

Yeah. If you can't if you can't close

the tailgate, right?

Then this truck's not for you.

Right. And it's the ones in the middle that are like, hell, yeah.

Yeah. Sure.

The truck thing is, I mean, all all little niches of the trucks are very device.

Trucks are trucks.

Guys are absolutely a new trucks are too.

You know, I see it almost.

I don't know what the price point is.

But if if it could be an alternative to a new fully loaded

100000 dollar Silverado or Denali or whatever it is,

I could see a time in the not too distant future where that would be attractive

to that customer.

Yeah. You know, and they're not going to go

mudding in their new Denali either.

Right. It's fine.

It's just somebody that is tired of the screens that wants to be able to work on

it and maintain it themselves.

Yep.

And well, could use it as a daily driver.

I mean, that would be awesome.

I think that's a niche that's coming that our industry could fill.

You know, the stuff that Roger is doing with the Chevelles that we talked about.

You know, is there a time when a customer of a new

Khmer, well, not a new Khmer, they're dead now, but a new Mustang, you know, which

they're almost dead.

Yeah. Would they say, you know, I would rather have that.

And if it was reliable enough price to the point where, you know,

they could daily drive that thing.

And the only way we could get there, because there's so much in building these

cars is to do some kind of semi like mass production or production run of them.

That's the only way that I think the only way to bring the price point.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I don't even know if that would be enough.

This is all above my pay grade.

But yeah, that's the struggle with it because there's a lot of guys that do a

great job with it in the truck market.

The Broncos, you know, Velocity does a phenomenal job with it.

And they do a super high volume.

The volume has to multiply probably tenfold to be able to bring.

If you want to bring that down to the point where all those guys commenting

about like how this is just something for the rich man.

Right. And it becomes affordable.

The volume has to grow exponentially.

Yeah.

But then when you start getting the volume to grow exponentially to that, then

there's going to be corners that need to be cut

and things that you're going to be like, well, we don't need to do this.

We don't do that.

Then you start to lose the core.

It's just like, yeah, I think that's a very interesting topic because I

cross the board. I think Ferrari is experiencing it.

You watch the just look at Ferrari's like secondhand market.

What's happening right now?

Like everybody became so disconnected with the brand because it's, you know,

they've made a few bad moves with some of the EV stuff and the stuff's gotten a

little bit space shuttle-ish on the styling and it's gotten so techy that now,

like everybody's pivoted and they're they're 488 and they're 458 have gotten

just the numbers have gone through the roof because that's what people want.

Yeah. That's what they're like.

Their customer base is speaking.

Yeah. And that's what they're saying.

Yeah.

But they're still going a different direction.

Like why?

Why doesn't it? And it probably will.

I wonder if there's a aha moment when everybody wakes the fuck up and realizes

what we're making isn't what the customers want.

Yeah. And they actually fulfill that need because who better to do it than the damn

OEs? Exactly.

Where is that gated shifter?

That's iconic.

That's what I would want if I was in the market for one of those cars and you can't get.

If there's one thing I've learned working in my time at the car companies is that

none of those decisions are an accident.

At the end of the day, if they were making money, they would make that car.

Yeah. Everybody talks about station wagons in the United States,

but none of us that are talking about it bottom when, you know,

no, it's usually the guys are like, oh, that's a cool station wagon.

And then why is it like I'm not getting a station wagon?

Like no, the RS6 is really cool.

I'm not driving a station wagon. Right. Right.

That one. That's about that one is bad ass.

It is.

But that's one of the few that are even left, you know, and and the car

enthusiasts talk about all those things, but we never bought them when we had the

chance and these these car companies, if people were putting their money where

their mouth was, all those things would still exist.

So maybe we're the minority.

This may. Yeah. Yeah.

Look at the types of cars that are driving around on just your ride to work.

Of course, you're the minority.

Yeah. Because there's so many just asexual.

Just, hey, I want a car in a non-offensive color.

We have this light brown and then one that's shaped like a kidney bean.

That would be great. Yeah.

Can I fit four people in it?

Yeah.

Like that's it's just when I had kids, though, I learned the beauty of the minivan.

I can't talk too much shit about.

Oh, really? Oh, I love it.

Dude, I've run it.

I mean, a minivan, it has.

I could never get my wife to adopt.

It was the wife's car, not mine, but I love driving the thing.

And when we all piled in it, it was the answer.

I hate to say it. Sorry.

Oh, yeah. I mean, what can you do with a Previa?

Right. Yeah.

I mean, the underpinnings of that, it's essentially a supercar.

Have you ever looked at the drivetrain?

Yeah, close. It's mid-engine.

Yeah. It is a mid-engine. Yeah.

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see where that goes.

But the other thing interesting, which, you know,

the sort of change directions here is with as close to concept cars as these

designs have gotten now in our industry, where does it go from there?

How do you possibly?

What is the next level?

Or is anybody coming to you with anything that's like, yeah, I saw that.

But like, we're looking to take it to the next level.

Where does it go?

I think

it's hard to say because I think the concept car thing that what what you're

seeing when you say concept car is a refinement, a level of refinement.

So the Aston Martin, you know, we changed every surface on that car.

But because it was done in CAD,

because of the CAD modeler skill on it, you know, I don't want to toot my horn,

but I had my own eyes on it.

We had between the two of us, we had, you know,

probably 40 years in the industry looking at this thing.

It gave it a certain level of refinement.

And I think that's what you feel when you say concept car level.

So I think as as people learn how to use CAD properly and kind of avoid some of

that leather wraps, two by four interior feel that we were talking about,

I think that will start to give these cars more of that refined kind of production

or OE type of feel.

As far as other trends in our industry,

I think there will be maybe like a little bit of genre mixing.

I get some customers coming to me with that.

I hope so.

Wanting to do a 30s car that has more of a modern

pro touring or, you know, break ducts and big, big breaks and meant to turn

instead of just cruising in a straight line.

I think that's interesting and it's been dabbled with before,

but it's never been a mainstream thing.

I would love to see someone build a

muscle car that looks like a 60s, you know, funny car, you know, a CUDA with the

wheelbase stretched and big HALA brands on it and big meets under the back slummed

on the ground. Cool. I don't I would like that in my own garage.

I don't know if anybody else would.

Good guys, missile.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's kind of hinted at it.

It was a little bit. I think it was built.

Yeah, it was built.

And then and then rebuilt.

And that's a little nugget for the old timers.

Fritz will pick up on that.

You're welcome, Fritz.

Yeah, that's a that's a cool stuff.

But I think like just genre mixing.

Yeah, I think might be the next thing.

Other than that, I don't know.

I mean, I would it'll be interesting to see what happens.

You know, we were talking about the hot rods, the traditional stuff.

You haven't had a lot of them come through the shop.

What's going to happen with all of those cars?

Selfishly, I hope the price goes down because I would love to have a 32 three

window in the garage myself.

But that's where I'm at.

Yeah, I mean, I I've got a model at 29 model A

and me and my brother just picked up this bitch in 30 Roadster that it's

it's coming home here shortly, but I'm a sucker for bad ass traditional cars.

And I just I don't you know, you don't have the time to make it happen.

Yeah, and you could still those are cars that you can still definitely buy them

way cheaper than what it costs to build them.

But to your point, the market hasn't like crumbled like they're not

buying a fire, say, on the moon, still bringing decent money.

Yeah.

But you know, I don't know, maybe it'll go back to that.

Yeah, I think that when you have stuff like

the rock and some other events to where there's there's some more things to do

with your traditional hot rod, yeah, and it.

Same thing with the survivor style stuff, right?

You had to you had to build the thing and it kind of be a cool thing because

the hot rod and street rod had gotten so far out of fucking hand, right?

That you couldn't show up with, you know, your one traditional hot rod that,

you know, what are you going to do with it when it's everything's billet and

everything smooth and so like that?

The industry kind of passed it by.

I think it's more stuff to do in event wise and stuff like that.

Yeah, I think that they'll come back.

I like that.

Like some stuff to get people to use their cars.

Like I am over, you know, getting to get into the show at seven in the morning

and setting up a chair so I can drink Miller light all day long and never leave

the park. I mean, it's sometimes it's fun every once in a while.

Yeah. But, you know, the rock event where they do the road tour, you know,

I think all of that is is the future.

Finding ways to get people to use the cars and people enjoy it.

Wheel hub did that with their event.

That's a great event that they have where they do the road tour.

And, you know, you're never stationary.

You're using the cars.

Oh, that's I mean, great segue right here.

I mean, in yet two big good guys events coming up.

Right. And I think I like these two good guys events so much because

you're doing stuff with the cars.

Des Moines coming up fourth of July weekend.

It is actually so I can read July 3rd through 5th.

Des Moines fairgrounds.

Great show.

Shit ton of cruising all day, all night.

They got a fireworks show.

And then Columbus as well.

Columbus.

That's the 28th Summit Racing Nationals July 10th through 12th at the Ohio

Expo Center. Obviously, that's that's the one we do every year.

And that is where we and most other people get to do something with their car.

Right. So you do we do a little road tour down there.

We're driving cars back to the hotel.

You're hanging out in the cars in the hotel parking lot.

You drink you're having fun.

You know, even there's there's all kinds of crazy car show stuff going on.

Yep. The parking lot parties and hanging out with the cars is

a little more rare than a lot of other shows.

So that's definitely one to get out and cruise hang out.

I've been going to Columbus since I was a little kid.

Sometimes it was for the Street Route Nationals.

Remember when that was at Columbus before it moved to Louisville?

But way back in the day.

I never miss the good guy show Columbus.

That is a great one.

They've moved in my right.

They moved the host hotel this year.

Yes, it's a different place.

Good. Yeah.

It's getting a little we've moved the party.

Yeah. Yeah.

Where is it now?

Yeah, it's where it's at.

It's where it's a new place.

This is where this is where we do the editing.

Yeah, this is where we take a break.

So yes, good guys, Columbus, they have moved the host hotel.

We are now at the double tree.

The double tree in Dublin.

OK, the double tree in Dublin is a new host.

That's where is that everybody's going to be at for the party.

Is the double tree.

Is that the one with the steakhouse in front of this is in Dublin?

In Dublin. Yeah.

This is a double tree in Dublin right there in the heart of Dublin.

Yeah.

That's as much as I know.

I will tell you the address right now.

I got the address.

It's 600 Metro Place North.

OK. Yeah, they are sold out.

But there's three or four other hotels right there around it.

That's a place to be.

Yeah, because in my he couldn't get one.

This is as important as knowing that there is a good guy showing Columbus

because it is the show's phenomenal.

Yep. If you don't know where the party's at.

Yeah, it's the after party.

That's absolutely.

Yeah, that's where you rub elbows with all your buddies with your peers.

It's the place to be.

You see the cars in action.

Yep. You get to see stuff moving.

Yeah, we're going to bring some some some cool things down there.

Maybe not vehicle stuff.

Like we're going to bring some cool vehicles.

But I'm talking about in the parking lot party.

We might bring some if you're not at the party,

you'll miss out on some potential surprises.

The rings going this year.

I don't think so.

We got it. We're doing it.

We got a final schedule of the rings.

Second podcast.

We're going up there to see them.

The first one was pretty entertaining.

Well, we had fun.

We have good stories.

The best stories.

Jim has some really good ones.

That was not our fault.

We didn't force them to drink near what they drunk.

No, we got to blame for it, but it was not our fault.

Nancy is not happy.

She was mad.

But round two round two is going to be great.

We're we're working on going up to Jim's farm.

Oh, awesome.

To do it.

Do it.

It's happening in the next couple of months.

Yeah, it's happening.

That'll be excellent.

Nancy's just got to text me back.

Well, this is her call to action.

I'm going to start dancing.

I'm going to start texting it like odd times, like 12 30.

No, hey, text.

No, just thinking about you.

Hey, we're going to do this.

Extra now and say, hey, we've got Gary Ragle here.

We've got this awesome project.

We're looking to get started on with him.

Yeah.

Mike, what do you think?

Would you recommend him?

Mike will be calling you.

Yeah, yeah, I'll get a call right now.

It'd be just, you know, it'll come from some random 608 number

because it's Mike's, you know, flip phone.

I don't think it doesn't.

Yeah.

It doesn't pop up as Mike ring.

He does have an iPhone.

Does he now?

Yes.

When did he get that?

Maybe a year ago.

That's like an iPhone one.

Maybe he maybe.

He doesn't text or anything.

No, I don't.

Huh.

You see if you can get a response.

Yeah.

Oh, when I texted, we'll get a response.

Sure.

I said, hey, we have Gary on the,

hey, we have Gary Riggle on the podcast.

We're thinking of hiring him full time.

Is that cool?

Actually, I misspelled a lot of words in there, too.

Damn.

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They're a lot of fun.

I stayed with them.

They let me stay with them at the house in Carmel for about a week while we were

there for the quail and they let you stay up past their normal bedtime.

Yeah. Yeah.

They were getting it pretty good.

So they're a lot of fun.

The whole family and the crew and Ryan and yeah.

Yeah, we joke around a lot between them all, but that's great.

Great families, great kids, good people.

Yeah, just awesome people in.

Yeah, you got a joke with them, though.

That's how you know good people is when.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Anytime you have to watch what you're going to say around somebody.

That makes me judge that person.

Yeah.

Yeah, 100%.

Yeah.

So that's so that's going to hurt his feelings.

Yeah.

So now I know I don't need to know about him.

All right, we're getting into a couple of.

We're going to get a couple of things.

I'm going to ask some

some questions related to everything we've talked about that we're going to get

into standard questions, but.

What's the hardest on the on our industry aftermarket hot rod build side?

What's the the.

The project that came to you that gave you the most pause that you had to think

about the most?

That's a good for whatever reason.

That's a good one.

Boy.

You know, I hate to keep going back to it, but

Mike's Woody was was because of the concert.

Yeah, I didn't I didn't know Mike that well.

And that was also like your like one of the bigger ones for your forward 4k in the industry.

Thank God, you know, at that point I was saying yes to everything.

So I wasn't going to say no, but you're supposed to jump the shark later on in the career.

Right. Exactly.

It's probably coming.

Um, but that one that one gave me a little bit of pause just because the idea.

But I'm yeah, I can't really think of of any others.

Like I said, I always I always the cars always fall into two camps.

It's either a beloved vehicle and you have to really think about what what to change

and what to do or it's an ugly duckling that you have a lot of freedom with and

and you know, it represents its own challenges.

There have been some customers that I've had to research a little bit

and decide whether I want to work for them and whether it's a good good fit or not.

And I'm trying to do that more and more now.

Like rather than, you know, there's a period of time when you start your business,

you take anything that comes through the door.

And now I'm trying to kind of pick the ones that that fit me and what I can do the best.

And and try to pick the ones that are more than just

a rendering in a color with these wheels on it.

You know, like I would rather do fewer, more in depth design projects than

than a hundred, you know, renderings for for different people.

So I'm kind of trying to tailor things that way.

So I guess to answer your question, that's kind of what's given me the most pause

is picking knowing when to say no, knowing when to say no and picking the right

projects for where I want my business to go.

What project have you done that you had?

That you can think back about right now that you that right when they're going

through the hay and thinking about doing this, this and this,

you've got the majority of it in your mind instantly.

Like what's the thing that's popped in your mind?

I know exactly what we're doing.

You know, honestly, that's that thing that I said before, where my pencil is

smarter than my brain, that is 100 percent true.

Like there's a there's a lot of designers that see it in their mind and then

execute it and I am not like that at all.

Really? Yeah.

Your hands you start from your head.

Yeah, there's nothing.

There's nothing up here.

My hand is smarter than my brain is.

And I will just start sketching out of never guess that and see what sticks.

Yeah, 100 percent honest.

That's cool.

There is very few like preconceived notions or ideas or anything in my mind.

Really? I will really cool.

Start sketching the car and

I think it comes from just repetition and doing it so much like my when I'm sketch.

I still sketch pencil and paper because I think that's really important.

I'll do the renderings in Photoshop just because it's easier to change colors

for the customer or make changes.

But everything starts with a pencil sketch on on paper.

So I my hand kind of knows what what should be happening.

Much more than my brain does.

That's wild.

No, it's great.

It's just it's so it's so surprising.

I wasn't I wasn't expecting that, especially from what we've seen like put on paper

and the designs that have come up there.

Like it couldn't be.

I would have never guessed that.

You give me a hundred guesses.

I would never guess that because it seems like these are all different ideas or

formulate. It doesn't seem like you're

figuring it out along the way.

You know, yeah, I'd love to watch the evolution.

Yeah, these cards.

I'm so fascinated about it because it's

I'm envious of it.

It's like a skill set I wish I had that I don't.

But it would be so cool to see that in action.

Yeah. Is it is it a particular profile?

Is it something you're drawn the roof line and like, you know,

particular arc or a modification to it as you're drawing it that you're like

and then things start falling into place or I I start every sketch because we're

because we're basing this off an existing car.

I will find a photo or if I have a 3D scan of the car,

usually it starts with a profile view, a side view, and I'll trace the photo.

OK.

And then I will throw that photo away

and I will start like doing overlay on top of overlay, like, you know,

allowing my hand to do its thing and start to fix like all the weirdness that that

car had from the factory.

So everything starts with a photo and that way I'll be able to tell the customer

like, OK, I moved it.

You know, I laid that a pillar back this much, you know, chop to top that this much,

move the wheel base this much.

So there's a reference there.

It's based in reality and I can tell the customer what changes I made.

It's not just winging it.

Yeah.

But yeah, it's just it's a time consuming process because it's just an overlay on

top of overlay on kind of feeling what what this thing wants to be.

They'll tell you what they want at a certain point.

Once you dig into them, the car will start to tell you what it wants and what it should be.

What point does it

move from a sketch to Photoshop?

How far do you take it before it goes to Photoshop?

Once once I'm convinced that all those big moves are good, I'll scan that sketch in

and then kind of do the rendering in Photoshop or do some shading if it's more

of a simple like sketch rendering or something.

But it's once I'm convinced that the proportions and all the big moves are correct.

I really don't I use Photoshop only to execute.

I don't use it to design so much.

So I'm not sketching in that or changing anything.

If I want to make a change to a hood or something, I will go back to the drawing

table and physically draw it and then scan it back in and render it in Photoshop.

Dude, I would love to see and this is I'm just going to throw this idea out there

for you, take it if you want.

Selfishly, I want to see it.

You should set up a GoPro camera and do a time lapse and obviously accelerate that

because I don't I don't want to sit there for four hours.

You watch you know, erasing shit and change.

I just want to see you don't have the attention span for that.

No, give me like, you know, of four seconds.

No, I can take it longer than that.

Yeah, that would be so cool to see.

It would be. Yeah.

One view, the evolution of the card is I do need to do that for sure.

It would be so bitching.

Yeah, you need to make it.

I'm going to make it an admission right here.

It's probably because I've had a little bit too much of this Japanese whiskey.

The thing that this sounds so fucking stupid, but I don't care.

I'm being honest right now.

That's the only reason we do this shit.

It's really just dawned on me.

Right now, with all the designers we've talked to, and as long as we've been in

this, I've never really put two and two together about the difficulty of

the design part process and putting that together and then cataloging the changes

to be able to tell them what the changes are.

I've never put that part of it.

Right. I've always just looked at like just work in progress talking about.

But as you're like you said, your hands doing things,

you get into the flow and the groove and you're just making it cool.

Right. That I know that's like you'd be hung up and making it cool.

Eric Black does a good job of like he usually shows.

Yes. Yeah.

If you quit being such an asshole to him on this podcast, he might share that with you.

But since you're fucking with him.

What I'm saying is in the artistic process, I mean, everybody does it their

different way, but then as you're doing that,

having the mindset of catalog, whether it's making the notes or like you said,

you know, doing the scale of like, well, this is this is one that, you know,

whatever. And then I've leaned the windshield post back and trying to document

that versus like making the thing look badass.

And then be like, see, all right, now you go to go figure that out.

Like it's just really dawned on me the amount of having to and everybody does it

to varying degrees.

But just that part of the equation in our world.

Yeah. You know, of having to give some of the bullet points of like, yeah,

and windshields laid back this much, we channeled it this much.

Oh, wait, I suppose when you talked about like sort of vetting customers and

working directly mostly with the shops, you get to a point with some of the show

that you sort of jive and you probably sort of click and they just, you know,

they get it, right? You look at the rendering and you.

That's not probably not the guy that's going to take his tape measure out and

start trying to scale something or be questioning.

We run into this a lot and we have years ago, like,

Amy and Chris joke about it sometimes, too, because some people can't see like

the shading or like the shadows on the side of the car.

Like some people will look at it like to me, like even look at the picture behind

you, like those are clearly shadows on the side of that quarter panel, like your

shoulder. And some people are like, so is that like, are we going to like airbrush

that that that grass?

A graphic really?

It's the shadows of what do you not get?

And other people will take, you know, a tape measure and start like it's a like,

we didn't change the car, but they're like, I think it's chopped and they're like

measuring and trying to scale it or drawing a grid.

Like, dude, it's rendering. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's tough.

I over time, my work has become tighter and tighter and tighter.

And it's a it goes back to what we were talking about before.

Like the the customer doesn't care about a rendering.

They want a car.

We're all we're all working together to build a car.

So I used to early in my career, I tried to make everything real artsy and cool.

And, you know, was trying to impress other designers with with the work.

And now it's more of a means a means to an end.

It's to it's to communicate what the car looks like in order to build it for the

customer who will drive it and enjoy it.

So that's caught me out a few times where I would do some creative shading or

something and, you know, the builder would go ahead and make like an undercut or

do something that I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Shit. I did. I did what you had on the sketch.

That was super cool.

Looks good.

That was a palm tree in the background.

Yeah.

Yeah. So a lot of that.

And laser cut it out.

That's an interesting topic, though, because the the fabrication,

like the hot rod industry has changed tremendously because it was much that way

to fabricators and shops were building things for a long time,

more to impress and get acceptance from their peers.

Yep.

Than they were for the customer.

Yep.

And it's a different animal, like different budget, you know, you're saving time,

you're saving money when you're building, when you're doing things fabrication wise,

focused on the completing the car, because it's not about the fabrication.

It's about driving the car.

And it's not about the picture.

It's not about the rendering.

It's about finished.

Exactly. Car.

I think you can you can.

If you did a timeline and in tract, everybody's arc, you could even visually

tell from the outside, looking in when everybody had that aha moment.

Yeah. When it's like,

I'll give a fuck if they like me.

Right. Right.

Exactly.

I will say I found the absolute.

I want Eric Black to like me.

I keep talking shit.

So if you quit fucking faking a cowboy, I'd.

Is that is that what it is?

You know, I know I don't.

I've never met Eric.

Next time you work is fantastic.

Next time you meet him, he's fully tattooed up right in a well,

tattoos, right?

The words on his hands change every time you meet him.

Yes. It's it's like an act.

It's like cosplay.

He's just got Eric.

Eric's got like a almost like a Jesse James presence.

OK.

Like a cool factor, you know, and Josh doesn't believe it's real.

Oh, he thinks it's no way.

Because he is like, remember, I said, there's no free ride, right?

You got to pay the tax.

He is super badass.

He's into all everything that's cool.

He's amazingly talented.

He's seemingly super fucking nice, although I'm going to push the boundaries

and see if Eric punches me in the face and I know where it is.

Those tattoos were fake.

If you come off, I just can't handle somebody having all those

positives, you know?

Yeah. So yeah, my own personal insecurities won't allow that.

I've got to tear it down.

Didn't you say it's like maybe he's got web feed or something?

Did you bring that?

That was what I said.

That's Adam Adam Banks.

But even then he turns around and I can swim.

Yeah.

No, I don't know that I really don't know exactly what it is with Eric.

We're going to find it one day.

But yeah, I give him a lot of shit because that's funny.

You got to know he's super fucking talented.

And he's cool and there's not a thing short of that one

Mustang that he's done.

And I always give him shit about that.

Which is that?

Then he did that.

The newer modern Mustang for Hollywood hot rods had to lift off like a black roof

or whatever he did.

I was like, yeah, it was like some kind of movie, I think, too, whatever.

But Eric's cool.

Sometimes

people get brought up and get a lot of shit on this podcast.

And that's just it is what it is.

Only when we like it.

Yeah, of course.

The Sawgrey.

Whatever they call a little meme or a video or something like that the other day.

And if.

If nobody's talking shit about you, that means you're inconsequential.

So.

That doesn't mean if we haven't talked shit about you, you're inconsequential.

Your time will come.

It's a get to you.

I mean, you fly that close to the sun.

I'm bound to get burned.

Can't be that good.

Can be.

You pay the toll.

Yep.

Standard questions, standard questions are brought to you by good guys,

Rod and custom, so you're going to be down in Columbus.

Yep, I'll be there.

All right, it's up for me.

Parking up.

It's over for us.

Over and down.

It's still down.

Yeah.

All right, so.

First up.

We'll just go first car.

We're going to go straight out to it.

What year?

Don't tell us the first car yet.

But what year did you graduate high school?

97

Oh, we're same age.

Are we? Yeah.

Midwest, you've.

Very well, you think it's kind of since it had his borderline.

Like we're right across the river from Kentucky.

Yeah, it's like it's northern Kentucky, Western Virginia,

Eastern Illinois.

You're not far from Lexington, right?

Correct. Yeah.

Not far.

So it's almost solid.

It's almost like considered the south makes it that that takes it out of my little

pie. I'm glad I've had.

We've had a lot of them out of my pocket in the last couple of episodes.

So you started driving.

You got your license in 95 then.

Yep.

Was your first vehicle a gift or did you purchase it?

It was a gift.

OK.

Hand me down within the family.

Yes.

What did your dad do for a living?

He was a machinist for Ford, a Ford transmission plant in Cincinnati.

Key.

Yes, it is.

Key little tidbit.

OK.

Hand me down in the family.

Hmm.

Is your dad a car guy?

Yeah.

Yep. He got me into it.

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NMLS 910457.

Hmm.

Well, it's OBS Ford pickup.

I'm going OBS Ford pickup.

That would be 8089

86 to 89

Yeah.

Gray with maroon interior.

I'm going it had to be

something that was enough to spark an interest in cars that probably wouldn't

have done it.

Um, but I don't think it was great.

It's usually not, you know, I don't think it was like a fastback mustang.

You know, not I'm not thinking that.

So the next best thing.

Ranger's Blash.

No.

Yeah, I think it was a maverick.

I think it was a maverick.

And it was yeah, it was like I think this was transportation.

Not in not in anything enthusiast based.

Well, is a maverick enthused other than some more than other than the one Jesse built.

Like, is it enthusiast space?

No, probably not.

You're probably right.

Uh, all right.

So go ahead.

You're you're close, but you're off a little bit.

It was a 78 econoline van full size van.

Long wheel like full wheelbase or shorty? Shorty.

So my dad was really into riding dirt bikes.

So he would use this thing to haul dirt bikes in 1978.

It was primered black, had ground effects on it because he was also a product of the

van era of the seventies.

These are all key pieces of information that were left out.

It's pretty cool.

This was a hand me down all primered black, no windows in it.

It had like the vector wheels like from the hazard charger on it.

It was pretty bitchin.

I don't curl him up front on the grill and he had to replace the

quarter panel on it, so he just D.P.

90 the entire thing is the quarter panel.

Half the car.

It is. I guess on a van is the entire entire body side.

That's cool. Yeah.

So the interior was there was no interior.

It was all plywood.

Four captain's chairs because he hauled car parts and dirt bikes in it.

So that's what I super cool with your buddies.

That's what I drove to high school.

Super cool with my buddies.

How did the parents of the girl that girls were maybe a little bit.

It was the molester van and everyone was told to stay away from that fucking.

That's right.

I.

Yeah, pretty cool.

Yeah, I like that.

Me and I love Vans actually really dig them and especially that that era,

the shorty me and my son rides dirt bikes and we were both dead set.

He's been searching.

I've been searching.

We've been trying to find one just like it.

Yeah, just to go to the track.

It broke his damn leg this at the beginning of the season this year.

So we haven't been to the track.

Otherwise, we'd have probably been in a van.

Yeah, because there is a convenience.

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

Roll that bike right in the back.

It's so easy. Yep.

Tump that mixed gas over on the way home.

Yeah.

Wow. 3 0 2 was not expected to see for.

Yes. Yep.

Okay.

Yeah, that was a tough one to guess.

Yeah.

That that definitely, you know, from a cool factor, that brings you up like, you

know, you and Eric Eric.

He wouldn't he wouldn't bomb it around in a van.

No, most most of the kids in my high school were not into cars.

So it was kind of yeah, it was kind of a cool thing.

Yeah, it wasn't very cool to them.

I thought it was cool.

Yeah, sounded good.

Had flow masters on it.

Cops gave me a lot of trouble on it.

It looks like trouble.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, next question, perfect segue.

Your most memorable law enforcement interaction story.

So it was in college.

I went to university of Cincinnati and their industrial design program.

And we had a studio that was sponsored by General Motors.

So we would have weekly video conferences with GM designers and they would

review our sketches. It was a pretty cool deal.

So this was junior year, right towards the end of the term.

Design schools, pretty intense, you know, it's time intensive.

You're you're up doing all nighters and everything else.

So I was in there with my buddies working in the studio.

I think it was two days before the final critique and all of these guys from GM

were coming down to review our work is a big deal for me because I wanted to go

work for them.

And they for some reason, the campus locked the door.

There was two doors in our studio and they only left one open for us and they

locked one of them and that was our access to the restroom.

The only other way was to go out into the hallway and it was a super long way around.

The restroom was right there.

And I have really sweaty hands and that this wasn't before Photoshop.

All marker rendering and pastels and air marker and all that.

So I had to wash my hands like every two minutes while I'm doing my rendering.

So I don't sweat all over it.

So I want to go to the restroom just to wash my hands.

And

we, my buddy and I decided that this door was not going to work for us anymore after

after a couple nights.

So we took the the pins out of the hinges and took the door off to give

us our give ourselves access to the restroom.

And I finished, you know, finish the night, whatever, finished my renderings, went home.

I was working on my model at home because my dad had set up a spray booth for me.

And, you know, all the kids at school were just using spray bomb.

And I was at home with automotive paint and, you know, doing this thing,

fix, be slick and this thing. Right. Yeah.

So I was at home working on my model and after being up all night at the studio

sketching and one of my buddies called me, he was like, Gary,

the fuck did you and drew do last night in the studio?

I was like, what are you talking about?

He was like the campus security came in and arrested him, put him in cuffs and

drug him off. Did you guys do something with the door?

And I was just like, oh, shit.

No, yeah, I might have.

Actually come to think of it.

So it turns out they had a video camera set up on us that we didn't know about.

Pointed at that door.

I don't know what the problem was with this door and why they why they did that.

But I went and turned myself into campus security.

It ended up being a big thing.

Had to get a lawyer involved and everything else.

Yeah, yeah, this you didn't steal anything.

You didn't do anything.

Didn't steal anything.

We were two of the better students, you know, we were just in there trying to be

returned back to normal.

You put the hinges back in it and put the pins back in it.

So I turned myself in and kind of my parents kind of helped work work through

this whole thing.

But like I said, this was two days before now, one day before GM coming down.

All of those guys heard about it.

You know, I thought, oh, shit, this is this just ended my my career.

I'm done before I even started.

They thought it was funny because they were just all recent grads that were working

with us and everything.

They thought it was pretty funny.

It shows ingenuity.

But yeah, exactly.

And I taught a couple of classes at that school just up to maybe like five or

six years ago, I would occasionally teach a class.

And those kids there still know that story really about that.

And one of them was telling me the story at one point.

Like, did you ever hear about this guy that got arrested and took the door off?

I was like, yeah, you're talking to.

You're talking to.

I was instantly the coolest professor that they that they had.

But that's great.

Yeah. Yeah.

It reminds me you ever seen the movie Radio Flyer?

Yeah. Remember that movie?

Yeah.

And they're talking about there's the guy the older.

I mean, he was like in his 20s.

I kind of free.

He was the guy that attempted to jump or something before and he's working at the

gas station, he's limping and the kids are talking about this legend.

And then he like, you know, I forget how they found out it was him.

But it's yeah.

Similarly, yeah.

Deep pull.

They liked they did not want their door fucked with.

No, I don't.

I still don't understand what what the issue was.

But I mean, it was really it was to the point where every minute counted.

You know, we were we were up all night down the wire.

You didn't have time to deal with that.

Three all nighters in a row and and we needed access to that restaurant.

So it's a lesson in resourcefulness and perseverance.

Yeah.

How if you want it, go get it.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, even if you're going to knock the fucking pins out of the engine.

Right, right.

Maybe just put them back.

Yeah, probably should have.

Yeah.

All right. Next up, you've got a.

You've got a PCH.

Trip.

This is a good guy's question.

This is one of the good guys submitted questions.

You're going to do the tour of the whole Pacific Coast Highway.

In some bitching ass car.

What's the car and what's the CD that's stuck in the CD player for the full trip?

I can tell you the CD right off the bat.

I'm a child of the of the 90s.

My favorite band is 311.

Yeah, so it's something with a system there because that's one CD hit.

Yeah, that actually happened to me.

Spring break, my buddies and I senior year,

the CD player in the car was broken.

I just had a boombox and one CD with me.

It was 311 music was the particular one.

So I just do that on repeat because I've done it.

No problem.

The car.

On PCH, huh?

Yeah.

Yeah, probably a 32 Roadster.

I mean, yeah, I usually like a coupe.

Yeah, but if we're on PCH, I'm just telling you, I that's a great answer.

However,

the 32 Roadster, this guy, CD player.

It's kind of weird.

Yeah, it's a goofy one.

It would be hidden.

That's an Alpine changer in the whole void build.

Or like we did, we mounted the head unit in the back and put the optical eye.

Get it remote.

I didn't think it didn't work with a shit under the sea.

What's the song 311?

Because I'm a 311 fan, but Phil, I wish Phil was here for that.

Yeah, this massive 311.

311.

Probably.

Probably the fuck the bullshit.

It's time to throw down.

Yeah. Yeah, that one hits.

Yeah. Yeah.

I still haven't progressed past like the late 90s in my musical taste.

It's, you know, all Alice and Chains and late 90s.

I don't think any of us had a clue how epic that our generation had it.

Like, I mean, it's honestly it's sort of dunks on it.

Like even a lot of the great classic rock stuff.

I mean, we had some amazing fucking artists.

Yeah. Does everyone think that as they get older, though?

That's what I wonder because I agree with you.

Yeah, I don't know because think it like,

you know, like 60s and early 70s, great.

Like through the 70s, the mid like mid 70s and into the 80, like even into the 80s.

It's Cindy Loper.

You had some like, you know, some banger stuff that was poison.

Guns and roses.

Well, but that like early 80s leopard.

What was in the early 80s?

Me, cool punk scene.

You had some interesting stuff, but no, I don't think so.

I mean, I think there's been a few like you had, you know, 50s.

You know, there's some killer shit back.

And then you had classic rock era.

Grunge era was probably rivaled that.

Yeah, I think so.

And I think now like what I mean from the like, what would you look back at?

Ten years from now, 20

then you would say that the early 2000s brought.

Yeah.

Like I struggled to think rock and roll wise or anything that.

What are these beers?

Yeah, Piley Cyrus.

I mean, the White Stripes may be the only like notable talent from a rock

standpoint, Justin Timberlake.

He's skilled.

I don't know that I won't look back at it and be like, oh, man, JT.

No, I mean, the stage.

You can sing, man.

It's got a voice.

Yeah, voice.

Tell you what, Miley just keeps getting better and better.

Yeah, Josh has a thing for.

Oh, yeah.

My service.

Yeah.

Like.

Past like on an unhealthy level.

Yeah, she's just got it.

She's a Janice Joplin of our generation.

Yeah.

And I think there's something cool about that.

And she's still alive.

Yeah.

But I liked Amy Winehouse, too.

I like.

Here's a little something about me.

I don't like listening to women musicians that much.

But if I.

The chauvinist.

If I do, I want them to be raspy, dirty blues.

Yeah.

Like I like raspy, dirty blues and.

And a little troubled, maybe.

That's that's heavily.

Along with it.

Yeah.

That goes more.

Not really just listening to this.

This goes more in my taste of women.

Like Sierra Farrell.

I love Sierra Farrell because there's an element of like that new one that troubles.

Kells, have you seen that new girl?

Fucking amazing.

Yeah.

Amazing.

But that's the same.

That's what you like, dude.

You're a track because that looks like a train wreck.

And that's why you like it.

Yes, that's the one singing in the desert in front of the.

Yeah, she does.

Yeah.

Yeah, she does a rebe cover and some other stuff.

Yeah, she's good.

She's really good.

Just came across on YouTube.

She was in Chicago Wednesday night.

We couldn't go.

But yeah, I do have a tight.

I also like Christine Aguilera over Britney Spears because she was the.

Dirty one had troubles.

Anyway, as we digress more, more Josh's is there.

Any good podcast takes its takes its turns.

This is how these things go.

Yeah.

All right.

Next up, this is one I think we're all super interested in.

This is a really good, good question.

And your specific skill set.

I'm interested in hearing this answer.

So unlimited budget.

You're going to have somebody build you a vehicle.

You're not building yourself.

You're having somebody build it.

Let me throw another element.

I was going to go there.

Go ahead.

Well, yeah, you can't design.

That's where I was going to.

Who's building it?

Who's designing it?

You can also pick a dream team if you want to.

And what's the build?

Unlimited, absolutely unlimited budget budget.

It would be a trophy truck or some kind of like extreme luxury pre-runners.

OK, cool.

Probably won't get a lot of use out of that in Ohio, but that's OK.

That's that's what I would want.

I would want like a vintage body on it, you know, a C 10 maybe or something.

Something like that.

But done, done to a level that maybe nobody has done one of those trucks before.

You know, the like luxury level.

Not necessarily that design level.

Oh, OK.

So now you're throwing me off because pick somebody to do it.

So not.

Yeah, you're not just widening the fenders to stuff the tire in it.

Like it's right.

I don't want to race truck.

I want it to be like refined and but be like a pure race truck underneath and have

all of that hardware and could it be the Lambo Rambo Lambo?

Could it be the Lambert?

You know, this is his.

No, this is his.

One. Those are cool.

This is his. This is in Josh.

I just wanted to see if we could come together.

Then you can hire him to design that for you for your dream build.

I just thought we were clicking.

OK, I do that.

No, I think vintage American truck probably like a like a C 10, like I said.

Man, a designer for it.

You know, do you guys know Mike Desmond?

Then the name rings a bell.

Mike, I worked with Mike at Mitsubishi, but he designed

Chacune, OK, Troy built.

Yeah. And he's done.

He's done a lot of hot rod stuff.

But Mike would be hands down the designer for it.

Mike's an incredible artist.

He's he's I don't have any tattoos.

If I ever did, I would get Mike to do it.

He taught himself to tattoo on himself.

Really? Yeah.

Yeah.

The name definitely rings a bell, but I can't put a face to the name.

So his tattoos are real.

They're bitching.

That's fucking cool.

I don't think he didn't do all of his,

but I know he he taught himself to he's that you know,

before we were talking about how there's

there you go. Oh, yeah, we're following Wargasser machine.

All right. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

OK, that's Mike. Yeah.

I just know him by his Instagram handle.

Right. So those are his oil paintings there.

Yeah, it's fucking amazing.

Radial engine.

He worked for Jesse James for a while.

He left Mitsubishi to go to work for Jesse.

OK.

That's killer.

Pure hell. Holy shit.

Yeah. Yes.

I know exactly.

This Instagram page.

I don't know him personally.

Yeah.

Keeps going.

Oh, there's a little off road east of.

Yeah.

Look at that.

Yeah.

So so Chevrolet or Ford?

Probably Chevy. OK.

Yeah. So you tend.

There's some of the early work for Chacane.

So he was

he was a senior level designer when I started at Mitsubishi.

And he was kind of my mentor for.

Oh, yeah.

Certain amount of time and helped me with a lot of stuff.

He always had a I thought a wonderful quality to his design work.

The cars just looked planted and solid and just had a bad ass

kind of look to him that I always tried to emulate.

I want that across my back.

You should be a great tattoo.

Yeah, sketches are beautiful.

Wow. Oh, that's awesome.

That's a that's a really good one.

Yeah.

There's some West Coast chopper stuff up there.

Yeah.

You did that other freerunner for man.

That's

good pull, good pull.

Yeah.

Who's building it?

Yeah, he's building it.

I mean, probably like a, I don't know, a kibbitack or somebody somebody

like that that does the trophy trucks.

I don't know all the ins and outs.

I just know I love those things like they are.

If I hit the Lotto tomorrow, I would go race.

Bah, skip right to the trophy truck class.

If you could do that and and race those trucks, I just think they are.

The coolest machines.

I want one for those for street use.

I don't want to do Baja.

I want one for street use.

Those do take a lot of money.

Yeah.

Yes, there's work that goes into those.

You follow Morgan Clark.

Yeah.

Range Rover is.

Yeah, bitchin.

Thanks nuts.

I hope you're the right guy to blend

like refinement, you know, yeah.

There's a lot of guys do a very race, like utilitarian.

It's just like it's a trophy truck.

I think it would be neat to do one where things were designed.

You know, all the control arms were billet.

And I mean, you guys did that with the Colorado, right?

I mean, yeah, we did.

That was I still remember that thing.

I thought that truck was awesome.

Thanks, man.

That was a fun bill.

Yeah, I bet.

Yeah, we got to we use it a little bit.

Tour up the desert a little bit.

Yeah, right after Seaman.

Was that for a customer?

No, that was, you know, one of those dollar car deals.

We just. Wow.

Yeah, I got like way carried away with it.

You know, yeah, you're just supposed to put wheels and paint job on those.

Yeah, me and Phil did not see eye to eye on that.

Really? I didn't consult with him.

Sort of had a vision of what I wanted to do with it.

And then went after it.

Is Phil the business business side?

Yeah, you know, he might, I don't know, voice a reason.

Yeah, OK, OK.

But shit, we did that thing start to finish.

I want to say like two months.

Oh, wow. Yeah.

You probably learned a lot, though, to learn to fit into the off road.

Yeah, and that's why you've got to do stuff like that.

We really did. I mean, I learned a ton about, you know,

and we experimented with a lot of new vendors, a lot of new parts.

Yeah, that was really eye opening and I learned a shit ton.

Yeah, that was that was a neat truck.

Thank you.

Yeah, like that, like, like where you're good idea.

Yeah, yeah.

Um.

Favorite car, another one by good guys,

but you can answer however you'd like.

Your favorite car show or event.

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It's honestly, it's gone downhill a little bit, but in the past, maybe 10 years ago,

the the Hot Rod reunion at Bowling Green Beach Band.

Yes, I just went last weekend and it's it's not like a lot of these shows.

It's not quite what it used to be, unfortunately.

But in in the heyday, I I loved it, man, the Cackle Fest when it was all over the

the mix of drags and a pretty decent car show.

Like and because I'm partial to the 60s drag stuff, that one was right up my alley.

I loved it.

You know how I know we're getting old?

How's that? Any time the way you look?

Any time we say it's not what it used to be.

Yeah, I hate to be that guy.

But that's what it is.

This this is not what it used to be.

The music is not what it used to be.

These cars are not that's how you know you're getting old.

Yeah. When anything you talk about, if you talk about something and you say,

it's not what it used to be.

Yeah.

Because it means you're old enough to remember what it used to be.

Yeah.

Regardless of your right or wrong.

Yeah. It means you're old and grumpier too.

I find myself getting getting a little grumpy.

Yeah, you get a little bit.

I just don't think you care less patience.

Yeah. You don't care to sugarcoat your opinion as much as you get older.

Yeah.

I think that's probably a good thing.

Yeah.

That's an event I've always like Father's Day weekend.

I always went with my old man and this year we took I took my son and went

with my dad and that was that one was fun.

I like it was hell back in the day or hell.

You had like pure hell there and you had all kinds of crazy shit running.

Yeah.

Way back in the day.

What?

That's this.

Here's something I don't understand and I'm a huge I love the styling of

you know, 60s front engine dragsters I'm in love with.

Oh, here we go.

The cackle fest thing.

I do not understand it.

Really?

I mean, they were people race those not that long ago.

Yeah. Like why do we not send it down the drag strip?

Because it's a little dangerous.

I mean, there's a lot dangerous.

Right. Drive the fucking thing, dude.

Like you.

What?

Yeah, well, OK, let's let's fire it up.

It sounds awesome.

Yeah.

I want to see that fucker make at least an eighth mile pass.

Well, I don't think they meet any of the NHRA safety.

So it's not their choice.

NHRA is like you can't roll cage.

The roll hoops on them are all really low.

Like if you look at the modern nostalgia top fuel, the ones that they're running

still, they don't look as good because the seating position is higher.

It's not like a real slingshot where you're down in it and it has more of a

obtrusive cage on it and the look at engine still in the front, you know,

it's all the same recipe, but the look is a little bit different.

So I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing that's why.

So this is more of the sanctioning body that's not allowing them.

I think so.

I don't their job.

They're like, I want to run this thing.

You won't let me.

So I'm just going to start it.

Yeah.

And at that you were making friends.

I tell you what, you're out there making friends.

He thinks so.

Well, if they all want to race it, then maybe I am.

If they're like this sucks, I want to run this car.

I'm sure some of those old like that ready to go.

I'm sure they would.

And you know what would be cool is maybe just a quick burnout or a little dry hop

or something and dry hop and then shut it off.

I mean, you can do you do it at the I mean, they do events where they do the

like pit road drags, you know, where they do, you know, 600 foot or something like

that, whatever, just a little blast off down through there.

It's it's awesome to hear it, to experience it, but it's so much work for them to do that.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

You don't want to drive it.

I was talking to one guy and he said,

Nitro is anywhere from 20 to $50 a gallon now.

Oh, wow.

And I mean, I don't know how.

You're going to go through three or four gallons in a run.

Yeah, so he was fucking president.

Nitro, what they're charging for gallon for nitro.

I don't think we get nitro from over there.

It's just just a guess.

I could be wrong.

They do push start some of them, which is kind of cool, like that that whole process.

But yeah, I'm with you.

They were made they were made to run.

I mean, I love them.

There's nothing in my eyes.

There's nothing cooler than a front engine.

Yeah, I love that era.

Yeah.

I mean, so bad.

One year down there, I was drooling over one of them and the old guy asked me if I

wanted to sit in it and I was like, shit.

Yeah, you know, I've never sat in one before and I started to crawl in.

He showed me how to do it.

And he's like, your legs go under the axle on this one.

And I was like, you know, I was like, wait, what?

And he was like, yeah, they go under.

I was like, well, my my knees don't bend that way.

I was supposed to do that.

And it was, I guess that's a thing.

That was a tight.

Yeah, so I thought it's over and chunking between your legs.

Right.

Yeah, legs under and chunk in between your legs.

Just a little bit.

Have you ever been to I was looking up my calendar to see it was last weekend.

Have you ever been to Vint, Indy Vintage weekend?

Yeah.

The the road races at the Speedway.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's a fun time.

That's a good one.

That's a fun time because you were when you were talking about

Frennig and Dragsters that I feel that way about 50s Indy cars.

You know, I mean, equally is dangerous.

Yeah, yeah.

I love like silhouettes and paints like finishes.

Because they they also made them like shiny and cool.

That's your like oval.

Yeah, like all the millers.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

There's hot rods.

What's the one that it's a.

It's a mint, blue and gold.

I can't remember the delivery name.

It's a very famous car with the with the polished Hallibrands on it.

And that's like they also they made things like shinier than they had to for race

cars to because they're you know, they're put on a show.

But you go there and at that weekend, you've got everything imaginable.

Running, I mean, 80s and ask our stuff.

Yeah, 40s and 50s Indy car stuff and all racing, you know,

grand am cars, GT cars, arca cars, it's like that.

Right. It's really, really fun.

Trans Am cars.

Yeah, all kinds of school, the pits are all open.

So you're just walking through looking at all this shit and seeing it.

It's a really fun time.

You'll see guys out there that were racing those like.

They raced that exact car.

Now he's 85 years old or whatever.

And he still owns it.

He comes out for this weekend.

He's got his old white bib, you know, overalls on a slide that pulls it

himself and going to write it's fucking cool.

Yeah, really cool shit.

The access to this to the speedway.

Like, yeah, you can walk in and out of the pit stalls.

Come on.

Wherever you want to do.

You can never do that there.

Yeah, it's really a fun time.

Next up. All right.

This is a new one.

This one's not brought to you by good guys.

I don't want to get them in trouble for this.

This is completely by us.

Good guys is a great sponsor.

But this idea right here came specifically.

This is brand new one.

So you you're a music guy.

Talked about listening to music, right?

Very specific genre.

So we want you to pick a builder,

a vehicle builder that is in this industry.

And what would they be?

Oh, you're applying it that way for him.

How'd you want to do it?

Well, I mean, typically we have builders on here.

So you would be inquiring with them as to what

musician or what music group they would compare themselves to.

It's also was the way I saw it.

Oh, I didn't see it that way.

OK, OK, but that's fine.

We can do it how this is.

So this came up.

Look, this came up last podcast.

We were talking about it and I'm thinking I'm like, what if you as a car builder,

what would you compare yourself and your cars to music wise?

Right, we had your style music.

Yeah, so Josh thought that Rad rides by Troy.

He thought that Troy and Adam would be like Simon and Garfunkel.

Which, yeah, they're it's a great group.

I don't know if that was meant.

Very technical.

No, very technical.

Yeah, technical group.

Yeah, we had John Wargo from the Customs shop on.

I thought he might I went ahead and offered up that I feel like his car builds.

If if they were a band, it would be poison.

I don't know if you're familiar with John Wargo.

He said Guns N' Roses and he and I was close.

Real close.

So.

I get you.

If you your style.

What musical act would most represent?

You the style of cars.

I design.

Yeah, I guess it would be a little difference.

He's not a car builder, a car designer.

Yeah.

You know, your skill set, your the way you draw a car, what your style is.

What would that compare to as a music group or even what you're into?

That's a good one.

This is this is a deep pull.

It is.

I all the cars I do, I try to make them.

Badass and aggressive.

Some may be more refined, some may be prettier or softer, but all all of them are

aggressive, so black flag hot rods at the core.

Henry Rawlings and black flag.

Yeah.

Oh.

It's probably the first black flag reference on this podcast ever.

Yeah.

Babe.

Man.

I mean, is Metallica to mainstream?

No, it could be.

Yeah, I think every night, you know, they had some in there that were kind of kind

of a little slower.

Yeah, the great guitar riffs.

Yeah.

No, it fits.

I mean, like if you put a song like a Metallica song and

sir, play that in the background and scroll through.

Scroll through.

Yeah, that it would hit.

Yeah.

That's not not a deep one, but yeah.

No, it's good.

It's not it's not supposed to be deep.

It's just it's it's it's telling it's another way to get to know, you know, the

inner workings.

Yeah.

Josh was going to go with Miley Cyrus wrecking ball.

Yeah, it's just for me.

Yeah.

No, no, no.

We're not doing ours yet.

No, we are not individually.

What would you think Eric Blacks would be?

I think he would go with something like George Jones.

It's great, you know, it's not for everybody.

It's great.

And it's when you look at like take

classic like nostalgic hot rods, I think is what Eric shines at.

And look at that like country music.

George Jones is said to be the greatest, you know, of all time.

Vintage.

Nostalgic, traditional hot rods.

An argument could be made that he's designed some of the best ones.

I see where you're going with that.

See, I don't mind that.

I would have went with Vince Gill.

You've told me behind the scenes.

Yep.

You've said horrible things about Vince Gill.

But he's got a voice.

And I've brought it up and you have you have corrected me and let me know how.

I've told you what I almost sexual you think.

Told you what I think about when I see him.

Oh, you are.

That was on purpose.

Yeah.

What are you?

You weren't supposed to say any of that.

You're supposed to just laugh.

I was supposed to go with the only Vince Gill's the best.

You know, I got the voice of an angel.

But I don't see how it correlates.

No.

No bullshit.

That aside just because we give Eric.

Eric. That's he's.

He's as cowboy as they come real deal.

He had a good great story.

Told us exactly how he grew up and how he's gotten where he's gotten.

Nobody's going to be whaling.

Right. Nobody.

Just like he never give a 10.

Not. You know, it's always going to be 9.8.

Nobody gets a 10.

Sure.

There is no whaling in my books.

But he's as.

He's as close as they come.

In that.

Stylist you basically say that was right. That's what you liked. Yeah, I did like I like George Jones. Yeah, I like the possum

Last but not least no we haven't gone to this one in a while

We gave it a little bit of a break, but what's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

So in in the past life when I was a little bit cooler much younger I'd raised jet skis

Oh, oh

Standups no, I I raced a C2, but it was like a smaller one

It was called an HX and it was kind of more of like a sport bike on the water a narrow hall that you could lean over

But I was before car design that that was my life like

Well, you know last part of high school. That's what I what I did

and a buddy of mine that was again kind of a mentor figure

he was older at the time but

At that time there was a particular class that I was racing in and

The old man had the ski tuned perfect and I was you know winning a lot in that in that particular class and

And he told me he was like if you go to the starting line

Knowing that you're going to win you'll win. Okay, and it was it was kind of you can apply it to a lot of things in life

It's kind of the pot, you know the the the positive thinking the power of positive thought

Anaphis the the key is you can't lie to yourself. So you have to really believe it

Right, but if you know you can do something and you and you truly believe it

You'll do it

So that's something that in design that's helped me a lot

You know if if I sit down and every creative person every designer kind of goes through this

Emotional roller coaster it happens to me with every sketch I do every rendering

There's a there's a period in in that rendering where I'm like dude. I suck man

I can't do this. What am I doing?

Like this is not turning out like any artist the way I wanted and

Then you'll do it add a little touch to it and you'll come back out of that hump

And it's it's this constant kind of emotional roller coaster that you put yourself through and kind of keeping that in mind like look

I know I know I've done this before I know what I'm doing. It's going to turn out okay

Like I know it's gonna gonna work. Yeah, it'll work

You can beat it in a submission and it'll work

So that was something that kind of always stuck with me and sure it was that's really good. Yeah

I love that. I've always told my son. I always use this

He was like competitively skateboarding for a while and when he was chasing a trick that he couldn't land

I always tell him to picture himself landing picture yourself landing that and I do it with motocross

He races motocross picture yourself winning. Yeah picture yourself land in the end. Yeah

Yeah, sort of the same philosophy and it's I think it helped him. Yeah, maybe he'll look back on that one day

They either say

My dad was an asshole. I'll be like remember my dad telling me this

I

Don't think so. It's it's it's good. It's I mean you have to have a certain amount of

Practice and skill set behind it right of course to back it up and like I said, I can't lie to yourself

You're the one person you can't lie to right you're not dropping it on that 12 foot vert ramp

Right like right first time out. I just got on the skateboard. Okay. Do it picture yourself landing this misty flip

I want to picture myself liking you

You think it'll work. I don't know I'm gonna start doing it every day

I'm just going there

You don't have to tell yourself that I think you just naturally are drawn to my charm

Gary this is absolutely been fucking amazing. Oh, it's been a pleasure guys

Yeah, been a blast dude, but before we let you go. I got I do want to know

What's the one and maybe you can't share this because that's could be your secret weapon?

What's the one?

What's the car that you would drop everything?

Tomorrow if somebody called and said they want to build they want you to design it

I

Have a Cobra. I've actually done a lot of design work on it and it was it was a stillborn project

Did CAD model everything yep and the customer decided he didn't want to do it and I actually bought it back from him

I

Bought the design rights back from him because when I do something for a customer

They they own it as far as I'm concerned before I put it on Instagram

I get their permission like when I do work for somebody they own that work

So I bought it back from him

But that's one that I felt strongly enough about it to you know put my money where my mouth was and and buy it back

So yeah, that would be the one I can't I can't disclose much more if there's somebody out there

It's ready to go for it. But yeah, that's

You have to on air right now admit you're gonna come back and do this again

We got to run it back because I think there's so much more and we're gonna figure something out

I think maybe needs to be like maybe a

Segment or something with Gary every you know so often whatever this was a really lot of fun

I don't think we even like touched the iceberg

Yeah, like tip tip of the iceberg. I'd love to you just throwing out stuff. Oh, yeah

This is jet ski racing. It's like that. Yeah, that was a random. It's like so many things. Yeah, it's lots of stories

Yeah, that had to stop when car design school started, but it's a lot more to this book

Yeah, I also liked how we started off the podcast with you saying that your wife said you'd be okay

Because it's about your favorite topic you and we ended with all you had my best piece of advice is just picture yourself winning

Oh

Right in this is sounding like a Josh

Think we just became best friends

Gary it's been awesome and really cool dude. Yeah, pleasure guys. Thank you

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