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How did I open that video?
This is not your father's episode of Head to Head.
That cost me $50 to produce and got me fired.
Jason Camisa.
My first ever appearance on the Motortrend channel.
I just looked right at camera, I'm like, oh, you thought I was Carlos.
You know him from the Hagerty channel, Automotive Journalism.
When did your passion for cars begin?
By the time I was two years old, I was completely obsessed with cars.
And I got fired continually.
I was in a couple of horrendous car crashes as a passenger.
I said, do you want to talk us through what happened with that crash?
The headlights were totally mis-aimed.
We could see barely anything on this twisty back road.
And then we see the sign, the 25-mile-an-hour left turn coming up.
And right where we went off, it was a 17-foot total drop.
From there, we're just airborne and then the landing.
Two girls were coming the other direction, pulled over and said,
just call the coroner.
There's no way they lived.
Jason, when people talk about what made them fall in love with cars,
they often recite a moment from their earliest years.
Maybe Top Gear.
Everybody speaks of that one moment that really stood out to them.
And for me, one of them was actually a YouTube video.
And it was all the way back in 2012 now.
And that video has now amassed over 133 million views.
Can you guess what it was?
It was.
This is not your father's...
How did I open that video?
This is not your father's head-to-head.
Because it was the Bugatti Veyron drag race video.
That was...
And I just remember the thumbnail so profoundly of the Veyron
sat next to that white Lamborghini event still.
And they were like the two heavyweights at the time.
And we're not going to gloss over 133 million views.
And as a reference point, because it's almost impossible to even
visualize that amount of people watching something or you.
The UK population, where I'm from, 70 million people are smidge under.
So that is twice the entire population of the UK watched a drag race video
that you guys got to do and have fun without in the middle of the desert.
A terrible drag race that cost me $50 to produce and got me fired.
There's your...
There's the opening for the episode.
Camisa tells what got him fired.
But before we get into that, how does it make you feel that you can
meet a random car enthusiast like me?
And a video like that when on the day it must have just
seemed like another day recording, another day having fun,
another day dicking around.
Maybe there's more to it.
A video like that could have such a profound effect to someone's
young or whoever at the beginning of something they're passionate about
that's led them all the way to sat here with you opposite.
Like, does it...
How does that make you feel?
I love that.
And what it does is it forces me to think of the people who did this for me.
Right?
To me, that moment was Tiff Nadel, E39M5.
Everything Tiff did make me laugh.
He just tickled me because his delivery was hilarious.
Be very happy you're British.
There are things you can do with the English language that I'm not permitted to do
because I'm American.
I mean, I can't use big words.
We sound like idiots when we try.
And I've always said I will do an entire Icons episode at one point
with a British accent so I can use all sorts of flowery language and whatnot.
But just watching Tiff between the childish nature of his slides
and then the sophistication of all the words that he's able to use
because he's British just fucking tickled me.
Oh, am I allowed to curse?
Okay.
Just absolutely tickled me.
And so that moment for me was Tiff.
So to hear you say that that moment for you was that video is crazy
because the backstory, what happened with that?
That was just a moment in my life.
I think it was that video was one of like two or three of the most profound bits.
You picture the YouTube thumbnail tester we open now
where you can do three different thumbnails.
And my three different thumbnails would have been Top Gear, that video,
and probably hanging around with like a few of my dad's friends
that had some crazy cars.
Like that for me was the combination of everything that collected
in my earliest years to form the passion that I had for vehicles.
You mentioned Tiff, but where was that on your timeline?
Because I've looked into your story and it's not straightforward.
You moved around a hell of a lot as a kid.
So when did your passion for cars begin?
And was that pre-tip?
Probably, oh yeah, that was pretty tough.
And it was probably in utero.
I mean, so I don't, I don't really remember being a baby,
but I am told that by the time I was two years old,
I was completely obsessed with cars to the point where I was driving
my twin sister crazy by like, look at this or look at that.
And you know, two, I could tell every, I knew every car on the road
and which is a little bit of weird thing, two, three,
because you don't read yet, but I knew what a Buick looked like
and I knew what who knew, who knew.
I mean, so by the time I was five, it was fully formed.
All I talked about was cars in school, drove everyone crazy about that
and then discovered car magazines when I was 10 or 11
and that was like a big deal.
Like then it was just, and then you sort of find your niche.
I went to a very small school, there were 68 kids in my grade.
And so to find anyone you fit in with was difficult.
I was not a popular student, I was not popular at all,
but I did find my sort of people because of the cars
and that sort of amplified the car craziness.
You sit opposite me and when I see you on screen,
you talk and present with so much energy, so much enthusiasm.
But that wasn't you when you were like 9, 10, 11.
I mean, I was enthusiastic and had energy,
but it was just the wrong energy.
Like it wasn't, I wasn't a jock, I didn't play sports.
I was super nerdy and loved like math and science and cars
in a school where everyone was like,
if you're a guy, you're playing football,
which I was also the smallest, second smallest kid in my school.
And so there was no, my parents made me play basketball,
which was a comedy routine.
It was just half the size of all the other kids.
Yeah, it just wasn't popular.
I was nerdy and weird.
And that time luck wasn't on your side then.
Where, where was you?
Was that New York?
That was New York, yeah.
That was right outside of New York City.
It's insane to hear a small school outside New York City,
which to us, especially maybe one of the visually biggest places
we could imagine you as.
So when you leave New York City limits,
you go along North, along the Hudson River,
and you have a bunch of small river towns.
And these were towns that existed for shipping
and they had small industries in the 17, 1800s.
And this was just one of the little river towns.
And it was, I think population, a couple thousand people,
four, five thousand people.
And so each town had its own little school district.
Still does.
And the school was tiny.
I mean, we had four digit phone numbers.
Everyone, I know everyone's, I could probably list out
of the 68 kids, probably 50 of them
with their phone numbers to this day.
It was just that small tight knit of a place to grow up.
And being near to the Big Apple,
would you see stuff at that age driving around
that you're like, I want to have a go in one of those one day.
I want to have a go in one of those one day.
I think, yes, but, and it was a sort of,
it wasn't by any stretch like a wealthy town,
but it was a sort of, you know,
upper sort of professional,
like a lot of professionals lived in this town
and then commuted to the city.
There were a lot of soap opera actresses
in our town for whatever reason.
And they sort of hop on the train into Manhattan,
which was a 25 minute ride.
But there was not a lot of extreme wealth,
like, you know, a Mercedes was a thing.
You know, it's in the US today,
especially come to an event like car week,
and there's, it's just a billion dollar car.
I'm exaggerating, obviously, big, big stuff.
That didn't exist.
I mean, when my friend's dad got a 300 D turbo Mercedes,
it was like, oh my God, oh, Mercedes.
It wasn't like, oh yeah,
he got the base model with this, whatever.
It was just a different time economically.
And we had one car dealership in the town
and it was a Peugeot dealer.
So there was, I mean, that was a fancy car.
And yeah, so there was definitely stuff
that I would see that's, whoa, what's that?
But never super car stuff,
never exotics, I never saw any of that stuff growing up.
So you've painted us a picture of the place,
but it was only one of many places.
But before we go to the next few places
that made up your earliest years,
can you paint us a picture of the who?
Like, who were your parents, your siblings on?
What did that life look like growing up?
And were any of them remotely
had any petrol flowing through their veins?
No.
I mean, my dad had bizarre taste in cars
when he was younger.
And so we somehow wound up with a Saab 900 turbo in 1981,
900 turbo, which was just a spaceship.
I mean, who know what a Saab was.
And it broke down continually.
But yeah, and my parents were from Brooklyn originally.
So we're Brooklyn Italians.
So everyone talks like this.
It's just how it's done.
Most of my family is still in Brooklyn and Staten Island,
which is the sort of like Italian ghetto of New York.
Ghetto in the traditional sense, not that it's shitty
because they beat me up for saying that.
They have somebody whack me.
Can't get about that for a while.
Break my fucking legs.
Yeah, Brooklyn.
And then when I was right before we started school
in earnest, my parents realized it was not the best place
to raise kids.
So we moved out to the suburbs, which was there.
My dad, when I was born, was slinging tires at a tire shop
because that was the best way to work out,
like just complete fitness and nut.
And he was like, well, if I can just throw tires up onto
warehouse shelves, it's like an all day workout lunatic.
Wound up, mouthing off to his boss.
So his two jobs were a tire slinger and a warehouse
and a bicycle courier for cardio,
between two offices of an editing agency.
And he mouthed off to his boss at one point and said,
you know, your editor is a fucking idiot.
I could do a better job.
And being the sarcastic New York Italian that his boss was,
oh yeah, show me.
So my father pulled an all nighter, edited a documentary,
and they released it as he finished it and it won an Emmy.
So that was the sort of beginning of his career.
And he's like, oh, I'll just do this.
Wound up being an executive producer on Madison Avenue,
you know, a madman, literally, in for TV commercials.
And that was what sort of enabled us to move out of
kind of an apartment into a small little house.
And the sob, which was crazy.
And the bourgeois that followed, which was even crazier.
And my mom stayed at home with my sister, me.
I have twin sister and it's just the two of us.
So just sort of normal, nothing was normal about my family.
But on the outside, it appeared to be a normal,
you know, suburban life.
What happened around the time if we accelerate a bit further forward
that you wanted to get into your first car?
Because there's a story there, right?
Well, you're talking about a 14, I bought a Super Beetle.
You couldn't really drive.
I did, but I couldn't, but I did, but I couldn't.
Yeah, I think by, I assume that's what you're referring to.
So when I said the magazine, the car magazine sort of solidified
like, you know, my friend group, that was my best friend, Jason.
We're still friends to this day.
We actually, I said something nasty.
He was a new kid to school and anyone new,
anyone who came after second, first or second grade in the school district
was new forever.
But Jason was like, new in seventh grade.
I said something, he said something to me and we were going to fight after school.
And that was it.
We were meeting on the playground and I was like, oh, like this just
never ends well for anyone, because usually whoever didn't get beat up
gets like suspended from school and whatnot.
And I was tiny.
Thank God he was tiny.
And I'm like, okay, let's just go.
And we wound up sat next to each other in the next class
in a social studies class.
And I pull out a car and driver magazine, put it on the desk and he's like,
whoa, hold on, you're in the cars.
And boom, it's the best friends.
The fight was canceled and replaced with us hanging out,
like talking about Chevy Cavaliers and other weird shit box 80s cars.
And so at that was, we were 12 probably.
And then two years later, he's like, dude, let's buy a car.
And so we found this little blue 72 Super Beetle
flat wing screen Super Beetle that was for sale at the top of the hill
above the school and it was 200 bucks.
He kicked in a hundred.
I kicked in a hundred.
We walked down to the car parts store, bought a battery,
which weighed as much as either one of us did,
carried it up this huge hill, started, I drove around the block
and then my parents found out about it and sort of went away.
No, they weren't happy.
My dad, who's kind of a lunatic, was like, that's amazing.
My son bought a car and my mother wanted to kill him and me.
And then my father's like, what are you going to do with it?
I'm like, well, we don't know.
Of course, 14, you have no plan.
And he was like, let's go get it.
And I'm like, well, I can't drive it home.
I'll do it.
So he drove it and we had a garage, like a small one car garage
that he had two motorcycles in and nothing else.
So we threw it in the garage and Jason and I started working on it,
which really meant breaking more stuff than we were fixing.
And at some point, my father got very frustrated
because he couldn't find any of his tools or anything
and kicked the blue piece of Smurf shit out of,
get that blue piece of Smurf shit the fuck out of here.
Yeah.
So that was the end of that.
Went to Jason's house and then eventually went to a junkyard.
I'm guessing then as soon as the opportunity came
round to actually get your license and do it legally,
you were all over it like a rash.
I was, but I had been dealt quite the blow because at 15,
I moved to Germany.
And so 17, I would have been able to drive in New York.
Germany is driving at ages 18.
And my last two and a half years of high school were in Germany
and I graduated at 17.
So was never allowed to have a car in high school.
Which was the biggest haul in your story.
Oh yeah.
I mean, it was just a heartbreak.
Didn't stop me from buying another Volkswagen Beetle.
This was a 73, 1300 that I bought with another friend
in Germany for 100 marks.
So $60 at the time.
But yeah, there was no driving to school.
My high school sucked.
No, but Green wasn't quite open back then.
Let's go and do a couple laps.
Oh, was it?
I mean, we're not talking the 1920s here.
Not at all.
Misha wasn't tearing round at that point.
But also Jason didn't have a license.
So, you know, my dad had an Audi 9020 valve quattro,
which was super hot.
And my mom had a Cadet, a C Cadet, D Cadet,
D Cadet, GSI Cabriolet.
So like we had two fast cars and I couldn't drive them.
Except one.
My parents went out of town and I would drive them around.
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Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the podcast.
And I really hope to bring you some more inspirational guests soon.
So being in Germany was that when, because you love BMWs, right?
I love a lot of different car companies,
but yeah, there are many BMWs that I love.
I've seen many a photo of you next to BMWs,
so as part of your story,
I've seen that you were desperate to get into a BMW
as like one of your first proper legal driving cars.
And what happened?
My bitch mother, I love her.
She wouldn't, I had put my life savings in her account
while I was moving across country.
And I found and this is, so now this is now college.
This is my second year of college.
So my first year of college, no car.
So I went all the way through high school not driving
and first year of college not driving
was in a couple of horrendous car crashes as a passenger.
And then finally I'm done.
I'm going to get a car.
And I had moved down to Florida.
And I found this is 1994.
And I found an 87, 325 I sedan,
black with tan interior, 68,000 miles.
The woman wanted $12 or $14,000 for this car.
I got her down to $5,000.
I gave her this cock and bull sob story,
most of which was true,
that I had just finished a year of physical therapy,
following a crash.
And I just said my dream car and blah, blah, blah, blah.
So I give her $500 as a deposit.
And then I go back home and I said to my mom,
like, hey, hand me, give me a check
because I'm going to go get my car.
And her biggest fuck up as a parent
was saying, you're not having a BMW.
Like your first car is just not going to be a BMW.
And I'm like, yes it is.
It's my money handed over and we had a bit of a war,
which she won because I was sort of in this ridiculous,
not ridiculous, but there's a phase at 18
where you're half an adult and half a child
and you still don't realize you can bulldoze your parents.
Like you still want to listen to them
and you think you should.
And so I lost the car because by the time I convinced
my mother that I was going to call the police on her
for stealing my money, I didn't do it.
But that was like, come on, look, what are you doing?
This is not fair.
By the time I convinced her to give me the money,
the old lady had realized what I had done
and re-listed it for $14,000, kept my deposit.
And that was the end of my BMW E30 story.
But I showed her because I have two E30s now.
At that time, and the story leading up to that time
of everything that happened, the good, the bad, and the ugly,
did you have a trajectory?
Did you know what you wanted to do?
Was you completely lost?
I mean, at that point, I was first year of school,
so I was a mechanical engineering major in college.
And I knew I wanted to work with cars.
I just didn't know what that meant.
And so my thought process was go into mechanical engineering
and then let it all figure itself out.
Which, you know, doesn't really work that way.
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Did you have, aside from that though, like a dream?
Like did you have like, oh,
if I was to achieve my dream, it wouldn't be this?
No, I'm not much of a dreamer, I guess.
No, I just was sort of, my thought always was,
I don't need to know exactly where I'm going,
but if I sort of want to get over there,
and there is this sort of place on the horizon
that's happiness and financial stability,
I'll just walk whatever direction leads me there
and go with whatever opportunities present themselves.
And that's sort of how I've traipse through life.
Like, okay, if this works, I'll just go in that direction,
as long as it's leading me towards productivity or happiness.
And sometimes something happens along that road
that you just don't expect to happen
and can knock you right back.
So do you want to talk us through
what happened with that crash?
There were a couple of them, but there were.
There was, yes.
I've got this whole shape.
The big one.
The big one was three weeks after the second biggest one.
The second biggest one was a Billie Joel concert,
actually, with my girlfriend at the time.
And she had this habit of loving to bury the needle
in her Chevy S10 pickup.
So it went to 90 miles an hour and then you didn't know.
And we were on a back road.
They had shut down alcohol.
That's interesting.
Shut down alcohol sales at the concert an hour in.
And Billie Joel came on stage and said,
look, my friend was just killed in a DUI accident.
We're stopping alcohol sales
and you guys need to all get home safe.
Fair, no problem there.
We weren't drinking.
We made it about an hour and a half from the concert
and she was coming down a big hill needle buried.
And there was a four way,
a three way intersection, I guess,
with a Ford Tempo waiting to turn onto this road.
And as we were entering the intersection,
the guy just floored it
and just pulled out right in front of us
and there was no time.
And so we hit the back of the Tempo hard enough
that it crushed the back bumper
was basically at the back of the front seats.
And there was a girl in the back seat
who was, thank God, lying sideways across the seat.
So we were able to pull her right out of the car,
unscathed.
She was totally unhurt.
But it was a probably 90 mile an hour impact.
It was huge.
They were at the concert
and they were drunk,
which was just the irony of great.
Thanks, Billy Joel.
Like didn't work.
Great, great idea to stop alcohol sales,
but these fuckers were drunk.
To me, it was fascinating.
The G forces were like indescribable.
Like I was like fascinating.
What a word to describe.
I remember the scientific part of you
from when you're young.
I was in engineering.
Okay, this hurt like hell.
And this is really screwed me up.
But, but you think,
you know, you're like in a little car crash as a kid.
Like I was in a couple of fender benders.
And you're like, oh, okay, whatever.
Nothing prepares you for that kind of impact.
I remember, clear as day, she blacked out.
She doesn't remember any of it,
which is probably for the better.
But I distinctly remember like,
oh no, we're going to hit that guy hard.
And I remember flying forward,
getting caught by the seatbelt
and then having my arms punch the dashboard
in this like moment.
And I was like, this is,
that was unbelievable.
Look over.
She's just glazed over eyes.
No response at all.
I turned the ignition off, put it in park.
And we just to a stop in the middle of the road.
We have no lights.
We're in the middle of nowhere.
And all of a sudden she starts screaming,
my truck, my truck.
And I'm like, really?
That's your fucking concern right now.
But, you know, like she was in shock.
And long story short,
neither of us got really hurt,
but whiplash concussions,
the sort of normal stuff car protected us.
Everything's fine.
Three weeks later,
we're in the rental car
while they're still processing the paperwork
to total her pickup truck.
And it was a Plymouth Sundance,
otherwise known as a death trap,
five-door hatchback,
this white thing with red interior.
And she was, a friend of ours fell down the stairs,
hurt her knee,
and we were going to the store
to get her a bag of ice.
And she was bitching,
this fucking thing is so slow,
it won't even do 100.
I'm like, of course, me.
I'm like, yes, it will.
It's electronically limited to 112 miles an hour.
And she's like, watch.
That's to hold my beer line
that everyone you guys at home know
do not fall for the trap.
The headlights were totally mis-aimed.
We could see barely anything
on this twisty back road.
She floors it.
I'm like, we hit the limiter.
It's 112.
Told ya.
Everything's fine.
And then we see the sign,
the 25-mile-an-hour left turn coming up.
Locked them up,
locked up the rears,
and kind of fishtailed went off.
And right where we went off
was this left-hand bend.
It was a 17-foot total drop.
So it was four feet to a service road
that was coming up out of the field
and then 13 more feet into the field.
We took down a bunch of small trees
and a bunch of sign posts,
hit the lower, that access road,
sort of front-on.
That fired her airbag.
It was only one airbag in the car.
And then from there,
we're just airborne
and landed somewhere in the field.
And it was negative 40 ambient air temperature that night.
It was low.
So it was probably minus 38.
Thank God we hit on all four wheels
and not on the roof
where we'd both be dead
and rolled five and a half times,
which they determined
by looking at the scuffs
in the frozen ground side-over-side
and landed upside down.
Meanwhile, again,
she's blacked out immediately,
has no recollection of any of this.
That first hit,
I was like,
holy shit,
like that was almost as hard
as the pickup truck.
Like that was genuinely,
wow, ouch.
And I was like,
why is my right hand burning
gas from her airbag?
I didn't realize they expelled
to the side so much hot air.
So that happened.
And I was like, whoa, oh my God,
that, whatever.
And I reached for my seatbelt,
not realizing we are flying,
while this is all happening,
we're flying through the air.
And I'm like, oh God,
let me get out of this thing.
And then the landing.
That landing down on the field
on frozen solid pavement,
this was 12, 9, 93.
I'll never forget that date,
December 9, 93.
That impact was a downward G-Force.
You know, we landed,
and both of our seats completely broke
and collapsed and reclined,
which then means you only have a shoulder,
a lap belt, no shoulder belt.
So from that point on,
that knocked the,
I mean, I saw stars from that impact.
What the fuck was that?
And then the side over side
and the G-Force is in every direction
and it's pitch black.
I have no idea
where, what the hell is happening.
I thought we were stopped.
And it was just impacts from every direction.
I just, I got hit in the face
with the bag of ice
and I know this only because it was wet.
And we just bounced around the car
and then stopped.
And I thought, holy shit,
like where are we?
What just happened?
What's going on?
And why is it so cold in here?
Well, the back hatch had flung open.
And I didn't realize I was upside down.
I was just kind of dazed
until I hit the seatbelt button
and smashed my face right into the,
right into the roof of the car.
And I'm like, she's not breathing.
What, like what's going on?
And so I crawl out of the,
I tried to, while I was hanging,
I tried to kick in the glass on the side,
which I couldn't do.
And one of crawling out of that hatchback,
burning my hand, other hand,
on the exhaust pipe,
which I used to stand up.
And I just heard,
and you know, my mind Hollywood,
like the car's gonna explode.
I look and I can kind of see,
it's just a tire making that noise.
So I jumped back under the car
to grab her and she starts coughing
and then face plants on the ground,
which I still have a six sense of humor,
so that's funny.
But she's, and the first thing out of her mouth,
where are my shoes?
Like, so her shoes flew off in the accident.
We have no idea.
We never found them.
Whatever.
So we walked up to the closest,
I saw lights and we crawled up the hill
and ran down the street.
And it was freezing.
It was 40 below zero,
which 40 below is the interesting fact
of being minus 40 Fahrenheit and Celsius.
Somewhere around minus 40 in both scales.
And we ran over to this farmhouse
and just I banged on the door
and the lady answers the door.
She doesn't know where we are.
She doesn't know, like, she knows who I am,
but nothing else.
She's just, you know, concussed.
And the lady opens the door.
I'm like, hi, we were just in a terrible accident.
Can you please call an ambulance for us?
And the lady was like, they survived.
There were two girls in their house
who were coming the other direction,
saw us go off and pulled over and said,
just call the coroner.
There's no way they lived.
They were going like, they estimated 130 miles an hour.
That's it.
Plenty of Sundays could do 130.
But I don't even remember ever seeing that on coming car.
So that started many, many years of physical therapy
and just a lot of pain.
But at the end of the day, we lived,
like lived without any genuine serious injury.
Did you grow up with any sense of fear?
Yeah, I was always a scaredy cat.
Minus 40, north 100 mile an hour.
Haven't you read?
You're not in control of the car.
Is there any, like, any sense of like,
this could go very badly?
Especially after just being in a crash.
Of course.
And she just wasn't listening.
She was just like, you know, I didn't know the road.
I didn't know where we were.
And so I didn't know that this curve was coming up,
but there was a straightaway.
I was always a nervous passenger.
Still am more so from that day on than I was before.
But I was a nervous passenger the whole time
I lived in Germany, which is before this.
You know, I didn't like really high speed stuff.
I don't like, I'm just a terrible passenger.
And that made it worse for the rest of my life.
I can imagine that made it extremely worse.
But did it not deter you from getting
straight back in cars and still being your passenger?
Oh, it was a while.
I mean, as a passenger, remember, I had no car.
This was the problem.
My parents did not allow me to have a car
in my first year of college
because they thought that was the safer option.
And you know, there I am calling them
from the emergency room again.
Like, you know, guys,
I think you've made the wrong choice here.
Like, everyone has beef with their parents, right?
Everyone has something, something, something.
My parents are not perfect.
They're wonderful people.
I love them both.
They, they fucked up as parents in certain ways.
And, but they did the best.
They did what they thought was the best.
They always had the right intention and a good heart.
Mostly.
Almost always.
The only thing that I really think they fucked up was this.
Like you don't take a child
whose life is obsessed with cars
and not let that child have a car
in the false pretense that their friends
are somehow going to be safer than like,
I just don't think they realized like,
you're not going to force me to stay in a dorm.
Like I'm going to be out in the world.
And I was a responsible kid.
I never drank.
I didn't do any drugs.
I didn't like, I never really gotten to any trouble.
Why would you put me in cars
with people who are drinking?
Like that was what their side effect was.
Now she was not drinking
in either of those crashes.
But at the end of the day, look at what happened.
Two major crashes in three weeks.
You know, then my father was like,
go light a candle, go to a church.
And then the joke of this whole thing
is bad things come in three.
11 months later, I was finally allowed
to get back on my bicycle.
And I was always a big biker.
And the first day I got back on my bike,
I got hit by a car,
totaled the car with my body.
And that was when my father was like,
see a priest, there's something wrong with you.
And I'm like, well, there's my third.
That was another couple of years.
Well, I do keep living from all this.
So maybe I'm immortal.
Maybe, yeah.
No, no.
Immortals would not have felt that pain.
Yeah.
So was it that sort of year and a bit
was a rough point in my life, physically, especially.
But as much as you hold some anger
about those circumstances
and the fact that they could have been different,
your life wouldn't be what it is today.
We're doing a lot of things
that you enjoy very much.
So it might have been,
but your journey has led you here.
Do you think that was a significant part
of your journey that's led you here?
And do you think if it was any different,
you'd still be here?
I know.
Because we talk about that word
from the start, again, trajectory.
Yeah.
And do you think that that has always been
something that has been in the back of your mind
through doing everything that you've done?
And that's how we all trajectory.
There are a lot of points in my life
where decisions were made by me or by others
that very clearly altered the trajectory
of my life in a very positive way,
moving to Germany, for example.
My first business was not in the car industry.
His first business sort of at the end of college
into my early, all through my 20s
was an e-commerce startup
that I started with friends in Germany.
My sister married her high school sweetheart
from Germany.
My mom and dad both wound up with people
they met while we were in Europe.
So clearly that decision to move us to Germany
when my sister and I were 15,
which was a really tough age to do that,
paid off in a big way.
I don't think that string of accidents
added anything positive
because I was already a nervous passenger
and I was already a cautious.
I mean, I appear online that I'm not that cautious, right?
That's part of the persona of the professional idiot, right?
But at the end of the day, I'm far more cautious
and measured than you think.
And that was already the case.
So the accidents I don't think helped that.
When was the first time you started to realise
what it was that you could potentially do?
You talk about having the automatic magazines
on your desk and you're a kid in school.
When did that become more than just reading magazines
like in your career?
I would say that,
I mean, I was so car obsessed that of my friend group,
which were all car people, right?
Car guys, car girls.
I was one of the more car obsessed.
And there were a lot,
when I noticed the difference was
that a lot of them were one make,
sort of one make one model.
They were either into Volkswagen Sorakos
or just Volkswagen's, for example,
where I was interested in everything.
Like I wanted to own all of them
and I wanted to work on all of them
and drive and drift and all the other stuff,
all of these different cars.
And so that was kind of a big difference.
And I was, I studied,
I read Car and Driver cover to cover every month,
like it was a journal.
Like this was like what I'm going to study
and I'm going to learn everything.
And it wasn't until after I sold the business,
I went to law school and then got an opportunity
to run the business effectively
of Automobile Magazine's website.
And it was effectively a business position,
but it was editor sheet of the website.
And I thought, there it is.
There's my, there's my foot in the door.
And the first month I was there,
I wrote a bunch of things,
one of which won a winning an award.
And that was when I was like,
I think I can,
I snuck in to do this.
So I can build that confidence.
Right.
But I think I can actually be pretty good at this.
And what age was that?
30, 30, 31, somewhere there.
Which I think is always like a great time
to just pause for a second.
Because there's so many people also listening to this
that are like me,
that you can beat yourself up so much
at so many different points
in your like 20s for argument's sake,
for feeling like you're starting something again
or starting from scratch at a different age
or a different point.
But it's amazing to see how much success
you've gotten yet that started from say,
those big moments there around 30.
I mean, everything sort of,
I started to start up.
I did not do anything fun for eight years.
It was just, you know,
so we grew 10% per month every month
and just trying to stay out of that.
It was a big business.
It was a big one of being,
I mean, it was three of us to start
and 180 of us at the end.
Wow.
And it was just this wild ride.
But when it ended,
we sold the company to one of our competitors
and I just wanted nothing to do with them.
I had no respect for any of them.
They were publicly traded.
There were a bunch of like
sort of corporate dick bags is how I saw them all.
And I thought, I need to engineer my escape.
Like I have to get out of there.
So I just wrote a non-refundable check
for tuition for law school.
And I'm like, oh, I guess I start on August,
whatever it was and bye.
It's the only way that I was able to rip that bandaid off.
And law school was actually,
that was amazing,
but it was the best mental workout
that I've ever had.
But it trained me to be a really good writer.
Or sorry, I shouldn't say it.
Trained me to be a much better writer
than I otherwise was,
because you have to be precise
when you're writing any legal anything.
And so these decisions sort of fell into each other,
but actually the eight years of non-stop work
allowed me the time and the finances
to go back to school and do that.
So they sort of layer on top of each other.
And it's not this like,
I wasn't reinventing myself,
but it was just what comes next.
How different were you at 32 to 22?
Not much.
Even after that whole journey building the business?
I was a terrible employee then.
I'm in a terrible employee now.
I'm a child.
I was a child.
I'm this weird combination of born as an adult, right?
I always wanted to hang out with my friends' parents
more than them, like mostly.
I was just very mature and very responsible
and like never got into trouble
and paid my bills on time.
I was just always sort of like a good adult in that sense,
but then I have the sense of humor of a 12-year-old
and that has never changed.
And I have the mischievousness of a 14-year-old
that has never changed.
And so really I'm the same person.
When did that transpire into all of those things
coming together and being in front of a camera lens?
The big moment was that video, the Drag Race video.
That was wild because we...
So I was at Automobile Magazine.
Even though that was your last video with...
No, that was my first ever video.
Was that the first one?
The one with Drag Race?
Yeah, the 130 million.
Yeah, that was the video that got you fired.
And then unfired.
So there are egos everywhere in this business
and there are big personalities.
And I worked at Automobile Magazine,
which was run by Gene Jennings,
who sadly passed away this year.
Gene was a fucking force.
I present to whomever you want to me, Gene was smarter.
She was better read.
She was funnier.
She was bigger.
She was louder.
She was more brass.
She was fucking walking genius.
The flip side of that was,
you did not want to be on our bad side.
She was also vindictive in...
Maybe vindictive isn't the wrong word.
No, I mean probably...
I love Gene.
I adore her.
There was just that element of...
Don't mess with it.
Don't fuck with Gene Jennings.
That like everyone knew this.
And I got on our bad side at one point.
Because it really wasn't intentional.
When I was hired at Automobile,
there's this person named Josh,
who was my boss,
who was actually not part of Automobile Magazine.
He was part of Automotive.com,
which was back up.
Publishing companies were struggling
to figure out this new internet thing.
And so the publishing company,
which was Primedia,
it was called,
somebody on Wall Street told us
that they needed to have an internet presence.
So rather than just say,
all right, we're going to make a website
and start doing this,
they purchased a company called Automotive.com
and gave a.com as we called it,
full power over all of the websites
for the magazines,
which was idiotic to say the least.
A similar thing happened in the UK,
I believe, with Car Throttle.
They got purchased,
it was a big automatic media brand.
They got purchased by Douglas Media.
And I'm pretty sure it then went to like,
someone just thought at the top,
this is going to work.
And it just didn't.
It didn't.
They, the problem was they just,
you know, some executive in New York
was like, well, we'll buy a web.
And so they bought this company,
not realizing that Automotive.com
had nothing behind it.
So before the anti cyber squatting laws came in,
this is law degree talking.
Cyber squatting is the practice of just
buying a domain and doing nothing with it
and holding a hostage
in the hope that you'll be able to sell it.
This is, I looked at my partner
because she's just bought one
that would have been,
but that was being held hostage
at the minute for a new brand.
They still exist, right?
But there are now laws that govern cyber squatting.
So if somebody has a real claim for something,
this, there was two guys that in college
had purchased a bunch of domain names
and they looked at when the cyber squatting laws,
anti cyber squatting laws were passed,
they realized they had to do something with it,
it was shit or get off the pot, so to speak,
like do something with it or let it go.
And the site that had the most organic traffic,
meaning people would just find it,
was Automotive.com.
So they revved that up
as a content producing farm,
basically, where they just took
press releases and just regurgitated
in the form of reviews that weren't, right?
Just a ton of content.
It was quantity, quantity, quantity, quantity, quantity.
And that organization was put in charge
of the editorial of the magazine's websites.
So if you think about that,
I'm an employee of Automotive.com,
but I'm writing or I'm organizing
all the stories that go on AutomobileMag.com,
which should reflect the magazine
and the magazine's ideals
and the magazine's level of quality.
And that's what Automobile did,
was just the highest quality writing,
the best fact checking.
It was not my favorite magazine to read,
but I really appreciated the magazine craft
that went into it.
And I was stuck in between two worlds
where I had Jean saying,
it's my fucking brand.
I started this magazine in 1987 with David Davis,
and you're not going to fuck it up
with these shitty stories.
At the same time as I had my boss
saying to me, don't fucking listen to her,
she has nothing to do with this.
It's quantity, quantity, quantity.
No one cares about quality on the internet, Jason.
And I got fired continually
because I sided with Jean.
She was right.
It's her brand,
and the right thing to do for this brand was that.
The problem was, Josh had a big payout,
and if he made it three years,
he got a huge double-digit chunk of millions of dollars,
I think it was,
if he hit all of these ridiculous profit numbers,
which meant I could literally
not expense a cup of coffee, nothing.
I had no account at all,
no expense account, no budget, nothing.
So I was stuck in the middle
and I would just go spend money and do stuff.
How difficult is that?
I must put it into someone
that had been running their own business
and in charge of themselves
for like eight years of their 20s.
Nightmare, nightmare.
I couldn't imagine doing it,
and I've got that entrepreneurial flag like,
working for someone.
I'd be fired so quickly.
I was fired constantly.
And I have no discipline,
and I'm potentially thinking maybe from the law stuff.
Would you say that you're more disciplined?
I'm very disciplined,
but what I am is unhappy with anyone standing in my way.
I have a very clear vision.
I have a set of things that I need to do, right?
This is my goal,
and I'm going to make this video.
And to do it, I'm going to do this,
get out of my way.
And the get out of my way attitude didn't work
in the publishing world
where everyone was like,
well, you can't,
I'm going to do my Michigan accent.
You can't,
you have a printer in your office
because we have this, whatever,
and I'm like, I need this for that,
or whatever.
I would just go to the store
and buy what I needed and expense it,
and then I would get in trouble.
And I'm like, I need to do my job.
So I bulldozed my way through hurdle,
after hurdle, after hurdle, after hurdle,
and made a huge enemy of my boss.
The problem was, at the same time,
I was making a huge fan out of Jean
because she saw what I was doing
and was like, thank God he's fighting these people.
He's doing what's right for the magazine.
And then so eventually I got fired on my birthday.
It was the fourth time.
And I was like, you know what?
One of these days,
this motherfucker is going to get what he wants.
Like I just, I was not a fan of this,
of this man.
Understood his motives.
His motive was rip the drywall off the walls,
leave this as, you know,
a shell of a company,
and he retires off of the money.
But that was flew in the face of what I wanted to do.
And so I thought the best thing for this company
is me to just fight him, fight him, fight him, fight him.
So he fired me on his birthday.
His assistant had already called me and said,
we've already undone it.
Like just tell him to fuck off.
Like don't even answer the phone.
Then Jean calls me and she would always say,
Jason, Josh is calling you do not engage,
do not engage.
Which is like, don't answer the phone.
And I'm like, you know what?
One of these days he's going to get what he wants.
I'm out.
I'm done.
And I made the very difficult decision to quit.
Very difficult.
And I walked in her room and you know,
you have those moments where you just the tears start
and you're like, oh, this is really embarrassing.
But I waited my whole life for this.
I wanted my entire life to work for a car magazine
and do this.
And I can't believe I was given this opportunity.
And now I'm saying bye, but I can't,
I can't live here anymore.
I can't live in Michigan.
I can't be fired all the time.
I can't be stuck between you and Josh.
Thank you for everything.
I love you.
But I'm going to move to California.
And she was like, what?
No, no, you're not.
No, no, no, no.
As of right now, you report to me and we're just
going to put you on print.
Like I'll find a way.
And I'm like, really?
You do that for me?
And she was like, yes.
So she gives me this big hug.
And Jean's hugs were the best because they really, she was very,
when Jean stabbed you, it really hurt.
But when Jean hugged you, she meant it.
And that meant everything.
So I walk into the office and I come right back in again.
And I'm like, I can't, I can't live here anymore.
I can't live in Michigan.
It doesn't work for my cars.
It doesn't work for my love of cars.
I'm just moving.
And she was like, fuck, what do we do?
And I said, well, we have a West Coast editor position open.
And she was like, what makes you think you can do that?
And I'm like, do that in my sleep.
It's this, this, this and this and this.
And she's like, but that's an LA based position.
And I'm like, and I'm moving to San Francisco.
But here's the thing.
San Francisco has better roads, better photography,
better weather, more varied geography, more varied real estate.
You know, magazines, you need weather.
You need beautiful backgrounds, great roads.
And they have a better airport and a huge fleet of press cars
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Do you think that you're able to talk to your bosses
in that way because the fact that you're an entrepreneur
for so many years?
Yeah, I came in like, I started my life as a president
slash managing director slash founder.
So like the idea that I was going to like listen
to corporate structure, like this is why I'm a terrible employee.
I'm like, no, I'm just going to do what I need to do.
Fuck off. Like, I got this.
I don't need you to micromanage me.
I don't need you to tell me what to do.
I don't need to fill out a fucking report
to request a pen.
I bought it already.
And is that because you almost just didn't care
in the sense of like, you knew you'd be okay
from that previous life and the fact
that you could just go and do your own thing
and have the confidence to be like,
I'm going to be fine no matter what
because my path writes itself.
Well, I'll go off and start another company.
I'll just go off and do this.
Were you not thinking like that?
No, I wasn't quite that confident
and I definitely wasn't that secure.
I think it was more,
I didn't understand corporate politics
because I had never worked in a big,
you know, in a big office with other people.
And so I just didn't know.
And I just, I'm like, I'll just bulldoze everyone.
Like, I'll get everyone out of my way
because I'm right.
And, you know, I have a, for better or worse,
I have a New York Italian argumentative nature
and I love to fight.
Like, I don't find a fight.
I love to argue.
Law school was a fluke,
but the, when I went in, there was like,
I was three months past the deadline to apply.
And it was three days before the start of classes.
And I went up with the headmaster
talking about, you know, this ultra late admission
and he was like, what makes you think you could do this?
And I don't remember what the fuck I said to him,
but the guy was like, you should have,
you need to be a lawyer, right?
Yes, you're in.
Like, I just convinced him.
I just persuaded him with like a logic flow
that was just like hilarious.
And so I've always sort of managed to just have a big mouth
and use big mouth and a chain of logic
to tell the story to get where I needed to be.
So how did those skills transpire
into you becoming the on-screen persona?
So it was that San Francisco?
So San Francisco, actually, yeah,
it moved to San Francisco and I was West Coast editor.
So that worked, right?
So I got that job.
Jean took that whole thing
and her nurturing nature and like, don't leave,
literally quote Jason,
babe, don't leave me is what she said,
which is the fucking terrible thing
to remember now that she's gone.
But it was, babe, don't leave me.
Babe, don't leave me.
She knew that I like at that point,
I was writing a lot for the magazine
and we loved each other and wanted to work together.
And so she made the West Coast editor thing happen.
But then the flip side of that scorpion
is the tail and the stinger.
And she went after me to get pay cuts
and made all these rules like,
well, if you're going to be in San Francisco,
you are never allowed to expense a hotel in LA.
And that's what you get.
And so we would be doing stories in LA.
Like something would happen in LA.
Down there.
And it was 400 miles away, right?
I mean, it was 400 miles
and I would have to drive on my own,
not expense the gas in one of my own cars,
which I don't ever mind,
but then stay with France
because I wasn't allowed to expense anything in LA.
Which would that drive you mental?
Because to me, I'm very logical in that sense.
Like, so if something doesn't make sense to me
or I perceive someone to be unreasonable
or just unlogical, I go mental
and it's just like, but why?
Like, I don't understand because this benefits you so.
And I think it's just a deep-rooted,
like logical people get frustrated
with people who make emotional-based decisions.
And was that what was happening?
100%.
But I had, we had two Joe's as senior editors,
Joe D'Amatio and Joe L'Oreal,
and they would both call me and be like,
fucking shut up.
Just shut up.
She's on a tear today.
You're going to get it.
We're going to be on a Zoom at the time.
Like, we're going to be on a call later
and you are going to hear it.
Put your phone on mute.
Scream all you want, but don't say a fucking word.
Because they knew.
Jean was a creative and she was very emotional
and she was very sort of unstable is the wrong word,
but unpredictable.
And so I drove me nuts.
And it was like, at the time,
I was writing more than the rest of,
I was writing more than half of the other pages
of the magazine some months, right?
It was me plus the entire staff,
me versus the entire staff,
I wrote more than all of them did.
And I was doing 50 press launches a year.
And I was winning all the awards that the magazine got.
And my thank you was this vindictive shit
of like, no raise for you again.
And oh, really?
You're unhappy that you went to Europe twice last month?
You're going three times this month.
And there was, I did it.
I did it.
I put my nose down and I just did it,
but it was tough.
And it all came to a head on that video.
So I went on a Bugatti rally.
As you do.
As one does.
Leaving Monterey was one of my,
I think it was my second car week ever.
And I was invited to drive Peter Mullins 1933 type 51C.
So, you know, an actual like GP car.
And a Veyron together, like on this rally for like three days.
Long story short, the 33 car breaks.
I fixed it on the side of the road.
It was just, I work in cars.
That's what I do.
I was like, it was no big deal.
And the guy who was in the car with me is a German
who I didn't realize he didn't know I spoke German.
And I have like no accent in German,
which gets me in a lot of trouble.
And so I'm just kind of traipsing along.
And then the Veyron broke.
And the Veyron breaking was a big problem for me
because I really wanted to drive that car.
So we pull over on the side of the road
and the mechanic has the whole back end of the car apart.
And he's like, yeah, it's what is broken
in this cool and temperature sensor.
And it's leaking.
And so unfortunately we cannot start the car.
And I look at the cool and temp sensor and it's plastic.
And I realized that the thread pitch and size
of where it screws in is identical to a transmission drain plug
on all the get drug transmissions, right?
From all like VWs and BMWs and shit.
And I'm like, just get a plug.
And I'm like, there's a BMW dealership down the street,
or a VW dealership down the street,
just get a Mark 1, Mark 2, Mark 3,
trainee drain, 020 drain plug.
And it'll plug it off.
You won't have cool and temp sensor, but who cares?
You're crazy, whatever.
And this, you know, this German was like having no part of me.
And I finally turned around and let him have it.
In German.
I'm like, listen, you asshole, you're costing me this rally.
I'm really pissed off about this.
PR is going to lose out on this story.
Everyone's going to lose out on this.
Just fucking go and get it.
So he calls and now he's the, Julius, the, the, the
mindor who did not know I speak German is like,
why did I like the Germans do like, what is going on?
As I'm like yelling at this guy, not yelling,
but I was sternly speaking to him.
And so he calls the Volkswagen dealership
and they don't have one.
So I pick up my cell phone at the time, which is probably
like a flip phone or something.
And I, and I call the BMW dealership, which is even closer.
And I'm like, I need a drain plug for an M20 transmission
and, you know, five speed and a knee 30.
Oh yeah, we have like 30 of them.
Okay.
So I drive down and get it and put it in.
I'm like, there you go.
There's your fix.
Have a nice day.
So they're all like, what is going on here?
And then I hear Julius on the phone that night on the phone.
I'll do it in English.
I don't understand it.
He has the accent of a Bad Humberg millionaire.
Okay.
So I lived in this town called Bad Humberg in Germany
and I was clearly not a millionaire.
Look at me.
But, but I learned German from all of the locals.
And so I have a slight Bad Humberg accent, Hesse accent.
And he picked up on it immediately
because he's from the same town.
So while we're in the car, he's like,
hold on, wait a second.
I lived on this street.
You lived on, we were like three blocks from each other.
So we became friendly and he kept telling everyone,
like a journalist, an American who speaks German,
Hesse, really, Hesse accent in German.
Like that doesn't exist.
And the fucking journalist fixed the Veyron
when the mechanic couldn't do it.
I owe you one big time.
And I'm like, great.
I'll tell you what, I want to do a drag race
of your car versus the other carbon supercars.
I want to do a story of what them.
And he was like, yeah, whatever you want.
So Bugatti didn't give anyone else cars.
So now I have a car coming and permission to do with it,
whatever I want.
Amazing.
As a payback for saving this rally, right?
At a time where YouTube was also taken off.
Like YouTube was just...
People were subscribing to channels
because they didn't see it as a monetary transaction.
Like they do now, like people subscribe.
It costs absolutely nothing,
but I feel like they think they're paying
100 quid for that subscription.
It's hard to get.
Back then, people were so much more open to...
Yeah, it was new.
And it was, and Motor Trend, which was our same company,
had just gotten the one of the million dollar handouts
from YouTube to start seed money to start a channel.
I've heard about these.
So my pitch was, so Lexus owed me a favor for something.
I remember what I had done.
But one of the guys is like, I owe you one, noted.
Something happened with McLaren and I knew those guys something.
And then Lamborghini, I knew the head of PR very well.
His wife, as it turns out, was my employee at my company
in the e-commerce field.
Like it was just crazy.
The world is very small.
So I call all four companies and pitch the story
that I want to do a story of the only four
carbon-tubbed cars in the world.
And I'm going to write it sort of as a comparison,
but it's not a comparison test.
And this is today the story that I wish
I had done more than anything else.
So the idea was to get the four cars,
but start in order and just walk through the process
of how you make these cars out of carbon fiber.
And so the oldest of the bunch was the LFA.
Oh, what a thing.
Right.
And then the next was a vented door, then Veyron, then MP412C.
Only four cars, right?
And so they are made out of space-saged material,
was my thing.
Turns out at Mojave, which is two hours north of LA,
Bert Routan's company, which was,
my God, why can't I think of the name of it?
They were making spacecrafts that people
were going to be able to go and do space flights with.
And so they had SS1, which was a spaceship one,
and then SS2.
And SS2 was about to debut.
So I called Routan's people and I'm like,
I am from Automobile Magazine.
I have four carbon fiber supercars.
You are making a carbon fiber spacecraft.
Could I please have it?
Take a picture of the cars together with the spaceship?
And he was like, well, actually, I'll do one better.
We'll wheel out SS2 and the debut photo of SS2
will be the four cars under the wing.
And then, by the way, I'll put you in charge
in touch with Virgin Galactic,
because the Virgin Galactic spaceport in New Mexico
is where this is going to take its Virgin flight
out of their Virgin flight ever.
They've just finished paving the runway,
or they will be just finishing paving the runway.
You, I will get your permission.
You will be the first person to ever set foot
on that runway in a vehicle
and go do a top speed run in the McLaren, in the cars.
And I'm like, oh my God.
So I start doing research.
Turns out the Virgin Galactic spaceport
is, was designed by an architect
who's the same architect that designed
the McLaren Tech Center in Woking.
And it's the same building.
He just cut paste over there.
And I'm like, this is unbelievable.
So the story that I pitched to everyone
is I'm going to go chronologically
and talk about how carbon fiber has,
you know, developed through the years
using these cars on a road trip from LA up to Mojave.
And by the time we get to Mojave,
because you're weaving in travel with everything else,
I will have come to the conclusion that
the 12C is the only car to make good
on the promise of actually being lighter
than its competition.
And therefore I will take a road trip
to the Virgin Galactic spaceport,
which is the same building that it was built in.
It was like, it was just this unbelievable thing.
And Jean said, no.
Oh, and by the way, while I'm on the way there,
I'm going to stop at this airfield,
Chuckwalla Airport in the middle of nowhere
and do a drag race of the car and for video.
And Jean says, absolutely not.
Now, why?
The scorpion, right?
This is a, no, you're not doing it.
I don't get it.
And I'm like, what's not to get?
The cars are made of the same material as the spaceship.
The spaceship is going to be there.
The buildings are the same.
It's a fucking runway.
I get to race the goddamn SS2 down the run.
Like what, what don't you understand?
And it was a hard, absolutely not.
And so I had done probably two months worth of research
and I sort of pre-wrote half of the sections
and I sketched out with the photographer
exactly what the shots would look like.
And I laid out this whole story and she said, no,
you're just going to get in the cars and drive them.
And I'm like, no, no, no, no.
These are all personal favors
that I got to get all four of these cars,
which no one was allowed to get.
And that's the reason the video did so well.
No one else was allowed to race these cars.
And it was before the influencer thing started.
So I'm like, if I don't do the story that I pitched,
we don't get the cars.
And she was like, you're not doing it.
I'm like, well, then I'm out.
So I canceled the cars and I canceled the story
and she called the car companies and they agreed to give them back.
And I had not.
So I handed over all my research to one of our other coworkers
and I'm like, good luck.
You do whatever you want.
I'm out.
But I insisted that I do the drag race video.
And so I got Motor Trend to get the runway for free
because it was just this old runway
that no one had been using in years.
And we got the cars and I spent $50 on lunch.
That's what I spent on that video.
And I just did it out in the sunburned
in those horrible shorts
with the same chain around my neck,
which is hilarious.
Actually, if I think about it,
because I always look at those video
and make fun of what I look like
and did the video in like two hours
and just banged it out.
And when they found out that I did that,
I got a call from HR and my direct boss
who was between me and...
So then you did it.
I did it.
You got an editor and then you put it live
on a channel that you were fired from.
Well, so remember that Motor Trend,
it was the channel that got the money for YouTube
was Motor Trend.
And the Motor Trend editor-in-chief
who was a nudge higher than Gene on the org chart,
just one little notch higher said,
yes, do it and I'll pay for it.
So I got a bunch of camera guys
from Motor Trend's YouTube channel showed up.
I bought lunch at my company credit card
and then the automobile guys showed up,
had no idea what was going on.
And I'm like, shut up, sit down and you drive, you drive.
I had Carlos from Carlos Lago
from Motor Trend drove one of the cars
and then Eric Tingwall,
one of the automobile guys
drove one of the other cars.
And that was it.
It was just...
Well, the thought's not going through your head
from getting to know you and reading your story
and seeing what you've done over the years.
If there's like million pound offers from YouTube
going around to fund channels and ideas
and you could sell literally anything to anybody
and the guy that you spoke to when you went to law college
just allowed you to do it straight away
because it just seems that you can talk your way
into any situation room or podcast fan
that there is in the world.
Was the thought not there to like go big,
go hard and launch your own channel?
No, no, that never, A, never entered my mind
but B, it wasn't even possible.
I mean, there was no monetization at that point.
YouTube was just a thing.
And I don't think AdSense had started.
I mean, I wasn't in that world.
I was working for Car Magazine.
So it never occurred to me.
But looking back on it,
I don't even think you could make a living off of YouTube.
I think that's why YouTube gave the seed money
because they were starting ads.
Because I'm not sure if this is true
but I think maybe Chris Harris got in quite early
with that kind of thing from the UK.
I think they did with the...
Chris and Matt were on The Drive.
Right? The Drive?
God, this is so long ago.
Yes, it was The Drive.
And I think they were another recipient
of some of that seed money.
These were all channel names that I
just remember just like clicking from one to the other
to the other to the other to the other.
And that was my earliest years of cars,
which is why it's crazy
because it still doesn't feel to me
like 2012 was even that long ago.
And those cars are still so iconic.
I know.
My last person to sit in this van,
luckily enough, owns a Bugatti Veyron.
Oh my God.
Zed Boliam and Ben Wickett.
And it's still just as cool as it ever was.
Yeah, it's a Veyron.
It will always be that cool.
So where do you go from that video?
So that video launched right at about the time
that on the Motor Trend channel,
right at the time that I was being written up
and then fired from automobile.
And before I could be fired,
the editor of Motor Trend intervened
and was like, hang tight.
The video drops.
How many lives did you have?
I mean, I was just like, find him out.
Fuck you.
I was so mad about the whole thing.
I was so upset that I had put so much work
into convincing these car companies.
So I had to get special permission from the CEO of McLaren
to drive the car that far,
because it was a 1,000 mile drive
to go from Mojave to the Virgin Galactic spaceport.
So there was just so much work in there.
And I was so excited about this idea
that I was just fucking devastated.
And when they were like, you know,
we're basically performing, we're setting you up to fire you.
I'm like, good.
You know what? Package me the fuck out.
It's been great six years.
Fuck off and die.
Like I never want to see you guys again.
But then motor trend is like, wait a second, hang tight.
The video hits and within 48 hours
is the number one video of all time on that channel.
And so he goes to HR and was like,
this is some vindictive shit going on at automobile.
Watch what's going to happen here.
And then it was the number one video on across.
They didn't have trending,
but like you could see the number one videos those days
and it was number one for weeks.
And he's like, we just got more eyeballs on us
from that $150 video than anything in the past.
They're wrong. Jason's right.
Saved my job.
Saved.
But it was just at that point, I was like, you know what?
I'm done with the vindictiveness.
I'm done with the, you know, I've paid now.
I think it was three and a half years in California
of just sort of whipping boy stuff.
And I'm like, I'm done.
And he chipped away at it.
It feels like it's constantly being chipped away.
I like the non logical of it.
Right.
And I was just exhausted.
I was exhausted from being overworked out of,
and they were doing it clearly as,
I think Jean was just saying, give it to Jason.
Give it to Jason.
He wants to move to California.
Give him to Jason.
So I would just do these like five trips.
He thinks he's the Mr. Big Man telling me what he wants to do.
I'll give it to him.
Meanwhile, I never strong armed anyone.
I just, I came in in tears and I said, I'm quitting.
Like I can't do this anymore.
I'm so sorry.
I'm heartbroken over this.
Well, I love hate relationship.
Right.
So that was Jean.
And so long story short, my job was saved.
But then I got a phone call from Rodentrack
who was just doing a full reboot
and they wanted me to run all road tests.
And I said, yeah, so I left.
And that was about a month after this whole thing went down.
Timing couldn't have been better.
Did two, three years at Rodentrack
and then got a call from Motortrend saying,
Carlos Lago has left or don't tell anyone,
but Carlos is leaving and we need somebody to replace him.
And I'm like, oh, great.
The old fat version of Carlos.
Because Carlos and I looked a lot alike,
but he was younger, thinner and far better looking.
And I'm like, oh no.
And Randy was Motortrend.
Randy had been, Randy was a contributor to Motortrend.
But yeah, yeah.
So Randy was there on my first day, first shoot.
And so, but I came in replacing Carlos
and they were like, the audience is going to hate you.
And I'm like, I know.
They do.
People on YouTube hate change.
They absolutely hate change.
They think a channel that does X should always do X.
Oh yeah, you should never do anything else.
And they wanted, they pulled me into meetings
to like prepare me for the ire that I was about to.
And I'm like, I got this.
We're good.
And they're like, what do you mean?
And of course I'm shitting.
I was so nervous.
But my first ever appearance.
So I always wear a black v-neck and so does Carlos.
So I did black vina jeans.
And he always had like converse shoes on.
So I bought a pair of Converse and I showed up and we filmed
the first segment is just a big dynamic.
It was Porsche Cayman.
It was terrible episode, but that's irrelevant.
Sort of slide the car around, slide the car around
in the script and then open the car door, get out,
pull the helmet off and realize,
and that's when the audience would realize
it's not Carlos, but it's some other guy.
And I just looked right at camera.
I'm like, oh, you were expecting Carlos.
Sorry.
I may not be Carlos, but at least I'm not Johnny.
And then we did a compilation of cuts
of Johnny going, hi there, hi there, hi there.
You know, he does it.
And Johnny was the other co-host.
So those shows were Johnny and or Carlos.
They didn't work together.
They were separately.
And so immediately all the first 3,000 comments were,
oh my God, this guy's great because I'm self deprecating.
And I'm saying acknowledging their feelings,
which is that like you guys are going to miss Carlos.
Carlos was amazing.
That's a really interesting point there because
I think that I've learned that through a lot of successful
people that have gone on to YouTube and even with what I've done myself
is rather than just try and be this person that is sometimes you're not,
you've got to just acknowledge the situation
and say to the audience, look, I know I might be ship.
I might not be as good as them.
I might have disarmed them.
Disarmed.
I'm a human.
I know people look at you like you're a celebrity, right?
You walk around and like, oh, I know you.
No, no, no.
You don't know me.
You know a version of me or a curated part of me
that I've allowed you to see on TV, but I'm a person.
Like, I understand.
Like, I have the things that I've said about like celebrities.
I'm not that I really follow anything in the past,
but like, fuck that person, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But that's a person.
And so my thought is immediately interact
and just introduce myself as a human being
and also make fun of Johnny, which did well.
I mean that it was the right way of coming in with a bang.
Was it a yellow Porsche Cayman?
It was.
That shows you because one of my earliest cars,
my first ever Porsche, was a Porsche Cayman.
Oh, really?
And I remember watching that video
and I remember that appearance in that video.
But then that's me all across the other side of the sea
on an island where the biggest video on that channel
would do twice, no, the other channel,
would do twice the amount of views of the actual population.
Like, it is insanely impact that a piece of content
can have on someone.
Even though it's entertainment,
do you think that those moments are important as well?
Do you feel any sense of responsibility
to deliver something to that audience?
One of the things that Jean did best
was belittle you into realizing that you are not,
as a writer, right?
You are not important at all.
I don't care and no one cares what you think.
You are there as a journalist to decipher
whether this car, to figure out
what the intended purpose of this car is
and whether the intended audience for it
will like it, right?
So it doesn't matter whether she never let me talk in,
any of us talk in first person,
you are not part of that.
And your duty, you are being paid
to be as objective as humanly possible.
There's a big asterisk there
because we're humans and we're flawed
and we can't be fully objective.
And I feel that huge responsibility
on everything I do.
The podcast that I do have a podcast,
a weekly podcast called The Car Mudgeon Show
and I just don't filter, right?
And that's part of it.
I'm allowed foul mouth, terrible human being.
My co-host is a quiet foul mouth, nice human being
and with a really bad temper.
And we just let each other have it
and let the cars have it.
Is that almost like a sense of therapy
in that section?
Totally.
They are aren't they?
Because when I write a script,
look, the best, the worst thing I ever did
was the fucking Tesla Cybertruck video.
So I, okay.
Really?
Okay, look, it was an amazing opportunity.
The guy who was running,
sort of secretly running a small PR thing,
he was a project manager in Tesla,
but he was trying to get comms,
communications done on Cybertruck,
came up with this fucking genius idea
to give it to three people.
And it was Marquez to talk about the tech,
Marquez Brownlee to talk about the tech.
It was Top Gear to talk about the driving
and it was Jason to talk about the engineering.
And so they wanted me to do a,
or they called me and said,
would you do a know it all episode?
None of these know it alls were like.
So you sat on the the vehicle,
I remember, even with parts
that were excited showing it to the people.
But they wanted me to do it in the studio,
not, I wasn't supposed to drive the car at all.
And I was just going to go through
point by point by point by point by point.
And so they opened up the factory
and the engineering facility to me
for a full day, 12 hours of meetings,
and showed me everything.
It was full.
It was 100% on the record.
No one held back a single piece of information.
So if I asked them, like, why'd you fuck this up?
They'd be like, we fucked it up because of X, Y, and Z.
They were just beautifully honest
with me about everything.
The summing.
It was amazing.
It was amazing to have that much insight
into a product that is revolutionary
in terms of its engineering was amazing.
So what I then hooked them into doing
was let me film it on a racetrack
where I can show the rear wheel steering,
the Sear by wire,
in a race with Randy Popes while he's behind me
in a go-kart.
And then I can do a quarter mile drag race
against an R1T, Rivian R1T,
which was the previous fastest pickup truck in the world.
And I'm like, I can sit in a studio
and tell you all of these things,
or I can show you.
Let me show everyone everything.
And so they took a little bit of convincing,
but they went for it.
And I think it was the right thing for them to do.
Where I fucked up is I didn't clearly enough,
especially the way the episodes titled,
say this is not a full review of this car.
This is a walkthrough of that car's engineering
and all the amazing things,
all the amazing new engineering the world has never seen before
and how this will then influence the way cars are engineered.
And the whole thing came across.
I wrote the whole script in a quarter of the time I needed to do it
and it all came together quickly.
And then we, on the thumbnail,
it said full review and something,
whatever, drag race or whatever it was.
And it really wasn't a full review.
The truth of the matter is I think it's ugly.
But again, gene, doesn't matter what you think.
I think it's horribly ugly.
It makes a political statement
that I don't want to get involved with.
That's not why I'm here.
But at the end of the day,
it's not as good of a consumer product as an F-150 Lightning
or a Rivian R&T.
I would have a Rivian 10 times out of 10 over a Tesla.
That didn't come across in the video.
Once Elon's activities got highly politicized,
then it just became a nightmare.
It was bad enough I went up on Matt Farmer's podcast
where Matt called me out publicly
on all these things that he thought I got wrong
and I revved up my law school diploma
and wrote a fucking dissertation.
And just, sorry, Matt,
I fucking destroyed his credibility on that podcast.
I don't know if you've seen it.
It was terrible.
It was terrible for everyone,
but I just went point by point by point by point.
Everything that he thought I made a mistake on,
I proved that I didn't.
There are certain things that-
Why was that important to you?
Because I was being accused of being a shill.
And if it's one thing that irritates the fuck out of me,
it's watching influencers make millions
and millions and millions of dollars
pretending that they love something
or, hey, guys, I'm over here and isn't this amazing?
And the camera goes down and they're like,
fuck this guy, fuck this shit, whatever, blah, blah, blah.
They're making 10X what I'm making
or insert in multiple.
And I'm killing myself,
making stuff that could be just switched on
and put on Netflix with no changes
because we do everything to Netflix standards
on YouTube budgets.
And that just takes a lot of time and effort.
They're winning and getting all the money
and now I'm accused of being no better than them.
That really pisses me off.
And so that Matt saying,
well, clearly Tesla paid Jason
and all the car companies calling me
and saying, how much did Tesla pay for this?
How much did Tesla pay?
It just incensed me.
I was just furious at everyone.
So I'm going to go on Matt's podcast
and I'm going to clear my name.
Does integrity mean more to you than money?
Oh, 100%.
100%.
I turned down, I mean, the industry now knows
I'm not for sale.
You're not going to pay me anything.
There is an ad department at Hagerty,
who's my employer.
They will sell ads for Valentine more sponsorships
for Valentine run radar detectors in the Drag Race show
or Fredestine tires.
And Fredestine keeps sending me tires to test.
And the annoying part is last year
I spent $3,000 two years ago
mounting and balancing tires
because everyone's sending me tires to test
and they're free tires.
That's great.
But now it cost me a couple hundred bucks
and I do all my own work.
So I'm going to take the tires off
put the car on the lift,
take the tires off,
bring them to the shop.
It costs me money to get free tires.
I don't even want them.
Like I'll put the tires that I want on my car
when I want to do it and when they're worn out.
And I turned down all kinds of stuff like that
because that's not journalism.
So to challenge on that,
on the story,
because there's some parts of the story
that have set you on that trajectory
that you've absolutely loved doing what you've done.
And you actually reflect on some parts
like what happened with the first car situation.
You were like, I wish that was different.
It would have been even better.
Do you think it's been maybe one of the biggest mistakes
not pushing your own channel as much
and delivering content on that to those high standards?
And is there still time to do that?
There's always time.
I'm not that old yet.
Forming my own channel is a very difficult conversation
because what I do with my team,
so let me be very clear about this.
I am an idiot and I do,
I'm the guy on camera
and I'm the guy behind the wheel
sliding the cars around
and I write the scripts and whatever.
But this product that we create
is not me in an editing bay.
This starts out with me and Anthony Esposito
whose name I've mentioned many times in different ones.
He's my best friend
and also my business partner effectively.
We left Motortrend together
and then started Icons for another person
and then we're brought into Hagerty.
I was brought into Hagerty
and I said, well, I come, he comes.
Like we're a unit.
Everything starts from Anthony and me sitting down
and making each other laugh
or figuring out what the world needs to see.
And then I go away and research and write
while he starts to plan out locations
and whatever else.
And then he comes in
and forces me to make the script better
because he's an asshole
and he can see all my faults and flaws.
And we fight like brothers
and then what comes out of all of that
is a script that works.
Then it's on him to translate that into visuals.
Now he's as much of a car guy as I am
but also in equal measure a film person.
And so then-
Invaluable.
Invaluable.
I mean, that's what we're creating is film.
At the end of the day,
what I realized at magazines
is you need car people at the magazines
but you also need a magazine people.
And magazine craft is its own thing
that has nothing to do with cars.
Gene was 80% magazine, 20% cars.
Joe, who is my direct boss,
one of the Joe's is two, 10, 5% cars,
90% magazine craft.
English writing, layout, whatever.
Then you have art people who are art people.
Anthony is that film person.
And then once we're done filming,
when he's shot, listed it and everything,
he comes up with the schedules
and whatever, I sort of hand over the reins to him.
And then it turns over to-
It turns into him and Rob,
who's our editor, fighting for weeks
or weeks or months on end
to get the final product out the door,
to be the vision of what Anthony
and I and Rob have all collectively seen.
And so it's not just me.
It's three of us.
To do what we do is really expensive
by YouTube standards, right?
I mean, when I do a 35-minute
or 30-minute icons,
that could literally be switched right into Netflix
and that's not my-
I mean, that's-
The world believes this and I agree, right?
This is-
It's close to Netflix quality
you're gonna see on YouTube
and that's our goal.
We are spending maybe a tenth or a fifth
as much money as any production company would
who is doing TV.
We are really scrappy
and we're really cheap
and I built a minivan as a camera car
and a crew car and a gear transport van, right?
And it was 20,000 bucks for a used minivan
versus $10,000 a day for a Russian arm camera,
whatever.
We were very scrappy
but at the end of the day,
what we do is not appropriate for YouTube
in terms of production budget, right?
YouTube is, you know,
hey guys, I'm here in front of whatever.
It's what Marquez does
and it's, you know, even what Jason Fenske does
with Engineering Explained
is that's what YouTube budgets should be like
or Throttle House.
Love my Throttle House boys.
But they do, that's the upper limit
of what's appropriate for-
But if you get the views,
there's now guys that are buying
coatings eggs, P1s,
guys, or is that because in your eyes,
they're selling out doing the influence
everything on the brands?
No, I mean, what they're doing is
they're pandering to views,
which is the right thing for them to do
and there's no judgment there at all.
But if Freddie Tavaresh ever saw what I-
what the amount of work
that we put into a 30-minute episode,
he would tell me immediately to stop doing it.
Like he, you know, if anyone in this business
saw what a production, our productions are,
they're fully scripted,
they're fully storyboarded,
they're produced like television
and it's a very different art form
to do what all of those guys do,
which is great.
But that's a, you know, show up
and just do it and fix it and edit the situation.
And why are you putting it on YouTube?
Because that's where the world is taking.
Remember what I said before,
you sort of look towards the horizon,
like, okay, well, this works, let's go.
You talk about Tiff, Tiff was very much TV based.
The type of content you're making is TV worthy
and it seems that you're really good
at knocking down any door that you need to.
Creating films like that
as you're describing them
and putting them on YouTube
sounds a little bit,
if you're not playing to the algorithm
and the metrics that YouTube needs
to get a video to do views,
a little bit like getting dressed up
to go to McDonald's.
You're right, you're right.
So is there not that conversation
around a fire pit with the boys
after filming something?
Could we make this easier?
Could this go into the right place?
So what has ultimately happened
is we fell into the haggardy thing where,
I mean, you seem to be great.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I wouldn't work with them if they were not.
I just hit five years with this company.
It feels like 30 seconds.
At the end of the day,
haggardy came up with the idea
that people should know what their name means
or what the name is, right?
And so they decided to create a media,
small media empire to do this as a marketing arm.
Now, I've been told a million times
from different,
a million different people internally
that we're not marketing.
That's bullshit.
What I do for haggardy is a marketing function.
If you think of the marketing as a funnel
where at the very top,
you have just brand awareness
and at the bottom,
you have the person making a quote
to get insurance and buying insurance.
I am top of the funnel marketing.
All I want to do
is give people a great time
and then at the end of that episode,
boom, boom, boom,
never stop driving haggardy logo.
That's it.
That's all I want.
And if I can get 500 million people
to watch all of these videos
that they then go say,
oh, that's the haggardy channel.
And then they find out
that haggardy has an insurance.
Maybe they,
maybe they'll bite.
And that was my thing.
I didn't want to talk about insurance.
I didn't want to advertise anything.
I've been fighting against sponsorships
on these things
because I think attribution
for what I do
should go 100% to haggardy.
And at the end of the day,
if you look at what I cost,
what my shows cost
with my whole team
and our full production
per eyeball that they get on,
we are a fraction
of what traditional marketing
and advertising would cost.
Even at the outrageous expense,
outrageous by YouTube standards
of producing them.
Do you hate compromise?
Some people are motivated by money,
not to my detriment.
Some people are motivated by fame.
I'm definitely not.
I did not get into this
to be in front of the camera.
In fact, I don't want to be,
but it works.
I am motivated by the pride of
doing a great job.
This is in life.
I'm the only one who works
on my own cars
because I want to say,
I did that.
I built that engine.
I work on my house
because I want to look at it
and say I painted it.
I planted that.
I did this.
I did that.
So that's my motivation.
And I'm not motivated by
compromised products.
I love things that are
like we did everything we could.
It's to my detriment.
And Anthony Esposito
was wired exactly the same way.
And so we have to be
checksums for each other.
It'd be like,
okay, sometimes good enough
is good enough and stand down.
Like stop.
He does it to me and I do it to him.
You spoke to your mother now
about the first car situation.
Oh, I have.
Does she still think...
Because she's seen everything
that you've done,
who you've become
and that you've got to work
with your dream,
which is cars
in ways you never thought
imaginable.
She still thinks she was right.
I don't...
Actually, that's a good question.
I think she would probably
phrase it as,
listen,
I did what I thought was best.
Sorry.
Like my mom accepts no shit
about that.
And I understand her.
She's right.
She did.
She thought she was acting
in my best interest.
Maybe I would have been dead
if I bought the Nissan Centres.
You know, that I really wanted.
To you was an logical way
of thinking,
potentially emotionally driven,
which is a little bit
like what Jean ended up becoming.
I mean,
yes.
Jean was far more emotional than my mom.
My mom is pretty rational
and pretty,
I mean, we're Italian,
so on that scale.
She's pretty levelheaded
and pretty,
pretty overly cautious,
I would say,
as a mom,
if anything.
She, you know,
the answer was always no.
And then if I could come back
and convince her,
maybe I'll think about it.
But I don't think she
fucked up that badly.
Like they're, you know,
parents can really do damage
to their kids.
And I'll give credit to both
my parents for,
especially my mom,
for really thinking about,
I'm going to do this
because I think it's best
for them long term.
And just,
how did she know
that I was this into cars?
Are you content
with where you are now
and everything that you've achieved?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean,
I'm not ever content with anything.
I don't,
yeah,
I'm very proud of
what we've accomplished
and, you know,
a billion
easy,
a billion views just on YouTube.
It's pretty,
pretty amazing.
You talk about you wanted
from your earliest years
along this timeline,
it seems to be that
everything that we're talking about
is that,
it is it.
It is it.
But is there still the little piece
just missing
in the back of your head?
Yeah,
there's always pieces missing.
I mean,
what's really difficult for me
is I think the car industry
is falling apart
and that's tough
because I'm no longer
geeked
and super excited
about the next
in certain name of car.
And this is the first time
in my life
that I remember
being that way.
And it helps me a lot
to when fetuses such as yourself
when young people
say the same thing
because I get this,
like I look in the mirror
and I see an old man
standing back to me now.
I'm like,
I don't feel old.
I don't act old
and then I
realize I'm not young
and shit,
maybe I'm doing this
for 20 something years
maybe I'm just getting jaded
maybe I'm just like
get off my lawn
old man
and it makes me feel better
when you say that.
You talk about BMW
we spoke about the start
but you say like love everything
but we've all got that one brand
that like means the most to us
and mine is Ferrari
always has been
ever since I saw a LaFerrari
on the M25
which is the big ring motorway
that goes around London
in the UK
when I was 12 years old
probably
around the same time
that I watched that first video
so it was all kind of
collating together.
And Ferrari
are losing it
and as a car person
that's so passionate
and cares so much
about that stuff
I cannot believe
that my favorite brand
from Italy
is effing up so badly
like I'm lucky
that I've managed
to own a few of them
and some I think are brilliant
and one really wasn't
that everyone else
thinks is brilliant car.
Which one?
812
Oh I kind of like it 12.
I really didn't like it.
Okay.
And I can tell you
why in a minute
and it's part of the reason
that I think that cars
are losing
and Ferrari have lost
that special touch.
I love even being young
stuff with hydraulic steering
stuff with good brakes
especially good gearboxes
and like those things
coming together
it's because they're all fast
so you have to have
the added value
which is reversed
from what it was
years ago
and for me
you hop in an 812
and the only thing
that's got any
blah
in that car
is the engine.
Is the engine?
Yeah.
You can't tell me the exhaust
as because
for them to sound good
you have to put different one on it.
Right, exactly.
Which isn't Ferrari
is the truth
and then you get in
and the steering is just
a bit number
than the other ones are
so it's not as good
and you've just paid
God knows how much money
and it's got to be
as good as it was
and it seems like
we spoke about a word
a minute ago
compromise
when we're talking
about it in terms of career
but every new car
that's coming out
there is some sort of
compromise
and when you go back
to that original video
which was the inspiration
behind everything
I've done with cars
but thank God you created
to me
every single one of those vehicles
in that video
were uncompromised.
Absolutely.
The I'm with you
first of all
F12 was better than 812
which is the problem
right and this is the problem
you say Ferrari's lost it
I mean
you've brought
BMW up a lot of times
BMW is actually
not my favorite ever
but BMW is the brand that I
had the furthest to fall
and man did they
Volkswagen has fallen
Mercedes has fallen
Audi is falling
Porsche
Porsche
clinging on
clinging on
GT cars
the rest of them know
but the GT car division
yeah
yep
I'd say that they're
they're kind of on top of the world
and there's an interesting line
that I used in a podcast
the other day
and I'm going to ask it to you as well
when did they become super cool
Porsches
yeah
right at the same time
they became
dickbag weenie mobiles
I mean Porsche became so great
when everyone else dropped the ball
right
Porsches were always great cars
and you know
even 996
you know what that about
say that
ugly
but from an engineering perspective
great
they drove well
right now
Porsche has just consistently
gotten better
and better
and better
in a world
where all of the other car makers
are just
off the cliff
and so
the differential
between Porsche
and everyone else
is just enormous now
I hopped in a Waymo
the other night
I've done this several times
and I love them
amazing
I think they are
absolutely fascinating
brilliant
and they're taking
technology
that sometimes
we really criticize
because from a
notional
emotional standpoint
when we're behind the wheel
as the operator
it actually limits
our experience in it
yet
when you're in another seat
with it as the operator
enhances the experience
and you think
this is absolutely incredible
100%
in that way
I feel like
there is
there is some level of hope
because there is still a
level of an excitement
about being driven around
with no operator
but I'm sure that will wear off
I mean
I take Waymos regularly
I will never
choose an Uber or a Lyft
or a human driven car
over a Waymo
other than San Francisco
they're everywhere
they're faster
smoother
safer
more efficient
it's a better experience
100% of the time
including I finally just had
a bad experience
where it got stuck behind
a parked car
because it thought
it was in a traveling
even that was better
I hit a button
they called
they're like
okay we'll drive around it
and took 30 seconds
but so I'm used to that
and I'm no longer
fascinated by the fact
that this thing is driving itself
what I am
is excited
to get all of the
the other drivers off the road
who a. don't want to be there
but b. don't care
aren't paying attention
aren't looking
have no fucking lights
on the outside of their car
which is one of my
pet
pet peeves at the moment
no turn signals
no lane discipline
just following whatever rules
that they think
that exist
but don't
because they're from somewhere
else
services
because they're a melting pot
of cultures
it's just a
fucking disaster
American roads
are just a disaster
to drive on
because no one knows
what the rules are
and they certainly
don't follow the ones
that are there
and so
I think get all of those people
out of my way
replace them with waymos
that are predictable
and follow the rules
and I'll just drive around them
so if a self-driving
electric car
that you
and this brilliant
that you use
can give you that
level of satisfaction
to say that
this is absolutely brilliant
why does it matter
that we cling on to the other stuff
why does it matter
that the top automobile brands
are going in the direction
that they are
why does it
why does it matter
to cling on to the past
because we used to be able
to combine
two very disparate functions
there's pleasure of driving
and then there's transportation
and for a long time there
we were able to
to get one car
that did both
right
there were plenty
20 years ago
especially
plenty of cars
that were great to drive
acoustically interesting
fun to interact with
beautiful to behold
all of these things
and got us to work every day
and what's happening now
is the
the trans
we're separating out
the fun and the transport
in the same way that
this is tired old
corollary
but to horseback riding
right horse
riding horseback
is now a pleasure activity
and not used as a
transportation device
and we're seeing exactly
the same shift
starting to happen
where we're going to separate
out transportation
and transportation is just
going to be in some
self driven electric pod
but you go out for a drive
for fun
and it's a difficult thing
it's a difficult thing to know
that I used to be able
to get into a three series
and just
drift around a corner
and have fun
to on my way to work
and listen to a magnificent
straight six
and feel great steering
and now
no a Tesla
is always like a Tesla
it's set out to be
what it is
a Porsche
didn't set out to be a Taycan
no
and they're having to
compromise to make that happen
they're into compromise
to put smaller engines
in 718s
do you think
those brands will survive
I think most of the brands
that we know now
are on death watch
almost every traditional
car company
and I think what's
what really scares me the most
is that the pushback
against electric vehicles
that's happening politically
right now
especially in the U.S.
I mean it's happening everywhere
but my perspective is that
in the U.S.
from both from
from a sort of individual level
and the governmental level
right everyone
we're sort of rolling back
emissions standards
and fuel economy standards
and just saying
V8s for everyone
great fine whatever
what that's really doing
is attempting to stop progress
and I feel like progress
is like water coming down a river
you're not stopping it
the world has experienced electric cars
and I'm sorry
if people don't get this yet
they're just a better
transportation solution
period
and we will come to the decision
the world has already made
the world's sort of
governing bodies
have made the decision
we're going electric
the mass market consumer
will also come to that decision
as soon as they're really exposed
to an electric vehicle
it's the way it's going to happen
full stop
by pretending
that that's not the case
you're damming up a river
but what's really happening
is you're just increasing
the amount of pressure on that dam
you're just holding water
and holding water
and holding water
and at some point
that dam is going to break
and what I'm really worried about
is any car company
especially the American ones
and American market perspective
that are saying
oh fuck yeah
now we can just put a V8
and you know every compact car
and not care about fuel economy
and not care about emissions
whatever
and stop the development of EVs
is going to find themselves
that much further behind
when the dam breaks
and when the dam
the dam is going to break
when for example
Europe can't hold out any longer
and says we're getting rid of
combustion cars
now you have companies
multinational companies
that make a worldwide product
that works everywhere in the world
or that only works in the US
but nowhere in the world
they're fucked
they have no chance of survival
so the ones that are forging ahead
with their EV plans
and sort of bifurcating
and having their ICE engine car plans
have a shot
but at the end of the day
if they're not looking at what China is doing
as a Chinese manufacturer is doing
which is amazing stuff
they're just getting left
that much further behind
which is just ensuring their death
in Monterey
where we are now
we're surrounded by millions
of car spotters
and people that have the same passions
as both me and you
for cars
my friend Scoop
shout out Scoop Supercars
I was watching his story last night
and he is
up in a canyon somewhere
overlooking the sea
road legal
road legal sesto elemento
just being driven around
and I'm like oh my god
but it's very young
do you think
the people with that passion
about the stuff will still have a place
in 50 to 60 years?
Hmm
will they be allowed to drive those cars on roads
is the question
and I don't know the answer to that
I don't think it's that far off where
cities will start to outlawed
human driven cars
and combustion cars right
I mean London's congestion fee
was not really about congestion
that was about emissions
and so and we know that
because EVs are exempted
from that right
so is that really a congestion thing
or are we encouraging the death
of the combustion engine
and so I don't think it's that far off
before even American cities
like San Francisco I'm surprised
hasn't started to move towards
no combustion engines
and then eventually no
human driven cars
and I don't like this
but I understand it's just
the march of progress
and we just don't have a choice
we're gonna have to get used to it
all of the people here
are really celebrating
old cars
right
I mean Monterey car week
is based around the pebble beach
concor
which is about really old cars
but at the end of the day
every you know
like there's just
combustion cars
there's nobody's bringing
electric anything here
and it is the years
of the resto mod
at the minute
I feel like
I get as excited
when like a resto mod is released
as what I do
when
like Ferrari
used to launch their new model
now because we've peaked
care less
like TWR
have you seen the super cat
TWR is a V12 Jaguar
oh yes of course
the one that's Kaisal
yes
great yeah absolutely
Kaisal Magnus
worked on it too
and lucky enough
my digital marketing agency
does all the website build
and supplies everyone
does some of the marketing bits
and bobs
and like what a thing
like even hearing it go up
the head would
good would hail
was insane
so I kind of feel like
we are living
the years of the resto mod
but even that
will come to an end
which is quite sad
so
maybe
I'm not sure if we have the answers
where it's going to go
we don't
I think the answer is clear
it's going electric
but I think
at the end of the day
all of us are here
I'm here with
40 year old car
everyone's here with old cars
and if it's
you know
a set to Alimento
that's
still an old car
right at this point
this is
20 years old
old thinking
these are combustion cars
and I have no problem
continuing to celebrate this
right
I have
who knows how many years
left on this planet
we never know
hopefully a lot
and I fully intend
to burn a lot of gasoline
and destroy a lot of tires
and
and I'm uniquely positioned
at a classic car
insurance company
let's face it
to sort of pivot
as the new stuff
gets less and less interesting
and I don't really
want to talk about
another hybrid
four cylinder turbocharged
two liter
Honda Accord
whatever it is
I can go and play
with something old
and that
that is
the answer to your
YouTube channel
I don't have to chase
the views
to to earn my salary
I can think a little bit
longer out
and say
what is the best thing
for Hagerty
and
can that influence
my choices
of what I'm going to cover
right
should I cover
an F-150 Raptor
look I'd love one
I'm you know
I guess a redneck at heart
but I don't think
that's really
going to appeal
that much to our audience
so as a tiebreaker
instead I will
to our
is not going to appeal
that much to the audience
of potential people who will
write an insurance policy
so if I have to choose
between an F-150 Raptor
and like an Alpine A110
the original one
I probably should do
the Alpine A110
now there are times
when I just say
fuck it I don't care
like I did
ZR1 episode
I did Cybertruck
right
I've
any of these opportunities
that I think are really
interesting
and I think
a story I want to tell
I'll do
but I'm
I don't eat
I don't live or die
by that
sort of
level of scrutiny on
eyeballs
eyeballs
eyeballs
and I get to 10
towards the old
cars which benefits
my employer
so I'm lucky
well you mentioned then
that every single one
of those cars
has a story to tell
and I'm so glad that
not just the cars
have told stories today
but you have told yours
because
someone that has had
a massive influence
are not just
my shape
and what I've become
with automotive
but probably
tens of thousands
if not millions of others
without even
consciously realizing it
inside
a very humble self at heart
I want to say
thank you for coming on
telling your story
on road to success
and meeting me today
and I hope that everybody
listening to this
enjoyed the episode
please hit that like button
don't forget to subscribe
and make sure
you're subscribed
to Haggerty too
so Jason
thank you so much for coming on
I'm very interested to see
what the rest of your journey
has in store
me too
because who knows
thank you
great thank you so much
About this episode
Jason Cammisa, renowned for his role in automotive journalism, shares his journey from being fired at Motor Trend to becoming a prominent figure in the industry. He discusses his early passion for cars, the impact of significant car crashes on his life, and the evolution of his career. Cammisa reflects on the changing automotive landscape, the rise of electric vehicles, and the importance of storytelling in car culture. His candid insights into the challenges and triumphs of his career make for an engaging conversation about the future of cars and automotive media.
From being fired on his birthday to creating some of the most iconic car films on YouTube, Jason Camisa’s journey is full of twists, fights, vindication, and passion. He’s been at the center of the industry, from $50 drag races that went viral, to working with Tesla, and Hagerty, while staying true to integrity over money.
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