Justin Starkey on Building VMP Performance, Whipple Superchargers, R&D & Building a Legacy

This episode is brought to you by 6XD Gearbox. More on them later.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minoxide podcast. I'm your host,

Harris A.K. Minoxide, man of many automotive aspirations. I'm here with my Ford loving co-host,

Dan. Yeah, which works very well in this situation. Yeah, not a single Chevy in here.

No. Dan's leaving on a high note out of here today, so you're very excited.

Nonetheless, today we are here with Justin Starkey of VMP Performance and

yeah, just tell us a little bit about yourself, how we got here today,

and we'll just go from there. We talked a lot before we started the episode,

so we'll get into all that. Yeah, so we've been doing this for 25 years. Our 25th anniversary

is actually like coming up in April. Huh. So I mean, I'm sorry. It's coming up in May.

And I graduated high school. I met my wife at the drag strip and I gave the business a name.

I had been selling computer parts on eBay and then car parts when I saved up enough money

to buy a Mustang. And then I graduated high school and I'm like, I got to give this thing a name,

start a website, not just sell on eBay and the forums. And here we are today, 25 years later.

What does the VMP stand for? I'm sorry if that's out there somewhere and I don't know it.

It was on a test at one point to enter a contest. But it's out there, but not really.

This is kind of dumb. Yeah. Velocity, Mustang, performance. Okay. That's not that dumb.

VMP performance. So there's technically two performances. Yeah.

It's a place to call map, map performance in Minnesota. It's like really easy to do if you're

in the space, I guess. Right. Yeah. You got your first Mustang then. So what year or which

generation would that be? It was a new edge. Okay. We didn't call them new edges back then.

Yeah. They've still an S in 95. But as a 2000 bright Atlantic blue V6 Mustang.

I was the coolest kid on the block. Yeah. One wheel peel, ran 16s. It was not that

cool other than it was a Mustang. So this drove me to make it faster, pure pressure.

So I did all the stuff you could do from the JC Whitney and the Summit catalog

and made my own cold air, put an MSD on it, put plug wires on it.

Yeah. So at this point, are you surrounded by other car enthusiasts? Are you the only car

enthusiast here or? We had a group of buddies in high school that had like Mustangs and Camaros

and like the hot Hondas and stuff of the day. So why a Mustang then? Because

you had the F-body stuff was pretty popular back then, all that kind of stuff. What drove you to

that? Well, this is kind of embarrassing. Yeah. The Chevy dealer did not have any Camaros.

That's all right. They don't now either. So I guess it was a good choice. Yeah.

So then, okay. So you start modifying things. So when did you start tinkering with your new edge

then? Like pretty much right after I got it, I ordered it because I needed time to save up

more money and I wanted a color and just a certain combination of parts. You order a car,

you save money, you get what you want, whatever. So yeah. So I think it was like, I got it in

August, September of 1999 as a 2000 model year. That was a month old, by the way.

Just for context. Oh, shit. Sorry, Kirst. Oh, don't worry about that.

And I think like, I'm trying, like this is a little bit fuzzy. Is that an excellent question?

I'm like, PVC called, they are pretty easy to make at Home Depot. I probably saw that on like

corral.net. Does anybody remember that? Oh, I do. Yeah. And you know, went to the track with my

friends. Like there was all kinds of like drama around this. Like my neighbor told my mom that

I shouldn't go to the track because people just get drunk and fight in the staging lanes and stuff.

I'm like, I don't drink and like, I don't fight with people. So why is it a big deal to go to

the track? Right. Did you see any of that stuff? No. Okay. Yeah. It depends on the track too though.

Yeah. Maybe if it was Yellow Belly, but you know. So, okay. So you started attending the

track then. So how does, how do you and the business eventually progress? What does the

next few years look like? So, trying to make this concise because I can talk a lot.

I started making accessories for the car and I started selling them on eBay because that was

my outlet. And eBay was a new thing then. We were still like having people mail us money orders

because PayPal like just came out in 2000. And of course we switched to PayPal.

And I wanted to go faster. So it's like, man, what, and I like to make things. So

I eventually like the holy grail for any 2000s kid, right? Was like a vortex supercharger.

Yeah. And I never actually got one. I got a power dime instead. That's another story.

But intercooling the supercharger, I made like an intercooler kit for vortex supercharger v6

because there was none. And like I learned a weld and everything else and fabbed all this stuff up.

And was selling it to fellow enthusiasts. Like I only sold a couple of them, but

I think that was my first, you know, going outside of like the, the accessory stuff was

fog lights. And I was buying takeoffs from Celine, making a wiring harness and selling it to the v6

people, put fog lights, GT fog lights on your v6. So yeah, switch gears, performance. And

I really kind of needed to like some time to mature in the space and like meet some people. So

and like learn and stuff. So there was like the early phase and like graduating high school,

meeting my wife at the racetrack and doing stuff with both of our cars. And then like

a couple of years before things really got off and running. And like what that looked like is

I built this car. I needed it tuned. So I met one of the, ended up meeting one of the founders,

godfathers of Ford Performance in tuning, Mr. Jerry Roblesky, and having him tune my car at a

dyno day. And you know, he was like, Hey, why don't you learn to tune? I'm like, well,

oh, shit. I didn't think of that. You know, I'm like, I was, I couldn't even drink legally yet.

Yeah. And he saw this car that I built and, you know, he said, Hey, why don't you get involved?

And he's like, I'm starting a company. And ultimately, I went on to work for SCT for a little

under a year. So, okay. And at this point, so you met your wife at this point, what does she have?

She's got a 95 V6 Mustang. Okay. We were both nerding it out in our V6s.

Was, was the original, was it VMP at this point too? Like your Facebook,

or your Facebook, your eBay page? Was it all, was that what it was then too? Or?

No. No. Yeah. It was, it was just like whatever your handle was. Right. Okay. And like it could

have been CPU coolers. It could be in Chiven have been something. Okay. Cause I, I was born in 82.

So I was there for the induction of eBay and PayPal. And I still have my original eBay account

and PayPal account from then. So yeah. Nice. Do you ever sell anything under eBay? Can you have a

lot of stuff to sell? I probably should. I'll help you list some stuff. Okay. So then you start

working for SCT at this point. And then how do things progress from there?

So I remember this, this is kind of a crazy story. And like we're past the statute of

limitations and everything, right? So we talked about this. They said work for, work for free for

the first week and we'll give you the software. Cause at the time it was like a $5,000 or $10,000

package of all their software. And it was the first of its kind in the industry, like

full end to end software with a chip solution to install it on the vehicle.

And it was well documented and it had a value file system, like a template system. So it was

repeatable. And so I got that and I was learning the stuff and selling it and supporting it at the

same time. And so once I worked, I ended up working for free for two weeks because I'm like,

I'm not going to say anything about this. This is a really good deal. And then they started

paying me in chips because I was tuning in the evenings and selling chips on the forums to my

fellow V six brethren. And yeah. And I remember, you know, Chris Johnson was one of the founders,

he's still really prominent in the industry. And I would, I would message, I would email him

cause we texting wasn't a thing back then. I'd email and be like, Hey, I left, you know,

a thousand bucks in your desk and I took, you know, 10 more chips or whatever. Cause I was,

I think, you know, I was selling more chips than I could, you know, earn. Right. So

this is all V six stuff at this point, pretty much. Yeah. And you know, you had like your

oddball stuff. Like I remember the first car I dyno tuned was like a ZX3 escort,

cause some local guy went on his car dyno to four cylinder, 140 year old horsepower.

And you know what? That was the first time like I got to kind of see more of the performance

world. I rented a dyno at some Corvette shop. I think it's Corvette masters and Longwood.

I don't know if they're still around. So you rented the shop from a Corvette place. You

showed up with a ZX3. Yeah. I mean, I had a V six, no shame. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Stop me at least.

Yeah. So, um, and the, yeah, I probably need a clip here to keep going. So ask me more questions.

Yeah. So, okay. So you start and you go, you take the ZX3 there.

So what timeframe is that roughly at this one? Like 2005, six ish or

it's probably 03 still. 03. Okay. Yeah. So then, okay, at that point though,

now we got terminators coming on the scene. Did you start dabbling with those at some point?

I did. I was a little bit more mature in my career. So, you know, I mentioned earlier,

I worked for SCT for less than a year. It was like eight months. It was a rapidly growing company.

And there really wasn't a place for an employee that was being paid in chips and working on the

side, you know, realistically, you know, understandable. And they really supported

me through my journey after I left the company. So that's all good. But that whole time I'd

been working at SCT earning a paycheck, making money on the side. I have been saving money.

I bought my first house and I bought my first dyno in late 2003. Wow. Okay. So,

but you can't put a dyno in your house. So I built a trailer for it in my two car garage.

I'm like, man, this would be perfect. I don't want to like set the dyno up in some shop that

I'm paying rent to or whatever and be stuck there. Let me just put it on a trailer and go

wherever I want. And I bought some books. I talked to a guy named Dan Desio that built

his own dyno trailer. And I'm like, I can, I can picture this. I can weld fabricate whatever.

Cool. So I did it. And, you know, the dyno was really that pivotal point where I had my own

equipment I could tune on as long as I wanted to my cars, customer cars, whatever, and really

start to learn like the real like, you know, craft of tuning. When you say learn, what does

learning look like at this point? Really making changes and understanding why they happen.

Yeah, you're on a dyno to look at horsepower. And you have that's your main measure of success.

So, but you're also, you're also data logging. You're also measuring air fuel. You're measuring

boost. And you're changing things, getting the right set of components for the car to perform

like, you know, optimally in every possible way. Are you getting some good gains out of stuff at

this point? I mean, as things are going pretty good and customer base is starting to kind of

fall in line, I suppose. Yeah. I'm not just saying that you sucked at it or anything,

but I've just, you must have been pretty decent at it at that point. I didn't blow up cars.

Yeah. Which, you know, I wasn't real early in the game with the 0304 Cobra stuff. I was like,

0506 is when I really started tuning a lot. But I say the thing about blowing up cars,

because there were a lot of lightnings blown up and warrantied by four dealers. There were a few

0304 Cobras as well. So you can't run 29 degrees of spark in a boosted car. I mean, you can,

but I don't recommend it. It's another story. So you, like, I was careful. I was crept up. I crept

up on things. I had some great mentors in the tuning space. So they helped me understand the

theory of it and I was able to apply that. Any to mention? Really, Jerry Ribleschi. Okay. You know,

and I'm trying to think, and then, you know, the racetrack that teaches you things. Oh, yeah.

For better or for worse. I just know we have a mutual friend, Greg Banish. So I didn't know

class and we've been friends since. Okay. And he's an incredible friend and mentor as well.

But yeah, he was a little bit later and I, I didn't know back then, but I would need him

for much more difficult stuff in the future. We'll get into that later. So

When do you first coin the website domain for VMP? I'm just curious. Oh gosh.

It's got to be 01 when we, when I registered the name. Okay. So I found the paper and it's in my

office at home. I'm going to frame it, but it's the fictitious name registration for velocity

Mustang performance. So I didn't catch this earlier. Did you go to school or anything?

Or do you have a degree in anything? No, I never learned to read.

Was it? It didn't hit quite the way I wanted it to. Yeah, yeah. Sorry.

Well, it sounds like you got out of high school and started a business right away and went right

from there. So I was kind of a failure in high school. I did really good as a freshman and then

I got distracted by making money on the internet. I had my freshman earth sciences teacher tell me,

Justin, you totally ace the class. You could be valedictorian of your class.

And like, okay, cool. I'll keep working at this. But the focus required to go through school.

I was easily distracted by cars, girls and money. So when you get to a certain level in a build,

whether it be drag racing or drifting, road course, or just the badass free car,

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could fit in your build. Let's get back to the show. A lot of late nights on

eBay. A lot of weightlifting was my first class, my senior year. And that was a really easy one

to skip. And they'd still give you a D because they didn't want to keep you behind. And which I

love weightlifting now. It's probably better than I'm finding it later in life when I'm more disciplined

and can stick to it. And yeah, so I went to college for like six months or a year and I did

some classes and just kind of the business and the family just kind of took off. So yeah, that

makes sense. Yeah. So when you're doing some fog light kits at whatever, when do we start

seeing parts? So you're doing some tuning and where are you? So that came later and about,

oh wait, and I'll tell you how I got there. Okay.

Weight, there was one part before I fabricated my own turbo kit and I needed a mass air solution

for the factory ECU. Like, and this is back in, this is back in, you know, a one or two,

maybe three, like you didn't put stand-alones in street cars. Right. It's like, you don't

understand the world that we're living in now. It's just amazing. But so you had to keep the

mass air. So I had a customer who had, now he's been a customer yet, he was a machine shop,

he had a local buddy with a machine shop. He's like, I can make that part for you.

So I made them and I sold them, people on forums and websites, a mass air flange to put

the factory sensor directly in a tube. Okay. And, and that actually started a big part of our

business is the mass air, housing, sensors, harnesses, et cetera. So that was the first part,

but it really, I don't know, I don't count it as really significant. I had to spend some time in

the tuning market and just kind of watch everything go on. And by 2006, there was a hot new

Mustang on the scene that was factory supercharged. Anybody remember that one? Yeah. Yeah. And

like, local guy had one of these cars and sought me out on the forums. This is 07 JT500.

You know, we hadn't been, yeah, since 04 Cobra was the last factory supercharged car,

we had the new generation and 05, but no supercharged Mustang. So,

Yeah, this is Shelby's back in the picture now too. Yeah. Yeah. And like I had been

tuned in three valves with turbos and blowers and nitrous and everything and, you know,

staying busy doing that, doing two valve stuff was still hot back then. So I was seasoned

as a tuner, you know, had my AFM 1000 wide bands, you know, in my dyno and getting,

you know, doing all the data acquisition you needed to do to be successful as a tuner.

Because yeah, if you don't have the basics, then you're just, you're just f-ing around.

So, 07 Shelby JT500. And I am the second person in the country to tune one.

John Lund beat me by a week. So we ended up picking up 60 rear-ball horsepower on

on this 07 JT500, taking it from like 420 at the wheels to 480. And I remember I posted on no

less than 30 forums on article with my dyno results. And like, there were some like,

weird ball forums I posted on, but I'm just like, I'm just going to get the recognition.

Yeah. So now where this goes into the part side of things is I'm like, I need to buy my own car

because this looks, this is fricking awesome and I can use it for R&D. So,

of course, these cars were super hard to get back then. Everybody was paying

15 to 25,000 over sticker. Oh, damn. Oh, wow. Okay. And you know, this was late 06, early 07, so

the economy was about to melt down, but yeah, it's always the hottest right at the end, right?

So like one dealership had a car of every color you could pick, but they wanted 25,000 over.

That was like, I'm no way. Yeah. I'm doing that. So finally in May of 07, I found a car,

a red with white stripe car. Nice. At a little tiny dealership in Paduca, Kentucky. No, it wasn't

Paduca. It was, that's the big city in Western Kentucky. It was a smaller city. Yeah. It was like

an OG four dealer with a showroom that held two cars max. Yeah. And so anyways, a guy had,

it was a lot, it was a deed, the dealership had won the lottery and they had sold the car to one

of their good customers. And I show up there and I'm like, okay, write a check for the car and then

write a check to this guy because he's selling you his allocation basically. I'm like, okay, cool.

So for $51,000, I walked away with my 07 GT500 and started messing it with tuning it before I even

got home. And of course on a supercharged car, the first thing you do is you tune it and then

you change the pulley. Yep. And then you do, you know, back then they had an air box still,

so we had to change the air intake. So I found a local machine shop and actually was at a party

with the owner's son over the weekend. They, they made, we designed a pulley and they made

it for me. And my claim to fame back then was the stock look but smaller because all these

guys wanted to keep their warranty. Yeah. I take my car into the dealership for oil changes. I don't

want to, you know, don't want them to see any mods. So and like in retrospect now, like we went to

one size and then I'm like, let's go smaller. Okay, what are the material properties? How thin

can we make this? How can we optimize every single element of the design to get as much as possible

out of it? And yeah, so I consider that my first like in 0809, we started doing pulleys for the

Shelby's. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you had an R&D car at that time. So that makes sense. Yeah. I had

the dyno set up in a shop. I was tuning there at the shop two or three days a week. And then I was

doing email tunes the other two or three days a week. Okay.

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Yeah. So I kind of played around with this Shelby as much as I could. I had a good friend who was

like, Hey, I think we can make a bigger throttle body for this thing. So I did the throttle body,

I did the elbow, the tuning, the pulley. We didn't know yet how bad they overheated.

We didn't know what other parts of the system could be optimized. So we just, you know,

you did kind of what you could see and feel and you could get a real quick,

a good gain on the dyno pretty quickly. You know, I maintain drivability, durability,

all those things that customers want because, you know, can't blow up cars. Like people got

to be able to enjoy their cars when they're modified. So we did all that and I get wind of

a new supercharger coming out from Ford Performance and contacted one of my long time buddies I had

met through tuning. He's still in the industry today. Great guy, Dan from Dynojet. I know

a lot of tuners and stuff. No, Dan. Yeah. Hey, do you know anybody at Ford? He's like, yeah,

send you a couple email addresses. And I wrote up a sponsorship proposal. Now I'm going to caveat

this with, this is going to kind of, this is kind of funny, Pads Cross. I also wrote up a sponsorship

proposal. The sponsorship proposal I wrote up and I said, Hey, I've got this car. It's going to be on

display at the PRI show because I always have my dyno at the PRI show and then you need a

demonstrator car on the dyno. And you know, these are the deliverables. We'll run it on the dyno.

People will see your product on my car. We'll do a, we'll do a plaque with the modification list

and everything. And obviously on the dyno, they'll see the horsepower result. You know,

and I'm a good tuner, so it will produce good horsepower. Sent a sponsorship proposal to Ford

Performance, Whipple Superchargers and Kenny Bell. Okay. And Ford Performance was pretty easy

because I had the emails of the guys, but I remember I messaged Kenny Bell on SVT Performance

and they didn't get back to me for a while and they had questions and stuff. And like,

I asked Jared to ask Dustin, you know, about this and they were busy and didn't get back to me real

quick. Ford Performance got back to me within like 24 hours and they told me what the, what I needed

to do. They wanted some other parts on the car that they were coming out with, some valve covers

and some coil covers. And I'm like, okay, this is, this is pretty straightforward. Let's do it.

And that started our first jump into the Supercharge world. Okay. So, of course, they gave me the

original Ford Racing TVS upgrade for the 07 GT500. It was like, they sold it as a package

with calibration that was rated at like 650 horsepower. And I remember when Shelby was

building all the super snakes of that generation, they were putting it on the convertibles because

that was the limit of the convertible chassis. And the Coupe cars got like a Kenny Bell 800

horsepower package. So like, you know, Kenny Bell and Whipple were both in this space at the same

time and they had options, but they weren't like fully flushed out. They had drop motor mounts,

they had trimming of this and that, you know, just, they got it done, you know, and which is

impressive to begin with, right? But the Ford Performance solution was a little more of an OEM

integrated approach with this new 2.3 liter TVS rotor pack. I'm like, okay, hey, you know, we'll

try this, this deal out, it's new technology, see how it performs. So, do you want me to keep talking

about this? No, no, no, keep going. Yeah. All right. Nice trip down the history lane. Yeah. So,

just like the factory supercharger on the GT500s, we, you know, applied all of our tweaking to this

one and learned, you know, a lot of what was different as far as, like, I just remember this

to the day that the pulley is an eighth of an inch difference. We had to make a different

line of pulleys for those. And it was really, it was meant to go on a factory car with

everything factory. So, same throttle bodies, air intakes, elbows, all that stuff applied,

you know, and that's when we started to get into, like, bigger injectors, more fuel flow,

because now we really could move more air, so we need more fuel. Okay. Yeah. And I remember

posting on the forums, I think I made 666 rear-wheel horsepower and everybody was real

impressed by that. Yeah. And this is a car that made 420 stock, you know, 520 to 550 with bolt-ons.

So, yeah. It's a big jump at this point. Yeah. What time frame is this at this point as well?

This would have been mid-08. Wow, okay. No, I'm sorry, it would have been mid-09.

Okay. Okay. You know, and we had come out of the O3 Cobra Hay Day, you know, all those cars made

600 of the wheels and you had the more extreme ones that maybe made 650, 700. Right. But the

lightnings never made that unless they were really heavily modified with the cylinder head that

finally came out for the two-valve and stuff. I was going to say because the lightning was

still a two-valve too, which is kind of disappointing. Yeah. And like the turbo,

the turbo three-valve and two-valve stuff, like nobody was popping out 1000 rear-wheel horsepower

numbers left and right like they are now. Yeah. Like that really only happened over like the last 10

years. Yeah. So, yeah, it was impressive. And I continued to modify that car into 2010,

you know, long tube headers, camshafts. I remember doing a camshaft install article for

5.0 magazine with Mark Christ and ended up making like 800 rear-wheel horsepower

on a stock bottom end just with, you know, two, three supercharger with all the upgrades and

cams. Now, these, I always forget that those 5.4s, those don't have variable cam timing either

or them, right? So, they can, okay. Yeah. So, now you're getting close and you got the coyote

coming down the pipe now here. So, yeah. So, a lot of things happened really freaking quick in

2010. And I actually need to write this down, you know, in the background, my life, my wife,

I met her at the drag strip. We built several cars for her. She would drag race them when she could.

She would help with the business when she could. But she was also going to school for her

micro molecular biology degree and having our first kid in 07 and our second kid in 09.

So, a lot going on at this point. Yeah. And, you know, the blessing of us being

both really hardworking and really determined is like she would be working at on school work until

like 2am and I would be sending out emails and tunes till like 2am. Okay. So, what cars is she

racing at this point? Because now this is years later past the V6 engine. Yeah. So, we kind of

retired the V6. We got her an 06 Mustang daily driver. And like back in 06, we were still pretty

hardcore V6 people. And you got to remember the GTs weren't that great. Yeah. Two valve made 220

to the tires. The three valve made 280 to the tire. But a freaking LS1 Camaro made 300 to the

tire and responded well to bolt-ons. So, we're just like, hey, let's get a V6 and throw a super

charger on it. That's kind of our jam back then. So, she had this V6 manual. We did a lot of stuff

to that car. Vortex at 15 pounds. We did a TR6060 swap. Actually, remember somebody that helped

me out with some parts they custom one-off parts they made. And like, you know, I was seeking out

people like Paul Savinike from Paul's High Performance and, you know, Bowen, who actually

passed away last year, Mike Bowen. You know, hey, how did you do this? You know, and this and that.

And, you know, I'm just some annoying kid, right? It's how I look at myself. And they were, you

know, they would help me and give me tips and stuff like that. And we'd go and do it. So,

we built this 450 rural horsepower supercharged V6 for her. That was her daily driver. She actually

had two kids in the back of it at one point when we had our second son. And my wife's 5'3". So,

like, she sits all the way forward. So, car seats and mustangs go together. Especially, yeah. So,

that's kind of, that's what, that's what else we were doing.

So, let's talk parts again here. So, you're doing like long tube headers and all this stuff.

Where are you producing all this stuff at this point? Are you designing all this yourself as

well? Is somebody helping you? No, we're, we're drawing on, you know, other, other companies.

And like, ultimately, we really only get into a part or component if we can add significant

value above and beyond what the rest of the industry does.

So, yeah, I'm, I'm happy to use, you know, I remember I called up McLeod and talked to Red

McLeod about a clutch for one of her cars. And he's like, yeah, we can make that. And,

you know, I was using headers from my buddies at AFCO, you know, the now defunct Dynatech brand.

And, and yeah, so just whoever was out there, at that point, you know, I was a go-to tuner.

So, I had a pretty big network of like people I could call. Okay.

So, then now we're finally getting into like the 2010 plus era. How are things progressing at

this point? Do you have employees at this point? So, sort of. Okay. And all right, let me get you,

let me get you up to speed on this. I had my brother working for me. He was still like a

teenager or something in the mid 2000s, making wiring harnesses and answering emails and shipping

stuff. I had my buddy Brett working for me. And then like something happened. And it's just like

my brother moved on, Brett moved on. And we're like, you know what, I'm just gonna do,

we're just gonna do all this ourselves. And you know, I remember I had a setup in my living room

because I was like remodeling the room in my house that was my office. And then, so from like

08 to 10 or 11, I had no full-time employees. I just had helpers at Dino Days. I know by the way,

this mobile Dino that that I built in my two car garage, we were taking it to every car show in

the area we could find. Because we would show up and we'd Dino about 10% of the show. Oh, really?

And it was just cash in your pocket. And it was the marketing exposure for the business.

So like Rebecca would sign them up, me and the helper would strap them down and run them,

give them their printout, how you're making this much horsepower. And we do that 10 or 15 times a

year. And are you doing a lot of tuning at this time too? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Day in, day out,

living and breathing it. You know, I don't even know what the numbers are. Like,

technically, I have all the files from back then. Yeah. But it was easily, I mean,

between updates and new tunes, I could have been slinging 20, 20, 30 tunes a day by myself.

Oh, yeah. Quite a bit at that point. Yeah. Yeah. So 2010, let's talk about that year,

because that was the year the Coyote was introduced. That was the year we had been doing a lot of these

Ford Racing Supercharger installs and a lot of tuning. And, you know, I would get them and I'd

modify them for people. And I'm like, man, why can't I just buy them already modified to my

specifications? And I had been talking to the, the Eaton Supercharger world is a pretty big world.

It crosses OEM and aftermarket. And their new two, three TVS rotor, it was a competitor,

the traditional screw rotors from Whipple and Kenny Bell, even though it was smaller,

it was very efficient. So I've been talking to Herup, Edelbrock, Roush, and it was really hard

to get into these big companies if you didn't have an existing relationship. So

this is silly. This is really silly. My caller ID lights up with Roush Industries.

Somebody calls me from Roush and says, Hey, I think we should be talking because

there's this new Coyote coming out and we have a Supercharger system designed for us. And

I say, you know, by the way, I've been trying to get ahold of you guys because I heard you made

XXX parts for Ford Performance, which was a Supercharger that was I got sponsored with. And

I actually want to do my own version. Like, Oh yeah, they said that, you know, that program's

kind of run its course, but we have some leftover inventory. We should talk. Okay, great. Yeah. So

that was the start of having our own Supercharger line. Oh, and then there's the whole other thing.

I said, Oh yeah, by the way, I want to put these two, three TVS is on

an 0304 Colbrox. I think it would be a good technology for that car too.

And, you know, I actually hand-built fabricated a couple prototypes with generic housings that

you could buy from the Supercharger companies at the time. So we had a working prototype.

I mean, it performed well, as expected, because I had all the data from the 54 GT500.

So yeah, a lot of stuff happened in 2010. That kicked off. So we kicked off our own design

on our own tooling for the Superchargers for first Cobra. And we modified existing tooling for

GT500. And then we partnered with Roush on the Coyote. Okay. Yeah. So your partner with them is

they're setting them to your specs or you're rebranding on to buying them from them and

selling them to your stuff. So we have, they started, first they started machining them to

our specifications so they could take a bigger inlet, a smaller pulley, and then later on we

invested in our own design and tooling. Okay. Yeah. So I guess we can jump right ahead then,

because this kind of works. So this whole deal that you've got going with Whipple now is not

anything new to you. This is something that you guys have worked on deals like this before.

How did that come about then? Did you... There's a, I've told the story privately quite a bit.

You know, we had been, let me give a little more history, because I know everybody wants to hear

how did we start working with Whipple. Right. Because we had been, you know,

bitter competitors in the space for the better part of a decade. And, you know, the,

with the GT500 stuff, Whipple, like, let's go back to the GT500, because that was like our initial

delve into really supercharging and modifying cars, you know, above and beyond just tuning.

Like I'd get a customer car in, it'd be specced out, and I'm like, hey, these parts of components

work good together. We tune it, we get them a result. So I always had that data, but I wasn't

changing things like real time. Whereas with my own cars and my superchargers, I spent a lot of

time on, I was intimately knowing everything I could about them. And I had been, you know,

I've been tuning a lot of Whipple cars. I had worked with Jared from Lethal early on,

was very close with Whipple and tuned a lot of his cars. And, you know, I actually have,

I've had Dustin Whipple's cell phone in my number of my phone for like 15 years. And I had called

him once about something in 2010, we'd exchanged him emails or something. And I actually found

this email and sent it to him. Like he said, Justin, we should get a Whipple on that car.

But yeah, through the teens, the industry got really competitive for better, for worse.

Like I played a part in that. And we had been really pushing the TVS technology. And Eaton had

had a good thing with the 2.3. They continued it with the 2.6.5. And they even tried to continue

it further with a 3.3, which ended up morphing into a 3.1. And we went through several versions

of the 3.1. And, you know, Eaton's a great company. They produce a great product, but they've got

their own little box they live in. We all, you know, we all have to frame stuff realities that

we can deal with. And right, like their downsides are they're traditionally a high volume OEM

manufacturer. They're cost constrained. And, you know, in the racing world, if you want to make

more power, like cost just can't be an option at some point. Right. The magic of being successful

in the market is hitting that balance of cost and performance. And Eaton had it for a long time.

And we ran with them exclusively through the teens and even into the early, you know, 20s. So

and where I'm going with this is like, we had tested the new 3.1 extensively. I think I showed

and I don't believe we'll ever be successful in this space. The manufacturing limitations that

Eaton has are just going to keep it, keep the 3.1 liter TVS from really being able to perform on

like this car and that Shelby behind you. It's not a high pressure supercharger. It is a high

volume supercharger. And on all of these late model cars, you know, there's small blocks,

five twos, five fours. If you want to make a killer number, you need 30 pounds of boosts,

you need 25 to 30 pounds. And I actually don't recommend running superchargers higher than that.

So the TVS loses its edge at those higher pressures and a bigger one, a larger displacement TVS

doesn't fix that. You know, Eaton's technology would probably be great on a boat, a steady state

application. You know, we found through extensive testing, it was

better in like the 3,000 to 4,000 RPM range on some of the Shelby applications we tested.

And I, you know, I'm going to get this about the TVS stuff. It wasn't torqueier. It's

it traded off. It just had a lot of trade offs. It had honestly a narrower operating window than

any supercharger I've seen that the three one did. The two, three and the two, six, five are great.

Yeah. And actually, you know, two, six, five, I think is the best people say a lot about the two,

three being torqueier and this and that. I'm like, yeah, it's torquey. And then it chokes. And,

you know, all of us want to go faster as the RPMs go higher and right six, five does that for you.

So enough about TVS stuff. You know, but I was important that we had really worked on and loved

the TVS stuff, but it really it hit hit the end of the line. Okay. And there were a lot of back

in 2023, there were a lot of things going on. Whipple was rolling out new product constantly

and hitting the market. And they were being successful, but they were having some failures.

And, you know, we've obviously had our own trials and tribulations in the aftermarket space.

You know, when you're on the cutting edge, that happens. And I see Dustin getting beat up on the

internet. And I just, I pull up in the driveway at home. I just pick up the phone and I say, hey,

you're doing good. Your responses are good. You're not arguing with people.

You're doing great, man. And he's like, you know, thank you. I'm just, you know,

I'm just trying to do the best I can. And we ended up talking for an hour.

And, you know, just kind of ended the call with like, Hey, you know, if you ever need anything,

I'm here. And, and that had been after a long

course of, you know, arguing on the internet with your competitors, but saying some things

I'm not real proud of. Well, I remember all through that S550 stuff, it was like Odin or Whipple,

and it was like, those were your options, you know. So yeah, it was, it was going back and forth.

So, you know, that phone call was really early in 2023.

And it, it didn't really go anywhere. But I think it laid the foundation for, you know,

hey, we're just people, you know, doing what we're passionate about. And

at the end of the days, there's probably more commonalities than there are differences.

So we get going towards the end of 23. And one of our former employees that,

you know, we're still friends with actually gets a job at Whipple. And as Chuck Carter,

and, you know, things had further developed with the new Mustang, more details were coming out.

And our relationship with Magnuson had really been going through a lot of trials and tribulations

because of the, the 3-1 failures, frankly. And there were certain things they wanted

that we didn't agree with. And, you know, they wanted to go a different direction.

So we started talking to Whipple and, you know, found out there was a lot of mutual respect there.

And, you know, from an engineering perspective and, you know, providing the best possible

product to our customers, found out Whipple was working on a lot of new stuff, found out they

had addressed their quality and durability issues. And with the Gen 6, found out they also had a

better mousetrap. So we were really keen to that. And, you know, we had always clung to

the TVS stuff because of the broad power band of the 2-3 and then especially of the 2-6-5.

It was torquey and it could flow there and make the power. And Whipple had always been able to hit,

you know, part of that, but have some trade-offs. Well, you know, they're new and like this is

something that's not really talked about in the Whipple space because it's the same displacement,

but a 3-liter Gen 5 versus a 3-liter Gen 6, totally different animal. And

that's what really sold me on partnering with Whipple.

When you say different animal, do you have any specific reasons?

Yeah. So they changed the rotor profile on the Gen 6.

It's kind of like, so I have a Gen 4 on my car, right? So that was technically a Gen 3,

but it had a different rotor pack, I think is what it was. So it's a kind of a similar situation,

I would assume. Yeah. And like, I'm gonna say that, and I don't think Whipple's ever come out

and say this, but I know all the design and engineering attributes because we design super

chargers here. Right. The Gen 6 is actually a longer rotor pack by 20 millimeters because they

worked out the length over diameter. And that's one of the critical factors you

manipulate to make a supercharger efficient in the range you need it to be. You know,

you've got air coming in and you can either blow air and just pump it or you can compress air

at a high adiabatic efficiency to do it without a lot of drive losses. And I can get more into

that later because I don't know if that really made sense. But where I'm going with this is it like

your two nines, I think like a Gen 2 through a Gen 4 2.9-liter, I think they'll all fit in the same

case. The Gen 6 is actually a new case, improved durability due to case structure, and greatly

improved adiabatic efficiency due to the rotor design. Okay. And you know, what this means for

the average coyote person is the boost comes on hard. It hits hard. I actually think that the

3.0-liter Gen 6 is well matched to the coyotes airflow requirements. It makes more torque

than a 265 at the same boost and same RPM. And you will hear all the TVS proponents talk about

this stuff about, you know, how torquey they are, how hard they hit. First of all, I don't care about

anything below like 2000 RPM. Like you're not really using an engine at that point. You know,

3000 on up, up to the coyotes, 7, 8, 9000 RPM revelator. That's what you're using.

So the Whipple stuff comes on. It's solid, it makes good power, and it carries it all the way to

the end. And I know from all the testing and development work we've done that, you know, you

have to hit the right profile. And you have to avoid expending too much energy to drive the

supercharger. So when we started doing, first of all, Whipple told us the results of the Gen 6,

and then we started doing our own testing. And you know, really, that's what's on this car.

That whole design compounds everything from the inlet, the intercooler setup, the rotors, they all

work harmoniously together to make a lot of power. Okay. You know, and at this point,

you know, we're, you know, if you can make 30 to 60 more horsepower at the same boost level

without having to change fuels, without being harder on the engine, that's a win.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, coyotes are already making the most power per pound of boost for,

compared to every other Dodge and Chevy out there.

And then on the upper end of things, you know, we were pushing the TVSs to like

a thousand, 1100, 1200. We had some really crazy builds make like 1300.

You're probably going to need to ship your car soon, or know somebody that will. And as someone

who used to work in freight logistics, I understand the difficulties of finding reliable transport,

especially when trying to make it to rallies, race tracks, or to warehouse to hide your Corvette,

because you're going through a messy divorce and when she says everything, she means everything.

Anywho, next year is the proud owner of Sure Thing Logistics. Having traveled much of the

country with every type of vehicle you can imagine, he's got the experience and reliability that you

want to ensure a safe journey for your pride and joy. If you want to find out what it takes

to ship your vehicle, go to Sure Thing Logistics.net, fill out the intake form, and be sure to let

him know I sent you. Let's get back to the show. The Whipple Gen 6 stuff can do that and a little

bit more. It can do it without overdrive balancers. Because it takes so little power to drive,

it can get farther with a six-rib belt before having to go to eight and 10-rib and stuff.

That's the engineering side of it. I don't know if I answered your question.

What I got from that is you were working with Eaton and you basically just switched suppliers

is what you did. It's not a new thing in this industry where people are putting their own

spin on stuff and whatever. Eaton is a giant corporation. They make manufacturing equipment

and all kinds of stuff. They specialize in superchargers.

It was like a natural evolution for our goals, for the goals, for our customers,

for our racing programs, for performance. People love their car so much,

when you come out with something better, they'll buy the next generation of it.

I think it's important to be able to continuously disrupt your own market, essentially.

Let's go into, because what you guys do do, I think very well, is all the stuff around it as

well. You're very big. We talked about cooling, things like that. Walk us through the R&D of

some of the stuff that you guys see that are lacking and where we go from there.

The whole thing about engineers at big companies are arrogant.

When the 3.1 TVS, the first version, didn't work, we were told that,

well, something else is wrong with your system. Your throttle body is too small,

your pressure drop cross your intercoolers too high, whatever. You've got a cork somewhere.

I had already started to dabble in that and that led to the partnership with PWR

to develop better intercoolers. The first one was for your Shelby, your new generation 2020 Shelby.

We developed an incredible test rig on our chassis dyno that rivals some engine dyno's

for supercharger testing and evaluation, like pressure drops, temperature, pulley speeds,

everything. We could test intercooler designs. You're working day to day, right?

If you don't make time for R&D, then you have no future. In retrospect, I'm looking at,

why did this take so long? The TVS stuff and the feedback from Eaton drove us to,

we were already good on the throttle body side, but it pushed us further.

But the intercooler is something that all these Cobras and the older GT500 we supercharged,

we just never touched the intercooler. If I recall, there were very few people in the,

there was maybe one or two in each market segment that had an aftermarket intercooler and nobody

really knew what it did or if it was better or anything else. That's really where I forced

myself to learn about the intercooler and how to make it better. It's an integral component of

the supercharger system. If your intercooler flows too much air and you can see through it

very clearly, it's not going to pull any heat out. Then conversely, if it's too restrictive,

the pressure drop across it is too high and your supercharger is working that much harder.

Every pound of boost from a supercharger takes 10 or 20 horsepower to drive it.

You want it to have to do as little work as possible. We ended up developing intercooler

upgrades for the Shelby and the older GT500 first. Those technologies work a little bit

differently and we're actually homogenizing that with some new parts and new offerings

that are going to happen this year. I first did cores, then I did lids and the lid thing took

me way longer, late to the game with that, but we've been very successful since. I think you

have one for your part. You must have sold a lot of Apex Predator lids though because I feel like

I see them everywhere. There's a lot of people that have them. I just ordered another 200

and I think we're about 450 in at this point in the field plus whatever we're going to sell this

year. That's pretty cool that your creations are adopted by the market.

Well, when I switched out my intercooler core, I saw your videos and then you put the two next

to each other and you're like, holy crap, it is a huge difference. It's funny because things

ultimately develop a life of their own. Our competitor said it was too restrictive,

it had higher pressure drops and I'm like, wait, it's engineered for lower pressure drops and the

data says that's how it works. Oh, you're just talking shit. Well, welcome to the internet.

Well, one of the things that we got to get a little bit of insight on, so hopefully by the

time this episode airs, I'll drop our tour with AMS Performance, but we went over there and when

we were talking to Martin, they censored the shit out of their car. I think it's like a

mo-tech whatever the thing and I think every time they switch cars like 19 sensors and they're

measuring all these pressure drops and all that, it's a crazy setup and it's the same thing you're

talking about. It's like, oh, these people are saying it's worse. Well, when you have a consistent

way of testing the data, it's like, oh, this is a significantly better product. So I'm curious,

what do you guys do for testing here to make claims like that? So on that lid and intercooler

development cycle, we were using spacers as thin as a millimeter and a half to and we had to do three

pulls back to back and have them in the same weather conditions and have them repeat. So that

meant setting the car up for a morning of testing and being able to do it like all in a morning

before the afternoon heat came in, because you can correct for weather changes, but it's really

not a good idea. So yeah, very minute changes and that ultimately proved out the technology and

we're now we've applied for a patent on it. So yeah, and essentially pressure is the big thing

and then horsepower is how we proved out that system. Okay. And yeah, if you have a GT500,

you don't have it yet, it was a very easy like it was an affordable like I'm surprised that it's

more cheaper. More people aren't just doing it because it really wasn't the price point was good

and it was a super easy install. Yeah, and that's like one of our goals, right? Is we did a second

generation lid recently to use some space that I had originally ignored, but there was a ton of 3D

printing installation trials to make sure that like the space can be there, but if you can't

install the part because there's something you have to work around then, you know, it's no good.

So yeah, and I feel like there was something I was missing on that.

Well, also, so you said you work with PWR, I talked to them at was it PRI or probably PRI and

I think they make Palm Beach Dinos heat exchanger and they supply for the OEMs. Basically,

if you have an intercooler or something out there, they probably make it for about everybody and

anybody. Yeah, yeah, they're a very premium supplier. I think CFS. Oh, maybe it was CFS.

That's who I talked to. Yeah, sorry. Yeah. And like I developed a special relationship with PWR

very early on. One of the engineers there, we really connected and were able to iterate a lot

to get to the best design and they make everything right there in Indiana. Okay. Yeah, that'd be

another good one to meet with their current head of engineering Hayden. So yeah, I don't know what

to develop and build things like that. That has to be pretty, that seems intense. Yeah,

going on there. And the crazy thing is when we first started working with them, they were flying

the parts in from Australia and they eventually bought, brought all the manufacturing stateside.

Oh, really? Thank gosh, right? With all the tariff drama over the last couple of years.

And they do batch brazing and these specially designed furnaces like

I think with anything, there's a lot to make and stuff and figure it all out.

You know, the only downside is they're a very premium product. So, you know, I made the decision

to offer a street line of intercooler cores that are more affordable and then a race line

for people that want all out performance. Yeah, I didn't, I don't know, I'm just,

if it's, there's a bigger one, I'm going to get that one. Yeah. And actually, like,

the, we have, we actually have carbios on some of our intercoolers as well. And we'll get them for

all of our intercooler cores eventually because they don't negatively impact emissions, but we just,

we have it on some of the original ones because we were doing a batch of carbios.

Well, let's talk about that for a second then too, because you're an active member with SEMA,

right? So, you kind of, I mean, you have a part in helping with the lobbying and all that stuff for

that. Yes. Okay. You know, they have been gracious enough to listen to me and take my opinions

and put me in front of Congress people and officials and, you know, talk about like what's

really going on in the industry. And the truth is, like over the past five, 10 years, we've seen a lot

of disruptions that, if not handled, could very easily put people out of business. Right.

You know, it's shops and small manufacturers, they can't afford to have, you know, mistakes

or overnight legislative changes that hurt their business. So I've, that's kind of like that. I

think I was talking about it before we started, you know, the mentoring and the protecting the

industry and kind of trying to look out for the future that my wife and I have become really

involved in. So what does that look like throughout the year? So I volunteer on a SEMA network

called ETTN. And I also interface with everybody else at SEMA from, you know, their president to

their DC lobbying organization. And I say their president, their CEO, Mike Spegnola, various

board members, you know, what SEMA like, it's easy to look at SEMA and just see the big flashy show

and all the money and the dues and all these things and say, what do they do for me? But,

you know, it's my opinion, you really need somebody like SEMA in the space to, you know,

take the concerns of the industry and lobby for, you know, better stuff.

Lobby did not get crushed by the, you know, freaking whatever DC is trying to do that minute.

Right. Because like, listen, it just changes from administration to administration.

And we were able to reverse some of the stuff that the last administration did, which was great.

Rebecca and I, you know, flew to DC early last year. And the SEMA staff, right, they're lobbyists.

So they walk into a senator, a representative's office, you know,

hey, I know we do the same thing, you know, you could be sitting in my position next week if

you get a job over here. So they bring people like us who are really on the ground working

in the industry every day. And like, we can talk about the issues that affect us and how,

you know, this legislation may hurt us, how there need to be some changes. So, you know,

it improves the situation for us or at least maintains the status quo. I think all the car

guys would just prefer to have the status quo, keep doing what we're doing. Let us, let us do this.

But the world gets all kinds of crazy ideas and thinks they need to do something about it.

Yeah. We talked a little about the electric car thing too. So, yeah, I mean, look what they did.

I mean, those companies are big enough to probably take the hit, but, you know, a lot of them invest

in billions of dollars into these EV programs. And then it was like, oh, never mind our bad.

Yeah. Product people didn't really want just being shoved down their throat.

Right. And we should have let that happen. You know, I don't know. I don't want to talk in

absolutes. You know, like, I'm okay with technology. Yeah. Like I started out in

computers and then I became, I was a computer nerd and then I became a car nerd is what I say.

New technology is good, but just don't force it down people's throat.

We've talked to a lot of you tuners. You guys are all nerds. It's fine.

Thanks for being so accepting. Yeah.

Yeah. No, that's the thing is like, you know, like Dan mentions, like the big companies can take

the hit. They can just write it off over 10 years and, you know, they got all this money coming in.

But like when you're talking about guys that got to pay rent today, it's a very different story.

And, you know, we're not talking about small like five, 10 man shops, but like when you get to

kind of like around your size or, you know, when you're putting out a ton of products, like where

you're, you're kind of more visible at this point, right? Especially all the EPA stuff and all that.

Like, you know, especially in the last 10 years, just it's been so crazy. Is there anything that

you've kind of seen that, that has been prevented? For example, like, oh man, that that was a close

one. Like, you know, people are very critical of SEMA. And I think I, I always think there's room

for improvement, but I think we have to look at the good things SEMA has done. You know, they,

they first uncovered some rulemaking by EPA back in 2015, some rules and regs that were

snuck in there. And you know, the way this works is there's a law, but the different

areas of the government still have to decide how they're going to carry out that law.

And they have a lot of liberty to decide that. And SEMA has given the EPA a ton of pushback.

And, you know, we're seeing that come full circle to where, like when, when we got the

advanced clean cars, two thing crushed by the EPA, like the EPA did not approve it.

SEMA's leadership actually got invited to the signing ceremony at the White House.

You know, we've got, we've got a favorable administration, obviously, to, to business,

Republicans are favorable to business, you know, and like they're, they're supposedly less favorable

to the environment, but it really shouldn't be looked at that way. Like we're all still

for the environment, you know, we're just being reasonable about how we get there. And, and so

I think SEMA's work in DC has just continued to accelerate and we're going to have more and more

successes there. Do you have examples of people being critical? Like everyone, like I feel like

if you're not involved in the no, it's very easy to make an outside judgment. But do you have

something that, an example of anybody being critical? You know, there was a lot of

disappointment. The RPM Act wasn't passed. And what was that specifically?

Recognition and Protection of Motorsports Act. Okay. SEMA created this, you know,

bill and then worked with different legislators to get it, you know, passed and

ultimately they did not get it passed. But I think it really set the tone that our industry was

willing to fight. We were not just going to take, you know, EPA oversight, you know, lying down.

And I mean, for those that don't know, EPA was coming into mom and pop businesses saying,

what are you doing? Give us all your records. We believe you have violated the Clean Air Act.

You owe us this much money. We might negotiate it down if you have an ability to pay.

If you only have an ability to pay so much. But it was very heavy handed. It was not in the

spirit of like working together. EPA is supposed to provide compliance assistance,

not only enforcement. And I think just trying to enforce against mom and pop shops is just

ridiculous. Oh, so rather than doing just kind of like a slap on the wrist, like, hey, stop doing

that. It was just like, all right, now you're in trouble sort of deal. Now you're in trouble,

you owe us a million and a half dollars. Okay. So. What happened to our Texas buddies, remember?

Sorry, I'm trying to think which Texas buddies. GM.

MoTeC. I could say it, I guess. No, no, that's fine. I think I know who you're talking about.

API settlements are public record. But yeah, one of the things I heard in a podcast we did

by a year and a half now at this point was now one of the things you mentioned is like basically

like, okay, right now at this administration is a little more friendly towards, you know,

car guys and whatever business and such. One of the things I heard and maybe you can kind of

give some insight into it is under the like 2016 to 2020 administration. From my understanding is

like they pulled funding from the EPA and as a result, they kind of had to like get their own,

like, basically start going around finding everybody to get themselves paid. Have you

heard that before? Is there any merits to it? There was a, they pulled funding and there was a

sect, there was a section, a group of the EPA that was very much like, well, we're going to go

after whoever we can go after. I don't, I honestly don't think it's profitable for the EPA. The

the most recent settlements they had early last year were the first big ones I've seen in,

in years. Okay. But you know, during, during the first Trump administration, yeah, the EPA was

just angry and a lot of things had happened leading up to that. Okay. And somehow the

administration did not keep a good eye on them. And I think Trump's trying to make up for that

now, frankly. But yeah. And listen, I'm just some guy who's been watching this for 25 years

and he's gotten a little bit involved. Yeah. No, that's why I wanted your opinion on it,

because like, again, you know, we talked to a lot of people around the country. I'm involved

in a lot of the forums. So I'm just curious, because like, again, you're on the forefront

as in actually talking with these people and being involved with SEMA. It's not,

you're not a regular guest to us in that sense, I suppose. Yeah. And listen, my association with

SEMA as a volunteer, as a consultant, they can tell me to get the fuck out of here at any point.

Sorry. Oh, don't worry, boss. But I guess, I guess I can talk about our accomplishments and why

they're significant. Yeah. Yeah, we got contacted by the EPA in August of 2015. Okay. How long have

you been a volunteer working with SEMA, by the way? You'll find out here in a second. Okay. So

they knocked on our front door, talked to my wife, who was holding one of our young

children at the time, asked if her dad was home. She tells a story way better than me. But, you

know, then they asked for, for, they thought Justin was her dad, you know, because they're

looking at corporate documents and website addresses and shit like that. So I end up coming

over from the shop, which at the time was next to our house, didn't look like the house or

anything like that and talking to them for an hour. And just in circles, they wanted to know what

this SCT tuning software I used was and, and if I was trained properly on it and all this other

shit. So that really started their major crackdown in August of 2015. And like, we were tuning gas

engines at that point, we were super charging them. And of course, I'm scared shitless,

federal government walks into a business that's five employees and two to three million a year.

This is not something we normally do. Right. You know, if you're ex on mobile or whatever,

you have a whole team of attorneys that deal with government regulation. We did it. So

turns out three other shops in central Florida were hit that same week.

You know, we talked, we hired attorneys. I regret that we did not work together more.

Work together as in the shops or EPA or the shops? The shops. Okay.

You know, they're quickly developed a stigma of who was doing worse shit. Okay.

But, you know, and that's something that, that I regret now.

We should all, you know, we should all act like adults and decide the stuff we're going to do

and not going to do, you know, there's like, you can have performance and compliance together.

But it was just a very, yeah. So what I'll get into the SEMA stuff is, is that we had been growing

to a point where we're like, okay, we should be doing emissions testing. We should be doing

carbios. Let's figure this out. I had actually engaged a lab in California in 2014 to start

doing some, some engineering and testing for me. You're talking about Diamond Bar?

This was a private lab. I forget the name of the guy that runs it, but

yeah. So, so fast forward to the end of 2015, you know, I said, a couple of people said,

hey, you should call SEMA. So I call SEMA. I get on the phone with their attorney and their compliance

guy. They're like, Hey, we've just opened a lab in Diamond Bar, California. And,

you know, and I said, okay, well, I want to test one of our supercharger kits in calibrations. And

like this is the thing. You put like a cold air on a car, like you're adding like 10 or 15 horsepower.

You put a supercharger on a car, you're adding two, 300 horsepower and you're doing this dance of

making the car run right with this much more boost, this much more power. You're usually

doing bigger injectors. You're doing bigger air induction, bigger throttle body. You know,

at this point, extremely skilled in calibration had been doing this for 13 years, 12 years since

2003. And wanted to try my hand at emissions calibration. So we ended up going to SEMA garage

with a 2012 or 2013 Shelby GT500 with at the time our latest generation was our Gen 2 R supercharger.

And proving that we could modify this car, make more horsepower and keep the emissions within

the standard that the vehicle is originally certified for. You'll hear me talk about that

with emissions compliance because the government grants the vehicle manufacturer a VIN number

and a certificate of conformancy to basically allowing them to sell that car. But they have

to meet certain rules and regulations and there's different tiers and bins that cars get grouped into.

So like the Shelby behind you started being sold in 2020, it was actually really clean from the

factory, but it was in a pretty, it had a lot of room where it could still fit into the category

it was originally sold for. So you actually had a lot of room for variability and just different

things. Like it inserts at like 66% of the standard. You want to be within 90% of the standard?

Why you can't be within 99% of the standard? I don't know, that's another problem with California.

Like the government has taken their rules and said, well, you know, you need to have some

buffer room. Well, why wasn't the rule that to begin with? But we'll get into California here in a

little while. So yeah, we got contacted by the EPA within, I don't know, three to six months. We

proved we could modify a vehicle without increasing the emissions on a very high level. And the EPA

did not give a fuck. They said, we are investigating you for tuners, not for superchargers. I have

that email, and I would use that later. But at the time, it's just like, how do I make these people

happy? You know, right, there's a game. Yeah, there's rules, you're willing to play within

the rules, and it's still not right. And, you know, I think that EPA was still feeling out. So this

is how they learn is they investigate people, get records in, look at connections. You know,

it's like feeding AI data. And they were really upset with SCT for selling all these tuners,

often to people deleting emissions components on diesels. Like we talk about the biggest way to

make a horsepower increase or an impact on a gasoline car. Well, the biggest way to make a

negative impact on diesel emissions is to remove all the equipment that recently became government

mandated, you know, as recently as 08, 0708. So they're investigating that. And like,

ultimately, they strung out our investigation for four years. Because they want, I think they

wanted to settle with SCT for they settle with us, which is another huge problem we should have been

looked at on our own. You know, yes, we sold SCT tuners. You know, that's what it is, what it is.

And, but we were willing to, we prove we could, you know, take certain steps to comply.

So there was a shop that I dealt with down here. So I have diesel trucks as well.

And I don't know if you're familiar with Vivian from Quick Tricks. They, from what I understand,

they raked her through the coals pretty bad for that. I think they took her in front of

judge and all kinds of stuff. So yeah, that was, that was kind of sad. I've heard stories and

stuff. And yeah, I've heard it was pretty bad. And, you know, we didn't, we didn't have that

happen to us, right? So I don't want to downplay, you know, yeah, but yeah, it's a pretty bad thing

to do to the industry. And, you know, I think SEMA really had to learn how to respond. And even like

they helped, you know, they helped us by having an emissions lab that was friendly to the after

market, being, making testing available at a reasonable cost, all this other stuff. And like

they still didn't care. So like, I guess that's where like one of the things were like, you can't

blame SEMA for that. Now they have figured out how to talk to the legislators and say, hey, we have

a process for the aftermarket to comply. We want you to recognize that, that process. And that's

like the next thing on the table. When did that process start coming on board? SEMA certified

came about in over the past like three to four years. Okay. So, you know, there's some, some

regulatory hurdles. And like, I can't talk too much about this, but there are, SEMA's got a lot

of good long term goals of making compliance solutions available to the aftermarket. I don't

believe they're the end all be all. You know, like we were talking outside, the impact that

the performance aftermarket makes a lot of these cars don't get driven much. You know, I'm still

interested in protecting things like dragon drives and just like the ability, the right to modify

your vehicle. Yeah, that's what I always think about is like, you had a dragon drive guys,

sure, like, yeah, they're doing, it's not exactly a Prius, but they're, they're doing what? Maybe

a thousand miles a year. Yeah. Maximum. Yeah. Like that's a strong maximum. Yeah. You know,

and the government's considering useful life of a vehicle and its emissions components,

like 80,000 to 150,000 miles. Yeah. So, they, they, they have all the data as to how much they

pollute and, you know, a dragon drive car driving a thousand miles. Yeah. Yeah. And that's probably

the most that car will be driven all year. Yeah. You think about a car that exclusively just runs

on the drag strip too. That's, you know, significantly less than that. And, you know,

I don't have all the answers. You know, there are, like, we have been able to make 900

rear-wheel horsepower on the Shelby GT500. And we've been able to go through the emissions lab

and pass and then go on the chassis dyno and make over 900 rear-wheel horsepower, like

compliance and performance, you know, they can live together. Like technology exists.

Um, and I think for, you know, big companies, mass production, you know, those and a group,

a group ourselves into that area because we do a lot of volume, um,

in certain categories, right? We'll sell hundreds per year, sometimes millions,

thousand per year. Um, so we need to have, you know, strong compliance. Um,

yeah, the technology exists. You know, I think it's something we should be mindful of. But,

you know, for the small shop building a couple cars a year for customers, they also need to

be able to do what they love and do what people want. Um, and I think compliance is not one size

fits all. I think it needs to be, you know, uh, appropriate for the person compliant. Doesn't

need to be a burden, right? As what I'm saying. That makes sense. Uh, on another note, I kind of

topic again, if we look at this administration as a whole, uh, we're talking about tariffs,

we're talking about China versus American made and all that. Where do you, where does

VMP as a whole kind of settle into that? Are you sourcing internationally locally? What does

that look like? We're sourcing as much locally and nationally as we can. And I mean, that's a

really, is a really difficult topic. It's near and dear to my heart because, you know, I've developed

a lot of friends in the industry and a lot, a lot of our suppliers I have become friends with.

They're my colleagues, you know, we'll trade business advice on everything. You know, hey,

what are you doing for hiring and employee benefits? You know, hey, what do you see going on with this

and that? So it's, um, you know, it's a very heated topic. And I, I think that first of all, we need

more, we need more, like, we need to make manufacturing in America great again. And

that starts with people to run the machines. Yeah. Like we need more getting young people

into skilled trades, um, everything from, you know, working on cars to running on,

running CNC machines. I mean, Rick, I mean, when you were a kid, you would have loved

doing that. Oh, absolutely. And like, and learning it and being good at it, it pays very well.

You know, and, um, we're just not seeing that happen. So that's, it's another thing I'm involved

with bringing engineering students into the industry specifically, um, engineering students

and technicians, bringing them into our industry and like showing them how like, hey, you don't have

to go work for like, you know, Lockheed Martin and look at a single part of an airplane for your

whole career. Right. You can actually, you know, make parts that people really love. So

yeah, it starts with more people in America willing to do the jobs. I think the tariff thing

has just skyrocketed prices for everything. I hear from all my suppliers, you know, materials

going up. And of course, everything else, labor, healthcare is going up.

Yeah. So the administration just, just screwed up on that. Like, I'm a big fan of like deregulation.

They'll let business, you know, do what business does. Right.

That's a tricky one too, though, right? Because like, if you fully deregulate, let's imagine

full deregulation, right? It's like, you're going to go where the cheapest thing is, where's the

cheapest thing? China. You know, it's like, and what the crazy thing is, and I've seen it first

hand, and I've talked to people on this podcast, which unfortunately, some things have been edited

out. But I can say that a lot of times, some of this stuff overseas is better too. Like, it depends

on the product and, you know, whatever, the sourcing and the vendors and all that. But it's

like, obviously, we could talk in election cycles and all that stuff. But how do we act locally?

How does the average 5, 10, 20 man shop, how do we make stuff here? Is it possible for a smaller

scale? I don't know. That's a really tough question. You know, I mean, I've got a local

machine shop I use. He's two, three employees. I got another one I use that's, you know, five,

six employees. Like, those are the local decisions I can make, right? Exactly. And sometimes he's

not the best guy for the job. I think it starts with like you were saying that we just got to get

some more people into it earlier on, right? We're not going to be able to right now, we don't have

the workforce to do stuff like that. It'd be so much richer if I got into machining out of high

school. Well, they don't. So even when my daughter goes to the same high school I went to, and she's

taking a CAD class, she's in metals, she's doing all this stuff. I mean, they had metals, but they

didn't have, it's totally different than when I went to school. We didn't have a CAD. I mean,

we learned typing on computers, but that was about it. It's like a generational problem.

Like we've been outsourcing manufacturing for 20 to 40 years. And you look at the biggest companies

in the space, they use that to grow. And I don't want to name any names or anything.

Yeah. How about on the engineering developments? We talked about this before the episode a little

bit. You have a long to-do list and a lot of ideas and more ideas and time and all that.

How do you decide what you're going to pursue and how does your team help you?

Oh, man. Self-control. I want to make things better. And I see that. I'll be real. We have got

like 15 employees. We do about $8 million a year in sales. And it's been all over the place since

COVID. But you know, the first thing is like we've got a website where we sell parts and services.

We still work on cars here. They're all lined up behind you in different bays.

Because it really keeps us in touch with the consumer and the vehicles and what they want

and what they're doing. If we want to design a new part for a 2018 Mustang, there's probably going

to be one here for an install in the next month or two. And I say design a new part. Maybe update

an existing part. So I have a philosophy. Disrupt your own market. Because everybody copies

everybody. It happens eventually. But you can keep improving your part. If you

make the right investments in the right places, it's not that hard to do. And if you care.

So our engineering, our product design and engineering workload is really spread across

updating existing parts and doing new parts and components. And we have a small team. It's about

three or four people usually. And we release, I don't know, I don't even really know, 10 to

15 new parts a year. Some of those parts are really small. It might be a pulley or something.

It might be a whole big assembly. But we're also updating existing parts. And we do that through

a very organized process of scope of work and idea, all the documentation to go with that idea

and then an actual design task. And then I'm guilty of taking too long for things because

I like to just look at stuff and think about it. And sometimes it's just sleeping on it.

Sometimes it's letting it simmer for a couple of weeks or a month.

Yeah. I'll talk to different people. They're like, what design considerations do you think?

I don't really call them that because, you know, hey, Bob, what design considerations do you think

or, you know, I should take into account with this part now. It's like, hey, what are you seeing

with this? What's it doing? You know, what problems are you having? And, you know, like we recently

found some part we released doesn't fit some Ford Performance oil separator. It's like,

well, if that person wants to run our part, we want to be able to sell it to you.

Hey, let's make some really nice ABS 3D printed spacers to lift that part up and clear the other

component. And that's like a minor design task, you know, and I'm having still probably

four to eight hours in it, but I delegate that to my son who, you know, he's not,

he's pretty cheap labor at this point. Okay. What's been, this is going to be a two-part one.

All right. What is your favorite, like what part did you design that got you the most excited?

You were like, this is going to be awesome. And then the second one, what is your number one

selling product? I mean, the super charging stuff is near and dear to my heart and like,

I don't talk about it nearly enough, but it's a big fricking deal. There's a lot of testing,

there's a lot of failures that nobody ever sees. Yeah, there's a lot of improvements that just get

rolled in, you know, through the course of time. So like the Gen 3R Supercharger for the GT500s,

the older GT500s and older Coyotes, that was like, you know, that was a big one.

We really put a lot into that and I think it was very successful.

The, and you kind of, you kind of, I know, I know what you're thinking,

because I kind of answered this for you already. The, I always got pissed off at the degas bottle

working on the race cars with the track. And like you said, unbolt it and lay it off to the side.

And like it's kind of fucking ugly. I'm just really effing ugly under the hood. I guess

coming from the older cars, they at least had the black textured top, but the newer ones are just

all clear. So we made one of those last year and we took our time with the design, did a lot of

test fitting. Like anytime I make something for the first time, I'm like really cautious,

because I'm like, what, what do I just not know yet? Right. And the same thing with tuning.

So it took us a good six to eight months to bring that one to market and

it frickin was a hit. Yeah. So, and then I'm like, crap, we were, I think we released it in

August. We sold a bunch of them. We got more and thankfully shipped a bunch of them for the end

of the year. But in that process, I'm like, I got to design these for other cars. So the S197,

the F-150, and then those are basically lot, they're, they're the toolings paid for parts are on

order. And then we just had to finish the design for this one. And this will be the most complicated

because it's going to have a supercharger reservoir too. So we're in the degas bottle business.

And I justify it because it's under the hood and you can change your supercharger pulley easier or

work on your car more easily with our parts installed. It's got a functional and a cosmetic

benefit. No, yeah, I did see it. It looks really good. So, yeah.

Touch on the trucks a little bit. We were talking about that before the show as well.

So, yeah, I'd like to think we're an early adopter in the truck racing space. We got a

16 F-150 back in 16 and supercharged it. And that's when we were working a lot with Roush still.

And it was a hoot. And then what you fast forward to the turbo short bed,

you know, supercharger and turbocharger short bed thing that's going on right now with the

Gen 3s and Gen 4s. You know, I think they just got better with the 10R80s. And

are you guys seeing the issues with the 10R80? Because I get mixed reviews. People love them

or they hate them. And I feel like you either get one that works well or you get one that

doesn't work well. I think that's appropriate. Yeah. Okay. I mean, the clutches came out of this

thing looking smoked and probably wouldn't have lasted much longer, right? But we only had

a couple track passes in the low nines. Right. So we upgraded it and it's kind of a bitch.

There's been, it's come out once already to have something reworked and it's still kind

of finicky, but it mostly works. So we drive it. Okay. Shits get more complicated. Oh, yeah.

This is harder than ever to do and more competitive than ever. So think about that when visiting your

local performance shop. You know, one of the best things that I think a customer can do is

realize it's a journey. And by that, you know, we're still gonna deliver, we're gonna deliver

you what you want, but realize that a 7800 real horsepower Mustang with a supercharger bolted on

is as good as a daily driver. If you walk in and say, I want a thousand real horsepower car

and you think you're going to like daily drive that, never pop the hood, you know,

then you're like living in a dream world. Just have like realistic expectations.

And I want that customer to come in, you know, start out, do some bolt-ons,

intakes tuning, enjoy the car, step up to a supercharger and then, you know, kind of go on

the journey of going further and further. They just don't try to fast forward to the front.

There's things you need to learn. Number one, how to drive, you know, number two,

how to listen to the car and then how to do like, you know, minor maintenance of the car.

You got a thousand real horsepower car. It's going to need plugs more often. The fuel, fuel really,

really matters. Yeah. Real quick, we're just losing you over here. Oh yeah. Just a little closer.

Yeah. You just slid away on me. Yeah. Fuel, quality, belts, you know, regular maintenance,

like plugs, you know, and you're going to probably run on the stock motor for a while at that power

level, but you're going to want to build a motor in the future. And how, okay, so things are more

competitive than ever. They're harder to do than ever. This is a two-part question. Are you on the

cutting edge, the, you know, front lines and two, how do you stay there if you are? Oh man.

So,

like, yes, we are. And I guess if I, I don't, I don't know, I don't just talk about myself. If

so, you know, do the things, right? Modify the cars. So we all, we have shop cars for every new

major generation, 24 Mustangs sitting here, you know, 2020 Shelby sitting out there and F-150s and

other generations of Mustangs scattered all over between employees and shop cars. And then

there's like, I guess what I've learned, right, is you can't just, you can't just be in your own

little world. And I'm going to, I'm going to plug SEMA here again, because, you know, I think they do

a lot of things well. I'm going to talk about ADOS and some of the upcoming stuff. You know,

we've been seeing this for, I don't know, I don't want to say a good five,

good five years now. You know, on the GM side, you got Global B, which was locked for really long

time. You know, and even the Ford MG1 was locked for, and you know, the new Mustang was locked for,

gosh, what, a year and a half. And the trucks were sort of unlocked, sort of locked since 21,

but there were ways around it, but there were really a lot of holes in support.

We're in a space right now here in early 2026 where a lot of stuff is unlocked. And we can do a lot

with these cars, but there are, there are hurdles. And the best way to see those hurdles is look at

government legislation, government rules. So one of the things SEMA is working on is these

various forms of ADOS that are being mandated for 2029. And the big one is automatic emergency

braking. It's required to be there. I just heard you. Yeah. And you, you rode course too. So I know,

you know, tell me what you know about this. Well, it's good to turn off if you're going to cut in

and out of traffic a little bit. Because when it, when it comes on, it can throw you for, yeah,

it is definitely shocking. It got me good the other day. I was cutting up a little bit on my,

I was running late to somewhere or whatever. And yeah, as I was passing a semi, it's like,

open and break. I'm like, I forgot to turn that off. I wish it was a way like, I understand it.

And for your average, well, first of all, we're just going to end up with people that don't

know how to drive too. That's going to be a problem. Right. So like, you guys have a lot of

them down here. Yeah. Yeah. We've been driving in Florida for a while. We've, yeah, we thought it

was bad back home, but it's pretty bad. Anyway, I wish to just make it a way where you could

turn it off and just leave it off, you know, having to turn it off each time or, or make it

to where you got to have it on all, you know, or maybe not even let you turn it off. That's

going to be a problem. I mean, right. Like individual choice is a huge thing.

And, you know, we wanted choice, whether we had an ice car, an electric car, and electric cars

were forced upon us and look where that went, you know, and same thing with that. Yeah. And

like there's very real world use cases. The first thing is emergency vehicles. And really,

if there's an emergency and you're trying to do something with your vehicle, you know, it could

be plow snow. So you could leave your house and, you know, and then I say that, like being able

to have transportation, if there's an emergency and you go to the hospital, something like that is

important. And like, there's currently no provision in the law for basic things like snow plows and

shit. Right. Yeah. That's crazy thing. I didn't even think about snow plows. And so

SEMA has been on the front lines of talking about that, studying it, talking about it and like,

you know, first of all, they make an ADOS calibration lab available to the aftermarket

in Detroit. And all you have to do is book time for it. We've had them on the show.

We've been, what's his name? Oh, Ben Kaminsky. Yeah. That's a very impressive facility.

Yeah. So around 13, I think. Any SEMA member company can go and use that facility. So

there's that, but like clearly the law needs to be amended with some, you know, exclusions for

emergency use, racing use. And these new cars are coming out of the factory. Incredible

machines. The new Dark Horse SC, the new Ford GTD. And like as much as the GTD is a low production,

like race car, it's still certified as a on-road vehicle. Right. That's insane. We were talking

about that yesterday with Kelly Akin. It's like, it's kind of incredible that that's street legal.

Yeah. But, you know, in 2029, all those vehicles have got to come with automatic

emergency braking. So how do you, you know, follow somebody into a corner?

Right. At Rode Atlanta or Sebring, at a racetrack, you know. And that has to be figured out.

And I, you know, the automakers, we've seen them succumb to the government before with

electric vehicle mandates. So I don't trust them. They're, they're good at producing cars

and making money and making their shareholders happy. What? Jim Farley loves making your shareholders

happy? That's crazy. And eating camps too, apparently. Yeah. That's, yeah, we made a comparison

him to Trump the other day. It was like, dude, just stop with the talking so much. Yeah.

But hey, we need, we need those people doing those things, you know.

But yeah, so that's where SEMA is looking out for the aftermarket's interest with this

ADOS, AEB mess. Well, I got a question for you on the, on the tuning side of things.

When they cracked the tuning on these cars here, how did that? So I watched a video with Jared and

Rob Shoemaker. They had made an announcement or whatever. When SCT does something like,

do they reach out to all of you guys or do they, you know, how does that just certain people get

to work with them and then they get access to it first or do they just hand it out after that?

You know, there's various levels of secrecy at these different tuning companies. I mean,

you know, having the relationship with the engineers and your rep and like, it's really kind

of a small industry. Right. We've all been doing this. There's the OGs that have been doing this

forever and like, I can't believe, but I am one now. And yeah, I didn't mean they need,

they need people providing, you know, engineering feedback and stuff. That particular one was

super top secret till like a week or two before it hit. Oh really? Well, yeah. And you know,

some of this stuff needs, needs to be, you know, not everybody thinks you should modify

your vehicle or be able to modify your vehicle, but craziness. Yeah. Yeah. I think we need to do it

responsibly. But you know, we need to be able to do it. Okay. What about this generation, right?

Cause like one, this is kind of like, we were talking about this yesterday. It's like the S550 V2,

right? Like, is there anything remarkable or special about this? Cause this is the gen four

coyote in these two, right? Yeah. And really the gen four coyote didn't change as much as it did,

you know, when F-150 went gen four. Same cylinder head surface, same stuff bolts on.

You know, for better or for worse, Ford's been trying to appeal more and more to the

wine and cheese crowd, you know, whether it be Germans, the market that would buy a German car

normally. And you know, I'm going to, I'm going to say they did a good job at, you know, making it

a nicer car. It's quieter, it's smoother, handles good, you know, the quality of the engine and

drivetrain. I mean, we're making 900 rural horsepower on a stock bottom end. Yeah. A lot of

refinement from what, you know, 15 years in the coyote game. Right. So are you, are you impressed

with what they're, I heard you mentioned the SC with the GTD. I'm not, like, I think it's all

cool. I'm not overly impressed with how things are going. Do you have any thoughts on that or?

I, I, yeah, I mean, I hate the name. Yeah. You know, I wrote, I wrote up a Facebook post about it.

I love the technology, love the performance. You know, love that, I mean, it should be around

$100,000, right? Yeah. Love that it's accessible. I mean, it's expensive, but it's accessible.

You know, we're going to modify and tune them.

What are your, what are your thoughts on the new dark horse?

I think that is mostly, I, the name is a thing, like there's some cooler things. There's some

things I wish they'd bring back, you know, they're, they had some, like, I don't like the Maverick

truck. Like that was a weird deal. Not that I don't like the truck. I don't like the naming. It was,

you know, Maverick. I know. The Mocky could have been something different. I don't know,

they could bring back the Torino. I mean, there's, there's things that, that they could do that,

and maybe they have some of those things in the works. You know what, I don't hate them.

Granted, the Mocky Shrin had probably been called a Mustang, but I don't exactly hate it as much.

The SC, like, I was like, well, that's kind of stupid, but I don't hate it the more it sits on

me. Like, I don't know. I mean, there's definitely like way cooler names they could have used.

But I'm not saying that I hate it. I'm just not loud, I guess maybe.

Do you think you're just getting old? That could be it. It's old and bitter.

Like it's like his first time seeing a GTD is like, well, I'm not impressed.

Like I'm impressed, but not really. I wasn't because I, for that price point,

I was expecting something like the Ford GT, right? Like I grew up idolizing that car.

So when the GTD comes out and it looks like an S650 Mustang, I mean, it's not. It's very

impressive in person. But it's got, you know, when I sat inside and it felt like an S650 and I

look at the mirrors and their S650 mirrors and things like that are just, it's, it was whatever.

Well, it wasn't a Challenger mirror at least because I don't know how much you fucking love those.

Not like Dodge mirrors at all.

So side note, did you also count how many extra teens you'd have to sell to afford the payment

on a Ford GT? Yes, I have. And it's not uncommon knowledge. I actually have an allocation.

I don't know that I am going to fulfill it. I don't really know. I've had them push it out.

But hold on, we could get a million subscribers this year and I'll get you one for Christmas.

One of the reasons I pushed out, we'll see what happens. It, yeah, it's very expensive.

A GTD. Yeah. Cool. Awesome. I'd almost rather get an 05064 GT, which again,

I know they don't perform as well as that. I just, they got up there. I think they're

wanting to 500, 600 thousands now. Yeah. Jesus. I think we're all spoiled because like we know

what we can do with these cars, just bolting on parts from the aftermarket. Right. And,

you know, like you look at the kits that are coming out from like Whipple now and stuff like

that and the amount of like premium features and content that are in there.

10, 15 years ago, it wasn't like that, right? It was the kit installs really 20 years ago.

The kit installs with a factory throttle body. It uses a tiny little heat exchanger,

tiny little pump. And then, you know, we all started really competing with each other and it's

like, well, mine's going to come with a dual fan heat exchanger and mine's going to come with a

amount of engineering and content in a supercharger kit today is pretty insane. Yeah. And the results,

you know, speak for that. They make more than dark horse SC on a GT. Yeah.

Well, then you also get the, it was the Shelby's basically it's just a 50 with a Whipple and they're

selling for like 200 grand or whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah. And I was just at RTR last week and

they've got an RTR spec five that fits right in that segment. Dude, those things are so cool. Like

honestly, like again, if we're looking at, if I had money to blow, if I was looking at Shelby

versus RTR, RTRs, I will go all day long. Personally, I think you're out of the Shelby demographic.

I do. I'm saying like the Shelby demographic. You make fun of me for being old. I'm also probably

out of the Shelby demographic, although I own one. But I got that car for what I was. That was

the last true Shelby. Like, yeah, hopefully that was a Ford production car. I don't know.

Hopefully I'm not cockying on anything you're affiliated with or whatever, but it's just like,

I don't know, man. Like the Super Snake is awesome, but it's a $220,000 car or whatever it is. Like

that's, that's not saying attainable. And like, I know that's what a lot of people go back to is

like attainable performance. And I think that's important. But I also think the Halo cars,

like the fact that Shelby built that car, it's probably to some degree inspired RTR to build

that car. Oh, for I'm sure. And how many other Hennessees and, you know, and then all the other

smaller car builders below that. Yeah. And I can even like, so I don't know. I think competition

is good. I think ideas are good. The money thing, you know, the stuff's expensive. It sucks. Oh,

yeah. I think it goes in tears for me, right? Like, for example, like the GTD, like people are

going to clown the price. I think it's amazing what they've done with that car. So that's like,

even though it's expensive, like, all right, cool. Same thing with the GT 500. Whenever people are

like, Oh, I'm not paying 100,000 for a Mustang. I'm like, dude, that is a super car and a Mustang

body. Yeah. Like when it came out, we had one, we had one of the first ones in the country to

join us on a road rally, drove it across the country, he was breaking miles on the rally,

and he's over there, you know, driving on the track with McLaren's and stuff. I'm like,

that's wicked. Like, it's cool. Hey, a DCT and a Mustang, freaking radial,

pinned rotors, all the tech that comes in those things, MagnaRide. Like my GT 500 is one of the

my favorite cars I've ever had. That thing is, if you had a Lamborghini body on top of that car,

with all the technologies and the cushiness of the seats and everything, that'd be a $400,000

Lamborghini, but it's a $100,000 Mustang. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's what some of the stuff that

Ford's good at putting a lot of engineering into vehicles and, you know, amortizing the cost out

of that at scale, right? I mean, that's what the company was founded on. So yeah, I got to give them

props for doing that. And I think they have, I think Ford has the best engineered American cars.

I would agree with that. Well, that the C8 and the ZR1 and all that stuff is pretty,

pretty badass. We are C and Chevy do some wicked stuff. Yeah. I think if you had any engineers

from either of those companies swap roles, I think they'd end up with really,

in a really similar, you get so much talent in engineering between the two.

So the question is, what are we going to do about Stalantis?

Like officially, like last week, I think it was announced that they're bringing SRT back

and we'll see what comes out of that. So I saw the new TRX and they up the horsepower on that.

And I heard they did that with just camshaft and tuning. It's the same supercharger,

which is impressive. I don't know. I think they had some mismanagement there for a while. So

let's see if they can. Oh, they definitely did. Yeah. That guy was a clown. They were on the wrong

train, the electric car, small displacement, fuel efficient training. They need to bring back the

neon. No, seriously, like an SRT4, like they need to bring, they need to, if they're going to try

to disrupt the markets, just stop. Okay. I'm on vent for a second here. Oh yeah. Let's go. Yeah.

Why are we doing a two door electric coupe? Can you explain to me that? Why? Why? You're

fighting a market that doesn't exist. Nobody does a two door electric coupe. You got the Audi e-tron,

sure. But that's it. And those are half price right now. I mean, electric cars are largely

utilitarian. If you can get some performance out of them, cool. But give me a four door.

Yeah. By the way, they're releasing the four door second. They want two door, then four door.

Dude is such a mismanaged, and I grew up in Mopar. I'm a Mopar boy. That is a mismanaged

cluster. And honestly, I test drove one of them. They're pretty cool, but that's not the market.

Yeah. Right. I mean, create a segment where there is none. And I think that's really been

Ford's success for the, for years and years as they've created that segment and stayed in it.

Well, any aspirations of branching out into anything else?

Yeah. What's next for you? We do a little bit of dodge and Chevy stuff now.

We're doing more of it, more and more of it. It goes back to our, anything we do,

we want to add a lot of value, have a better mousetrap, better solution.

And that comes in a lot of different forms. It can be engineering. It can be tuning, which

really tuning is engineering, but it's really kind of talked about in its own way.

It can be customer service, customer experience. So like when we build a car for a customer,

you know, we're upfront about what it costs and what you're going to get and we deliver on it.

Yeah. So I, and I guess what I'm saying is like there's space for,

there's space for the basics, even in the other segments from a, from service standpoint.

Okay. Do you want to pop to usual three and then do a Minnesota goodbye?

Sure. All right. So at the end of every episode, we like to ask our guests to pick three cars.

I need a track car, a daily driver and a show car. You have an unlimited budget.

You build what you want. God.

So I got that thinking swivel going on. Yeah. That's the most you've seen me move.

Track car, daily driver. And then what was the other one?

Show car.

Okay. Shall be carbon fiber track pack because that will produce, press people at the show.

And a daily driver, four door supercharged F 150 and then a track car,

a supercharged Mustang. Okay. Is this straight? Any contract? Any track you want?

Yeah. I'm just going to say drag racing. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Which like you're talking like one

of these? Yeah. I like one of these. Okay. So you can beat a lot of people and have a lot of fun

and just put tires on it. Do you ever get any, so is it mostly always single cabs? You ever get

any extended cabs or crew cabs? Cause we do. Okay. Cause I again, we talked about having

bunches of kids. So when I do one, I'm probably going to do an extended cab because I want to be

able to have a backseat. Yeah. So yeah. My, my original truck that, that erased a lot was a four

door and then one of the guys working for us at the time had a two door. So we were, you know,

at the same power level, we had gen two coyotes, you know, making about 700 of the tire, same power

level. I mean, the regular cab was like a second faster. It was pretty sick. Okay. The mile per

hour difference from less drag and less weight. Yeah. Pretty fucking sick.

Well, sweet on that note. Where can everybody find you?

You can find me on our website. Well, no, you can find you via peopleperformance.com is our

website. I'm on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, you know, regular social channels. So

anything else that we missed before we wrap up? Oh, no, I think we had some good conversations.

We'll be back for a round two. Any, uh, any cool parts coming down the pipe that you want to talk

about at all? Or you don't have to. Um, we have, we have delved into the world of air to water

supercharging for other power adders, mainly turbos. And you could use it with a centrifugal,

but I would do a turbo. Um, if you want a blower, I would do a positive displacement style blower.

And if you're not going to do, then turbo is really the other option. So, uh, yeah, we've got

all this great, great technology in parts and we brought it together in our Leviathan intake system.

And we've actually got a lot of builds going on right now using that system. So it's our,

it's essentially a supercharged lower intake. You can bolt a supercharger to it.

But we make a, what I call a turbo hat that allows you to put a throttle body on it and then,

you know, force-feeded air from a turbo. So could you do that with one of your blowers?

Could you just pull the top off and slap that stuff on there or? Yeah, a couple people have done

that. So, you know, the idea is not new. Right. Um, and I say that, like you could take the rotors

out of that blower, um, but we made kind of a more compact, you know, system that does that

bed job better. Okay. And we're going to expand that offering. You know, currently it's only for

Coyote. We're looking at a lot more offerings and that's where some of the other, uh, the other

brands may come in. Okay. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. Well, I don't know. Thank you very much for

coming on the show. I'm glad we finally made this happen. Uh, Dan, thanks for existing and we'll see

y'all next time.

Justin Starkey on Building VMP Performance, Whipple Superchargers, R&D & Building a Legacy

Ford Mustang

Chevrolet Camaro

Chevrolet Corvette

Shelby Cobra

Shelby GT500

Dodge Charger

Toyota Prius

Ford F150

Golf Gtd

Ford Maverick

Ford Torino

Ford Gt

Dodge Challenger

Dodge Neon

Audi Etron

About this episode

Original notes