Live from The Copperstate 1000 - Arizona's Premier Car Rally
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This is hard parking brought to you by Right Hunt and Right Toyota out of Scottsdale, AZ coming to you live from Tempe Diablo Stadium at the Copper State 1000.
I am sitting in front of a row of show cars.
There's probably 3 or 400 of them out here ranging from all makes, models, builds. It's an amazing thing.
Excited to be out here today drinking some of this shift coffee. The gentleman bought this for me
earlier. You guys know Rob, Mr. Cars like
how you doing? Doing pretty well.
Doing pretty well. I've been out and about.
Have you gone to one of these before?
No, it's been on my list and I was talking to some of the other photographer guys. I was like, how have I not been
to this before? So I made it a point to get out
here today and hell yeah, so cool.
I have not been to. I thought I'd been to one.
I've gone to one of the stops before.
I have a friend OK who has a friend.
Who has AV 8? Yeah, in front of your mic.
It's this little Shelby Cobra, maybe Factory 5 build.
Oh, I was going to re record it was so I'm going to record it anyway. So you guys know who was
disruptive? There's there's always someone.
I mean, hey, when you're setting up a booth right in front of a bunch of cars at a rally events. You know you, but you know what?
What's refreshing about this is all these cars basically got set up earlier. That's true.
And so you don't have to deal with that and it's fine.
You're at a car vent, you know, it's something minor, but a lot of times when I do these mobile setups, I'm right by the DJ booth or, you know, there's just a bunch of stuff going on and these microphones are pretty good at trying to help with that. They're directional.
Yep, they are. But still, you know, still.
When it's that loud, yeah, it's just.
Ambient volumes. Basically that even with a noise
gate you're cutting that out, but then at that point you're cutting yourself out too. Right, right.
But yeah, I went to, I went to go see a friend and his friend, which by proxy is my friend, because I'm cool with both of them. Mutual.
Friends somewhere along the Copper State route years ago, but that's as close as I've come.
Bless you. That's as close as I've come to
this event. But yeah, did you go inside the
ballroom? From my house.
So, huh, did. You go by the inside the
ballroom. Yeah, I did a lot.
OK, Yeah, there's so much cool stuff in there.
A lot of vintage Ferraris, a lot of Aston Martin DB fours and Alpha, some other wild cards, some big old Cadillacs and stuff. I was like damn.
Yeah, the wild thing is there's they're going 1000 miles.
I saw that. I was like, that's awesome.
I mean, Arizona's got some beautiful roads to be cruising on, so I'm jealous. Oh.
Absolutely. But it's just some of those
cars. You know, like I said, we had
Desi on earlier, but he'll actually come later in this video episode because I just did the opening.
But yeah, that's amazing. And then, you know, we have
mobile tire repair out here and, oh, that's going to be Eurosport. So there's actually, there's a
lot of support for the rally too.
I didn't even think of that. Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Yeah, I was talking or you're. Just like, hey, you're on your
own. Good luck.
Right. No, I was, I was talking to Tim
who has this, this RX7 in front of us and we were walking around inside and you're saying that this for rally goers, this is like the pinnacle around the States.
I mean, even going down in there, like the cars that are being driven, I'm like, these are some great choices to drive.
Yeah, and they have support vehicles with them too.
But this is the I. I called this the Gentleman's
Gold Rush Rally. I can see that.
I can see that. In fact, yeah, it's a little
more localized, but the concept is there.
It's a more refined taste. Absolutely.
You know so when I say the gentleman.
'S I follow, yeah. But viewers of this listen to
this is absolutely not a knock on gold rush rally.
I no what have you seen out here?
Have you got a chance to walk this?
Yeah, I've walked all of it. I like there.
There was a Rover over. There, I don't watch, walk any
of it. There's only when I was setting
up, it was just me and Rebecca. Yeah, it's he.
Was way over there. Yeah, I did see them on the
warehouse booth. Yeah, I walked.
There's a lot of cool stuff here.
I saw one of the ones that interest me was a Rover where I was like, who imported a Rover? That's wild.
But the craziest thing is actually that right there that I saw so far that MG, it's all decked out with an eco boost and race. I was like, yo, I don't think
I've ever seen anybody deck out an MG modded out for sport racing. Yeah, I need to try to get over.
There and get that awesome. Yeah, so there's some cool stuff
out here too. 348 and the Testarossa rolled up over there
just a minute ago. And I'm a big fan of 80s
nineties era cars and generals. Oh, there's a 348 out here.
I would totally take a 348. 355 is like my dream if I had money
to just daily drive like a daily drive.
Yeah this dude that V8 is so good on the gated manual that's.
And then everyone dumps. It before the major service all
about it, man. Yeah, this is actually my first
time at the stadium in general. Oh, no kidding.
Yeah. I'm not a sports ball guy so
normally there's not much recent.
I've been out here, I think for spring training and there's like an army, like an army vehicles, car show.
Like 5 ton trucks and stuff or in support of.
No, like a legit old army and there's on the other parking lot and then there's also the Christmas lights.
You can always see it from the highway.
The kind of drive through parking lot thing.
Which is an interesting. Concept.
Well, good deal, man. I think I'm going to get out
there and kind of walk the lot after I get a little bit more of this content. Yeah, well.
You're going to talk, you're going to be sitting here talking about cars you haven't seen, and it's going to be weird.
I know you're going to sound like a poser.
I am a poser. Anybody who knows me really
knows that. Actually, this is my first time
I finally got to see Jay-Z. Oh yeah, yeah, I.
Love it. There's a little escargot over
there too. The little Snell van.
Oh, sure. Yeah, I made the executive
decision to keep it longer. What do you got?
Like a whole 96 horsepower in there at best.
I wish I had 96 horsepower. This little turbo was like 50.
I was 60, like 64 horsepower. Yeah, I don't know why I went
that high. Yeah, it's fine on the regular
Rd. I drove a partial freeway on the
way here this morning. It's a little guy.
It only weighs like 500 lbs, not literally.
But it's like 1300 lbs. Yeah, that's so light.
Everything that we're you have around you was packed into that thing. Hey, that's pretty impressive.
Exactly. Like fold down rear seats or no
rear seats? Yeah, the, you know, it's, it's
got rear seats, 4 seater, but you fold down the passenger seat and take a look when you get done here and it actually turns into a bed. I've got these little books
inside and Japanese think of everything but in folding it down. I could put the pop up in there.
I could put multiple tables, multiple chairs.
I could actually put two pops pop ups in there.
That's pretty cool. That's what I did for the the
United Food Bank thing. But anyway.
Now, unlike the NSX, you can actually practically use it.
I know I get it'd be nice to bring the NSX and this car to an event, but it's just not feasible.
Oh yeah, you're volunteering. OK.
Why not either one? Hell, I'd even drive that thing
that's still cool. That's about your pace.
Yeah, they're both my pace. Cool colors are cool cars, man.
Cool colors are cool cars. Speaking of cars.
Go check them out. Good to see you.
For sure man. Nice.
Chat by the studio. Oh yeah.
I haven't done that. Yet we got to go fishing.
We do need to go fishing. Yep, it's been like a year dude.
It's been a while since we've gone fishing.
Yeah. All right.
We'll plan that. All right, let's do it.
All right, later. All right, guys, we are out here
at the Copper State 1000 with Mr. Desi.
Izzy, welcome to hard Parking. Thanks for having me.
Yeah, man. So this is the 35th. 35th 35th
Annual Yeah, even made it through COVID.
That's true. It was a different year, but we
made it. How long have you been involved
in all this? You're the Co chair.
I'm the Co chair this year, next year I will be the chairman for the next two years. I actually joined the
organization, the Men's Art Council two years ago.
So I'm only been pretty still fresh into it.
Just been a car guy connected with Scott and he wanted to bring me up the reins to Co chair this year and happy to do it. It's it's fun.
So is Scott maybe stepping down then if if he's the chair right now, correct? Yep, typically it's a.
A chair is there for two years and then the Co chair, whoever they selected, is typically in line to follow.
So how did, how did you get involved with this?
Because I I researched and it says the Men's Art Council has been around since 67th. Yeah, so almost, I think almost
60 years now is, is what it's it's close to.
And I found out about it from a guy through work, a colleague who was in the organization. He said, oh, you like cars?
Have you heard of Copper State 1000?
I was like, yeah, definitely. He goes, oh, our organization
puts it on. I was like, no way.
It's like there there's a group that just puts it on and I had no idea about the Men's Art Council.
And then so he was my sponsor to get into the the organization and that was two years ago. And it's a, it's a good group of
guys all focused around the Phoenix Art Museum.
All we do is fundraise for them. We have some monthly luncheons,
have really cool local artists that come in.
It's a good, it's a good organization, fun, fun group of guys. Yeah, I saw that in the fall.
You put on kind of an off road version too.
Correct. Yep, another vintage off road
overland style. It's a smaller group, usually
about 20 cars versus the 86 that we have out here on the field, but still kind of the same vintage vibe pre 1973.
Maybe a little bit more LAX on the rules than we are with this just because you know, people are going to put some bigger tires and, and you know, different modifications to make their their overland vehicle get over the land.
Yeah. I mean the, the highway, the
back roads, you know, they run a number on these because these are some very expensive vintage cars that people are running.
Very, yes, there's a couple $1,000,000 plus cars out there.
There's some cars out there that you can't.
I look at there's a 1928 Bentley out there.
I don't want to drive that 1000 miles, but these guys do it.
They're it's, it's awesome. They these guys drive their
cars. That's pretty amazing because
there's two types of cars, right?
The kind you park and look at, and the kind you drive.
For most people, I think the cars that are on this field are the ones that most people would park and look at.
And these guys, they drive them. They drive them hard.
A lot of them do 3-4 rallies a year.
Some of them have multiple vehicles that they take on different rallies, but this is their lifestyle.
And so kind of walk us through really quick, you know, kind of how this goes. Right now they're in the stadium
behind us. Yep.
So right now it's kind of just the calm before the storm.
Actually, you know, it's kind of the storm already, but right now they're just getting their cars cleaned up.
We'll start the kind of their drivers meeting will be at 9:15 and they start departing at 10. From there we head up to
Flagstaff this year, have cool lunch spots and dinner spots set up for them. Everything on this rally is
catered to our our participants. They don't have to spend
anything if they don't want to. After the registration, of
course. And then we're making our way
into Saint George or Ivans, Utah and then back through Zion into Flagstaff and then back back down to here.
So it's about 1000 miles, hence copy state 1000.
But yeah, that's that's kind of the the outline of the day or the week. And we've kind of talked about
these aren't just any regular cars, but I mean, that's a lot of mileage because what's the cut off?
1973 for for the age of the vehicles, Yeah, they have to be 73 or older. So what are some of the, are you
allowed to say some of the cooler cars or some of your favorite cars that you've seen because they're all cool their own I. I end up leaning heavy towards
the Porsches. So I definitely like some of
those R s s out there. They're they're awesome.
One of the guys, Mike, has an old Studebaker.
If you like a loud car, that's the one.
It's a definite old race car. Him and his wife have to wear
headphone headgear and a microphone the entire time.
So I mean, there's the, there's some cool stuff out there.
There's a Safari Porsche out there.
I gravitate towards those ones. So those will probably be my
favorite. And then you guys can't see this
right now, but we're sitting in front of a car show that's taking place right in front of us as well.
How many cars do you think are out here?
Right now looks like there's probably maybe a couple 150 cars. I think it's still growing.
You know, it's still early in the morning.
So people still coming out here. This is our W lot car show that
we have every year in adjacent to our our launch in the field constantly trying to get it growing.
We have a obviously a large parking lot here that we can utilize. So it's something that we're
we're focusing on to make a, a good event out of.
And quite the array of vehicles out here, anything from old vintage American to JDM import, you know, you name it, Modern.
Yeah, there's a couple ducks in here, some Range Rovers, some a lot of merchandise. So what are some things that
people could pick up over here? We got some coffee food.
Haggerty car club is here as well as the warehouse.
So couple of good groups of people organizations.
If you're looking to join some some enthusiast clubs.
You got lug wrench heroes over here who, if you don't know already mobile tire can't can't beat that love when they come to your house. That's.
Clutch for days like today. Oh yeah, yeah, definitely.
But yeah, it's ever growing with the vendors out here.
Couple of cool artists up here on the mezzanine.
Has some digital art prints and some acrylic paint stuff.
Really cool work. Yeah, I think they're doing a
thing with students. And then yes, we actually, that
was another thing that we added this year.
I'll, I'll credit Scott on that one.
He we got it connected with a few high schools and had twelve students come out and paint or draw kind of whatever their choice of medium was of 12 of the vehicles out on the field.
So just a way to get the youth involved, something kind of cool coming back full circle to the art aspect of what our organization is raising money for.
That is a special opportunity. Yeah.
Like, that is amazing. Like I, I went to art school.
I was supposed to be an artist and all that kind of stuff.
And man, this would have been like the icing on the the cake for me, man. Yeah.
It's, it's awesome you guys are doing that.
Yeah, well, hey man, I know your time is valuable.
You got a lot of stuff you got to do.
We should do this again in more long form.
Yeah, I would love to. Yeah, me as well.
All right. Thanks, Desi.
Take it easy. Thanks man.
So we're sitting here with lug wrench heroes.
Tell us about lug wrench heroes. Hey, brother, Yeah, my name is
Nate. I'm the owner and founder of Lug
Wrench Heroes. We're the tire store at your
door. And what that means is, you
know, instead of you going and sitting at the tire shop for two or three hours, we bring the tire shop to you, whether you're at whether that's at your Home Office, things like that.
But yeah, Love Ranch Heroes opened in 2020, is when I founded it. At the time I was living in
Utah. And you know, you remember 2020
COVID. I think, I think I remember that
a little bit, yeah. So with COVID, people weren't
leaving their houses and, you know, you're getting all this stuff delivered and they're working from home.
And I was like, is mobile tires a thing?
Are people getting tires delivered to their homes?
And did a bunch of research, you know, saw some people doing it.
Nobody really doing it big in Phoenix.
And I had some family in Phoenix.
So we moved down here and you know, I started this company from scratch with one, one man, 1 van, no plan, just, you know, trying to, you know, take care of customers.
You know that that one, love convenience and two, just want a different approach to the normal tire shop experience of sitting two or three hours, you know? So if I call you today, First
off, that's an awesome service. It's I haven't used you before,
but I will and I'll tell other people that I know about you as well because I didn't heard of you until now.
So that's that's got to be part of the challenge.
But you know, talk me through the process because I saw a number of things listed over there in bullet points like what all do you guys do? You know, so we kind of have two
separate divisions, right. So that's a great question.
We have what we call our our retail heroes, which is our consumer side, where on our consumer side we sell and deliver new tires, We do tire repairs, we do balancing and we use touchless tire equipment. So we have a lot of auto
aficionados that you know they don't want their wheels damaged.
So we have touchless equipment to help protect their wheels, protect their investment. And on that side we really focus
on like a lot of busy professionals, people that they know that their time is valuable and you know, they don't want to go sit somewhere for a few hours.
So that's kind of our retail side.
It's pretty much just all tire related.
You know, we have an e-commerce site that can order and make an appointment online or they can call in to our call center and make an appointment. And then we have a lot of people
that just reach out to us on Instagram and Facebook from our following that order tires through there.
You know, we sell quite a few sets of tires a week just from social media. And so sometimes it's a little
challenging taking care of all the leads coming in from all different places. But you know, we do our best and
we're constantly adding people to our team.
And the other division of lug Ranch is our is our fleet hero side. And so we have a complete
division that just focused on business to business.
And when I say that you don't think anybody with a fleet of vehicles and from that side, we offer not only tires, but we offer our monthly hero maintenance plan.
So we do we we'll check the tread form monthly, do air checks for the monthly and then we also help them make sure they stay on top of like their oil changes, brakes and batteries.
So we do light maintenance on that side.
And because you know, 90% of small business owners headaches with their fleet vehicles are either tires, brakes or battery related. So we offer those services, you
know, mobily and then the oil changes too.
So we can kind of, you know, help keep their fleet in top shape and they don't have to waste downtime sitting at the shop. And so those, those are our two,
you know, different divisions that we have and how we serve our customers. Yeah, I know someone that runs a
churro business. OK.
And I think that sounds like you could save them a lot of time.
Oh, yeah, they're pretty. They're pretty, you know,
frugal. It's my son, OK?
He's super fucking frugal. But I think I just found a
solution for. Oh.
Nice, how many vehicles does he have on there?
I think right now he has seven or eight.
That's awesome. Yeah, I think he's maxed at 12.
He's he's here, OK. Yeah, he's here in the Valley.
Awesome. Or are you guys, I mean, you're
mobile, but where's what do you call central?
So headquarters for U.S. central World Lug Ranch Heroes
headquarters is in Tempe off of baseline and Mill.
Pretty exciting. We're getting ready to open a
second branch North Valley 'cause it's just growing so much out on the three O 3. So we're open a new spot on
Pinnacle and 7th. We haven't even released that
yet. It's going to be opening within
the next month. We just got an offering on a
building up there. Congratulations.
So we're going to have a second branch location and we'll have two hubs to deliver North and South out of.
But it's been your biggest challenge other than chasing leads. You know, our biggest challenge
is that been, you know, like you brought up, like we spend a lot of money in marketing. Still people don't know who we
are, right? We go to a lot of events and
people still, still don't know who we are.
And then the other challenging thing is like everyone loves our concept, but getting them to break their habit of going and sitting at the tire shop for hours on a Saturday like it, it's been a little bit challenging to get them to switch their buying habits. That's weird, right?
To me it doesn't make any sense. Like anytime we have I have a
flat tire or something happens, I'm just like, OK, you got to make an appointment. Yeah, you could drop it off, but
you still have to leave your house to do it.
If you're not sitting there or walking around the nearest strip mall, you're Ubering home. You know, and that's a great
point. And then the customers that talk
with us, they're like, yeah, but it's free.
I'm like, you wasted 4 hours in your whole Saturday.
It was not free. Your whole Saturday's gone.
Like, what's your time worth? Like?
Wouldn't you rather, you know, be golfing or hanging out with your kids or doing something you know?
No, that's a fact. You know, and so we've been
working through that and some ways that we've worked through that is we've implemented a direct sales team that all they do is go build brand awareness. That's the team that's here
today and then we just hired an in house marketing person and.
We're on the commercial side, we're experiencing rapid growth on the on the commercial side, our fleet business has just been blowing up. And so we'd like to bring the
retail level up to match that. But like at any given month
we're adding about 140 new retail clients a month.
So we're still having healthy growth, but we would like to build upon that. And so, you know, that's been
our toughest challenge is just awareness and then just trying to get them to switch their habits.
But you know, we are starting to get a lot of momentum.
So, you know, and all the time we're seeing other people starting to offer the mobile solutions.
So it makes people more aware too, you know, because when they look for a mobile tire shop, there's nobody that has more reviews than us when they go to look for one.
So it's nice to have other shops in there and then they compare them to us and they're like, let's go with these guys, look at all the reviews they have. Well, good deal, Nate.
Thanks for coming by the booth and telling us about, you know, your shop, Lug Ranch Heroes. And yeah, good job, man.
I mean, I'm excited. I'm gonna tell everybody I know
and I'm not. That's not just lip service.
I'm serious. No, I appreciate that very much.
Yeah, don't forget. Don't wait.
Call Nate. We're the tire store at your
door. You guys can follow me on
social, Nate the tire guy. And then you can find me on all
other social platforms under Lug Ranch Heroes.
All every single one you guys do like TikTok and stuff like that.
TikTok, We've got LinkedIn, we've got Facebook, Instagram, yeah, those are the our big ones that we that we're active on.
And then I'm really active on my personal account, Nate the tire guy on Instagram. Good deal.
Thank you. Hey, thank you for having me.
Yeah, of course. OK.
At this point, a lot of the vehicles have already started to roll out all 86. They're probably going to be
doing it for the next hour and a half, maybe an hour.
They're spaced out probably 3040 seconds between a couple things that about this event. As far as your vehicles, it says
this is Please note from the website, no clones, reproductions, tributes, recreations are not eligible for participation in the Copper State 1000.
So all these vehicles are exactly 100% original and legit.
I did get an opportunity to walk around.
There's definitely some really cool cars out there.
Checked out the car that the cars Robert was talking about earlier. It's always funny because he
goes by cars and we're looking at cars.
So when you're talking about cars with cars, it doesn't really work out verbally. Special shout out to the
Warehouse, AZ Rebecca's place. It's right across the way over
there on the other side of the parking lot.
Went over there and got some water, got some muffins.
Went over to the lug wrench place.
This is pretty cool. They got Lug Wrench Heroes hot
sauce. I don't know if you see that Lug
Ranch Heroes hot sauce. I got to say that this is an
amazing event. I can't believe I've never gone
to this just as a spectator. But hopefully moving forward,
we'll have more opportunities to record at this event and other events because this is great. You know, you get an opportunity
to meet people that you normally wouldn't normally come across, catch up with some friends, talk some shop, and at the end of the day, it's all about cars, the things that unite us.
And there's just so many different vehicles out here.
I could sit here all day and just stare at these vehicles without saying anything on camera.
It's a beautiful Sunday too. The weather couldn't be better.
Slight breeze when you need it the most in the shade of course.
Nick Kingsley, future in Studio Guest.
But you never know who you're going to run into in these type of events. Welcome officially to your first
Hard Parking. Thanks.
All these cars are kind of rolling out right now.
Yeah, I was. I was a bit surprised.
I was walking around like big Lamborghini guy, right?
Seeing that black LM over there. I was like, oh, do you see that?
Oh, right over the by the, by the truck, Yeah, by the.
Trailers double O2 green interior.
Car is Immaculate. No kidding.
He's like I was talking to do you know Mike from IDRII Tell Designer Racing they have the diesel swap LM2LM double O2 I.
Don't we don't. We don't run in the exact same
circles. Got you.
Because you do all the work on all these high end vehicles.
Yeah, so. I mean.
Nick runs in circles with people with Paganis and Bugattis and all sorts of stuff. And then I'm also working on
like civics mostly, and that's the running gag with friends.
Like, hey man, I just work here there at night.
I'm like doing a WIRA. But no, I didn't see that one
over there. But anyway, there's Mike with we
said IDR. Yeah, it's how design and
racing. So he does so over at the
warehouse booth on the other side.
They got like there's like that Renault and those kind of like odd funky cars. Mike does a lot of work on those
and you've you've probably seen it around.
He has an orange LM double O2 that he diesel swapped.
OK. And so I was talking to Mike
about it and he's like, yeah, you know, we walk over and he's like, this thing's like really nice.
I guess. The guy who bought it had a
bunch of shit chromed on it and interiors like flawless and just PPF on it. The whole thing was repainted.
It's got Brembo brakes on it, custom Chrome wheels like it is Immaculate. Nice.
And it's, you know, as a Lamborghini guy, I've seen a lot of those just at the leaf factories like, you know, it's probably. Going to be a Fountain Hills.
Maybe. Maybe.
They'll take anything as long as you register.
It's all donation. I don't think they'll refuse
anything. Have you gone to this event
before? Oh yeah, yeah, I've, I've been
to it like twice. It's not really about, you know,
I'm not a again, like I'm kind of an odd, like I like all cars, but you know, a lot of that stuff in there is not really my cup of tea. And I'm like, oh cool, I like GT
40s mirrors, you know, not a big Ferrari guy, but you know, 275, stuff like that, like. Why don't you like Ferraris?
Man, so grandfather, grandfather was a cool guy and he meant a lot to me growing up. So he was pilot in World War
Two, test pilot after. So he flew like SR-70 ones and
he was like a fighter ace and flew night fighters and, you know, and he was always big into cars too.
So he was always like hot rod. And so he's got stories from
like Area 51 in the 50s when they were like bored and like hot rod cars. And eventually, you know, it's
like, I had pictures of him like smoking cigars with Fruccio Lamborghini. He was at the Ford team with
Shelby in the 60s. So it's like there's a reason he
doesn't like Ferrari. And that was about it.
Remember I told him I like the like the way a 288 GTO looked as a kid and he smacked me so but it's and personally it's like.
I don't dislike them. Oh well it's just now I think
after working on them I highly dislike them.
They're just like the most clap together like steel shitty welds. They spray paint everything
black underneath like it's just. I would assume it would to be
the opposite. I would I would assume and you
get to work on these cars. Oh yeah, don't.
I would assume that Lamborghini would be more guilty.
No, dude, that's The thing is everyone's always like Kuntasha's are garbage, Diablo's are garbage, and I'm just like, dude, they're actually built really well.
Like in in just to be clear, like none of these older cars are built good, right? You know, like like in don't say
the 9/11 because the 9/11 was a mass produced car.
Like we're talking cars where there's only a couple 1000 units made if you're lucky. True old school.
Yeah, like, cool. We're just kind of like shove
this screw in this door panel here.
It's going to go into a piece of metal and there's no torque spec. Like we'll see if it stays or if
when he opens the door the third time, the screw falls out.
Like that's just that's how they are, right?
You know, And it's my biggest don't ever meet your heroes moments in cars was Ferraris and Mclarens.
Oh yeah, we we know about Mclarens.
Yeah, I would still like a couple of them.
Oh like me too. Like A7 like so.
I'm a huge 720 fan. Oh, dude, I love like so I used
to work at a place called Turbocraft.
It's air cooled Porsche. They do turbo owners great.
You know, they're world renowned for it too.
It's like RWB Nikai says, like these are the RWB engine builders. Like go to Chris, you know, and
I was very lucky to be able to get in and I learned a lot about work ethic and stuff like that, where it's like, you know, if you're going to do something, do it right.
You know, if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.
And then well, on quote, he told me that I will always remember no car will ever be cooler than what came out when you were in high school. So it's like, all right.
For me, it's like Lamborghini Chantonario.
There's one specific RWB that was at Sima when I was in high school that I got obsessed with that started my career, that the path I went down 720 S, new 4 GTS, new NSX, you know, like, yeah, you know, there's a bunch of other stuff I like, but I'm not, I'm not like, you know, I could, I could honestly care less about a Sheeran, even though I drive them when I get to work on a couple. You know Konus eggs are cool
but. It's a cool looking car.
What is that? A oh, that thing that's an MG
that's got something else. Yeah, it looked like it was hot
rod a little bit. Yeah.
Like like Sheerans are cool. Like and that's, you know,
there's always like Konusig or Bugatti or this.
You're right. Like the Paganis and Konus eggs
are always riddled with issues. I have a video on my phone of a
why recoups door failing. Like at a track, the guy opens
the door and it like where like the latches go or not the latches of the hinges go. It just like snaps off the door
and you're just like what? You know, And it's great pieces
of art. But at the end of the day, it's
like with Bugatti, Volkswagen Auto Group, they're dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into these things, developing it. It is perfect.
Right. You know, it's been tested, it's
been through and through. And like, Comstocks are great,
they perform amazing, but they're just little quality control issues. Like I've driven 3 Regueras now
and each one of them like the sensors and the doors don't work or they're plagued with gearbox issues that I've never experienced. But always hear about it just
little stuff here and there. You know it's but it's like I
also own an RX7. Everyone's like Rotary dude like
trust me, I'm feeling it right. So it's each car has its little
plagues and issues. It's just do you want to put up
with it? Do you want to pay for it?
I. Think these cars in front of us
are getting ready to start their engines and pull off, so that's a good time for us to say that. This is Nick's first time on the
podcast, but he will be back very soon in long form and we have a lot of stuff to talk about.
Yeah, it's going to be a lot of. Fun stuff.
Before we get to our last guest of the day, just wanted to make sure I thank my Patreon business supporters.
Shade Bros out of Boise, ID, automotive specialty Tool out of Owings Mills, MD, Cool You Automotive out of Winter Garden, FL, apparel construction out of Caledonia, MI, Beef House small home design out of Ashford, Virginia and Traverse City, MI.
We are waiting on Tim Yule head over here looking at a couple of RX sevens. He's a big RX7 guy and he is the
reason primarily why I'm sitting here today.
Samuel. Yeah, hi, Jay.
I said earlier when you weren't standing here or sitting here that you know, this podcast probably doesn't happen today without you reaching out and and offering to talk to Eric and and get me here. So yeah, excellent opportunity.
Yeah. I thank you for it, and I and I
thank you for the the long, slow, romantic walk around the inside of the stadium too. Yeah, that was nice.
That was nice. There's just so many cool cars
that you rarely, if ever see being driven great other than in a museum. So Copper State is a great
place, a great way to get up and close with the owner and an enthusiast like that guy just revving.
You know what's funny? Because I looked at that little
green van truck thingy, right? Like, is it that?
Oh no, it's the Camaro. Yeah, yeah, no.
Do you know Jason? I don't know.
This guy shows up everywhere. Yeah, and it's good.
It's only the good places, yeah. That's right.
Yeah. There you go.
Yeah, do or do not. There is no try.
You want to photo bomb this so you'll appreciate this, OK?
Yeah, come on here, you're going.
To appreciate this story because there's always something right.
There's a thumb screw that goes in here.
Yeah, you thought I can? Have because I was packing at
1:00 AM you. Know I need to double check all
your equipment man. Dude, it's I did 10 checks
before I go OK I got this got that got this got that.
I even brought my little thumb screw container thing and none of them fit this. So now I'm holding this like
this, but at least it looks proper.
Yeah, yeah, stuff. That drives me insane.
Like why is this just not like a standard?
Exactly. All of them are the same, right?
Exactly. Any photo equipment, there's
usually one of three sizes and it's not any of them.
Yeah, because I have a bunch of them.
I. Mean why can't they, when they
send it, supply you with two or three extras?
Future guests standing behind us.
Yeah, awesome. But no without without you, this
probably wouldn't have happened. It wouldn't have happened
because you reached out about it are.
We live on camera. Well, we're on camera.
That's fine. I'm not cutting it out either.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm not cutting it out
either, but I mean. More people know him than know
me, right? So it's like.
But to learn about those cars, like, I appreciate all the vehicles. I think most of us here do.
But I don't know, you know, that this is a, you know, 1964 Alfa Romeo DD4. I think it's what that was,
right? Right.
I just know I like the car. Yeah.
And so I appreciate that. Yeah.
But the funny You've never been on hard parking.
You have been on one drink Wednesday.
I did randomly call in to 1 drink Wednesday because I subscribe to 1 drink Wednesday and every time you start it on Wednesday it comes up on my phone and it says Jay has started a. Live stream.
Or something. Yeah, live stream.
And I'm like OK, cool, I'll watch it.
And I didn't know that if I clicked on the link it pulls it pulled me into the event or into the podcast.
So you asked. Yeah.
So you hit the thing and it's like, hey, Tim wants to come out. And I'm like, oh, OK, You want
to be part of this? Welcome.
You're like, huh. You know.
But it was cool the the podcast that I did join happened to be your friend over in California who owns the Super low mileage white 10th anniversary RX7. Yeah, Sean.
Yeah, Sean Lee. So, yeah, and Sean, you know,
since then I, I saw Sean over at Fuelfest and and met Cody through Sean. And so yeah, it was pretty, it
was a pretty cool deal, pretty cool deal.
A couple years ago out they, they asked me to be in the in the Mcguire's booth at at that show.
And so good deal. Great event, great event.
But you brought an RX7 Gen. 1 here today.
I did I. Brought tell all the viewers and
listeners the the quick story on that.
Yeah, The car belongs to a friend of mine who passed away a couple years ago. He had just moved here from
Alaska about two years earlier. We quickly became really, really
good friends because I have a first Gen. 79 blue and he's has
this red 80. So he wasn't here more than like
a year, year and a half and had a little tinge in his throat and went to the doctor and got diagnosed with throat cancer and they thought it was curable. And, and you know, unfortunately
it ended very terribly for him a couple years ago.
But he had this red 1980 Arc 7 and he had a red Ducati, a 1981 Ducati Panta. And so we've helped get the
Panta running and we rebuilt the engine on this Arc 7 and we're about to listed on bring a trailer probably coming up here within a month, month and a half.
And it's all in an effort to to just help his wife.
Sure Stu was. He was in one of those guys who
was an avid contributor on the Arc 7 club forum in the first Gen. section, and anytime anybody had a question about
7980 Arc Sevens, Stu always chimed in.
And he had friends all over the country that knew him from his car a good deal. Man, that's that's awesome that
you're willing to do that and you're brought out here to show people and maybe get us sold here beforehand.
But you know, if not for sure, yeah, yeah, on bring a trailer or somewhere of the like. And then you've, you of course
have a tell us about your multi multiple award-winning RX7 because you don't you're not stepping out one of these Copper State 1000 cars. You have something that a lot of
people and then a lot of people would like those two, but.
Yeah, yeah. So I'm kind of a Rotary guy in
town, right? I'm kind of the the de facto
leader of the Rotary community in the Phoenix area.
So yeah, you know, fast forwarding to 2000 and actually probably in the late 90s, I started looking because I worked at Honeywell and there was a gentleman that named Dolph Strom and Dolph bought a brand new yellow FDR 7.
And I lusted after that car for a long time in the parking lot.
Finally we got to 2000 and the kids were growing up and my wife said I think it's time for you to start looking for your RX7.
And so my criteria on the car was that it had to be under 40,000 miles and it had to be yellow.
At that time cars under 40,000 miles at 2000 for 1/3 Gen.
RX7. The truth was they were 25 to 30
used if they were under 40,000 miles.
And I found this one on eBay in Honolulu, HI.
When was this? This was 2000.
March of 2000 and so you could go.
So the cars are still relatively newish.
Yeah, yeah, right. They.
Didn't hit that. Right, right.
Yeah, Seven years old at the time.
I bought the car in March for at that time 16,500.
So now you've had this thing for 25 years.
Right, right. You said March, right?
I bought it in March. So literally 25 years.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're exactly, exactly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So.
So it was bone stock when I bought it, and then the following summer I heard about this event over in Los Angeles called 7 Stock. Oh yeah.
And and so I decided to drive across the desert end of June when it was 120° through Palm Springs.
Have you missed 7 stocks since? Because every year that I've
talked to you. I've been to seven stocks every
year since 7. Stock 4.
And that's the event for all RX sevens, right 7.
Stocks all Rotary powered vehicles.
OK, so I mean what? Rotary powered pickups, RX twos,
R1 hundreds, RX threes, fours, anything Rotary powered, right?
I think for most of us we think Rotary is just the RX7, but obviously it's. More Yeah, It's, it's so many
things. In the 25 years that you've had
this vehicle and you've kept it mostly stocked, when did you decide to start modifying it? And then, well, how many awards
do you think you've won with that car?
So I started modifying it shortly after I bought it, just because there were there were a lot of horror stories at the time about. The motor the.
Reliability of Rotary engines. So I just went with the
reliability mods 1st 2007 to 2008.
That's when you started, really. Like the car needed a new motor
at the time. And so when the motor was out, I
worked for Honeywell, who owned Garrett, and so I could buy any Garrett parts at cost. And so I bought a turbo that was
to the power range that I was trying to hit.
So yeah, I mean, I bought a vented hood.
I bought all kind. I wanted to keep the car
somewhat stockish in appearance, but I wanted the benefits of heat relief. Kind of visually an OEM plus,
yeah, look, yeah, yeah, right. So I bought a vented hood and
and then my son was really into JDM cars at the time and so he turned me on to all the goodies from Japan like bride seats and.
Just all the car show eye candy, yeah.
Yeah, all the car show eye candy, right?
Probably 2009, 2010 I'd started taking it to quite a few shows.
Won a lot of years now. Won a lot of awards over the
years. I mean I think probably the best
year for me was I went in 2019 to 7 stock, 7 stock voted my car best in not just best FD but best in all the event.
Wow, how many cars are there? About 400 cars and then I come
home and in January the last year the Future Collector car show was up at at High Street. High Street, yeah.
I win, best to show there. You've just been kind of riding
the wave then. Yeah, the car like a heavyweight
champion now that just does this touring and.
You know, I don't I try to be a humble owner and you are and I thanks Jay. I mean, I try to be.
But for me anymore, it's not about winning awards.
It's about it's about spreading the hobby, you know, about helping young kids get into Rotary cars that have questions.
You know, that will listen to me anyway, right.
And so it's really, it's really been a great experience.
That's good, but we got to probably get out of here.
We should have you on the podcast in a more long form.
I'd like that. You can come over and you can
serve you whatever, whatever it is you want to drink.
Sounds good and then we'll do that.
But you know, Tim, again, thank you for you're the reason why we're here today. Thank you so much.
Thanks for you're also part of the One Auto Council.
Yeah. Thanks, Jay.
You know, and you know, we try to make difference in everything we do and couldn't do any of this stuff without you, any of it so. Thank you.
Appreciate it, buddy. All right, you bet all.
Right, guys, we're going to get out of here and that is it for this portion of the podcast. And I'm going to queue the pre
canned closing. Hey guys, I want to thank you
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Time. Ain't nobody got time for that.
Shut up.
About this episode
Broadcasting live from the Copperstate 1000, this episode captures the excitement of Arizona's premier car rally. The hosts explore a vast array of show cars, from vintage Ferraris to unique builds, while discussing the event's significance and the camaraderie among car enthusiasts. Notable guests include Desi, the co-chair of the rally, who shares insights about the event's history and the impressive lineup of vehicles. The episode also features conversations with vendors and participants, highlighting the community spirit and passion for automotive culture.
Original notes
271 Copperstate 1000 - Arizona's premiere rally took place on Sunday April 6, 2025. This annual event is the premiere car rally of Arizona with cars ranging in value from several hundred thousand to several million. These vehicles have to be original and they drive 1,000 miles on the rally, hosted by Men's Art Council. Men's Art Council About:Men’s Arts Council (MAC) of Phoenix Art Museum was founded in January of 1967 to support the programs and activities of the Phoenix Art Museum. Admission is by invitation only. With the talents and efforts of its over 200 members, MAC organizes three distinctively different annual events: the Bell Lexus North Scottsdale Copperstate 1000 vintage car road rally, the Copperstate Double Gun, and the Copperstate Overland vintage off-road rally. In addition, MAC members provide help in a variety of ways at the Phoenix Art Museum.Contact Hard Parking with Jhae Pfenning:email: [email protected]: www.Hardparkingpod.comPatreon: www.patreon.com/hardparkingpodcast/Instagram: instagram.com/hardparkingpod/YouTube: https://youtube.com/@HardParking Links Referenced in this video:https://mensartscouncil.com/
Hard Parking with Jhae Pfenning
Jhae Pfenning
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