Very Vehicular Apr 8, 2026

NADS & SCOTTO’s Unfiltered Journey Through Five Decades of Car Culture

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Car

Audi S3

The Audi S3 is a sporty version of a compact Audi. It’s made to drive faster and feel more performance-focused than a regular compact model. The podcast is bringing it up as one of the cars being discussed.

Part

coil overs

Coilovers are suspension parts that let you lower the car and adjust how stiff or soft it rides. They usually ride better than cheap lowering springs because you can tune the setup.

Term

lowering springs

Lowering springs are parts that drop the car closer to the ground. They can look cool, but they often make the ride harsher or less controlled if they’re not matched well.

Term

wheels and tires and suspension

They’re listing the main things people upgrade on a modified car. Wheels/tires affect grip and look, and suspension affects how the car handles and how low it sits.

Term

Spoon parts alone

They’re saying the cost was mostly just the Spoon parts. It’s a reminder that performance parts add up fast, even before labor or paint.

Term

donuts

“Donuts” means making the car spin in a circle and usually burn rubber. People do it to show off, but it can also cause trouble if it’s done in the wrong place.

Term

wraps

“Wraps” are vinyl coverings put over a car’s paint to change its color or style. They’re popular because you can change the look without repainting.

Company

wera tools

Wera Tools is a brand that makes hand tools for mechanics. The speaker is introducing a specific tool they think is especially useful.

Term

street racing

Street racing is when people race cars on public roads instead of a track. It’s dangerous and often illegal, and it changes the vibe of car culture.

Concept

cars and coffee

“Cars and coffee” is a casual car meet, usually in the morning, where people bring their cars and hang out. It’s a friendly way to meet other car people.

Concept

engine swap

An engine swap means putting a different engine into a car than it originally came with. Enthusiasts do it to get more power or a better-performing engine.

Brand

MotorTrend

MotorTrend is a big car website/magazine that reviews cars and covers racing. Here it’s mentioned as part of the traditional media world.

Concept

NASCAR

NASCAR is a big U.S. racing series with stock cars. They’re talking about how fans and media react to influencers showing up in that world.

Brand

Hoonigan

Hoonigan is a car-enthusiast brand that’s known for stunt driving videos and for building a community around cars. In this episode, it’s also part of how they talk about identity and belonging.

Concept

Gymkhana

Gymkhana is like a driving competition where the goal is to show off how well you can control the car. It usually involves tight turns, drifting, and sometimes obstacles, and it became really popular through viral videos.

Brand

DC shoes

DC Shoes is a clothing brand most associated with skateboarding. The point here is that people wear certain brands to show what scene they belong to, and car culture works similarly with car-themed apparel.

Brand

HKS

HKS is a Japanese company that makes performance parts for cars. In this conversation, it’s used as an example of a brand people wear to show they’re into JDM/performance.

Concept

swag

“Swag” refers to promotional items given out by companies—like shirts, hats, stickers, and other branded gear. In car media, swag is often part of sponsor relationships and brand activation.

Concept

drone

A drone is a small flying camera you control from the ground. In this context, it’s used to film cars from above and behind for more exciting video shots.

Company

ESPN

ESPN is a major sports network, and here it’s central to the discussion about who was supposed to pay for the production. The speakers are describing how budget assumptions affected the event coverage.

Concept

drifting

Drifting is when a driver makes the car slide sideways on purpose while still steering through the turn. It’s a skill-based style of driving that gets judged and has its own culture.

Company

Grid Life

Grid Life is a company that puts on car events and makes content about track driving. They’re known for bringing together car fans and making motorsport feel more approachable.

Concept

time attack

Time attack is racing against the clock. Instead of wheel-to-wheel racing, you try to set the fastest lap time, and the rules decide what kinds of cars can compete together.

Concept

paddock

The paddock is the area at a motorsport venue where teams and cars are staged between sessions. The host mentions walking the paddock at Grid Life events, which signals the event’s culture and how fans interact with cars.

Concept

sticker bomb

A sticker bomb means putting lots of stickers on a car to make it look unique. The host is debating where to put them and worrying about what happens if the glass breaks.

Part

dual side drafts

Dual side-draft carbs are performance carb setups with two carburetors. They help the engine breathe better and can make it feel quicker when you press the gas.

Company

FCP Euro

FCP Euro is a parts store that specializes in European car parts. The host is saying they found the right upgrade parts there for their car.

Concept

OEM plus

“OEM plus” means upgrading your car with parts that are still basically factory-style. Instead of random aftermarket mods, you use official parts from a newer or higher-end version.

Term

big brake kits

A “big brake kit” is an upgrade that helps the car stop better. It usually means bigger brake parts so the brakes can handle harder driving.

Concept

Fast and Furious

They’re referencing the “Fast and Furious” era as a time when car culture got way more popular. It brought attention to tuning and street-car style.

Brand

Tesla

They mention Tesla because it’s one of the most well-known electric car brands. The speaker is saying they’ve experienced Teslas firsthand, even if they’re not fully on board anymore.

Term

backup cameras

Backup cameras provide a live video view of the area behind the car when reversing. They reduce blind spots and help with parking and low-speed maneuvering. The speakers agree they’re useful, even if they personally don’t always rely on them.

Term

Hill Assist

Hill Assist helps keep the car from rolling backward when you start on a hill. It holds the brakes for a short moment so you can get moving smoothly. It can make driving easier, especially in traffic.

Term

blind spot indicator

A blind spot indicator alerts the driver when a vehicle is detected in the adjacent lane’s blind spot. It’s typically integrated into the side mirrors and may include visual or audible warnings. The speaker calls it “a little extra,” suggesting they don’t feel it’s necessary compared with their own awareness.

Company

Valet Parking

They’re talking about an early company that offered valet parking as a formal service. The story is more about the history and branding than about cars themselves.

Concept

zero to 60

“Zero to 60” is how fast the car goes from stopped to 60 mph. It’s one of the first numbers people look at when judging how quick a car feels.

Company

Vyper Industrial

Vyper Industrial is a company that makes shop stools. They’re sponsoring the podcast and are described as supportive of car people.

LIVE

S3 E17 - Audio === Welcome back to yet another episode of Very Vehicular, and as always, I am your host, Brian Scotto. Last week you got John Naderi on Firing Order and we're bringing him back. That's right.

More nads. And a lot of you have mentioned you enjoy the freeform format of this show. Let's just say this one is really, really free. So, uh, strap in, hold on. This one goes everywhere. All anyone wants to talk about nowadays is how great nineties car culture was.

But what everyone forgets is how bad our slam cars rode on crappy lowering springs. At the time, that's all my wallet could muster. But when I finally did step up and get some proper coil overs, I went for kws and never looked back.

I've been running their stuff for over two decades now. In everything from my nine 11 to my RS two, I even have a custom set in my Land Rover discovery, and yes, that bloody thing does finally run. Anyway, because of my long history with them, I am very excited to announce KW as the newest partner in this whole podcast syndicate thing I'm building.

Anyway, check 'em out. Kw suspensions.com. Legal disclaimer, it might actually be illegal to wear heatwaves polarized ultra black lenses while driving, but if you spend a lot of time in violently bright conditions like snow or in the desert, then these lenses are gonna be perfect for you.

Traditionally, sunglasses have an 11% VLT rating, but these are cranked all the way down to 6%. That's limo tin for your eyes. They also provide a great level of ocular privacy for when you're looking at something you shouldn't be.

I'll be wearing them tonight while I'm sitting next to my wife. Scrolling Marketplace. Avoid being [email protected]. Nad you ready for this? What, what am I ready for? I don't even know what this is.

I'm, I'm unsure. In this, in the Scope poll, I'm, I'm workshopping that name because I can never keep up with you for naming Convention Chef's Kiss. But in the Skoo universe, I'm unsure if I'm here for a very vehicular or a firing order.

There's not a third person here. I don't know if this is a new show. I dunno if you're inventing some, it could be a new show. Do you wanna do something new today? I'm afraid of that right now. We could just build this plane while we're flying.

So we pretty much, this is, we're never gonna land plane between the two of us. No plane landing here at all. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another s Scotto production. Yeah. So, no, this is, this is very vehicular.

This is just you and me. We already did firing order. I really enjoyed having you on the show. I feel like you might become like a reoccurring guest. 'cause that's the whole idea of this show. I would, I would kind of love to be a reoccurring guest.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I kind of got off on it. I'm thinking the next one though, we bring in like a shock collar just to slow down some of the stories. What was the joke about Mr. Honda that we would always get into at, at Hoonigan?

We'd start talking about something. Oh yeah. Let me tell you about a man named Soichiro Honda. That this versus that, that became like an entire running guy. And for me it was rail car because I would always do the like, but first before we leave, let's talk about rail car.

And it's the realization no one else has that joke except for the two of us. 'cause we are the most long-winded old bags in the business. So, speaking of which, um, yeah, you've been doing this for a while, bro.

You are the first person on this show who's older than me. Yeah, I know. Don't tell me this. I looked up. You're so old that I looked up to you before I was in the business. It's pretty cool. Keep reading the magazine kid.

You know, what do you want to do with that? You know, it's 99 cents off the dollar 99 subscription. Go run with it. Um, yeah, no, no man. It's, uh, what have you been up to lately? Uh, about four beers a day, which by the way, I was under the impression that this was a brew with format.

So I'm, yeah. I'm a little, like, I'm a little at that end house. Yeah. You know what it is, is if it was only like a half an hour show, I'd let you drink, but we gotta go for three hours and I've seen you drink three hours.

Three hours deep. Yeah. We just like, you know, it just three hours deep gets kind of crazy for a great pod, I wanna say. Yeah. Yeah. You then you'd definitely be naked at the end or somehow wearing everyone else's clothes, which by the way, this may or may not be water.

Yeah, man. So what do you, what's been new? Oh, I, I literally have not, other than doing firing order with you, but we have not actually had a chance to speak before today in years. Yeah. I know. I know.

Like I've ran into it a couple events, but like, it's weird how you work with people, you see them every day, every day, and to the point that you're sick of them, and then you just don't see some of us more sick than others.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, like that is weird to me. Right? Yeah. We were so close, you know, we were just talking about that. Yeah. You know, and it's like, well, just be honest. You kind of hated me after hitting forward.

That's fine. Mean everybody did. Everybody did. It was like, you know, it was like you couldn't keep the band together, you know? And I'm like, I know. I tried. So, but I'm, I, I do, like, I appreciate you reaching out and I don't know if it's an olive branch.

I don't think it's that, was that like contentious? No, no, no, no. It was that point where it's like, we work together now, we don't work together and there's a little sourness, you know, and it's like, eh, whatever.

You know, John and I had a similar conversation, which was like, he left when we should have all left. But we didn't realize it. And he left. And I think all of us were like, kind of bummed. He left and like it, and it, and it was a weird, not that anyone was, you know, mad at him for leaving, but it was like, wait, you're leaving now.

Like, and it was weird. He left in this weird time and all of a sudden, like, we woke up one day and like John just wasn't there, you know, chase just wasn't there anymore. And it was like this weird, like, I don't know.

The domino effect. Yeah. Essentially. Yeah. Yeah. But the one I, obviously you went on, you did a bunch of other stuff, but the coolest thing you did out of all of it is you finally built a really cool civic.

I did. And, and it's crazy. It's, it's outside. Yeah. It is outside. Yeah. And yet again, uh, much like the civic that Yeah. That I built at Hoonigan. I had nothing to do with it. I had very little to do with it.

I, I built this one at a TV show, which seems to work really well for you. I, you know, I just do the crying Jordan at the end of the thing. Yeah. And I'm like, I'm so grateful for all of this, but who in this earth has had like two really cool cars Yeah.

Built for them. This new, this ones cooler than the one we built for you. This one is more my vision. This is like completely my vision to be honest. I mean, you know, to, to fill everyone in after Hogan, I don't know how, but I lucked into a discovery show on Motor Trend TV F Fryberg, and Alex Taylor and Lucky Costa and that whole group and everything that, you know.

Hogan, alternate universe, bizaro, Hoonigan world, I guess you call it. I think we're bizarro then, but whatever. We're bizaro, MotorTrend, whatever you want call it. But I, I came back there, which is weird.

Yeah. I'm like, I was there when we used to put ink on paper and put it in a news stand and asked people to give us money for it. And then I came back for, you know, something when I got the show, my youngest is, is a huge fan of, of Ken's.

Mm-hmm. And yours and all of us and the Hoonigan era. And she goes, you're back at Super Streete. Are you doing YouTube? And I'm like, no, it's not YouTube. And she goes, what is it? I'm like, well, it's the MotorTrend channel and the Discovery Network.

What is that? You know? And I'm like, does television? Yeah. She goes, tell me, tell me dad, what is television? Does mommy get that? I'm like, no, I don't think she subscribes. No. So, so I'm like, it was a weird step for me.

And I said, is there a way we could do do this on YouTube? And they go, no, you don't understand where the money is literally coming from. You know? Right. We're trying to fund Shark Week, you know, episodes, you know, and I'm like, okay.

So I, I got with it and I tried to figure it out and they go, well, you know, I go for this first episode, we're gonna swap a case series into this fit. And they go, oh, maybe not that much. You know, what can you do with like, putting wheels and tires and suspension?

And maybe like, what are those tribal graphics? You know? And I'm like, oh my God, this is the, you know, so I, I struck a compromise with them and I said, listen, we, what if we did a couple mile builds and a couple wild builds?

And they said, okay, so I came up with the whole thing. Right. 'cause you have to have, like, you have to have the setup. The process and the payoff, you know? Mm-hmm. For any, you know, they go, not everyone's gonna watch serialized content, right.

Like YouTube, you know? And I'm like, okay. So I kind of said, what if we do like a mild build that we finish, but then we have a wild build that's going on in the background? They said, yeah, and then so I'm doing it and I'm working away and I'm figuring out how to do everything.

And they go, you know, you could, you could do one of these cars. You know, like, I can't, I can't afford a TV show car. I'm like, there's no world in which I can afford that. And they go, no, you don't get it.

You can buy the car, we'll modify it and then it's yours. You just don't sell it during the season. I'm like, what? And I'm like, okay. And they go, what would you do? And I'm like, A yellow Honda hatchback.

That's, that was the one that made the magazine, what it was. And they said, okay, you know, I go Phoenix yellow or Sunburst yellow. I go Probably EG. Or ek leaning towards ek. And uh, they said, okay.

They go, it's before we even started filming, they go, why don't you paper the build out? And I said, okay. So I go on like Google Sheets and I start like, I'm buddy the Elf in the elevator, and I go to the Spoon catalog and I'm like, Bri, you know, and just like checked, you know, everything for the ek, please.

You know, and I just ran it all through, not even thinking, going on my merry way. And I like had a summation function. I'm not really, you know, and I said. I should kind of maybe check where it's at, you know, just the spoon bill, you know, so I have spoon Bill and I, I, uh, look at it and I'm like, it was $65,000 in spoon parts alone.

And I'm like, oh my God. Well, maybe I could switch like the spoons to like an I box set up. Mm-hmm. And then maybe the wheels I could switch to like an an A or something. I'm like trying to figure it out.

But now they're all my children. So I'm like, well, I can't, I can't give up that because that goes with this and the wiper blade's going with the little windshield banner, you know? And I'm like trying to figure it out.

And I'm like, they're like, Hey, we need that list. And I'm like, okay, okay. And I'm like, you know what I need to do? I need to go through it, build the ultimate car, and then scale back for a TV production when I get done with the, the sum of parts, not even labor, not even paint or anything, it came out to be like $88,000 in, in parts alone for this car.

Here we are building a hundred thousand bucks, civics. Civics. It's a 1997 civic hatchback, mind you. So I'm like, okay, that's a little much. Finally the proofer goes, Hey man, I need that list.

And I'm like, well, I'm fired before I even got the job. Can't figure out how to scale it down. Just send it. And I'm like, I need to talk to you about the list. And he goes, he goes, don't, don't worry about it.

We'll figure it out. So I sent it to him, don't hear anything back. And I'm like, well, I'm fired. Before the show even started. I get a call like two weeks later, he's like, Hey, we need to talk about your list.

And I'm like, oh, here it comes. And I'm like, I'm wide open, you know, let's, this is a give and take. Yeah. This process, you know? So, I mean, I didn't know, you know, I'm like, you know, I've, I've, I You're already, yeah, you're already caveating it back.

Yeah. Hundred back percent. 100%. I've been, I've been divorced twice, so I know, I know how to this game place, you know? So I, uh, said, okay, yeah, we could talk about it. He goes, no, no, no. I owe you an apology.

We couldn't get all the parts. So we're literally having spoon overnight parts from Japan. I, I shit you not, you got that quote outta him. I got that quote. He's like, and, and that producer probably never saw, he was too, doesn't understand the joke.

He goes, they're air freighting, everything from Japan because they can't put it on a container 'cause it'll take too long. And I'm just wanted to let you know, I'm sorry. How much muscle control did it take?

Oh my God. To prevent the just massive smiling giggle that comes in those moments. The hyperventilation, the anxiety and the pinchy moment. Don't wanna show your poker face. Yeah. So you're like, oh yeah, okay.

And we're on a, we're on a teleconference. And I'm like, okay, yeah, I guess I could deal with that. And you know, and then now I'm flipping the script, you know, and I'm like, I'll be cool about it, but I can make it work.

I guess I'll have to make it work. But, and it was one of those, again, another fast and furious moment where the, the truck is like driving down the road. It was coming into the shop. So, and I'm like, had this clipboard and I'm like, okay, that's the hood.

That's the, he had like converted and then got connected with a guy who had a B 16 B swap and then he had the CTR front end. Everything sort of came together. Yeah. And then they're going, you wanna respray it?

And then the last minute I go from yellow to white because I just always wanted the white. Yeah, the white CTR you know, I'm like, if it's for me. The TV show's gonna last for whatever, but I'm, this is my Forever car.

And we did the respray and Is it Championship White? I wanted Championship White. And this is crazy 'cause I'm super Honda nerd and I won Championship White and I co-hosted the show with the mayor Ben too.

He's a famous time attack driver. He's got a case swapped NSXR, his future, all this stuff. And he goes, champ White is not really white, bro. You know? And I'm like, what do you mean? He goes, it's kind of a cream.

And I'm like, I never knew that. I was like, champ White is the whitest white, you know? I'm like, excuse me, not, not to be canceled. You know, not white is right. I'm not going anything there, but I'm just saying like, it's the, it's that cream and, and he shows me, he goes, this is Champ White versus what you're talking about is like what you want now is a lot of people are trying to get the civics in what's called Teta White, which was a an OEG.

Oh, okay. Eek color. And I was like, oh. And he goes, look at Teta is wider than that. He goes, if you wanna go even whiter than that, there's something called Grand Prix White. Yeah. Which came on the NSXR and a certain generation S 2000, which is like Motorsport White Motor.

It's like body on White, white. It's, it's, it's OG if you remember like the 72 Honda F1 car, the white with the, that's not the Champ White that we know today. Yeah, that's the pure Japanese race car.

Motorsport White. And I'm like, oh I want Grand Prix white. So it's Grand Prix White. It's funny though 'cause 'cause I've gotten older, I've actually really begun to appreciate the off whites. Like when I was younger, I hated off-white.

I do too. Like for example, my Vanna gun's like a creamy white. And I, I never really liked that. I always liked pure White. Like my nine 11 is I think actually Grand Prix white with um, like that color kind of white.

I, but with a, I love the nine 11, but with a pearlescent on top of it. Yeah. So it gave it that like weird flip and made it look a little creamy, but it was still like a pure white. But now, like I was, the other day, I was with, uh, with Will Rogie and he had like his white sprinter van parked next to my van gun and like, I don't know, there's something about the, the creaminess is kind of nice now.

I think I'm just showing, I'm getting older. Like the more, the closer you get to enjoying the color beige. Or AKA old man tan. It's just showing your, it's just showing your age. Well, I mean, now, you know, I mean, you know, this is the, the parlance of our time.

It's no longer a basic bee. It's your beige. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's like, that's the color you identify as. The other thing that I, that blows my mind is like PTS Porsche colors, like root beer.

Brown was the jam like in the seventies and eighties, and then it just, it was gross to the eighties and nineties. And now it's like brown with a caramel interior is like, oh, that's the color on the 9, 9 2 3 rss.

You know, I think in the Porsche market right now, you've got this world where it's like, the weirder, the color spec, the more valuable. It's like, Hey, we got a, it's a booger green on a pumpkin orange interior.

And people are like, oh my God, I need that. And you're like, no one did. They're like, it's super rare. You wanna know why? Because no one expected nobody. No one expected nobody. No one expected one dude who was color colorblind bought that car thinking it was something else.

Or I love people who are like, this is, this is actually Aine 17, you know? And it's like, come on man. You know? It's like you're getting, now you're getting way outta hand. It's the same thing. The, the JDM guys with midnight purple.

There's like three different shades of midnight purple. Yeah. Yeah. On, I'm like, midnight. Purple is a great color though. It is a really good color. It's a, it is a great color. Uh, complete lane change.

I know you used to do a bunch of work for Hot Rod really? Through Mothers and used to travel on Power Tour. Oh yeah. Yeah. You're doing Power Tour this year? I am not, they're not doing Power Tour anymore.

That bumps me out. Mothers is not. Oh, yeah. Because you know, they're doing Route 66 this year. I know, I know. And I I did, I did it for so many years with mothers, even when I was at Hogan. Yeah, yeah.

Everybody was so good enough. 'cause mothers is my family from another mother or mother. Yeah. And uh, the funny thing for me about like, power torn all of that is I think because of your time at Super Street, because of your affliction to Hondas, like people really see you as very one dimensional, like crazy.

You are the Honda guy, but actually, like, you have this massive like, involvement and knowledge in like just general car. I mean, you're like me, like you just like general car stuff. I, I'm a fan of the automotive culture.

Yeah. I am. Like, I am a career rock on tour. Like you and, uh, I'm, you're probably the only other person who's pretentious enough to use the word rock tour, but I love it. I know. Yeah. I appreciate it.

And, um, I just, I've always loved cars and I started, I'll tell you, my origin story started with the, uh, Rell P six, the, uh, the six wheeler. Mm-hmm. And, um, dad, how old were you? Oh my God.

I was probably like. 10, eight or 10. My dad just had a poster and he put it on my wall and I was just like, what is it? And it was at, on the streets of Long Beach. Mm. Of all places. And I was like, that's, that thing is really cool.

And then never really got into F1. But from there I saw a big photo of all things, you know? Oh yeah. And I'm like, what is this thing? And it's Bob Chandler, it's a super infamous photo sitting on crushing two trucks and he's leaning out almost like Zach, you know?

Mm-hmm. Zach Merton style, like leaning out, elbow off the door sunglasses, cowboy hat. And he's just on the 40 eights. Oh yeah. And like, it's just, I'm like, I want the monster truck, you know? And my dad and I built, you know, he was, had a little bit of money, so he said, what do you wanna build?

And I'm like, I wanna build like an F-150, you know, I wanna build a truck. Like, you know, like, like Bigfoot. So we built like off-road truck, remember? Did you grow up here in la? I grew up in the San Fernando Valley.

Oh, okay. Yeah. I was born in, born in Santa Barbara. Went to Santa Monica for a minute, but San Fernando Valley, it was like, so, so that led to, you know, me racing BMX in the eighties. It was like, right.

That was the time everybody raced, BMX. And um, so it was the little league of its day. And, uh, so I was there in the early days of BMX racing and everybody got, so saying early days, like what frame were you riding?

Uh, my first frame was a rally Rampart. Okay. And then from there I got a pre super goose, uh, mongoose. Nice. With moto mags and tro cranks. And So you're talking like 83? Like 84 is, that's pretty good.

Yeah. This was, uh, more like 79 to 80. Oh wow. Okay. So even, even earlier than that. Wow. Yeah. I forget our age. I forget our age difference. I know I'm an old man. I'm 57, man, so Wow. Wow.

You look good for 57. Thank you. In the last pod I said you looked old, but now that I realized how old you are, damn. They like, I'll take that. Yeah. You got like embalming fluid. I'm getting my, uh, I'm getting my a RP invites on email.

It's like not good. Step off. I'm not ready for that yet. I'm not ready for that. I didn't realize you were that. No, I So you're like a decade older than me. I didn't realize that. Yeah. So I went to high, I graduated high school in 86.

Mm. So for me, like coming up in the valley, yeah. I graduated in 97. Yeah. See, so like coming up in the valley, uh, I was on the tail end of it, but Van Nuys Boulevard cruising on Van Nuys Boulevard was the thing.

Mm-hmm. And f Fryberg was there. Didn't know him at the time, but I, I literally would ride my BMX bike. I lived right down the road from, from Van Nuys. There was a super shops right there. And I would ride my bike there and there was, you know, Freiberg's crew.

How do we bring back that culture like cruising? Cruising was so. Fun. Like as a kid in New York City, we had Francis Lewis, but Francis Lewis was like part cruising, part real ra like actual racing, like Yeah, yeah.

Rolling nine second cars off of, you know, off trailers and racing in front of Francis Prep. But we also had this spot in Astoria, right on the water that had like speed bumps. Like you couldn't speed, it was just cruising.

Like it was just go out, hang with your friends, roll back and forth, make the U-turn, go back, run it again. DPA was the same way. Um, there were spots up in the Bronx, like it was such a great part of car culture.

Like just go out, hang out with people, get to see people's cars, get to hear them. Maybe a little light to light action, but like instead we have takeover culture, which is like SII don't even, it like we, we bring it up on almost every episode, but we never really talk about it because I feel like, I don't want, I don't wanna feed it, but like, it just seems so removed from what I want to do with cars.

Like I, and which is crazy 'cause I know some people are like, you created the environment for that. No, with GaN, but that's the thing that people don't realize. We were tilting at windmills granted, yeah.

But that's what you were trying to stop because you famously told me Yeah. When we were all kind of conceiving the burny yard, like there's containers and it's like a takeover, but it's not a takeover.

It's like filming a show, but it's a little bit bigger and there's whole thing. And as we were like, you know Yeah. Storyboarding it out. Um, well, barnyard was just taking daily transmission, putting on the road for a live show and then Exactly.

Exactly. And then, but we, we had the residency at Irwindale that sort of felt like maybe we are doing good, but. Maybe we fan the flames a little bit too. I don't know. I'm not entirely sure. It's like, it's weird if you try to like keep it off the streets sort of thing.

You kind of give them a blueprint on how to do it. You know the thing, sideshows have been around since the eighties. They started up in Oakland. Oakland, like the Bay started it. But what the sideshow was and what the takeover has become is like two very separate things, two completely different things.

Because the sideshow wasn't about people getting hit by cars. Like that wasn't part of the culture and like the kind of crazy chaotic fireworks. Like just literally just throw everything you can at this thing to just be an absolute nuisance to everybody was like, not really what the sideshow was.

Like. I went to, I went to side shows when I was at Rides magazine. I went, we went and like, you know, hung out in the bay and went to a side show and it was like a bunch of old, it was like mostly like older guys.

And when I say older, I mean like 25 and older. But like in hip hop, that's like an older group. And it was guys in Older Camaros and Fox Body Mustangs. Like just throwing like donuts. Whipping shit. Yeah, whipping shits and like having a good time and you know, and like the OGs are there like, you know, sipping on like an oldie and like, you know, smoking like, you know, like a bluntness blunt.

Yeah. And like that was, and it was like kind of mellow and it was like industrial areas and it was really quiet and like really wasn't like what it is now. And, and, and I don't wanna talk about takeovers 'cause it's like I don't wanna give them the air.

But what I do wanna talk about is like cruising with such a cool culture. And I think it's one of the things that makes Power Tour feel rad. 'cause Power Tour feels basically like a really long cruise.

100%. Where you get to meet people, you get to talk to people. And I guess instead, like we've swapped that out. Like I guess the closest thing we have is cars and coffee, but it's definitely like a different environment.

Like I think cruising, you could bring a ship box to go cruise and still have fun. Like I think about the movie Dazed and Confused and like, there's an element of that that like, it was real in what we actually did.

It was like, it was like a postmodern American graffiti sort of vibe. And I'm really dating myself with that reference. I think it's okay. So I, I had this conversation with John Chase in the last one and I actually had a really long conversation with, um, Ashley last night about it, which is like, I really think we're like at this tipping point of going back to being more analog and having more analog preach Malcolm and having more analog experiences.

Oh, 100%. Because like this digital thing's just not working. I wouldn't say it's not working, but we became so reliant on the digital world when you talk about, this is such a cliched thing to say, but it's so telling about our society is do it all for the gram.

Right? Yeah. Yeah. And when I say do it all for the gram, I mean build your car for the gram. Mm-hmm. Like, you know, I'm just gonna say it, rep wheels. Mm-hmm. And these terrible wraps because they look good.

Yeah. On your little two by two square that you're being served. Yeah. Or like a Honda Ridge line with like an indie car in the back, you know, things like that. Build it for the grams. Build it for the grams.

Exactly. So like all of that I feel like is what the, the. The culture is being reduced to and I think it's starting to like kind of boomerang and come back from that. Yeah. Where people and the pandemic, you know, as much as it hurt, it also helped accelerate this, this yearning for community.

Yeah. And I think this want to come back, you know, and even like when you talk about cars and coffee, it is our, our, our thing these days. That was started by a bunch of old men, you know? Yeah. I was, I was there for the first car.

I know the cars and coffee origin story. And did you used to go to the Mazda one? I went before the Mazda one. Yeah. To Crystal Cove. And Crystal Cove, you know, was started by a bunch of extremely, and I know some of them extremely wealthy, reclusive men with like.

You know, $20 million cars that would just like, probably on their second wife, not gonna assume, but she wants to get her beauty sleep. Yeah. And I'm not saying that it's men versus women. Please don't counsel me, but the men would get together.

How much of your life is spent? Just please not to cancel. It's, it's need to get tattooed all my forehead at this point, but I'm like, I, I'm really worried about not being woke at this point.

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So for me, um, uh, that world was. Them going to get away from wife and kids, and it's just five or six, but collectively it's a hundred million dollars in cars that are parked at Crystal Cove. Yeah. And it's over.

And when I say a hundred million over like six cars, you know, and so these guys would meet, but then the internet got ahold of it and was like, well, what are you doing? And they'd go, well, we just get together and we get a coffee.

And then Bristol Cove exploded, and then Mazda took it over from there. Sure. And that's what started that. So at, at its crux, that's old guys getting up at six o'clock in the morning. Yeah. Which, you know what, I'm here for that right now.

I'm like, I'm loving that. If I'm not up staying up all night drinking, I'm gonna be in bed at eight 30 and get up at, I'll be wiping my car down at four, like ready to go to the cars with coffee. But I think that there's a, the, the element of cruising that never even came to the Honda world, we went straight from like static displays to street racing and it's, I Oh really?

Yeah, like Water Fest. When you talk about Water Fest. Well, water Fest Fest was just a show, but like, but no, but Water Fest after the show wasn't like everybody. H2O was, H2O was was Cruise. H H2O cruise was where you cruise around.

And I'm like, man, at npi, to an extent at NPI each night when we'd get to the stops for the thing, people would like gather in the parking lot, but it was still more of a cars and coffee thing. Like Honda Heads were more like.

Not, not, there's, there was like, and you know, RJ and Craig Leman came from this, this group called Art in Motion. Mm-hmm. It's like a famous club, man. I haven't heard that before. Right? Ever.

So, but it was like an art in motion sort of vibe where the cars are moving and you get to see them in their natural habitat sort of thing. But now it's become like, did you ever go to H two? I never did one things.

So HII, the last H tour I went to was in 2004. It started to really get wild after that. Um, but it was an amazing show because it's like beachfront property, right? In Ocean City, you basically have two streets, two main streets.

So they have like this artery, you could run one way, flip around, run back the other, and then there was like the other street that you can back on. And the show became like, the actual show didn't matter.

Like what mattered was the cruise and all the mini, mini meets The gathering to get there. Yes. So like, it started with like, you know, the, you know, like the Bag Society guys who had airbags on their Volkswagen would meet, and then like the mark one guys would have like the mini meet.

And then there was just this like, you know, it was like, oh, what are we doing today? And it's like, oh, well two o'clock these guys are doing this, and then we gotta go wash cars at the car wash. But like, the whole time you'd run into people you'd be cruising.

Like, there was a little bit of street racing. But like, you know, and I, I'm, I'm very careful to not, you know, be like, oh, to dismiss it as like, oh, well we were street racing, but didn't matter.

But like, nobody was doing like 150 miles an hour down the road. It was like people were pulling first and second. Yeah, yeah. Right. Like, like, yeah. Okay. Still illegal, but like. It's kind of harmless in a way.

Look, I say that I know people get hurt, but whatever. But it was fun and everyone stayed in town on that strip. So like at night everybody's out in the hotels and the burnouts were crazy and all that, which is fun.

But um, that was like this really cool, like cruising meets a show environment. But even just the good old fashioned, like it's Friday night and I want to go somewhere to go do car stuff. Like when I grew up in New York, I could either drive to Astoria, which was like a 15 minute drive from my house.

I could go out to Francis LL Boulevard, which was like 30 minutes. Or I could go to DPA, which was 50 minutes, but was worth the adventure because like it was where like all the hot old hot rod guys go, you definitely are gonna see some cool stuff.

Made a ton of friends there. Maybe it's just because I'm older now, but like if I don't wake up at six 30 in the morning, I don't get to go do car stuff. Like so much has moved to cars and coffee. This is also the family element too.

It's like you gotta get this stuff done before everybody else wakes up. I know. You know, I'm like, I'm ki I'm so old now that I'm an empty nester and my kids actually sleep in later than me when they're with me.

Yeah. So for me, I'm like, I could sneak out, do some car stuff and my youngest, my oldest loves the car stuff. So for better or for worse, we go up to good vibes for on Aach h. And we were talking about how that's getting Yeah, like a little bit, it's like a takeover canyon run.

It's a weird way to describe it, but you know, it's like, yeah. No one respects the mustard rich guys who feel invincible because they have cars with really attraction control way beyond their capabilities.

Yeah. So, um, but. You know, we get up early and we go before my youngest wakes up, and then we go out and we take her to lunch or brunch or whatever. Yeah. And then we go do our thing. So I guess that's kind of what it's come to.

But for me, you know, it, it was never that, it was either static parking, like meet up at a, you know. Yeah, yeah. There was like the Krispy Kreme meet back in the day, which isn't even back in the day.

It's after my day. But before that it was street races. You'd go to the street races and you would go, like, everybody would kind of hang out or work on their cars or whatever. And then you'd plan to meet and you'd usually, there were set up spots, but sometimes there wasn't.

And it was crazy to me. We were talking about if, if we could go back in time to the other pod, to the, to the, to the, to the firing order. Um, I could remember days and I used to run with a crew called Redline and there was cyber and all these, all these weird little street race.

We all had the coolest things back. We all, yeah. Right. So Eight Ball was the thing. I loved eight Ball. They had like, they had a little eight ball sticker on their car. I'm like, God, I want, my car club was called Auto Creek.

I, which which just, which just loosely translates to car war, which I love that. Which as a kid just sounds so tough. I love that. Like, belonged to the car war club. Well, that's when you think about like battle version and time attack mm-hmm.

And things like that. It's like battle version was always really, yeah. Like, things like that make me, you know, I like that. But anyways, um. We would go to the street races and sometimes, I remember there was a guy, white boy Paul had a Mark two Supra with a Mark three engine.

It was a, it was an a, a 60 with a, uh, with a, with a seven MGTE Turbo, single turbo. This thing was a beast, you know, for at, for the day. You know, it was one of the faster cars in Red Line and some company showed up.

It was my first introduction to this company. It was a white mark three Supra, which was brand new at the time, the 86 and a half. Mm-hmm. This with seven M Motor. And somehow Paul had already swapped the engine into it from erect one, but they pulled up in a white one with a, with a Kaari kit back in the day, and Epsilon Southern ways, mesh wheels, white wheels on a white body kit.

And it said Trust and bigs. Wow. And along the side, the engineers from Trust came to the street races and they just So this is early? This is early. This is in the, this is like pre Super street.

This is, this is, this is eight eighties. Late eighties. Well, this is when Super Streets still had Chevys on the cover. No, that, that was, that was, that was super Chevy. It was actually different magazine.

Super Street was a, was a, was a nod to that world, to that for the Hondas and everything. Wasn't there a didn't come along until 96. Wasn't there a time though, in the early Super Street though, where there was still like Nonja, like, didn't, didn't, wasn't there like, like am I misremembering?

There was a move to put where they put like a GNX or something. A Dodge Neon or the Turbo Magazine. Oh, that's what Im thinking. I'm Turbo Magazine. Turbo. I, I'm thinking Turbo did like.

Who was it? Forgot about Turbo Magazine, gene Deputy and, uh, Kenny Detweiler. Kenny Detweiler did the, uh, the Buicks and then Gene Deputy did the, did the five ohs Herbo was that place where you could see both.

Yes. Like you could, you, you'd see like a fuck body Mustang with like an SVO in it. But then they all Turbo was about like high horsepower, you know, turbo cars. I completely forgot about Turbo Magazine until you just said it.

That was, I felt like if you looked at the mags, it was like Super Street was like the culture mag sport compact car was like engineer nerds. Coleman's engineering nerd. Which by the way, I want to get Dave on the show.

Oh my God. I actually hit him up. Are you following his stuff? I hit him. Yeah. He's building the launch show right now. It's fucking amazing. So good. But um, I actually follow him on Facebook 'cause it feels more period Correct for him.

But, um, I actually dmd him the other day and was like, Hey, you want to come on? And I was actually gonna surprise him as a guest with you on the show. Oh. And not even tell you. Oh my God. And just, and then just do the like super street versus sport compact car.

I'll, I'll do that firing order, but I'll get wrecked by him. I mean, you kidding me? The man is a walking encyclopedia of engineering knowledge. The guy came up with an Ackerman point. He probably couldn't, he probably couldn't.

He probably couldn't name five wheels that matter. No, but he could tell you how much they weigh. 100%. Watching him do the CIA is so, uh oh. It's good. It's so rewarding. I think you were talking about in one of your pods, or it might have been in YouTube.

I can't remember. I can't keep up with all the content you're making these days is, um, about how just the essence of watching something take shape, we've lost that. Mm-hmm. And I'll go back, like Ron Carr gave me, like, he introduced me to Thursday boots, like the way they restore the boots and everything.

He goes, watch this YouTube channel. Mm-hmm. And it was back when we were all at Hogan and I was obsessed with any kind of content. Mm-hmm. And I, I looked at it and it was so like, pleasing to watch them a 26 minute video of them restoring a boot, redoing the soul, an old boot, you know, the soul of an old boot boot that looks like it had no life left in it.

100%. They're like, we're gonna bring this back to life. And like I lo I love like the people who say this is every nut and bolt of this restoration that I'm doing. And, and Dave's going into that mm-hmm.

Level of nerdism with that. The launch it, that's probably gonna still leak oil and run Yeah. Miserably and everything because he's like, I mean he's literally posting stuff that no one other than other CIA owners should care about, but somehow I care about it.

It, and, and what's crazy, it's like you, you, you're just living, uh, viscerally through him. And right now we have moved this conversation to a point where if you are not, um, over 40, you probably don't know this at all, but like Dave Coleman, like you either braided the altar of like the super streete boys.

Max Power Boys or you were a, like a disciple of a sport compact car, which means you never slammed your car because then you had a bad role center and you learned the word role center from him. I mean, so much of that I knew about engineering and suspension 'cause I, I enjoyed both magazines.

Super Street was obviously bigger for, well, there was different times, but there was a period of time in, in the boom sport Compact car was the biggest magazine. And, and yeah, Mitch Chang took it Super Street to number two and I was fortunate to be there when Fast The Furious took off and we hockey stuff.

Yeah. Then, then it exploded. So rode that wave. But there was definitely that, that, like you e you, you either like. If you liked one magazine over another, it told me everything about how your car was gonna be set up.

100%. Like if you were like, I subscribed to Sport Compact car, I'm like, I knew exactly what you were into 100%. Where if you're like, I subscribed to Super Street, I'm like, you have underground, like this is a little inside baseball, but we talk about like press drives.

Yeah. And you go like the journalists, we're all hacks. None of us can drive. So we, we show up and we're, we're going to the event and they have Scott Pruitt there or some famous racer that's sponsored by Lexus is gonna help show you the line around the track.

And Scott will run around, he'll set a time, he's like, Hey, there's no reason for you to drive like this, but we just wanna show you. You ride shotgun. And everybody goes, okay, you lead Follow. Yeah, whatever.

It's, so then you get by in the call, like Josh Jaco, one of the editors of Sport Compact car used to go faster than the pros sometimes. And I would be like, they'd have a competition and Josh would always win and I'd just be sitting there probably hung over because I went out with the marketing people the night before and stayed out way too late.

He was proper quick. I went to an event at Laguna Seka, I think it was actually ISF launch and he brought like this sport compact car project Evo with him to the event. Oh yeah. Yeah. And was like.

Like, just like meticulously doing like a string alignment, the air pressure, air pressure, checking everything, all that. I'm like, what is this dude doing? And then just went out there and ran a ripper of a lap.

And I realized, I was like, yeah, that guy knows how to drive. Yeah, 100%. All of them. They had more degreed engineers on sport compact car than they did at road and track MotorTrend, automobile, all the other, oh, well these, the sport compact guys would always just destroy the road and track guys on track.

100%. I mean, let, I don't think people talk about this much, but like most journalists are slow, are terrible drivers. There's a lot of journalists who appear on podcasts who talk about driving fast, who I have been at events with.

That's, and they're not fast. Yep. I'm not saying I'm fast. I'm saying I'm faster than them, but I'm not fast. And then occasionally you'll go to an event with a Chris Harris and you're like, that man is fast.

And is fast. Exactly. Exactly. You're like, that guy actually knows how to drive. It's funny because now, um, I went to an event and like, uh, press event and it's like, press events are so different today because you have this whole influencer group that's there.

Right. Which is crazy to me because now this is the, this is the do it all for the gram Right. World where it's more about like sharing the experience. Yeah. And almost like. Coming up with a script that chat GPT wrote for you.

That's like, I'm gonna tell you all about smoking nega or something. Right. And then not even really ever experiencing, I'm not saying you need to go to a shop, but it's like you need to have a passion.

You, you don't just need to be about it for the content you, you know, and, and if you are, that's fine too. Yeah. But when these people start going to press launches and driving cars, because they do have a level of influence that the automakers are looking for, they definitely have, they have more influence than magazines do this way than 100%.

But is that a good, is that giving the automaker the best review? I think it depends on who it is. No, because I think on some sides you have people like. You know, people we know like Vinny and Ron are both good.

Good. They're both good. Wheelman, a hundred percent. I mean, Ron literally has a Pikes Peak, you know, like record for being a good wheelman. That's so crazy. Um, and I think that that's one of those things that from the outside looking in, you're like, oh, those buffoons over at Hogan, they just do donuts.

But it's like those guys like really can stitch together good laughs. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but, and then you have like Cletus who like, is I, this is, I don't, are you paying attention to what's happening with Cletus and NASCAR right now?

Yeah, yeah. He's actually like, but but like have you watched the hatred that's coming outta it? Oh yeah. 100%. Because they look at him as pure influencer, you know? Yeah. And it's like he's not pure influencer.

Does he have the C time as everybody else? No. But like I think the Cletus going there is one of the greatest things that has happened to nascar. I haven't seen this much excitement in NASCAR since Ross Chastain basically just did the video game ride the wall and passed like half the love that like, and they also got mad about that.

And I started to think like, nascar, I think you're your own problem. Like the expression you're stepping on your own dick. Like if you don't realize that these things that make you unhappy are actually the things other people wanna see, maybe you don't understand like where the current space is and where the audience is.

But like the Citis thing I think is interesting 'cause there's this weird world where, uh, I think the old school journalists look at influencers and don't take them seriously. Feel like they're not, they're not real.

Yes. Right. But there's two categories of influencers, you know? Yeah. When you look at someone like Aus or Chris Harris versus someone who makes TSU sounds, you know? Well, of course. And that's the thing.

And when you go to some of these like, and there's no hate against that, honestly, please don't cancel me against. So, you know, it's like, um, but you know, every, you know, everyone has their way.

We need to get back to hating people. You know, if I'm being honest, I, I, God, I would love to hate people again, there I have so many strong opinions that I bite my tongue on that, you know, I'm waiting for the statute of limitations to go out.

We're talking about particular movie franchises and, you know, and. My thoughts about all of them. And it's like, you just, it's hard to like hate on some of these trends, you know? Yeah. I got a lot of things, I got a lot of hate for movies that, that I'm, that I'm open with.

Although I did say to you before, I did enjoy the F1 movie, which is one of the most hated movies in the automotive industry. I, I don't understand why too. I don't understand why too. I don't know.

Because people wanted it to be like an, like a race. They wanted it to like play out like a real race. And it's like, nobody wants to watch that. No. God no. You know, I think they, I think they did a great job like balancing between the suspension disbelief that you need to have.

Yeah. A little bit of a story. 60-year-old F1 driver. I get it. You know, all that. I'll watch Brad Pitt. Exactly. Exactly. Come on. You know, like it works. Rewind, uh, back to where we were before.

Um, I don't know which was, uh, I want, I want to ki I wanted to go back and touch on the analog thing, but we'll get back to that. But I think back to like the, um, the super street and sport compact car thing.

'cause like, that's kind of like where we we're at and that's like your era. Um, I'm still creating content, you know, by the way. So I, I don't like to define, I hesitate to define myself to an era, you know?

That's interesting because like, I, I question that about like, I think I am sitting pretty comfortably in that. Like, I've already peaked God. No, I mean, like, I'm like, I realized like I had like a peak moment, which was like.

Probably like 20 17, 20 18 was like peak, like Hoonigan was ripping. Like, it literally was on a, I was on a roll where like I could do no wrong. Like Gymkhana was crushing, like life was pretty good.

Like I got pretty skinny for my wedding. Like, I was just like firing on a bunch of cylinders. A few of my cars ran like, you know, it was, it was pretty cool. Um, define a few. Well, actually, actually right now, more of my cars run than ha ever have.

I have like 12 cars running at the moment. But yeah, it was just like, at the time it just, it just like it was, and then like, you know, it's like, I don't know, I'm just kind of pacing now. Like there may be another peak that comes.

That's, to me, I always, I never, I'm not flashback Friday, throwback Thursdays four touchdowns in a single game. That's not Yeah, you're, you're not, you're not, uh, what's his face? Al Bundy bun.

I'm not Bundy it at all. Yeah. Polk High, you know. So again, gen X, gen X references. Yeah, exactly. But for me, um, I always wanna be looking at what's next. I always wanna be looking at what I could do next.

Right. You know, for me, I did the, I did, geez, I left print publishing at, I was at Peterson. I got the dream job and I left it to go do over boost.com, you know, and then I got brought back, sucked back into it, which I'm eternally grateful for.

Yeah. To do Super Street. And I left that to do YouTube content in 2007 before anybody knew what YouTube was. So my Too soon Junior moment. Yeah. I You've been too soon on a lot. 100%. I put, you know, knob Toag, Gucci's, I talked about that in the other Pod Drift car on the cover.

I did VIPI did the very first Gymkhana event in the United States before Ken even, you know, Ken showed up. Well, that's, that's what, that's what brought I introduced, I introduced Ken Block to Gymkhana.

Yeah. Well, I introduced him to the event And then you introduced him to Gym? Gymkhanaka? To Gymkhana. Yeah. We were both involved. Oh, you brought, you were the one who brought him there. So, but I think because either you or who was the other person who, Ken aka Ken aka He sent me an email.

He was the one who was doing Gymkhana, USA. So he sent me an email about having zero to 60 come. And I was like, and I, and at the time we didn't have any budget or anything to go drive there, but I knew that Ken was local.

So I sent Ken a note and I said, Hey, can you get one of the Vermont rally cars to go do this? And he, and he hit over Vermont Sports car and they were like, uh, we don't really have anything that'd be good for it.

So then Ken just built that car? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. He built the car for that event, and then the event was supposed to do a second event. It didn't. It didn't. And now Ken had just dropped like 40, 50 grand into building this STI and was like, all right, I guess I'm going to like just go shoot my own film.

And then we birthed the Gym CNO series. Do you know that he also talked to me about filming that? Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. I mean, he was, he, he, he said, when I left Super Street and I started doing Rice Boy, he said.

Yeah, you're doing YouTube content. He goes, does anybody, does anybody? He asked me three questions, does anybody do video parts? Right? And I'm like, what's a video part? And he's like, like, escape video.

I'm like, is that what you call those? You know, it's like, you know, it's like, oh, I get it when Durick comes down the 20 stair gap. And that's, yeah. Yeah. That's a video part. That's the part, yeah.

Oh, I get it. So everybody has a part in this, you know, it's like, oh, okay, this is the Sunday morning video or whatever. Right? This is Thrasher, you know, I went, oh, okay. You know? I'm like, no, no, no one does that, you know?

And he goes, oh, that's strange. And he's all, what about like lifestyle brands in the space? I'm like, what do you mean? What's a lifestyle brand? What do you mean with lifestyle brand? He goes like a brand that is like, like DC shoes.

And I'm like, oh, for cars? And I'm like, no, God no. And he goes, well, what apparel do you wear? I'm like, well, if you like Hot Rods, you wear a moon eye shirt or a hooker header shirt. Yeah. And if you like JDM, you're wearing an HKS shirt, you're wearing a brand shirt, you're wearing a brand shirt.

And that's how you identify. You and I talk about tribes a lot. We always talk about, you know, when you come into a school and you don't know anybody, you wear the Thrasher shirt always because you wanna find your tribe.

You know, it's like you put, it's like it was the Hoonigan thing. It was like 100%. That was what we built Uni again, you raised that flag and you hope that someone sees it first day in the prison yard.

You know, you take your shirt off and you show your ink, you know? Do you remember the thing, what you wore to your first day in college? God. No, I was degenerate. I was just, see, I, I totally remember.

You, you, you were, you were, you were, you wore something. I was at University of Vermont. I was really big into snowboarding, which a lot of them were, but, and I was really into like punk rock at the time.

And I wanna say I wore, like, I knew I wore a punk shirt and a snowboard hat. I think it was like an op Ivy t-shirt and like, like a ride snowboards hat or something like that. And it was literally just like putting out the like, hey.

Yep. Hey, does anyone, yeah. And like within half an hour met my roommate Dan Kennedy, who like, you know, still friends with Till today because he was like, Hey, you like Op Ivy? I like op IV two.

And when we started Hoonigan, that was like, one of the things we discussed was like, you need to build like this. The goal here is to build a brand that when someone goes to their first day of something and they want, they recognize, they want to find, you know, community that like, it's literally wearing a flag and you have no idea how many times people have said to me like, oh man, I was at this bar, dude was wearing a Hoonigan shirt.

I walked over and was like, Hey, lemme buy you a drink. You like Hoonigan. And like, now we're best friends, you know? And they're like, it was like, there was like such a, that's like such a weird thing, but it just works, you know?

So, but it's true. 'cause when Ken was asking that question back in the day, there really weren't like. Automotive lifestyle. The automotive brands lifestyle brand. Were someone who, like a, you were just wearing like a TA step in receipt of a, of a tri five Chevy that was like Right.

A Tommy Bahama not, it was like terrible, you know, no one really, like, it wasn't like a brand brand or you would, you would wear a snowboarding shirt. Yeah. Or a skateboarding shirt say, I like cars 'cause I'm driving a car, but I also like this, this is how I identify.

And to me, that was so shocking to me. Yeah. And then he goes, what do you wanna do with your, with, I went down to the, to the, to the office and Oceanside and everything and he's, he goes, what do you wanna do with this brand?

You know? He goes, I'm all about it. He was one of my first sponsors. Hmm. They were one of my first advertisers. DCC sent us a bunch of swag and we did them a bunch of commercials for them that were more car based.

They were working with Von getting at the time. This was at, this was when you were This was Rice Boy TV. At Rice Boy tv. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So met with Ken, he said, I'm very interested in doing YouTube because we do video parts, but it was all like VHS or a DVD that you get in a magazine.

He goes, but now this YouTube world, it it, I love it and I want to do something with cars. Yeah. And he goes, what do you got? And I'm like, here's what I got Friend of mine, he has something that, it's like a helicopter, but it's not a helicopter.

It's like a remote controlled helicopter. It's not a remote controlled helicopter. It's called a a, a drone. It's a drone. And he and Craig Lieberman of all people, and he flies it behind the cars and he could almost kind of keep up with a car.

What I'm saying is not one car, not two cars. Not three cars, but all of the Falcon Drift team, because Vaughn's on dc. Yeah. You put the rest of them in DC shoes too. You have the whole team, Tony, Angelo, Forsberg Turk, all of 'em, Ryan Hampton and I go, then you run a train, not that kind of train.

Then you run a train around the bank and you shoot it in every different angle and you make the most epic drift video ever. That it's just, it's one lap, but it is shot a hundred different ways. And then you stitch that all together and you create the perfect little music video for that.

Yeah. And he goes, that's not bad. That's pretty cool. He goes, what if you did it with a rally car? And I went A rally car. No one's gonna watch that. And that was like, that was it. That was closest I came with again.

So that's how I came with again. And then, and then he called me and was like, what do you think about rally cards? I'm like, I love rally cars. And then the Martelli and you guys do the Gymkhana practice.

Yeah. And then I was like, oh, that's what he meant. I'm like, that's a really good idea. You know? And I'm like, that was it. You know? He did it. The other one, I'll save my remember Miss You moment is, uh, you and I talking way back, my first stint was doing the gym Kana thing.

Video, yep. And doing the Gym Kana event. Yeah. And then Scotto famously told me, he goes, I go, why didn't you want me? And he goes, because you did. You're doing time attack and you're producing events and you have this like, you know, this world, you know?

And I said, I could put it together, but live tv the, the chances for this not going well. And we built the rules package and we slammed it all together in like 50 days. And then, um, by the way, you're, you are playing this down.

This was Gym Khanna grid. As a event at X Games. Which, okay. Do you want me to play it up? Which, which was like a no, but I mean it was a major event. No, but do you want me to play it up? I'll play it up right now for you.

I'll tell you this, even like Bob Burnquist didn't get to bring the mega ramp, Bob Burnquist is an X Games legend. He had to do his own event and ESPN would look at that event. Street League skateboarding.

During they go, they're doing their own event and they're like, that event's doing really well. Do you wanna bring it to the X game stage? Yeah. Ken is the only athlete in the history of the X Games to not even have an event that ESPN went carte blanche.

Ken, what do you want to do? And he's like, I'd like to do a Gym Kahan event. A what kind of event? And he goes, yeah, it's, you know, we had only done that one event at Erwindale. Yeah, we did one, we did the test event at the forum.

We did the test event at the forum. Yeah. And then we did the event the Dale did, and then that was it. We did the main event. Yeah. And then we did the main event and we didn't even have any cars and they were doing global Rally cross global rally cross cars cross over.

So they're like, okay, make use these cars. You know, in the end it had the same, if not more viewership than Global Rally cross it. It, it, the format was got so hard. But I will tell you, like meanwhile I'm, I get divested from you 'cause you and I very symbiotic relationship.

Yeah. We work well together. I'm with Ken and Matt Chillo, bless his heart, but Matt's like Ken's body man and he's just like, where are we at with this nads? Where are we at with this nads? I'm all shut up you little parrot.

Lemme talk to Ken. You know, love you Matt. But you know, and be careful. Matt's at Haggerty now. You might need to work there. You might need to work there one day. So, um, I'm like. I'm trying to figure this out, but you guys gave me 55 days and I'm like, Scotto, what's going on here?

And you're like, NA's, consider this. Like we're putting a suicide vest on you and if you could run in and somehow get the vest undone and drop the bomb and get out, you have a job afterwards. You know?

So that was my audition. Yeah. Essentially to, to work with you guys. And I was like, this is brutal. So didn't have enough budget. Uh, Dan, I can't remember his last name, but Dan from ESPN was my contact, my connect.

Mm-hmm. And this guy was like one of the producers at Hoonigan, everything's fine, everything's fine with, meanwhile everything's burning down around us. He goes, you got this, you got this. I didn't have enough budget.

Ken was under the impression that ESPN would pay for everything. ESPN was under the budget that Ken, under the impression that Ken would bring a turnkey production. And I'm stuck in the middle having to tell Ken ESP.

He goes, you tell them they better pay, you know, a quarter million because I wanna do an entire, like I wanna do a, I respond this con I remember this conversation and, and it was, it was literally, this is my fast the furious moment.

Much like the car. Um, we took the elevator to the top of the mega ramp and Ken Ron Scotto and Matt were up in the up with me and it was literally like Ken holding the back of my shirt. Do you see the problem, Ted?

Do you see the problem Ted? We ain't got no engines. Ted. He's like hanging me over the side of the thing going, do you see this course? This doesn't look like the course that I envisioned. It is literally the day before the event.

So we had to like. Go get, uh, well, you guys had to build the course in like a 24 hour period. They were using the rally cross course they had to take down and they were using part of the mega wrap and they were using part of it for the mega wrap.

So the mega ramp came down and we only had 24 hours. I'm like, this does is not going to work. We didn't even have kras and you know, and if you know Japanese gym Kana, it's ridiculous. There's like two cones.

Yeah. It's really simple. Simple. And someone does every single car does like the same 40 maneuvers around the two. I'm like, how do you Even American drivers don't. Yeah. Or British Auto Park is like the same 100 passed.

Like, is that a parking box? I don't even see the box. And they like slide and then they get out of it and then they're like doing everything with just literally two con dude cater 'em who just like, like yeah, exactly.

It was just like crushing. Oh, it also rest in peace. Alex Pfeiffer brought the, the caterer. I know remember that cater that he brought, he just like such, I just loved him to death. He's one of my boys.

So it's, so, I, I bring him up. Alex Pfeiffer famous Drifter, uh, of Hawaiian one, one of the first. The first of the first. Yeah. He was kid from Hawaii that just did very well on FD in the early days.

But he was a pirate. He didn't play by the rules. He was so like, oh, I may have different memories of other people than him. 'cause I, I watched, I saw a bunch of people posting about like, we miss him, but he was like such a, you know, he was like so fierce about this or that he was ready to throw boys for everything was nothing but super nice to me.

Like he's the first person I ever met. In drifting. I met him because I flew out in 2004 for J-G-T-C-D one at font. Oh my God. You were there. Yeah. Yeah. That was a, that was a moment. So I flew, I was, I started at rides.

It was like my first month or two, and they were like, well, is there anything that, you know, you think is coming up that's cool? And I'm like, you know what? The hip hop magazine rides needs to cover Japanese to work card.

I promise you. There's gonna be a brand called Bathing Ape that comes out 15 years from now. I was immediately abusing my privilege immediately. Like I wasn't, like my healthcare hadn't kicked in, I was already abusing my privilege.

Oh my God. And flew out. And we went to JGTC, me and Tony Harmer. And uh, yeah. And I met him there and it was like, drifting was still kind of new, right? Oh, 100%. It was, but it was, it was new, but everyone was talking about Formula.

Drift had only been around for four years. Max Maxim was like talking about it was everybody was already on it. And, um, we went there and I met him. I think, I wanna say I did a ride along with him in the, one of the R RSR cars, but, um, and you drove the S two?

Yeah. And, uh, he was just awesome. He was such a great guy. And then he came to the Gym Con grid event. Gym, in the cater, in the cater and just wrecked shop on Wreck. Everyone. He, everyone.

And he came up to me. And I, I was like, Hey, thanks for coming today. And he was, I was, he was like, oh yeah, no doubt. Whatever man. It was like super fun. I was like, yeah, 'cause you just created a new rule.

No cater rooms. But I think he would rec shop even if he drove an old crawl. No, he was an amazing driver, but he, he loved, yeah. But the fact that he had the cater, every other driver was like, bru, really, you know?

But it was, he was such a, such a great personality. Yeah, I was. This is just, he just passed just the other week. I was, I was so sad to hear that. I, um, it was, yeah, it just such a, he was such one of those dudes.

I hadn't seen him in years, so. Yeah. Yeah. I hadn't either. His health took a turn. Yeah. But anyways, don't wanna bring the, don't wanna. No. Hey, it's part of, it's, it's part life, but I wanna give him as flowers.

I mean, dude was a ripper. 100%. And, and was one of those early dudes that influenced so many people. Oh, so many people you think were early. Like he was earlier. Like he was, he was, he was definitely there.

So one of the OGs. But yeah. So anyway, but he's also the reason that we don't allow, cater him kidding. Gym Con. Great. Because they're, they're rippers. So Yeah. Ken was like, Ken's whole reason for not, he's like, that's too fast and it doesn't look cool.

Well, yeah. He's like, that just doesn't look cool. I was like, yeah, I get it. I get it. But, you know, I, I, um, I have like a lot of regrets. I, I don't know if I'd say regrets, but like, I just wish some things worked out differently.

At Hoonigan thing we were drinking from a fire hose the whole time. 100%. There was so much opportunity. And I constantly tell people, 'cause I'll be like, oh yeah, yeah. Like, we had this idea. They'd be like, oh, why didn't it happen?

It's like, 'cause we had 15 other ideas. Ideas the exact same time all the time. So it's like, yeah, the idea was there, but like there was another idea. And even if that idea wasn't as good as the other idea we had, either someone was willing to pay for it or it just started to move forward and like you knew how it was at.

And again, once something started to move forward, it was like, okay, I guess we're doing this, the station. And the one of the bigger regrets that I had was that we didn't spend more time trying to make Gymkhana grid work because I feel like it filled this interesting gap between drifting, uh, and rally, which is like drifting is is a really fun sport.

It's obviously created this massive culture that like, has really shifted I think the way that, you know, a lot of people look at cars and, and how to ha go and have fun in cars. It brought sort of the skateboarding, um, mentality of like, yeah, this is just cool and fun.

But I think Gymkhana grid took the dynamic style of that, put it against the clock and made it more like rally. In its style of like, it's still time. You gotta be fast, right? Yep. But there is a style to it as well.

Style. It kind of like mixed those two. And I thought that there was this really good opportunity, especially when drifting was kind of going through like a lull to like come in there and be like, Hey, you can take your drift car and come and compete in this against the clock.

And it would be, it would speak to different drivers in different ways. Like Dioi Hara would've destroyed Gym K Grid 'cause his brain was wired for it. And he did. He did. He did. Well mean he, he won, he, he wa he won in a two wheel drive class and like, you know that Falcon, the, uh, discount tire team?

Yeah. Discount, uh, 13. Um, like he was one of those drivers that was like, this I think really speaks really well to him. And look, you know, he's someone who retired from drifting and went road racing, right?

Like he eventually wanted to go after the clock. And it never happened because Frank just point blank. Ken was like, I don't wanna race in parking lots. 'cause Ken knew that in order for him to go do it, like in order to be on a bigger level, in order for it to be busy, like for it to happen, he would have to be involved.

And he had so little time that he was like, if I have a choice of what I wanna do on the weekend, go race on the stages or go race in a parking lot. Like I'm gonna choose racing stages, you know, in the far 100%.

And I get it 100, I get it. But for me, I was looking at it as like, this is this really cool thing that we could build. And, and you had already, um, I think you had already had, you left Uniken before Ken passed.

Or after I left, before he passed. Right. Right before he passed. Like literally like a few months before we, uh, we desperately tried to make Gymkhana grid happen. Remember? Yeah. Um, because in my mind I saw this as like, this is like the real legacy for him would be like, let's build this series, let's create this sport.

Because if 20 years from now I'm driving down the road and I drive past the parking lot and kids are doing gym kana instead of autocross, like that would be a major change, right? Like that would've been this thing.

'cause I always thought that the sport of gym Kana grid, like had so much opportunity. 'cause like autocross is only fun for the driver. 100%. Gym Kana is actually fun to watch. Yeah. Right. Like, but if you make it fun of, there was two things.

Of course, there's two things that we said about that. We started live in front of 30 million people. Yeah. On eight, on ESPN. We started with the Super Bowl and you had always said, we need the little league to Of course.

To fill that in. Because you can't just go to the World Series. You know, you gotta, you gotta build feeders to get up to there. But when we did it, Ken wanted to put a good show on and that was the one thing he did.

Yeah. And Ken was great at, he's an amazing driver and amazing showman. Mm-hmm. And he was an amazing marketer. And I, we all learned so much from him. Right. And I would watch Ken go around the course and like sideways at the ESPN and like come in there was the tether ball hit.

Yeah. And he would hit it perfectly with the side of his, yeah. The side plate of his rear wing. Yeah. And he would just send the ball spinning. Tanner. Faust, I knew you were gonna say Tanner. Consummate.

Racer. Consummate. Racer would tell me, he goes, how hard do we have to hit the ball? And I'm like, what do you mean? He goes, where do we need to hit it? And I'm like, we didn't justify that. Yeah. And I said, you know, and then we started to quickly come up with a rule, knowing what he was gonna do.

Yeah. Saying you can't hit it with a windshield. And, and I think that was one of the original rules. Yes. You had to be sideways. Yeah. I think it was like behind the door. And Tanner was a, was a two time champion, drifter.

He knew how to put a car anywhere. Put a car. And he had his, his Volkswagen, but he also highly competitive. He was highly competitive. So as, as Ken came in like this and would smack the, the tanner would go and it would like, barely like the ball.

But he got, but he got the checkbox and the, and then the flag would go up and saying, the driver achieve. And Ken came to me and goes, well, he can't do that. And I'm like, I don't know what to say, boss.

I'm like, technically he can. But I'm like, what do you, what, what do you want me to say? You know, again, Ted, we got no engines here. You know, he is like grabbing me by the scruff of my neck. And I'm like, but that's the problem is anything you create in racing, people are gonna try to figure out ways the, the day they figure out how to put two cars against each other's figure someone figured how to, how cheat.

Cheat. Yeah. It's true. So, um, but no, I, that's like something and, and I tried to do that and you know, the guys at Hoonigan, you know, have brought back the Gymkhana courage. They're series and they're trying, but it, it needs Gymkhana grid is a really great.

Support show to something else. Yeah. 100%. It needs to be part, it needs to be one of the rings of the circus. Yeah. It's like you could go to another event and we, through the years we talked to Monster Jam about doing it as part of the pre show.

I remember that we talked to NASCAR about doing it. We talked to IndyCar. Yeah. We were gonna go, we even were looking at uh, E-S-P-N-X games in Dallas. I flew out to Dallas and looked at Coda and tried to, well the reason we didn't go there is there just wasn't a full, there's no pavement at the time.

I'm like, I'm like, who the thunk, they build a track where it was literally dirt parking lots. Yeah. And I'm like, how is this possible environmental? Yeah. Fuck dammit. Probably got wind power too.

Um, but um, yeah, and I still like, I hope there's like another chapter in my life where like I get to take another swing at trying to make grid into a sport that's more accessible to other people. But I don't know.

That requires you, I I'll have to call you 'cause you wrote the rule book. So Yeah. I mean that's like, I, I, I get into it with the guys from Grid Life 'cause I wrote the time attack rule book and Adam Jae is always going, I hate that rule book you wrote.

And I'm like, that's, that's, those are the rules. That's one of the things we talk about. Time attack, like Yeah. And we talk about Ken and there's like a spirit of competition there that the Japanese have, that the Australians and the Americans just don't get because Australians, Americans figure out how to cheat.

Japanese are sort of like, Hey, we have a kind of a, you know, they understand the spirit of why we're here. The spirit of the agreement is like, this should be like a tuner car, right. Where the Aussies are like, you know, Andrew Brilliant comes in and like designs every kind of like under tunnel arrow and hammerhead looking thing that looks more like a spaceship than a car where it's like, okay.

And even the Japanese, hold on a second, Suzuki. Did Americans ruin Motorsport? Is that the take? Yeah, I, you know, we'll find a way, you know, our, our need to just like, dominate everything, you know?

I mean, I can see that. Yeah. Well, sorry, F1, um, on the time attack one, uh, have you watched the grid life? I know this is like a few years old now, but it still feels like a new concept, but like the toge style time attack they do.

Where, where it's like the two cars, the two car, and it's like the time between them. I think that would work if the cars were a more evenly matched, and b, it took place on a legit to little toge because that's the whole appeal of it, the tightness of it.

Yeah. When you're on a track where you could go, you know, three wide and you're, you know, it's like two, two cars by it themselves, I don't, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't quite translate if you did that at like.

You know, the balcony, you know, or I mean, um, um, horse thief, mile Horse Thief. Horse thief, horse thi at, at Willow, you know, um, that might be something that would be more the, the audience would respond to it a little bit more.

Mm-hmm. Also, the way that they produce their content. I think you and I could probably show 'em a couple things about, like, the way that they need to actually film it. They, they just got this massive roll up.

I racer, call Taro, get in there, figure it out. Chris is, I'm actually, Chris is gonna come on the show in like a week or two. Uh, nice. I, I love Chris. You know, there was a talk back in the day when, I guess we could say it now, statute of limitations.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Chris was thinking about selling it to, to Hogan. Well, we, we tried to buy him and I was actually the one that talked him out of it. I could tell you now. He was like, we literally just met and we instantly, like Honda, Honda nerd was this head meld, you know, engage.

Yeah. And we're like, oh my God, you like this? I like that too. Oh my God. We don't like the same things, you know, we just went off. Have you driven a fit? You drove a fit, you drove fit, fit, you have an acting, got a Honda acting.

Oh my God, can I drive the Honda acting? You know, and then like, so Chris and I became fast friends since then. Yeah. And, um, he's like, well, what do you think, man? Because he was, you know, apparently he knew I was, was was this, this is when we brought him out to, to, to have the meeting.

And we were literally, this was when Wheel Pros wanted to buy them. So we had already, we were positioning it as this was gonna be a piece of the puzzle that we were, and I'm like, Hey, if you want to take this as a golden parachute and get outta town, but you're not gonna like, what?

Wheel Pros and Hood gonna, Hey, by the way, the, uh, golden Parachute turned out to be Rustoleum Gold. It all fucking flaked off, crashed right to the floor, broke my hip. So for, for me, I'm like.

I straight up told him, I said, don't, this is not your sale. You know? Yeah. I, I, I, I hope it, it makes sense on Paper Motorsport, marketing media altogether, you know, racer and, and, uh, and Grid life and, and, uh, ID agency.

Yeah. And I'm tight with Victor and I know the people at Racer, you know, I'm like, see what they do. You know, I, I'm happy to hear that Chris seems happy, but, um, for me, I think Grid life to me, and God, I hate to use this phrase, but it is that intersection of cars and culture.

Sure. It's that true. Anytime you have an event promoter, someone at Coachella will sign Scion back when they were doing music festival stuff, and they go, let's do a car show. So when Coachella tries to do a car show, it fails miserably.

Much like if the people at, I don't know, import Expo or what I, I don't mean to call out a particular show, but let's just say a car show tries to do a music component. It fails miserably. Chris and the crew get that like perfect.

Yes. ' cause he comes from the music world, but he's, but he's a car fanatic. He's a real car guy's. He gets it on both fronts. Like, they, they would always ask me every year, they're like, what do you think of the lineup?

And I'm like, I don't know, a single artist. So I guess that's a good thing. Yeah. You, you don't want me to know, you know, you're like his Depeche mode playing this year. Exactly. I would see that show.

Yeah, I would too. So for me, I'm like, I like what they did. You could walk the paddock and I've been to a lot of grid life events. You could walk the paddock. In the morning and see the, you know, shitty skid kids.

Yeah, yeah. And that, that crew. And then somewhere around three o'clock, four o by the way, I love shitty Skid kids. Skid kids. That's just shitty. Skid Kids is a brand. Oh hundred make stick and sell it 100% shitty skid kids.

I, I wanna be those kids and I can't, my civic, my kids like, you gotta sticker bomb one of the windows. And I'm like, I should, I, should I, I'm, I'm counter-cultural and I'm like, well, where do I put the first sticker?

And then, no, you're like, my OC D's not gonna allow me. Well, I like the sticker, but I don't know what if the glass breaks and then I, I lost that sticker. I'm never getting that sticker back, you know, and I'm like, maybe if I tape 'em on, or like, oh, this is so true.

I have, I have a shoebox full of, of stickers. 100% I can't commit that I won't use because I only have like one or two or 10 of 'em. I cannot, cannot commit, cannot commit. There's nothing valuable enough for me to put the sticker on.

100%. Same thing. But why are we like this? I don't know. But I wanna be that. I want, like, you, you can do it. I've seen you with like Napalm Nova and some of your cars. You're like disposable cars.

You go just, it gets that grit about it. Like Zach somehow makes that, that K five. Look all at once, like, oh, this is just a, a barn fine. But yet it's got a 5 72 big block in it. And it's like, it's clean but not clean.

But yet, you know, and it's well used, you know? Right. Yeah. Vin and I are on that other end of the spectrum where, but then actually drives his cars though. He drives him through the rain, where I'm like, Mickey's worse than all of us.

While we were waiting to do firing order, Mickey was like picking dust off of his car. I'm like, you drove it here. Like of course there's dust on it. I was like, this is so different between the two of us.

Meanwhile, my nine 11 has like six months rot dirt on it, and I'll drive it like that, two cars in coffee, and Vinny will be like, dude, dude, he even wash it. Like, what the fuck? I'm like, eh, there's a, there's a group that's on the come up right now, doghouse Garage.

Okay. And, uh, I actually don't know of them. Yeah, they're, they're just crushed. They have good name. Yeah. Doghouse garage. So they had an event in Orange County at an Acura dealership park your car inside the dealership.

Okay. And they invited me to put my car inside the dealership. My kids were in town. My oldest is like, oh my God, this is, this is really cool. And I'm like, okay. The morning of the meet dumping rain.

And I'm like, kiddo, I'm sorry I can't take the car. She's like, what do you mean? I'm like, I can't, I, I, I can't, I I can't take the car. And she's like, just drive it. Just drive it. I'm like, no, no, no.

It's gonna stay in the shop and the car cover and it's, it's good the way it is and we'll just, it's, it's, it's just dumping. This is such a Southern California thing. Oh, 100%. What? Because everyone else in New York, you're like, yeah, I know it's raining.

The show's still going on. She's still, we're still gonna go. And she, you know, they, uh, when I got there, people with like cars that were. 10, 10 show cars. Mine's a driver, you know, it's not even that nice.

All drove their cars, no wipers in the rain, like slammed on our comp tires and everything our com found. And I'm like, and my kid's like, see, that guy drove his car. Oh look it, that girl drove her car.

Oh look it, so, so you didn't drive your car? I didn't drive my car. So what'd take, I took my daily parked outside and he's like, did you bring your car? I didn't bring it into the show, but I'm just like parked it and I'm like, it's raining, you know?

And then they're like, oh. And then all of them were like, yeah, we're gonna pay for it later. And they're all Instagram stories and then washing their cars. Yeah. Give them more things to, on Instagram.

Yeah. It gives you, yeah. It's like, I'm like, I I will not like, I, I let her drive. I used to, you know, whatever Mexico, whatever you wanna say. I used to run Mulhall and that's how old I am. Mm-hmm.

In this little mini truck. And we go up and down Mulhall and I showed her like the little, I forget that you had mini truck roots. I had, I had mini truck roots and was mini trucks before.

Like, was that the first thing for you? Was that, that was my first thing because I raced BMXI could all like Bob Harrow and all the, all RL Osborne, all the people from BMX Action Magazine had lifted Hawaiian style trucks.

Toyota SR fives or they had slammed mini trucks and they throw the bike in the back and they Did you have a Toyota throw mixers? I had a Toyota. All Toyotas, I had two lifted, two leveled, if you piece of parlance of our time, the vehicle I would build, if I could build a, I always liked the, uh, Mitsubishi Mighty Max.

Oh my God. I know why. It's just so cool. And do you know what you do back when they had the stickers, 4G 63 in it or something? You, when, when they had the stickers on the Mitsubishi on the back, you'd change it to, might you be high.

You never saw that in the old mini No, that sounds exactly right. Yeah, 100%. It's just like taking the, to the Toyota and just say, yo Yoda or yo, and then, um, there used to be, and please again, don't cancel me, but no fat chicks.

My truck will scrape. You know, it's like all that, every, every era, whatever, Volkswagen, all that. But I had a, uh, my, my, my end all be all was a, was a 1980 long bed SR five. And I pulled the motor and I went to a place called California Mini Truck.

It had a, it had a 22 R 20 R, actually 20 R carburetor, 20 R. And I got a 18 RG out of a Celica that I didn't know was an 18 RG at the time. So I actually went down in displacement, but it was a built motor and it had dual McCoy side drafts on it, and Doug Thorley header, and I had them swap it into the car and it, it ripped, but the problem was there's nothing in the back.

So the rears would just spin. I had black inky 90 twos Storm Trooper look, I feel Wheel Mini. Many trucks are starting to come back. Oh, mini trucks are having a resurgence, you know? Yeah, you saw Georgia's.

Oh yeah, that one's super sick, but like, I, oh, Jordan, you're talking about Jordan? No, no, no. Georgia from, do you know her? Oh, Georgia, Aaron? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know her, but I know of her.

Yeah, she came into Hogan, like at the end and, and like, so, and it, I don't even, I forget how we even connected, but I, she was like doing something and I was like, oh, your shit's kind of cool. And I was like, Hey, you should stop by Hoonigan one day.

And then she stopped by and then just like ended up on and ended up, yeah. I was like, I love, like, we need a little female mix. She does Good doing, but does, um, who the, who's the kid? No, God, I'm blanking on his name, but he had the blue five 20.

With the Wilcox wheels on it. Mm-hmm. And it had the shell top on it. He was at Hogan. Oh yeah. Yeah. I forget. Yeah. Was it Jordan? I just want, I just want a dancing bed car at some point. Oh my God.

God. So, but to me, back when I was coming dancing, have you seen the dancing beds were terrible and now the fog of memory we're going, oh, yeah. You know, did you, have you watched the guy who has the dancing bed, but he uses it for real, like construction shit?

Oh yeah. He like it. He likes, he goes to the dump, he goes to the dump and he's like backing it up. And like everyone else, he twi around. Everyone else is backing up there, like F two 50, and he pulls in, slammed, and then all a sudden lower hard body.

He's like flipping it, trying to shake it, it out. Um, it is like, I, I like, there's things you see and you're like, this is what the internet was built for. Like, this is what I wanted to see. Hundred percent.

Like this is what I wanted to be delivered. 100%. I didn't wanna be delivered all the atrocities of war. I wanted to be delivered a dancing bed, sand out construction debris. Like to the actual, to the absolute chagrin of other construction workers who were near him.

Like, what is this man doing? Oh, hey, what's up? Here we are with another story time interruption, brought to you by my good friends at FCP Euro. Look, if you've spent any time in the Euro scene, you have heard the term OEM plus.

Okay? For those of you who don't know. OEM plus is modifying your car with just OEM parts usually taken from either a higher spec car or a newer car. To most people, it is the morally superior way to modify a car and still consider yourself a purist.

Anyway, back to what we were saying the other day, driving the S eight, it was brought to my attention that it needed new brake and I thought, oh, I probably need to fix these, but why fix these when you can upgrade these?

I found a bunch of big brake kits I could go buy, but then I realized that there was a really good OEM plus option, which was upgrading to the next generation D three, either a eight or eight breaks. I started looking on marketplace.

That's usually where I go and it occurred to me, you know what FCP Euro probably has most of what I need. And they did head over to fcp euro.com, filled the cart, and surprisingly it was not that much more than buying the parts used.

That's right. I was able to get brand new parts to do this great OEM plus upgrade, all from FCP Euro brand new. If you two wanna mod your car and you like the O em plus route, remember you can go to FCP euro and find a lot of those O EM plus upgrades right there.

If you know what you're looking for. FCP euro.com for those of us who have an affliction for the European cars, fucking crazy. So, okay, conversation switch. Um, you have been in the business for a long time.

Right. How many decades now? Uh, as, as an enthusiast, my, as an enthusiast since 1984. As a, as a, as a career. 1998. Okay. 1998. So you've been here for a long time. Do you think we are at a peak moment in car culture right now in terms of the mainstream being aware and being involved in car culture?

Well, you know, when we talk about this is what the internet is for mm-hmm. There's so many different things to occupy everyone's Yeah. Attention span. So before, when we talk about magazines, that's your single source of truth.

Yeah. Now there's so many YouTube channels out. I, all my friends make YouTube content I can't possibly watch. All right. I, my life is spent sitting on the toilet watching at 1.75 speed. You know, it's like, that's like, that's when I cons.

I'm like, okay, cool. Yeah. I get the idea, you know, you know, such and such did this this week and that's it. You know, by the way, I hate how I sound at 1.75 'cause I, I review these at 1 7 5. It's 1 7 5 and I realize a lot the audience listens to that, which made me also realize that if I was, if I met some of these people in real life, they wouldn't understand why I sound this way.

Do, wait, do we need to talk faster or slower right now? I think we, I think we have to talk real slow. It's really slow. So that way sip in on C or at 1.75. Yeah, it's a normal speed. We sound like Christopher walkin.

Yeah, we've, yeah. So we just drink some lean on the show, slows the whole thing down Anyway, so, so, but I do feel like. Because there's so much content to consume, it's harder for people to keep up.

But I'll also say, but you, you're talking about the content side. What I'm talking about? Yes. Talking about is like, so, so I'll give you a peak that we both live through, um, two peaks, fast and furious.

One was like this peak in import tuning, right. All sudden, sudden, sudden, you know, Maxim Magazine, gq, everybody's talking about, everyone's covering all of it. Yes. Um, I think it was a short lift peak, but there was definitely like peak, it was a bubble.

Hip hop car culture was a massive peak. Talking about like dub and ride, you know, rides dub ride pit. My pit, my ride. Like that whole era, MTV cribs with the dubs presents the garage.

Yeah. Like that lasted for four or five years. I was living in it. It felt like this massive peak. Like people knew what spinners were. Spreewell. I mean, it w it had transcended car culture became pop culture 100%.

And then we fell from there. And I felt like the dark ages of like 2008 until maybe like 20, I don't know, maybe even like 2020, like maybe 20, 21 was like an enthusiast era where like if you weren't an enthusiast, you probably weren't paying much attention.

The ride or dies are sticking around. Yeah. Like if, if this wasn't your thing, you were, there was, no one was casually involved in the space. Right. And then like. You know, you've got like the, the nine 11 explosion occult sort of brings in this like, you know, more high-end community.

You've got sort of this like new explosion of supercars like then, and then all of a sudden F1 explodes because of Netflix's drive to survive. And like now you got all these like motor, like I go to, to like, you know, neighborhood events and like my neighbors who are not in the cars are talking about F1.

And I'm like, I don't follow F1 anymore. Like, I have no idea what you're talking about because like, it is just not where I'm at. But they are all like super saturated in it, like a whole new sport. But now you've got, you know, j John Chase and I talked about this, it's like Diamond Supply co makes Ferrari T-shirts.

Yeah. Like, we tried so hard to get into Zoomies and, and they told us we didn't, both with the Griddy and TD collab, it's like, it's like now this culture is like now something that everybody is doing and it feels like it's this peak.

But I've mentioned it to other people and it, and, and also some of our own comments on this pod is that people don't feel that way because they feel like, as an actual enthusiast, it feels like it's at a low.

Like the, the laws are making it harder to own cars. Like there's just like, there's, you know, that the actual, that while the superficial side of the space feels, um, maybe sat highly saturated wrappers are putting, you know, cool cars like.

E 30 m threes and their videos. Right. Um, but you have this other side of it where like everything else feels harder, maybe more expensive, like unrelatable, like we're losing racetracks. So like in one way the culture feels like to the outside, like, this is the biggest it's ever been.

But then at the same time, we're losing like all this access to get to go do the hobby. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I see that. So I, but I ask you, because you've been around and you've watched a couple of these other, the peak, the hills and valleys.

Yeah. Right. For me, I think the first real peak I got to experience, I, I, I saw Fast and Furious, but I wasn't really in the business yet. But from the industry side, like right now, there's a ton of money coming into automotive that is like non-endemic.

100%. And then that money leaves. Yep. It comes in waves. Yeah. But like, do you feel, do you feel the peak right now, or is it, well, I judge it by, you know, like I live and die by the automotive aftermarket and the motor sports side of it, and the show side to an extent.

And you know, that that aftermarket culture, that aftermarket culture thrives on. You know, essentially OEM offerings. So when I came up in the, in the first wave of that 98 and everything, that's when the Honda Civic Honda Civics were being produced at that time.

Yeah. The old guys liked, this is the point other people have brought up. Yeah. The old guys liked the old Camaros and the old seventies muscle cars that were no longer in production. Right. They were dying off.

The cars were getting harder to find. The prices were going up. Now we're seeing that happen with our cars when Huff does the CoLab with TRD, they don't put a GR Corolla on it because the GR Corolla, as much as I love that car and wanna get one, um, it's not as sexy as Ivan Stewart's old school, you know, class seven Right.

Truck, you know, and so that's the car they put on it and people were like, I like cars. But they don't even realize that the car that they like isn't, is an eighties era offroad, you know, Baja 1000.

Right. Crusher that, that has no real identity in today's world. So if you look at the cars that we're producing today, it's not good. But then you also, but hold on. Yeah, that's a really good point.

You know, so there's not a lot. So a few years from now, you know, you have to wait for those cars to go into the aftermarket. The past 10, 15 years have not been good, but people argued that when the R 35 came out, remember when the R 35 came out, 2010, everybody's like, Welp, there goes tuning.

And now you have people 2,500 horsepower, you know, vr 30 eights, and you know, it's like, it's impossible to tune because the transmission has its own ECU. And now they've like. They're just tuning the F out of 'em, you know, so I look at that as the same way as like the cars.

That being said, I still find the R 35 GTR to be a very uninspiring car. Oh, 100%. My, my hot take too is the Mark four Supra is a very uninspiring car wrapped around shake my hand, wrapped around an amazing engine.

The Mark Force Super is Japan's answer to the Mustang that no one asked for 100%, you know, and a movie made it take off and made everybody put. Yeah. But it doesn't really handle that great. No, it's a terrible pig of a car.

The, you know, 36 6, 600. It's, it's good for what people use it for, which is like Texas 2K 100%. It's a really fast, in a straight line, you know, it's that engine that just, that goes and goes and goes.

Smokey did it. Right? Yep. Exactly. Exactly, exactly. But you know, I, I will argue that the NSX and the FDRX seven aged much more, much more gracefully than the super. Yeah. You, you look at those two cars and you just, f DX seven is beautiful, you know, just beautiful designs where the super is like, okay.

I thought it was cool. I remember when it came out I was there. I think, I think all the other, I think the GTRs have aged well, I mean, I think 32, 33, 4, when you're talking about 32, 33, 34 to me, yes.

35. The Mecca not really, not really feeling it. You know, the early ones are great too. Um, but's us, we're getting stuck in an era. So, so you just said something though that I actually, like, I never thought about this 'cause concern before.

Um, I do not like new cars. Right. I, to me, to me, like I ek is greater than, uh, FL five and FK eight, you know, it's like, yeah, I like, there's something, and I don't know if that's because I'm old.

Are we listening to the same music that we listened to in high school, is what we're doing right now? No, actually new music. I do too. I do too. Yeah. I listen to new music. I listen to, I, I still listen to old music, but I do enjoy new music.

What about old music? Do you guys No. Anyway. Good Instagram page if you don't follow it. Oh, I love that guy. He's amazing. That's white boy with the glasses. Yeah. British dude. Just listen to this.

Just listen to this. Are you stupid? Stupid. Are you mental right now? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just wait, wait, wait. So good. So good. So good. Show him. He's great. Old, old music Fridays. Um, but something you just said actually frightened me in a way I never really thought about before.

Like right now, I think the thing that is propping up car culture are car cars that are 10 to 20 to 30 years old. Like that's what the culture's built on. You are Right. When we were into Hondas and, you know, Volkswagens, we were, we were modifying cars that were still in the dealership.

It was a six gen Honda and a Mark four Volkswagen, right? Like, like you're literally either one. You're either one generation out of the dealership or you're currently in the dealership. 9 6 4 Porsches E 46 M threes.

You know, it's like that's, and I wish I could say it's just our generation, but younger kids are also pining for the same era cars, which then asks the question of in 30 years from now, what is the group of cars you're building?

BRZ Toyota Supra, the new sra, the mark five. Um, it's tough for those cars to age because like a muscle car. That can kind of withstand the test of time. Yeah. Whereas like a plastic car of the, of our air, I always fear like, what is our patina gonna look like years from now?

I'll tell you. It's, it's like crack dashes. Yeah. Crack dashes. That's our future. You know what, uh, my, my least favorite thing about the cars from our generation is soft touch. Oh yeah. And all the soft touches becomes this like, go, that's just like, you can't get off your fingers.

It's all peeling the way the Alcan Tara just sort of wears a away to a smoothness. You know? It's like, yeah, but no, but like, are we in a weird place where maybe that, maybe this dies out because there isn't a huge handful of cars right now that become affordable for kids in 15 years to tune.

And the, all the nineties cars and the 2000 cars that we grew up on become unattainable because we make them all expensive because as we get older, we have more disposable income. At least I'm hoping that happened.

It happened to the boomers. I'm waiting for that moment. I have a horribly apocalyptic hot take on all of this. Oh yeah. Let's, let's, let's get dark. Let's get dark. Okay, here we go. This is my old man rant.

Um, I got into this with, I was on the, uh, the inevitable. Oh yeah, yeah. Edlo and John. They've, they've asked me to do that podcast and I'm like, I do not. Like electric cars anymore. I told them that too.

Like, I, like I, I, I was an early adopter who has turned against them, so it's not like I'm the never like, no, no, no. I'm the never, I'm like, I'm like, I've ridden in a Tesla at Hoonigan. I've maybe been in a Tesla, Uber, you know?

Yeah. But I'm not your guy. But I was hosting the show at the time and Yeah, yeah. They wanted to boost the show and they wanted to get the boost from the show. And I'm like, they brought me on and, and Mike talked about, by the way, it's a great name.

Oh, the inevitable 100%. Inevitable is a fantastic name. As someone who's like a man show. Oh, I fucking love for you. Give credit to that name. That's high praise. It's, that's high praise coming from you.

It's really good. Yeah. They did a great job with that. Ed, ed. Ed does, ed does very well with that sort of stuff. Ed and Johnny, the two of them together, and they make great co-hosts. It was, it was a fun experience, but we started talking about, you know, L one to L five, you know, autonomy.

And right now we're about like L one, L two, you know, which is like just for everyone. L five is like full autonomous, right? Right. L one is like, okay, lane Assist is like lane assist and everything.

So we're getting into like the L two era and starting to push into L three, and then we have the Waymo's out there. That are not quite L five, they're more like L four because there's someone monitoring that.

Right. Um, but this is the world that we're in right now is the same world of the industrial revolution. When the automobile came around, we're the move from horse to buggy to car is happening again for us.

And it's, the only problem is the loose nut behind the wheel. Because if you wanna have full autonomous, all the crashes right now that have happened from most of the autonomous vehicles mm-hmm. Back in the day, this stat was more true.

But as they're driving more, they're, they're finding more issues. But most of the problems are problems with human error. Humans are driving and they run a light, and the autonomous vehicle runs into it.

But for the most part, they're gonna, there's the, there's the, one of the, the Waymo that gets confused when the guy's like mm-hmm. Down on the ground and the police surround him in LAPD. There's a few of those.

Right. But for the most part, the problem is the loosen up behind the whale. It's the human intervention. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you wanna have, eventually when you get into full autonomous, L five is what you're getting to.

That's not just interconnected vehicles that are talking to each other, but interconnected roads that are talking to every vehicle. So that way you're gonna have vehicles in the fast lane doing 200 miles an hour.

And all those vehicles are doing 200 miles an hour, bumper to bumper, not connected, bumper to bumper. And then when one vehicle wants to merge the other vehicles, no. And Right, because they can speak to each other, they speak to each other and they're all on a normal work.

Yeah. No human could keep up with that. Yeah. It's the same thing with the, uh, the, the, the, uh, paddle gear shift, you know? Yeah. If you're talking about dual clutch, it shifts faster than any human could shift.

I happen to prefer rowing my own gears same. I just like it, even though it's slower, I get it, but I just feel more connected to the driving experience. I don't, I don't need to be that fast. I don't need to shift fast.

Like Louis the Hamilton, I don't need to do that. So for me, I don't see that happening. The other thing I don't see is that people aren't gonna be able to coexist with those cars. Mm-hmm. So eventually humans are gonna be taken outta the equation.

So before the horse used to be a beast of burden, right? Mm-hmm. That's it. You, you, everyone had a horse, you know, then the horse became the playground of the wealthy. Yeah. The car is gonna be the playground of the wealthy thermal club where there's a driving thing.

I know your daughter's, I've heard this line before, and why your daughter's not gonna want a pony. She's gonna want a Miata, and the Miatas gonna be there, and daddy, what do we put in it? We put gasoline into this vehicle and it's only available here and it's very expensive.

And then you could drive your car around. She goes, oh my God, I have to drive it myself. That's so, that's so quaint. Yeah. You know, and then you learn how to drive and the, the vehicles are gonna be the playground for the rich.

And if you want a car, you don't get to drive one, but if you want to go pick up something at Home Depot, you could summon, you know, a, a vehicle that can carry what you need or it just gets delivered or, yeah, exactly.

Or everything gets deliver. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So, and you never need to leave your house. And you never need, and you, and then we're in the, at that point, you just plug into the back of your neck and you're the matrix as a see or, or you're in the, I'm a, I'm a, my kids are of the Pixar age, the Wally.

Mm-hmm. You know, you're in the Wally world where we just end up going to buy Right. And spending everything there. And you know, it, it seems that's super dark and, but I've heard people saying, Johnny Lieberman, who knows so much about this, contested me to the end.

He's like, absolutely not. There's no way You could still, you could still ride a horse on the street. You'll still be able to, people will still be able to draws. But the problem with it though, and you said this, and I've heard this line before, and the line goes, at one point everyone rode horses and only the wealthy had cars.

And now only the wealthy can afford a, a horse. And it's like, that's just a reality that comes because when something is no longer the norm, it, it fits outside of standard practices and then it makes it more expensive.

Because if there aren't gas stations anymore, if there aren't roads you can legally drive your horse on or your car, well then you have to go to thermal club. I don't know, man, I, I, I don't know if I am, I don't know if this is because of my age or because technology just moved too quickly, but in the past year or two, I have taken a massive, like, step back from wanting more tech in my life.

'cause I was a huge supporter of like new tech. I like tech, right? I mean there, there's some tech that thinks that's really good. The cameras that are recording us right now are these like Logitech cameras that are all connected together and they all work off the iPad and it's like they all just stream together.

I love that. I love that. It's so simple. And if the way we used to do it at Hoonigan was like four different cameras and like each of them individual think the time codes and they're, it's like, it's like, that's great.

That's an advantage. But there's other things I'm just like, I drive new cars today and I just, I want to turn everything off. Like I don't need it. There's a few new technologies. I actually wanted to do this as a firing order, but I think it just ends up being like old men yelling at clouds, but was like what?

New tech is absolutely useless versus like what New tech is actually great. Like there's certain things I like, I like, I'll talk to the good tech. I'll go positive first. I like. My high beams getting turned off when another car is coming at me.

Oh, a on a two lane road. One, I find it to actually be really convenient. It, it makes it nice. I get to keep my hands on the wheel, especially if I'm riding like spirited road. I don't have to reach for the stock.

Right. Boom. It's on and off, on and off. Backup cameras. I think backup cameras are good. I don't really use them because I don't own any cars with them. Same, same. I I never owned a car in concept, in concept.

They're great. You, when I drive, you don't like run over your drive up. When I'm, when I, I'm like, oh my God, this is amazing. Yeah. I'm like right there, you know? I forget to use them when I get like a press car, like I'll still be, you're over the shoulder, run over the shoulder looking in the side mirror as like I'm driving a fucking, like a box truck.

But other technologies. Oh, I like Hill Assist. I think Hill Assist is the weird cheat. I don't like auto blip, I don't like anything that adjusts to performance, but I don't care how good of a manual transmission driver you are, if you're sitting at Lanigan and Sunset, oh my God, it, I knew you were gonna say that.

I knew you were gonna, it sucks this game. You're like, hand, I get like sweaty when I realize I've done that. Well also, all my cars, the, the, it's not that good. You know, it's not that good.

I'm like, I, I don't have much hill holding power with this one. And I'm like, at that one I'm like, I always try to time it. I'm always like, yeah, okay, okay. And the guy in front of you starts and stops.

Stops and you're like, yeah, you're like burning your clutch. Like, I don't need that in my life. I no longer need to prove myself there. But there's so much other stuff, like the lane assist, like just weird things that the car does that without me asking it to do.

Um, all of that stuff. Like I, I just have no interest in the blind spot indicator is like, that's a little extra to me. Yeah, there's just, so the other thing is if you look back at tech that, that didn't work.

Do you remember like the S chassis and the, uh, I wanna say it was the third gen Integra that had the automatic seatbelt. Oh yeah. We had that in the, uh, Volkswagen, Colorado. Yeah. Yeah. God, it's just the worst, you know?

And I get like those were trying to keep you safer. And I guess all of these are, I mean, I guess in the end, like the idea of like the lane guide and stuff and all of that is so that you don't pay, you don't swerve off the road while you're on your cell phone.

But if we remove the cellphone, maybe like, we'll move that too. Yeah. When we're talking about tech, I was thinking about that. I actually rode in one of the signal auto drift cars in, um, in Osaka.

Mm-hmm. Like literal Bayside drifting that you see the on the streets with that. And, um, they were doing, I don't know, 80 mile an hour entries back then. And, um, one of the drivers, uh, I jumped in the car and I got in and they went, okay.

And he goes, strong. Go you strong. Go. And I said, what? It's late at night. I've been drinking a little bit. And I'm like, what's happening? He goes, you're like, I gotta give this guy a hand job too.

He goes, he goes hand on the A pillar, and then they close the door, and then the little seatbelt retractor goes, and there's no seatbelt, no harness, no anything. Oh, goodness. And so I'm like, you want me to brace myself on the, A pillar with, and I'm like, you know what?

No one else would get in the car. Everyone else was like, Nope. And I'm like, I'll, I'll get in the car. No, there was no, there was no cell phone camera or anything. I'm just like, I'm doing it for the, the, the, the story.

Yeah. For the vibe. Yeah. So I'm like, okay, let's get in the car. And I went and full like 80 mile an hour entry. Of course, it was a right-hand entry. So I'm right there like, hi container, you know, like strong go holding on, holding on and everything.

And another one I'll give you is I, I, I, I won't do that anymore. I'm too old now to get into other people's cars. I still jump in like the biggest idiot ever, you know. But another one I'll give you about technology that just made me think of it with the seatbelt thing was I used to park cars at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and my dad actually invented valet parking, but that's another story for another pod.

We, we, yeah. Your dad invented valet parking. My dad invented valet parking, which is another story. I've crashed the Playboy Mansion as a parking attendant. Okay. I worked at the Beverly Hills Hotel as a parking attendant, and I've had some pretty cool jobs and drove some pretty cool cars.

So before your dad. There was no such thing as valet. There was no such thing as valet parking. Herb Citron and John the dairy started a company called Valet Parking with a v It was meant to look like a tuxedo of a, like a man servant, a valet or a butler that would actually bring your car.

Why would I want you to bring my car? The parking lot is right there. It's right there. No, this is a service. You're spending a lot to go to this restaurant. We give you a good complimentary service and everything.

And they first started it at Laurie's Prime rib in, uh, Beverly Hills, California in like the mid sixties. That is a fun fact. I did not know. Anyways, I, I've worked at a lot of these valet jobs and I was working at the Beverly Hills Hotel and when someone tips you back in the day, the parking was, was $2 to park at the, the Beverly Hills Hotel.

People will give you a five. It lets you keep three. You get a tip and everything and everybody's happy. Um, Jean Claude Van Damme comes out and he was Peak Van Damme at the time. This is like, God, I want to say, uh, early, late nineties.

Late nineties, right. You know, like Clark four. Yeah. There was a whole thing and, and uh, no, I mean early nineties. Early. Yeah. Early to mid nineties. And he, he comes out, he had a BM BMW seven series brand new.

And he said, how much? And I said, uh, $2, you know? And he said, oh, okay. And he gives me a five. And I said, you kind of weigh, you know, and then he is like, change. And I'm like, are you mother? You Jean Claude Van Damme.

And so I take like three damn wad ones and I hand it to him. I don't like, you know, give him his change in any like, sort of measurable way. And when someone tips you. You hold the hand on the door and you hold the other hand on the handle and you close it and you say, thank you very much.

Have an enjoyable trip. Thank you for your picture. Right, right. If they don't tip you, you give them the, you like, yeah, you give him the flick. You know? So I flick the door and I look over my shoulders.

I'm flicking the door and he has a pen, and he goes to write something down as he's talking to the other people in the car, and he drops the pin and it lands on the door cell and he reaches his hand out to get the car to open the, to, to grab the pin.

And the pin rolls outta the door cell onto the ground. The door is in motion now, and I'm like, no. And I'm, I'm rushing to get to it, but I can't get back to it fast enough. And the door hits, but doesn't close all the way, which is the perfect close if you're trying to snub him.

Not the perfect close. When you close Jean-Claude van Dam's hand in the thing, but it was the soft touch door. So not only does it not close all the way, but it like hits and then, and then it goes, pulls onto his fingers and he goes, open, open.

He's like screaming at me with his accent and I'm like. Oh my God, John Claude Van Dam is gonna kick my butt right now, you know? So I open the door and I just look at him and I panic and I take off running.

And it was a big party. There was people everywhere and I don't know what happened, but all I imagined was because this is, I'm dating myself here. I see him on the Arsenio Hall show later that night.

This didn't happen, but I'm imagining him in this full, I can't do the new movie because some idiot closed my hand in the door and everyth. But never anything about it. I mean, honestly, it's his fault.

$3 could have saved him that know. Come on man. Come on you. I might have been the end of it for him. Come on JCPD, be better. No. Um, yeah. I always love when you have like, weird interactions with celebrities once backed into, um, Alec Baldwin's, uh, Cadillac.

I wanna say it was like a, the DTS Remember the DS Oh my God, yes. The DTS by the way, let's talk about this. Didn't Tony Soprano drive a DTS and like, probably I want, I feel like that was, that was dts was soprano as Cadillac was making their move from being like, we're no longer a big boat company.

We're gonna, but we're not quite art and style. We're no, we we're gonna make, we're gonna make a sporty CTS. They're like, someone was like, we still need to make a car for the old people. And someone's like the DTS, it was like their malaise era without being in the Blaise era.

Hundred percent. It was like, it was like they looked at the Lincoln Town car and was. I don't think we can improve it, but we could certainly make another one. And they introduced the DTS, which was like a modern version of just an old Cadillac.

And he had one and we were working as when we were movers and we worked in the city and he backed into him and he was always annoyed. I talk about him on the pod, but I love, I love, I love him so much, but, um, he backs into him and Tim, who's in the, one of my best friends who was in the car who's in the truck with us, was like, oh shit, yo, you hit that car, you, you should leave.

Like drive away. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, oh bro, you just hit that car, you the moving go the van. You drive the bush. Yeah. Yeah, because like, yo, he hit like, I mean he hit him with a moving van.

It's like, it wasn't a small dent, it was like caved in the quarter panel and, and we're like trying to like figure out what to do and we're like, shitty fucking like, you know, 20-year-old kids. And uh, then all of a sudden Tim's like, ah, shit.

Looks like the fucking doorman caught us and the doorman comes running out. Doorman was not the doorman, the doorman was out. Ouch, Baldwin. So we get out the car and he was super fucking cool. Oh, he was super cool.

And this was like three weeks after he beat the shit out of a photographer. Oh my. And once we, once we were like, yo, is that Alec Baldwin? And this was when like, was an aspiring photographer. And uh, I was like, he was like, is that Alec Baldwin?

I'm like, yeah, I think so. And I was like, bro, he, he already doesn't like photographers. He's gonna kick your ass. And then we literally let him get outta the truck. We both lit up Newports and just sat there, smoked a cigarette and watched in the side mirror just like, oh, cigarette break.

Here we go. Oh my God. And he ended up being super cool and he ended up not even going through insurance. Like, he was like, yeah, whatever. It's fucking cool. But like, but you know, you, you run into people like that and you're like, oh, this could be an interesting, interesting position.

So what did we learn here? Jean Claude Van Dam. Asshole. I like Baldwin. Baldwin. Not an asshole. Yeah. Where were we going before we were talking about Peak? We got off of that. Um, autonomous. Yeah, we kind of moved on to autonomous, which like, I hate having that conversation.

I don't like to have that conversation. But I told you I wanted to give you a, a dark apocalyptic, which apparently might not be such a hot take anymore because people are seeing that riding on the wall.

Johnny Lieber and I got in a huge debate over it where he just, he was not, Johnny just likes to fight though. He does. He is. I feel like John, I'd love, I'd love to see Johnny on the pod.

Johnny, I think Johnny would be really good on firing order. Yeah. Yeah. 'cause I think that like, he would do his research, he would come prepared, but it needs to be a topic that like really suits him.

The problem is, is. Extremely knowledgeable, but also just as opinionated. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I love that about him. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. He, he, he would be, he would be good for that. The, um, but I just like, I don't know, you need to teach him how to do YouTube though, is driving with Johnny is like, Johnny work on the driving with Johnny.

I, I, the, the big issue for me though is I, I really draw a weird line when people are like hyper defending electric cars as like, great. Being a great driving experience. And it's like I'm all, I, I, because I'm not one of those people, like, I, I'm really concerned about what the fuck we're doing to our like, universe, same, same bad climate I grapple with like Yeah.

You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, you know, I'm test piped, you know, dirty smog, my car and all that. Right, right. But at the same time, I'm like, eh, like kind of what am I doing for my kids and everything, you know?

It's like, that being said, if all of us collectively acted like the way we do, are we setting ourselves up? But the problem is, is if you actually look at the percentage, the percentage of the percentage of people automotive emissions versus in performance cars versus what's actually the problem.

Yeah. We need to look at like long haul trucking. We need to look coal, fire, power plant, all we need to 100% look at shipping and container chip 100%. Like that's what the problem is. We need to, you know, I don't know, think twice before, like, you know, igniting oil fields on fire.

Like these are things that like, are really, really bad for the environment. Right. Um, I'm not gonna get into the argument of whether or not electric cars are potentially worse for the environment because I, I don't have all the, 'cause they get charged by the electricity from a coal fire power plant.

And I, I will say the battery waste and everything else, I haven't done the research, so I don't have like enough education to, we also haven't been doing it long enough to realize the repercussions and ramifications of everything that we're doing.

So it, the case study totally. We can't do ab testing on anything yet because we really don't know. Totally. But I will say this, they are not a better driving experience. No, 100%. And anyone who says they are, I instantly lose.

Like that's, you've lost credibility. You've lost all your credibility 100%. Like that's 100 credibility's out 100%. And when you say good driving experience, they'll say, well, it's faster than your car.

That's not, that does not qualify it as a good driving experience. Yeah. That just means that the, the zero, the, the instant on torque of an EV motor is applied in that fashion. That's it. Um, and I also just don't find raw power and speed to be what motivates me for a car.

Slow car. Fun. Yeah. Yeah. To me, I'm like, and I know everyone says that now, but it's like, it just works. But to me I'm like, it's so much better than like. I, I was, I don't know. I somehow get involved with these, like hypercar owners with some of the work I do with, with mothers and everything.

I heard people debating over the driving experience of a Bagi Zda versus a Kig Segarra. And I was like, does it matter? Are you, do either of you? Are either of you? And I'm not. I don't know. Have a lot, have you driven a lot of like hyper cars in your life?

No, I haven't had the opportunity. I would love to. I, I, you know, a couple McLaren's and Ferrari every now and then, but, you know, nothing that spectacular out there. You know, the, probably the craziest car I ever drove was like, on the power tour.

It would be, um, um, Charlie Lillard, who's a famous collector, had, uh, one of, uh, mark Steel's, uh, famous pro touring Camaros, which is like a super, super different, different space. Different space.

Yeah. But that was like a, that's a quarter million dollar car, you know? And I'm like, okay. And that was like manual transmission and everything, right? Rock crusher and everything. And it was, yeah.

I think like every, I, I, I've driven a couple hyper cars. I've driven a bunch of super supercars, and I think that the same experience I always have in them is when I get out of them. I always feel like I drove the car at like four 10.

And you also, it also kind of know you from the driving experience. I drove an R 35 in 20 20 12. Yeah. Right. When they were pretty new. And I, I followed behind a three RSS and on a, like a little autocross style.

Mm-hmm. Like road course type ConEd road road esque autocross course. And, um. I effortlessly kept up with, and I'm not that good of a driver and I, but I just felt a little detached from the driving experience, you know?

And I also felt like I didn't nearly explore the levels of what the car was capable of. Yeah. And I'm like, okay, in order to get there, that's, you gotta get on another level. I had an amazing experience in that car, not because of the car, but I went to a press launch when it, when it launched in the us they launched it at Reno Faley Racetrack, which was like an old Oh, I know that.

I know that track. Yeah. Motorcycle track up in Tahoe area. And, uh, went to the press launch. They'd already done the Tokyo launch, right? Yeah. I forget where it was. But they already done a launch in Japan.

And then, um, this was like the first US launch, and this was all like, um, I forget what the hell that was called, but like, you know, the, the media like, like instant media. So it was all like people who had to like report their stories early.

Oh, okay. Like a deadline. Yeah, it like Deadline Media. So it was, you know, it was more of the blogs and that kind of stuff that were showing up for it, at least for the Wave I was on. But I was there for zero to 60, so like, I didn't have like a rush to, to deliver something.

Yeah, yeah. Everybody went and did one lap and then went and wrote their story. I'm like, okay. And then the rest of 'em didn't even go back out, so I went, I did like my five laps. Like they gave you tickets right?

For like how many laps you could do? I did my five laps and then, um. I think it was, uh, was it Scott or Steve Oldman? I forget which one. Scott Oldman. Scott, well one of 'em worked at the magazine.

One of 'em worked in the magazine world. One of 'em worked at Nissan. I forget one of the Oldman. Okay, okay. They were brothers. Um, I think it was Steve Oldman, maybe Scott Oldman, I don't remember.

Anyway, um, he came over to me and was like, Hey man, like here's a bunch of tickets. Like can you go and like drive the car more because like everybody else doesn't want to go drive anymore? And Steve Millen was there and I did lead follow with Steve Millen for so long that we blew the brakes out on three of the cars and we would just bring the cars in and then hot swap to another car and go back out.

Like literally killing tires on cars, just following Steve Millen through this track. And it was one of the most like rad experiences. 'cause we would do laps and then Steve would like pull in next to me and as we came into cool down and he'd be like, here's what you're doing wrong in that corner.

Oh my God. And it was like, it was just such a rad experience. But it was also this amazing moment at like looking at what journalism was at the time, which is like all of you just got invited to drive one of the most important cars of the decade, the car that everyone's putting up against the nine 11.

And you drove it for one lap and then wrote a story about the one lap. Like you literally did an out lap and that was it. I spent the entire day driving that car and I can genuinely say it's not that great.

Like it's, it does its job, but like it felt, it's. It's not a nine 11. It blows my mind how people don't wanna drive cars anymore. Like when we talk about journalists, I have another story that's like exactly like that.

I went, uh, I wanna say it was Acura, RSX press launch. And then by the way, not to, not to cut you off, but the RSX was a car that got mentioned in, I saw it. I saw it. I've never driven one.

I think I owned one and I think I've never driven one. Is it a car? I need to go drive. No, it's not, it's, it's okay. Mickey even mentioned it in a, in a pod that said it's the next collector car that's gonna come from Japan.

The, the type R, because the DC five type R and I'm like McPherson strut front end. It definitely like it, it needs a lot of help. It needs a lot of aftermarket help. But anyways, that the, the new car came out in oh four.

I think the, the, the, the mid cycle refresh came out in oh four and we went to Streets of Willow to drive. And I know streets pretty well and we got to drive the car, but then also we got to take a lap in Peter Cunningham's real time racing sick DC five race car, everybody could take a couple laps, you know?

And I was like, what the, what? So we got to drive the car. Drove the car. Yeah. Everybody did a couple laps and then they all went in for lunch. And then I'm like kind of standing there going, I go again, you know?

And this, this kid, uh, his name was Jasper. He worked, he since passed I that, but I had such a great interaction with him. Mm-hmm. He's like, yeah, no one else. He goes, we're they paid us to be here all day.

We got tires, we got fuel, you know, take it out. And I'm like, okay, how many laps? He goes, I'll flag you when it's time to come in. And I'm like, what do you mean? And he goes, just go, go have fun.

And I drove countless laps. He flagged me to come in. I'm like, oh, that's it. So I brought it in and he goes, we gotta change tires and fuel. You could stay in the car if you wanna keep going. I'm soaked in sweat.

And I'm like, yeah, I'll keep going. I skipped lunch. I know I drove so many laps in a real time racing world. Challenge DC five. That's incredible. Type Acura, you know, DC uh, uh, RSX type s. You know, I'm like, we're, and no, none of the jour other journals were just like, yeah, well it was cool, you know, A lot of 'em couldn't fit in the car.

They're a little too too overweight. I'm like, dude, I, I'm like a cat. I'm like, if I fits, I sits, you know, I'm like, I'm gonna like wedge my fat, fat ass into it. And I'm like, gonna go, okay. All the tiny little bridge seats I've squeezed into over the years, I'm like, I don't fit in any of the seats.

Problem. You know, it's like, just, you know, it's like that fat kid who puts the helmet on that's too small. That's me and all the BRI seats, you know? And I'm like, I'm doing it. I do not care. You have no idea how many times people handed me keys to cars.

Like, go take it for a spin. I'm like, I physically do not fit in your car. Like, no, no, you'll fit. And then I tried to get in, they're like, oh my God, you do not fit. You. You were talking about, uh, Elise, Elise and Exe.

Um, yeah, we built one for the show and, and Amir built it. It was a K 20 swap turbo, K 20 nice monster of a, of an Elise and an exe. And he did full arrow on it and everything. But because he's. Diminutive.

Like a jockey or a race car driver. Yeah. Yeah. He did a fixed mount seat and he tucked it all the way in and I'm like, I could do it. I could do it. I could not do it. Yeah, I could not. And he was like, you could take it for a rip.

I'll let you take it for a, he was like so open to letting me drive it and I just, my knees just went right up into the steering wheel and I was just like, if I could just, if I had like a slider on this, Amir, I'd be in it right now.

Now, by the way, something I noticed about our conversation, 'cause you're like, is it a new show? This is the show that we're doing today. Okay. I've realized what it is. We're, we're about two hours in.

We're about two hours. We're about two hours in. I'm sorry, audience, I figured out what the show is. Have you ever played that game? What I brought to a picnic? No, but, and basically it's like I, I think, wait, does everybody put their keys in a bowl?

Because if so, I think I played it. Okay. No. Is that not the game? You brought the cucumber. Okay. So it's like the game was like, you would say a word, you'd be like, I brought like a loaf of bread.

And then you have to use the last letter I of the word I said to say the next thing, this whole conversation has been, you start talking about something and then you say a word and I'm like, Ooh. Let's talk about that word.

It's tangential. It is 100% like, like none of this. This is the most stream of consciousness conversation this is. And because you're like, oh, that actually happened to me or this other thing. No one is gonna want me on this show ever again.

Did you just said something, you just said something and now I fucking forgot it. But I was like, was it about driving the press cars, the, the or squeezing into the bridge seats or not fitting into the lotus and maybe it was.

So I love the way we're like, you know, this is like a chat GPT search history. It's like, what was I asking about here? Well, we're hallucinating right now. We're full slop hallucination at the moment.

No, there was, there was something you had said and I was like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the next conversation piece. And I realized that like that's actually a really good format for a show, which is like just start telling a story and then something from your story has to connect to the next a piece out of that and then go to the next story.

Oh my God. And then go to the next story. And then it's like every story is connected, but you can like only put it together if like you're a neurodivergent. Like otherwise it makes zero sense. You're like, I don't know how these guys started here.

Like first they were talking about his civic and then they were talking about like this and then like, I don't know. Then like then it was like just sexual innuendos for like three minutes straight. Like what the, what are these guys on about?

It's a good thing you didn't let me drink beer. You know? I'll say that much. Yeah. I don't know. You're pretty gear Good conversationalist on a beer or too. I, you know, but the thing is, is I've watched with you if the beer pacing like is not at the right speed, I you have to like, you know, you, you like you Yeah, yeah.

100%. It's like throttle modulation. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it's like you, you can't No, not too much. Over steer, under stare. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's definitely one of those, I, I'll give you one about being overserved when you talk about, like, you know, me having, being good conversationalist, when I was at Super Street, HPI, RC cars came out and I'm terrible with RC cars.

I never take the time when the car is coming at me, I cannot figure out how to steer. It is going the opposite direction. I'm like, I almost have to like turn my body this way when I'm driving and that's how bad I am.

This is my hand eye coordination when it comes to RC cars. Just terrible. So. I get invited to the Celebrity Grand Prix. It was at the opening of, you know, some super auto box right in Orange County or something.

And HPI is having a celebrity Grand Prix with real life drifters, racers, media personalities, and I'm one of the drivers. And I pick, of course, knob Toag, Gucci's Red, D one Grand Prix, S 15 with super advent wheels and the whole thing.

And it's all got delivery and everything, but they don't gimme the car. They say, are you gonna drive this car? You're gonna bang into things. And this is your practice car. So I have some practice car from HPI.

I never take the time to even take it out of the box. I don't even practice. I keep, I'm so busy with work, you know, magazine world, you're just like, I'm like, I gotta get, I'm watching it sit on my desk, this bo unopened box going two weeks.

I got two weeks so I could do it over the weekend. Yeah. The weekend I'm hanging out, drinking, doing whatever and everything. The night comes, I still have not taken the car out of the box. And I'm like, I'm so ruined.

This is a big thing in front of a whole bunch of people. Right, right. So I'm nervous and they go, well you gotta be here at like seven o'clock. So it's like a Friday night. We all leave work early. All the Super street guys come with me and they're like, I'm like, this is terrible.

I dunno what to do. And they go, you need a drink. You need a drink, you need to like, just take a drink and like, that'll help you like calm your nerves at least because you are, I'm, I'm losing it now, like the anxiety's kicking in.

So I'm like, okay. Me being me and the super streete guys being the super that I get wasted, like completely just gone. I stagger up to the thing when it comes time and I'm like, I feel pretty good now.

I'm feeling loose, you know? And I'm like, I got this. I get in the car, get to line up for the race, and the race starts. We're all in the podium and everything, right? The suspended little, and you know, we take off and I'm like in second place, you know?

And I'm like, oh my God, you know? And I'm like barely hanging on. And I'm like, please. And I'm like, death gripping the controller right now. And I'm like, please, please, please. You know? And then now I'm like, oh, there's an opportunity.

And I pass for first and I'm in first place and I'm winning the rrc. And I mean, meanwhile there's like Alex Pfeiffer may have been there. There's like, yeah, yeah, guys, the Tanner Faust of the day or all, all these drivers and everything.

And I'm like, dude, there's something about like, I'm doing this, you know? And one of the marketing people comes over from HPI and they said, John, are you okay? You know? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'm fine.

Don't, what are you doing? Don't talk to me now. I'm doing great. You know? And then they're like. Are you sure? You know, and I'm like, yeah. And they're like, that's not your car. I had drove my car into the wall.

Meanwhile the steering just going, and I'm like, gas, brake, gas. I'm tracking someone else's car around the track thinking it's you thinking, it's me thinking you're killing it. And I just punched it into the first turn and I'm like, literally like watching the wrong car.

I'm like, okay. I handed the controller and I'm like, I'm so sorry. And then, so that's the problem. That's when it goes from good conversationalists to, you know, oh my goodness. A little, a little outta control.

I once right before you hit hit me with what actually happened, I already knew. Yeah. I was like, oh, I know exactly. This is, man, exactly where this goes. That's sobering reality of like, I am outclassed for this right now.

I just recently, um, went to Cletus's. I was there filming something with Leah Block. I saw that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And, uh, Cletus was, has a RC full-size Crown Vic. And I made it two thirds of a lap and sent it right into the wall.

I, I saw that too. Wall. I didn't know it was an RC car wall. I didn't know it was a, I didn't know it was a No, it was like, okay. And like, I thought, I'm like, why would you do that?

I'm like, were you in the car? I'm like, you just sort of turned up into the wall, like, well, from the, from the perspective when you're, like, when you're watching, do you, do you have a POV camera?

No. You're just, I was just watching it forever. You're watching the car. Oh, that's weird to me too. But also it doesn't center. Oh, so you have to, oh, so you're constantly, you're constantly chasing, you're constantly chasing, like it doesn't auto set the wheels.

You have to steer it back into position. Oh my God. Which was weird. Um, it's also got a massive delay, right? Oh God. So you get into it and then, and then you wait, and then by the time you're trying to correct, it's like, oh no.

Now it's still starting the, yeah. Yeah. And then on top of all of that, um, in my head I thought I was doing like 20 miles an hour because like you're like watching this car on this big racetrack from You're a quarter mile away from it.

Yeah. And then when they brought it in and I realized how tall it was, I was like, I was doing like 70, like, like you didn't realize like, like I really got stacked. Like, 'cause in my head I'm like, why isn't it turning back?

And I'm like, oh, because I'm doing 70 miles an hour and I'm, I like trying to just steer the other way and I just pushed right into the wall like weird. So. Yeah. And it was funny 'cause I was like that 'cause it started with CTA saying, are you good at RC cars?

I was like, I'm okay. Which was definitely the wrong answer. The wrong answer was definitely the wrong answer. Definitely set me up for that. I was RC cars is what kind of really got me into real cars.

Oh man. Back in the day, the TIA cars. Yep. They were so like not, it was like a rat fink aesthetic that was like, they were like hyper realistic. Yeah. But with that little bit of that, that cartoon animated twist, that cartoonish twist, you know, I, um, I got into RRC cars.

Um. I'm trying to kill that fly the whole day. Um, I got into RC cars because I was, uh, eight years old. I went to the park and they were these like older, like I older guys. They probably were like teenagers, but they were playing with Alaw Buster.

Oh yeah, I know, know exactly what you're talking about. And a Blackfoot. And I like fell in love and like my parents didn't have like that much money. And I remember like, long story short, they'd asked my grandfather to buy one for me.

My grandfather ended up passing away, like between that period and my birth, he actually died the day before my birthday. Wow. And my parents were like, decided to splurge and like, spend money and they bought me a Keo show, um, turbo Ultima Tube.

Oh my God. And it was just the coolest thing. And it, like, it taught me about how suspension works and like, you know, I had oil fill shocks and you learn like the dampening and like, all of that was just so much fun.

And I should have realized then that I definitely enjoy like, building unbuilding and rebuilding cars more than driving, more than driving them. Because I would like build it, bring it out, crash it, and then just like that was it.

Like I wouldn't drive it again. Like it would like sit for like a month. And then I'd finally like, I'd be like, I, like I can't just rebuild it. I need to like put a new this in it, do a new that. Like, I would like modify the hell out of it.

And like, I enjoyed driving it, but it was definitely, but RC cars was like my entrance into real cars because I was not one of those, like I didn't read car magazines until I had a car. I was, I was one of those people, like, you know, like some, like there were kids I went to high school with who were like reading Hot Rod when they were in freshman year of high school.

It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, I was into BMX bikes. Like, like, I liked my hobby to be immediate. Like, I wasn't like something, I was like, you were, you were planning aspiring to, to, yeah.

But like for me, I always think like my, my grandfather was into cars, which is why I, I loved cars, but it was RC cars that like, made me want to like build them, design 'em, work on 'em. Like I built my own shock towers when I was into it.

Like just ordered a sheet of like carbon fiber from like McMaster car and then like cut it out with a band saw, oh my God. And like, you know, just came in this like flat sheet of whatever. Like, I was like that, that like early on was the thing that, uh, that got me in.

Because it was funny. 'cause when you said before, you're like, these are like the, you were like Bigfoot and, um, what was the other one that was, you said Bigfoot got you into cars. What was the other thing?

Uh, the Terrell P six six wheeler. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, for me, I don't know if like, I have that, like, I had like specific moments, like I would say, uh, the Lamborghini Kunta just as a car was super cool.

But Miami Vice is probably what made me like cars. Like I thought Miami Vice was the white tester. And by the way, they're, they just announced that they're gonna be doing a new, there's a reboot.

Yeah, the reboot of the film. And, um, the director who did F1. Oh, okay. Okay. He's doing it. I was like, man, that would be a cool, that'd be a cool film to work on. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Hundred percent.

Like that would be, that would be super cool like that. I, I wanted nothing more than to be Don Johnson when I grew up, when I was a kid. Like, I thought he was the coolest thing ever. I I you were a little bit older.

So I, I would, I would wear the Don Johnson clothes to the high school parties. Ah, you know, everybody would, yeah. And the girls would wear the Madonna glove and the guys would wear the, the teal shirt and the white, I, it's terrible with like white linen because I'm always like, I had a lowered mini truck and it was always like, something was wrong with it.

I'm like trying to get in and out of it without, I had white Corbo seats on it, which I thought were like just pretty pimp pimp right. Until like, just every little bit of dirt and everything.

I was just like, could not keep 'em clean. I, I don't know how people keep white seats clean. I drove a Audi RS four with white interior home and I had like, you know, like salvage denim that was blue.

And by the time I, I drove it from LA back to New York and by the time I got back to New York, the seats were just down Blue died blue. Yeah. Same like for me, like people said, oh, why didn't you get the Civic type R seats?

'cause the civic type R seats are the Ros, the SR threes, but they're red, they're bright like Honda Red. And I'm like, dude, I just gonna just wreck those seats. So the Integra type R from the same generation had black seats with red stitching.

And I'm like, that's, you know. Yeah. Gimme the black seats please. Now. All right. So Nads the million dollar question. What's next? What are you doing? What's going on? You know what I'm doing? I'm doing, so I'm bracing my old school roots and I'm writing a book about golden arrow wheels, my love letter to old school wheels and like Nice.

All the way back to the sixties and like all the way you mentioned the OZ Futuras on like mm-hmm. You were talking about something with James Poey. Yeah. And I was like, that's one of those top, those are, those are one of those that's everybody has those wheels.

It, what I'd say is it all wheels, like not Japanese, it's it'ss Japanese. It's the Japanese market, and it starts in the sixties and goes all the way to about the 2010s when the, the first wheels literally fall off the bus.

Is the first wheel make like official wheel maker in Japan? Is it wa when we talk about it goes back to watt and you're 100% right. That's, we talked about that in another conversation. Yeah. Fire.

That's a, that's a, that's a mini light rip off. Yeah. You know, it's like they were, they were the first, you know. Yeah. But, and then Pan Sport copied the watts that were a copy of that, and then Kig rewinds and every, everyone's done that.

Yeah. And you've got Western the westerns and everything. A bunch different brands. But what I feel like that no one really ever talks about is we are unique in our space. If you talk about a low rider, it's Dayton a hundred spoke triple crosses.

If you talk about a hot rod, it's halland sprints. If you talk about a, a muscle car Camaro, it's torque thrusts, you know? Mm-hmm. Every SP like Porsche has their FU alloys, right? Every space has the perfect wheel.

Even if you are an outlier, even if you, like Vin wants to put ts on a Ferrari, which you could tee the world, which I get that. But the T 37 is not the first wheel that you think of when you wanna put it on our Ferrari, but.

Then, we'll then it's a little different because he's got a few different sets of wheels for that. Because he comes from our space. We are the only ones that don't treat wheels with that main character energy.

We treat it like an ensemble cast like Kuni. Again, we treat it like there are multiple options to play with and we treat 'em like we're the sneaker heads of the car culture. No one else does that. The low rider space, they don't go, yeah, I got these wheels, but I also got these wheels or swap them out.

I mean, swap Right now you are running, I have two different six wheels because you're wheels on your car and everybody, everybody I know 12 sets of wheels to my rabbit. I've only ran one on them now.

But like they, I, they, you know, for a rainy day I might, every one I know got rses. 'cause you have to have an Rs. It's the, it's the driveway picture of the one car with all the wheels and tires laid out and no one, no other space does that.

The muscle car, maybe they'll do like forge lines instead of the OG torque thrust, which I think, I think Euro kids are the same though. Euro kids are the same. But I'm saying like the, the sport compact world.

Okay, got it. Is just a little bit different. And even like. You know, vin's more of a Euro kid. He's a JDM guy too, but, you know. Yeah. Yeah. He's got multiple sets of wheels for all his cars. You know, you've got multiple sets of wheels, you know, most of the people I know, multiple sets of wheels.

There's never that one perfect wheel. And I know people who get a set of wheels for their car and go, yeah, I got these, but I also want those, or I can't decide, so I'm just gonna get 'em Both. I, I think wheels are so important that I've bought wheels that have then made me buy cars to match.

You buy a, you, you come up on a deal and you're like, oh my God, these are, you know, these are five by one fourteens. Mm-hmm. And they're, they're in this, they're in this PCD and they're in this 15 eight and a plus 38.

I gotta get an ek. Yeah. You know, I gotta, I gotta get an EK for these wheels. I can't not get the EK because, you know, oh, yeah. I will 100% justify like, Ooh, this is a really good wheel at a good price, and this will go perfect with that.

Yeah. So now I have to buy and build an entire car just to support these wheels, but yet it won't stop at that one set of wheels. Just like the, just like sneakerhead culture, you know? It's like, it's this, we are the only, only group in this, in this segment that treats wheels like this.

That's gonna be a really good book. You're thinking like coffee table type I, I think coffee table type. And then I'm gonna do like a little bit of, like, there's a little bit of like, there's gonna be also what I, what I wanna call the outer rim.

Mm-hmm. Getting my name in conventions from you. You Yeah. Is like, what, what was, why would, why were moon eyes so big? Why were halland sprints so big? Right? Why were torque thrusts so big? What, what is the deal with like, Dayton, Dayton Wheels on Low Riders?

Can I write the whole section? That a KF is just Japan's interpretation of a torque thrust, dude, my God. There I, I, I, you know, and I'll, it's one of my least favorite wheels. How? But like, the scene loves it.

This scene loves the KF for those, because when, when, when, you know, the Japanese, there was a subsect of Japanese drifters that wanted big fat steelies and just like mm-hmm. Just to show it off, you know?

It's like v drifting meets VIP sort of thing. Yeah. And I also think drifting, I think also drifting meets hip hop culture, like that meal feels so pulled out of like the back of Rides magazine. It does, but it also like, it's also right at home, at Final out.

Yeah. No, it works. So it works. So it's like, okay. So when I saw him on Hertz Car, I was like, okay, now the US is getting a hold of these, you know? Yeah. Well it's like, it's weird for me 'cause I like performance based wheels.

Like I think my first wheel of choice is always a wheel that feels like it belongs on a race car. Do you know what I'm saying? That's what I Yeah, I get that. I get that. Like, I like it, I like tees, but then I also like a Futura, which doesn't feel like it belongs in a race car.

No, there's a, there's that weird like three piece wheel German element, which Yeah, B-B-S-R-S is like the iconic wheel, but the RSS were once race wheels. They were, that's what so cool. Now they feel weird as race wheels, but like, yeah.

And now people don't step lift your rss, please. God. Those are just Wait, what step lipped rss. You don't like that? Oh God, that's so bad. I think it's okay to a certain size. Oh, it looks, it looks, I think it's okay to a certain size.

Oh God, it looks so bad to me. Yeah. No, I mean I, in my opinion, I think the best size RS is a 15. It works well as a 15 or a 16, but, um, John Roff started, uh, the little wheel. Yes. Little wheel.

I got the sticker on my rabbit. I'm like, I am 100% card carrying member. He's like top of the list of people that I wanna reach out to and talk to him. But it's the same thing that goes, like, I'll make the comparison to sneaker culture.

When you design a sneaker, you design it around a size nine. Right? I didn't that like a size nine is what's called sample size. Okay. Okay. So like that is the perfect, like proportion proportions. Okay.

For a sneaker. Okay. I wear a size 14. It doesn't always translate the same way. And I think the same thing happens with wheels. Like wheels start to get too big and it's like certain wheels just don't translate bigger.

Well, it's all, it's also the wheel diameter to the sidewall ratio too. Right? It's like another thing, you know, like to me, I think the 17 is like the perfect size wheel overall. I think like once you start getting into twenties wheel, unless it's like a monoblock, like they just start to like the proportion of like the size of the lip versus the wheel.

It all just seems like a lot. I think it also depends on the car, because today's cars are getting so big. Yeah. You can't run, you know, fifteens on. But when you see someone put a set of ni, like BBS is stepped up to a 19, like a set of RSS up to 19 looks insane.

Like, I can't defend that. I like, that's like too much. When you've got like this, like this, it's this much of a void of like polished aluminum that's going out to the, to the lip. To me it feels like that's, that is is not true to the original.

So, so I mentioned this on, uh, on the firing order, but I do wanna do, and I think you brought the book up, then it's like, I really wanna do a firing order on wheels, man. But that will, it's really difficult because it's, it's really too broad.

I mean, like right now, top five, top five wheels of all time, can you name them? God, you, you're like, IT 30 sevens, bbb ss, that's two I hundred percent. What's, what's the other 3%? I would say, uh, the southern ways Epsilon mesh now, which is like a, like a super, I get it.

But to me it's one of my, and, and I have my other Dream wheels and I hate that my dream wheels are black because I hate black. No, but, but to me, I, I, I agree with you. But there's something special about a spoon wheel and flat black.

A a friend of mine, Christian Wong from Battle Craft, he's one of those huge inspirations to the build and actually helped build build the build. So I had a lot of my like iconic friends. Yeah. Uh, Ryan Ry Wire Bossie helped wire the car and did the headline talk.

Yeah. And Rwi does the best. He does the best. Amir Ben too, and like Christian and this, this group that got involved with it. But Christian has, uh, the wheel, the, the SW 3 88, the S stubs are based on the Desmond Riga Master Evos.

Right? Yes. So the rigas white with the black and red around the outer that has that touring car, JT ccc, like, oh God, that look is so good. You know, we were talking about on the other pod too, is like the way people tried to go touring car wheels to represent, but they didn't recognize that you gotta recut like the fenders to get that to tuck like that.

And that's the way those BTCC cars were made. And that's the way all the Japanese touring cars were made. But I will give, it's also the reason why the raw walls looks so good. People don't understand.

Like people, they cut deep, they radius them deep into the, they radius into it, and then they move the fender line up. It, it raises the fender line. So it's essentially like a modern era body drop, I guess you'd say.

Yeah. But I would also say like, there's people out there, like Eric Cile gets it, you know, if you know who he is, he's A-G-L-T-C racer and he did his civic and he's now, he's doing it a Accord touring car that he just looks so careful and he works so hard to make the car not only look good, but perform well.

Yeah, I think Mike Burrows from Stance Works is also another one that like really works on like roll center and like, how will this car perform? But I want it to look really, really good. Look good. Well, you know, and then there's also, like, if you look at like Mad Mike, I remember, like, I know that there's a, there's a, there.

Set of twins. The turbo twins, they call 'em twins Turbo. They did 900 horsepower supers before there, you're talking about like back in the day Turbo. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They worked with Vinny 10 and everything.

Yeah, I know. Vinny 10. Yeah. Yeah. So they came up through Vinny 10, but they helped him with his car, uh, rod Chong was at mm-hmm. You know, need for speed and speed hunters, and he helped sponsor Mike to first come here for fd.

And the twins were new to Drifting, and Mike was like, these are what I want. These big fat 20 inch Johnnys on my fd, you know? And he is drifting, and they're like, these wheels don't work, man. You know, they're not right for this car.

And he goes, I don't care. Figure out a way to make 'em work. He's like, the look has to be, has to be right. And to me, I'm like, ah, maybe that kind of goes, I, I like a Mike Burrows a little bit better than a Mad Mike.

You know? That's like more like, it has to absolutely perform, but also look sick as fuck, you know? Um, so yeah, when you talk about wheel sizes and everything, we, if we get into like, you know, the, the wheels, so, you know, my, my, my spoons are also, you know Yeah.

A set of those. But I think you also get into like, and this is where it's such a difficult conversation, and I, I don't know if, what, what's the application? What car are you making? Yeah. The application.

So much of it, I love super Advent SA three Rs. Yeah. Because those were the wheels that were on, you know, no to Gucci S 15, but. Would those wheels look good on something else? Yeah. I also like when people take them outta the box.

Vinny, Vinny Tee of the world vi put T of the world Vi Vinny put T 30 sevens on his mark two golf and the Volkswagen community just vomits every time they see it. And it's like, you know, it's not like a concave t, it just doesn't really work on that car.

No, I get it. It looks cool in like a Motorsport fashion, but there are a hundred other wheels I would put on that car first 100. But I would still argue that the T 37 is one of the top five type five wheels in the motorsports arena.

I, I will too. But also I'm like, but at the same time, I think Meisters actually look better. Which is a weird thing to say. Like the tes is just like such a staple. But then what's crazy, I like work meisters, but the SSR sp one professors not quite as good because the way the spokes meet the barrel, it's, there's the weird little things that you could get so right and so wrong.

I had, I'm not ashamed to admit it, HRE five oh fours. Okay. Would high HRE purchased the name from HII Racing Enterprises and became, right. It was, it was the HRE that we knew today. It was the precursor to that.

And they had the fake plastic cap and the wheel cover, and they were wannabe BBSs. And I thought they were so cool until I saw a set of BBSs and then I was like, yeah, I done, I'd done fucked up. You know, I, I, I, I'm, I'm, I'm faking the fuck.

Which, the other thing that I wanna get into in the book, and I'm, I'm digging into it now, is the world of reps. You know, it's like, back in the day, it was like you, you had to be authentic with everything.

Be it body kits or wheels or turbos or, and nowadays it's someone like, I can go to Alibaba and get the same wheel. Or a company will make a wheel that is inspired by a iconic, you know, design. And yet they're blatantly ripping it off.

You know, I'm not gonna name names, but you know, name. Yeah. I mean, it's funny though, 'cause it's at a point where you got me blacklisted from hops sayings. It's a super deep cut. If you, you, I know you have to be the only one that knows it.

Wow. Okay. They asked me to name, names, names, name, the names we use that cut. In the last, uh, in the last episode. Oh really? Yeah. 'cause we kept saying like, like, I don't know why, but with John Chase, he just kept saying like, I don't wanna name names.

Don't name names, don't name names, don't name names. So we used the, like, she named names anyway. Uh, well it's getting hot in here. It sure is. We have no air conditioning in the studio. Off all your close, right?

Yeah. We have no air conditioning in the studio. And we're on a double header. 'cause obviously he was here for firing order as well. So we're getting a little exhausted. You have any last, do you have any last things to add?

No, it's before you wrap this out, it's, it's been good catching up. It's been great catching up. It's been good to hang now we, what I brought to a is a nice format for this. I, I think that's gonna be something that, you know, I I, it'll be tough to replicate with, with other people.

No, it takes a certain brain type. It takes a certain brain type. Yeah. So, yeah, no, just excited to still be like, I appreciate, you know, you told me a lot of people wanted me to come on, so I do really honestly like appreciate that I, you know, these years people miss your brain Nas like, I don't dunno if they miss your face, but they certainly miss your brain.

You know, I have a face made for a podcast with no video component. No, I, I, I, I something that you brought. To Hoonigan was that encyclopedic knowledge on things that I think people loved our conversations 'cause we would often fight about a lot of stuff.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Which is weird 'cause I don't think we got in too much of an argument on firing whatever, which means I'm gonna have to have you back on something that I feel like I'm more in a position to fight with you about.

I was, that's what I gotta be honest, I was. I would never go on the driver's car with, with you and Ron and Vin because you guys have driven more cars to me. Yeah. Mean you have more of that tactical, that era too is like, I have a lot of were of all those cars and, and you guys had that depth of knowledge that I would be, I'm, I'm out of my, I'm out of my wheelhouse, so to speak.

Yeah. Um, today I was a little, it flipped the script on me a little bit. 'cause I'm like, I'm not in a position to see Scotto at his like, weakest, you know, when we did that firing order. So I was like, dang.

I wanted to, like, when I said wanted that, when, when I said Tammy Carr, I looked at both of you and I'm like, well, clearly that was not a good choice. Yeah. And we were, you did, we were trying to respect it.

You, you guys are being nice. You know, if you haven't seen it, go watch it. And, and as Nikki and I were like, yeah, that's a, that's a choice. You know? It's adorable when you try Brian. You know, so, you know, next time maybe try coloring inside the lines.

But you know what, that was pretty too. We we're gonna put that on the refrigerator, you know, so fine. Again, grantor ismo shaped me, so, you know, but, so, no, it's nice to see you still doing the thing and I'm sure, and I'm hopeful that our paths will cross again on a personal slash professional level.

Yeah. Very least go for a drive. You know? I mean, I would like to do more print stuff. It's something, again, I, I said it multiple times. It's huge on my list. I just think, well this is great. And I enjoy, uh, the long form element of podcasts.

Um, I really just miss things that don't feel disposable. 100% people will watch this and then they will stop watching it. Right. The other day, Ashley asked me to clean out all my books because I have like a huge stack of books.

I'm just bringing 'em to, to the farm. Okay. Okay. 'cause we need room for Hudson's toys. In, like, in this section. And, uh, I was just, I pulled out all these books and it's like, I got to like re-experience all these books over the past, you know, whatever, however many years from like Calvin W's drifting Handbook.

Oh my God. Like, love You Calvin's like, um, Antonio's book on drifting. Oh, the book on drifting. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, and then just like collections of like, you know, you know, nine 11 books and Audi books and like, you know, the practical guide to building a race car and like all those kind of things.

And it's like, there's just something about sitting there, undisturbed, not distracted, flipping through print that I have grown so nostalgic from. And I, and I, I've had, I have been, you know, I'm not really a big, uh, person to say like, I feel blessed, but I, I, I, I feel blessed to have done or privileged to have done all the fucking cool things I've done.

But hands down, zero to 60 was the best. Like Hoonigan probably had a much bigger, not probably Hoonigan had a much bigger impact Yeah. In the community as a whole, than Zero to 60 did. Um, and I built amazing friendships through it.

It put, it gave me access to do all this really cool stuff. I had an amazing time with Ken. Uh, it was super fun to do all the Gymkhana films. It was super fun to work with all of you guys, but. There was something about getting this first stack of magazines when they would show up at the office after, like you'd gotten, you know, the, the first proto, you know, like the, not the blue lines, but like the first sample.

Oh yeah. Yep. They would send you like the four Yeah, yeah, yeah. Before they went to like full print and you would like just sit there and I remember they would come in and we would all sit in the office and just, everybody would just quietly look through and enjoy it.

Yeah. And it's like, I upload something now. I never watch it again. I upload gym Kana and I don't watch it again. Yeah. Like it's up there and it's just there. It's like where like there was something about.

That, and that just makes me wanna, like, I, I don't think that the, the previous magazine format is sustainable anymore, but I do think that the book format is sustainable. You know, you look at Triple Zero, I think there's something about Triple Zero Road and Rodders Journal and Surfers Journal and all that.

I think that there's something there for that quarterly that really Yeah. Coffee Table Magazine esque that I think is, is very good. I will tell you this, um, when you talk about, you used to read me when I was at Super Street, I looked at zero to 60.

And to me the highest compliment I pay to people is when I, I'm mad at what they did. Yes. When I, when I look at it, I'm like, fuck that guy. For sure. Why can't super streett look like that? I challenged my art.

I every, I slammed that book on the table. Look at the paper quality, look at the quality of the writing. Look at that Hunter s Thompson esque Zero. Fuck that is that, that's a combin. Makes me teary-eyed.

'cause he was such my inspiration to me too and I. I read Health Angels, we did. It made me wanna write, you know, the way that you write with that abandon like that, to me it's like our A DH ADHD minds.

Yeah. You know, it's like you're writing on acid and you're just taking us on that journey. And to me, I was like, fuck, this is like the type of shit. But we, you know, we were too far, you know, we were too far gone at Super Street, you know, it's like we were down that path and we were, you know, it was so, I tried so hard to like bend it back and I could ne that's one of my regrets.

And I still wanna revisit print even down to like some punk zine influences. Mm-hmm. Oh, that's a big one for me. Just, I wanna do, I think one of the things that people aren't even doing YouTube right, is I want weird, random, like inserts and I just want, you know, it's like, so, so, okay.

Because I don't think anyone's doing a YouTube show the way it should be done. Even when I did the TV show, yeah. I would do just random. I, I just said film me eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, like a, you know, I just, and it would just be a cutaway of just like, huh, just defeated by this project car, you know?

Okay. So two things. One, I think we should try to do a, a magazine together, even though it's just a scene. Oh my God. I would love that. If, if there were two people in this business who were set to do this, it's the two of us would love that.

We need to bring some. Quality, you know, photography and, which is pretty easy. We know some people. Um, I definitely think that that would be something fun. We've talked, we teased about it. 'cause at Hoonigan we talked about doing a, a mag, but I think, I think we should try to do that now.

I'm in the process. I'm working on a, I'm working on a potential chem block book, which is like based around 43 stories. Um, and then I'm also, um, working on a book actually for BBI right now. Oh, nice.

About the development that they're doing on the Type 99 Evo project. Yes. Um, and then I've got a couple other things and they're all like, sort of in the works, but, so the first one is, I definitely think we should have that conversation where we could continue it off, off podcast.

But the other one is the other part that you said. So I wrote this concept the other night. I'm just gonna throw it out there. We'll see what people say in it. And I actually think there would be, I think you would be great to help me with this project because I wanna make a video magazine for YouTube.

I know already that it won't work. Meaning because of the way the algorithm is built, it like doesn't service the thumbnail, but like, I just don't care. Maybe I'll just make one and we'll see how it does.

But like an hour, basically like an hour long variety show. Where it is, like, Hey, it's, I just drove the BRZ. Like, here's three minutes of it. Right? Um, here's a rambling on this. Hey, I ran into this person, I interviewed them about this.

Like, Hey, I went to this event and here's some stuff from this event. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Um, someone asked me this random question. Here's an old story, right? And, and like just a a just like this weird variety show that's like all fucking over the place, very zine style aesthetic to it.

And here's why. What I miss the most about magazines isn't the individual pieces. It's curating the whole, and I feel like we really have lost that on YouTube. Meaning like, you got to curate a whole EA whole issue.

Like you got to say, Hey, in this issue, it's a recipe. It's a recipe. You're building a recipe for a meal. We need a little bit of this, a little bit of that. The front of the book needs to do this.

We need to do this. Well, right now we even talk about it. What you serve up to your audience, right? It's basically like, it's basically like a chow line and you slap it on and you throw the plate across.

And that's what you're serving to the audience right now. And as much as we joke about how, just like absolutely a DHD, like a adult and out of control, all my podcasts are, I think that there's an audience that's enjoying it because like, you don't know what you're getting.

No, we're taking, it's a little bit of a surprise and we don't know where we're taking up. We don't know. I don't know. I, I, it's, we're two and a half hours in, I don't know how we're gonna land this plane, but like.

There's something fun about like, curating this journey for someone. And I, and I remember like when, when I read the first Maxim magazine, I was, I was, it was, it was same. Same. Remove the girls and the boobs.

Yes. Because that's not what made that. No. It was nice to have the humor and the, and the diversions and the, you know, all the pieces. And like I just read a six page article about colonoscopies.

I would never have done that exactly, but the way Maxim could present it, everything from the writing me made it so interesting to me layout the presentation to the curation of everything. But, and the different entry points, even though you didn't know what you were gonna get, you did know that it's gonna include a little bit of information.

A little bit of personal growth. Yeah. A little bit of humor. A little bit, yeah. And you had those little segments. Yeah. Just like every time you, you know, like God really going back, like the variety show when you talk about like a Carol Burnett or something like, you know that this skits gonna do this in living color and living color.

I mean, we just talked about a little bit of this, a little bit of that. There's gonna be this one, that one there's gonna be everyone together. The guests are Saturday night. It may not all be great, but some of it's gonna be pretty good.

Exactly. Exactly. So you kind of know what you're gonna get. But that, like we have now moved into single topic, everything short form. Yep. Right. It's like I can only, like when did we as humans get to a point where it's like, all I can consume is one idea at a time.

And also that idea has to greater than the idea that you solve for. And then curation. Is this random curation created by robots. That's the algorithm of what I see in my feed. It's telling you what you want rather than you expressing, but it's ifferent creators who don't have a common thread, who don't have a, an aesthetic that like, you know, speaks through it all.

And that I, I missed the tangible piece of magazines, but my God, I miss, like, feeling like a new issue shows up and I get to dive into it. Oh my God. Like, like, you know, like, it was like, oh, like this, like I wanna read everything from the editor's letter all the way to, and like at zero to 60 we would hide stuff.

I would at the bottom of the masthead. Oh, yep. I would add little extra, extra stuff. Yep, yep, yep. Because like, I wanted this experience where like, I know what it felt like to get to the end of a magazine and be like, oh, should I read all of it?

Like, I remember getting on flights and like reading all of Vanity Fair because it was a fucking excellently read magazine. And when I was a kid, I thought it was a magazine made for women. I didn't realize it was a magazine meant for like, made for great reading.

Exactly. You know, and it's like, it was like, this was something that was like, and I, I so enjoyed that. And at Hoonigan, I think we tried to curate it across channels. But it was harder. It was just so much harder because it, we, we curated a content calendar.

Yeah. That had a mix of everything. But at least in terms of episode, it, everything had a singular arc. Single serv. It was all single serving. Single serving. I will also like counter your Vanity Fair reference.

I'm gonna go way back. This is, this is one for your, for your kids back when you read Harper's Bizarre. This is, no, this is, uh, Richard Scary. Did you ever, do you remember Richard Scary books?

Do you know what I'm talking about though? I know of 'em, but I don't know 'em. But it's like a view of the city and it'll show how the sewer works and it's a No. That's cool. But you have to like, it's almost like a Where's Waldo type thing, but every single time you look at it again, you're like, I just discovered something new that I didn't, that I didn't know about that before.

You know? Mm. And that's, I love that when people put stuff, I, we used to put stuff, spy quotes on the, on the side. I did one that was all in Wingdings, like Wingdings font, and it said, if you could read this, you need to get a life.

And someone actually read it and figured it out. It literally, there's no way you could do this. You had to like, literally go on your Yeah. And go, you go into Wingdings and figure, figure out and actually go backwards and go backwards in every letter to figure it out.

To figure it out. And someone actually figured it out. We did a, I did a backwards issue for April Fool's Day in 2004, like a JDM issue. Not even thinking that. But the way you read, you know, you'd read here and then you'd have to jump over there.

Read there. I did the entire issue backwards. Someone, no one, there was no barely any email then. Mm-hmm. Someone sent me a letter, or I think it was an email, and said, you, I, I got your new issue.

But it's, but it's like. Backwards. So it's hard to describe. I'm like, what do you mean back? They got like, it got like printed wrong. Yeah. I'm like, what do you mean backwards? I'm like, are you sure?

Did you check all the issues at the newsstand? I'm like, please go back and buy another one. And he sent me an email a week later and said, I bought another one. It's like that too. I'm like, two sales.

I just made two sales. The point. And it did so well. We po we had to poly polybag it because we already had a polybag planned for that issue. And I'm like, that's our April Fools Day issue. We, I did a backwards, I mean that's, that's the links that I could go to.

But I would do, like, I would really like, one of the most, one of the most brilliant things I saw was when I was at Mass Appeal Magazine, you know, which was culture, you know, culture Mag Vice was our competitor.

Oh. And this was before Vice became the vice that became this juggernaut. It was actually at the time we were probably bigger than Vice and we had beef with them. Right. Yeah. I I could see that our beef was that they were a bunch of Canadians.

Yep. Trying to write about New York. Yep. Yep. Like culture. And we were a bunch of New Yorkers who were writing about New York culture, right? Yep. Yep. And um, so we used to take jabs at each other, right.

And we would take jabs at each other. And uh, and it even got to the point where like things almost got like, like we would run into people at like at parties. It was like not cool, right? It was like full mag beef and they fucking killed us.

'cause they made an entire issue of vice designed like mass appeal. They basically just ripped our magazine off. Oh. Like their, like all of our sections. They basically just made an issue of mass appeal and called it Vice, but then just clown.

It was so good. It was so good. It was so like, the amount of effort Oh, that they did to go through that I thought was fucking great. And I, I just loved it. I was like, it was so well done. So I don't know if you remember, but at one point DDE E did Oh yeah.

Did, did this, did like their version of this versus that. Yeah. Do remember that? Yeah. Do you remember what we did? No. We took their, we took their, they they made this verse that we were like, this is our show.

Our show. Yeah, yeah. But you literally came on our show and then you you were ripping it off. Yeah. Nothing but nothing but love to dam dude. But like, they came on our show. I remember that.

And like made like a version, but like, oh, ours is different. 'cause it has supercars. I'm like, our you are on our show with your supercar. Which, but he was like, yeah, we made our own show. So we, we didn't say anything.

We just, we just took their episode, downloaded it, and then put all of the this versus that, um, font work on it and re-uploaded it to bonus channel. So it was their episode. Oh my God. But recut with all my god of this versus that graphics package.

That's pretty good. Which was like our, like, yeah, that's your vice master basically made our show. It was little inspired by them. So anyway, I think it's time to maybe end this one, but. This has actually become a bit of a theme, Nick, where at the end we make grand promises to do big business ventures with people.

Whether it's like making movies, making magazines. Okay, so you're making a movie and now you're gonna make a magazine with me. Yeah. Magazine's pretty, it's not easy, but it's a little bit easier than making a movie.

So, yeah. Yeah. But if you're still listening, if you're still deep in and you want Nads and I to make a magazine, just let us know below if there's a, like, if I know how many comments do we need to make magazine is that way they're supposed to comment.

I don't know. I don't know. The podcasting world. Do you comment below? It depends on where they're listening. Do you smash that light button or do like, okay. To Depends. It depends on where they're listening.

Yeah. The comments comment in the comment section. Depends. Yeah. Send us a dm. Okay. I don't know if there's like more than 10 comments. Maybe we should make a magazine, whatever. Okay. There it is.

10 comments. Where we get a magazine. That's where it's, so Nat, thank you for coming on. Um, I'm definitely gonna have you back on firing order, so you know, we'd love it. Yeah. Let's think of another good topic that's, oh, that's, sorry, that's not that show.

Sorry. What were you gonna say? I was gonna say, that's a wrap. No, we don't do that. You could do it. You, no one's done it. Bring us. That's a wrap. Finish it up, but step back a little bit so you don't blow people's ears.

Okay. Okay. That's a wrap. Thank you everybody. The mailbox, the mailbox, the mailbox, and not accept any messages at this time. Goodbye, goodbye. Goodbye Vyper Industrial makes the best damn shop stools ever.

Go buy 'em. Okay, now that we've got that out of the way, I wanna take a moment to really thank Vyper. They were the first to hop on and support. Very vehicular. When I hit 'em up, the immediate response was, yes, we want the biggest package you've got.

That's why they're the title sponsor. Look, they make a really great product and I felt that way before this partnership, but they also do a really good job of supporting all of us in the car community.

Think about it. They work with Adam, LZ, Chris Forsburg, grant Anderson, Travis Pastrana, Vermont Sports Car, and those are just the ones I can remember right now. So Vyper, thank you again. As I was saying before, go buy a damn [email protected].

That's Vyper with a Y. Of all the sunglass companies out there. You might ask Why Heatwave, aside from them being friends of mine, they just make great shades, awesome styles, cool collabs, smart tech.

They even have extra large sizes for big heads like me. And for those of you wearing this on the job, they make ANSI Z eight seven spec safety glasses too. But what really attracts me to heatwave is that they are physically a part of our culture.

You'll find them everywhere from King of the Hammers to formula drift. You'll see everyone wearing heat waves at your local track day event. Damn. You might even turn laps with the co-founder Justin, because they're one of us.

So one more reason to choose heat wave visual. To fix your face. I'm a tool dork. My obsession might even dwarf my addiction to cars. I love collecting unique and specialty tools, which is how I initially fell in love with Wera.

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About this episode

A freewheeling, two-plus-hour catch-up between Brian Scotto and John Naderi spans five decades of car culture—starting with suspension and KW coilovers, then diving into how analog cruising and community got replaced by “do it all for the gram.” They trade stories from Honda/Euro/JDM eras, magazine culture, and influencer vs journalist driving, including the chaos behind Ken Block’s Gymkhana Grid and the unreal logistics of TV builds. The conversation ends on car culture’s future: access, patina, soft-touch aging, and a dark take on autonomy and EV driving appeal.

backup camera big brake kits blind spot indicator cars and coffee coilovers DC shoes donuts drifting drone engine swap

Audi S3

Original notes

For those of you who appreciate our more, shall we say ‘free form’ episodes? This one’s for you! Get ready for ADHD-fuelled tangent after tangent, curve after curve in an extended conversational touge stage that is as thrilling as it is prolific. This time? No-one’s making it out alive! Nads tries his level best to get cancelled, Producer Nick realises he may need a more robust command of criminal law, and Scotto is in a blissful realm of his own, having created another patented Scotto-fied format with “What Did You Bring to a Picnic? - The Podcast!” (coming soon, I both fear and do not doubt). Exhales - ok, you’re just going to have to listen for yourselves… if you dare! Enjoy.

@Nadsynads

@BrianScotto

@321ActionAction

Partners:

Vyper Industrial

FCP Euro

Heatwave Visual

Wera Tools

Producer: Nick Rutter @nickrutterarts

Music: SlikSound

Patreon: https://patreon.com/u37266647

https://bio.site/321actionaction

[email protected]

00:00 - Welcome & Introduction

00:24 - Sponsors: KW Suspension & Heat Wave Visual

02:04 - Pull the String in Nads’ Back - and Prepare

05:41 - The Dream Civic that Somehow Actually Got Built

08:35 - Actual Overnight Parts from Japan

11:32 - The Whitest White? (Don’t Cancel Me)

18:26 - Cruising Vs Takeovers

23:12 - Cars And Coffee Origins

24:10 - Sponsors: Vyper Industrial & Wera Tools

32:36 - Magazine Wars

39:48 - Bring Back Hating

42:52 - Ken Block And Gymkhana Origins

49:01 - Gymkhana Grid At X Games

01:02:07 - Rules Were Made to be Broken

01:09:42 - Mini Truck Nostalgia

01:13:07 - Sponsor: FCP Euro

01:14:41 - Is Car Culture Peaking?

01:21:33 - Hot Takes on JDM Icons

01:23:36 - Future of Tuning Culture

01:25:18 - Nads’ Autonomous Cars Apocalypse Theory

01:30:10 - Good Tech vs Bad Tech

01:33:26 - No Seatbelts in Osaka

01:34:48 - Nads’ Dad Invented Valet Parking?

01:53:28 - Drunken RC Car Racing - What Could Possibly…?

01:57:00 - Scotto Crashing Cleetus’ Full-Size RC Car

02:03:09 - Nads to Write the Book of Wheels

02:14:47 - Reps And Authenticity

02:18:06 - Print Nostalgia And Zines

02:23:24 - Future Collab? Video Magazine for YouTube?

Very Vehicular

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