Ravi Tomerlin - We Don't Lift Racing

So he, we went over there and he, this guy put a 110 to 240 transformer in a PlayStation One and put it all right back inside. And I still have that.

It still works. Oh, wow, it's been 20-30 years

and that thing still works. So that was my first culture

shock, was burning up a PlayStation on the wrong power in a hotel, you know? This is our parking Bucky by

right haunted right Toyota out of Scottsdale, AZ.

I'm your host J Finney recording for my home studio here in Gilbert, AZ Coming up on today's show, I traveled to Ravi Tomerlin's We don't lift shop in Phoenix.

He has just recently relocated from his original Tempe location. Technically this may be still be

Tempe. I'm not entirely sure.

One thing we know about Ravi is he does race cars.

He does have a shop, but we dig into a little bit of his past to find out how it is he got to where he is today.

You're not going to want to miss that.

So that's coming up after this word from Arcus Foundry.

Business tech filling, wack. Too many tools, too much chaos,

not enough time. Arcus Foundry is here to fix

that. With Spark Forge, you get a

unified platform that connects everything you need.

Your website, social media, phone systems, and more.

There's no need for an expensive IT department.

We're dealing with a bunch of separate systems.

It truly is the all in one solution that saves you time and helps your business run smoother.

Head over to arcusfoundry.com and use the code Hard Parked to

get your first month free, upgrade your tech and get back to business. Ravi Tolman, welcome back to

Hard parking. We are sitting here at your

place. We don't lift.

It's been a long time new location.

Welcome back. Well, thanks.

Appreciate having us back again. Yeah, of course.

I think the last time we talked it was about your Southwest Speed Festival, right. So we talked about that.

Don't let me forget, but I met you.

I've. I've been wanting to know more

about you because you're like, oh, here we go.

Yeah, that's. That's that's a memory test,

right? There because when I moved here

in 2014, we met. Actually, you came out to like

the first meet where Jay's in town, Jay's coming into town, and at that point you had one 1 1/2, maybe 2 or 2 1/2 in SXS.

Between 1:00 and 4:00. Between 1:00 and 4:00.

Fair. What?

So let's let's play this like a movie.

Let's backtrack from that point. And how did you get there?

Because I think you were involved in an accident at that time. You had walking assistance.

I think you were walking around me with a walking sticker cane.

Didn't meet at one of those. One of Robert's Red Robin meets.

Is that what it was? No, it was Jay's coming to town.

Where this guy, I think we went to Cornish Pasty Company or something. Oh, really?

Yeah, Yeah, I'm a long time ago. Glad you got a sharp memory.

I can't remember anything. No.

Yeah. So prior to that, yeah, I had a

pretty nasty accident in 2009, which, yeah, that actually affected my memory. My short term memory is pretty,

pretty bad. But yeah.

So I've been doing cars since the early 2000s.

I went to my drifting phase in the late 90s, early 2000s.

I end up going to college up at Emory Riddle and there was a car club up there and I didn't have a car yet myself.

So I I hooked up with all the guys who had cool cars like 300 Z XS and stuff like that. Man, we'd race airplanes back

down to Phoenix, which was absolutely a terrible idea and very unlawful. But here we are many years

later, still alive. So I got a car while I was in

college is my silver Integra. I don't think you ever saw that

I. Don't know if I don't think so,

yeah. That that car was another story,

another another day. But so that Integra I didn't

know how to drive manual. I learned how to drive manual

in. It no kidding.

Got my first speeding ticket the first weekend I owned it for going 2 miles an hour over in Prescott.

That's bullshit. I didn't know how to get into

5th gear so I was in fourth gear as it was just a giant mess for me and that car. I got maybe 500 miles on it and

lost the head gasket going down the 17 right around Black Canyon freeway exit. Oh yeah.

Yeah. So yeah, it's right before

Phoenix started. I started a fireplace.

Yeah, exactly. And so I ended up, ended up

going into town. There's a little parts store and

I, I, I bought a manual for a 9295 Civic because my, my friends told me that I could use that this before Google, you know, this, this is early. So we, we, we didn't have GPS or

cell phones that were worth a damn.

We still, I think I still had a brick.

I had a Nokia brick still something along those lines.

Maybe I had an early razor at that point.

But yeah, I learned how to, I did that head gasket on the side of the road in like 5 days. Yeah, on AB series.

And I've never worked on a car other than I think I'd done a battery. Sure that was that was the start

of my. It's more than a lot of people.

Yeah, well, I, I was broke, man. I didn't, I got quotes and I'm

like, I don't, I don't have that kind of money, man.

I came across, I came across from, from overseas with a couple 1000 bucks. I didn't, I didn't have much to,

to get by. So the car was 3 grand.

I had like two or three grand left in my bank account.

There was no way I, anybody was going to get two or three grand out of me to repair the car. So I spent probably like maybe

300 bucks doing it myself. You know, luckily it wasn't too

bad. I, I didn't even machine the

head or anything I just it was just the the side of the road repair job and then that car launched me into everything that has happened since then. They.

'D have been pretty crazy if you can machine the head on the side of the road. I mean, even just I quote, I

call places, you know, again, this is where you don't have Google. So you're looking to phone books

trying to find a machine shop that's within a reasonable distance to to get to. And I just didn't have options.

So I just changed the head gasket, slapped it on with new head bolts, new head gasket, and kind of crossed my fingers and hoped it worked. And it it did work.

It worked for probably another year and a half before I took that car part for other reasons. Because then I started modifying

it and you know, it got out of control.

Now, were you living here in the valley at the time?

I was living. I had a dorm up in up in

Prescott. OK.

So if you were semi close ish I guess, but not really, yeah.

I was up in Prescott at that time.

This is this is this is still early 2000s like 2003 ish roughly. I met a lot of guys from Arizona

Honda tuners Azhti don't know if you ever ran into that.

It was kind of dying about the time you got here, but that for a long time was, you know, when you used like bulletin boards, you know, all that stuff. Forums.

Yeah. That was the largest Honda form

in Arizona and probably one of the larger ones out there.

Like it rivaled Honda tech even as as size and volume.

And it was just a bunch of idiots having a great time on there. But it was super valuable.

I missed forms because of the the be able to be able to archive stuff and have it all documented to what we thought would be eternity. But of course, you know,

photobuckets shutting down. So most of those threads are

dead now and all the information has been lost Which.

God bless Photobucket man, they ruined a lot of shit for a lot of people. Yeah, they, they brought it,

they brought a whole new way of, of archiving to, to us and then they snatched it away. Yeah, I I get it, You know,

that's just how things work sometimes.

But yeah, so Honda Tech Arizona HTI started going to all the meets with them, spent tons and tons of people through that group, got into the car scene quite heavily and you know, it just it's it just bowed out of control.

I started dumping unnecessary amounts of money into that silver Integra. At some point it made 500

horsepower on a Civic type or integrity type R engine, CC-5, all authentic Nugan body parts on it.

Really nice clean car. If you if you go on the Internet

and search real hard, you'll find pictures of it.

But it hasn't been that. I think that car ceased to exist

essentially. And man, I'd say roughly 2011

that car ceased to exist. It got it got it got impounded

for lack of any other explanation of that.

It went through a nasty court case over over a a transmission that the cops thought was stolen but was not.

Ended up getting the car back on a pallet with my chargers being dropped but the car was. Completely.

Destroyed so turned into a race car after that.

By then I'd already moved on. I had my arc 7.

I had a couple skylines been by then.

I had a Supra. I had an M5.

I had just purchased my new NSX right around that time.

The NSX came out of my RX7. When I my RX7 was T boned on

Thanksgiving in 2009 I was hit pretty hard enough to knock me knock my lights out for I think I was a a two or three minute lights out scenario. Now let's hold on to that point.

Sure, so you went from literally nothing to do in the head gasket on the side of the road to what did you have?

I started early, early 2000s. I was importing lots of Japanese

vehicles cause I've learned how to do that.

So I was making. Making side cash that way 'cause

man, I was working for like $6.00 an hour at Orion and you

know, I needed side cash. So I figured out how to do

importation of vehicles when it was easy.

Still before the current rule sets that are out there so I had bought bought bought a couple skylines in I I I looked for just weird cars. I was trying to find what kind

of car really spoke to me So again skyline supras all Subarus, like I said A2000M5, which is that that fun V10 one.

I really liked that car except it smelled of leather really badly. So I got I actually traded it

straight across from my FDRX 7 and I just kept trying to find the car that seemed to fit me after the after the integra was gone. So I really wasn't sure what was

the, you know, I'm still at that point where I wasn't sure what I liked in a car and what what made me interested in it.

And yeah, so the Arc 7 was, was really probably my biggest launch into cars publicly. Because the Arc Seven, I was

producing like V mounts and some upgrades for it that people wanted that I'd done in a manner that were quite affordable, as opposed to these big extravagant kits that weren't any more effective than what I was building.

How'd you get started with those?

Kind of the same way everything in my life has.

I did it for myself 1st and somebody, hey dude, I'm one of those and I'm like, OK, you want to pay for it, you know, And I, I just started building them and I did that for two or three years. I was mainly just doing V mount

kits for that would utilize a factory radiator very lightly modified factory Raider and it was actually utilizing a 2005 STI intercoolers, really small top mounts flipped upside down, but they're remarkably efficient little intercourse that they're very high quality core. So I made 4:30 at the wheel on

my R7 on like 13 lbs on the on the aftermarket set of twins, which is pretty low boost pressure for that power on a stock ported car. So people like that and we, I, I

rebuilt a few FDS for people and, you know, kind of casually was assisting that community with the, with the help of those cars. And for the most part, kind of

when I get into something, I kind of, you know, OCD my way to a very deep level most of the time.

And that usually results in a lot of progression, whatever I'm working on quite quickly. We're going to play it back even

further. You're in Tiger Breaks Down,

don't have a lot of money because at that point, you know you didn't. Wherever you came from, you only

came with a few $1000. Where was that from?

Like where are your early beginnings?

Where Where is Robbie from? So my family, my dad was into

banking so we moved around a ton.

And again, the so I'm I'm born 85, oop dated myself.

So I think from a roughly 1990 to 94, I lived in Egypt, OK.

I grew up, I grew up a lot in Egypt.

I was, I, you know, spent some time there that I came back to Arizona. I was in Glendale for I think.

How old were you at the time? I was in. 510 first second

grade. Yeah, you said 85, right?

Yeah, 80. 5 S 1st 2nd grade I. Think and very young.

Thanks man. Appreciate that yeah.

My grade's on the back though yeah and then I we left a desert storm happened so anybody was ex patriot was like exiting that area in a rush. So we actually, I vaguely

remember like when we left, I remember that we didn't really, we didn't really like do like a moving van and stuff.

You don't even pack all the stuff into the big vans and you know, it all shipped away and you got it on the other end.

I it didn't occur to me until probably maybe 10 or 15 years ago that we didn't pack up the house and leave.

We just grabbed stuff and left. Like a movie.

Yeah, I had. I had my little stuffed animal,

my Game Boy, and a backpack, and that's all I left with.

So I mean, we had suitcases. Why?

Would you need more than that? Yeah, right.

That's the essentials, you know, the dire essentials, You know what I mean? I had AI.

It was before the color Game Boy.

We. Like good stuff, but.

Yeah, it didn't even occur to me that we didn't really pack up the house or anything. We we just packed it with fit in

suitcases and everything else was sold or left there.

Then we get came back to Glendale.

We lived down in Glendale, I think.

I think I was there till 6th grade.

I want to say roughly, which was interesting because you're moving. Glendale, AZ Then.

Yeah, Glendale, AZ So just over by on like like Union Hills and 67th and Union Hills, I want to say Arrowhead.

So I was there, you know, getting into getting into middle school, basically into elementary, beginning of middle school. And then that's when things

really kind of went different for me.

So my dad was doing really well in the banking industry.

So up until this moment, we were kind of, you know, we weren't broke, but we were definitely like, you know, lower income family in a cheap car. We had a, you know, old old 2.

Door lower middle class or Yeah. Lower middle, yeah, we had a old

like 2 door accord for a four person family that we all crammed into that if I recall, didn't have air conditioning either. So yeah, we came back and my

dad's promotions, we now had a 93 accord.

So nice. Yeah, yeah, fancy 93 accord

then, which is this is like 9697.

So that was that was a pretty big, you know, move for him and, you know, excited. Certified pre owned right there

man. Yes, yes, nice quality that that

that light green color 1 Ford or LX trim, tan interior, beautiful car. So that was air conditioning,

you know. So that was that was pretty

cool. Pretty important in this very.

Important in Arizona, but we didn't, didn't, we didn't stay here that long. We actually left in, I want to

say I think we left in 97 or early 98.

We went to Singapore and Singapore is where I went all the way through high school. And that was that was the the

biggest culture shock you can possibly imagine.

Yeah, how so? Well, I mean, Egypt it was, it

would have been a culture shock if I was that age 2, but obviously I was young so I had nothing really, you know.

It is what it is when you're young.

I didn't think about that. I was running.

I was walking down the streets with a bunch of goats, you know, like that was just normal to me. I didn't occur to me that that

was not a normal thing to do, you know, walk to school with a herd of goats around. He was some guy waving an AK

going hi and just walks his way. You know, he goes the other way.

Didn't occur to me that was abnormal.

But now I'm now I'm old enough to see that I've lived in the US for a while and then I've gone back overseas and, and seeing we the, the biggest culture shock initially was when I moved there. We actually stopped in, in this

was Hong Kong. Yeah, we were in Hong Kong for a

couple days. We stayed, I think.

What took you guys to Singapore? Just.

Dad's job again, yeah, again, for a company called Group 1 and Group One has a had a pretty good headquarters out there.

So they were moving the whole family out there and he was working out of there for the Southeast at this point.

He was doing a regional, he was a regional manager for the entire Southeast Asia area, so he was doing quite well in that sense. But yeah, we stopped in Hong

Kong and the first thing I remember is plug into my PlayStation One, which is my, my big present I got maybe 2 years earlier, like PlayStation One. It's cool, you know, still has

the most expensive thing I've ever had in my family.

We've never had consoles. We always, you know, we had

never had any of that stuff. You know, we never had a

Nintendo or Super NES. So PlayStation One was the first

point we got to having something fancy and expensive to us.

Yeah, we plugged that puppy into the wall.

I was playing my games and then all of a sudden it smelled really freaking bad. What games?

Gran Turismo of. Course I mean it.

I was going to say Gran Turismo, but you never know.

Had. Gran Turismo 1 and Final Fantasy

7. OK.

And Final Fantasy 7, it was still above my pay grade of understanding what was going on. There.

Oh yeah, that's not for Yeah. That's that was a certificate,

but yeah, like plugged it in and it yeah, it, it, it caught on fire because they used 220 over there.

Oh yeah. And none of us had any

remembrance that that was a thing.

So a brand new PlayStation smoldered.

You know, it's so my dad and his infinite kindness and desire.

Yeah. Well, my dad knows people that,

you know, 'cause he's been traveling and he knew some guy who knew a guy who said you go down this alley and down at the end on the right, there's the guy there and he'll fix it.

So he, we went over there and he, this guy put a 110 to 240 transformer in a PlayStation One and put it all right back inside. And I still have that.

It still works. It's been 20-30 years and that

thing still works. So that was my first culture

shock was burning up a PlayStation on the wrong power in a hotel, you know, and all the advantages to remember getting on the trains and doing all walking all over the place and all these people that I didn't speak language I understood and watching my dad and this other guy in a goat and, you know, talk to people and try to figure out where we're going. And finally ending up with this

little, you know, 10 foot by 10 foot stall in the middle of downtown Hong Kong to replace a transformer for a PlayStation.

That was a strange thought to, you know, remember, hold on to, of all the things I've forgotten, that's one of the ones I've remembered, you know? What did you guys get around in?

So. 'Cause you better remember that

shit. I mean, we're sitting in your in

a shop that works on cars. So when we got to Singapore,

Singapore is a country that doesn't really do a lot of car stuff. It's a it's a very small island,

it's like 40 square miles the whole country.

So cars there, there's huge Rd. taxes on on vehicles.

It's very expensive to own 1, so I believe this is in 99 again.

We had a 1991, I want to say Corolla camera or Corolla, I can't remember. Zach, which one.

There was a greenish color. I believe my dad said we paid

something like 45 thousand U.S. dollars for it.

Which is like 4 times its value though retail, yeah.

Because that's just how expensive they were.

We kept it for two years, two or yeah, I think it was just two years, and we sold it. There was no point of owning it

in Singapore. They have incredible mass

transportation there, cabs, the buses, the trains.

Cost you like a dollar US to go from one side of the island to the other via training. It would take 30 minutes.

It's crazy, right? Yeah, it's in, it's in.

It's, it makes, it makes like, you know, like New York or Chicago or even even Japan's public transit transit look absolutely silly. It's incredibly ruthlessly

efficient. It's always on time.

It's very clean. The, the laws over there are

super strict about like, you know, littering and stuff.

So very clean. You never sat in gum or anything

like that, you know? So, yeah, as a kid, I mean, I, I

have freedom. I was like, you know, 13 years

old and I could literally go do whatever I wanted 'cause you're in this incredibly clean, safe country.

So it's kind of weird to think about it that I, I, I really did grow up alone from, like I said, right around 6th grade and up 7th grade, I was, I was functionally alone.

I mean, I would, I want to go downtown.

I just got on my bicycle and rode downtown or jumped on the train and went downtown, come home at 1-2 in the morning.

Parents didn't really worry about this because this was a super normal thing over there. You know, you do that in

Phoenix, like you might be dead already.

You know I can't. You know, you don't know what's

happened. Especially these days.

Yeah, it's it was dangerous even back then in Phoenix.

You don't go down in Phoenix at 11:00 at night as a 13 year old kid, you're going to get kidnapped or something's going to happen. But out there, totally normal.

We, we go out in groups, you know, 45678 kids and we just go out there and roll around and go play video games at the, you know, land parlors and stuff like that.

And you know, back in the day, back then, everybody was into weird colored hair. So everyone's getting their hair

dyed and just just crazy shit, you know.

But yeah, nothing to do with cars back then.

It was other than Gran Turismo, which was just more of AI had it wasn't really an interest yet. I enjoyed it, but it wasn't a

wasn't a thing that really formatively affected me in any way. I never connected Gran Turismo

and and cars. No kidding.

Yeah, that that connection came way after I got into cars.

So you're a pretty engaging person, easy to talk to with all your moving around. Was it easy to find friends or

you just didn't want to fuck with them or?

You know, I came into, so a lot of my ease of communication now has come into from that. I was the awkward kid who didn't

have friends. When you still are a little

awkward, but I appreciate that I.

Attract awkward friends like yourself.

Absolutely. Yeah, no, I, I had AI had a, I

had a core group of like 3 or 4 friends and most of us were like just video game nerds and you know, or we played in the band together. I was in like orchestra and

played in the, the jazz ensembles and play like 7 different instruments, you know, So I was the one who sat on the stairs all the time during lunch.

You know, I didn't go to the cafeteria because hilariously enough, my older sister would bully me because she was a senior and I was a freshman. So yeah, I didn't get any

shielding. There is no family protection

there. God bless her.

So she was not nice to me in high school, but that's kind of expected. She had to show off her friends,

keep her social circle. She was the butterfly 1, sure.

But yeah, most of my social skills definitely came from trying to find out where I belonged.

And I, I just, I would make friends very easily with anybody who wanted to be friends. I didn't have any requirements

to be friends. I didn't have, I didn't feel

those walls where I needed to approve of you as who you are.

I'd, you know, I'm just friends with anybody.

The weird kids, the nerdy kids, the band kids, the jocks, whoever, didn't matter. I'd just friends with everybody.

You're still that way now. Yeah, for the most part.

For the most part, I mean the adult version I'm.

Agreeable with anybody until they do something really stupid.

You know, like everybody gets friendship first.

If they if they decide that they they don't deserve it and let me know, then I can I can help them with that.

All right, so now we go back to the RX7.

Sure. What happened that night or that

day? RX7 Thanksgiving 2009.

I remember very distinctly I was, I was going to this is actually, I would take that back.

I don't actually exactly remember this 100% with Claritix. I thought I was going to the

store to get a stick of butter, but I've been since told that it was actually a can of beans I was going to go get at the store. I was going to go get something

for Thanksgiving. I had two options.

My motorcycle, which was my CBR was standing, was sitting in front of my RX7 and I had the RX7 to go to the store and I was thinking about taking the bike. But I, I, I luckily the, the

motorcycle's battery was dead. So I didn't take the bike and I

jumped in the RX7 drove out of my neighborhood about eighth mile away. I was sitting waiting to make a

left hand turn and then all I remember I was in the ambulance for the most part. I was sitting at the light

waiting to make a turn. Somebody ran through a light and

T boned me at roughly 50 miles an hour, 50 to 55 miles an hour, passenger side. They hit me on the passenger

side. Thank God some.

Pretty great photos on my Facebook open passenger side door. I see you.

Post them every once in a while, it's kind of a remembrance.

It's a, it's a reminder of how close you can get sometimes because that, that that door was almost touching the passenger door was almost touching the driver's side door.

And I was in this little like triangular shaped cocoon.

Somehow the, the, the door didn't hit my leg.

My only, I mean, I had a slightly fractured cheekbone from hitting my face, hitting the dash.

The dash is at a 90° angle. You can see it, You can see the

smear of my face on the dash like the, the mark.

I remember when I kind of came to, I was, didn't know where I was. I was very dazed.

I remember seeing some orange out of the right side of my peripheral. I remember turning the engine

off because it was still running.

The car was still running, hilariously enough.

And I was thinking in my head, my I can't move my neck or I'm awful. All Ridge it up now.

And I'm thinking, oh man, I hope it's not too bad.

You know, I wonder how bad it is.

And at this point, I still can't see anything except in front of me in the little bit of peripheral.

Then as I'm sitting there thinking about what is this orange? And I'm like, there's no orange

on my car. And then I remember my coilovers

are orange. So what I was seeing was the

back right coil over sitting by my right shoulder.

And then I had realized and processed that it was a very hard hit. I remember something coming up.

Apparently an off duty nurse came up and was in the window and she got my phone number out of me for the house and I remembered my mom's phone number.

And then that's it. I don't remember anything tells

almost into the hospital after that.

But she had called my mother. My mother came down because she

was, you know, eighth mile away too.

And yeah, that's all I remember from that scenario.

And that I remember in the ambo waking up, I could vaguely see people above me. And I remember just they had one

of my arms strapped down and they had the other one still loose, which I thought was kind of weird now in retrospect.

But I remember just taking my one arm and reaching over and grabbing this giant chunk of glass out of my right arm and pulling it up and just looking at it.

And then I see the nurse freak out, the EMT freak out, like what are you doing? They're like patching this hole

on my arm and strapping me all the way down.

And I passed out again. And just, you know, I get to the

hospital and I remember my X-ray tech knew me by name.

And at first that doesn't seem very it wasn't Mr. Tarmal and

that was Robbie, Robbie. And I'm like, holy crap, I

didn't realize it was this darker complexion person with like blonde hair. But about maybe 2 weeks later, I

found out that was actually my light skinned person with blonde hair who worked at that hospital named Annie, who was actually part of AZHT at the time. So she recognized me coming into

that, into that storm of chaos. Yeah.

And then I don't remember much after that.

And then I remember, I don't remember really any of the discharge process or being in a hospital room or anything.

I don't, I don't remember. Any of that.

Less than a day other than a a fracture.

You. Got really lucky, fractured

cheekbone, a lot of muscular trauma from the whiplash.

And I still got some scars on my arm for where that, you know, the little little rod that comes out of a door to hold the door open. The little black rod.

Yeah, that went right through my muscle from one side of my arm to the other. So I got a nice scar on each

side of my arm there. But yeah, I remember going to

Applebee's maybe the next day, maybe.

I think it was Friday then at this point, my good friend Josh was checking on me at some point.

He's another one of the Easy HT guys.

That Saturday and Sunday was a NASA event.

Somehow I convinced Josh to take me to the racetrack that Saturday and I was at the racetrack during the week weekend. I did someone's timing belt high

as crap on whatever drugs they had me on.

Anthony Lisa, he won the race and I can't believe he I, I don't think he knew I was high, but I, I, apparently I went like in my pyjamas. So I don't know why anybody

would trust me to do mechanical work in my pyjamas.

That's. AG over there, see that guy in

his pyjamas like he knows what's up like.

Anthony Lisa had me do a timing belt on his B16 in his Civic at Phoenix International Raceway. I don't know how I got home.

No idea. I don't remember any of the

ride. And.

You into the whole NASA scene and and car and racing and stuff at the. Time.

Yeah, I was, I was, I was driving my, I was like, well, I was driving the Arc. I've driven the Arc 7 on track.

I've driven the Integra on track by that point.

My Skyline had been on track by that point.

I think I I might have been working tech at that point because I went through a lot of different jobs at that with that group. But yeah, and then there's a

giant blank in my memory from that day to when I remember anything. Like the next thing I can

remember maybe was yeah, parking my black and a sex at my o'reilly's workplace. So I'm all healed at this point.

That's probably 8 months later. I don't I don't have a lot of

memory in between there and getting the NSX was done on AI bought my first NSX highest shit on drugs.

I had no idea I bought it until I till I had it and it just arrived. I started.

I started. 14 and 10 at this point.

I think that was December 2009. I think I moved pretty quick.

I. Moved pretty quick as soon as I

was within a month of the month month and a half the accident I I went and bought that that NSX. Why the NSX 'cause?

I hadn't had one yet. I had all those other, you know,

Japanese great cars. I, I don't know when this

occurred, but I do remember at some point I borrowed a friend, Jeremy Ward's S2000, drove it around for a day or two to see if I liked it. And then a friend, Simi Sandu.

You might know Simi. I know the name.

Yeah, I drove here 2. Thousand guy, right?

Yeah, I drove. Is he?

Is he here or did he move away? He moved out, I think.

Yeah, A. While ago, maybe.

Right. Ten years ago.

Like a blue one or a white one. You don't remember?

Yeah. Yeah.

But I drove here. It wasn't a dig at the memory.

I just. Yeah.

Yeah. No no, no.

I remember he had AAP 2 and Jeremy had AP1I.

Drove them both Simi, I can't. Remember, yeah, I drove them

both and I decided that I didn't like how they drove on the street. It wasn't my car for the street.

So then I shotgunned the NSX based on not liking the S2000 because I just had a bigger engine.

You know how how longer gears didn't Rev as high.

I felt it'd be a better streetcar for the torque.

And I, I never test drove one because no one will let you test drive one back. Yeah, no one was just lending

their keys out to their NS XS back then.

So yeah, I bought it sight unseen, had I think 65,000 miles on it. They reported one scratch on the

Fender and a check engine light on.

Yeah, spot it. It arrived and all of a sudden I

remember it being at O'reilly's. Every time somebody mentions

Skylines, especially R30 twos, so I always think about you so.

I never because you. Have some opinions on Skylines

and you've driven them? R30 twos, 30 threes, 30 fours,

30 fours. I never, I never fell in love

with a car. It's one of those cars that like

the Arc, the Arc 7 and the NSX. To me, they're so bespoke and so

unique and they have like a almost like a soul to them.

They have, they feel like they have, they feel like they have more going for them. That's on the that's on the

surface where the Skyline always felt like a very glorified S chassis to me. And the interiors were not very

bespoke. They weren't special.

The base model versus the GTR was not incredibly different and they're really heavy from the factory.

They're very, very slow. You know, in comparison, they

were not the fastest things by any means factory wise.

Now obviously you can throw money at anything.

You can make them. Yeah, make.

A paseo fast if you want to, you know so.

I don't know about it. Paseo I've.

Seen a I've seen a 2JZ swap Paseo in.

Phoenix 2JZ. Swap.

OK, that was nuts. Your point?

Any money, anything with money you can make fast.

So I kind of always like the for the most part with cars, I time it kind of I kind of like, I like to get to know them when they're in like an OEM or stockish format.

And yeah, and as I've gotten older, I've even appreciated those cars more and more. I've appreciated cars in OEM

format because let's be honest, most time when we mess with cars, we make them way worse. Way worse than the original

target goal for the car. You know, so you can make it

faster, but it doesn't make it a better.

Car compromise. Yeah, at some point, like, like

my race car, very fast race car, terrible Street car.

I I hate driving that thing on the street.

Everything about it is awful for the street, but you put it on a it's. You're legit.

And it's a race. I purpose built it for that.

So there was no expectation of anything but that.

But yeah, like my, my, my white on a sax.

It's just, it's stock and I like it that way.

It's, it's wonderful. It's drives great.

The only thing I have a problem with is now is extreme anxiety of somebody hitting it, you know, outside of that, it's a pleasurable vehicle to own. You know, it's got 249,000 miles

on it now. I've done all the T belts on it.

And outside of that, it's pretty pretty much how it came, you know? Congrats.

Thank you. On all that stuff, let's talk

about We don't Lift a little bit and let's talk about Southwest Beat Festival. Well, we don't lift still here.

You know, this is year 10 technically as we've started year 10 on it. 2015, early 2015 is when I came up with the idea.

It's a long time it. Is a long time It's and it went

by really incredibly fast through a lot of ups and downs.

It was generated obviously due to my unemployment that I had in 2013 is when I kind of started this whole gig.

And I never thought it would be a company like I thought it would just be a end to a means, you know, found another job and you know, moved on with life and it'd just be a side hustle.

But now it's turned into a fairly large facility that does a fairly large volume of dollar amount with just retail alone.

Plus the service work we do in the back.

It keeps expanding into new avenues like we're now doing a lot of formula car work here, which is kind of new to us.

We have anywhere between 3:00 and 5:00 employees at any given time, part time or full time. Most of the most of the vendors

that I work with, they recognize us as one of their top dealers for the Southwest region. If not some of sometimes in just

general. We call we're considered a small

volume dealer because we don't buy millions at once, but we do millions in terms of volume over course a year.

So it's pretty it's pretty interesting to see where it's gone. I mean, I've gotten to the point

where I've started. Taking.

More. Of a backseat.

Role. The other owners kind of doing

the same thing. We're we're kind of just pulling

back and trying to enjoy it as a company and trying to put people in place to run it for us as opposed to being such an active hands on thing. It's gotten to a point where

people don't have to come in and see me.

Now people come in and they'll talk to my other employees, which has been a big chase for years, is trying to chase myself away from the counter so I could go work on other stuff.

So yeah, it's it's, it's wonderful to see where it's gone. I think 10 years is a long time

for anything though to do any one thing.

So I think I've come to my point in life where I'd like to take a pivot and work on other stuff. What else do you have going on?

Southwest Speed Fest we've talked about a little bit.

That's not really an income source for me.

It's more of a community project to a degree 'cause like I said, my goal was is we have a lot of really cool events like Fuel Fest and like you know, the Go Fast stuff.

And there's lots of other cool events that happened in Phoenix, but none of them are really Motorsports centric.

They're all either show centric or drift centric specifically or culture centric, which all these things are great things and none of them on on there by themselves is a bad thing in any way whatsoever. But I wanted something in

Arizona that that got all of that in one spot in one house and no one's really doing that. So we came up with that

Southwest fest. We talked about I think about

two years ago when we first talked about it and it finally, it finally happened last year in September on a very lucky 90° day instead of 110° day. And it was a great event.

Yeah, From what everything we've seen on any metrics measured, it was a very successful event. We had triple the amount of

people we expected show up. The event itself was sold out.

The entire paddock was full. There was no extra place.

Podium Club had to bake another parking lot during the event to accommodate everyone, which was kudos for them to recognize that, you know, we had to make it an adjustment correct quickly. We had lots of food vendors.

We had music. We had alcohol, which is always

a tough thing to get figured out.

And you know, every, all the feedback was like, hey, when's the next one? When are we doing this again?

How can we make this better, bigger, you know, so I'm already in talks with sponsors trying to get more people to sign on.

We're we're, we're, we're very close to hopefully announcing dates and and we know it's going to be in quarter one of next year. So early.

So cool dates, sub sub 90° dates.

It's going to be a 2 day event instead of a one day event.

So we know some basic details. We expect there to be more live

music. We expect it to be a slightly

shorter day, but two of them we are really trying to have some wheel to wheel racing pop up via hopefully either a local racing chapter and or the Podium Club's racing series itself, which will most likely be open wheel, which we have a ton of open wheel cars out here, but nobody knows about them.

So we're pretty excited to offer that to the public.

We're going to bring drifting back of course with more.

Well we had 30 Drifters last year.

We're going to try to get that up to 50 this year.

Couple more lights make it a little more visible out there.

Hopefully add some spectator areas.

Because this was a multi day event too.

So last year was technically 1 long 15 hour day, followed by like a 7 hour day the next day plus a practice day.

The format was elongated the way it was, predominantly because we had a whole bunch of unknowns we were working for.

We didn't know how the drifting was going to work at that track, so we needed to have some off screen time testing.

So we did have a lot of drifting in the morning just to kind of see how it went. And then we also didn't, I was,

I, I, I out of my personal bank account came that event.

So I was only risking as much as I could possibly afford.

And the big risk was actually the lights.

The lights were a substantial portion of that budget, many, many thousands of dollars. People don't realize how much

lights cost to rent. And when you're talking about

renting 20 of them plus all the fuel to fuel them, that was the largest single expenditure we had for that event was lighting the racetrack. So I did not want to light it

for two days in a row, so I wanted to light it for the very minimal amount of time. Hence the elongated one day

format that we ran this year. We're spreading that out to a

two day format that will probably be lights Friday and Saturday. Sunday would be a daytime only

event. So you're still planning on

doing 25? Or are you thinking 26?

We are doing 26. Yeah, we are skipping 25 mainly

for the dates issue because it's so incredibly hard to work with summer dates to maybe get what you want.

Whereas if you push it to quarter one skip this year.

A A gives us the time to breathe because I I actually came out of that whole event with a pretty nasty case of carpal tunnel.

For several months I could not type on my computer because I was working my regular 8 hours of desk work plus another two to three hours per day of desk work and my my whole wrist and arm and shoulder were just done. So we needed to break the other

two guys, Chris and Avery, same thing we needed to break.

Plus we wanted to talk with the community and kind of get a better pulse of what we wanted to change and how we wanted to make additions and just give us more time to do it right.

You know, as opposed to rush out a product.

We just didn't want to rush out a product and have it fail.

So we'll be looking forward to that and then announcement a lot of old cars around here. Yeah.

Anything newish that you like? Yeah, we still kind of stick to

our. Old money, not a problem.

I'm not asking, you know, what's your dream car, but is there anything out there where you're like, what?

That'd be kind of cool to have. Well, I just bought a Cayman

recently and that was definitely.

I guess that's kind of cool. Yeah, that was like that one.

Right out there. Yeah, the white one out front

that was AAI. Haven't bought myself.

I've never owned a car from the same decade ever.

Ever. I've never, and technically that

one's not from this decade either.

It's last decade, but I've never bought a car with like a like a 15 year old span of time. They've always been

significantly older for financial reasons.

I didn't have the money and B. I'm also a person who doesn't

really like to pay for depreciation.

I don't like the guy who buys it and loses 20 grand value immediately. At least.

Yeah, so I was looking for something to replace the NSX and also my Subaru. I love my Subaru 25, but I get

40 getting tired of driving a manual in traffic every day.

So I wanted something that had some flexibility, but it was really fun to drive still. So we've got a, we get a lot of

P cars here on the shop. A lot of Porsches come by for a

track setup and that type of work.

So I've driven a lot of Caymans at this point 'cause it's a really well known car for being very good at being a track car, as opposed to the 9/11, which is a little bit dramatic for a lot of folks. And the price tag's pretty rough

on them too. So after driving, you know,

dozens of these caimans around, like I, I really started looking for a caiman pretty actively. I wanted a, a 09 to 2012

specifically because I wanted the facelifted 987, but I wanted the PEK, not the automatic because the, the tiptronic automatic is, is God awful. I drove a couple of those.

They're uninspired, sloppy, don't feel good at all.

And like I said, I was trying to avoid a manual.

So you're 10 or 15 grand for one of those cars or you know, in the 30s for the the PDK ones from the 9:00 to 12:00.

I didn't want a 13 plus because I went to direct injection.

I didn't want to deal with all the DI issues and maintenance issues. Little bit more horsepower on

those engines. But again, this one's I think

270 and 240 foot pound wreck that £3000 car.

If it sounds very familiar to another, it's a.

Very, very first Gen. NSX right there.

It's a very first Gen. NSX.

It's a touch faster in a straight line.

It's a 5 second car, not a 5.25 point 3 car amazing AC system.

The ride quality is untouchable has that huge front trunk plus the back trunk. There's storage compartments

everywhere I'm getting about I get 24 average miles to the gallon, which is better than my Subaru 2/5 with 113 horsepower at the wheel. You know and cruising on the

highway all touch 3233 all day long.

So it's, it's economical to that degree of it's very much a typical Civic or accord levels of economy to a large degree.

But it, it's sporty, pop it in the little manual mode and flap through the, the PDK real quick and it's crisp.

I made sure I had the sport plus modes on it, which again, change how the transmission shifts and how the throttle responds and all. There's tons of options on P

cars if you've ever looked into them.

So when I bought it, I was running VIN numbers trying to find one that was just loaded to the hilt with options so I didn't have to pay for them, you know, But yeah, it's it's been a really good car, I'd say. I don't, I don't think for 140

grand you're going to find a better car.

That's a sports car type fuel car that's pretty reliable, you know, solid numbers on all metrics.

You know that car is just one of the highest rated cars you can find out there. Why not get a Miata?

Why not get a Miata? Because I don't want an

automatic Miata to start with. That's that sounds awful.

As low as great as those Miatas are to drive like the NDS, they're slow. They're just, they're uninspired

in the straight line and. To me, you know anything less

than an NSX in terms of power to weight ratio is just a step backwards in terms. Of it's hard, it's.

Hard like that's why the Subaru, the Subaru 25, it's you know, they're rated like 175 wheel. They do like 100 and 15120

wheel. Usually.

The only reason that one got me by is it's £2500.

So it got through its power really well.

It was, you know, it, it felt light and then it had other advantages like all-wheel drive. So I took it camping and all

sorts of other stuff, you know, outside of the, the norm.

But I have my pickup for that too.

So I'm not, it's not. It's just a duplicate vehicle at

this point. How many cars do you have?

Oh. Man NSXNSX, Civic, Subaru

Cayman. When we have a pickup truck.

Pickup truck? What am I forgetting?

O2 Motorcycles. Two bikes.

Two bikes, yeah. So I think that puts it as 88

actual vehicles plus the camper, plus the trailer.

Well, Robbie, thank you for taking the time.

Yeah, it was fun, man. Sit back, catch up.

We just got to talk about you one time.

At some point, maybe we will. Need to flip the rolls maybe?

I'll give you, I'll give you 2 questions right now.

Sure, go ahead. Oh man, on the spot in five

seconds. What What got Jay into cars?

Oh God. Ha, gotcha.

Next question. Oh, no, no, no.

Like every like like most people, right?

You just, I think gravitating and stuff like that is just natural. You know, you just grab stuff

and you like what you like. You know, I don't think there

was any one specific thing, you know, I can always think about the specific thing that, you know, the first time I saw an NSX and I became obsessed, you know, we usually don't forget that. But just cars in general, I've

just always liked anything that moved.

Question 2. So you are definitely what I can

consider like a, an ambassador to automotive enthusiasts and to the NSX club specifically. Unlike most people if they have

any concerns with NSX club or any, you know, anything they want to bring up, they talk to you because you're a good entry point and you're again personable and again you're an ambassador to the whole group. Is that a role that you that you

desire and crave in your life, or is that something that just fell upon you? Kind of fell upon me.

Well, what do you think about it?

You know, as the as the current club president, it's not something I wanted to do. I was asked to run, you know,

when I stepped in as the kind of the vice president, that was kind of the expectation. And so I basically got fallen

told to run for president. Sure.

I try to play stuff so much down the middle and just about everything I do. You know, we've kind of briefly

talked about that earlier. Yeah, moderation is always.

Just, you know, the, the, I wouldn't say public perception, but I would say maybe the public perception of people within the NSX community. For those that know about the

club, you know, it wasn't always the best.

You have your die hard people who love the club.

We've been members for 20 years or so.

You have people that may were in the club at one point, had no value and got out. Maybe you think it's the cool

people's club. Maybe you think it's is, maybe

you think it's that. So I, I said, if I'm going to do

this, we're going to make some major changes and it's going to take the power of everyone. And I need everyone to be on

board before we tell every, you know, the, the membership base and other people out there that are on the outside looking in that these are things we're going to do.

We need to commit to them. And so that kind of became the

responsibility, I guess that I took on.

And this is the second year in and we're kind of behind on some things, which is understandable. We had a very aggressive

timeline you. Have a very big plate on this

too though. I mean, I kind of understand.

And this isn't a knock at any of the previous presidents.

You know, I'm, I'm really good friends with one of them, you know, Peter, of course. But you start looking around and

it's like, OK, now I know why things didn't really change.

Because as you know, running a business, it takes everyone and you don't want to just look up and be the only one running.

You turn around, everyone's just still standing there.

People that were just ready to go, you know, through the through the wall with you are just still standing there.

And so that's been a big struggle.

But we've been able to deliver a lot of things that people have been asking for for years. That's wonderful.

Yeah, but we have to just keep doing it.

Yeah, I said consistency that I think where you'll get where you want to go. And I, I think with all, with

all types of clubs and organizations of this nature, having a consistent platform that you are moving in one consistent direction where people can feel more confident about what they're involved in. I think that's, that's just life

in general, you know, like that's most people don't sign on the stuff that that that don't seem that don't seem like will be consistent. Yeah.

You know, and The funny thing about that whole thing is, you know, we had what kind of joke, I call it the secret Society of NSX owners. But, you know, we had an e-mail

that got sent to the club back when I was filling vice president about the direction of the club and how they're worried about it. And, you know, the former

president's just putting all his friends in in places, and it's just going to be more of this and blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I'm like, OK, well, there's people that weirdly might be rooting for you to fail. And so I kind of took that as on

as a challenge because, yeah, me and Peter Cunningham are really good friends. Totally.

But as people know, I'm taking the club in directions, different directions, because at the end of the day it's on me to make it work. That's the interesting

perspective that you have too. I said you are, I said as an

ambassador for the community is what I was kind of getting as I, I feel like you have a much better pulse on the community than than prior generations have in that sense that I think I see, I've seen more movement because I, I'm actually on the outside of the NSX club. I, I don't participate very

regularly and you know that I, I, I pop in every couple years, show my face and disappear. But you pay attention.

But you pay. Attention, I, I always watch

from the outside in and I like to, and I'm probably one of those folks that if things start going a direction that's interesting to me and intriguing me, I'll, I'll probably get more involved again, you know, and that's not like a, that's not what I would call like a, like a, a threat to how people operate with this. I think that a lot of people

like are like my cells, whether we just sit on the outside and we can't find the value in the active participation role.

A lot, a lot of people do sign up for their NSXCA membership purely for NS Expo. And that's 100%, you know, and

that's, and that's, I think kind of what you're trying to fix actually. But I've kind of viewed that

you're trying to add some value to the club for the rest of the year cause 'cause that's, I think that's where we have this disconnect between folks like myself.

We're more the trackside and the performance enthusiasts and who just appreciate the platform for the performance side and the folks who appreciate it for the collector's value and the technical aspects of it. Because I've always felt often

when I visit NSX meets in general, there is a very much a divide between the two groups. And it's not like they don't

like each other, just that they they don't have any commonalities. What's that?

It's just the different interests other than the car itself. Correct, Yeah.

So the car is bringing us together as an interest group, but we don't have a lot of commonalities to end with the club itself bringing us together.

So it'd be really cool to see some more, some more work towards that, that direction of where we all come together for different reasons than other, just just performance or just the value of the vehicle, you know?

Yeah. So we've talked about, you know,

building a track centric section of the club and it's just going back to what I said a few minutes ago, you know, everyone's ready to get movement on all this stuff, but at the end of the day, you're wearing all these different hats.

So I mean, that's just part of the grind, you know, and I told everyone, hey, it's going to, we're going to be working hard as hell at first, but we're going to look back and just be in a maintenance. But we have to work hard right

now to get to where we need to be.

Oh, it's a, you know, ton of energy to get the ball rolling.

Once more, my biggest fear is that we put in all this work and then when I am no longer the president, it just falls off.

Right, the legacy stops. Yeah.

That's a something I work a lot with, with the the the SAE Sun Devil Motorsports guys, all those FSE gets same problem.

They run into is a it's, it's all it's you can take any business and it's the same problem.

Yep. It's, it's whether or not you

react to make changes or not versus just staying the course and seeing if it Withers or not and then you have a lot more work. Yeah, I'm very like, we're

thankful to have you actually taking that initiative to make changes in the club. That's your two questions.

There you go. We'll revisit this some other

time with it fully flipped. That's right.

Absolutely. Thanks, Robbie.

Yeah, you got it man. Thanks.

Good seeing you again. Hey guys, I want to thank you

for stopping by the podcast. If you like what you saw today,

go ahead and hit that like button.

Hit subscribe. Assuming you're watching this on

YouTube, if you're streaming the audio, please consider subscribing and leaving a positive review.

Believe it or not, that does help the algorithm tremendously.

If you're in a position to help the podcast upgrade, please consider joining the patreonpatreon.com Hard Parking

Podcast. For as little as $3 a month, you

can get access to bonus audio as well as Patreon exclusive swag and free show swag. Also, special thanks to the main

show's sponsors, Right Honda, right Toyota, Toyota, Huntington Beach, Claremont Toyota and Gardenia, Honda, Arcus, Foundry, Auto Cannon, officially licensed Honda, and accurate gear.

Your support makes all the difference in this show.

And if this is your first time checking this out and if you truly enjoy this show, share it with the world and I will talk to you all next week. Now it's stripping time.

Ain't nobody got time for that. Shut up.

Ravi Tomerlin - We Don't Lift Racing

About this episode

Alpine A110

Acura Integra

Honda Civic

Toyota Supra

BMW M5

Mazda Rx7

Ford Orion

Toyota Corolla

Honda S2000

Nissan Gtr

Toyota Paseo

Porsche Cayman

Porsche 911

Honda NSX

Mazda MX-5 / Miata

Request an Explanation

Want to learn more?

Help improve this episode

More from Hard Parking with Jhae Pfenning