Rodger Lee of Ironworks Speed & Kustom 3.0

When I first heard it was going to go on there, I was like, oh, man, this is, I don't know if this is going to be good or bad.

It could go either way.

Pretty respectable.

It was the highest selling Chevelle by far on Bring a Trailer.

Absolute elite status.

The one and only Roger Leaf from Ironworks.

Speed and custom.

Ask people, how close have you ever come to running out of business?

And, you know, is it like every three weeks, you're like, well, I don't know, this week's going to be a short week, I guess.

Most guys, if you're doing quality work, never even get close.

And it's interesting as you watch guys get further along in their careers.

They're more concerned with the customer than they are the physical project.

And I'm not saying rest of my cars for our industry.

I'm saying rest of my cars and singers in Guntherworks.

A lot of that stuff is becoming more popular than even hyper cars because the hyper cars are cool and they do ridiculously crazy things.

But a Tesla Plaid is like the fastest thing.

And you're like, it's kind of like driving an RC car.

And there's no emotion.

There's no emotion.

There's no connection.

There's no thump.

And I just got to thinking like, what am I trying to prove that I can take this car that will never see the freeway to go drive it on this thing?

So Josh is like, well, I guess that thing does drive.

Yeah, I don't know.

Ain't no trailer queen.

Right.

And you're like, but what does it really prove?

Like, because that car is not built for that.

Who's made more push the envelope choices when it comes to their fashion between the two of us?

You look like a complete asshole.

You're picking a black sweatshirt and black sweatpants as a as a as a pushing the envelope.

What else was?

Yeah, when it was paired with black shoes and a black beanie.

It's just it's just going out like going out.

It's like the lounge where it's lounge where it's sweatpants.

There was an uproar in the shop over that.

I had to hear about it from at least six different people.

Like I'm not even going to get like the moon boots you came over to my house in the other day.

Those they were Napoleon Dynamite boots.

You're listening to another episode of oil and whiskey this week.

I think you're the first.

Are you the first three Pete?

I can't be the first three.

I think you're the first three or.

Chris Jacobs might have been the first three Pete.

I don't remember, but you're in rare company.

Yeah, to be a three Pete absolute elite status.

The one and only Roger Lee from Ironworks, speed and custom.

I kind of feel bad for you guys.

If this is the yeah, is it still custom with a K?

It is custom with K.

Just just wondering.

And yes, that's why they do it down at Baker's.

And it's a business class conference.

It's conference sounds for what you're charging.

It should be a conference.

It should be.

But then yeah, that would come with nice pants.

Yeah, you would have to dress like a quarter zip.

Oh, yeah.

Quarter zip with the vest.

And it seems like it should be in a conference room at like the

Hyatt Regency Holiday Inn.

Yeah.

Well, but business boot camp really doesn't sell.

Now boot camps get a little scary.

There's be CrossFit involved and.

Yeah.

There's got to be a word that we're missing that's in between

class and conference.

Extravaganza in enlightenment.

Intervention intervention is probably best business intervention

because it's almost the all the all the like the self-help stuff

that they do that they do the business for dummies.

No, they always had like a we are cool name where it was like a.

You know, like a jazz session or something like that where you

go out and learn, you know, retreat.

They use retreat a lot retreat retreat is kind of mysterious.

Like it's no idea what's going to happen.

There's a certain there's a certain allure about it.

Like, you don't know if that's these are recovering drug addict

and going to get straightened out or maybe they're like learning

some advanced CEO behind the scenes tactics.

So yeah, think about it in my home in Illinois.

Going to Roger's business retreat this weekend.

Retreat actually.

No, little Colty.

Yeah, a little Colty Colty with Roger Koresh.

Roger sleepover.

Yeah, we're digressing.

We start with the thing.

If you if you don't if you're not a little pissed off at the end

we're not doing our job.

That makes sense.

We're going to get you a little closer, a little closer.

There we go.

Now we're in the mic and not an echo.

Well, Roger, it's great to have you.

We do became good friends.

We talk a lot about stuff and this has been good to have you on

as a recurring guest and you know, it's it's nice when you've

kind of get through the the backstory, the niceties and the

you know, the standard.

Now it's just like we're on here to bullshit.

Yeah, that's fun.

Talk about car stuff.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, the end it's we're such a long distance apart.

We see each other in passing or my guys tell me that some meatheads

came by the booth and look like the road to shop guys.

You know, and then I never saw you.

Yeah, you were busy.

Get outside on your after something.

We pop by a few times.

We did.

We spent quite a bit of time, honestly, around your ranch wagon.

Good grief.

That is a bad ass car.

Thank you.

Did really dig that.

I love the concept.

The fucking T bird interior works so good.

That whole concept works so good.

Yes, it's very cool for a great customer that I built.

I think I built I think it's six cars now.

The Mustang we built a few years ago.

He's got a slew of other cars that we've done.

That one was just kind of always his direction.

That one really is his style.

The we took it over from.

Oh, it's the fat jack guy is who started it.

And so they had some of the concept in there.

We kind of went backwards on some things and really kept the style.

The colors, I wish we were that smart or whatever.

We were going to do like a silver and a gray and it looked cool with

the red interior and then we started trying to figure out the silver and

gray and I'm like, I'm just not seeing it.

It's not the right vibe.

And I went to go have sandwiches on Friday with my wife for lunch

and there was a mini Cooper in front of me and I'm like, oh,

that cream color is really good.

And that and black, you can't really argue with black and timeless.

And then the gold on the side was really we had it always planned to do

something.

It just wasn't supposed to be like that.

And that was really tricky.

Um, the way it all came about with the colors, but man, it really

works fair lanes have the gold trim on inside there.

Right.

In the fairly have like a box gold trim.

So, so, so did those.

Oh, did they?

Yeah, they did.

It was a, um, but it's a thin metal piece.

Yeah.

We didn't have to pay you did it and we machine the trim did all that.

There's a lot of stuff we did to kind of close the gaps and just

make that stuff fit better turned out amazing.

It's one of the striking great spot right there.

The, you know, early in morning, the sun was coming in hit the hit the car

right that one definitely grabs you and pulls you in your stuff by any

way to hang out with you.

But like that car definitely catches your eyes.

It sits good.

It's got details.

I think it, I think it kind of is reminiscent of that fairway 55.

I did a long time ago.

The orange 55, it kind of has that same bite to it.

This one sits better though.

Yeah.

No, the 55 was a hammer.

But, but it's just that same thing where you, it's a, it's different,

but it's not different.

Like, it's a, I mean, I call it, it's a time capsule car.

Like that one right there.

You could have done this show, put it in a time capsule, go back in time,

go forward in time.

And it's still just like, holy shit.

That's just as bad ass.

And I think, I think most people don't even realize that the interiors,

I mean, they know it's done to a high level, but I don't even think

they're most people realize that it's custom.

Which is cool because you sort of have to do a double take because

it really does look like it belongs, which it means it's done right.

The amount of time as I've seen a 59 Impala cluster and dash swapped

into something, it's like, dude, that's enough already.

But it usually works better in everything but a 59 Impala.

I mean, S 10.

Absolutely.

OBS.

OBS for sure.

Camaro.

Yeah.

I mean, it's nice to keep it in the era.

Mazda B 2200 pickup.

It's probably been done.

I know it has been done.

I'm going to show you your truck.

No, I'm just, yeah, I know that.

That sounds like Alabama.

I live that life.

I've just, I've listened to enough of these to know that that's a possibility.

It was, yeah.

And I try that wagon.

It's like one of those where you just walk up on it looks high end.

You don't know what was done.

You don't know what was original, what was modified drastically different.

It just all goes together and I kind of call it believable.

Like it's just believable that you, my mom would think it's stock.

Yeah.

And you know what's cool too is you weren't there.

Right.

Your guy was pretty cool.

Well, your guy was there, but helps me and Josh.

We were able to enjoy and take in the whole thing.

And like, I didn't need somebody to tell me that it was like that the wheelbase

was moved a quarter inch or that this was here.

This was here.

It was just kind of like it looked really good and I was able to take that all

out for myself without somebody can walk you around.

You're like cringing like I'm going to say something that's going to

offend somebody.

I feel like you're just like in the house.

No, I'm just you can have somebody walk you around like a poorly

executed car and show you all these modifications.

That's usually much more apparent.

That's a very well executed car that probably has shit tons of modifications

that I don't even know what they are.

But it doesn't matter because it works.

It's just like whatever you did suited the car.

And then I think it's when you get cars like that, you're even me is the guy

that's the builder, probably even my employees.

They're looking at it and they forget half the things they did because you

have to jog your memory to go.

Oh, yeah, we cut that.

And oh, yeah.

We uh, yeah.

Where was the stuff?

Oh, yeah, we did do that because it's just I just call it believable.

Like do you think that's more of a car thing and because you'd rather enjoy

the car or is it because we just don't like conversating that much?

We're not people, people, people.

Here's what I'll say.

I think this will probably be controversial as well.

Yeah.

You see, you're like, yeah, hard to believe.

Yeah.

Thanks.

You see some smoking hot chick that obviously has some mods done.

You don't need, you don't you can take it in.

If she is fucking gorgeous, she's gorgeous.

The boobs are in proportion, you know, like just well done fucking slim.

The right amount of muscle tone.

You don't want her to come up to you and be like, so I got 50 ccs and look at

the lips.

Like, you know what I did with the lips?

It either looks like shit and you can tell me all about the mods or don't

say anything and it maybe it looks really good.

Makes sense.

Yeah, I understand.

There's a saying that I always had with Kenny Davis.

And we said, who's he was, he was on the other podcast.

That's probably why I don't know.

Yeah.

Body shop conglomerate guy and yeah, they had different industries.

He had Hardy podcast.

Yeah, it was jeans and yeah.

Affliction podcast.

I'm sorry.

Yeah.

And he, we always said that if you have to explain to someone why it's cool,

it's not cool.

Yep.

Yeah.

And it makes sense where you look, you walk up to stuff and you look at it

and you're like, okay, there's a lot done, but I don't really get like what

all like what, and they're like, well, this is supposed to be a World War

two bomber.

Oh, gotcha.

But it still looks stupid.

You know, it's kind of that Orange County chopper thing where the guy got it

and took the Geico stickers off and they're like, so why does it have

lizards all over it?

Like, yeah.

Well, it was the Geico bike that Orange County choppers did.

Yeah.

Geico.

Josh used to do that a lot, like to try to explain to you why it's cool.

He used to come in like wearing just something so off-putting and it would

always be explained as well.

Maddox, you know, told me about it.

Like, dude, you don't even like the college kids like the high school

Maddox like pick these out.

Like it still looks.

I don't care.

You don't have to explain it to me.

You're honestly saying I've made that many fashion choice.

There's been one thing.

I wore a puffy jacket that you hated other than that.

There's been a note.

There's been quite a few.

There's not.

Yeah, there is.

I mean, you could probably say the same thing for all the stuff you see

in Hollywood when you see these stars where something weird and you're

like, what is that?

Awfully glasshouse.

What do you tell for you to be throwing stones in about fashion choice?

I'm here and to you, someone who doesn't really know much about glass

might not be the best reference.

I guarantee that Phil would back me up on this.

If we're going to go there.

Fashion choices.

Who do you think pushed the envelope more like done and done it well though?

No, no, no, no, no, no.

No.

Who's made more pushed the envelope choices when it comes to their

fashion between the two of us?

Who was it that was just fucking busting your balls the other day about

looking like the wet bandits?

Like I don't ever cure it.

Finally curate my sweatsuits.

A sweatsuit is like something I put on because they because I'm fucking

lazy.

That's the worst example.

It's a black.

It was.

It was a bad example.

Yeah.

It was a horrible example of of something to wear.

You look like a complete fucking asshole.

You're picking a black.

You're picking a black sweatshirt and black sweatpants as a as a as a

pushing the envelope.

What else was.

Yeah.

When it was paired with black shoes and a black beanie.

It just it's just going out like going out.

It's like loungewear.

Going out to rob.

It's a loungewear.

It's just that's like it's sweatpants.

There was an uproar in the shop over that.

I had to hear about it from at least six different people of what

the fuck Josh is wearing today.

Just own it.

Do you changed afterwards?

So you know I changed my hat.

Oh yeah.

To a black hat.

Okay.

But it wasn't a beanie.

Sometimes it's the smallest detail.

They got like a fucked up hood scoop.

Right.

That's just one part of the car.

It's fine.

Not a problem.

I'm going to start.

Did you guys go back to the library and then I'm going to continue

to start documenting.

I'm going to.

I'm going to you would.

I'm going to narrow it down to just footwear choices.

Like I'm not even going to get like the moon boots.

You came over to my house in the other day.

Those they were Napoleon Dynamite fucking boots.

I had to show Phil the picture because it's so bad.

There was there were snow.

It's for the mud my wife and I both candidly took pictures of

you separately because we they were so shitty looking and we

were both cracking up and then shared the pictures with each

other later over the moon boots.

Do we have pictures of sad mood?

Yeah.

You said you want to see my house and I'm going by there.

It's braining.

It's muddy.

I had nice tennis shoes on so I grabbed the snow boots that

were in the garage just to walk through the mud.

It wasn't a it wasn't a fashion choice.

That was a choice.

There were any like slip.

I throw like van slip on zone or like construction boots.

I didn't have any construction boots in the garage.

I didn't want to go back in the house.

Were you swinging by the Arctic Circle after that?

Yeah.

It's fine.

When it comes to footwear, I'm telling you the documentation

I have and what I will continue to have will far outweigh

anything that I've done.

One pair of neon pants.

There's been 12 pair of neon shoes in the last five years.

A few.

It's been a few.

There's a pair of slippers.

There's a certain pair of slippers.

They're badass.

They're not you have slippers.

They got skulls on them fucking skull and crossbones.

So do rings.

But I don't you don't see me wearing them all over the place.

Richard Rawlings does.

He's done well.

I think we should move on from this.

This is not I think we were just scratching the surface here

of a great podcast.

Well, we keep going.

This is how it gets started.

Where we were at.

I'm just glad you guys don't have to try to find shoes in size

15 because you don't have much selection.

I wish I could have selection.

Fifteens are probably tough.

Yeah, they're tough.

That's when they just get to like sports shoes.

I've got some.

These are athletic shoes.

Yeah, I got some pretty bright shoes.

Athletic shoes.

Yeah.

In 15 athletic boats.

How does that work driving cars?

I was thinking especially hot rods.

I sometimes you need a special set of shoes.

There's shoes you want to walk in and then there's shoes you

want want to drive in my wife's like why are you changing shoes

to go drive the car?

You wouldn't understand.

You kind of need to.

Yeah.

Could you physically drive that 35?

No, I can't even I have to take the cushion out of it and

it's it's pretty tight.

That's no heel toe.

That's heel heel.

That's there's another thing you guys might not be aware of

where your left knee hits the backside of the turn signal lever.

That I've never, but obviously never doesn't apply to me.

Yeah.

Fucking legs.

But I barely reached the metals.

Yeah, I've had there's winch.

There's a window crank when it's up or when the windows down

you get all the way up.

There's different things like that that happen when you're

a big man overgrown big man.

Yeah.

But also probably came in handy of designing these new

Chevelles of how people should sit and fit in them as you made

them.

That's a great segment.

You made them comfortable for you.

I made I made them selfishly comfortable.

But what would he do in it was the seat go up that far.

There's a lot of travel.

Haven't you ever had that argument when somebody's mounting

one of those?

Yes, well, no, it has to go dude.

It still isn't going back far enough, but then you can pull

it through the core support.

Yeah, but it could go forward.

But look how much further it goes.

It would have been easier if you put it in the middle of its

travel and then mounted it there.

Yeah, but generally any muscle car if you want to get as low

as you possibly can even a guy my size like you still you want

to get low.

We're doing that road runner right now in the dudes.

I think he's six four.

So he's big, big tall guy and you know, John's working through

it and he's got the seat planted.

I mean, the floor drops down in it at the bottom of the rail

seats down in it.

And I still sit up and down.

You know, height wise, you sit good.

It's obviously way back, but one of the good things about the

perimeter frames and what you're doing because you're not

confined to the footwells and the stock floor pants.

I mean, I would think even a stock seated Chevelle is not is

probably ideal for you.

I still feel like I sit too high in them.

Too high.

Yeah, that's my point.

Yeah, right.

Even like, yeah.

Yeah, like hammered down in there that everybody wants to

sit like they're in a Peterbilt a little bit.

Exactly.

Have a little bit of that.

Yeah, unless you're driving a fifth gen Camaro and that's

the thing that I don't that's the belt.

Seat all the way up the belt line on a fifth gen Camaro, like

six or six gen Camaro, like it's already there.

Yeah, you can't like, yeah, no matter what you do, it's a

mail slot and you feel like you're sitting down in it like

this.

And then the damn A pillar is like an oak tree.

We had that one.

It's fifth gen, right?

Yeah, the ZL one, a fast car.

But yeah, the damn A pillar is like massive.

Yeah, you are hammered in them.

You're down in it.

Well, I think I don't know if you're that much further down

in the doors, the doors, the doors up.

Um, what talking about the, the, the Chevelle, right?

We talked a little bit about it on the last time, but now it's

going good.

It's, it's moving.

It's coming along and a lot of, uh, I always thought like in

the initial first five cars, like you're going to sell them

to people you already know.

And we're getting to the point now that we're selling them

to new people that I don't know that, you know, the first couple

I sold to people that I built other cars for.

And so that just became another one of in their collection.

Um, and so now we're selling them to that.

The marketing's working.

The positioning that I'm trying to, um, show for the cars is

really coming together.

Um, we had one sell a couple of weeks ago on bringing trailer.

Yeah.

Got some good, I mean, the, got some really good feedback on it.

And it, it brought some good money.

It wound up selling a few weeks, like two weeks later for 450,

which is probably 75% of build costs, which I know from a

financial thing that's stupid, but man, there's riddler cars

that bring two in a grand bike.

And so it was the highest selling Chevelle by far on bring

a trailer, which I was, when I first heard it was going to go

on there, I was like, oh man, this is, I don't know if this

is going to be good or bad.

It could go either way.

And so, um, and, but it like for to sell at that price.

It's funny.

It went to a guy that was 20 miles away from Rob.

And so the guy, the guy wired his money and his buddy gave

him a ride down there to drive it home.

And I, you know, and he called me and he was like, man, this

thing drives awesome.

And I think the presentation they did, the guy that sells the

cars that, um, on bring a trailer, did a lot of stuff they

normally do on the premium things, shutting the doors, just

he does the video that was the functions.

And then he had one where he drove the car and they had the

sounds inside the car and then the sounds outside the car.

And I think that's what really sold it.

Cause it's, it has a lot of those, like we said, timeless things

to it.

It's just really, it's done to a high level.

It sold through one of those pretty high end dealerships.

What was in it?

Who had it?

1600.

Yeah.

Veloce.

Yeah.

So I'd never heard of them before.

I've been on, obviously bring a trailer.

They do a nice job.

They did a really good job.

That's, I think sort of their business model is all pretty high

end stuff through bring a trailer and it's all presented.

There were a lot of people that commented in the comments that

said they had to look at it because they'd never seen a

muscle car in the premium listings.

So I don't know if that's just the cloud.

Those guys had that made it that.

I don't know what qualified it to do.

I don't know if you'd maybe just pay money to make that happen,

but I thought it worked out well.

It's good they did.

Like you said, the videos and the sounds, especially shutting

the doors and driving inside because that is a tilt.

Everybody's got that that like stigma in their mind of what

the doors sound like when they shut on 99.5% of all muscle

cars regardless.

So there's 50 cents and change in the horse.

And then Mopar is just a very distinct sound.

Yeah, that's what they've got like a that carries on after

the fact like it's that's like a run on that's like diesel

and of the engine, but it's the shutting of the door.

It's 10 and then 10, 10, 10 G bodies.

You get a chivelle pretty tight.

Yeah, yeah.

You have to springs.

You have to redo the the rollers because the modern I'm

about ready to make my own plastic rollers because when the

window is down.

No, the ones that ride in the tracks because they only last

about two or 3000 miles and because they're you're getting

them from Dynacorn or whoever's making them and they're just

garbage where they wouldn't cost as much to make out of a better

material.

And so we've been trying another one that's a dual track power

window thing and it's better.

I just don't know if it's worth all the work.

If I might be able to fix it with bushings that just fit better.

So we're kind of at that point where we're going through that

and I think the epiphany for me has been trying to really figure

out if a guy has a Porsche sitting in his garage and he has

a muscle car, like what is what is the deciding factor that

makes you you're like, I just want to go drive something.

Yep.

What is it that you want to do?

And the OG Black Chevelle is what we call it the one that I

built a long time ago.

We put a bigger and actually same displacement.

We put a LSA with it with a cam and was no longer just a

crate engine.

I've done a ton of crate engines over the years and it sounds

cool, but when you start, when you get to the point where you

pull up next to in the, when you pull up to the signal light

and the guy next to you is like, he can feel that in his car

and you can feel like there's just a muscle car experience and

I can see where these cars are getting to a point where it's

similar to the guys who want a GT3 style car or a touring car

because there's guys that are going to want a touring car

where they want it to be on the quieter side.

They want some of those things, but they want a muscle car

and then there's guys who they don't want the thing to make

nine, they, they think they want it to make 900 or a thousand

horsepower, but most guys really don't want that.

They make 550 or 600 and they want, but they want it to sound.

They want that sound and they want the experience and I think,

you know, there was a point where my wife, I took her for a

ride, we were going to church or something and I drove the

gold Chevelle a long time ago and I asked my wife just to get

her opinion on the car and she's like, well, cause she's just

always had a Tahoe at that point and I said, what do you like?

What do you think of this with the windows up?

It's 105 degrees outside and she's like, I would think this

is kind of like what Alexis is and I'm like, not really, but

okay, but as I got to thinking about it, I'm like, on one hand

that's good, but on the other hand, do you really want Alexis

your Chevelle?

That's good.

It's good observation, you know, and so, but I think on one hand

you do and so now I look at, you know, Greg has the OG Chevelle

that has the cam has that thing.

We've that's a chassis that I made a long time ago and the

steering was always, it wasn't too quick, but if it was any

quicker, it would be too quick.

And so you use, if you got out of your 2500 truck and drove

this car for the first two hours, you kind of held both

sides and so we slowed down the steering just a little bit

and I think that's, that's one thing that I think is hard in

this industry now is just getting the steering racks to get

that ratio right.

There's a few things and and so that's what I've been just

really trying to decipher is that there's going to be guys

who like we had issues with LT motors and power steering

pumps with the chassis that we were using before at slow

speed, the steering was just notchy at a super slow idle

and it was and it was really big in a direct injected not

cammed crate motor because they idle at like 600 and with

an automatic transmission, you can drive around the parking

lot at 600 RPMs a manual transmission car you're kind of

modulating the throttle and doing those things.

You didn't really experience it as much and so we kind of

dealt with some of those things and we put a pump on it and

it works well.

We got it where it was better on the bottom, but it would

also lessen the feel at high speed.

It starts getting floaty starts to get floaty and overspin

in the palm.

You overspin the pump then you can you can orifice it down

and do stuff like that, but it still is.

It's just not as like the heavy feeling of those cars when

the steering at slow speed was not ideal, but at 90 on the

freeway, you're like, oh, this is great.

Yeah, I mean, essentially we've we've tinkered with that a

lot and we're the three of us.

I think we're all pretty in tune with it.

We've all driven.

I made hundreds of cars.

You almost want manual steering at speed and you want Lexus

steering in the parking lot and it's so difficult to accomplish

because the pumps just aren't designed to do that.

And to your point, like it used to be like if you can get a

big block Chevy to idle at 800 RPMs and just be thumping like

that was bad ass, but yeah, nothing else mattered.

Nowadays, you're 500.

Yeah, you get these mild LS motors, even some of these

supercharged motors to idle at such a low RPM that you're

not spinning the pump and then you're looking at like there's

different geometry, different ratios of different people's

serpentine drives.

Some guys pay a lot of attention to it.

Some guys it's just like old suspension theory that you just

put a arms in there or four link bars and that's what they're

doing.

They're just putting pulleys in there and they're not cognizant

at all of the speed at which the crank is spinning the power

steering pump and what it's spinning at high RPM, what it's

been at low RPM and it's a fucking struggle for sure.

The problem my two cents to throw in is it's interesting to

have these discussions now and people have had this.

It's when you're looking at doing your recipe in a volume,

right, whatever volume that is at volume, right, where it's

going to be.

This is the thing we build in repetition.

You've got colors.

You've got some, you know, motor choices like that.

Then you start having these discussions and thinking about

this stuff, not on the on what you want the car to feel like

when you're looking at trying to quantify your customer.

It's just like what the OEs do, right?

When you're doing custom vehicles, the guy that comes in

and says, Hey, I've got, you know, seven, you know,

Ferrari challenge cars, you know, and I'm not looking for

that.

I want a muscle car, right?

I won't roll up windows.

I want all that stuff.

You've got to understand what that guy's frame of references

and build him something that he's going to like and that's

going to be a custom car to him.

Like take Porsche, for example, you've got, you know, a GT3

touring, which is less racy and less hardcore.

You've got a, you know, full blown GT3 RS.

It's a way different driving experience than a regular 911

or something.

It's still volume, but even in the volume they do, they

can't make the one car that fits everybody's boxes because

the driving experiences are so subjective.

Handling is one thing, but the brake feel, how many times on

either end of the spectrum, if people been all over the place

on brake feel of like, Oh, that's too touchy.

Yeah, all the way to, I can't stop the car.

I'm going to have to put like, it's a great manual brake set

up, but in their mind, they can't.

Steering's the same way with that.

The simple answer is like, dude, you got to go do some leg

curls.

You got to get to the fucking gym because if you're building

a car for an older guy or if the guy test driving your car

six foot six and 280 pounds, right?

He's like, what are you talking about?

This pedal is easy to push.

But that's where I'm going.

Like it's when you start looking at that because we did this

a lot on the legend structure, you know, right?

When you start thinking about the fine line of they want the

truck because it's an old truck, right?

But their frame of reference, especially at some of these

age, these guys age, there's some of them that didn't drive

the square body for edit on a daily basis.

They have memories of their uncle or their dad or their

granddad or something like that going in the square body,

but they didn't drive it every day to have a frame of reference

on what it felt like.

Or they haven't driven it in 15 years.

Right.

And they've driven a lot of new trucks or they drove it with

a 3 305 in it that did 55 miles an hour.

So you start having those conversations of like, we were

talking, you know, even on the tailgate thing, right?

We went through back and forth on the tailgate thing and how

many people were like, no, like I want that weight of the

tailgate.

I want to know that I'm it's an old metal truck, you know,

but then on other stuff, it's, you know, it's like, well,

I yeah, but I want like, can we get the USB and like the power

windows and so it's just I'm not saying there's a right or

wrong because everybody's different.

And that's what you're seeing in the industry today is and I've

been watching a bunch of YouTube stuff where the rest of

them odd cars are becoming more popular and I'm not saying

rest of my cars for our industry.

I'm saying rest of my cars and singers in Gunther works.

A lot of that stuff is becoming more popular than even

hypercars because the hypercars are cool and they do

ridiculously crazy things, but a Tesla Plaid is like the

fastest thing and you're like, it's kind of like driving an

RC car and there's no emotion.

There's no emotion.

There's no connection.

There's no thump.

There's no I would and for me, I would rather have a

car that exudes whatever I'm trying to be when you drive a

GT three, you're driving it to for that period of handling

and you're driving it for that sound from 4500 to 9000 so

that you can hear that.

I mean, when I've driven them, they bounce off the

rev limiter like because you you just can't get enough of

that to do it and and I don't think you're going to drive

a muscle car the same way, but I think I think there's an

element to that that you you want the muscle car to drive

well, but nowadays everything drives good.

You want to just get to the legends truck, but what I'm

thinking about it for a little bit of a mind fuck those

people that you're talking about that's coming from, you

know, even from Koenigsegg or Pagani Ferrari, whatever

these stuff and then they're keep they keep going to the

next thing that their neighbor, their golf buddy, their

whatever can't have.

So they go into lower volume, lower volume there.

I'm gonna find something that you can't get because you either

get a weight in the lighter, they don't build enough of

them or whatever and the people that are coming to this

industry is focused on like when we build more of these

and volume like you don't say it's the exact opposite.

It's in the mileage doesn't matter.

Right?

Like I don't benefit this.

I think I think you could take Rob's car that was on

bringing trailer and you could do proven that you could

put a motor you could you could blow up the motor and put

another one in and I don't think it changes the value, but

you I mean, it's it's I just it was a funny like thinking of

you have people in the Bronco industry, a lot of our great

customers, a lot of our great friends.

I mean, there's a lot of people are doing different their

niches in a larger volume of production than what

traditionally just hot rod builders have been and I'm

even here in that you've got guys are like, well, man, so

anybody could just order this Bronco and this color and they

could replicate this like, well, no, I wanted to come

something like nobody else can have.

So what can we do that's custom?

So it's changing.

It's changing the thought process already.

It's going back to the shit we used to do anyway.

They're like, all right, well, or we can change.

We don't normally do this motor, but like if you want

something different, we'll do this motor and then like we'll

do it.

We'll change the chassis to do this because that's what

they're chasing is the thing that nobody no matter how

much money they have, they cannot replicate.

It's the only reason to do in the first place anyway, but

I've looked at a lot of those cars as kind of a gateway drug

because they attract a different guy.

The guys that the guys that are into that, like I've had a

couple guys that are comparing me to there was a guy not too

long ago comparing me to Revology and they do the

Mustangs and stuff like that.

And he's like, well, what's the difference?

And I'm like, I'm like, you could do those same parts.

You could do this and that.

I'm like, if you don't really care about the details under

the hood because I'm going to build a car that's a little

bit more detailed, you know, I'm going to guess honestly,

they probably have a better shock package than I would

have out of the gate because they built so many.

And so they're going to, could I get it there?

Yeah, we totally can, but they're, they do that Mustang

every day.

I go and, and, and so you're, but they, the way they

attracted the way they put in the short lead times, the way

that they do a lot of that stuff appeals to guys that are

outside of our circle.

And I think that's a great thing that they're doing in it.

And I feel like there's going to be a guy later on that's

like, well, I live here and there's six of those Broncos

that we see and they're all just a different color.

And, and you know, or it's a different driving experience.

I think if you go get in your Bronco, it's going to be a

different vibe than you are in your Chevelle.

But I think it should be, you know, and that was sort of

my point, what I wanted to get into when you brought up Lexus

deal, like you don't, don't, you don't want to make everything

Alexis.

There's a time and a place for it and it's the right vehicle.

I was using the legend truck as an example because that's a

vehicle we designed to legitimately be driven every day.

And I do.

And what we've done with that, you want that as close to

Lexus drivability and ride quality wrapped up in an old

pickup truck and it's got some power and it's got the sound.

You know, if you drove it and there was not any wind noise,

if you drove it and it was like the square all these things

just go by a Toyota Kendra.

But that's what I'm saying is like, there's a point where you

don't want like, and I'm not saying you want it noisy with

wind noise, but there's a point if it's just dead, quiet.

I guess my point is like that.

What we all do and like, like your Chevelle's, they're fucking

badass.

The reality of somebody purchasing that to be like, this is my

car that I'm going.

This is my mode of transportation.

It's not realistic, you know, whereas those pickup trucks, I

do use it as just straight transportation and it's like

if like, I'll jump in it and drive up like to Michigan.

It, trust me, you as cool as it is to have an old car.

The fucking wind noise is not that cool, right?

It's not great and you can only get it so good.

You know, you're pushing a box through the air, but those

I've found enjoyment and I think the customers have.

We've all done road trips.

We just, you know, did the road tour, you know, over the

summer at four or five of them on there and it's, it doesn't

wear you out.

That's what happens like in a car that, that lacks those things.

You sort of get worn out.

You get tired.

You get fatigued.

You want to get out of the car that you can get in like one

of those blazers and you could drive it from here to California

and obviously it's 30 hours of driving.

You're going to get a little worn out, but the car is not

going to fatigue you.

Whereas.

Danny was the same way with when we were on a road tour,

he was driving the kind of, some of my guys just swapped cars

around amongst them and there was a point where we left.

Um, we left Salt Lake city and he's like, Hey, about dark, I

think I'm done.

I can't see good.

I don't want to do all that.

And so we, we went from Salt Lake down.

It was sun was setting right as we got into Las Vegas and you

couldn't pull him out of the car and he's just like, no, this

is fun and he's a Ford guy.

Like if they still tease him about driving the Chevy and I think

you enjoyed that too much and, you know, just all that stuff

and you're right.

You want to make it where it's not wearing you out if you can

drive a long time in it.

Um, but once again, I think all those cars and that's going

back to like Greg with the two cars, his Goldie car that is in

that, I think is still a road tour car.

Yep.

The OG car is not a road tour car.

It's been on three road tours, but now that it's got a little

bit more lump, it's got some stuff like there's just stuff

like that that makes it.

And I was honestly worried that it when I delivered it was going

to be too much because we, we swapped the motor, put the new

one in and now there's like 20 new rattles in this car because

it sounds like fire.

Yeah.

And, and I'm like, oh, and so we worked through all that and

worked through.

I put a bunch of effort into the tuning to get it as drawer.

Absolutely perfectly drivable as it could be for being as

healthy as it was.

And, and I, and I delivered it to him thinking I may wind up

doing a cam swap on this thing and about three months later,

he's like, I still think the OG is still my favorite.

And I'm like, wow, that's awesome, but that's because it provides

a different, different experience, a different experience.

Like I've, I've wondered this.

Like you look at Carrera GTs, the buddy of mine works the

Porsche dealership clutch swap on a Carrera GT is $75,000.

For the whole clutch and everything.

That's actually not that bad.

So, but does that thing drive better than a GT3 RS?

Cause those things are going for like three million bucks now.

My Carrera GT is a little rough.

I feel like, but you're trying to, you're trying to quantify

like the reason that there is so many massive, you know, global

manufacturers of automobiles is because there is never been

the one size fits all.

It just can't be even collections.

Even in our, even in what we do, we can't, you can't, I think

it's why it's so important.

Everything is important in whatever all of us are doing.

It's so important to ask those qualifying questions at beginning

of to make that car the right one for that guy.

What is the dream I use my, my example is like, what is the

at night when you've been thinking about making this purchase?

What is the dream that you're going to fulfill with this vehicle?

So we'll leave the center console out.

Yeah.

It's a common shift.

There's been in that.

What's the, when you get this thing, what's the first thing

that you're going to go do, right?

And those answers wildly vary.

But I'm going to this show and I want to win this award versus

the, I want to, you know, on my, on the weekends, my buddy's got

some cars and we drew it drive, you know, two hours to the lake

and you know, he smokes with guards and we do this and we drive

back.

Others like I'm going to travel.

I'm retiring next year and me and my wife are going to travel

the country.

We're going to see all, you know, 49 States, blah, blah, whatever

it is, or I'm wanting a weekend warrior.

I want a Canyon Carver.

I want to autocross on the weekends.

All those answers make the vehicle build because there is nobody

that can build the thing to do all the stuff because there's like

whatever, 14 models of the Porsches in the 911.

Like, so is the Carrera GT basically a GT3 RS?

I don't know.

Like it, but it, what I'm trying to say is like, is that driving

experience six times better than this other one because of the

price?

No, it probably has a, it's six times, it's six times more rare

and less people have them.

So it brings that more sound.

It does those, you know, there's a sound that comes to it.

Obviously the clutch is different or, you know, comes apart differently.

It's like Formula One car basically.

Basically, but, but my question is, is like in those, like, what can

you, there's only so many weight only, you can only dial it in so far.

Like, shocks make a huge difference.

A lot of those, you know, and you're never going to make a

Chevelle handle like a Porsche.

You're never going to because the weight is different.

You're dealing with a fat girl that's, you know, heavy and this and

that, you're taking other cars, but like, there's just so many

different things of the torque that comes in differently.

Does this car make torque on the bottom?

Does it make torque on the top?

Does it not have torque?

Does it just a high winding thing?

There's all those driving experiences and that's interesting.

But that's the, I mean, that's comparisons is what is, forget the Chevelle.

Okay.

You're not going to make a Chevelle handle like a Porsche.

Neither can fucking Audi or Lamborghini or any of that because

it's not a Porsche is going to handle like a Porsche because of

it's because of what it is.

If anybody could have already copied that, I promise you they got the money.

Like, like all these manufacturers could, they just can't, right?

So those things exist the way, I mean, look at the damn even

simplify it into offer.

Look at Ford Bronco and a Wrangler like for utilitarian purposes to get

the job done and pull the top off and pull the doors off.

Those are like apples and apples.

That's the sense that they both do the exact same thing.

But there's people that are diehard Jeep that drive a Bronco.

They don't like it.

There's people that are diehard Ford.

They're like, I'd never, you've never gotten dead.

But for what it does, it's like, well, that, I mean, they both get you to

work and they could go to the beach and they could go to the thing.

But they scratch that itch completely different for those enthusiasts

than they do the other enthusiasts like the underlying sort of answer to

this, in my opinion, is that all of us been at this a long time.

And the important thing is that we're all like cognizant of it because

there's a shit ton of people that would never have this conversation.

They're just going to build a car.

They're worried about it because it put all the wrong stuff in.

Yeah, they're not even thinking the way we're thinking, but they're just

focused on the trophy because that's a Porsche of it.

And sometimes it's a horsepower number.

Yeah, you know, it makes this even though it really doesn't.

And then like to Josh's point of there's so many vehicles out and

that's why there's so many manufacturers, knowing what we know

being cognizant of it and knowing how to sort of go down the right path of

like if, if a customer loves Porsches, if a customer loves this, know

the customer and then build him that right car.

Like we're building a car for Scott right now.

So this is like Scott's fifth car and he's building a Fox body.

So I know, I know Scott very well and I know Scott, he'll drive that.

He wants to jump in that car.

He's going to maybe rip it to dinner or just around the block.

He'll be in it for 15 or 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes max.

And he wants a thrill out of the car.

He wants the biggest smiley.

Yeah.

So for that, I mean, it's got a fucking, the body's pretty stock.

It's slicked out.

Dutch boys just did the paint and it's got a Wagner built

Windsor, basically a NASCAR motor.

Yeah.

It's got a solid, solid lifters in it.

And most people would balk at that, but Scott's not going to pull the fucking

valve covers off and set the valve lash case.

He'll send somebody down here to do it, you know, for the amount of time

you need to do it.

But when you light that fucker up, it's going to be so fucking nasty.

It's got 180 degree headers on it.

The car is going to be interior wise, very civilized, basically a stock

car. It's on the Fox body chassis, but that's something it's like just get in

it, have an absolute blast for a short period of time and then park it.

You know, it's you're not going to take that car cross country.

You could.

It'll do it, but that's probably not the car for that.

There's other cars for it, but that's the thrill in that because like, dude,

it's a Fox body.

You know, what are you going to put like a mild 302 in it?

And at that point, it's like, why even go through the trouble?

Some of those cars you can make throw a vortex supercharger on a stock one.

Right.

And that's, that's where I think the industry is really going to of these cars

now that don't just drive out of the trailer and drive to the winter circle

or, you know, I mean, there was a show I was at not too long ago and Troy made

the comment, Troy light made the comment to me that he had said he was amazed

how many cars couldn't even drive out to the parking lot to get hauled home.

The tow truck had to go in and get them out of the show to drive him home.

And he's like, seriously?

And he's like, that's, that's embarrassing.

I'm like, yeah.

I think I couldn't paint on his car last year.

Yeah, so fast.

I think Jeremy, like you were saying, I think it is it.

We've been talking about this for a while.

The industry is going that way.

And I think for so long, the majority of people weren't focused on that.

Most of everybody wasn't.

I mean, hell, there was a time we were not focused on things like we should

have been or, you know, the industry kind of pushes itself and the parts are

allowed, like parts weren't there to make the cars drive.

Correct.

Then they are.

You got to get a couple under your belt to realize you're doing wrong what

you want, then a couple more to refine it.

Yeah, it's good.

And it's the industry is evolved at a rapid pace and continues to evolve

at a rapid place, rapid pace.

Still, I don't think they're even in the, in what we're talking about now back

to the, there's not a one size fits all answer.

It's not a one size fits all answer to say that every single build out there

needs to be built to be driven and driven only because I think the most

important thing is to have that personal relationship, that conversation

with the customer and both sides be honest, the builder and the customer

be honest of what do you actually want to do because you're telling me that

you want to crank it on the weekends and do blast offs on your property with

the talking about it with the with the grandkids.

Okay.

Yeah.

Oh, stop.

You always give me the hard time about crank the engine.

So if you want to, if you want to start it up on the weekends and go out

and do burnouts with your grandkids or whatever and you're never going to drive

but you want all the horsepower and you want it to be reliable to crank up

and you want, you know, a gas or inspired thing or whatever it is, you

know what I'm talking about or there's other guys.

I mean, if hell, if you want a 36 Ford hand built fucking Roadster to be

the baddest thing in the last 25 fucking years and that's what you want to

do, build them that fucking car like Adam and Troy did.

You know what I'm saying?

Or you can take the other side of it.

So the 35 Chevy for us, we took it to the gathering of the rock and we drove

it for like 500 miles in bare metal thinking we're going to shake it down

and we did and we did all that stuff.

There's this ton of stuff that changes from bare metal to the end result

that, you know, is a difference in that.

But when, so last year we were going to take it back to the gathering of

the rock and we were driving the car.

We had put all this PPF stuff on the bottom to try and I don't know what

trying to not get it scratched up is what our hope was and we broke something

like two weeks before the gathering that was terminal.

I couldn't get it fixed that quick and I just got to thinking like,

what am I trying to prove that I can take this car that will never see the

freeway to go drive it on this thing.

So Josh is like, well, I guess that thing does drive.

Yeah, I don't know.

No trailer queen.

And you're like, but what does it really prove?

Like, cause that car's not built.

So what's that?

It's that car's really built.

That car's, as I call it, like a process car.

A guy builds that because he's involved in the process and checking, picking

all these things, going through all that and then you go out and you hope that

other people like it.

And so you, you go through that relationship and get to the end and I'm

like, so do I need to prove to people that we drive cars?

I don't think so.

That's a good point, man.

Yeah.

Like there's cars that are going to serve different purpose.

It's just when people advertise it for that to say, you know, oh word, I'm

going to build you this car that wins all this stuff and the guy's like,

well, I just want to drive it on the weekend and then it doesn't drive at

all.

But that, again, like you said, that, that came down to like, you wanted to

prove that you could build a car this nice and prove to all the other builders

that it could drive.

The customer would have never came and be like, Hey, not only got to do this,

but like, he's got to go to the rock and you got to show me that it's going to

drive.

He would, he didn't care.

Well, he did because he wanted to, but he wanted to experience the rock.

He didn't want to prove to anybody that it drove or did he?

Kind of cause he doesn't want to be the, you shouldn't have broke it then.

I don't know what to tell you.

But that's my point is you don't break it unless you drive it.

Yeah.

Had we have left it, you know, that's what I tell Troy all the time to use

for his mirrors, tell people the mirrors don't matter if you don't drive the

car.

Yeah, you don't fucking need them.

Right.

None of that matter as cool as they are.

It most of the time, the car looks a little better without mirrors.

Yeah.

So like you're putting them on with that windshield wipers.

You can just put a power glide in it.

If you're not going to drive it, you don't need to put air conditioning in

it.

There's so many things that don't matter if you're not going to drive it.

And so it's a very interesting conversation.

And I will say having talked to you a lot, I mean, we chat all the time and

knowing the way you've executed the Chevelles and what goes into them.

I think you've got the perfect recipe there.

Like I think you're checking all the boxes for what a Chevelle should do.

You're fixing all the things that are wrong with it and making it to where I

know the way the chassis is configured.

I know the way you're building the cars.

It's not it's not like getting into Tesla.

Nothing like that.

Like it's going to be a fun sporty.

It's sports car, muscle car.

It's a touring car.

You've checked a lot of the boxes to make you've built that car the way it

should be built.

And I think we're actually going to start building them where they were going

to go back to an LS motor that is naturally aspirated to get the sound

without making it because you put a blower on these things with a camera.

It sounds good.

It's gnarly.

It's fast.

You're making eight fifty nine hundred.

It's gnarly and it'll it'll it'll scare you like there's a lot of guys

who think they want that until they that changes the driving experience too.

When you're driving around puckered up all the time and you're worried

about a thing, you know, what we did that we did change the end.

We quite a bit too.

It does.

We did that Chevelle not too long ago for Roger Holder, who's a big well

known drag racer guy that races all these 5000 horsepower cars all the time.

And he's like the chip.

The we had a problem with the transmission and he's like, I don't care.

We're not going to detune the shift to do it.

I don't I don't want to change the driving experience.

We will figure out a way to do this, you know, the things like 1300 horsepower

and it's in 450 miles.

He's almost through a set of tires, but he but that's he's like, it's incredible.

You just it just goes straight and just works, but that's what he wants.

And I'm like, I just I don't even like for one, I don't want to drive it

because he's had it for 45 years and don't want to be the guy to wreck it.

But you know, he came in and did all the test driving and all that stuff

on the car because that's what he wants.

Yeah.

And he wants the car that scares him a little, but it's cool to see him text

you a video where he's driving it in 105 degrees still with the windows down

because that's another thing I think comes with the differentiation in those

two cars, the GT three car is a there's just some about rolling your windows

down in your muscle car.

Yep.

And then their touring car would be the guy who still puts the windows up

because he wants to be comfortable.

I what's the type of guy that has the wind the top down and the windows up?

Oh, well, see those guys.

The quarter windows.

That's how I was going to get a little better back in the day.

So he couldn't roll this down.

I was going to say you got to go all four windows down if you're going down.

Nothing worse than I know convertible with the windows.

It quarter windows up on any.

Oh, yeah, I don't think there's a muscle car.

I drive without the windows down at all times and I'll turn the AC on.

But Camaro must things easy.

A 70 Chevelle roll ups that passenger of your quarter is done.

That's a red light.

Oh, yeah, that thing tops out.

Yeah, we've all been there.

Camaro is near enough.

You can lean over.

Yeah.

Camaro, you can get it behind.

Yeah, catch that one.

And so I just think there's a bunch of stuff I've been processing for

what really is a muscle car.

What is the and there's probably a muscle car for two different people.

Well, the how many muscle cars where they're built and different types

and different wheelbases, they all sucked.

I understand that.

But there even those muscle cars were built for different people get

pissed when I say that, but I don't disagree.

They're by today's standards.

The Chevelle is a perfect GT car.

That's a perfect grand touring car.

That's the perfect because it's a weight wheel.

It's got weight and wheel base because it's not as big as an impala

and it's not as small as a Camaro and it's right there.

It's just like what Mercedes would build.

You know, it's not it's not a race car and it's not, you know, an S class.

It's it's and that's it's a good.

It's a good car to build and a good thing.

But like that's there's so many different ones with so many different

engines, they couldn't figure it out.

Nobody's been able to figure it out.

There's not in one time had we ever gotten close to saying, you know what?

Everybody's happy with one car and one car manufacturer.

Right on the engine choice, though, you can usually pretty much cover

your bases with two options.

Seven hundred and twenty five horsepower LS seven with the camera.

Yeah, that's and that's what you're doing.

It's an N a l s.

That's rowdy.

That's where it has the muscle car sound.

That's my preference.

Like it can't be the trains and we're doing it's a six seventy five

seven hundred horse and a seven and kept the cubic inches small, made

it spin some RPM and they sound nasty and it's a fucking wicked.

But I still like a L T for a Whipple charged LS.

The supercharged option is always has its place because the L T for

is so civilized, it makes it's the same horsepower as that package.

A little less, but you just I mean that thing will sit there idle.

It's more of the touring car.

It's touring car with some power.

So it was the first motor that was in the orange and white C 10 race

truck. Oh, that's it.

That was that was a tall day.

RHS.

Yeah, it's like five hundred inch.

Yeah, that was one of the best.

And then a tiny little motors.

Yeah, like a clutch six inch billet clutch.

That thing was awesome.

You had to sidestep it at four thousand RPMs.

He had to be replicated because that was.

Yeah, we did a 56 Chevy that the guy it was a huge cubic inch thing

like a 540 big block in it or something.

It sounded ridiculous, but at twenty three hundred RPMs down the highway.

It's all rope, rope, loading up.

No, it's loping down the road because it's it doesn't start making power

till full, but it sounded phenomenal.

So that car right behind you is still one of my favorites.

It's the 454 LSX in it.

Texas speed was like a six fifty six seventy five horse.

You could cruise it.

It had big block sound shit ton of power any time you wanted.

And first or second gear, you could blow the tires off of it fast enough

to beat a Hellcat.

Yeah.

Oh, wait.

Yeah, we did down the road tour on the interstate.

Yeah.

Turns out in Mexico.

So is there is there any new car stuff that I mean, obviously you

know, Lambos and all that stuff is cool, but is there cars that nowadays

that you think are intriguing?

Like because I feel like we're in this spot nowadays where like I was saying

that the rest of my stuff is coming back where I think cars have gotten too far.

I mean, just the rental car I got today.

I took me to one.

It took me 20 minutes for you to turn on the stereo because I couldn't

see the part that said double tap the screen to turn on the radio double

tapper double tap this.

And I'm just like serious.

Like I'm looking for knobs and I mean new car shit's weird because

I mean what the loudest group is the smallest purchasing group.

So the loudest group, everybody that hollers is bring them back to manuals.

We're done with push button.

We want actual tactile knobs.

Everybody's you know, that loudest group is the one that is moving back

towards like what we're building on a daily basis, but that loudest group

ain't the purchasing decision.

The biggest purchasing group just a asexual rounded box.

I don't care if you call it a car, a crossover, an SUV, it's four doors,

third row doesn't have to have a logo on it.

Just some mute color that will have big enough cup holders in the back

and I can put my back.

That's the biggest.

But that's like that's not car people, but that's new car.

That's what everybody's focused on because that's they're everybody's

going to that everybody.

The one you're missing is my wife's Stanley though putting the Stanley.

No, I'm thinking they to actually build the Canyon arrow from the

Simpsons, the biggest fucking SUV that you can possibly get 62 people in it.

Yeah.

Like fuck a third or also for a third row.

I think it needs to be like the CTA Chicago flex box fourth or fifth row.

Right.

Never use it, but it's there to use it if you need it.

That like that.

Remember that Centurion back in the day that kind of had it right.

It was the conversions with six door excursion.

Yeah, they'd take home.

They do all sorts of weird stuff like, you know, make a crew cab.

I think in like a four door suburban type thing, but yeah, where you just can

put like you can buy the whole grocery store and put it in it.

I think I mean, new car stuff.

The only thing that's it's always continuing to impress everybody is just

the amount of power that they're able to build in, you know, engine stuff.

I mean, as far as I mean, my wife wanted to get rid of her.

Our kids are now nine and 12.

She wanted to get rid of the Yukon cause she said it was too big and she

wanted something that was a manual transmission.

So of course I go to the, go to YouTube and I look around and I'm like,

well, uh, really you're probably in a Honda or an Acura.

Yeah.

And so we go down and I'm like, show her the Honda that's got a giant wing on

it and all this.

And I'm like, I'm not sure I'm seeing you that with the, she's like, oh,

the red interior.

Yeah.

No, that's not happening.

And so we go and she's, she's like, I was, she just, cause she just wanted

a manual, she doesn't want the horsepower.

And so she was, was one of the 200 horsepower Honda that was a manual.

And then of course they had to find it in Siberia cause they're not around.

And I'm like, I just don't know if I can be the guy that if I ever have

to drive this thing that I'm like, okay.

And so we got the type S, you know, it's like 10 grand more, whatever.

But you drive that and I've been driven a front wheel drive car in 30

years from the car my mom had when I was seven, 16 or 17 or something.

And like, it's a good driving car.

Like it makes 320 horsepower and I don't want any of that, but it just,

it's kind of sparked my interest of like, what is it with the all wheel drive stuff

that's, there's a lot of that stuff from the Ford focuses and the Subaru's.

It's kind of interesting of just all the stuff that's available with today.

The all wheel drives always intrigued me from the launch and then that's it.

It wants to try to go around a corner.

Yeah.

Like Phil had the, what's the RS six of odd?

Is that what they call it?

Yeah.

That's I had on the RS six wagon thought it was like the ultimate like do everything

car gay and really those things look super cool.

It's the best looking car.

I think that's ever been built, but when you're expecting it to be a sports car

that you can throw all the kids baseball gear in the back and have room for four.

It's fast in a straight line.

Yeah.

Real fast and straight line, but like you could, you could brake, torque it,

take your hands off the steering wheel, sidestep the brake and do zero to 60 and

three point whatever and fast as shit.

But you're the car is doing everything.

You're not doing anything.

No drama.

No, you couldn't break the tires.

You couldn't get it to slide.

You couldn't get it to do anything stupid and fun hindsight.

Like if I was a normal person, it'd probably be an incredible car.

But after driving all this stuff, you're like, yeah.

It's again, to me, it goes back to like being in tune with all these cars and

they like Audis have always driven me nuts.

The steering feel, you know, I like Porsche BMW steering feels amazing.

Audis, my wife's had a couple of the SUVs.

It's like driving a sailboat.

You just, you know, you could just like spin the wheel.

You know, they're like one of the few cars that have a negative scrub radius in the

front, which is why, you know, there's no resistance in like the contact patch on

the tire.

It's just like you ever, your wife has one.

Yeah.

What do you notice it?

Yeah.

It's the easiest thing that you can move.

Now she likes that.

Some people do.

Yeah.

But but in your car, I couldn't stand that.

I get out of the Raptor and I can't drive settings and put it in like the sport

firm mode made it tolerable.

But that goes.

Then that's a whole never tangent about driving your wife's vehicle.

If you drive, you can't reach the steering wheel in your wife's car.

Yes, you gotta get a curl up.

But no, I mean, if you, if you are used to driving your own personal daily

driver, you know, 150 times in a row and then you jump in whatever there's is,

you know, for a family thing, whatever, and the, uh, like how you look like you

can't drive, like brakes are touchy in the steering.

You're like, huh, I'm just getting used to it.

It's her BMW.

And it's the brakes were and I can't stand doing that.

Just my wife's, you know, you jump in there and you're like, shit.

It's not what you're used to driving.

I'll throw a kid from the third row through the windshield.

It breaks her just always to slow down three miles an hour.

But you do take like influence from a lot of stuff.

Steering feels always one of them.

You know, there's some ride quality stuff that you try to emulate.

I'll say driving your C8, the fucking trans is amazing.

Like that's got to be the most wild experience that it's literally like a video game.

It's almost too good that you have so much confidence in the little bit.

I drove it, but the sounds, I found out there's a couple of settings.

It wouldn't make you not have that confidence.

Would you still have the confidence?

It just outconfidence to you or does it?

The, no, I don't have the confidence anymore.

If you put it in those modes, get loose or the shifters.

I mean, yeah, the trans is still great.

However, the trans seems way greater when it doesn't blow the tires off in

like second, third, fourth and fifth.

So if he does that, then yeah, you're you're not you're not experiencing the fact

up with it or no, it just blows the if you take all the traction shit off.

It's just it's just does it manually shift faster than a 10 speed

because the 10 speeds are not the fastest.

No, it's a formula one.

It's it's instant.

Okay.

It's instant.

Yeah, it's it's and that's it's a zero six or a regular C8 zero six.

Okay.

Yeah, it's a so if you guys done cars with the eight HP.

Yeah, we got a truck C10.

That's right, which I love it.

The eight HP is probably the in my opinion, the best auto that you could

put in something that you're putting power to fix and to find out how that

new one from Blueprint feels.

That's the the ZF only one.

Yeah, it's going to go in.

So you're doing the eight eight HP 90 or the seven 90.

Yeah, we did a 90 in the C10 out there, which is not wildly supported.

You know, the 70s a lot more common.

But it's on that turbolamic TCU.

Fuller put the package together on it.

And I mean, it's great that like it's got the tap shift.

You know, you can bang gears in it.

It's super predictable.

It's, you know, on pump gas, it's eight 50 horse to nine Whipple

Wagner motor make a thousand probably on E 85.

But that is the transmission.

Yeah, everybody's going to that.

Autos, big horsepower, autos with especially supercharged motors.

Yeah, can be frightening.

You get yourself into a lot of fucking trouble with one because

they're often so unpredictable.

It's that you can get yourself in trouble with an LS 3430 horse

and a 4L 60.

Yeah.

When you put 15 inch fucking tires on it.

4L 60 will just yeah.

It gets you downshift.

Yeah.

It's only four speed.

This got seven gears because of the downshift.

And yeah, but the predictability of it, like you dip into the throttle.

I mean, assuming the trans tunes dialed in, but you dip into the throttle

and it's just dropping a gear, dropping a gear in the RPMs, right?

It feels more like a manual because the RPMs right where you want it.

You don't want to let that thing like, you know, build a bunch of boost

and then fucking then the trans catches up and then tires break loose

and then you're in the fucking median, you know, that's what happened

to me on a road tour in that blue wagon that I think Dave has now.

Yeah.

We're following some hippie through Oregon at like 35 miles an hour

and there's been a line of traffic and now it's my turn to get it on.

Show everybody.

And I was, I had my kids in the car and my wife's that, you know, so you're,

but there's like that point where you can't just get it to you're like,

I just want a couple gears and you look over and you're doing 110.

You're like, and you're what my wife's like, what are you doing?

I'm like, it's a 35.

I'm just trying to get around the hippie like, but it just downshifts

and is gone.

Yeah.

Even like the engine braking on the way it shifts is good because a lot of

those autos too is freewheel.

Yeah.

It just holds the gear and the car.

Like you get off the throttle and you do one of you do one of those

pulls like up to, you know, you know, so you're going up to 120,

130 miles an hour and you get off the throttle and the fucking car is still

like picking up speed that especially LT four that eight HP.

It does a nice job of like you get off the throttle.

You know, it's got some engine braking there.

It brings drags it back down.

It's all in how you feel like a manual.

Yeah.

But I you got one in something or you're looking to put it in something.

I want to put it in some things.

I'm, I got a truck from a buddy of mine and I decided to, um, I ordered a

chassis from Rob at no limit because I wanted his race car because he's the

autocross king for what, for trucks and stuff.

So I, I wanted that deal and I wanted whatever he was, yeah, we can edit it out.

But I wanted to try a whole bunch of stuff and I want to make it like not

normal, like of trying to make a, I'm putting super small brakes, doing all

the things I can that, um, make it like just to try things.

I want to, I want to try driving it with the hood off just to see what it

does to air intake temperatures.

Um, I wanted to, I probably lowers them probably does.

And so, um, but because that's a huge consideration with those blower motors.

Yeah.

Like trying to get, they build a ton of, a ton of heat.

And so, but I want to see, I want to see how the car feels differently.

Sure.

Like I want to, and I wanted to do it with a truck because everybody thinks, oh,

a truck can't hook up because it's a truck.

You know, you got to put 500 pounds of kitty later in the back of the truck and

go race on Saturday night.

Yeah.

You do in a new truck that's designed to haul weight, but not doing that.

And so I just wanted to try something that was like not in his, in his mind.

Yeah.

It's meant for the street, but it's not meant for the, it's not meant to be,

it's not, I'm not trying to build a tour.

I'm not trying to build the touring car to do that.

And so I'm putting the eight HP in it.

I'm doing a 70, um, cause I go back to some of these cars with once again, with

the big super chargers, with a clutch, they have that huge dual disc clutch.

Yeah.

And there's a ton of connect, ton of guys that built LT fours for, they

could have totally gotten away with a single day's clutch now seeing the way

that they drove it, seeing all this other stuff.

So you're not trying to move that clutch pedal four miles or have a clutch

that's super stiff to push so that it's not a long distance.

And so I've just been seeing that and I wanted to try the eight HP F, especially

after seeing there was an Autotopia video where the guy had put the two JZ

motor in a 240 Nissan or something and he had the paddle shifters on

the steering column and he had the, um, sequential type shifter.

Obviously it's a lecture electronic, but he's up.

What is he?

He's downshifting here and upshifting here and keeping one hand on the wheel

to do that.

And I'm like, man, that's right.

That fucking triumph.

You can get the electronic clutch pedal in them too.

If you want.

Yeah.

It's just interesting to try all those things.

And so I just wanted to try something that was crazy.

Something that's, it's got, I'm not trying to put cool wheels on it.

I'm trying to do a lot of stuff that's, it's got a super wide track with

what year truck.

Do you say was like an 82?

Well, that, uh,

like trying to clutch, well, you talked about that.

That'll allow you to slip it too.

Yeah.

It's progressive.

Yeah.

I've never driven one.

I've researched a bunch, but you know, guys use it like drifting.

What do you do with your hand when you're working that clutch?

You know what I'm saying?

Like you're so used to, it would be a, uh, like a muscle memory.

Right.

What do we do?

Yeah.

You mean for the shifter?

Yeah.

Because.

Oh, you're saying pushing the clutch.

Yes.

If you, if you do, I'll let you shift.

Exactly.

I mean, it would be, it'd be quite the, the, yeah.

They're not really clutching them on shifts.

It's like launching guys are clutch kicking them to drift them stuff like

that.

I understand, but yeah, it's weird.

As soon as you, as soon as that left foot goes in, you're expecting

to do something with your right hand.

Yeah.

So the car my wife got, like, she went to go take my kids to school

the first time and my kids are like, so you got to do that thing

like all the time.

She's like, yeah, I love it.

And they're like, you're weird mom.

It's a good dry, like driving tool for learning to drive.

I feel like that's something nobody does anymore, but it definitely

keeps kids like focused on my wife.

I think that the kids should be driving manuals so they can't text.

I mean, I'm pretty good at driving in my whole life.

So I can be sitting there and I'll have my coffee, like I'll lock it

in my arm and I'll reach over.

I'll shift with my, with my left hand and then I'm fucking texting.

I get one hand on the wheel shifting gears, but that's an experience.

You know, it's like traveling on those old Peter Belcher.

Like 30 years of experience, drive a Honda Civic.

When you learn if you're driven for so long and you can get it right

to the certain RPM or whatever.

You don't need clutch and no clutch.

And it's just a bump with the elbow while you still got your

cell phone or your thing and it.

And I guess that's, I guess that's what I'm saying.

It's a really exciting time with everything that's out there.

It really is.

There's a lot of great, cool stuff of, of parts and pieces and things that

are, I mean, have you guys seen the Mason Motorsports guys?

They build trophy trucks in California.

Those portals.

The portals are cool.

The trailing arms.

The trailing arms where it's two differentials on each side.

Do you know where that came from?

A fucking conversion van.

There was a tractor thing.

No, there was a van that was done that.

I think General Motors did it originally and that's where the concept.

Really?

Yeah.

Google it.

If you want, I believe you, but it's nuts.

I saw the picture of the rear axle because it's differentials on each side.

And I'm like, there's nothing connecting it.

And then you realize first either.

It was, and then you go like, oh, so it allows the truck to sit lower

because the driveline doesn't have to go down the middle or be somewhat offset.

Like it's way offset.

So now the truck can sit lower and have more travel and all that.

You're like, those guys are like, I mean, essentially you could put them outside the

truck.

I mean, the wheels could go past it.

You don't have, they are technically carbon brace connecting both sides.

Yeah.

You don't have the CV like way at the back at the, at the highest end of the

trail.

You don't have anything.

Yeah.

And then they put the gear reduction in the front in the portals.

Yeah, it's nuts.

That's what's always intrigued me about like to an aftermarket all wheel drive

setups.

It's just the, just my mind and like thinking through all the scenarios of

the crazy things you can sort of concoct to do it.

There's a lot of cool parts out there.

Well, now there's like, I mean, years ago I tried, I did my truck chassis with

the transaxle.

I did a couple transaxle cars, but really only one got to the end, which was mine.

And it was too nice to lie.

You, you know, you talked all the smack that you're going to go drive it and do

all this stuff, but then you wind up selling the truck and you show the

truck and it was, it drove fine, did all that stuff, but you didn't, you

didn't ever really got to experience having the weight in the back.

And now I just feel like that stuff's just easier to do now.

They're still not on the all wheel drive.

I mean, just because of physics, there's, there's still not.

Is that the solution?

There's not a normal track with normal hood height v8 and a way to get

steering drive shaft diff up front.

It's just not it.

It's definitely not in product form.

Like there's no one off it.

Yeah.

It's just if you get rid of the passenger too many, too many of the things

want to exact occupy the exact same space.

Ideally, you've got 500 different cars with different front axle center

lines in relation to the motor and all that moves.

Yeah.

You do it for a show of elements.

Somebody wants to come arrow and then a Mustang and and then a 62 Nova

something super small.

Yeah, that should fit easy.

Yeah, that'll fit easy.

That's sort of what we're trying to wrap up.

Everything we've talked about here is what we're kind of trying to wrap up

in this Pantera build.

It's checking all the boxes are the best.

Everything like the best steering feel, the best trans gearbox experience,

the best engine sound and performance like huge and a horsepower that still

civilized nail the sound like all that stuff wrapped into one.

And then obviously the no wind noise thing tightened in the car making it

but still be a very auxiliary.

This oral experience, but yet have some really trick modern shit underneath it.

It's going to be cool.

I'm just excited for the future.

It's a good time.

All the stuff that's coming for that stuff.

Definitely good time.

Come a long way from the old BNM shift kit, you know, on the turn 400s.

I mean, you got to figure 20 years ago that just all the cars drove the same

by 20 years ago.

We were trying to figure out the fucking with the TV cable on the 700 R for

me.

We're all burning them up.

Yeah, that was the.

Yeah.

Well, because you guys have what's the new shock brand that you have?

Nitron or something?

Yeah, it's a their their menu.

They're building them for us.

It's it's our Roadster shop line of shocks.

So there's got to be a difference.

It's a huge difference.

And that again was exactly you'll get some of the first ones.

I ordered some.

Oh, yeah, I have a truck chassis on order that.

So Greg, the guy with the Chevelle's, he wants to do a C 10 truck and we're

doing an eight HP and he has a 430 horse LS three that's been sitting in the back

forever.

And he's like, that's all I want that with the eight HP, but I want to put the

good shocks on it.

He loves the electric shocks.

So everything that was on the same on that same truck that you guys just

finished for the shock package is, you know, because we want to try those things.

And that's again, it sort of goes against everything we were talking about

because that that gets you like the one car.

It's it's starting to get there.

It takes you from like you want that touring car.

It hit a button.

It's the touring car.

You want the GT three like, I mean, boom, hit the button.

It's it's GT three.

And that's that's sort of one of the driving factors in making that change.

It's evolving, making the cars more enjoyable, making them to where I enjoy

driving them more.

And it's putting sort of taking we focused heavily on like very touring car

type shock package early on.

We were working with Penske and we focused very heavily on like a pro touring.

You're going to road course this thing.

You're going to autocross it.

Give you fucking race car like Indy car.

Yeah.

And this is really without sacrifice.

You know, you guys have all driven them without sacrifice.

It really is the best of both worlds where we're we're running.

We can run like I mean, crazy light spring rate, 150 pound rear springs

where we're running 350 pound rear springs.

So ride quality just killer, but you it's still the valve stack in the

shock and the shock supports the car.

The performance is so good that you're not giving anything up.

You don't need to run 650 pound rear springs.

We did to make it a fast off because the shocks are helping with the spring

rate.

Yeah.

The shocks are just the way that they're valve the way that shocks design.

It's you're dropping serious rate in springs.

Well, serious rate.

It's funny how we did.

You know, we won't go too far down the rabbit hole because it's still pre pre

hard launch, but we've been doing testing on that for quite some time.

And the three of us and Michael Brian and a couple of other guys will do,

you know, some road testing.

You want to have a bunch of different asses in those seats, right?

A bunch of different opinions.

And the three of us like, well, I know we don't like to like talk to each

other until after all of it, right?

So it's like, so it's like I drove it.

Not it's done, you know, and, you know, then I remember the like the final time

where it was like, it was our, it was 99.9% there before.

And it was that one that, you know what, like let's, let's in that 99.9

went to like 110.

I know that's not a thing, but it did.

It really did.

And I remember I drove it and then Phil drove it and then Jerry's driving

it and me and Phil and it was one of those like you felt, I felt so good

about it and I was so blown away about it that I was almost like pulling back

because I'm like, man, I probably, I might be an idiot.

Like it might not be that good.

And then I'm like, Phil, I'm like, that thing's pretty nice.

He's like, yeah, like you instantly, we got, we got two little spots.

Like one is the very first transition coming out of the driveway, right?

Under the main road.

Oh, right out of the overhead door is always the first indication when

the concrete drops about like an inch.

Yeah.

And so it's kind of like, you know, and then me and then like 30 seconds

and it's like, that's just ridiculous.

It was absolutely, well, that feeling when you, when, when what was your

10 for a while, maybe even a while.

And then all of a sudden you get in and it's a dip.

Like it's a noticeable difference.

Like as soon as you go over the first bump and you're like, I've had that

happen with a bowler transmission when we've had it blueprinted.

Guys are commenting how great it is before they've got the car backed

out of the shop.

Yeah.

And they're like, dude, this is totally different.

And you're like, I told you, like it's disc, it disconnects your

ass from the road.

And you're steering, steering, you don't feel a little cracks in

the road that you would get that.

It's just that part's gone.

But the steering wheel, but not in a bad way is still there.

If not better.

Yeah, it's a hundred percent better.

Cause yeah, like you said, like we, we spent a shit ton of time getting

to what we thought was the best of the best for the last few years.

And then you get to this and you're like, yeah, we just blew that out of

the water.

And then with like the electric side, like we probably all like kid ourselves

that like it's adjustable coilover.

So you're going to get out of there.

You're going to change knobs.

You're not like, we've got a shop.

Like we've got four or five mechanics.

We could pull the thing in and be like, all right, let's put it up in the

air and let's put it on kill mode.

That never happens.

Like you're never actually going to do that.

You said it for the best all around and you never touch it again.

This you've got a cruise quality or, you know, a smooth, a sport and a race.

And it's a button that's night and day difference on the shock package

and what it does with the valving.

And I'd probably leave mine and race full time just cause.

Little bit of the say, don't massacist on that.

And I want it to perform to that level.

That's the kind of car I want to drive.

But like you can have that at your fingertips.

I'm the same way.

I like to feel the stuff, but not have it beat me up.

Yeah.

I rode in a car that had some super duper shocks and the guy was all excited to

show me and you see these gnarly railroad tracks coming and you drive over them

and you're like, you didn't feel a thing.

Like I don't like that.

I don't like, you know, I want to feel some of the road.

Like, but you want it to, like you said, not beat you up, not wear you out,

not do those things.

The right amount of feedback.

Yeah.

And to your point, like take a double adjustable shock.

Let's say you're cruising.

You're, you're driving through town where you just, you want the car to ride smooth.

You get out of town and now you get into some windy roads.

Like first thing you do is pull over.

Are you going to pull that car over to the side of the road and on a double

adjustable shock that's got like 30 clicks in each.

You have 60 clicks.

You're trying to remember which way is where.

And then you're like, zero it out.

Start back.

One, two, three.

And then your question.

Did I just a counter cause the clock was damn it, damn it, damn it.

I mean, you'd be under the car for 15 minutes.

The exhaust is smoking hot on your quarter zip.

Yeah.

Depending on what car it is, right?

But you're not really going to do it.

Even all the cars that we've had, I mean, I very seldom get under there and

screw with my own shocks on stuff, but track car when you're trying to do something

and but, and you know very well that there's a huge swing in performance to be

had or increased ride quality, but when you can do it electronically and

it's actually doing something instead of, you know, just some kind of fake crap.

But yeah, but it's also, it's not, I mean, we'll go again.

We're not going too far.

Those are like placebo, right?

It's not really moving just like going to the next setting, right?

That's that's available just in cabin control.

It's not just that.

It's also now it's like active.

So it's active.

No, it's pretty cool.

That's when it's just driving normal and all that stuff.

And before like it knows what's going to happen before it happens.

That's on a different level when you can have literally all the best of all

those worlds of and did you guys know that when you adjust the shocks far

enough away, it ruins the initial compliance of the shock.

So you have to re valve the shock.

If you get too far away from the base because the initial bleeds

don't line up anymore.

I didn't, I didn't know that much rebound trying to stiffen it or trying

to make it firmer and it gets too hard to drive.

And what we did the Oldsmobile and I, we, I drove the car and I'm like,

it just feels like it's lighter, but it's heavier.

And, and so, and we kept, we made adjustments.

We'll come to find out that it actually was, we, we couldn't figure out

why it rode that way in the initial.

Finally, we waited, realized it was heavier, which made no sense

that it, it felt like it was under sprung.

And so, and, and, and it, we'd done all the other cars and we had all

these comparisons to it.

And that's when I found out that because the car's heavier, we'd adjusted

this, adjusted the suspension differently on it, which made it give it more

rebound, which added the other part.

So I had to send the shocks in because that of the weight of that car to get

back to that point to get the initial compliance.

Yeah.

I had no idea that the bleed made so much of a difference just in that

initial compliance.

Yeah.

Bleeds big.

They bleed, but honestly, the spring rates huge on everything too.

Like a 50 pounds is, it can be a huge adjustment to 25 pounds.

Yeah.

I think it, I, I can't tell you how many cars I've had come in that other

people have built that the front springs are just rammed as high up as

they will go.

Oh yeah.

So cause they were like, well, these are the springs they sent.

So they must be right.

They said LS motor and I have an LS motor.

I mean, it was a learning experience of huge.

I still have to run to Jeremy on about all of them, but the, you adjust

rate to keep the spring at a suggested length to keep the car at the right

height that you wanted in my mind.

Right.

We use a percentage.

Yeah.

It's, but I, the availability of spring tuning on preload and links and

lightning and cheating it this way and cheating it, not cheating it, but

the playing those games to be able to get the car to do different things

completely blew my mind.

I understand how it is a thing in the race car stuff, but in this kind

of thing, I was like that seeing it firsthand was a complete and it's

difficult because it could be back to volume.

Like there's no possible way to send every single chassis out

there and nail every single spring rate for every single type of build and

every single type of driving experience and every single type of motor

that's going to change three times before the car gets built.

Like there's just no way to hit it.

Whatever.

It sucks.

I wish we could.

I wish we could, but that's, I mean, it's, it makes such a difference.

And we try, you know, we, you know, sales guys try to do a good job and

we definitely deal, you know, with, with a lot of, of, of our volume

customers and stuff.

And you know, the guys that know it's like one of those things like, Hey,

once the car is driving and done, like our relationship's not done, like call

back.

Yeah.

It's doing this.

Hey, I'd like it to do this.

Is there anyone to do this?

I mean, we've seen it all and it happens.

I mean, we've done, we've done most of all the mistakes ourselves, which is

why we know the mistake.

If there is one, you know, I mean, it's not.

That's what's been cool about the Chevelles is that it's the same thing.

So we've gone back and done what we did to number five back to number one.

And we've been upgrading the other cars.

And before you're like, well, you get this one done and I get ways this much

in the front, but it's this or that, like there's just common differences

in things and you really can't, you don't really know.

You're like, well, this one rides better, but the wheelbase is longer.

Do you realize how many times with the amount of chats we've got and the amount

of custom cars that are being built, do you realize how many times a year

that springs are painted to match the color theme of the car?

No, you know, that's, that's done.

And then they have no idea what the spring rate is.

Well, that was my next question.

Do you think they have any idea what the spring rate is?

Good thing.

Well, it's four springs.

We document it, but you also don't know if they've got the backs.

Well, that's, that's where I was going.

Man, this thing is hammered.

Stiff as shit in the back.

Yeah.

I cannot get this thing to ride.

I, it's no matter what.

So what's the rate you've got on it?

Six fifties in the back.

Well, the first thing is it's always in the front.

Hey, what's the rate on the front spring?

Oh man.

How do I tell that?

Well, it's got a, it's got a number on the back of, oh shit, I painted the

springs.

We can go ahead and swap them.

If you painted the springs, you know, on the number I'm telling you right now,

just go ahead.

Well, diameter.

I know, but I'm just, yeah, it's, it's a bunch of cards where we have raised

the spring rate to make them ride smoother.

Yeah.

And the customer's always like, what did you just say that again?

No, I'm going to put a stiffer.

No, don't put a stiffer spring on it.

Yeah.

No, it's already rides different.

You're like, I'm telling you, there's no suspension up front.

It's just in coil bind.

Yep.

They've just like, there's no more threads left.

That eight inch spring is about four and a half inches long.

By going to a stiffer spring, we're going to give you suspension.

Actually have a spring.

I was just looking at that on a Senate to fill because, you know, I think we all

fuck around on bring a trailer a lot.

Right.

And you just look at, you look at cool pictures.

I was looking at, there's a Kuntash on there right now.

So there's a bunch of undercarriage shots of it and you know, they've got four

coilovers, I think on the back and rear coilovers, front coilovers.

You could tell they're stock, like they're weathered, like they're stock full

coil bind on all four corners.

I love those pictures when you see the custom cars in the magazine.

Like this is how this is how it came from Lamborghini.

Like clearly it's not been screwed with.

Like, well, man, you could probably improve that ride quality.

That thing is probably because it's like your ride.

Not it's good thing.

It's got 15s with some sidewall on it.

Or that tire is going to crash into something if you start doing that.

That's right.

Yeah.

If you give it some wheel travel, you know, that's yeah, it's a bump stop.

Lamborghini even trying to make stuff actually work then.

I mean, I, if you've looked at some underside judges, Kuntash's and Diablo's.

Wow.

Yeah.

I saw one that looked like it was all square tubing.

There's play sets that have been built better in the seventies.

Then it's shocking.

And they sure had the style.

Like in houses have been done an electrical conduit that look better.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's easy restaurant.

Yeah, it is shocking.

Segway.

Good Segway.

Um, talking about all that we've gone into on the building cars and achieving.

Um, what each of us individually have in our head for, you know, checking all

the box boxes from performance and NVH and steering and braking and trying to

give the ultimate experience talking about listening to those customers and

giving them what they actually want in the business class side of things.

You focus mostly on the business side of things.

Do you ever get into those topics on specifics on building of the car and

the nuts and bolts there?

And if it, if you don't to level two class, yeah, I don't, I don't think it

matters of how to build the car because I, I believe we spend a ton of time

talking about choosing your lane.

And I think there's so many guys that try to be all things outside that are

outside of their wheelhouse just to build the car because you see a lot of shops

that are body shop slanted shops or fabrication slanted shops where they're

like every car that comes out of there, the paint job is perfect.

And the fabrication is minimal, you know, or it's funky and you know, you

see where they mig well to everything together and it's, you know, you see

the cave and pave stuff where they can, you see the build pictures and you're

like in bare metal and you're like, holy, holy, that's a ton.

And, and so you see those aspects of it, but I just feel like there's an,

they're like McDonald's sells hamburgers that are not the greatest hamburgers.

Like, but you, why do you go to him?

You go to McDonald's, you go to McDonald's cause you either want to

quick or because you want to cheap, which I guess it's not cheap anymore.

But, um, and so I kind of look at it that way is that if you're satisfying

the customer and giving the customer what they want, not everybody has the money

to build a half million dollar car.

Oh, no, I agree.

I'm just, I'm wondering if there's a scenario that exists that if, uh, these

shops absolutely could benefit from the business advice and running the shop.

Could those same shops also not benefit?

Like you said, a phase two of just nuts and bolts tips and tricks on things.

It's not to, this is the business class to go and win, you know, Sloanaker or

whatever it is, but this is, these are some things that you absolutely should do.

Regardless, right?

It's a hot rod class.

Yeah.

I mean, it's, I don't know.

I'm just spitball on here as we're talking.

You know, I mean, I'm wondering that's a conference.

Well, that's a full blown conference, right?

That's, but I guess I would just ask you what you're at Regency, what you're

saying, like technically how to righty, tidy, lefty, Lucy.

No, no, no, no, no.

I mean, it's all the things that we were just talking about here and the things

that sort of reading, reading the customer, trying to deliver.

Yes, we go through all that, the right car for him.

We start the class with picking your lane because so many guys, I feel like

there's one or two things happen is either you pick your lane, which Dave

Lane picked his lane.

Like that's what he wanted to do.

He didn't want employees.

He didn't want any of those things.

He wasn't trying to build some big monstrous thing and he should be teaching

the business classes.

He's the one that figured out.

He should just be teaching the life class.

Somehow he's doing something different than you and I are.

And so, and, and that's where I, I asked them, are you building the cars

you want to build?

Cause I think it's interesting to watch some of these guys that are traditional

hot rod guys that build street rods.

You're like, didn't you kind of sell your, like you have black and white

tattoos and you have all, you live in the, live in that lifestyle.

Josh is black and white tattoos.

I always will.

But, but you, no color from me, but you get what I'm saying.

Like they don't do color.

They fit, they fit that genre.

And, and they, and so they're going through, through that.

And then they wind up building all these other cars.

And so, um, and so we talk about, you know, what are your employees good at?

Cause if you have a whole bunch of like mig weld and Bondo slinging people,

you probably shouldn't be trying to take.

Well, the, I mean, I've, I've heard of guys that do something that they call

it mig ticking where you make weld and add tick wire.

I've never, I've never seen it.

Only heard of it in legends.

I had to try it because who, we were joking about somebody that Jesse

taught me about it.

Yeah.

Greening was at the big tick that somebody did it.

I don't, we can't name names, but it never just named a name.

No, he, he just told me about it.

He told you the legend of a mig ticking.

I had to try it.

I know, I know the guy because I was like, people actually do that.

I know.

And so it fucking works.

Like when they do the body work, big gap, they cave and pave.

They kick the middle of the door in so that they can Bondo up the whole, Bondo

it up to that point and they don't care.

Like as long as the cave doesn't hit the window, I guess they don't, or they,

maybe they don't even get far enough that they put the window in the door.

I don't know.

And so we just talk about that stuff of, cause there's sometimes where

the lane chooses you and there's times where you choose the lane.

And, and I think that's really, um, just a big thing that comes cause the

work comes in the front door and it's, what are you going to do with it?

Are you going to say yes to every person who comes in the front door?

Cause there's a question that I ask in the email stuff leading up to it,

which most guys don't get.

You can always tell the arrogant guys who kind of give you a half ass or

they don't answer, um, some of the questions cause they, I mean, one of them

is like, can you tell me your project to employee ratio?

And there's the guy in the last class was like, not tracked.

Well, you just told me how many cars are in your shop and how many employees

you have.

You can't do the math.

You just figured out real quick.

Yeah.

You have to, you have to call accounting to get that.

And, but it's just interesting to watch that part.

And so I asked people how close have you ever come to running out of business?

And you know, is it like every three weeks you're like, well, I don't know.

This week's going to be a short week.

I guess most guys, if you're doing quality work, never even get close.

And so, and another one, another question I ask is how many of your current

customers, if you could get rid of them in hindsight, would you wish you would

have never said yes to, and there's always 20 or 30% of the everybody has

some customers that they're like, yeah, probably wish I wouldn't have said yes

to this job or the person or whatever it is.

And, and it's interesting as you watch guys get further along in their careers.

They're more concerned with the customer than they are the physical project.

But I, I mean, I had a guy and I had a guy in the last class here.

No, one of the last classes, he said, I would live under a bridge to build

a street machine of the year car.

And then a quick moment of brilliance, I said, and you realize that guy's

never going to hire you to build a street machine of the year car.

If you live under a bridge and you're like, but I don't, I, I think

eventually that click form where you're like, you have to be like functioning

and making your business work.

And, but there's a lot of guys that I really, I look at their priorities,

which I think mine were completely jacked up.

I think that's why I didn't get married until I was 32, 33 to finally find

someone like my wife that was going to put up with my craziness of that's

all I did was eat, sleep and breathe cars.

That's, you know, and so, but, but there's, there's a balance in that

of, of choosing your lane.

And now I'm more, I'm more concerned with the customer than they in the car.

That's how I ended up with that Mercedes that we're doing.

Cause I hear from a lot of people like, well, why would you do that?

And I'm like, if you saw the email I got from him initially and you talk

to him on the phone, you'd be like, man, that dude's super cool, but

he wants to build a Mercedes.

I'm like, I'm going to try to build the best Mercedes I can.

And now people are like, man, that's pretty cool.

My redneck friends are like, that thing's pretty cool.

That's me.

I'm like, dude, that Mercedes is bad.

You know, and, and so, but it's just interesting as you, that's the part.

I, I try to encourage people that it's not about going to the shows.

So yes, that gets your name out there.

Yes, that does this, but don't think like you have, I hear so many guys

that are like, well, this car is not what we want to build.

Okay.

Are you building the cars?

Well, not yet.

So you're just going to be radio silent in the industry until you build

the stuff you think is good enough to put on your social media.

Yeah.

Like are you doing a good job on this car?

Yes.

I'd say the bills.

Like, but there's also a point where you're only as good as the last thing

you did.

Yeah.

You know, and so you have to choose your lane is the biggest thing I hear

from guys after the class of just learning to choose your lane of what

you're going to do, whether you're going to build entire cars, whether

you're just going to do pain body, whether you're going to chase the

almighty dollar, whether you're going to chase the passion.

You know, there's a guy that's in our 20 group because the 20 group is kind

of our stage two, but it's a monthly, we now meet twice a month.

We were doing it monthly.

Now we're doing it meeting twice a month.

One meeting is just hanging out, asking questions.

We don't even record it.

The other one we record and we Troy and I put some effort into a message

of sorts and then discussed through that stuff.

And so there's 15 or 16 guys in there.

Um, typically they sign up for a year and that's where we meet regularly

to talk about that stuff, but we won't let you get into the 20 group

unless you've been through the class to understand that you all the things

you want to come through running a shop.

Like there's so many guys that are like, I want to build a street

machine of the year car.

I just don't want to dump the trash.

Well, you don't dump the trash in your shop.

And so you think a guy's going to walk in here and be like, Oh, there's a 350.

I just can't like, like you see the guys who set engines on old tires.

Like that happens still.

And you're like, really?

Like, where else do you sit them at?

So that's a tire stand, right?

I mean, that's engines.

In the yard.

Under the tree, right?

The chain hoist.

Yeah, that's where my Nova goes.

That's where my Nova goes.

But you still see those things.

And you're like, so you want, this is what you want, but you don't want it

enough that you're willing to dump the trash, run the books, take charge of

your business.

You want to be the man and you want to, you want to hang your sign out

front, but you don't want it enough to actually clean the shop up.

Or you can tell the guys who there's just a layer of Bondo dust on everything

in the entire shop.

I mean, your point is you want, you should demonstrate that professionalism

long before the shop stacked with cars that maybe that the cars would show

that professionalism, show the professionalism yourself.

At some point, the cars will come and you see, you see the memes on Instagram

where it's got some big fat dude or big fat girl.

That's like a meme.

I don't know.

Whatever.

Is it, is it mean everywhere except Bakersfield?

I think it's a meme.

Impala.

First time I've heard men.

Oh, I'm sorry.

But, but you caught me off guard there.

But they're like Rose Biff.

They're like, oh, I want a girl or a guy that's fit and goes to the gym and

you can just tell that they have only gone to the chicken place next to

the gym.

Yeah.

And so, and it's like you, there's a point where you have to do that.

And I think I try to encourage people just finish cars.

Like if you're not strong in fabrication, then don't try to put a

custom firewall on this thing.

Just build a, build a tri-five that runs good.

All the trim works well.

The door flappers work on your, on, on that part.

Roadster shop chassis on it.

So it sits good.

Yeah, make the right wheels and just make it nice and boom.

You don't like a lot of fabric.

You don't have to feel like you're very easy to install.

Very minimal money.

But, but that's, that's really what we say is try, is just know what your

strength is because more than likely, if you're trying to do something that

everyone else is doing and you're not there yet, that's where you're going

to lose money.

That's where you're going to, you're going to, you're going to have a car

come in and the guy's like, oh, I'm, I'm willing to spend 175 grand on

there.

And you think that's a huge amount of money into a car and you're like, oh,

we're going to go, we're going to Columbus with this thing.

And you go way overboard on the thing.

The customer's mad.

He's out of money.

Then it doesn't get this and you're like, oh, this guy just doesn't

understand and all, and all that led back to the initial decision of you

just trying to make something of what it wasn't.

And so we, we, that is a huge crux of where we start with the lane, the

customers and what you really want to do.

And I, Jeremy and I have talked about this a few times.

You and I've talked about it of, I don't think any of us want, for me,

25 years ago is when I opened my shop.

I never thought I would sit at the desk as much as I do.

Oh yeah.

Nobody.

Yeah.

Cause I'm dealing with trying to get all this stuff done.

Yeah.

The painter, the engine stuff, all, all these types of things.

And you're like, you know, you, there's, there's a guy, Donny that's in a 20

group that is trying to narrow down his workload so that he can spend 20

hours a week now in the shop, but just working on his cars.

I wanted to ask you, we talk business open with that.

Yeah.

No, but he's got employees that are doing there.

So he's creating management stuff to where he's, um, he's trying to just

make things as streamlined as possible for his opera.

He's not trying to grow and he's happy with what is here, but he wants

to go back to working on that.

And I, and I think it's interesting the same thing of, I mean, 25 years ago,

I would have, all I wanted to do was work on cars.

And now I have a garage, I have a shop at home where I have the space to do it.

And I don't really want to work on something after hours.

Like it's,

it's exhausting.

I mean, you put a lot of work during the day.

It's tough to, at this age, the energy is not quite what it was to get

done with a 10, 12 hour work day and then go.

Well, the problem is the setup, like if, if I could roll home and be set up to

like start working within 15 minutes of arrival and be able to put in a good

three, four hours on a project, then possibly there's going to be some time,

but could you be happy with what you produce in your garage?

That's what I was going to say.

I think it's a different, you're doing this up to this level that now you've

got, no, it's going to be so much crazy stuff.

You're going to be, you're not going to be happy just building a basic car.

You're going to want to build significantly better than what you do here.

I mean, I'd use all those resources.

I now own the orange 55 Chevy.

We got that not too long ago and I was working on registration stuff and

things like that.

And my wife's like, I fired it up not too long ago and I don't know if you

guys ever heard it, but it's got that huge blower.

So it has a huge noise.

And so we drove it around our, our neighborhood just cause I was trying

to keep, you know, things moving and she's like, why don't you drive this

morning?

I'm like, cause it, it's a, it's a B 15 motor and it just doesn't have a

cam and I'm like, it just needs a cam.

And she's like, you're so stupid.

And so now never satisfied, but you're just never satisfied.

And so, and I look at things that we did, I don't know.

We unveiled that thing for 2015 or something.

It seemed like it's just not what we do now.

So I think it's less or embarrassing, which is totally stupid, but it's

just the way we think now.

But well, okay.

And so what I wanted to ask you, I was going to ask you something different,

but I'm going to ask this first because you just said that you're, how

much in the business class are these builders worried?

And do you talk about worried, not worried.

How much are they, are they focused or cognizant of what the peers and what

the industry as a whole thinks of their work versus what they're doing

for the customer?

And do you touch on that?

And interesting, but you are even worried about what people are going to

think of you driving around in that fucking 55.

It's just what I think.

Well, I don't, I don't really care to, to take it somewhere.

It's just, you're looking at that as, oh, we could do so much better now.

I'm just snotty about it where I'm like, but it's the same.

Like we all do the same thing.

And I, that's not going to change because if you weren't that way, then

you would be building the exact same cars that you were building 25 years ago.

A hundred percent, a hundred percent.

And that's just, we talked about this the other day.

That's the fucking curse.

But I look back at the things that I put more effort into it than I needed that

costed me money that kept me from buying tools that kept me from doing things and

kept me from raised my stress level, raised all of those types of things.

And that's the part where, I mean, I, I turn 50 next month and I've, I mean,

I guess it's a midlife crisis.

I need to buy a Corvette, you know,

it'll do it for you.

That and some new balances.

Yeah.

It's a moon boots.

Yeah.

Good thing.

We're going to have a discussion off air about the fucking moon boots.

That one.

Did you get the, oh yeah, we're getting here.

That one hurts your feelings.

All right.

Hey, don't worry about it.

All the things that we're going to do that hurts your feelings.

Yeah.

Because it's low hanging fruit because it wasn't a style decision.

It was a, it was a mode of transportation to see something that you asked me to

come see to keep my feet from getting muddy.

Yeah, but I wasn't going out.

We're blue.

I didn't look at those, but you know what would be cool is where these shoes should

have, but it, that's that.

So that's fine.

But we'll handle it off air.

So those are, don't worry.

You're saying those are house slippers.

Those are, those are slippers where you're like.

I wish you'd just worn house slippers.

I was just kidding, dude.

Okay.

Took you a long time to get those windows put in up front of those moon boots

going right fucking through right fucking through.

That's fine.

As long as you're not wearing them, that's fine with me.

You can fix, you can fix windows and I'd rather put new windows in and then

never see you wearing those moon boots again.

See you wearing those things again to get, to get it back on track.

I look at a guy that I built a car for in 2016 or 17 and then I built him

another car like a year or two ago and I can see the difference in my system of

the struggles I had with him back then.

And probably the reason that we didn't do anything else for a while and for

some reason we got back reconnected and decided to do another car and I can

see where my system of updating them and looking at the customer's perspective

through their eyes and explain and keeping them involved in the process,

keeping them updated, answering my phone, just doing all of those things

that a lot of guys just want to be like, just leave me alone.

I'm going to build you a great car.

Just leave me alone and keep sending the money and I'll call you when it's

done, when we're going to go to the show and they're like, no,

but I wanted to build the car.

The experience was more important.

The experience and experience is really important to most people on some level.

Oh yeah.

And a lot of guys get, just get blinded by that where they're like,

I'll just let you know.

Okay.

When I need you, no, we're not painting of that color because Josh is going

to think it's lame.

Right.

And so, and that's the part where like we, we get into the customer experience.

We get into all that stuff that really isn't the, I think it, I think once

you, once you start doing it, it becomes the fun part because you see the

excitement in them, it sees them, it makes them want to do more stuff.

You know, if you feed that, if you feed the itch for them, it makes them want

to do it again and not be like, oh, this was a miserable experience.

I wanted to ask you, we came off of SEMA.

We talked about it a couple of episodes right after SEMA, several

episodes actually, then in the general takeaway from, from the three of us

and a bunch of people that we had on after that was just a sense of happiness,

community, community, camaraderie, unlike that we've seen in, in, in probably

20 years in the industry from all shops across the board, just happy to be friends,

happy to be in this industry together, our customers, other shops, customers,

shops, customers being friends with each other and their individual customers

and then obviously the shops and stuff.

And I mean, we've all been through, I mean, hell in this room, we went through

the fucking drama in, in the egos and shit in the back in the day.

Right?

And the, and the gorillas of, no, this is my territory.

You're in my territory.

And that shit is, it seems like it's gone for them.

For some people.

Well, it seems like it's, it's definitely lessened than what it has been in the past.

And I'm wondering in the classes, are you seeing that same thing?

You've been doing this for a while, but you've also been in the industry

for a long time.

This generation, newer generation, even if you guys have been in business

for a while, come and do the classes, are you seeing the same thing as a whole?

I think so.

I think it's, I think it's also become more prevalent.

Like it's easy to see what other people are doing through social media.

You don't just have to go to Columbus to see that, to see the car when it's done

and then wait for the magazine article.

You can see how things are happening now.

And so you, you, you're kind of in touch with that because a lot of people

don't want to wait, they want to post stuff sooner to be, that's where,

I don't think you have the internet, the Instagram fabricators like you do now.

You know, people are just trying to do all this crazy stuff so that

you can cover it in dynamite or boom.

I just, I mean, more so like it's, it's, I mean, even speaking to our own thing.

I mean, eight, nine years ago, would you have ever thought to have three

or four cars being painted by three or four other hot rod shops?

Because I think people are starting to choose their own lanes.

Yeah, probably not, but that's a good point.

You go to the people that, you know, excel in those fields because you want

to deliver the best finished product to your customer.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And that's, and I think so many other shops are in the same way that it,

it by default lowers the, like the, the barriers and the walls and the,

and the ego where it's like for a good, for, let's just take care of our

customers as a community, the best way that we can.

Yeah.

Well, and you get to a point like there's a lot of shops now.

I'm, I'm amazed that now we've had, we're at 135 students that have come

through our classes now and I think we're at 10 or 11 classes, something

like that.

That's a lot of people and I'm, I mean, I'm, I always, sometimes I've shared

it with you or I'm like, we'll just go through the list and you're like,

I think I've heard of three of those 20.

Yeah.

Well, you know, sometimes you have a little, a few more and you guys are

in touch because you're buying chess, you know, they're buying chassis

from you and you might be like, I think we sold one to that guy.

Yeah.

And, and so there's a ton of shops, which is more.

Um, but I think like you were talking about sending something to Dutch,

to Dutch boys for paint.

Yep.

Like he builds cars, but he also does a lot of paint work and, you know,

and I think you, you said you guys keep your paint people busy with just the

stuff that you're already having to paint around for all these things.

And so it's just going to slow things down.

And so that car is just going to be here longer.

Right.

And so I think you, I think as a business, we're all just getting smarter,

willing to put our egos down a little.

I see a lot of people that aren't.

There's still people that want to machine their own mirrors because they

think their mirrors going to be better than Troy's or they want to build

their own chassis because they want, you know, for whatever reason.

And there's a time where you might build your own chassis or there's a time

where you guys may do that for, you know, you guys are building my chassis

for the Chevelle's for that reason.

Right.

You know, there's, there's, but there's still the guys out there

that won't talk to you.

They still think like, I've always been amazed that those guys are never

really at the top.

Like, who would you say?

Like, you name, name names.

But there's just, or if it's the Migtig guy, who was that?

By the way, the Migtig guy, I know of one that did it, that worked for me

that worked for somebody else.

I'm not, yeah, no more about it.

He's no longer in the industry.

Doesn't matter.

Then what would it hurt?

I mean, there was a, there was a point, there was a point 20 years ago

where we were in all of us.

You guys are, I was intimidated by you.

You guys were intimidated by me and I was surprised when you guys

picked my copper truck at Columbus for a builder's choice thing.

And I'm like, man, that's cool.

Like, and you know, and we were on opposite ends of the country.

So we didn't see each other much.

And now I think the world has just become smaller in this.

So we talk, you know, people talk more and do those things.

And I think there's, it's not as competitive.

Plus I also just think that most, there's a point where you get,

where you realize the car makes the car and not the awards.

Cause that's the bummer with the awards is that, you know, like at

Slonaker, there's one winner and 11 losers, you know, and everybody

wants to win that top fives cool, but everybody wants to win.

And everybody, I know Josh's mom told him he was handsome.

She never told me that.

I wish you would have.

I'd have been a different person if you'd have told me that.

But we all think our car is the best pretty little boy, you know?

Cause we all look at it from our effort to go, but you're, all

that stuff is picks, you know, is just picks.

Like there's, there's really no, there's, I mean, it all comes down

to taste on most of that, you know, things get judged at shows

from golf carts.

They just drive by on a golf cart and they're like, yeah,

that one should win.

Yeah.

But at the same time, you got to, you got to have it cause it pushes it

like it pushes the, it pushes the industry.

It pushes the, the design.

It pushes everybody's thought process.

It's, it's something to strive for.

You need the stage, but I don't know, nobody, we put so much

effort on the award that we really don't remember.

Yes.

Like, can you tell me the car that won the Riddler last year?

Yeah, but you do the same shit and you related to sports or whatever.

I mean, yeah, I can't tell you who won Super Bowl in 2017, but

it fucking mattered in 2017.

In 2017, you're right.

You know what I'm saying?

But you could, but you could remember.

It's a goal you got to go for.

But I could probably show you a car and you'd be like, you'd be

like, I remember that car.

Oh yeah.

You know, like we said earlier before we got on here, the federally

coup.

Yeah.

There's just cars you remember.

He brought up your 55.

That was a memorable car.

Yeah.

Like the car was impactful.

It had a mile deep fucking pain.

Yeah.

I should press the color combo was cool.

The wheels were cool.

The engine was cool.

You remember that car, you know, and there's a lot of award winners

or runner ups that you don't.

And I took that thing to hot August nights and got nothing.

You know, there's different colors for wheels, don't you?

You're right, but I do want to point out there were two cars there

with this year with the other wheels.

Yeah.

I mean, I would have called those gold on that car.

They were gold.

Yeah.

I would call mine gold until you photograph them.

Yeah.

But there was a car there this year with yellow wheels.

So yeah.

The fucking the 67 she felt like gold wheels on it too.

No, those are those are not gold.

The black one you mean?

Yeah.

Okay.

They're down seven ish, but it's that's what color would you

call it?

Get close to they're not black.

They're not silver bronze.

Okay.

Bronze is all right in the in the rare earth.

We're never, we're never, we're never even getting close to

that again.

Never ever.

Yeah.

I'm a fan of gold wheels in all of its all of their colors.

I mean, I do have two toolboxes with yellow wheel cars.

They don't just hand those out.

No, they don't get her in this.

They roll them in, but they don't just hand them out or they

like yellow wheels.

I don't know.

What do you as we as we start wrapping up and we're going to

go to standard questions, even though we've done standard

questions before.

What's the one thing that you hold on?

Yeah, go ahead.

I wanted to we've talked a little bit about this before and

I I know you and I've talked about it, but I think that there

should be something where we start to drive something of

supporting other shops.

Okay, you know, like there's awards that are doing that, but

I, I think like you don't go to a guns and roses concert and

see Axl Rose wearing a guns and roses t-shirt.

Dude, we throw a pretty big fucking party to support other

shops.

You're right.

You do, but I would like to push it to where other people

do it.

So like Friday at SEMA, okay, you have to wear another shop

shirt.

That could be a thing.

I usually do.

Yeah, it just depends on this.

Just make cool shirts that I'll wear.

Yeah, I'm going lobster trap.

Yeah, 100% should start the tradition of of wearing other

shops shirts like buying the shirt.

Yeah, yeah, like, yeah, 100% by the shirt of of shops and

peers that you respect.

What's the one thing that you for the guys that have not

taken the class or the guys that have taken the class and

the guys that maybe you're going to what's the one thing

if you could sum things up right now of a little free tidbit

something that's a teaser something that's going to be

like, oh, shit, that's a good one.

What's the number one thing for a shop that's out there right

now that they're not doing they should start doing tomorrow.

Keeping the customer involved.

That's involved looking at the looking at the car and the

process through the customer's eyes.

And trying to make that as fun as possible for them because

this should not be a torturous process.

You know what's the best way?

Obviously, it's great advice 100% agree the fastest way for

you to realize of how important that is is for you to be the

customer to pay somebody to do something for you.

I'm doing a remodel at this house.

I have to ask the contractor all the questions.

I am that guy now you it's and I mean you've been there before

right but that is one when a any shop or anybody starts to

give the point because we've all let's face it.

We all spent 20 something fucking years.

Focused on the work and the shop and the things like that.

So anything that needed to be done.

You just like, all right, yeah, fuck it.

I'll do that on Saturday afternoon or something Sunday

afternoon.

I'm gonna I'll fix this thing when you get to the point where

it's like I remember vividly and this is I mean I cut grass

myself for a long time right at a landscape company just I

remember the time that I paid somebody to cut my own grass

for the first time.

I remember hearing about it too.

Yeah, and that was it's a small thing but it was down on the

customer of the thing and like especially when it's something

that you that I know well and and passionate about and know

intimately have high expectations and how they're going

to mow your lawn.

Yeah, and I remember like talking to the guy and I'm being

I remember feeling him like it started clicking.

I'm like, man, I'm like that stupid fucking customer that's

asking like dumb questions.

This is good.

The guy but I'm like, hey, like Edge and like, you know, you

have like show me how you're going to do this and but then

you start getting into like remodel stuff and you start getting

to pay somebody to do something on your car and you start

seeing that so much more generally on a negative experience

and you're like, ooh, that was just one little thing that he

did that rub me the fucking wrong way and now you start being

cognizant of that.

You're like, never we've always kind of known that about

customers, right?

And you can now you try to impart that on other guys that

maybe haven't had those experiences where they haven't

been a customer.

I mean, I mean a customer when you're spending thousands of

dollars on something, right?

I'm taking my money to get you to make me something that I

can't do.

Well, if you if you're doing it worse than what I can do,

I didn't need to pay you.

The only reason I paid you is I want you to do better than

me or the same or you're just trying to buy some of your

time back.

That's so sort of a curse.

Well, yes, sort of the curse doing what we do for living being

sort of a perfectionist and also having a broad skill set

and the ability to do a lot of different things and usually

better than a lot of people that charge to do it.

Not to sound like I would join that corner way different

and you wouldn't have had those.

I mean, I dealt with you through those situations and like

you weren't wrong.

You know, some of those things were like, oh, yeah, dude,

that like,

first one fucking got tore down, didn't it?

There's two different ways that I think that goes down is

that you, you have one, you have the guy who lies or stretches

the truth or beats around the bush to what actually happened

to their customer where they're like trying to be like, well,

the paint shop, well, the tranny guy and you're like, yeah,

but you're the guy who put it together and this, you're the

guy that I'm dealing with and they, they just want to skirt

the blame instead of being like, yeah, you're right, I shouldn't

have done this or that.

Yeah.

And, and so I think that's a huge one because I think and the

other one that kind of goes with it because in that instance,

they're trying to, they're trying to pretend that the guy's

not like you can just, oh, I just tell him this, like my kids

lie to me and you're like, I invented that trick like, right?

And so the guy didn't get to the point where he could pay you

to build a fucking hot rod by being an idiot.

Yeah, or it's not his first hot rod or it's, right?

Any of the, and they're just going to tell them these stories

that you're like, yeah, okay, sure.

And so, and then I think the other one is, is just learning

to take the time to explain what is seems so basic for you

to this guy.

Like it may seem where you're like, seriously, I got to explain

this or explain that, but I, I encourage new customers.

Please, if you have any question, no matter how stupid it is

or how stupid you think it is, just ask.

Yeah, I'll show it to you.

I'll be glad.

I would rather explain it to you now than six months down

the road.

There's this huge mess where you think you're getting ripped

off and because there's phases of the car build that suck

that are just the desert like paint and body paint and body

or just body metal finish and wiring.

There's cause the wiring is not glamorous.

It's glamorous when it's done and it's done nice.

And if it works well, nobody sees it.

It's time consuming to do.

There's a lot of stuff in that, but there's like you need,

there's just, it's good to show like we usually take the

harness out of the car and finish it on a bracket that's

up on the table.

And so it's good to take that picture and show them.

Oh, wow, there's a lot of wires.

Instead of just when it's done, they just see the ones that

are on the top, you know, and so just explaining that stuff

to them and, and, and keeping them up to date.

And there's times where I know that we're looking at,

we're doing something difficult that the customer I think is

going to struggle with and just being aware of, okay, this

guy's kind of like this kind of like, it's probably a good

idea for me to send him two updates this week just to keep

him in the loop or text him a couple of pictures.

Like there's, there's just times where if you were the

customer, how would you want to be treated?

What's your take just before we get to standard questions?

What's your personal take on the correct day to send in voices?

Day of the week.

We send all ours on Mondays.

I don't know.

I don't, I think the only thing that matters is consistency.

You need to send them on the same day and get them in a rut

where they understand to expect, you know, my customers joke

when they hang out together to show that Shannon is going

to ruin their Monday, their Monday.

Every other Monday, Monday, Tuesday, Mondays.

Monday's been traditionally like I've always thought Monday

was the best day Monday is you're going to have like five

other things that are going to be suckier on your Monday

anyway than my invoice.

And I never wanted to be a into Friday.

Like to ruin a guy's weekend, but I believe you go into the

thing, but I know some people are like, oh, you do it at like

seven o'clock on Friday.

He's not going to see that thing till Monday, but he's

just still going to see it on Monday.

He's just send it on Monday.

It's a big deal.

But I do believe you should send them pictures of what's going

on before that before.

Yeah.

For you to know what he's about to get in voice.

I'm sending updates on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday to get

all the guys covered and then my wife is sending a bill to them

every other Monday.

So we build hat.

We build half our customers on this Monday and we build the

other half of the customers on the next Monday.

So there's always consistent cash flow.

So and to keep that consistent, I think having a guy pay every

week, it just becomes a lot of work.

You know, yeah, and it also by doing it every two weeks if

there's we've done it where it's once a month and sometimes

those bills get yeah.

And you're like, well, that's what you wanted.

We can go back to every two weeks.

It just seemed a little bit, you know, weeks just downright

inconvenient for everybody.

Yeah.

And it's and so we we've spread it out that way.

I've had a lot of people that come away from the class and they're

like, they're billing once a month and they're billing everybody and

they don't really they just get paid when they get paid and

you're they're like, our cash flow is terrible and you're like,

well, we just tried building every two half of them on the

first and half on the 15th or whatever you want to do.

Do you get into more?

I don't know.

Hardcore business stuff on cash flow and cash management and

how to run the business side of things in your classes or is it

just I look, I look at most of these guys.

I think are like Jeremy.

They got into this business to work on the car and see anything

either.

They don't have Phil as the brother.

And so a lot of guys, I don't.

I think a lot of guys have no idea if they're even making money.

Piquito.

And so but I we really are biggest thing is we want them to come away

with learning how they shoot themselves in the foot in whatever

way through the lanes, through the work, through overselling,

through poor pricing, through I mean consumables, through I could go

on and on and so learning how they're shooting themselves in the

foot and running this and and learning that you it's okay to

say I don't know because the guy comes in.

I mean, I had a guy two weeks ago that was like, I will have a dodge

charger and I want to put a chassis under it that would weld into

the rockers and put a Hellcat motor in it and I need to know a

price and I'm like, okay, have you seen like the Roadster shop

sells a chassis like, yeah, I don't want to do that.

It's that's too much money and I'm like, okay, light bulb number

one, yeah, because who's going to do that's a fraction of the

cost and cutting your entire floor out and building a car with

a Hellcat.

Yeah, and I'm like, okay, so that's all right, light bulb number

because a lot of guys are like, so you got a Hellcat charger.

You have five bucks.

Once you drop it off on Friday.

Let's take it.

And so and so this conversation progresses with him and I go,

well, I'm just going to hit you up like this.

What do you think something like this is going to cost?

What are you expecting to pay?

Because there's a huge variable in what you just listed.

That thing could be, you know, a million bucks or I mean, where

do you want to stop?

And he's like, well, I have a guy that says he can build the

chassis and do all this stuff and he's built a whole bunch of

stuff that's in Baja for $25,000.

So he's going to build the whole chassis for that.

Yeah.

And I have another guy who says he's going to paint the car wire

it and make it all running.

And I'm like, because that's where I turned tonight.

I'm like, we're using the motor that was in it because that's

kind of the words you just used.

And that's where he's like, oh, no, I'm going to put a Hellcat in

there.

I'm like, oh, you just made it even harder.

You're going to, oh, and I'm, oh, it'll fit.

Yeah.

And so, and he's like, well, the guys and this guy says he'll do

it all for $30,000.

I'm like, oh, the motor's 35.

He's going to pay for all the parts.

And I'm like, I sat there quiet for a minute and I'm like, well,

so you're saying $55,000 in labor to do all of this?

Well, yeah.

I mean, that's, can you like, where are you at in that?

And I'm like, uh, we're good.

I'm just going to tell you right now.

It's probably another zero.

I'm like, this is not going to end well for you.

And he's like, what do you mean?

And I'm like, and that's where I realized I probably shouldn't

have said that, but like, it's not like that guy who says he's

going to paint it and do all, do it all for 30 is not going to,

you know, he's, he's never done it all.

Or am I, do you realize that this guy's working for $3 an hour

or something to pull this off at that price to do all of this

work and he, but just clueless.

And so, but I think a lot of times the builders just as clueless as

a customer, there was times I look back on me.

There was a time where I was, I had to live up to things that I

agreed to do because I didn't know what it was going to take.

And I said, I said, oh, I could do that.

Oh, it's easy.

Yeah.

And so I think that's just a matter of the communication and.

I don't know.

That all 100% standard questions, standard questions time.

Did we do law enforcement or action story?

Yeah, the blob, the bubbles know the one we didn't do, which

is a great question is car builder.

Yeah.

If you are going to have a car built no budget.

What's the car and who builds it for you?

Classic car, any car?

Yeah, I don't give a shit.

A fucking airplane.

Let's make a car.

Let's make it a car, but it could be a flying plane, flying car.

That's hard.

because the caliber is out of business.

Don't worry, somebody could restore it for you if you wanted to.

You would look amazing.

I look amazing in most everything.

Be all knees and elbows.

Part of me like a trophy truck.

Yeah, there's some guys who build some pretty badass trophy trucks.

I think that that world really interests me of just the form and the function.

Custom car wise.

Those Gunther Works cars are pretty badass.

Yeah, these things are pretty badass.

Tell my trophy trucks, you know what truck I'd like to have.

Remember the red crew cab pre-runner that Jesse James drove up in on the second motorcycle mania?

Yeah.

Oh, man, I'd like to have that.

Was it the Cat Eye?

Or just the 98 or I think 98 Sierra Classic.

Would I remember that in motorcycle mania?

Remember the red crew cab Chevy truck with the projects on it?

Just anything with projects.

It was fucking awesome.

I wonder where that.

Yeah, I think for me, I think I'd have to pick and I there's a handful of guys that I think could do this.

But I wouldn't want like I used to want to build this 36 Ford that was all chops sectioned, all that stuff.

And I still love the look of that car, but I don't know if I'd want to have it.

But in the car that I would want to build the level that the love.

If it's all limitless.

Sure, I'd love to build that car, but it would have to be like you said, they'd have to build it to the level that everything functions.

And so there's obviously a lot of guys out there that couldn't do that.

There's Troy's, there's, I mean, there's, I mean, lots of guys who have you guys, there's proven guys who can cut up a car and make it drive and make all those things work.

But I just don't know if I could ever be, and I don't even know if I could build it where I would be happy with it.

I don't, I don't, I don't think I could afford, I couldn't afford to build the car that I want out of that 36 Ford.

And obviously you said there's no budget, but that's just a heck of a thing.

That's a car that I've always dreamed about for because it's ridiculous.

The ideas I have, like it's stupid spaceship stuff that you've had.

You've spent too much time thinking about it.

But there's part where I just love to have just a great look in 36 on a stock chassis with a flat head.

That just isn't cut up at all.

Drag a bumper every now and then when you'd go around.

Like, and, and so somebody who could do that with the, the, cause once again that, that punches some of the best sounding cars I've ever heard were flat heads.

Yep.

Like straight pipe, no H pipe.

And I don't know who that was.

Cole Foster.

That's, I mean, that, but that's a different.

That's a custom 36.

I'm saying a hot rod.

I like them both.

I remember the Cole Foster thing when it was in, in Rodgers Journal.

That thing blew my, that.

Would you think a South cities blue 36.

It was awesome.

It was a great national.

The like flight blue one.

Yeah.

It was cool.

Yeah.

A little too, I like it either way over here or way over here.

And I like, it was right in the middle and I like that one.

There's the Murray's one that is up for sale right now.

So that's cool.

That one's well done.

I liked it.

Cause the trunk.

What's he asking for that?

You know, I don't want to ask.

It's really good though.

It is.

The trunk is very well shaped.

It's a really good start for somebody.

There's a lot of those.

And so I don't know, I'd have to, but I, it would definitely have to be somebody who I know is going to make it run, drive, stop and steer well.

Well, then I guess it'd be easier.

Who would you not have worked really?

So there was like a particular shop that you were just like, definitely not them.

Cause I see you're working through this in your head.

Was there, is there one coming to mind that you're like, uh-uh, not them?

Just one.

I'd have.

As many as you want.

I'd have, I'd have Roadster shop build a chassis.

I'd have Bobby Walden do all the sheet metal work.

Oh, you're doing a dream team.

Doing dream team.

Right.

And then I'm going to have Cole Foster and Eric Black work on styling.

And then I'm going to force, fuck that up.

Yeah, I know.

So he's, I'm going to do it through a shadow LLC.

He's going to, he's not going to even know who I am.

And then I'm going to have, I'm going to force Roy Brizio into finishing it.

That's a pretty good poll.

I'd probably let Eric Black drive it too.

And it's done.

So it looks cool.

Cooler.

Seriously.

I mean, he's looks cool.

He looked good in it.

I know he would.

He'd look way cooler than me.

I'm not going to argue that.

I like so many cars.

Yeah.

Like, and I can appreciate more and more of them.

It's just an, it's an, it's an like, I do like your take on it though.

Putting, you know, how you move that.

Oh yeah.

The industry for that all star cast to, to build something epic.

Yeah.

I just stroked it.

I just fucking cheesy it.

I just fucking move it all around to all the people that have the talent.

There's a, there's a class five that's thrown in there.

Do you notice class five is class five is the Volkswagen buggy.

Yes.

There's a super duper one that's for sale on the internet right now that's built by

Jake's fab works.

That's pretty badass.

It's got all the mo tech stuff on it.

Big Dan ZO four cylinder motor in it.

But they're like,

You're big into this off road.

You wouldn't go off road shit.

I used to race.

I used to race it before.

It's fun.

The hardest part of off road is getting your friends to go.

Cause you're like, okay, so we're going to go out to the dentist.

It's going to be so cool dude.

Like I'm going to drive the car and you're just going to sit here.

Like see right here.

50 miles down the road.

You're going to be here with fuel.

When I get here, you're going to put fuel in the car and you'll be,

it's going to be so cool.

And they're like, so when do I get to drive?

No, dude, you don't understand.

It's my car.

My car.

But you're just, you show up and when it breaks, when it breaks, you can help us fix it.

But we're not going to get to drive.

Dude.

We'll hang out tonight.

Later.

Late, late tonight.

I think you need to take Josh's sales class.

Yeah.

You'd probably sell that.

Oh, I'd make everybody.

Your trophy truck guy.

You've been following that Morgan Clark range Rover build.

I think that thing's cool.

Things.

I mean, for some reason, I know that trophy truck crowds a rough crowd.

He gets some flack.

You know, there's like whole Instagram pages dedicated to like fucking with them.

Huh.

But to me as a chassis builder fabricator, I'm fucking impressed with what that dude

does like that.

But I think, I think he probably gets it from the race car guys.

Maybe the guys who just are there to straight.

Cause obviously that Land Rover's not built to race.

Who cares?

I understand.

I agree.

I agree with all the, I think it's just, there's just always haters and everything.

Yeah.

You know, I, there's a guy that direct message me cause he's said something.

Oh, that Chevelle's dumb cause it's got a LS in it.

And I'm like, no, it doesn't have an LS.

It has LT.

Yeah.

Whatever.

You should have a big blog.

And then, and then I get it.

You know, he decides to DM me and tell me how stupid I am too.

And you're like,

Can't believe you put 20 inch wheels on it and ruined it.

Yeah.

Wagon wheels.

That's another.

But there's just always haters like, I think that guy has found his niche.

Yeah.

You know, um, you know, I mean, there's the, the kibbitat guy does a lot of a kind of

a varying amount of stuff.

You know, there's the guys, I think another one that's super cool is the King of the

Hammers trucks.

Like that's a different level.

I don't know if you guys watch it this year.

Nothing against those guys.

It's just not, it doesn't interest me that much.

Not as my trophy trucks, badass, long travel stuff, really cool.

The King of the Hammers stuff.

It's, I mean, I can respect what the guys are building.

It's just not fast enough for you.

Yeah.

And they're getting.

Oh, they are now.

Pretty quick.

Like if you.

Maybe I need to spend some more time watching it.

Just look up Lauren Healy's Bronco.

That deal is ridiculous.

You know, it's got independent front suspension and does 140 miles an hour in the desert.

And now they're due this year.

They ran, I don't know all the trails that are there, but they run a trade.

They don't tell you what the trail is until the, for the final lap until the day before.

So you can't go pre run it.

And, and somebody had told me that the trail they went this year on the final lap.

He's like, I've walked down it, but I never thought anybody would drive up it.

And that's what, and it was just a winching thing this year for that final lap.

And it took whatever 14 hours or something to finish the race.

Like they finished in the dark.

And they, they say that the guy going into the last lap, whoever's leading on the last

lap will not win.

Cause it's just that tough, but you just look at, I mean, yeah, there's solid axle ones

and, but it's one of the things that's still wide open.

Like the ingenuity is endless.

Yeah, you can do whatever, you know, if you want to run solid axle and be a narrower car

or like Lauren Healy's cars really wide, but it's, you know, they, they're putting the

motors in the back.

They're like, it's not just a rock buggy, like you remember back then.

And so, but to make those solid axle rock buggies go through the dirt, I mean, go

through the desert at a hundred miles an hour is pretty impressive.

You know, and so just seeing that's the, that's more of what I'm interested in anymore

is the engineering side of it.

Yeah.

Is making, that's more of where I'm really finding more enjoyment in that because the

lipstick stuff's cool, but just seeing where the, I like it when a customer, you can guarantee

the customer is going to enjoy the car.

It doesn't matter what anybody thinks of it.

Yeah.

You're going to get in this car, drive it.

And that's, that's, that's the part I enjoy anymore.

So I don't know.

Did I, I think I answered the question.

Yeah.

You answered it a hundred percent.

Next up, Bert Reynolds or Sylvester Stallone.

I saw this somewhere that you guys put this on.

It's been ongoing for quite some time over the internet.

So today's voting did not bode so well for you guys.

I think it has to be Rambo just because I don't remember.

I just, I've watched all those shows over the top Rambo.

Yeah.

Um, Rocky.

Yeah.

I mean, all I, all, all I remember is gosh, what's it called?

Where he's Cobra.

Cobra.

No, I'm saying for Bert Reynolds.

Oh, it's hard.

It's hard to remember.

We're smoking the bandit.

Yeah.

There's the one.

I was wondering if I'm not old enough.

Cannonball run.

Right.

That's what we thought too.

Cause he's obviously an elder because I mean, when did that stuff?

I was born in 76.

So when was that stuff out?

Was I not old enough?

Was Rambo more 80s, 90s?

Rambo was 40s.

90s.

Yeah.

I mean, I think I'll always remember Sylvester Stallone being in the mud.

Oh, just popped out.

And then he pops out and just gets him.

Yeah.

With leeches on him and shit.

And there's that movie.

And then the predator, which I don't think had Stallone.

Stallone was not in it.

Predator Schwarzenegger.

That means Stallone was a, was bad ass.

I loved Rocky and I loved Rambo.

I loved Rambo more.

I've gone on record saying that when fucking Schwarzenegger came along though.

And he just shat all in his Cheerios.

Schwarzenegger was by and large a better action hero in all movies.

Hmm.

Commando.

He just better accent or better.

He could be a talker.

I mean, physique wise, right?

He's fucking Mr. Olympia.

Of course.

But yeah, there was so much, there was so much more mysterious.

Yeah.

Like trying to understand what the fuck he was saying.

Yeah.

Was mysterious.

Who knew that Terminator 2 was going to become like a real thing.

Terminator 2.

Yeah.

Like we're,

Next week.

Yeah.

We're seconds away.

Somebody needs to interview Sarah Connor and get some more low down.

What's going to happen?

It's so wild.

Have you watched that movie yet?

I've told you to watch.

What is it?

Mountain Head?

Mountain Head.

Yeah.

It wasn't that good.

You didn't think it was that good?

Yeah.

Okay.

I watched the beekeeper on the airplane today.

You could just, I loved that.

There's one plot.

Just over.

I watched it.

Yeah.

And they just twisted a little bit.

You watched it.

You just don't know about it.

It's Statham, right?

Beat up everyone.

Yeah.

Statham and Liam Neeson.

I've rode off about four or five years ago because it's just red to repeat.

I had to finally write off.

Liam Neeson just doesn't have the look to.

Dude, you're fucking almost 80.

It's not.

You nailed it.

You're not selling it anymore.

You nailed it that one time.

Yeah.

Like that was great.

You caught lightning in a bottle.

You have a special set of skills.

Just quit trying to have those special sets of skills.

I never, I never watched it.

You know, it's a fucking great one that's kind of similar to that.

The equalizer with Denzel.

Oh, yeah.

That's Matt.

I love.

I love Denzel anyway.

It's a great fucking act.

I love Denzel.

Yeah.

But equalizer is great.

All of them with three of them.

Three of them, right?

Equalizer one, two, and three.

Equalizer is great, but fucking what's the damn?

Old school gangster Denzel.

Training day.

Yeah.

Oh, no.

American gangster.

Oh, yeah.

I don't know if I've ever seen that.

I got to go back and watch it.

Holy shit.

That first five minutes of that.

Yeah.

That's good.

Oh my.

That's Denzel prime.

Training day, though, will go down in history.

Training day.

Training day would be on my top probably.

Probably definitely top 10, maybe top five.

It's just a phenomenal actor and he sells the shit.

Ethan Hawke was the other one, right?

Yeah.

Every character.

Vinny was in it.

That one takes you.

That one was, especially my age at that time when you're watching a movie, you're starting

to get just a, you're a little bit more mature to like pay attention to the movie and like

the ride that it's taking you on versus just like action and action all over.

You're like a little bit more intelligent.

That one was like, it took you for a fucking ride.

Training day.

Denzel's great.

Have you ever seen the commencement speeches that he gives or whatever for like graduation

and stuff?

Yeah.

He's a sharp guy.

Yeah.

Dude's really good.

I was thinking we had something else.

What was the other?

What?

We don't.

Yeah.

That's it.

It's been amazing.

The class, we've done the plugs.

Everybody knows where to get the class, but you'd go ahead and one more time.

So we decided we're going to do a class in September.

There was a ton of people who signed up last minute, like usual.

So we're going to do one in California in September.

We've already set up one to do again in February next year at Choice Place.

We haven't picked a date in February because we try to not get it on Grand National or

Riddler weekends, try to get it.

So it's away from that.

And so we've already done that.

We're just taking $500 deposits.

Ironworks.

Speedincustom.com.

That's right there.

You can just hold your...

And as of right now, it's still being called classes, right?

But it's TBD.

It could be changing for...

Retreat sounds a little too...

Quality.

Like we might smoke weed at the end of the day or something.

Maybe that's important.

I'll tell you what.

Do it in Flagstaff and you do a business class retreat and I might be there.

Yeah.

So it's been a lot of fun.

I've really enjoyed seeing guys raise the bar in their shop and seeing that stuff get better.

There's some guys that you see them blossom from being a car builder to a businessman.

Yeah.

That's...

We've heard nothing but great things and you've seen the guys that have done it a couple

years ago and you can see that.

Results.

Yeah.

You're doing an incredible thing for the industry that kind of like you said at the beginning,

everyone has got too much of an ego to talk about it, but it's obviously what keeps the

lights on.

It's what keeps everybody going.

So yeah, props for...

Thank you.

Sprinting the industry along.

I think it's doing phenomenal things for the entire industry and everyone should definitely

jump on to it.

And there's been discussions that I've seen you guys have and you guys are right.

There's things we say in there that I don't think you could say at a public setting just

to be frank with people and really like there's examples we get, like, I use the example of

what kind of hooker do you want to be, but it's the same thing, like, do you want to

be in the back alley doing junk or do you want to be the call girl?

And so...

At the end of the day, you're still getting...

Either way, it's the same thing.

It's funny how it's like a really good example.

It's a really good example.

And so it's really been neat to see that.

It's been neat to see the camaraderie that develops in the classes with each student among

each other.

I'm a firm believer.

There's been discussions about the price.

The price is the price because when we said it the first time, I didn't think anybody

was going to show up and I didn't want one person to show up and I'm pissed that I've got

to do the class for one person.

And so we've learned that if you're not at a point where you're willing to invest in

yourself, you're not going to listen anyways.

Like the fabricators union that's on Facebook, I don't even really participate in anymore

because it's just the same people who are still going to try the same things to do those

things and not reach out.

And Troy and I work our ass off in these classes.

And Troy's been telling me all week because every time the week leading up to it, I'm

analyzing everything these guys put in their notes, trying to make sure that we're saying

these things and on Saturday night, I'm spent.

Like, spent.

And I'm traveling clear across country, giving up time with my kids, giving up time with my

wife.

I'm out of the shop.

Troy does the same thing.

Troy's always like, we should just have this class at your shop.

I didn't realize how much setting up all the tables and snacks and all this other stuff

just takes probably lose two days where the work leading up to it of some, some sort.

You know, you got to move stuff around.

And for me, I'm, I'm the most frustrated is you can write on the website.

I need the attendees cell phone number and an email address that you look at and they

still can't do it.

And there's, they misspell their email addresses and I get, and so I have to call them and

be like, okay, I've emailed this email address three times here.

Can, is it, oh no, I don't even check that one.

That's not just a business class.

That's just this industry.

Do we got, we got, we had 40 something plus cars and for best on RS at SEMA, right?

It's very simple.

Just picture the car, your logo, name, cell phone number and then location at SEMA.

We'll handle all the rest.

Where's it going to be at SEMA?

SEMA outside, inside, upstairs, the booth, the big booth, the small booth.

I don't know yet.

TBD.

Shout out to Vinny for entering a car that's not even on our chassis.

And then you get the one called Vinny.

Hey, the Mustang's fucking ripper.

I think, is it on a chassis?

Nope.

This is best on RS.

Oh yeah.

Fuck it.

I didn't pay attention.

Thanks.

He just thought he had an answer.

So that's, that's always an ordeal.

But at the end of the day, it's just neat to see things, see those guys improve things.

And I, it's amazing to me to see how many good car builders are coming out there and

you should pop up some testimonials, you know, follow up with some of these guys.

And we do, we post those up on our Instagram.

It's, I have yet to figure out what that, what it is that makes people finally decide

to do it.

Cause like I asked almost everybody, Hey, did you see the stuff that was on here for

the oil and whiskey?

And they're like, no, I didn't see that.

And, but I think there's just a point where they get serious enough where they're ready.

They're ready.

They want to do those things.

And this is our biggest class.

So we're 23 people or something.

We're over what we wanted Troy.

And you know, there's, there's a, there's shops that are coming that you would be

surprised are coming or maybe not.

I don't know, but there was some shops.

There's some shop stuff that's coming that I think is, it's cool.

And then there's others.

There's a bunch of guys that I haven't heard of before.

Then there's guys you're like, Oh, I didn't realize I was already following that guy.

And so, but it's just neat to see that.

And our, we really hope that a guy could get to the point that he owns his building that

he's, I really would like this industry to become legitimized to where it's, you

know, you're, it's not, I, there was a post that was on, I saw it on pro touring

Camaros or something on Facebook and this guy, these guys were talking about shops

that mark up the parts.

And some guys like, Oh, I make enough money on the labor.

I don't need to mark up the parts.

And you're, and I'm just like, so who, who unloads the UPS truck?

Who invoices the customer for the parts?

Who opens the boxes and figures out all this time researching what parts are

going to work and ordering.

And he also said that he, that he, other guys are like, well, I only sell the parts

at what summit sells them for.

And I'm like, okay, like, how much time are you spending to compare your prices to

summit to be like, Oh, well, I'm only making 2% on this thing to do it because

that I don't have enough buying power to do that.

And you're just like, like, you don't, that, that goes back to your lane for me

is like, do you want to be a part store or do you want to do this?

Cause you're not going to, if you're not going to make any money off it,

let him buy his own shit.

Yeah.

And like, and if you can't get a deal on it, then don't sell it.

You don't need to be, try to be summit.

They do a pretty good job of being summit.

Right.

Like, don't waste your time.

Stay in your lane, build your cars, use your knowledge, do these things.

If you're going to sell some parts, sell some stuff you can make some money at.

Don't be like, Oh, sucky, sucky, you know, whatever.

So be that high class one.

Yeah.

So you say, so you say, has there been anything that one of the students has

brought to the table that you've learned from that?

Every time Troy and I always come away with something of doing it.

You know, we have just different, there was a time where I realized I,

we don't answer the phone at my shop.

The phone rings and it goes to voicemail, but it's, there's our shop is small

enough.

We don't want to pay someone to just sit there and answer the spam calls,

answer all these things.

Cause it's just money that's going away.

And I'm not trying to, if you, so we, it's, it's helped me set up my email

thing where I have a qualified customers through the email process.

I want people to contact me through the emails and there's been things like

that, that I'm just sitting there teaching this and you're like,

I'm so spinning my own wheels doing this thing or that thing, you know,

of just little things.

And then the other thing that I think is good is Troy and I do a lot of things

similarly, but we also do some things differently.

You know, I track my, attract my consumables differently than you guys do.

And there's, and there, neither one of them is right and neither one owns wrong,

but it's just what works for you.

And, you know, one of the things we do is the untracked expenses is I track

all the stuff that you can't really track.

The Argon, WD-40, Tigrod, you know, cause I don't want my guys spending 15

minutes a day going, here's these nuts.

Here's these washers, three squirts of WD-40, all these things that add up.

So we just take the whole total of it that month, which to restock that stuff

might be 600 bucks.

There's 12 open projects.

It's 50 bucks a person.

If they spend 10 minutes a day tracking it, they're going to spend four

times more money tracking this stuff than it actually cost.

And so I want to get the car done four hours sooner.

And so those are all things that have been tweaked and moved and gone.

And, you know, there's less and less now because we've done this class 10 times

now.

Now we do it more of a discussion.

So we give out a book that was written by me.

That's, I'm not a book writer, but it's just, I don't know, 20 or 30 pages.

Tell it by the description.

Yeah, he's called an author.

See, it's not a conference, it's not a conference.

But at the end of the day, that's what we tell these guys.

We've chosen our lane as still to build cars.

I don't want to be, I had SEMA call, I had PRI call.

All these guys call and want to put me on the stage to put on this thing or do

this or do that.

And I'm like, that's not what I want to do.

I don't want people to come at SEMA and be like, come see Roger, talk about all

these tips, 10 tips to save you money.

No, I want you to come to the car to see the cars that I'm building.

We're just going to pull back the curtain and tell you the things that we're

doing that work.

And I can't tell you if it works.

In our Zoom class last week, we talked about the metrics that Troy and I use to

determine whether our business is working well this week.

You can have profit loss, that works.

But what are other metrics that you can do to do that?

And really, a lot of it came down to just experience in us understanding how our

businesses work, where we take the metrics at in the cycle of payment and all this

stuff, because every Tuesday afternoon after everything's been paid, all this

stuff is when my wife gives me this update.

And so I can tell by these basic numbers where I'm at.

And so just in doing those things, but we were nervous that it was like, it's not all

this Excel spreadsheet and all that stuff because you're trying to sell value.

You're trying to sell all these other things in the process of what you're doing.

And we got done with it and everybody's like, man, that really helps a lot just to be

able to understand that you understand your business.

That's the only way it would work in this industry.

If you could spend a year and a half putting together the perfect program and Excel

spreadsheets and a login and stuff like that.

Tomorrow it's going to go to shit.

It could go to shit, but it'd also be over most everybody's head.

It'd be too fucking complicated and you'd be like, oh, you don't understand how this

business works.

You're relatable, you understand it.

Well, and you take mistakes that happen in your shop.

You typically don't notice the mistake right then.

You notice it down the road when someone else tries to put the bolt through that hole that

doesn't line up.

And usually that mistake gets fixed by someone else.

It's worse when you notice it before it's going to happen and you say, don't do that.

And then it happens.

You're like, oh fuck that happened.

We need to fix that and it doesn't get fixed.

And at the end you're like, motherfucker, we talked about that three times.

It didn't get fixed.

You're speaking like you've experienced it before.

You're just talking about those other shots.

Hey, before you do that tomorrow, don't do it the way I think you're about to do it.

Okay.

Well, it was very nice seeing you guys hanging out.

Maybe we'll, maybe we'll forfeit next year.

Always a pleasure, man.

Good luck.

Keep building cool shit, man.

Looking forward to seeing that Mercedes across the finish line.

I think it's gonna be cool.

It'd be at SEMA.

Trying to work on where that's going to go.

It's gonna be at SEMA.

Trying to figure out where it's, it's still basically on its own jet.

It's not stocks.

I don't know what to tell you.

I'm sure there's somewhere.

You win some, you lose some.

But I do have a Nova.

I do have a Nova.

You get, huh?

Mercedes have a booth?

I don't think so.

I can't put it there then.

No.

Well, and that's, that's the other thing.

You were the, you're, you're number one in line.

With the Mercedes, what?

No.

Oh for the, yeah.

Cause I called you the day after.

Yeah, I know.

You couldn't help but be number one in line.

I still smell like smoke and I'm still hungover.

You're trying to get a spot for next year.

Yeah.

Full transparency.

When you called me, I had not gone to sleep yet from the night before.

I was like, yeah, fuck it dude.

I don't care.

Whatever you can have the whole booth.

So here's a question.

Where do you think that Mercedes should be at SEMA?

Cause do you want to show that Mercedes to us?

Or do you want to show that to Mercedes people?

Where's the place to put that car?

Get with, however the hell people end up with fucking cars and like the entrance to

SEMA.

Do it that way.

Whose car?

There was an Impala convertible.

Yeah.

Like sitting right up front.

That's the car that should be there.

There's, there's, there's ways to make that happen.

That's a car that should be front and center and be seen.

It's a sort of opens the industry up to doing cool, fresh, interesting, different stuff.

Yeah.

Cause that car, that car is a car that needs to go to SEMA.

Yeah.

Like I took the 35 there last year and it's nobody looks at street rods.

That's just SEMA.

Nobody goes to SEMA to look at street rods.

So.

Let's talk to Josh.

Josh has all the connections.

Oh yeah.

So many of the connections.

I've been talking this fall cause fall would be a good one.

I'm just not sure that hot rod alley is McGuire's is a great place.

Hot rod alley is always the place.

I understand, but that's always the hot rod.

But how many, but how, but, but how many Mercedes guys go to hot rod alley?

How many Mercedes guys are going to SEMA?

And if they go to SEMA, tell me the places that they do go.

Toyo booth.

That those are maybe answered.

That's just, yeah, there's not for that type of car.

It's not like, first of all, SEMA in general is not the place as good as SEMA is.

Not the place to be having multiple other black.

Oh, I'm in the, I'm a Mercedes enthusiast.

I'm walking around with all kinds of money.

I'm waiting for the guy that could do a resto mod Mercedes,

but she just don't want it to disappear to where the Mercedes,

it's not going to disappear wherever it's at Mercedes media.

People don't see it.

That's what that's what I'm saying.

Go ahead.

Phil, Phil, you're up.

What are you using for ECU and tuning?

GM ECU.

Good call.

Yeah, I do see what you're going with that, but that's like back pocket stuff.

We don't know how many cars we need and what booths we need.

That's the type of the inside things.

We'll work all this stuff out.

There's this behind there.

There's a, there's a, there's a great possibility that is a possibility for you.

Yeah.

Because that's a, that would be a perfect car.

It really would.

Yeah.

Front and center.

Yeah.

As long as we don't have any cars that we need a booth for.

Which we do.

But it's the impact of that car is crazy with the stance and all.

Yes, it's going to be fucking nuts.

It's super cool.

So that's why it doesn't, I mean, with a car like that,

we've had people from CMON, you know, sometimes they've said stuff before.

And it's like, yeah, yeah, I get it, but blah, blah, blah.

But the thing that does matter on the car build side,

the car, make the car speak for the car itself.

There's great spots and there's okay spots.

Regardless if the car is fucking awesome.

A great car and an okay spot wins.

100%.

I mean, we've saw that with cars.

I mean, hell, fucking Thomas Dickerson is a perfect example.

I mean, being over in the battle of the builders thing was in a,

it's a far away spot.

Right?

It's not.

But the talk about that vehicle, I mean, Tuesday at 10 o'clock,

the show had been open for two hours.

And I've already had 10 fucking people say,

you got to go see this truck.

You got to go see this truck.

You got to see this truck.

So when something like that happens and it starts spreading,

then it doesn't matter the fucking spot.

So do you do the shit that needs to be done?

And then the spot will take care of itself,

but there is some opportunities.

The customer always joke that he's like,

I just don't want it to look like a Pope mobile or like ISIS is driving around

the Middle East.

What are you going to do about the 50 cal then?

Yeah, I mean, that's, it's funny though,

because he's a Middle Eastern guy.

Just play it like that.

Then pop it up on two wheels for the size.

I have like five guys hanging out.

What's drifting size?

That would be great.

Great.

Shop uniform for everybody.

Just a little.

A little AI video.

Just a little AI video for you.

A little logo.

We'll see you again next week.

Rodger Lee of Ironworks Speed & Kustom 3.0

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