Ron Evans - Behind The Vault

This is hard parking brought to you by Right Hunting right?

Toyota out of Scottsdale, AZ. Coming up on today's show, I

recently went to The Vault in Scottsdale, sat down with the owner founder, the gentleman, Ron Evans.

If you're watching this on Spotify or YouTube, word of caution, I've had these issues with focus and a large part of Ron is out of focus. However, I encourage you to

stick with it. I try to run it through some AI

processing and it helped a little bit.

You can see his facial expressions and other things, and it's only part of the video, a large part of the video.

Now say stick with it because at the end we walk around and he talked about some of his favorite cars in his collection.

And there's a lot of visual things that I add into the episode when he's talking about his life growing up.

Incredible story. I know some of you listening

actually know who Ron Evans is, but I could probably guarantee you do not know this Ron Evans because we dig into his life, his incredible journey, his health issues and more.

Before we get to this word from Arcus Foundry.

Congratulations to friend of mine Peter Cunningham for selling his yellow Acura and Tiger type R19984000800 miles on it for $204,000 on Bring a Trailer.

There are some haters out there. That car is not worth that much.

Well, anything is worth as much as somebody is willing to pay for it. So special congratulations to

Peter for the sale. I joked with him and said that

he owes us all a round of Casa Amigos, which is actually terrible tequila. He, like myself, is a tequila

snob. Also, I was recently on

tormenting tarmac with Mr. Jorge so you could check out the

tournamenting Tarmac episode featuring myself.

We had a great conversation. He will be coming on this

podcast much sooner than later. So after this word from Arcus

Foundry, Mr. Ron Evans and the Vault business Tech filling

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get your first month free, upgrade your tech and get back to business. Ron Evans, how you doing?

Thanks for having me on. Tell us about you.

I want to know about you because we kind of know each other.

We did an event here. You have a beautiful NSX behind

you and then we we see each other maybe once or twice a year. But I need to know, we need to

know how you got here. Born in a small town in Missouri

called Cape Girardeau, MO, the home to Rush Limbaugh is the only claim to fame that town has.

My great great grandparents and now my cousin and his kids have farmed the same land since 1890 on the Illinois side.

So young infant running around on the farm.

Spent my whole every summer down there.

I was probably 8 or 9 years old. My family moved away up to

central Illinois about 3 hours South of Chicago.

Small farm towns, 500 people, 1500 people and so great place to grow up. You leave after breakfast in the

summer and you come back before dinner or supper as it's called in the Midwest or when the street lights come on.

Parents didn't know where you were.

I'm the Gen. X that got into all sorts of

stuff my parents still don't know about.

Ride bikes everywhere 1020 miles outside of town so grew up skateboarding. BMX bike started.

Got my first motocross motorcycle.

Raised a little bit of that for fun.

And then I was in 8th grade. We moved to Arizona.

Safford, Arizona. OK, all right, the armpit of

Arizona and right next to Yuma. No offense to anyone who lives

in Yuma, but so we the one benefit is that our house was right across the street and down an alley was the open desert.

So every day after school, not much else to do in that town.

We were out in the desert riding motorcycles, 3 Wheelers.

I got my first three Wheeler. So I grew up in the the.

Honda, Yamaha. Honda.

Honda 110 and then a 185 and then the 250R which was a 2 stroke first suspension on a three Wheeler.

Used to jump those raced them. In fact I once came up what I

thought was just a hill. Turned out it was a berm that

cut off and I jumped about 30 feet and a three Wheeler with no suspension and bounced and threw me off and knocked me out cold and separated my shoulder bags. I woke up 4 hours later in the

desert when it's dark. No one's.

Around no one's around steering wheel or the handlebars are crooked and I drove 3 or 4 miles back to my house, hit it, covered it up, fixed it so my parents would never know about it and had a friend put my shoulder in and that still gives me problems to these day. To this day.

Was it just like the movies? How do you do you remember?

Were you slamming your shoulder against the corner or how did that work? I did with a friend holding me

and then shoving me hard against it and it's now I had a rotator cuff surgery and but I don't know that it'll ever be right.

By the time I was 10 I'd broken 7 or 8 bones.

Unfortunately, back then the Plas were cast or the calves were plastered. Well, I thought it'd be cool to

hang on to them as trophies. So they were all underneath my

bed. My bedroom in the basement of

our house. One of those, after 7 or 8 of

them, my mom couldn't figure out what the smell was coming from my bedroom and I yelled at for keeping them.

But if there have been Child Protective Services back then, I would have been taken away from my parents.

All the stuff. My first concussion was at age 2

crashing a tricycle into a curb and going off the tricycle and hitting my head on the sidewalk. So I was one of those kind of

kids. Sounds like 3 wheels isn't

really your thing. No.

So I graduated from 2 wheels to three.

Quads weren't even out back then, but if it went fast, that's what I wanted. I was an adrenaline junkie from

the time I could walk. We moved to Phoenix middle of my

junior year. I still have my first car from

high school, which is back in the back. 69 Triumph GT6, the

only coupe that Triumph really ever made.

First six cylinder they had done the car I pushed more than it drove because it broke down all the time we're.

Going to take a look at that. It's had four motors and two

paint jobs. It was painted at a prison.

It was 2 shades of British racing green and my my dad was the Superintendent. High school principal had

finished restoring a 53 Triumph and had signal red was the color and had a couple gallons of it. And so I stripped everything off

the car, the Chrome, the glass, drove it up to the prison with the paint. They had a paint booth for their

work program at the prison outside of Safford and for 50 bucks they painted my first car and.

That's how it ended up being two different colors.

And then no, it was already two different colors.

And then we painted it red. And then I spent a week hand

rubbing out the paint to get rid of the orange peel because there weren't really buffers back then or not that I had and.

I feel like most people would have just let it be.

Probably, yeah. It's just not the way I was

wired. I had three cars before I was

18. I blew the motor in the Triumph

and we towed it from Safford to Phoenix when we moved to Phoenix. It's a long way.

Yeah, my dad wasn't happy about that one.

Had a Fiat X-19, the removable target top, and then in my senior year in high school had sold that out of 77 Toyota Celica. This is pre JDM.

Right. Yep, Yep.

Celica had been lowered, fiberglass flares molded on side skirts, front air dam and a 930 Porsche whale tail fiberglassed into the trunk. So I've only I've got a couple

of photos not here, but I've got a couple of photos left all white. It was the 80s so Miami vice,

you know whited out white bra on the front.

This is pre PPF with a sticker. Sammy Hagar's I can't drive 55

with a line through it with A6 cylinder dropped in from an 84 Celica. I bought the car I literally in

late 84 and so that car saw a fair amount of street racing Kony shocks and lowered. Wasn't fast in a straight line,

but it could beat any muscle car around the corner.

So I terrorized the streets of Phoenix in high.

School so so around the corner. So are these like the ones we

would see in movies where it's almost like?

A It would have been in a Fast and Furious movie today, but it was in the 80s. That's wild.

That's wild. Big white vinyl across the top

of the windshield. Windows all tinted limo black.

18 speakers with two Subs and three amps.

What were you playing? You remember.

Journey and Foreigner were my 2 favorites in the 70s.

That would have been KISS, but I had started to grow out of that by the time we got to the 80s. I was a big 70s rock'n'roll fan,

so that car ended up before there were cars and coffee in Phoenix there were in the 80s. There were audio competitions

every weekend. Oh yeah, that was a big thing in

the 80s. And then through midnight.

Competed. I was sponsored and competed for

a couple of years with that car. Wow.

We tried out different speakers, different amps.

We once put 22 speakers in a big 70s Cadillac with 145 Watt amp to drive them at 1/2 an ohm. So we experimented the the guy

that worked at it was called Cardinal Curse Stereo over in Glendale. Was in my wedding as one of my

groomsmen. So I'll put it that way as far

as how much time I spent there. Made our own speaker boxes, made

our own door panels, hit all the speakers.

All the stuff that became popular later we were doing back then. Had the first Pioneer, had the

first CD player in Phoenix when those came out for an in dash CD player. So now the six disc changers

have been around early 80s, but so that was a fun car.

We went to high school at Phoenix Christian just for that.

I could have graduated my junior year.

My dad wouldn't let me, so I took two classes my senior year and then went took full load at Phoenix College.

So I was started Grand Canyon as a sophomore.

So it wasn't all my life I'd either wanted to race cars or be a car designer, so I was an art and design major at Grand Canyon. For two.

Years I would been drawing cars since I was little you know all through high school I took mechanical drafting drawing and then art major wanted to be a car designer just loved drawing cars and. Did you finish that program?

No. So after my sophomore year we

went or half. No, it's halfway through my

junior year. We went and applied and went to

Tour Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, which is where Chip Foose, about every significant car designer came, comes out of that college. It's.

One of the top 2 I believe. They practically laughed at me

and they said we get, this was in the 80s, we get 2000 applicants trimester because they had three semesters a year and they accept about 100. And they said most of ours are

master's degree in art. Come back in seven or eight

years once you've got a master's.

And as much as I loved it, I didn't want to spend that much time in school. This was 1987, No 86.

I apologize. I was dating a girl all through

high school, three years or so that was going to school to be a medical assistant at what was called at the time Apollo College now no longer exists. And so I'm dropping off my

girlfriend and a recruiter grabs me and introduces the typical salesman fashion, pulls me into the office and asks me what I'm doing with the rest of my life. So, and I wasn't sure 'cause I

had just gotten back from Art Center interview and so I ended up enrolling in respiratory therapy.

So if you've ever had a loved one or yourself after surgery or in the hospital on a ventilator or life support, it's a respiratory therapist that takes care of that.

So it was a two year program. There wasn't a degree program

back then. Now it is.

And so I the spring or January 87 start that in October, we finished it early. So I did clinicals at the VA and

Saint Joe's Hospital, 20 years old and I'm in the ER in the trauma room in the burn unit and county and some things that most 20 year olds don't ever see and decided to go into the second program. They were just starting up this

new program called a therapist, not a technician, and they talked me into enrolling. There were seven of us.

Well, that's How I Met my wife. So she was a single mom,

divorced, two kids. They were ten and eight at that

time. She was 30, I was 20 or she was

29, I was 20. And we drove each other crazy

because I was working full time on the night shift.

I was going to school during the day, and I was doing clinicals in the afternoon. I'd go 48 hours without sleep

living on nodos caffeine pills. And jolt.

Cola and Reese's Peanut butter cups.

That was my diet. You're still here in front of me

right now. That's bizarre.

Needless to say, I was wired for sound.

Yeah. So I'm tapping my pen on the

desk. I'm kicking the desk with my

foot because I've also got a little bit of ADHD.

I was a hyper kid back before they knew what to call.

It always had to be doing something.

First week of school. Pam says if you don't do that,

stop that. I'm going to break your arm.

Well, that weekend I broke my arm playing volleyball at church. I came in with a cast, full cast

from my elbow to my fingertips. And the instructor said, what'd

you do? And without even thinking about

it, I said, Pam did it and she goes fine.

And you 2 can be study partners because she could write and and take notes. Funny.

So we started hanging out, having two kids.

We were at her house studying her apartment.

This would have been fall of 87. She asked me in January.

Her daughter was turning 11. She was having 1511 year old

girls going to Great Skate, which was a roller skating rink over in Glendale 'cause that's where she lived was off 43rd and Union Hills. And so I helped chaperone this

girl's birthday party and they started playing Chicago's You're My Inspiration and on one of those couple skate things and we were skating next to each other and I reached over and grabbed her hand. Now we have been.

It was safe to be friends because as far as we were both concerned, nothing could ever happen.

There's nine years between us, I'm a single 20 year old guy and she's a a divorced mom with two kids and our first date was Valentine's Day on that February. 2 weeks later, our

second date was March 9th on her birthday and I proposed to her.

Wow. We got married six months later.

And how long was it? It'll be 37 years in September

since we were married. What do you remember about your

first date? Valentine's.

So we went on 19th Ave. Cactus.

There was a steakhouse called Lenny Mani's House of Steaks was went out of business 25 years ago.

It was surreal because just a year earlier I had been dating someone for 3 1/2 years. That's a longer story we don't

have time for in this podcast of what happened there.

Jail was involved a gun and a murder and that we'll leave.

We're just going. To throw that out there.

Just going to throw that out there.

We'll leave that for another time.

Our first time, even though we've been studying together for six months. First time her mom, who mom and

dad were retired living in Winslow.

He had worked for the railroad for 40 years, ran through Winslow and that was his last place he worked for a retired.

She calls up her mom the night I proposed and she said her mom said put him on the phone. I get on the phone and her mom

said you love them and take care of them and I'll love you like one of my own. You do anything to hurt them.

I will squash you like a bud crawling across the floor and take great pleasure in doing it. Now give me back my daughter.

Yes, ma'am. So Pam saw the you know, the

color drained from my face. The next week was spring break

for the kids and she told Pam come up, bring him up for a spring break. I thought we were going out to

see them. We get there.

Oh, also through that week before we left that weekend, the next phone call was her telling me that she slept with a 38 underneath her pillow and was a great shot.

Her mother-in-law now and she did sleep with a 38 underneath her pillow. My wife's dad worked nights his

whole life so she was by herself at night and.

So we get up there and I, we get out of the car.

Oh, so at the time when we met, Pam was driving an 86 Chevy Sprint. Those of you that don't know,

it's three cylinder motor which is 2 chipmunks and a squirrel.

The version of the turbo was to turn off the AC when you're going downhill. 12 inch tires. 12 inch wheels.

Three cylinder sitting out there that I limped in on SO.

This car was tiny, looked like a clown car, yours is bigger than her Sprint was. So I told her I could not marry

her driving that car. That was all she could afford at

the time. So we sold just about everything

we could and I leased an 86 Mazda 626 turbo with a factory aero kit. White, white wheels similar to

my Toyota that I wish I still had.

So we're get up there and I think we're going inside and she puts up her hand at the door and she said no, just the kids.

And I turned to Pam and I said, do we get them back?

What her mom wanted to do was to grill the kids all week about who I was. You know, do I, do they light

me? Do they approve all of that?

So we drive back down 3 hours from Winslow left the kids there said come pick them up next Sunday.

We go up next Sunday. Like, yeah, I'm going to stay in

the car this time. I'm not.

She comes out, she goes, what are you doing in the car?

Come on in. And hugs.

And I was accepted because the kids had given me a seal of approval. Now both of our parents didn't

want us to get married. Thought we were making the

biggest mistakes of our life. Age difference.

She's. Got the kids previous.

Marriage, kids, age difference, you name it.

I showed my dad the engagement ring and he goes, I could have given you more ideas for a birthday present for her because it I proposed with the ring at the same restaurant on her 30th birthday. And so my best man, who was my

best friend, tried his best to talk me out of ever getting married. We had no money Respiratory in

those days was making 6 bucks an hour, maybe 8 if you're on the night shift trying to, you know, pay past bills that she had from a divorce and keep food on the table.

So the we got married. What is what was first Southern

church next to Grand Canyon. The the college now owns that

property. We are from two different

churches. Both pastors were there.

What I didn't know part of the service was to kneel down so the pastors could pray over you and my best man had taped help me to the bottom of my shoes. The whole crowd saw.

So we had always wanted to go to OR.

We were looking at these honeymoon spots as we were planning the wedding and a friend donated the flowers.

Another friend donated the food. We had zero money to put a

wedding on. Her mom made both the wedding

dress and the cake. Oh wow, yeah.

The day before the wedding she calls and she said it's raining in Winslow. I've got an open bed set.

Her truck was a 72 Chevy C10. She goes, I've got an open bed

truck and five layers of cake. So we hauled up there the day

before our wedding to bring the cake down, had the wedding we couldn't afford really a honeymoon and we couldn't get the time off. We were both working 12 hour

shifts, you know, 6:00 AM to 6:30 PM.

So we it decided to go to Colorado Springs, which she and the kids had lived in after the divorce for three years.

What I didn't tell her is that week before the wedding I got a nice little letter from our Arizona MVD that I had accumulated too many points and my license was suspended for six months, so I hadn't shared that with her.

I was caught street racing and back then it it was just three different tickets, speeding, Exhibition of Speed and I don't remember what the third one was but I got 3 in one night.

From the same. Stop treating some construction

cones like a slalom course. Which everybody's wanted to do.

I'm glad I've actually met someone who's.

Actually, it was a blast. I'll tell you, it was midnight.

I thought, OK, no one's around down 19th Ave. around

Thunderbird and Cactus. He got me.

It was all of AI think $100 fine nowadays.

I would have been put in jail probably in my car.

Total it. So I still didn't tell her when

we left. So we hop in the car.

You're going up through Payson to go to Colorado Springs, and we're about halfway to Payson. And off I pass, sitting off in

the woods, an unmarked Bronco that I just knew it.

And sure enough, as soon as I passed him, the old fashioned gumball light that's magnetic goes on top of it and he starts after me. I get up about two miles and I

pull over and I wake her up. My shoes are off because I used

to drive barefoot or with my socks.

I wake her up from a dead sleep and I say quit, change places and she's confused. She's waking up.

She goes starts to open the door.

I said no, we have to do it inside.

There's a limo 10 on the windows and she didn't really even ask why, she just she's half asleep did it?

She had just pulled her seat up thinking that we are changing drivers for some reason and there's a on the window.

She rolls down the window and the look on that cop's face was priceless to see. Red headed short woman driving

this white Mazda 626 turbo that also had the same audio system that used to be in the Celica Toyota Celica because I took everything out and put it in that.

He goes, ma'am, do you have any idea how fast you were going and she didn't She goes no and it's our honeymoon.

It's a new car and she put on. She kicked right and right.

You know, and she was clearly surprised and stressed.

So it wasn't an act. She clearly, and we're on our

honeymoon and you know, it's a new car and he goes, well, hang on, he goes back. We've got a temporary plate on,

runs the temporary plate comes back and he goes, ma'am, that little green light on the dash when that comes on the turbocharger, that means the turbocharger's on and.

So he knew a little bit about cars.

And she was raised with four brothers.

They used to hang her by her ankles upside down to find the bolt that they dropped in the engine compartment.

Her mother drag raced with her older brothers through the 60s and 70s. So so yeah, she was, you know, a

car girl and but he wrote her a warning comes back goes well, consider this your honeymoon, your wedding present, you know, went don't let that little green light with the turbo.

Come on you guys, you folks have a nice day.

She rolls up the window and whacks me and said, how fast were you going? I said well, when I saw him, 135

and a 55. So that was a very quiet ride to

start my honeymoon with her driving all the way.

It was a 12 hour drive to Colorado Springs, very quiet drive and not your normal honeymoon.

So my first taste of speed and I, I would say even though I always loved cars, I was five years old, city of 500 people.

Our next door neighbor had a 427 Cobra.

This was 72. And every Saturday he would give

us kids rides. When it's in the middle of the

winter and there's three feet of snow on the ground, he would open the garage and start it up and let us jump in and pretend we were driving. And you could hear that car all

over the. Sure.

Neighborhood. So at 12 I managed to wrangle a

passenger seat ride in a pro stock car, a six second pro stock car in 180 and loved every minute of it.

How'd you pull that off? So a friend of mine's dad on the

car, he was three years older and he looked probably 17.

He told his dad that I was 16 and had a license and I was I think 12. Right.

And strapped me in, gave me a home at 3 times too big for my head and we went down a quarter mile 6 seconds.

Wow. That's how we started our

married life though. Was with me get a warning in at

135 and 55. Kids were 11:00 and 9:00.

So by the time I was 30 I was a grandpa.

My daughter got married at 20. So basically nine years after we

had gotten married in 88, she had five kids before she was 30.

So I was a grandpa almost when most of my kids were still having their kids. I to this day have kids, friends

that their kids were the same age as my grandkids.

So my son, it's bizarre, was 36 when he got married and has a 7 and an 8 year old. My daughter's kids are 15 to 25.

I have great grandkids, 2 great grandkids that are fantastic, Parker and Palmer. The all of the Mindy's five kids

start with an A so Pam used to call him her A-Team.

So really I'm just a product of the 80s.

To me, selfishly my opinion only, the best music decade of all time was in the 80s. The best some of the best movies

that everyone still watches today came out of the 80s first.

Top Gun and Risky Business and. Let's just see your name, too.

Tom Cruise back-to-back there. I don't remember if the first

bad boys was in the 80s that. Was the 90s?

Yeah. Early 90s yeah.

So all of the pop movies, but that's my jam when it comes to music. That's back when they made songs

specifically for movies. You can actually.

Hear the words. And they made them specifically

for the movies. Kenny Loggins wrote Danger Zone.

Yeah. For Top Gun.

Yep. And you instantly, if you hear

that song on the radio, you know that that's for that song.

Beverly Hills Cop Back to the Future.

Ghostbusters. Ghostbusters.

All of those, the music was as good or better than the movies were. So we spent 20 years working ICU

trauma, ERI did some helicopter transport where it's either a nurse, a doctor, or a respiratory therapist with a patient and a pilot. Everything from a fixed wing

plane up to Chinle in the north part of Arizona on the reservation, landing on a dirt runway in the middle of winter with cross winds blowing and you feel like you're just a paper airplane to a helicopter transport in the middle of a monsoon. I was.

Is that, is that kind of the craziest trip you had in a yes?

I can't even imagine that. It was Aerovac, it was called.

Aerovac was the company. And so understandably, when we

got married, having two kids and she had been working since 86, so she had been in the field a year longer than me, we both went back for the therapist program.

She goes, I'll let you drive anything with four wheels that we can afford, but no bikes. I sold all of my toys and bikes

before we got married and I haven't been on a motorcycle since then. Probably the scariest ride was

on the back of a motorcycle at 125 or 130.

That was one I swore I'd never do again.

Was there something that happened on that ride or it's just the fact? That no, just that you had no

control, right? Adrenaline and Taipei's tend to

be control freaks and a wayward bug or a bird and you're both dead. Because we didn't have Leathers

on. We had a helmet, but that was

it. So and then I I worked both the

neonatal ICU with premium babies, pediatric ICU, Pam did adult ICU from open heart post open heart surgeries to neurologic ICU where car wrecks or head injury patients.

And then we both worked other hospitals to for extra money on our off days. When my daughter got engaged, we

didn't really have any money to pay for the wedding.

I worked 9312 hour shifts in a row to pay for that wedding.

Wow. Passed out twice, went to the

emergency room twice, but I worked 9312 hour shifts in a row because our what was going to be a small wedding turned into 500 plus at the wedding and 300 at a seated sit down reception.

His parents paid for the alcohol.

Thankfully that bill was more than the food was, but that was the only way we could afford it was the overtime to pay for the wedding. Would you say it was rewarding

working in the medical industry or at times depressing because it can wear on you? I'm I'm.

Sure it does and be rewarding at the same time.

There is nothing better than having a sick child, a six month old or a 2 year old come in needing heart surgery.

There's nothing more crushing than watching in this tiny little baby with open heart surgery and tubes coming out of them. But four days later when they're

running around the ICU and they're trying to catch them because they don't know they're supposed to be sick, is the most rewarding thing I've ever had in my life, next to being able to raise my kids and have grandkids.

But after the last year, I worked both in a outpatient pulmonary clinic that dealt with cystic fibrosis patients, which are is a terminally ill lung disease.

I went to 8 or 9 funerals that year of kids that had passed away, the last one being one that I worked on at the clinic when she was a baby being diagnosed.

When she got sick I was her caregiver in the ICU on the ventilator and I got a call at 3:00 in the morning from the parents for me to remove her breathing tube to let her go.

That just broke me. Yeah.

So we both gave notice and went to work for a medical device company doing clinical education.

It turned into a sales job, which neither one of us really liked. But when you're selling

something you know can help patients, you believe in it.

We were very successful. They sold the company.

We both got laid off on the same day.

Most of our 37 years have all been spent working together.

That's amazing. And we started a small company

for someone who had no knowledge, but he had financial resources. And we started a small medical

equipment company in 2001 with the promise that if we built it to $1,000,000 the first year, we would get 10% ownership.

We started with nothing, one employee ourselves and we built it to $1,000,000 in the first year.

And he came to me and he said I don't remember ever having that conversation, of course. And I learned the the importance

of the words from Ronald Reagan, Trust but verify because I didn't have it in writing. It was a handshake, which is how

I was taught to do things. That's how I was raised.

I said I'm going to go home and we'll have this conversation tomorrow thinking OK, he's going to come to a census next day.

Didn't remember that conversation.

First time I've ever left a job and I didn't have a job now because I always left on good terms.

One thing that I was taught with the work ethic and building relationships from working on the farm and different jobs.

I mean, my parents were meet middle class, upper middle class, but didn't believe in any allowances.

So if I wanted spending money from the time I was 8, I had a paper route when they had those rake leaves, mowed lawns, you know, whatever it was to make my money to buy the first motocross bike, to buy the first motorcycle.

And so I left. But because I had left on good

terms with them not wanting me to leave, I'd made one phone call to Phoenix Children's and I was invited back and I was working the next day. It was a much easier time with

paperwork and HR, sure, because I'd only left, you know, eight or nine months earlier. Pam got a job the next day with

one phone call to one of the doctors we had worked with.

We worked a couple other places and then in O6, all of the doctors that we had worked with, they were still residents when we were at mostly Good Samaritan, which is now Banner University down in McDowell was a teaching hospital and when we decided 10 years later to start our company in O 2006, they were all now in private practice. So when we started up our

company, we took a home equity loan in our house which we rented the first few years. We bought our house in

Scottsdale in 1994. We took a home equity loan of

100,000 and had one employee in 800 square feet. 12 years later,

almost to the day, we sold the company.

Nice. That was 90 to 100 hours a week

for that 12 years, which is I was used to, but it meant I missed a lot of family birthdays, anniversaries, kids stuff. So my only regret is that I had

to do that to make the company successful, but I missed.

Some of my now teenage or they were teenagers very quickly growing up, they were actually graduated high school and now married and out in the world but.

You just said something pretty important though.

I just the grind, you see the beginning, you see the end and that's what people see, but they don't understand the grind.

And I know how much that's even changed today with I worked 2.

Or three jobs from the time I was 8 years old, right?

To earn money for my first car I worked McDonald's at 3 bucks an hour. In 1983 I sold off bicycles and

three Wheelers to afford the half the 800 bucks for the down payment and my dad cosigned a loan for 800 bucks payments for $40 a month. Was my first car in high school.

I worked full time back when Chris Town mall was still around. I worked at the same shoe store

in college and then when I was working I'd work.

We work different hospitals on call on the weekends or on our off days because they paid you more and so we've worked at just about every hotel or hospital. Sorry in this valley at one time

or another from Sun City West to Chandler the I wouldn't let her work at County because being down there is not safe for anyone at night let alone woman. So not to be chauvinistic, but

when they carry 9mm in the emergency room with Phoenix PD that's not and leaving at night in the middle of a not great neighborhood. So I worked accounting a lot on

my off days and when we started that company, it was 980 to 90 hours plus and then we started ours that was and I stayed on to run it for two more years. So from O 6 to 2020 it was 90 to

100 hours a day. Do you remember the feeling you

2 had when you sign on that line and then the thinking back to where you started with literally nothing but your but but each other and a couple kids? So five years into it, 2011,

Medicare was about 90% of our income because you bill insurance and they pay you. We'd opened up a second branch

in Sun City in O 7, and in 2011, Medicare somehow decided that second branch wasn't legal. It was, but they made an error

and they held our money, all of their money.

For six months. We hawked wedding rings.

We didn't take a paycheck for six months.

We didn't layoff. At that time, we had maybe 50

employees. We didn't lay anyone off.

We had started a branch up in Prescott.

I bought a small company in Prescott and turned it around from almost going out of business and grew it to be one of the most profitable branches we had.

And so at obviously I wasn't sleeping much because we were, we had pushed off creditors as far as we could push them and we were probably 30 days away from going bankruptcy and at 3 AMI check our bank account and they dumped $2,000,000 from six months worth of Billings into that account.

And I screamed, gave my wife a heart attack and I said Medicare finally paid us, didn't pay us any interest, didn't say I'm sorry, just a letter that says this branch is now approved and that's all we had. My asthma that I have came from

being a respiratory therapist. A lot of people don't know that

because they don't say it much. 20 years old, I'm on the

research team at Saint Joseph's giving experimental meds to kids that have a respiratory virus called RSV.

That was a brand new virus in the 80s.

They didn't tell us a couple years after a lot of people were coughing and they didn't have us in protective, you know, masks and gowns and, and they gave it to just about everybody that came in with us sniffly nose. We also were giving pentamidine,

which is a medicine put in aerosol for HIV patients.

Now they give that in a ventilated hood that sucks all the air up into a carbon HEPA filter.

So there were five of us on that research team.

I was in my 20s. They were in their 40s.

Three of the four, I think, were smokers.

They were dead in their late 40s or 50.

Wow. My symptoms started three years

after chronic bronchitis, sinus infections, no family history of asthma or allergies so they didn't diagnose me with it.

Then the chronic infection started from your sinuses being full and draining in your lungs. 30 and I was remodeling.

Our house that we had bought was a house built in the 70s.

Scraping the popcorn off the ceiling which has asbestos paint. Had lead in it because it's 76

was the last year they let let be in the paint and a wet moldy insulation from the leaking roof collapsed on top of me and I inhaled wet moldy insulation into my lungs.

So my asthma was mildly irritating.

I had a sinus surgery that got better and then at 30 I was ended up in the ICU just about ready to go on a ventilator.

I they made the argument and I refused because to this day asthma patients have less than a 5% survival rate once you put them on a ventilator because the pressure goes in and it pops their lungs like a balloon and they end up passing away from complications. So I refused and I spent three

weeks in the ICU, three weeks in the floor unit, and I was off work for a year and a half on a Bipap machine, which pressurizes air and forces it into your lungs.

Oxygen at 30 years old, home Ivs, IV steroids, and after two years I went back to work at the clinic and my lung function was 20% of normal at 30 years old, they were going to put me on the lung transplant list, which requires you to be 20% or under for two years. Didn't know whether I would make

it out of that at 30 years old. I eventually recovered, took

another three months to get all of the rest of the fluid, then accumulated to my lungs out of there and went back to work with about a 60% lung capacity. But it started a 10 year of what

started at 40 milligrams of steroids.

In every hospitalization you get IV steroids, which are four times as powerful. By the time I got to 40 I was

325 lbs and was on 80 to 100 milligrams a day of Prednisone which a normal dose in the hospital is 40 milligrams.

I was in the hospital 3 or 4 * a year for pneumonias and asthma attacks. I got IV steroids in the

emergency room. I used to do them at home which

not the safest and they won't even do them in the emergency room anymore 3. 140 lbs Three, 25325.

Wow, OK, I've. Got a picture of my office?

I'll show you after. We're done.

I don't want to show that picture on camera.

That's fine. So as a way to save my.

Life he. Said we've maxed everything we

can. Your body, steroids, rux, your

body. I still have, I get bruises if

you touch me because my blood's too thin.

They slow down your metabolism and they're they convert to sugar so it raises. I was I would have been

diagnosed as a diabetic. My rusting blood sugar was 180

when they took it right before my weight loss surgery.

The pulmonary doctor called Robin Blackstone.

Who is? Had been doing weight loss

surgeries just them for almost 10 years and was really a pioneer. She's written books about it.

She at the time was working at Scottsdale Shea or what's now on her health and he said he won't last another five years without with that weight and being steroid dependent.

She goes it it's not. And I had horrible diet.

I ate fast food three times a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner, working night hours, weird hours, day shift, night shift back-to-back. I drank couple 2 liters, a

bottle of soda that was my caffeine to stay awake in the hospital instead of coffee. It's a horrible eating habits,

horrible diet and he convinced her to let me have the weight loss surgery. She didn't want to do it and he

convinced her that I would likely die if I didn't.

I lost 170 lbs in six months. Six months later I was 155 lbs

and looked like a survivor from a concentration camp.

Right? Pales just, you know, lost a

bunch of my hair because they didn't have me on enough protein supplements. They didn't think I would.

I never even went to the gym. It just melted off.

They made me go cold Turkey on steroid, the Prednisone, sugar, caffeine six weeks before the surgery.

I was not a nice person to be around.

My wife tells me that I was probably how she was going through menopause. But the they were thorough back

then. Now, if you can pay the money

and you can, you know they'll do surgery on you.

I had to do a 400 person 400 questionnaire, a site visit, psych eval. Because what people don't

realize is that there is a higher than normal incidence of suicide in people that have had weight loss surgery.

Because if you don't work and have a healthy self-image of yourself when you're fat, it's not going to magically get better when you're skinny. Now I was.

The same person. Inside, but I was, you know,

between the long hours and bad food and the Prednisone, I kept putting on weight, right? So I went six years with no

Prednisone after that surgery. And instead of four or five

times a year for 10 years that I was in the hospital, I think I've been in the hospital four times in 15 years, maybe five times, and most of those have been in the last five years.

So that incident with the wet, moldy insulation left some permanent scar tissue in my lungs and chronic infections.

On my best day, I've got about 40 to 45% of my lung capacity.

Normal person uses 20 when you're talking and walking.

So it doesn't take me much at all before I get very winded and I'm coughing. The difference is I.

Used to cough and cough. And cough and cough and cough

until people thought I was dying 'cause it's that deep, nasty mucus cough I once popped along on its own, driving to altitude.

I didn't. Know it.

So we turned around. My oxygen saturations went down

in the 70s. This was I was 35 or so.

So we drove back down. It's Christmas Eve, we get home

that morning, we go to church that night, stand up to sing.

Heart, the Herald angels sing. And it felt like someone had

shot me in the lung, just popped a hole and I collapsed right there in the church. 2 friends. Carried me out.

There was a little side office next to and there happened to be a pulmonary Doctor Who was visiting the church for the first time, sitting six rows over.

Wow. So he followed me out.

He diagnosed it just by watching me and listening to me.

They that church at that time had a full time nurse on staff all the time. EMS was.

There in 3. Minutes because fire station was

just down the street from this was Central and Bethany North Phoenix Baptist Church and I had a what's called a pneumothorax.

I've since had a few of them but that was the one where from being in the altitude and weakened lungs and coughing burst. It was a small.

Hole and fixed itself. Small ones will usually heal

themselves. But so Needless to say I've had

a few close calls over the years.

Most people now only know me as a car person I think when we did a site visit. In 22 you had like a mini spell.

It did. So just year and a half ago, I

ended up in the ICU on a ventilator for only the second time in my life. Besides surgeries, I.

Also. Am a what we'd call in the trade

of lightweight, meaning that it doesn't take much anesthesia to put me out. My mom has it, my grandmother

had it So for whatever reason it's in our blood and my wife has actually pulled the breathing tube out of me after surgery more than once. So yeah, it's I've had some

close calls over the years and and this recent one was coughing up blood, which I'd never done in my life, but it those different. Points 'cause you.

Unfortunately, it didn't really give me the wake up call I needed to slow down after we. So back to your question about

that feeling, it was. We have been working.

On the deal to sell our company for four months at least we were scheduled. For our 30th.

Anniversary to go to Italy for the first time.

We're leaving on a Friday, this is Wednesday and I said, guys, I'm leaving for my honeymoon. Whether this deal closes or not

'cause they were our typical, they're argued, lawyers are arguing over the language. Contract was 160 pages long and

so we gave our signatures at midnight and back then you still fax things. You didn't scan them and e-mail

them. We faxed them to our attorney at

midnight with our signature pages.

Of all of our signatures, there were 14 signature pages.

She had bought me a Mont Blanc pen.

I'd always wondered why and couldn't afford it.

She bought me one and we saved it.

I had it for two years without using it until we did that contract and I used it to sign the.

Contract we. Both had to sign, sure, they

held the signatures in escrow and the deal closed while we were halfway through the flight on the way to Italy.

So there was no Wi-Fi on planes in 2018.

So we got there and we are in coach.

We sure didn't think we could afford first class, had never flown first class and landed and I had probably 200 emails and 250 texts and voicemails because it had been announced.

They sent out a press release. It was a private equity company

that bought us. So I was sitting in the airport

when I found out our company had finally sold.

I knew we were close. It didn't really sink in, but it

was the the most relaxing trip I have ever had.

Good for you. So.

Actually. Come think of it, that was our

second trip to Italy. We went to Lake Como and all we

did all week was just sit on the deck and look at the lake and every evening the IT would rain across the lake and most relaxing trip I've ever had. Good for you SO.

It took me about. Two weeks.

My plan was to work five years, 2018.

After about 18 months I knew with someone else owning the company and making a lot of changes I could not do this.

So I gave him six months notice. I left.

As it turns out. Good timing is better to be

lucky than good. I left the month the first COVID

diagnosis hit the US. Asthma, compromised immune

system, healthcare business, sick patients coming in.

No one really knows what's going on.

Yeah. So within I think.

It was maybe 2 or. Three weeks after the first

COVID patients, I was out of there.

It took me about two weeks at sitting at home for my wife to agree that she needed me to go find a hobby.

I've never played golf, didn't have any goal of.

Doing that I had no idea. What I was going to do, I hadn't

really planned on anything 'cause I thought I was going to be working for five more years, so I was 50.

Two years old. When we sold, I stayed on the

board a couple years after that, but after a couple weeks I started looking. We had back up a second.

We had bought. I found this land.

I was looking. I'd outgrown the building that I

used to have for just my cars had about 3/4 of these signs and 3500 square feet, so it was a tight fit.

I was running the same general area.

Yeah, it. Was just across the airpark on

Hayden. And Redfield, I had outgrown it,

so I was looking for a slightly bigger building to move my carts to and I drove. I was looking at a building just

down the street. I looked at Jordan's building.

Shout out to Jordan goes by Lowball or GTR.

Fantastic collection, fantastic person.

I had looked at that building and it was a it's a bit narrow and I'm like, yeah, this may be hard getting cars in and out, but I ended up buying the pool table that he had up top that he was going to include in the building.

And I said, well, what if I just buy the pool table from you?

So the pool table I had came out of the building that Jordan owns now, and I was looking at a building down here that actually used to be called the Vault. That's not how I got the, it's

like idea for the name somewhere, right?

It's nose. Literally 4.

Buildings down, it was sitting empty.

It was owned by now the owner of Podium Racetrack and I.

Saw a little for sale sign by. Owner and this was a parking lot

used by Wright Honda and Toyota to park their overflow.

Shout out to Wright Honda and Wright Toyota.

Yep. That was when.

Dealers actually had overflow. This was, you know, 2019 pre

COVID. And I, they still parked their

cars after I bought the land. But it took us two years for

permits. So I need something to do.

We had finished or I can't say finished.

I was changing things right up until the time we finished.

So I rented a small warehouse around the corner that's next to Craig Jackson's personal collection, and I started buying cars, fixing them up and flipping them.

Developed friends with a good mechanic that was working at Bear Jacks at the time. He used to work for Gas Monkey

and he would do the mechanical stuff.

I would help out with what I could do.

And so we probably did 15 cars out of that warehouse over the span of a couple years. My lease was up.

There was a shop for older cars in front, right in front of us.

They took the space over and I had agreed.

On the. Original building that I had to

rent it out for a year after I sold it.

So we I got frustrated with the architects.

So my first idea was this was just going to be 8000 square feet for myself and I was looking at other businesses to buy because I love cars. I've always been a car person.

I'm like, maybe I'll find. There were a.

Couple tent and wrap shops for sale.

There was a dealership for sale, although I didn't really want to do car sales. So I was going to build just a

building half a size and go buy another business or start one.

And then I was meeting with the architects and they said, well the city, this is an acre. And they said, well the city

will let you build 16,000 square feet.

That's when the light bulb went on.

I've stored my cars and friends cars for years and that and.

Then but at the same. Token.

I've been in just about every car storage place that there is in this town before I started this and.

In fact. Looked at one that was for sale

at the time. I won't say which one because

they're still in business. I looked at the books and they

weren't really making much money just doing storage.

And so when LG was the commercial company that built this building, I essentially told them just give me the outside shell and let me design. Going back to my roots of

designing things. I drew out how I wanted the

lounge look, how I wanted the conference room to be.

I wanted no beams in this. So it's clear span.

This was about as big as we could make with Wise without having to buy trusses that are twice as tall.

So it turned into OK, now we need to going back to looking at the books of other a couple of storage places for sale.

I said we need something else to do and we decided before we ever finished that we would rent it out for private events.

I didn't have any. Social club when?

We started, we were open for three weeks and I got a rather panicked call from McLaren of Scottsdale.

They were the Arizona's Hennessy dealer and they say, can you host a party for 150 for Hennessy with their new Venom supercar? I said yeah, sure.

When? Tomorrow.

They had rented a house. An Airbnb in Paradise Valley and

we're going to have 150 to 200 people at a house in Paradise Valley for an unveil of this supercar.

The owners found out. Obviously that didn't go over

well with the owners or the neighbors and the police wouldn't of. And so I had 24 hours now we had

my, at the time, 10 cars and I had two customer cars.

We parked them underneath Stacker.

We have 10 Stackers and I had two in the middle, so the floor was already empty. They already had the DJ, the

catering. It was just getting the

announcement out to everyone that had RSVP for 175 people or so. And so that helped for a little

bit, put us on the map. We had our grand opening party.

We had, I didn't know half the people that were there.

Now I consider them friends, but back then I was friends with people who knew them. We got people to bring.

In cars to. Put on display Scottsdale,

Ferrari, bought a couple Ferraris.

We had a mixture of all different cars for our grand opening, but three weeks later we held our first event and then Hennessy came back the following year.

It was during Barrett Jackson, and so we got a dozen cars within a month after that just from people seeing our place for the first time. I had.

Never possessed a social media. Account right until I started

broke ground on this. People want to scroll back

they'll find the very first post was a patch of dirt when we dug up the pavement and we started with a fresh acre of dirt to build the place. I wanted something that I was

going to build from the ground up.

No other storage in Phoenix. I love a lot of the other ones

that are here. They've got some great design

things and great buildings, but they none of them built it from the ground up and going back to what I said before of wanting to do something different. So this was my full time job for

two years of planning this place.

This was during. COVID.

And the delays were and the price increases were starting to happen. I took a chance and I ordered

the trusses, the block plywood 6 months before we had permits and we put them here on site with a chain link fence around it.

Drove by twice a day just to try to make sure the TRUSSES took six months to do everything. The trusses and the block

arrived or the block arrived before we poured the.

Slab the trusses. Came after so we poured the slab

at 3:00 AM. Sixty concrete trucks in and

out. They were lined up all down

Greenway Hayden. We started pouring 1 drops drops

a load. Drives up 70 7th St. next one

comes in. Took about 3 hours to pour 60

concrete trucks for the slab and but we finished.

Construction in. Ten months we opened in or 11

months? Sorry, we opened December of 21.

When did you decide this is what you wanted?

To do because going back you said you were, you had your own storage with 3536 hundred square feet and you needed to find something else, but you had your own storage with your own cars.

When did all that start? So.

I bought the building. That I the smaller.

Building I had in 2014. Got it.

It was an office condo. Gutted it and turned it into a

smaller version of what you see here.

Still had that 2 post lift in the back.

Was in my old shop. I had a 2 car wide lift.

The neons were in there. I had one office, a bathroom, a

kitchen, TV area. After I looked at 30 or 40

commercial buildings in the airpark when there was actually inventory. By the time I bought 1 and

remodeled it I would have more money in it than but building it scratch so I decided. To do.

This it would have been late. 2019.

After looking a bunch of other businesses that I knew, I.

Could make it profitable. We had bought in my previous

life nine companies in seven years.

As far as like like when did you?

Decide. You wanted to start collecting

cars. Oh well.

I. Wanted to from the time I was in

high school but I couldn't afford it.

I bought my first collector car in 2005, the year before we started our business. The year after we started we had

billed out. We did over $1,000,000 that

first year but we only collected 250,000 of it.

We had 10 employees. I had Billings waiting for

payment of $850,000 and we had no.

Money to hire billers. To start billing it ourselves

instead of paying someone else to.

Only thing I had a value 67 Ford Mustang 427 side oiler, ton of ram, dual quads. Just a tire burner 12 1/2 to

one. Compression.

Just a hot rod I sold it in. O. 6 for $75,000 and that was

enough to hire two people to start doing our billing the year after we had collected that over $1,000,000 and I built my 65 Shelby Continuation Cobra with a 511 cubic inch big block.

So that Cobra was kind of the pay me back for being willing.

As much as I love cars, they're still just stuff.

They're not as important as family friends they can all be.

Replaced and so. That Cobra was a replacement for

my Mustang that I sold now since then.

I've had. 767 Mustangs 2. Cobras I only.

Have the one that the original 1 but I had a second one in there at one point and I probably own 80.

Cars over the. Last 25 years.

That's wild. By the time we sold our.

Business, I think I. Had 10 or 11.

Cars. I've always liked all types.

Obviously growing up in the 60s and 70s, I've always loved racing. I grew up in the Midwest where

it's dirt short tracks with Sprint cars, NASCAR, but I still, you know, I'd catch 24 hour Le Mans on ABC or clips on Wild World Sports, which is where every hour, every week they would before ESPN, they would highlight what had happened in sports. So I always loved Lamont's.

I loved Indy because we were three hours 3 1/2 hours away from Indy bug my parents every year until they finally took me when I was 10 and somewhere is a grainy little Polaroid picture of 10 year old or 9 year old me standing on the semi holler of AJ Foyt who was my favorite driver.

That's neat man. So I've.

Been to Indy several times. Since then at the museum, a good

friend of mine whose dad raced at Indy just brought me back a brick, one of the original bricks from Indy.

Most people, a lot of people don't know that truck was paved with 3,000,000 bricks in 1911 or so, and they keep that. 3 foot

strip of bricks gets replaced about every year and a half because the modern cars wear them out.

They've got a warehouse full of these old bricks, but they're about 10 lbs apiece. They're twice as heavy as a

brick you would use. That sounds like a pretty big

brick it. Is not much bigger than what?

You'd see on a brick house. They were just super dense,

super dense. So racing is always, I've always

loved watching race, I've always loved going fast.

I just couldn't afford to do the things I loved selling my company provided. The first thing we did was set

up 529 college plans for all of my grandkids.

We have 7 grandkids. They all got their colleges

funded or mostly funded depending on where they go.

We have had two graduate college now.

The third one's in college. One just graduated high school,

starting college down to the seven-year old that so and we were already debt free when we sold the company.

The company wasn't debt free, but we were.

The house was paid off. We did our remodels with cash.

Going back to the way I was raised, if you couldn't pay cash for it, you couldn't afford it. Now, I didn't always live that

way because I couldn't afford to, but when I could, we haven't had a mortgage payment since 2018.

Actually 2017. We paid it off the year before

we sold the company have had a car payment.

The only time I'd financed the car actually is the NSX sitting behind me. One of the only cars I financed.

Interest rates were cheap or the second time.

OK, I I was hoping you wouldn't go there.

So this car sitting behind me is a 1991 NSX.

When they were new, they were $75,000.

We didn't have two nickels to rub together.

We're three years into our marriage.

If it wasn't for my mother helping us buy food, our kids wouldn't have had food to eat back then.

My couple of. Friends we had bought.

Two of them, and they were at the time Car and Driver 1991.

That car was faster than a Ferrari, then a Porsche, then a Lamborghini or a Corvette in 1991.

And so couldn't afford one, but they let us drive it and that was both of ours kind of here's our car that we're going to work towards someday. Someday was.

In. The year before we sold the

company 2017, I could have paid cash but I'm like it was one of the first times where and I think I paid $45,000 for the car. The Cobra was expensive but it

was overtime that we paid on it during the build.

So I put like half down and I think I financed $25,000 and I still felt guilty about it for having a car payment.

We paid it off when we sold the comp or right before we sold the company. I had it like the note like 6

months so that car. I.

Enjoyed. I put 5000 miles on it and the

values that started going up and so being the capitalist than I am, I'm like hey, I can almost double my money.

I sold it for $90,000. I doubled my money.

Turns out my. Wife didn't want me to sell.

It she knew I was selling it, wasn't happy about it.

And so it's been gone about a year and a half.

Guy bought it, drove it back to San Diego.

Unfortunately, what I found out when my wife said and my grandson shamed me into saying you need to, you know, you need to find the car. I said OK, I can find one easy

and they said no, it needs to be your car.

That took a little bit longer. Because I hadn't.

Saved any of the information from the buyer.

I found the. Name in an old.

E-mail that and so I took a chance and emailed him, not knowing if that e-mail still worked, and that began a negotiation on buying my car back.

It showed up to me and the PPF was the car had been left outside because he didn't have enough room in his garage for it. So we did bake the protective

film on the car. It was a pretty spotless car

when it left here. Absolutely.

I've always taken good care of my cars.

I drive them and drive them hard, but I also take good care of them. And so we stripped off the PPF

and unfortunately an original paint car, it took clear off of the Fender. So I had to repaint the the

Fender but still had the wheels I put on it, which are 97 NSX wheels. Actually they're an inch bigger.

Science of speed, shout out to them.

They make one that looks like the 97 wheel, but it's a 1718 inch wheel Revs to 8000 RPM. You know, just a great driving

car. It's not the fastest and

straight line, but around a track it's pretty good.

I remember a grainy. Video on.

VHS back then, back in the day in the 90s of Senna around the Nurburgring with loafers and pants, you know, and barefoot with loafers, driving in NSX around the Nurburgring at 140 miles an hour. And so that was always like that

car that we both loved. And so buying it the first time

was but finally finishing that dream.

I'm always someone that was raised that you work towards something. It's not what you get from it,

it's the journey that you're on. And a lot of people only think

about the goal, they don't think about the journey.

But it will forever be in the collection and my grandkids can fight over it when I'm gone. Nice.

How long has it been back? Not that long.

It's been back about two months now.

It'll get PPF next week and it'll be back on the road.

Needs an AC service. Because it blows.

Hot now instead of cold. I know a local company they

could probably help you out with.

That Yep, it'll go down. To them once I get.

Some PPF on it, so the about a year or so 2.

Years ago. We are completely packed and I

realized that my cars were taking up 20 of my 65 spaces.

I started selling off. Anything that I.

Wasn't going to keep permanently.

This NSX was one of them and I ended up selling off some at Barrett Jackson's couple of Eleanor's 56.

Big window truck hot rod with 600 horsepower.

I'd have built them or bought them, enjoyed them, but they were. I realized that I didn't have

the time. I was getting this off the

ground and while I'm not working 80 hours a week, I'm still here every day working and it just didn't make sense to have them sit and not be driven. And it's a business and so

you're. Occupying spots that could be so

I was taking up 70 grand a. Year of revenue just in those

ten or so cars that I sold off or 75.

So I sold off more cars than my wife probably wanted me to.

She was it by then. It just attached to the cars as

I am. Are there any more on the

retrieval? List I got to get that car.

Back No. None that are coming.

Back I've had British cars, European cars, muscle cars, I like them all. I love an E type Jag but after

driving one that we store I have no desire to buy one.

They're great looking cars, fan one of the most beautiful cars ever made, great Rd. cars. But fitting in them and keeping

them from overheating in the summer is just not.

Easy, so I do have a build underway.

I'm partnering with a good friend of mine for a track toy that will have a license plate for the street. 800 Horse air

cooled Porsche 930. 5. Race car nice so.

It'll be done. It'll.

Be at SEMA in the Toyota Tigers booth.

BZ Moto out of California is building it.

Been great working with him. I'd never even met him before.

We've done everything over video call and emails, phone calls.

Great person to do a build with. He's got some sponsors for Seema

that are kicking in some parts and Charlie and I worked on the livery so it'll be a a fun car to do. 2600 lbs.

He's a well known big name too. So yeah, that name pulls some

things for sure. So the.

And I missed my air cooled 911. I had a 356 Outlaw was one of

those that got sold. There's so few people building 6

cylinder 350 sixes that it already went up in value after a couple years. And I got more for it than I put

in it, which is unusual for a custom build.

So I there's some more cars I'd love to drive before I die or own before I die. That may not happen for a while.

What are some of the top three or?

Four. If I had to only pick one, it'd.

Be a Lamborghini Mira. This was late 70s.

They had already went out of production but a lot of people had the Farrah Fawcett poster and those of you that grew up in the 70s will know what I'm talking about.

Or in the late 70s early 80's the Countach poster.

I had a poster of a mure in my room.

The original Supercar V 12170 miles an hour which in 1967 and 8 came out the year I was born. Not the best build quality and

parts are almost impossible to find, but to me one of the best looking cars that Lamborghini ever designed.

We have a don't we have one or two in?

There are none that I know of I. Saw one, maybe it was in town

for. For it was in town for the.

Arizona concourse I think had one for an anniversary for Lamborghini. So and I've never owned a

Lamborghini. I had never owned a Ferrari in

my life until three years ago. I bought a 550 Marinello gated 6

speed V12. Enjoyed it for a couple years,

sold it. That was one that got sold.

I made some money on that. If you buy good cars and you

keep them well or sort them out, you know if you buy them right then you make money on a car. Not when you sell them but when

you buy them is my humble opinion.

But I also don't. Really do it to make money.

At the heart, I'm not the vault guy, which is what I've been referenced to. I've been called worse.

I'm really just a car guy who loves cars.

I love some of these cars and don't have to own them because I get to look at them every day. And I love it when the old ones,

when the owner says can you exercise it for me?

And whether it's this Packard here behind you or one of my cars or we've got a 66 Corvette convertible, it's just a great driving car. I love it when they say I it

needs to be exercised because that means I get to go drive around cars and enjoy other people's cars without having to buy them. But it ends.

I'm just a car guy and this happens to be the business that I'm in to keep myself busy. I don't need to work at this

point, but yet I'm not wired to not be doing something.

What's the hardest thing about? Running this place best.

Thing about the car community is people.

And the same token as we both know that can also be one of the detriments depending on the people when we sold our.

Company I had. Three, my wife and I had 350

employees, 42 locations in 10 states when I decided to turn this into a business and not just a small building for me for as we sat down and talked about it because Pam and I have always done everything together. I said, you know what if I'm

going to do this, I want something easy to manage without many employees and if I want to. Wednesday I took what I call a

mental health day and went to Apex for the track for five hours of driving down there. I drove down five hours at the

track drive home. I was thoroughly exhausted, yet

mentally it completely clears my mind and was the best stress for me. This best stress relief I have.

But when I have a bad day here, a car won't start and maybe we've got to swap a battery or jump a car.

If you have a bad day working in the ICU, someone dies.

So it's a matter of perspective. Are there stresses?

Absolutely. It's just not the same level I.

Was 21 years. Old and.

I'll never forget the moment I was on the night.

Shift at Saint Joseph's Hospital in the pediatric ICU and a six month old baby had had open heart surgery and back then they would leave the chest cavity open with a clear sheet of what they put over Ivs to keep it sealed and clean.

But it's because all the babies born bones haven't hardened yet and they're still growing. And then after about a week,

they would close them back up. That's wild.

Well, this baby. Decided their.

Heart stopped beating in the ICU and instead of taking them to surgery because it was emergent, they peel that off and they started doing open heart massage.

Surgeon or the ICU doctor while I was breathing for the baby with a resuscitation bag. We took her off the ventilator

and. I didn't really even.

Realize what had happened. Doc said I need a pair of hands

and I. Said no one answered and I said

what do? You need and there's eight

people around this little tiny crib and he grabs my arm and before I know it I'm doing cardiac massage.

On a six month old and. I'm 21 years old.

That changes how you look at things.

Yeah. Puke my guts out after that, but

I had to grow up very quickly between having.

Two kids. To raise.

I'm halfway in age between my daughter and son and my wife.

So I was 21 with an 11 and a nine year old and working, taking care of life support machines for kids and babies.

Want to take a look at some of these cars?

Yeah. All right, people always ask

what the favorite car? Is usually for me the answer is

the next one. Yeah, if I had to.

Only pick one. That's like a push.

That's a push of an answer, though.

It is. If I had to only pick one.

Up front is my 2005 Ford GT. We both agreed when we sold the

company we would agree to pick one car each within what we thought would be appropriate as a reward for the last 14 or 12 years of building this business. So she ordered a 570 S Spyder

McLaren and I bought this Ford GT from the original owner or it had been 1 owner. I bought it at amicom auction.

Actually prices have gone up a bit since then.

This was 20 January of 2019 when I bought that car.

So it had 500 miles on it. Never had the anything changed

the original tires so it had an engine out.

Service and the next. Day I took it to the truck it

blew a $0.50 radiator clamp and sprayed coolant all over the

motor. I thought I my heart just sunk

because I thought I was cooked in the car I'd wanted and spent all this time for. Luckily it didn't hurt anything

that cleaned up fixed, but it hasn't been down to the tracks since then. But the my 65 Shelby is one I've

won and since I was 16. So that one took a few years to

find the right one and then also have the funds to to do it.

But in the same token, Porsches are right there along with Ford's. OK, we're just going to go

around and talk about. Some of the cars, it's going to

pick a handful of cars let's go that only weighs 100 lbs.

More than a 5 liter coyote motor desk.

It was pushed back 8 inches. So it's truly a front mid engine

car with 5050. Yeah, that's way back there.

Yep. Firewalls pushed back 6 inches.

So I barely squeeze into the car.

So the 65 Shelby GT350 is one that I've wanted one since I was 16. I grew up a Ford family, I'm

sorry Ford fan and a family full of Chevy levers.

So an original 65 Mustang. I'm the 5th owner.

I have registration slopes from 1965 when it was first purchased been restored. 12 years. Ago but still looks practically

brand new. I get.

I've put 3000 miles on it since I bought it early last year and one of the cars that will be in the collection forever right next to it is the 1994 Toyota T100 pickup.

It was owned by my wife's mother who since passed away.

It was bare bones other than two-tone paint was the only option. Plastic door panel, dash, roll

up windows. That truck is a great Home Depot

truck, but I get offers to buy it from me every time I go to Home Depot. Original paint except for the

hood that's been repainted. And we'll be in our family

forever and passed down to our daughter and her kids one day.

Terminator. Yep.

It the Terminator was the T. 1000 I believe and so when she

bought this and being AT100I used to joke about it being the Terminator. This is the 69 Triumph GT6.

Basically Triumph put a six cylinder in place of a 4 cylinder Spitfire and added a fastback roof even though it.

Really isn't. It was nicknamed the Baby Jaguar

because if you squint from 20 feet away, it's got the basic outline of an E type Jaguar tilt front end the way the Jag does.

Wire wheel knockoffs. Real knockoffs and drove all

around Phoenix in one of these all summer with no AC and it's had several motors in it. Hasn't been painted in 15 years,

so this car has been. Driven underneath a.

Monster truck when you pull up to a light your eye level with the UPS driver's wheel or a tire so.

You put it on instead. Of actually get in the car.

So my current daily is a 2024 force turbo S with an M engineering tune. Some wheels and a downpipe made

800 horsepower at the crank. But a nice comfortable daily

gets me around town. So at home in my garage is my

continuation Shelby Cobra that I've had for over 20 years.

Black car. It is the full size version of

this car. The spec is exactly how my Cobra

is at home. Black.

Black side pipes. St. bumpers.

This was made by a friend of mine with an electric motor.

Does 50 miles an hour. He made a form and hand poured

aluminum bumpers for it. Made the windshield and has a

app for you to control the top speed from 2 miles an hour to 50. I had to take out the seats and

lay down sideways to drive it because it turned out much smaller than I thought it was going to be and they put in a regular cobra steering wheel which made it much bigger inside. 1/2 scale car but it's the mini me of my cobra so next.

To me is my 1938. A158 recreation that was this

morning's cars and coffee car. The theme of Scooter Rio was

cars that don't fit in. This car is fully street legal,

registered with a license plate hidden underneath the seat in case I get pulled over. But in the day.

Juan Fangio won his first F1 championship in 1951 in one of these cars. It was the last car Enzo Ferrari

worked on running the AR Racing team before he started Ferrari.

Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it and we'll have

to do this again sometime. Let's do it.

Hey guys, thank you for checking out.

The show, if you like what you heard or even if you didn't like what you heard, if you're watching this on YouTube, go ahead and hit that thumbs up. Hit the subscribe button.

If you're listening to it on traditional podcast media, go ahead and go over to YouTube and hit that like button and please subscribe. Trying to move everything to

YouTube. It's been a lot of good time

trying to make these videos. But anyway.

So with that being said, I do want to thank the show's sponsors, right Honda, right Toyota, Toyota of Huntington Beach, I got to read this. Claremont Toyota and Gardenia

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Shut up.

Ron Evans - Behind The Vault

About this episode

Morgan 3 wheeler

Toyota Celica

Fiat X1/9

Mazda 626

Chevrolet C10

Ford Bronco

Ford Mustang

Shelby Cobra

Chevrolet Corvette

911 Porsche 930

Porsche 911

Lamborghini Mira

Lamborghini Countach

Ford Gt

Toyota T100

Jaguar Type Jaguar

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