Spike Feresten on Podcasting and SoCal Car Culture

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the BAT Podcast. This is Randy Nonenberg reporting from Bring

A Trailer Headquarters in San Francisco for another episode. And for this one, we have

a super special guest. We have Spike Ferreston who's here to join us who runs a podcast

that dwarfs ours. So maybe he'll give me some hints and tell me a little bit about the car

world in SoCal and what is happening. Good to reconnect with you, Spike. Thanks for being

here.

Yeah, thanks for having me on.

We have been talking about all sorts of corners of the BAT universe, but your touchpoints

on cars in SoCal go quite a bit broader. You've built what I always hear as kind of one of

the benchmark car-oriented podcasts, but I wanted to ask you about that, get some updates

on the podcasts and what else you're up to. But tell me, I mean, you consider the podcast

sort of a side fun project, or do you put a lot of focus on that as one of your main

outlets or tell us how it has informed life for you?

It's always been a side hustle. It's always been just an hour of fun with me and my friends

that, you know, continues to grow in size and demand more and more attention. But if you

knew anything like about me, it's like I do put quite a bit of planning into it, not like

Zuckerman or any of the other guys, they just show up. But I'm thinking about every kind

of inch of what we're going to talk about. You know, I have a great team down in Austin

who edits with me and we, you know, we want people to enjoy this hour of kind of, you

know, off-center car talk, you know, and what we're always trying to go for is like the

real conversation people are having behind the conversation. So when you're hanging out

with your friends and you're looking at cars at cars and coffee, and then you go off to

the side with your buddy and you go, Hey, here's what I really think. That's our show.

You know, and then we, we have accumulated knowledge of many, at this point, decades

of buying and selling cars and, you know, including from your site, you know, your great site

and your great community that you've built. And we love just sharing some of that craziness

with everybody. And, you know, hopefully we're there to go, Hey, I've been in that situation

and here's what I think you should do, you know, because when you're buying and selling

cars or when you're collecting cars, I mean, when you just have one car, and I remember

it was at the very beginning of this, you know, your thinking is not all there. You

know, I remember one of my first instincts was, well, I'll buy the cheapest rotted out

thing I can find and then I'll restore it. Not understanding that that would cost me

four of those cars, you know, and I always would get advice from folks around me and

go, Oh, that makes sense. Buy the best preserved lowest mileage example I can afford. And then

ask before you restore because it may not be worth it. You know, so we're now trying

to kind of give back to our car community a little bit, still learning a lot about the

whole car collecting deal. And, you know, Spike's car radio is just a whole lot of fun

for us. You know, it really is. We love getting together. I love driving press cars and new

cars. That's super fun. And now we're getting to travel and have, you know, more interesting

people on the show than just my crew of monkey guys. So, you know, it's good.

Yeah, that fun aspect of it in time with your friends, I think comes through. And I think

that's why probably people relate with it so well. You say traveling around. I know you

guys have kind of established a beachhead a little bit year after year. Now you come

to Pebble Beach on the Saturday or on the Friday. You guys are there and kind of doing

the live version. Is that something that's good and you want to keep doing that? Or is

that a bunch of folks that don't get it and you're talking to a crowd that's a little

disconnected or are people pretty, pretty engaged in it? That's a good place to be.

No, our friends show up. You know, we do a show, we sell tickets, all the money goes

to charity. And we always, we have sold out the last five or six years. And it's always

like our group, our friends. They know the answers to all of our trivia questions. You

know, I think I can stump them. They've got them. It's always super fun. And now, you

know, I'm off to a drain concor with Johnny Lieberman tomorrow. We're flying out there

to do a show. It's me and Johnny. Have you been there before? It's pretty cool spot.

Yep. Yeah, no, but I'm from the East Coast. And you know, I was born not too far from

there, not in Fancy Newport in Fall River, Massachusetts. But I'm excited to go kind

of connect with the East Coast car community and see this event. I didn't understand the

scope of it till I looked at the schedule yesterday. It went, oh, damn, this is a real

deal. They're wearing pink sport coats. So I'm psyched. I'm psyched to get out there

finally and hang with Donald Osborn. And hopefully I'll get to see JLo's mansion. I really

want to see that thing on the peninsula there and just see what this whole thing's about.

Yeah. I mean, I hear people talk about your guys podcast on the East Coast, on the West

Coast. I was in Europe recently doing car stuff and somebody said they were listening

to it, driving around overseas. So that's where to reach. Obviously, we've had a kind

of similar journey with BAT and you just kind of are a little surprised when it kind of

catches fire a little bit and you guys are all over the place. So I love hearing what

you guys have to say on it and tuning in. But there's always some questions that I have

about it in terms of, yeah, you have your buddies that are on it with you and I love

the different banter and their different experiences. The press car thing. So obviously, once you

get some visibility, like you get to drive some brand new stuff, you guys are always talking

about the brand new stuff that you're driving. Used to be super heavy, Porsche centric, but

now it's like all over the map, right? I mean, you guys are driving all sorts of stuff. Is

that right? Yeah. My sensibility for the show is guys having fun with stuff. So I really

only say yes to stuff that I think we can have a good time with and then I try to communicate

the West side of LA lifestyle use of this thing. So right now we have a long-term loaner

on Ineos Grenadier and all of us are driving it. I was just in it this morning. I took

it to play tennis this morning and it's fun for me to get on the set and then go, hey,

when I brought it to tennis, nobody knew what this was. Well, that was at the Ralph supermarket.

Somebody said, what's in Ineos? Is that a defender? Is that a G-wagon? I don't understand

what you're driving and then you meet people in the neighborhood who have them and go,

oh, you like Greenies, don't you? And you learn, you get to talk to them and go, what

do you think of this first-generation SUV? And they go, oh, the steering's a little

weird, but it's charismatic and I like the way it looks. And you go, yeah, that's what

I'm experiencing too. And these guys really have developed something right out of the

gate that's like a solid grade B, I would say, which is really hard to pull off. And

then I called them up and said, what are we going in the future? And gave them some of

my feedback and they said, we're already on it. I love hearing that. And I can't tell

you what they told me, but there's good stuff coming. And that to me is very important information

to communicate to somebody who's in the middle of nowhere or just like, I like this thing.

I like the way it looks and I go down to the dealer. You're not necessarily going to get

the feedback that I'm going to give you or the other guys are going to give you, right?

They're just going to sell you a car. So while we don't take it too seriously, we do understand

that there's a hungry audience for kind of basic information. A lot of other shows will geek

out and drill down on the tech and the specs. And I think that's well covered, but not a lot of

shows will go, my wife hates this thing. My kids told me not to drop them off in school in it.

Or three people flipped me off in one drive today and I was not doing anything. That's like what a

Bentley convertible does in LA. There's it saying something to the world and you should know before

you buy this, there's going to be a bias against you wherever you might be driving it. And you

don't want to be surprised when you're spending that kind of money two weeks in when every day

you're getting flipped off. Like, oh man, what did I sign up for? People appreciate that sort of

straightforwardness, right? And you have some sponsors on the show, but it's not like you're

sponsored by Jeep. So you can't say what you feel. You can't say what you feel about the exact model.

It seems like podcasts in particular. I mean, I think the new car magazines or the reinvented car

magazines are trying to do that, but frankly, nobody reads and nobody does that anymore. So they

definitely much rather hear it from you or hear it from something that just feels like a real

personality in their ear in a better way. But we have had Porsche sponsor us. We have had Ford

sponsor us, but it's always a very specific thing that they're trying to sell. And they know we're

just going to speak our minds. That's just what we do. In fact, there are times where I think the

guys are being a little unfair. A lot of times that's a little personal bias that he's putting

on something. But I think all of it's kind of important. And I feel when I'm kind of digesting

content, I don't want to be in a negative space. You know what I mean? I really these days,

I would rather someone be telling me how I'm going to enjoy this because I'm already kind of interested

in it. And then maybe say, here's something to consider. Maybe it's a little too expensive for

you. Maybe it doesn't handle right here and here. But I think I'm trying to remember there's only one

car in our eight year history that we really went, what the fuck is this?

I'm happy I can't remember it right now. But we were all just like, yeah.

Come on, man. You got to remember that one. I think it was something. No, it was something

Johnny brought on the set. It wasn't something I accepted. I don't know what it is. But

people think of us as like a Porsche podcast, but I mean, we love Subaru a lot. We're big

Subaru fans. I'm a big Ford fan. Porsches are getting more and more expensive. And obviously,

we love those. But we just like driving stuff and talking about it and talking about our experience

and how it affects the world. Yeah. You've been a Bronco guy, haven't you? You had a Bronco for a

while and you have one now. Those had the big bubble run up when everybody was chasing them

right at the beginning on BAT. Now that has simmered down. We still sell. There's still a

trickle of those on BAT. Oh really? Man, at the beginning those were banana. Remember guys paying

over sticker and guys salivating for the Raptor to come out and blah, blah, blah. There was some

crazy times when those vehicles were just coming out. That's a pretty special vehicle for them

to relaunch though, the way that they did. It's cool. I always liked that you, even if the

conversation was veering like supercar or whatever else, you'd be like talking about your Bronco

and driving it around LA. It's especially satisfying because yeah, I had a bunch of

Land Rovers like Range Rovers and Land Rover Defenders. I've always had that as my kind of

daily car in the garage and that in the driveway. And then I started looking at these Broncos

and this limited heritage edition and I thought, boy, I don't think I've owned a Ford since my

first car when I had like a Ford Torino 500, the 71 Torino 500. My dad bought it for a couple

under bucks and my brother promptly crashed it into a telephone pole after a few drinks. So

that was my last Ford experience and Johnny said, you're going to hate this. It's too cheap for you.

It's not you. And I said, I know, I said you're right and I think I'm going to love it and I

think you're wrong. But everything you're saying is accurate. Everything that I've done up to this

point, you're right. My taste, you're exactly right. Yet my kids, I have two teenage boys,

they're tired of me saying, don't throw the mud and surfboard and the crap in the car. This thing,

I'm not going to say that. I can take the tops off. Both kids are driving now. I can let them

take it, not worry about it too much. But I think I'm just going to have fun in it. And I think that's

going to outweigh all of the other concerns. And that little voice in my head was so 100% right.

I have fun. I still do. I'm a year and a half into it. I'm still having fun driving it when it's

put away for a month like I'm driving the Ineos. When I get back in it, I go, here I am. I'm home.

I absolutely love it. And I leased it. It was a business lease. I'm going to buy it when it's

done. This is going to be my Bronco. This is going to be my old man car.

It's awesome. I tell everybody to get them. I think they're terrific. You see them all over now,

but they are awesome. And you can spec them the way you want. And the Heritage Edition one is

super slick. So no, when I first met you, man, I think you had a short wheelbase,

Series 2 or Series 3. Series 2A. You had a 2A. I still have that.

You still have it. Oh, okay. I thought maybe the Bronco just placed that.

No. It's definitely not getting used as much. But recently,

Zuckerman bought an 82 Range Rover, a Euro spec, and asked me to go halfs on it. And we had bought

another car that same day from the same guy that I went halfs on, BMW 525. And I just said,

it's too much, Zuckerman. And he goes, trust me, you're going to love this thing. And I said,

I'm not buying half of it. A year later now, I was handing off the Ineos to Cameron, our producer,

and I called Zuckerman. I said, hey, let me drive that Range Rover. He goes, okay,

I drove it home and I fell in love with it. It's 11 years older than my Series 2A,

and it's like a Series 2A meets a Rolls-Royce Slut. And then crash in the middle,

and it's got a V8 in it, and it works right, and it's a four speed, and it's way faster than it

works better than I thought. This one wasn't leaking. And I called him and I go, oh my God,

I made such a horrible mistake. Did you sell half this car to somebody? And he goes, I did.

And I go, can I buy the guy out? So that's where I'm at today. I may sell my Series 2A

this weekend to try to get into that, because those old Range Rovers,

people have been telling me this, and I feel so stupid for not listening to them,

for 10 years they've been saying, when you get inside and your seating position is high,

glass and the visibility, and it's vintage, but there's enough modern driving experience

where this is usable as a daily. I wasn't listening, and boy, were they right.

They're great SUVs and a great choice for something fun and old and trucky, you know,

that's going to work. Yep, the low dash in those, the seating position is crazy. It's really

different than a Land Cruiser. A lot of people associated with Land Cruisers and stuff of the

same era, but they have a different vibe. The pillars are thin. Those are super cool. I drove

a 95, the stretched one, the long wheelbase one for a while. I actually put a fair number of miles

on. It was loaned to me by a friend, and I snuck out without having to do repairs myself,

so I thought I was the hero. I thought I had a great experience for about a year in one of those,

so anyway. I found six things wrong with this one immediately, and as I do with sometimes

press car, anytime I drive something I love, I start fixing it whether they want me to or not.

I'm sending it off to my mechanic. I don't own this car, but I'm sending it to my mechanic

in Inglewood, who's a Land Rover expert, and I just gave him a punch list. They go,

just do this stuff. Zuckerman, I'm taking your car. I'm getting it fixed. You're going to love

what I do to it, but they were just tiny little things, but things that I could not live with,

like the rear wiper blade, a piece of it was hanging off, a trim piece here, a speaker there,

a light, and the bonnet wasn't working, and this guy will just crush it, and that car will be 100%.

You know? That's the whole game. I love that. Nice to have somebody you can rely on if you

have one of those cars to fix it up a little bit when you need it. I want to talk, I don't know if

many folks in our audience knew about your sale, your charity sale of the moto that you did. I

wanted to kind of reach back and see what you remember about that and how that went. You were

selling a pretty cool Triumph motorcycle that was in your garage for a charity benefit. Can you tell

whatever ended up coming to that? Yeah, that was, so obviously in the top of last year or top of

this year, we had the fires in the Palisades, and the town pretty much disappeared, and the school

was raising money. The school, 75% of it was there. Both my kids are Pally High public school kids,

and my wife said, what can you donate? And I said, well, why don't I donate my Triumph Bonneville?

Why don't I call Randy up and bring a trailer? He's got such a great audience there, and we'll

sell it for charity and see what we can get. You were great, and you've helped us out before,

like you did with Sheffield. I think we raised money from my wife's health care initiative in

California. That's right. She's about free health care and getting people free health care in this

state of California. We got a lot of publicity. I think you helped publicize it. It was on TMZ

weirdly. I was so surprised. To me, I was just selling an old motorcycle, but it got a lot of

press, and a buyer down in Orange County who was about to buy a house in the Palisades before it

burned down, and then that house owner was going to buy it burned down, said, I want to do something

for the community, and he wrote a big check for $25,000 for that. And it's always so much fun

when we're selling something on Bring a Trailer. You probably know, but Jerry and I and Zuckerman

will always lurk in the comments when one of our auctions is going off. Several times,

I've had the pleasure of sitting with Jerry and smoking cigars while his auction ends,

and I'm commenting for him, and we are just laughing and having fun. There's nothing better

than that. It's so much fun. I mean, we were doing a writing session this year at some point,

and his auction was ending, and we lit cigars up, and it was such a great 45 minutes,

like when it was over, we got a ridiculous number. Obviously, people knew it was Jerry,

so there was a premium paid, but when the auction was over, Jerry was just like,

isn't that the greatest thing? Didn't we just have the greatest time? You're talking to the people

bidding. We're getting texts from our friends in Malibu who we didn't know were bidding on it,

and they were. We're like, what are you doing? They go, I want the car. They go, well, why didn't

you call us? It was so funny and so much fun, and that's what you do so well. It's fun to bring

you guys together like that. I appreciate that you've adopted it. You've always had nice things

to say about it, and I appreciate that. That was part of our early success, I think, with some

folks like you guys with some visibility saying, hey, this was an okay place to sell a car, and

it's turned into a crazy thing, but it still has that one-off experience too. It's not just full

industrial boring website. Thankfully, there's still that connectivity. If you're in the moment,

it can get the endorphins going pretty well. It can. No, it's very exciting. The two things we

like, obviously, is the idea that we know we're going to come there and find some cool stuff.

You're bored. You've got an hour to kill before a meeting. You're saying, go and bring a trailer

to see what I can find. Put in the word, oh, look at that. There's cool stuff. Then the community,

the people, there's nothing like it on any of the other platforms. There's such a vibrant community,

and they're mostly respectful, I think, which is rare these days. You have the ability to

kind of, because sometimes you can't look at what you might be buying, you can digest the comments

and talk to people in the comments section and read your... That's my question. I want to hear

how that was answered. Oh, I didn't know that about the number that were made, and I didn't know that

about that color, and you bet the car in comments, which is really fun. It's an experience more,

I think, than an auction platform. I appreciate it. Thanks for saying that. Do you delve into

comments in your own world? I know you do a lot of social stuff, and your podcast obviously has a

lot of people with an opinion about it out there. Oh, they definitely do, yeah.

Some people want to run the other way. Some days I want to run the other way from the comment section,

but in general, we try to engage in it, but outside of that, in your own world, is that

something as a public figure that may be something you just want to... Yeah, I'm over that. Comments

are always good because it means people are engaged, and opinions are all over the place,

so there's no way to please anybody, but it just means people are invested and care about what

you're doing, and the trick is always looking for useful feedback if it's there at all versus

just doing somebody else's idea. You know what I mean? At this point, I know the type of show that

I want to do, and I know how it's going to affect views and certain listeners or viewers on YouTube.

YouTube is its own separate ecosystem, too, with its own type of feedback,

and if you pay too close of attention to it, you'll get lost because someone's going to beat

you up, someone's going to praise you too much, someone's going to tell you, just put the guys

on, someone's going to say, get rid of the guys. I hate that guy. I hate you. I love you, and it's

fun for me when I think more so than comments is when we do a Q&A, or now we're on Patreon,

so it's getting very small. Patreon is a place now where we can do an after show. It's way more

relaxed. You can subscribe at a couple of different levels, and if you're there playing with us,

we do this Dear Abby segment where Zuckerman answers questions. We can now do a very small

version of that. We'll fix your personal problems, and we'll post it here for Patreon, and we'll talk

about it. It's not us talking about cars. It's us talking about your fiancé and what she did,

and that's not necessarily big enough for the show, and nor do people want to see that in the

show, but it's become this really new, fun place for us to play. I like that. I like answering

people's questions and talking to them there and engaging them on Patreon right now because it's

smaller, and then Patreon also offers a place for us to make. We bring cars onto the set,

but we haven't been able to drive them yet, so now when the show's done, we're talking about the new

Porsche 911 Turbo S. We stick a camera in it after the show, and we drive. Zuckerman and I go for

drive, and that's just him road-raging, really. Well, I tried to talk about the experience of

the car, but people get to see what he's really like on the road. That's something we can't do

when we're shooting the podcast on set. I get excited about where I think we're going to be

taking the show in the next five years and what we're going to build from some of this. I think

of it as pilot Patreon content, but then once it's refined, it's going to bounce back to YouTube

as a new show next to the podcast. It's all good. Yeah, that's a pretty good teaser. I was going

to ask you about what does success look like in the podcast world? Do you just go bigger and bigger,

or do you want to expand sort of laterally? So maybe that's the teaser right there

with what could come in terms of new types of content. That's interesting.

Well, yeah. I mean, you've got to evolve and change and bring your audience somewhere,

and that was last December when we launched on YouTube. Truthfully,

none of us wanted to see our stupid faces and then do that, but it provided an opportunity for

the show and it provided an opportunity to show our listeners what we're talking about.

Forget about us, but go, hey, here are these new watches that we're making with Sheffield,

or hey, here's this car, or look, you've heard Zuckerman talk about his BMW collection. Let's

look at them. Let's put a camera on them. He can take you through some of the interesting,

that we're really enjoying. We can also now talk about news and pull things up on a monitor,

and you can see, and we can have that conversation that we've been wanting to have and being a little

more topical rather than evergreen. And in that way, we're hopefully mimicking what people are

talking about across the country and when they're out of cars and coffee. So once you do that,

you see, I saw right away, okay, well, this is its own thing, this podcast, but now we definitely

have a vibe that's different from other car podcasts. It's a reverent, it's sometimes stupid,

and frequently inaccurate, but fun. So if you've taken that, but we have a lot of access. We have

Johnny, we have a lot of access to real automotive journalists in our orbit and people like you.

So what can we take now, and how can we make a car show for YouTube that carries that aesthetic

forward, that concept forward? And what does an irreverent Jay Leno's garage look like? If Jay's

1130, we're the 1230 show, what does that mean? So that's kind of where I'm trying to figure out

right now. I want to do the 1230 version of Jay Leno's garage. You know what I mean? He's got

his thing. He's the king of YouTube right now. And I don't want to step on that. I want to do

my own thing. That's a little out there. And that's what we're working on.

As it evolves, tell me about old car versus new car. I know Zuckerman's into some old cars. You're

into these old Land Rovers, some different things. But some of your audience is probably younger and

is like, why are you talking about 70s BMWs? I don't care at all, right? They want to talk about

the latest greatest spec. I feel like Lieberman is kind of sometimes peppering in that the

latest stuff he's driving. How does that balance work? It is true. I mean, press cars are generally

are the new cars, and they generally come in there. But we also collect old stuff. I drive

that Zagato that Zuckerman and I own. We love 356s. And it's cyclical like anything. I just noticed

here in the last couple of weeks on LA, I'm seeing more of the old cars on the road. People are

getting back into their old cars. And it's just because the weather's, you know, 10 degrees cooler

and people are not worried if they don't have air conditioning and they want to take a nice drive

out to Malibu. It's nice. And I see, you know, my kids and their friends, they like a lot of

vintage cars. You know, the ones that are car guys like you and me and everybody probably listening,

they like old stuff. And they know an awful lot about it because of YouTube, you know. So it's

always a balance for us. You know, it's just a balance. And I find in my decades of going back

and forth with stuff, I'll be driving and I'm kind of in it right now. A lot of modern stuff.

Like I've been driving our 718 Spider RS and then picking up the ST and then getting the

Spider RS and then the ST. And just today, I've done with the new stuff. I want to now go right

back to the beginning and drive the oldest thing that we have, which will be the Segato.

And that's coming up, but you know, when I get back from Audrena, that's what I'm going to drive now

for a week. And then I'm going to start moving forward again. And I think a lot of folks are

kind of like that unless they're just starting out and then they're, they're going, all right,

I want to buy something from the 2000s, the 2010s that I grew up kind of looking at. And you know,

I just got my first job and I got a little bit of money, you know, that's a segment that's hot

right now. But the new stuff, it's kind of hard to tell. I don't know, have you been up to Pebble

lately? Absolutely. Yeah, I've been there. I mean, that's pretty close to me. That's kind of my

home field advantage in Monterey. But yeah, for the event in August, I was actually racing at the

track in August for the first time this year. So that was cool. And I got to see a bunch of the

events. But yeah, that's why Saturday was booked. I never get to come to your guys thing on Saturday

because we always have something on Saturday. What were you racing? A Shelby Mustang 65, Shelby

Mustang GT 350. Wow. Yeah, that's always been sort of my dream race car to get to do there. When I

was a kid, I went there to watch those cars race. So the car I raced was racing there in 96 when I

was in whatever high school watching them race around. And I got to get that car and get it on

track. So I feel pretty fortunate for that. That's just amazing. But maybe you noticed like I did,

it seemed like that week was more about hypercars. Supercar. Yeah, totally. Two years.

Hypercars, supercars are really hypercars. It's everything's getting nuttier. And it was in that

direction that used to be about old cars and beautiful old things. And you know, you'd go up

and you'd see a 250 short wheelbase at six in the morning just gliding through the woods and you go,

oh my God, my life is complete. Now, you know, it just seems like people were celebrating a

different group of these cars, like you're saying, you know, the supercars and hypercars.

And you know, I'm always trying to bring our audience something new, but also something I can,

I'm interested in myself. Does that make sense? No, it totally makes sense. I feel like if we're

interested in it in some way, then it will be interesting to our audience. It's really only

that simple. Absolutely. And there are big generalizations around, oh yeah, kids only like

the supercars or kids only like young folks only like this or whatever. And obviously,

you can break that rule in three seconds because you know a kid who loves a, you know, 65. Well,

yeah, it's funny. I remember talking to Pebble Beach Concord people years ago and they were like,

yeah, we're thinking about getting video games and driving simulators to get the kids because we

this is generation of kids who don't like cars. They couldn't know you're wrong. Yeah,

they don't. Yeah. You're misplaying it. They're here. Just they can't afford this.

Yes. You haven't given them something to show up to. And now, you know, now they get up there,

no matter what, they don't go to anything. They're in the woods with their cameras. So like this year,

there's like, you leave the quail, there's 40 kids out there with their cameras getting psyched

at the beginning of their thing. You know, and I talked to the kids here on the west side,

you'll see them at the cars and coffees and stuff. And they are so passionate. It's so great.

There's a huge generation of car lovers coming up. And in some ways, they're way ahead of where I

was, way, way, way ahead. You know, they're already putting on their own shows. They're already connected.

I know one kid who's just like, yeah, I'm going to USC, get right out of USC, right to work for

Zinger. Is that right? Wow, cool. It's just I'm so happy. I'm like, I've never seen someone's life

work out like that. You know, but it's just you meet them and you just go, you're going to be working

in the car industry. There's no way you're not because you just eat, drink and breathe it. You

know, it's so cool. See, it's encouraging. That is certainly encouraging. My boy's 15 years old.

I know you have a son you talk about on your show and seeing them like cars and how they interact

with it. It's really pretty cool. Yeah, they're not. One's a pilot though. He's about to solo,

which has got me bummed out. Oh my goodness. If you're a dad and you're listening and thinking

of your baby and a Cessna flying up in the air in LA, what do you do with that two hours of your

life? Oh man. And when it's the kid who can't clean his bedroom and can't remember to set his

alarm clock and I'm not good with that. I remember when he got his driver's license and he said,

I'm driving to school and I said, well, hold on for the first time. I called Zuckerman up and I

said, what am I supposed to do? And he goes, you just got to take a valium and let the kid drive.

I go, really? He goes, he's got his license. Just let him go. And it's a real leap of faith.

And now he's fine. He's been driving for a year and he's been no accidents, but man,

flying's a whole new level of scary. And the other kid is not a car guy. He's a motorcycle guy. And

boo, you know, that's another one. I've got a, luckily for me, you know, these kids are all on

these serons and electric bikes. That's right. And, you know, already had a horrible leg break,

not related to that as he points out. Not related to that. Dad, even though we found him in the

street once and he broke a finger some other time, but he, you know, he had a cow where he's doing

wheelies and standing on the seat. My wife was like, what is happening? I go, I didn't know he

was doing, but it's pretty cool, right? Look, thankfully, and if you're a parent going through

this, when your kids get to high school, there's peer pressure to not ride those things. Cause it's

a middle school sir. Does that flip? Oh, I love that. It's suddenly he called and goes, I'm selling

my bike. I'm like, Oh my God, am I awake? What do you mean? He goes, Oh, I'm selling. I just want

the money for something else. And I'm like, well, I want to step up to like a Yamaha or what do you

want to step up to? Unfortunately, he loves dirt bikes are different. No, we still take dirt bikes

out in the desert. That's fine. It's being on the road with people. That's the problem.

Nobody, he said, I said, I suspect that, you know, cause I see younger kids on it that you don't

want to be doing it. He goes, yeah, it's kind of a middle schooler thing. And I went, Oh, okay, cool.

Grow out of that as fast as you can. Middle schoolers on motorcycles. That's the reality

here out in LA. Oh man. Yeah. You mentioned the ST. I know you're going through a line of

interesting Porsches kind of latest and greatest. We've had STs going through the site. I don't know

if you guys have been seeing them or monitoring them, but that was a crazy phenomenon. Still

moving one or so of those a week through BAT, which is crazy after they reached a year old,

right? They became a free for all, but you guys took delivery of yours and that's a keeper or

you guys are now jonesing for the next latest thing. Well, I think we're supposed to, we had to buy

a lease for it for a year and I think that lease is up in January. So that's when we'll make that

decision. That car is, I drove it yesterday. It's incredible though, right? There's nothing else

to say. Why would you jones for anything else? I mean, I don't even know where they go from there.

That car is so impressive. Well, we're a little spoiled by our friends at Porsche Clearwater

and we were supposed to just have this car to drive for a year. We had traded in the GT4 and

kind of kept the money on the table and got a GT3 RS and then sold that, kept the money on the table

and we were able to buy the lease out for a year and kind of have a free 911 ST before we had to

make a decision. And that was a five year plan of ours, which worked quite well. And now here's the

car and at the same time I had a friend, I won't say who he is, but he's a famous film star who

wanted a 718 Spider RS and Porsche Clearwater was able to get him an allocation and at the

last minute he changed his mind and decided to get something else. So Porsche Clearwater said,

do you want his allocation? You can do paint to sample. You're nodding. That's what we did. We

went, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll do that. Yes, please. Yeah. Yes, please, but we don't think we'll hold

it that long, but we'll keep it for six months or so. And we did a Ration Green, an old 356 color

and that car got delivered three or four weeks ago and we're unexpectedly in love with it. It's

one of the greatest driving convertibles I've ever been in that has a monster race car when you want

it with a push of a button and then you're just, you know, I'm having these sunset drives down,

sunset Boulevard to PCH, you know, with my wife or one of my kids and I'm just feeling like I just

came back from a week long vacation. So, you know, that car has been just a joy right off the bat.

So I don't, I'm lost now, you know, and we had an allocation for a GT3 Touring for the spring,

I think, and we specked that out with Mason from the Porsche kind of special wishes department

and that car is spectacular, but something has to give Randy. We can't hold all of this stuff.

It's too expensive, but it's just a long way of saying I don't know where we're going with it,

but we're lost. Maybe January will be an inflection point, something's got to give

and a decision needs to be made in January of whether you keep that thing or launch it.

I tell people, I tell people when they call with this kind of stuff or they can't get this or

they can't get that from the dealer, I said, look, there's so many places to win here at this point,

just find anything like this, a 991 Speedster, find anything. You're going to be happy and just

stick with it. Is one appreciably better than the other? I don't know other than the ST, but

you know, you'll be happy. They're all special cars and Porsche is going to continue to churn

them out and you're not safe anywhere. Good advice. Good advice. I wanted to maybe wrap it up with

asking you about the state of things in the SoCal car scene, which you're obviously a big part of

or see at least. I don't know if you'd like going out to events, you have name and face recognition.

I don't know how much you like mingling amongst the masses and people running up to you and

I love it. And giving grief, but they don't. Things have evolved. I mean, Luft has been out

for, I think they're in their 11th year and other things in SoCal. There's a big Italian show that

we were at this last weekend. They're sort of getting subtraction and some momentum. Are you

finding things that you're excited about or that are happening or would you rather just kind of run

for the hills in your cars and drive some twisty roads and do it in a less public way? What's the

exciting part of car culture in SoCal right now for you? Well, driving is always the reason that

we live here. I mean, it's so great. The PCH was closed because of the fires. It was really hard

for me personally because I did not know how much I loved that experience and what a release it was

from stress, the stress of the week. So now that that's open, like on the weekends, you see a lot

of folks in their cars driving out there, hitting the canyons, having a good time. There are lots

of great new shows popping up on the weekend that I like to go to that are much smaller.

But I think the thing that we're all excited about more than anything now is the rebirth of

Willow Springs. Having the racetrack there and having this new Disneyland for gear heads

opening up is the thing I think that everybody's buzzing about right now. They've dumped a lot

of money into the tracks there. They've redone them. They've made them safe. The new pictures this

week of the green and white runoff and the logo and all that stuff. It looks pretty solid, doesn't

it? Yeah. And it's an hour drive from LA and while some of it's going to be private, a lot of it's

public facing. And the guys who are doing it like cars. They like two things, money and cars.

But the right people bought it and they're saying to us in Southern... This is the place you want

to come to play. Bring your cars up here to race, race our cars, race the cars. We've got everything

for you. Come here on your bachelor weekend. We're building a hotel, rent a condo. You're going to

have a memorable time. That to me is the... I think really is the next big building block for

the SoCal car culture. We've got the shows. We've got the people. We've got the cars. It's diverse.

It's everywhere. But now you've got a racetrack and it's not a run down. You're going to go out there?

When are we going to see you out there? I know they're having on the 11th of October.

They're doing that big ground break and you're going. Okay, cool. Of course. Yeah, yeah. It's

funny. I say everybody, but everybody is going. Is that right? That's awesome. Hey Jay, you're

going. Yeah, I'm going. Matt Ferri, you're going. Yeah, I'm going. Singer, I'm going. Everybody is

going. Triple zero, I'm going. They've called everyone and everybody's showing up and

they've got a giant car show going. They've got demonstration laps. It's really going to be great.

It's just the beginning of what I think is going to be a really cool Southern California

kind of racing story, the next generation racing story for SoCal. Cool, man. Well,

thanks for your optimism around that and getting the word out. Yeah, I've talked about that with

friends. I was sharing those photos right when they posted those drone photos of the green and

white. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. There's a couple tracks. I mean, Koda does that a little bit,

but there's a couple tracks in Europe that have all that painted, striped sort of runoff area,

which looks super exotic from the air and just how much of an improvement it is. That place was a

little dusty and the concrete wasn't exactly as tidied up as they're making it. Now it looks like

it's amazing. Yeah, no, it was. It was always kind of run down and that was cool too, but it didn't

have, it seemed to be on the down. There were no signs of life, right? There was nobody there

with a vision to go, okay, what could this be? I do like Thermal Club, but it's very exclusive

and it's much further from LA and these guys kind of have calibrated this thing right.

This isn't just for people who have $100 million in the bank. It's for everyone.

Fantastic. Yeah, I'm excited to get down there. I can't come on the 11th, but I hope everybody

goes. I think it's kind of a come one, come all, right? I mean, they're not... Yeah, they're selling

tickets on a vent price. Yeah, okay. It's a vent price. It's $10 a ticket, the most of the proceeds

charity. They want you to bring your family up and they want it. It's just like the beginning

of what they're going to do. They've done all the tracks. The hotel's obviously not up, but they

have a three to five-year plan that's really wild, but the racing is up and running as I understand

it. Awesome. Well, I hope people get out there and maybe get to see you there or maybe we'll pick

some other SoCal events where we can cross paths. Spike, this has been super fun to catch up a little

bit. It's been a few months since I was down at your garage there and you have me on the podcast,

which I really appreciated. Maybe we'll get a chance to do a couple more of these, but thanks

for the update. Come back and visit me. Bring a car on. I would love to do that. Now that you got

video, we can walk through it for the Patreon folks. So thanks for pointing out as well. But

terrific to have you as Spike's Car Radio. Everybody ought to be checking that out and

hearing the latest and greatest. And we appreciate you also listing your stuff on BET and helping us

out in that way. We always appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks, Spike. Thanks everybody for listening.

Another BET podcast. Check us in another week and we will see you then.

Spike Feresten on Podcasting and SoCal Car Culture

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