The First Automotive Influencer? | RJ de Vera's life in Cars from The Fast and the Furious to SEMA

Welcome back to another episode of Very Vehicular.

As always, I'm your host, Brian Scato.

Today's guest is one of the OGs in our space.

He's quite possibly the first ever automotive influencer.

That's right, we're talking about RJ DeVera.

And this guy has consulted on everything from products to magazines.

His consulting even landed him this bit roll in a small LA underground movie about street

racing.

Maybe you've seen it.

Anyway, get locked in because this is over three hours of really great conversation.

RJ, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me.

You ready for this one?

I feel like I need to stretch.

Yeah, like...

I've listened and watched a couple of episodes and I'm like, oh, okay, I'm gonna be there

for a while.

We're gonna talk about all sorts of stuff.

We're gonna hit all of it.

The first question I want to bring up, I just want to get right into this one because you

are like a veteran in the space now.

I know you still look 25.

I hope it stays, by the way.

Thank you, mom.

You are, yeah.

By the way, I was gonna say this related, but I spoke to Richard Chang this morning.

He asked me if you could please lay out what your skincare regimen is because he doesn't

understand how you still look the same ages when he first met you, whatever, 30 plus years.

Yeah, I drink blood.

I tell everyone I drink blood.

I miss Rich.

I haven't seen him in a minute.

Yeah, I've been talking to Rich about trying to do some projects with him.

Oh, that's awesome.

He's such a good guy.

Not to make this all about Rich to start, but I think Rich left the space so early that

I think a lot of his contributions are almost forgotten.

For sure.

Including like help put drifting on the map in America with like that original Super

Street story.

What I loved about Rich when I met him was he wasn't from the space and he brought a

writing style that was so elevated.

I remember proofreading one of his first articles and I went to Matt Pearson the editor at that

time.

I'm like, this is too high-end for us, you know?

But he just changed kind of the feel of Super Street because of his writing style and how

inquisitive he was as a journalist that brought, I mean, Matt of course was the original editor

and chief, but he came from enthusiast books.

And I was just a kid from the street that was, you know, learned how to write and shoot

to contribute.

And then Rich came in who was a true writer and he really elevated the game of the magazine,

which to your point like really helped blossom it into what it became.

Yeah.

I mean, I think he left Super Street, went to the New York Times.

I know.

And then zero to 60.

So he just kept going up.

Yeah, exactly.

Zero to 60 though, when that, because Nads talked about it, I remember seeing it and

I was like, this is the coolest thing ever.

I appreciate that.

Yeah, no, because it was, and you talked about Maxim in another podcast, it felt like Maxim

in a car magazine had come together and I had not seen that.

You know, there were the enthusiast books and then there were the motor trans, even

car and Europe, all these really elevated mainstream books and zero to 60 fit in this

pop culture automotive thing.

And that's to me and some of the writing that was in it.

It was just like, this is amazing.

Thanks.

It's always good when the show starts with compliments.

So I appreciate that.

Yeah.

So back to the first question, you have spent 30 plus years in the business now?

Yeah, three decades.

Yeah.

Three full decades here.

And as someone who has seen that and seen it from so many different POVs, right?

You've seen it as an enthusiast.

You've seen it from the media side.

You've seen it from a product side in multiple different businesses.

And now from the SEMA side, right?

The organization that tries to make this all make sense for all of us.

What is your health check on car culture right now?

And I asked this to a lot of the like OGs, people have been around for a while.

Like we've been through the ups and downs.

Yeah.

How do you feel like car culture, the tuning community after market?

How do you think everything's doing right now?

Like where do you see it?

Like in this current moment, I feel like it's in a really great place.

And I've seen it enough that it bobs and leaves and as in flows and these, you know, peaks

and valleys.

It definitely feels like we're on this upswing.

And whether we're at the peak or climbing to a peak, partly because there's just so

much content and media around all forms of car culture.

I mean, look at Pike's Peak, you know, and how big that's gotten 15, 20 years ago.

You had to be really hardcore to know about Pike's Peak.

And that's just one microcosm of everything that's getting talked about F1, right?

Everyone has kind of accepted and embraced it because of Drive to Survive.

And so that helps, you know, the Fast and Furious franchise, like 10 movies, 25 years

into making.

I feel like there's all these things, Jim Khanna, right?

However many you made, like all these things kind of came together and have been

building the culture for, I'd say the last 10 years, because I feel like the last big

dip was the recession in 09 and it really died down.

Like millennials didn't really care about cars.

Everyone worried about putting food on the table, except for the through

enthusiasts.

Yeah, it was the core core.

It was the core core.

There wasn't this mainstream thing, like that pop that happened when Fast One came

out.

And I feel like now in 2026, it's like there's so much momentum.

All the people that are creating content on YouTube, all the things that are happening

in movies, all the fashion that you can buy at PacSun and Ambracombie and Tilly's and

whatever, it's just coming together.

So to me, the health check is it's in a really good place.

You look at the SEMA show, post pandemic, to where it is now, we've grown almost back

to 2019 levels, really, really close.

24 actually, we had more exhibitors at the SEMA show than we had ever had in the history

of the event.

And so that's just a good temperature check for the industry.

But for me personally, going to car meets, meeting people, talking to people, going to

car week, festival of speed, SEMA show, whatever it is, the crowds are amazing.

Like everything's like sold out, you know, wall to wall people.

So to me, it's exciting.

I love these moments, you know.

So I agree with you.

And I think especially the pop culture side is something I've never seen before.

And remember, I worked before zero 60, I was in hip hop, yeah, I worked for Ryzenegg.

And that was a big boom.

Right.

We all remember spinners and 24 wheel and dubs and so on and so on.

What was the show where everyone went, oh, Cribs.

Oh, yeah, Cribs.

And then cars are always a big part of it.

And then Pimp My Ride, I was out of that.

And then you had like the Funkmaster Flex car show and the dub car show and all those

kind of things.

But I don't know if you know this, but I had a show on MTV.

Did you know this?

Yeah, it was a trick it out.

Trick it out.

Yeah, yeah, two seasons of it.

It aired the same time that Pimp My Ride.

It was a lot of it was cheesy, cheesy as hell, but fun to make.

Yeah.

I mean, but that like the mid aughts just really embraced cheese.

Yeah.

Like it was cheese was just people loved it.

Yeah, it was.

And think about how cheesy Pimp My Ride was.

Yeah.

Oh my God.

And Monster Garage and all those shows, all the shows, but they were so entertaining.

There were, I think people watch it for the entertainment.

Yeah.

Even when we may trick it out.

It's like we had these themes like alien theme or sports theme.

And it was like, all right, RJ, like, you know, the, because the guys that we gave

the cars to were actual shops.

Yeah.

And they wanted to build like real cars.

And they were like, we're going to give you this space age theme.

And they're like, what?

What do we do with that?

I'm like, figure it out, you know, it's for TV.

Yeah.

So it was just something that was huge at that moment to your point.

But yeah.

So I think like pop culture wise, like one, I don't think it's ever been bigger,

at least in my life.

Sure.

Right.

Maybe it was bigger in the 50s, 60s and hot rod era, but for my lifetime.

But it also, I don't think has ever been cooler.

Right.

Like you're seeing like Kim Kardashian is dating Louis Hamilton and like showing

up at F1 races.

Right.

Like, and like these cool brands like Kith and everything are doing collabs with,

you know, with auto brands.

Right.

And like, and, and like what was sort of nuanced to us is now being put on t-shirts

and sold at, you know, designer shops.

So I think that part's cool.

But when I mentioned this to some other people who maybe aren't seeing that as much,

they say, we have all this regulation.

We have all these problems.

We've got, you know, we've got people getting put in jail for tuning cars.

We've got EPA issues.

We've got, you know, the obviously future of EV and what does that mean for combustion?

So it's like, I think, depending on how you look at it, and then on top of that,

especially living in California, we've got like all these laws now that we're like,

all of a sudden like CHP feels like they're targeting, you know, car enthusiasts.

Right.

Yeah.

So how do you see it from that side?

And obviously, I know SEMA, you know, it does put a lot of work into this.

For sure.

I mean, that's thanks for the softball there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thanks for the softball.

Yeah, we'll start with softball somewhere.

On the advocacy side, it's a very big area for SEMA.

And not a lot of people know or realize that SEMA is a nonprofit and all the money

that we make from the SEMA show, from the PRI show, from membership, all of that

goes back into the industry.

Yeah.

A lot of it goes into government advocacy, whether it's, you know, our biggest

things right now, we have something called right to race.

We're in certain states.

We're trying to implement bills into law where if a neighborhood gets built around

a racetrack, they don't get to use the nuisance law to shut a racetrack down,

which has happened a lot everywhere.

My hometown track, English town.

Got it.

So I think we've implemented in a number of states now and maybe up to 10 or going

to getting close to 10 and we're, you know, looking at it state by state.

And then there's another thing that we're working called right to modify because

there are a lot of technology things are going to be standardized in cars in 20,

29, 20, 30, a lot of the Adas stuff.

And right to modify is just a bill that continues to give access to aftermarket

brands to be able to access all of these technologies so that if you lift a vehicle,

you lower it, you add a winch, whatever it is, you put a wrap on it, that you still

have the, the, the manufacturers, all these aftermarket manufacturers still have

access to recalibrate systems.

Cause can you imagine if you don't have the access, right?

Like how do you personalize your vehicles?

How you lift your, your Jeep?

How do you lower your, your Ferrari, the new one?

If all of a sudden the can bus is like, nope, this is wrong and now the car won't

start or won't let you move.

Right.

So there's a lot of things on that front that seem as a part of, I would say when

I was growing up in the nineties, it felt the same though, where there was like law

enforcement that were like, you know, and you talked about this 11 of the

podcasts, like we all lowered our cars either by cutting springs or like heating

them up.

Yeah.

Right.

And you would have the bounce, right?

The Brooklyn bounce, you know?

And of course if, if we called it the Honda hop.

Okay.

I don't know what we called it here, but it was just a thing.

If you had a lowered import, you were getting pulled over because they're in

Southern California, there was some correlation with, you know, like, um,

import car culture and Asian gangs.

So they would use that as an excuse and you would kind of get profiled, which

really sucked.

Oh, I bet.

But it was going around and, and there were in certain cities, you know, law

enforcement that would bring their stick out and that was like their measurement of

whether you were too low or not, 22 inches to your headlight.

And then there's even some of them that would have you pop hood and like, oh, you

know, looking for nitrous or something.

Yeah.

Right.

So I know that's happening now with like Montana plates and things of that nature.

So I don't feel it's that different.

I think people, if they didn't live in that area, they didn't know about it.

Right.

Are there more regulation coming that?

Yeah.

And we're fighting lots of, um, like trail laws and clothe, like, um, closures to like trails.

Um, so then you can't, you know, take your overlanding vehicle or your off-road vehicle.

So I think there's more of that in certain categories, but in terms of like car

culture or street car culture, I feel like there was, it was there back then.

It just depended on where you live.

It's more pervasive now, I think across the country.

But I think the industry, like we as enthusiasts, like we live through all, we just

keep going, right?

You know, I mean, in New York, you're right.

Like I would get pulled over at least once a week.

Yeah.

Like in a slam golf with 10 to two windows, like I would get pulled over all the time,

stripped, like pulled out of the car, sat on the car as they go through the car, like

have, watch them take my JLW fours, unscrew them out of the box to make sure

there's not like drugs in the box, things like that.

Do you miss car audio?

I do.

I wanted to come back.

I was, I miss it a lot because I don't think it wasn't something that I super loved

compared to like other people, but it was like a must have.

Right.

Like you had to have, have a box.

Like you had to have like the Rockford Fosgate.

Yeah.

Fosgate.

And then I had a Ryan's.

Do you remember the old?

Oh, yes.

I remember.

Which were like really cool.

That was like premium.

Yeah.

And then later on I got the Fosgate's and because they came with the bridge.

Okay.

So you can make them all look like one stack, which just looked visually cool.

Yeah.

And then I had like a mobile Sony mobile ES mini display.

Wow.

Which was like so cool.

The mini display.

You were at another level.

You know, because it was like the Alpine pull out.

That was cool.

And then the Kenwood mask that would flip black so that you couldn't tell that there

was a head unit.

I remember everyone would have to bring their pull out because if you put it under

the seat, people would break it.

Yeah.

Early you'd have the Benzie box and you'd be walking around with that.

And then later you had the detachable face.

And you know when you like Wendy's, I left the detachable face and you get back in the

car and you're like, oh no, my face is there.

Yeah.

You go run back.

That was such a great era.

It was.

It really was.

You know.

I miss car culture.

I miss magazine era car culture.

Sure.

Not because I'm, you know, I have this like love for the print era.

Sure.

Which is true.

Me too.

But I loved how slow the information got to us.

So like you would go to a show and you would see someone with something new you've

never seen before.

Sure.

And you'd be like, commit it to memory.

Because it wasn't like you had a cell phone in your pocket.

No.

You'd take a photo of it.

It wasn't so instant.

No.

You know, and when I started at Super Street, we were still shooting slide film.

Yeah.

And, you know, I got taught to bracket probably like, you know, you would shoot

things like six stops up, six stops down just to make sure you got the shot,

especially hot and port nights because it was dark.

Oh yeah.

So you would shoot like 30 second exposures.

You would double expose.

And you didn't know if you got the shot or not.

For our younger audience, you explain hot and port nights to them because it was

hot and port nights was like, I'm going to say it now.

And I probably back then I probably was like a little jaded about it, but it was cool.

It was the first one I ever went to was really cool.

There was just great progression on, let's just call it car shows.

Yeah.

And like car culture based car shows, because when I was growing up, they didn't

exist in the early nineties.

If you had a modified import, you went to a couple places.

You either went to the street races or a test in two night at some eighth mile

tractor was one in Long Beach called terminal island.

Of course.

You went to house parties and you drove up and down the street thinking you were cool.

And you may have gone to a couple of sales of like certain import shops.

Okay.

So car mate was one big one in Glendale and they would have a yearly sale and

every crew came out flexing.

We had the same thing.

Yeah, right.

It's called rapid parts and everybody, all the crews would come up and like,

no, you wouldn't buy anything.

You just show up.

You'd buy the air freshener, the squash CXX three or whatever.

It's called the squash.

That's a good throwback.

So then, and then the first import car show happened that I'm aware of actually

two in one year in 95 import show off, which was held at the Pomona Fairplex,

Ken Yoshi and the team.

And then performance motor sports expo, Todd Knetko at the Velodrome in, I think

it's somewhere in South Bay.

And then a few years, and then that continued to evolve and got bigger and

bigger.

And started to tour.

Cause if I remember correctly, it wasn't show off, I think came to the East coast

eventually.

Eventually, but it was touring like LA, San Francisco, San Diego.

And I think it was a 97 when Richard Goodwin and the guy started Hot Import

Nights and the first one was in Long Beach.

And I remember going to it like real skeptical.

Cause I was a hater too.

And I didn't even bring a car because I was part of a car club that competed,

that won a lot, but I just came with a super street guys to shoot it.

Mike Munnar, who was a classmate or a colleague of mine at UCLA, he was kind

of part of that group that was helping putting it together with Richard Goodwin

and the team.

And after seeing the first one, I was like, this is pretty cool.

Cause it melded like this.

Like club culture with car culture, which felt like a natural fit.

Cause you, before that you would go to these 18 and over club events in LA.

And there was just a huge contingent of people with modified cars.

And then people knew each other within LA car culture through a number of things.

Like you're part of a dance crew.

Oh, you're, you're RJ from, if I was part of a dance crew, or you were part of a

car crew, or you were a promoter of some sort, or, you know, you were some sort

of gang member and you kind of got known for that.

I was known as RJ with a white integral GSR who had a girlfriend from this dance

crew.

That was kind of who I was.

You're calling it something.

Yeah.

So when hot import nights came together, it became this mashup of a car show and

really a nightclub.

Yeah.

Because it was like DJing and break dancing.

We're like a big part of that at the time.

Yeah.

So there were DJs that they brought in.

There was a big stage.

There were, you know, there were some, some places where you parked the car, you

couldn't see the car.

Yeah.

Cause it wasn't lit up well.

There were areas that were lit up well and there are areas that weren't.

So you were almost, it was like a rave.

A lot of people call it a rave with cars in the way.

Yeah.

Initially.

That's kind of true.

And I was like, yeah.

With cars in the back.

It was kind of what it was.

But I also think like, I think without understanding hot import nights, it's

kind of hard to understand what the cars looked like in the early 2000s.

Because I think, I think about this now and I don't know if at the time I was

like cognitive of this, but you were really building these spectacles that

stood out in a rave.

So like all of a sudden things like underglow and like Lambo doors and TVs.

Exactly.

Made a lot of sense because you were displaying your car inside of a club.

Yeah.

And, and there's definitely people that hated that.

I was not the biggest fan.

Cause I came from an era where it was super clean and you know, you slammed

your car by heating springs and running 16s.

And it was kind of this OEM plus five because you couldn't get a whole lot.

Yeah.

And then the car shows became such a way that people identify themselves, even

myself, where you just, you just kept going like, what can I do next?

What can I do next?

And then it becomes like a checkbox thing.

And then you don't even drive the cars anymore.

Well, now it's like they're putting mirrors underneath the car because they

want to see if you've chrome plated everything.

Yeah.

And so there was like low, almost like low rider culture.

It was, it was kind of interesting that it, cause you know, like sport

compact car was the first and turbo magazine felt like the two magazines that

first featured import cars in their magazine.

Turbo did it in a way of like, Oh, this, this Honda is turbo charged and they're

running at battle of the imports.

Right.

Or this, or this DSM is pretty fast.

You should watch out for it.

Yeah.

Dave Buscher, right?

And then sport compact car had more, what they called Euro low riders, which

were a bunch of Hondas that were wire wheeled, you know, hydros.

Yep.

Custom paint with the pinstriping.

And then there was a group of people, you know, a lot of us in Southern

California that were buying option magazines and tuning in the way you would

see cars modified in a Japanese magazine, right?

Before JDM was JDM, there's the term didn't exist.

So there was nothing that was covering that.

And so there was, there was a moment where like it evolved and then import

shop came and then you, and then you were just like, okay, well, how do I take

this thing that was the style in Japan, but make it American?

Yeah.

Right.

Or youth car culture in America.

And that's how it evolved to this thing at hot and port nights where you had 10

TVs and different taillights and colored interiors and, and you didn't drive

the car anymore.

No, it was just like a moving statue.

No, it was a movable couch, right?

A piece of art.

Let's call it.

I think while it was happening, like you, because I was this Volkswagen guy and

it was all about performance and, you know, I wanted cars that drove well and

subtle and things like that, that that was a little like was a, was a bridge too

far, but I couldn't not appreciate the spectacle.

Like when hot and port nights came to town, I would go and then I would have

these like secret dreams of like, maybe I build just a hot and port nights car.

Yeah.

Because like, they're just for hot and port nights.

Like not my regular car.

You're like, you know, and with a house of color paint job and all these crazy

things that were coming into the culture from that, because it was, and one of the

reasons why too, and I think we forget about this, there were girls there.

There were a lot.

Yeah.

There were a lot of girls hot and port nights, which was something that was not

normal for like an afternoon car show.

Like for sure.

It was kind of like Americana reinventing itself.

And I first got noticed by a guy named Mark Vaughn from auto week.

Yeah.

I didn't, I didn't know that.

Yeah.

He wrote an article called love mark.

Yeah.

He's great.

Yeah.

I love his human.

I saw him at Luke.

I saw him at Luke to call like two years ago.

So good to catch up with my head.

It's amazing that he's still, he's still doing it.

Still doing it, you know, but he wrote a story in auto week called passing the flames.

And it was this idea that there was a group of young people in Southern California

reinventing the wheel without knowing that they're reinventing the wheel.

It was basically hot rotting in the nineties.

And it was just like the sixties, except instead of muscle cars, it was all these

Japanese imports.

And so I was one of three or four people talked about in that article.

And that's what it felt like it was, you know, it was, it was a bunch of young

people are reinventing the wheel, not really knowing it.

So previously on this pod, I, I think I referenced you as like

potentially the first like modern day automotive influencer, right?

In a way.

Yeah.

And, and I thought about it a little bit more as I was thinking about

and preparing for today that to us, you know, a pre-social media world, you were that kid,

whether or not you knew it or not, you were.

And you were definitely this guy who was, you know, an influencer because before

you're like, and I understand sort of your background because of Richard Chang,

which was like, they connected to you because you knew it was cool.

But more so than.

That's kind.

I'd like to think so.

But that's what Richard told me.

Like that's how he saw it.

That you were like this guy who had where it was around cool stuff, was involved in cool stuff.

And because of that, they sort of, you know, gave you an editor at large for this

show and you came in because they knew you had like the finger on the pulse,

which is what the modern day sort of, you know, influencer, creator market,

which is all we talk about.

And that has become the everything.

But like, how do you, you know, so how do you like your position as the first?

You are the genesis of this problem.

That's very flattering.

It was pre-social media.

And I remember when I saw it come back around, mostly with TJ and Dustin, Chris Fix,

even Amelia in the early days.

So it gave me some deja vu moments when I saw them kind of up and coming.

And of course, when I was at McGuire's, I had done some deals with TJ and Dustin and

then ended up being throttle and fix.

So, but yeah, back in the time that I did it, I didn't know because I was just so excited to

like get brands involved.

And then I realized it was an opportunity for me to further what I wanted to do,

much like content creators now use, you know, creating content, building a variety to get

brand deals to do what they want, like go racing or whatever, whatever it is.

So for me, it was the same.

You know, Matt Pearson, Super Street had had this skyrocket rise at Peterson Publishing.

And all of a sudden, everyone was taking notice of like, what are all these,

what is this segment on of kids building Hondas and Mitsubishi's and Toyotas?

Matt was kind enough to be like, I've got this guy on staff that's like been doing this for a

while, which is crazy to say because it's the mid 90s.

But he's like, he loves it.

He knows all about it.

He travels to Japan all the time.

You should talk to him.

So I started talking, I think Honda was one of the first people I talked to.

And I went to a meeting at American Honda in Torrance.

I had size 36 khakis that I folded and the bangs that were dyed.

And I got pulled over when I got out of Honda in my Lord Integra.

But I was just shocked that someone from this corporate company that I looked up to

wanted to talk to me and I didn't know what they wanted.

They just wanted to know, like, what are you guys doing?

Like, why is it lowered?

Well, what are these wheels?

And so that just became my MO of like me talking to people to, for me, I wanted to

don't get them involved.

And then it became like, can you help us?

So like PepsiCo was one of the first non endemic that reached out and said, hey,

we understand you helped with the Fast and Furious movie.

We're really interested in this culture.

We have a new product coming out that we think makes sense for this demo of like young people

who are passionate about cars and just culture and living life.

It was called Pepsi Blue.

Can you help us?

And I was like, yeah, I can help you.

Like, what do you want to?

Well, we're looking at this thing called Hot Import Nights.

Oh, yeah, I've been there since the beginning, you know, and like,

like, sign me up as a consultant, I'll help you and I'll give you a bunch of ideas.

Right.

So, so then that just built for a number of years and ended up with like my own wheel line.

I did a deal with Vavling, which is why I said a lot of some of the stuff that I watched

Dustin and TJ do is is deja vu because I was the Vavling guy before any of the social media

but you talked about it in this one podcast where for us, we had to do a deal with someone

that had an outlet, a magazine, a television show, whatever it was, you had to have your media

partner.

So I built all these cars, but I needed to make sure it would get featured.

Luckily, I was an editor at Large and Super Street.

So a lot of that was easy because if you didn't, then there was no value in it because there

was no media in it.

So it was a very interesting dynamic of this, I needed media, whether it was Super Street or

Modified Mag or whatever, or Grip Video or the DVDs versus what it became, right?

And YouTube and what became the platform for people to create content and gain influence.

So I had influence in a very different way than what people have now and the reach is so different.

My reach, the highest search for Super Street was 350,000, right?

And that's like nothing in the social media.

I know, but in the print era, that was massive.

It was massive.

It was huge.

And I don't think people are as like, that was bigger than most magazines you think are big.

Like that was outselling well-known magazines at the time.

But that was the biggest.

It wasn't as global for sure.

And I ended up in a bunch of Japanese magazines as well.

I ended up in Car, which is probably like, to me, was like,

wow, I'm going to pinch myself a moment because I got a feature in Car Magazine,

which was one of the most beautiful magazines, right?

And they sent a photographer out to shoot me.

And I couldn't still believe it.

And I still, it's one of the magazines I'll keep forever.

That's cool.

But yeah, it was a moment where I really enjoyed life.

I enjoyed helping brands build their brand within a space that I really loved.

I ended up helping make product to your point.

And, you know, die-cast product, I was a, you know, even Ford's a motorsports,

I was a consultant that helped advise on what parts you could get to modify.

I think it was Ford said two or three, even like the bumpers and the specialty cars you could win.

And then I had my own real line.

So all of these things that I kind of see content creators do now, it does take me back.

And, you know, TJ is a good friend.

So we have this running joke and John Sabal as well.

He's like, dude, you were the first influencer.

I'm like, that's kind.

I don't make the money that some of the influencers do.

No, the people who come first never do.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

We're going to take a quick break.

Come back.

I want to dig into kind of where that all took you.

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I was hoping we could maybe go the full two and a half hours without mentioning Fast and Furious,

but you were so synonymous with it.

Yeah.

But I want to start by saying that I don't find you synonymous with it because I knew of you before

Fast and Furious.

And when I saw you in Fast and Furious, I thought, that's cool because I saw it as like, you're

giving a nod to us.

You're giving a nod to all these people who read Super Street, who are like, are following

what people are doing.

And it would be the equivalent of the if the new Fast and Furious put a TJ Hunt or an Adam

L.Z. in the movie, right?

Where it's like, it's just a nod.

It's that perfect cameo.

But when I look at sort of this, I don't know, I don't want to call it revisionist history,

but I think sometimes a lot of people put a lot of emphasis on your involvement in Fast and Furious.

It's usually the first topic on a podcast.

Right.

Not realizing that like there was a decade of stuff before that that got you to that point.

And then there was all this other stuff that you did after it.

And in a way, and Fast and Furious, I think had a bigger impact years later than

it did immediately after.

Yes.

Right.

It did.

Like we all remember like Fast and Furious 2 came out and it felt like the series was over.

Yes.

And then Tokyo Drift came out and it was cool because it was different, but it like was lacking.

And then all of a sudden like Fast and Furious came back years later.

So if you're, you know, if you're probably in your, you know, maybe mid 30s or younger,

you probably have a different view of it than you and I do.

So because, and I say that because like, I don't have spent too much time on Fast because

everyone asks you fast questions, but for you putting that film together, like what was your

like POV coming in?

Obviously you worked with Lieberman on it.

Did it seem before it came out, did it seem like it was going to be something like so impactful

for the community?

I thought it was going to go straight to DVD.

Yeah, same.

I remember signing on and I've talked about this in other pods where Craig got hired.

They wanted someone younger that knew the scene.

They came to a car show.

I met them and I literally asked them is like, are you guys are making a movie?

It's like a DVD movie because I, you know, DVD is a thing and they're like, no,

we're going to put this on the big screen.

I was like, in my head, I was like, yeah, right.

And then we made the film and no one cared about the film when we were making it.

Yeah, we'll send you parts.

No problem.

You know, no one took it seriously.

And then the film hit, right?

And the initial box office number estimate was like, oh, you guys are going to make 12 million.

It tested really well.

They moved the, when it would debut in theaters and it made like 40 million or something crazy,

right?

And the movie was, I think the budget was like 38 million or something.

So then everybody was on Leno Letterman, you name it.

And it became this thing.

And then years later, it became a bigger thing.

For sure.

Right.

So it wasn't, you know, my experience was, and even when they offered me the role in Paul,

I really have to thank Paul for that because I wasn't even, I didn't even ask for a role.

Even though I'd read the script and I knew there were Asian characters in it.

And Paul was the one like, you should be in this.

And I'm like, yeah, I don't know.

Like there's a lot of things that you guys are asking us that you're not listening to us on.

Like, I don't know.

Right.

Because you're worried that it's going to kind of be bad.

Yeah.

This is like, this is going to feel good, you know.

And even when it did come out, I did, I got a lot of flack.

Of course you did.

Because it's like, this is wrong.

This is ridiculous.

Yeah.

It's like, this is, I'm like, I know, I know.

Yeah.

We couldn't reshoot that.

Like it's a movie.

It's not a documentary.

Yeah.

So my POV was like, so my S2000 was rented to the, to the franchise for the first film.

It was the villain's car.

They put Ninja Stars on it.

We call them snowflakes on super street.

I was like, am not dry.

Everyone else was like, this is going to be awesome.

This is going to be huge.

I repainted that car before the movie came out and put different wheels on it.

And everyone's like, what are you doing?

This movie is going to be huge.

I'm like, nah, I don't want to be affiliated with it.

So the S2000, they have itself like a million dollars on a trailer.

So it's, well, it's the pink one that's sitting at the Peterson.

Oh, okay.

Because I sold it to them for the second movie.

They didn't want to rent anything.

So if you, if you pop the trunk, you'll see all four colors that the car was.

Because I was so hell bent that I wasn't going to have the car be affiliated with the film.

That's, that's how I looked at it.

If that's a telling story, right?

So, but they were like, can you bring the S2000?

I'm like, it's not black anymore and the stickers are gone.

They're like, well, what color is it?

I'm like, it's blue and it's got different wheels.

And they're like, well, just bring it anyway, because it's the car.

I'm like, okay.

And I had just launched a wheel line at the time because I was trying to move away.

I would leverage the movie because I knew I could leverage it for certain reasons,

but I was more focused about the next thing and not like my involvement in fast.

But, you know, if a Pepsi came in and said, hey, we know you worked on this film,

like hell, yes, I did.

What can we do moving forward?

Right.

And I built a bunch of evos that we gave away that were Pepsi cars.

But it was, it was, to me, it was just a tool.

And even now, you know, we leverage it just to get me some

interviews and whatever, and it will pivot to whatever is important to the organization.

But it is a huge part of my life.

You know, it's one of the, you asked Amelia about her tipping point.

It's one of the tipping points.

But interesting.

But my story is like hers.

It's, it's this progressive, you parlay, build, parlay,

you parlay, and you just, you gain more experience, you trust, you do something different that adds

to the resume.

And now it's, you know, 30 years plus.

So.

Yeah.

What do you think was the tipping point for Fast and Furious?

Because I don't know if the, the first movie is my favorite because it's a nostalgia.

And I definitely went and saw it in the theater and I drove like a complete idiot leaving the

theater with all my friends and as we all did.

But then I think it kind of disappeared for me for years.

And then all of a sudden.

Because two was to video gamey.

Yeah.

I think there was so much.

So first tipping point is number one.

Right.

Because of course.

People watched it 67 times, which was crazy.

I probably have watched it 34.

I mean, we, I had the DVD and if friends were over for like a barbecue at the house,

we would just put it on and just like recite the lines like that and the movie swingers.

Like there was just a bunch of movies in that era where you had to know all the lines.

He's all grown up.

Calm down, House of Pain.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wait three days, always three days.

Yeah, it's always three days, always three days.

I mean, I think that was the first tipping point and then the next one was four,

even though three was building up four.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

I think three is obviously sort of an unsung hero because.

Had the best action to my opinion.

It had the best action.

I mean, Reese Millen driving the car up the, when we recreated that in a film that I did

with Chris Forsberg back in the day, but like driving up that section, the Hawthorne,

was it Hawthorne Mall, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, with the.

You know, like that was just really cool and like really stood out and I think that that film

was probably ahead of its time because drifting was still very

new.

It was, I mean, in Japan was one or two years old in the US.

It was literally just starting.

This is 03, right?

Before I think Formula D officially became Series 04.

That particular scene inspired me to create a show that I sold to MTV that never got made.

Oh, really?

Yeah, it was called Drift or Die.

Oh, that's a good name.

And it was going to be on MTV too.

It was going to be shot in parking lots where people would build drift cars and compete against

each other.

Oh yeah, that's a good idea.

You should bring that back.

I think you can make that show today.

Probably.

Since Skater Die was like one of my favorite video games as a kid.

Well, that's where it came from.

You know, and I was, I mean, I think both of us were into different cultures and Skate

culture was such a big part of a precursor to our import car culture, right?

And it kind of.

You're like your big sneakerhead too, right?

I am.

Yeah.

One of my first jobs was at Foot Locker.

Oh, really?

Saving up, earning money to buy parts for a car I didn't have, which I talk about a lot in other

podcasts, but I fell in love with sneakers.

I was a big basketball fan being an immigrant in the 80s and watching the Lakers and the

Celtics go at it and was around watching Jordan become Jordan.

Jumping from the free throw line, Jordan threes, you know, that whole craze of sneaker

culture like really getting going and all the air forces and then the dunk stuff.

So yeah, for me, it's kind of intertwined.

There's a thing about customizing and personalizing your vehicle in the same way like you

wear like sneakers to like show your personality or the car is also like an extension of your

personality.

One of the things we always said in New York City is because so few people have cars,

sneaker culture was so big in New York and just fashion was great.

Right.

Like I joke with people now like I wear T-shirts and jeans and whatever.

When I was in New York and living there, like I paid a lot more attention than what I was

wearing because like people don't see your house.

You live in an apartment.

People don't see your car.

So like the one thing you have to modify is yourself.

Look, right.

So all of that stuff became really important.

But there was a culture behind it.

And I think that's the, the connection point.

There's a culture behind car culture where people get together and there's this joint

passion for something.

And, and street wear, even before it was street wear culture, skate culture had the same

because I was traveling to New York.

I was traveling to Japan buying all the vape stuff.

And, you know, this is pre supreme, but going to New York and finding some of the brands

that were in Soho or wherever.

But I think what drew all of us to sneaker culture or skate culture or car culture was

that you found other members of your tribe.

Yeah.

Right.

And you connected with them because there was this joint passion.

So it was, as a car enthusiast and even a sneaker enthusiast, I would travel the world.

And if someone, if I met someone, even if they didn't speak the same language and it was

very limited, if I knew they were into cars and or sneakers and or whatever, we would get

along really well.

Yeah.

And so it was kind of your way to, to be part of the tribe.

Is this why you and Mark Arsenal were friends?

Yeah.

And I met Mark, I think even before Illest, he was still working at Nike.

And it was a small world.

I think, you know, within import car culture, there's a smaller group of Asian culture that

you and Everly would meet somebody.

Jim Law, I went to college with Mike Munnar and Mark Arsenal, all these guys that have

you know, done things, Ken Miyoshi, the guy that Jim Khanna can.

Oh, Ken Takahashi.

Right.

And even the guys that do top rank now were the Motor X guys back then.

So like it was just a small world and like you would inevitably like cross paths.

Yeah.

I remember when I first found Fat Lace, right?

It was like early when it was the blog.

Sure.

I remember thinking like this is it.

Yeah.

Like this feels, and I was at that point, I was already working in the print industry,

but it was this perfect intersection of culture, all the things I liked about,

you know, skate, sneaker culture, fashion stuff, graffiti and car culture.

And I had never seen that before.

So Mark was this person who when I eventually met, you know, a year or two later,

I feel like we instantly bonded for that same reason because it was like we didn't

actually just have to talk about cars.

Like we like the same kind of music.

Like we're both into hip hop.

We're both into like break dance.

We're both like all these things just kind of like overlapped.

And actually the thing we shared least in common were cars because I was on the Euro

side of things and he was more on the Japanese side.

Yeah.

And Mark's one of those great examples of a little earlier.

Oh, yeah.

You know, illists being and Fat Lace being really the first,

some of the first brands that were bridging, you know, car culture and fashion, right?

Where it didn't really get into zoomies or any of those things up until you guys kind of

opened that door.

And I've been trying to get Mark on the show for a while.

He's just, he's like always just traveling, doing baseball stuff with his kid.

Knowing Mark too.

He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like when can we do this?

He's like, well, you know, three months from now, six months from now.

Exactly, exactly.

Lovely Mark.

Yeah, yeah.

Mark's great.

Yeah.

And Mark was actually, I've never had a, because, you know, without question,

they were our competitor when we launched Tunigan.

Okay.

But I've never had such a friendly competitor.

Yeah.

Because I would be able to call Mark and say, hey, man, I don't know how to do this.

Sure.

And he'd be like, oh, let me hook you up with my guy or let me do this.

That's very Mark too.

And then on the flip.

Great, let me hook you up with my guy.

Mark's got a guy for everything, right?

And obviously we launched Tunigan side by side with illists,

because we launched Tunigan through the RWB project, right, in 2011.

And that was the official launch for the brand.

And at first I thought, this is kind of weird.

We're launching against alongside someone else who's very similar with what it was.

But it was a really good friendship in the early days.

We'd go to like Agenda together and we'd be the only two car brands at Agenda.

But, and then eventually then we went to Zoomies first and Mark, you know, called me.

Sure.

And was like, hey, what should I know about Zoomies?

Yeah.

It was like, it was a nice relationship to have with someone where we were competitive,

but we both wanted each other to succeed.

And then oddly at the end, he ended up working at Tunigan.

And then I left, he stayed at Tunigan.

So funny how the world spins like that.

Yeah, yeah.

So.

Yeah, I think that's a great sign of one of the things that powers the industry is this

collaboration culture.

And you see it now.

One of the things I love about mostly the aftermarket is people do want to see each other

succeed many times, not always.

People that hate each other for sure.

But there's also a lot of people that are willing to help each other.

I think the drift scene is a great example of that in early days of drifting.

I think even now, like lots of people that would compete against each other if something broke.

And they didn't have it.

It's like, hey, take my axle because I don't feel good winning if you're not on the line.

And I didn't beat you.

Any part of drag racing was the same, even though there was this really intense rivalry

between all the crews and cyber and red line precision power and everyone that was in it.

They still wanted to see like they still wanted to line up next to their rival and beat them

like heads up and not because like some part broke.

And so I love that about our industry.

This this idea that, you know, you want to contribute and help watch others grow,

even if you're not growing, you know, for me, it's like my biggest like feels like my passion

point, my calling, my purpose, whatever you want to call it.

Yeah.

You know.

Question for you, when you, when like looking back at it now, right, and I realized it was all

a blur when it was happening, but you've got, you know, three decades of, you know, retrospect

to look at it.

What do you think it was about what you were doing at the time that opened up this world for you?

Right, that like got the guys of Super Street to take notice, got these other brands to take notice

and I'm talking before, before fast, because after fast, it makes sense.

Sure.

But before that, what do you think it was that you were doing that got you to do that?

I think what most people gravitated to was just enthusiasm that I had and my desire to

connect people like, oh, you're doing this, you should meet this person.

Like, let me be a bridge to that.

And I was just a young kid that wanted more people to be involved because in my eyes,

the more people got involved, the more corporations got involved, the more credibility the space had.

Because I came, you know, being an immigrant to the U.S., a lot of what you did was just fight

to have credibility.

You were fighting to be seen because you were a minority.

And import car culture was the minority within the larger car culture world and,

you know, driving, you know, a Honda, anything front wheel drive, Euro or Honda,

you got looked at like, yeah, that's not, not hot rotting.

Yeah.

And we didn't see it as that.

We didn't want it to be called hot rotting.

We just, we were modifying our cars, right?

And we were personalizing it.

And so I had, I threw so much energy not knowing it just because I wanted it to succeed.

You know, like the import showoff guys, I had a booth at the first one, I met Ken and I was

like, let me help.

I know some guys at Honda.

Let me introduce those guys because they need to see what you're doing.

I met Rodney who did TMR, toy machine racing.

Love Rodney.

Right?

Like, hey, you got great design skills.

He was at Image Dynamics at the time.

I've got a buddy who's throwing car shows who could use your talent.

So he would sit in his office till like two in the morning designing import show off flyers

because it took two hours to save the file because it was like 50 layers and it was like

Apple II or whatever.

The Apple II.

Yeah.

And even when I met the super street guys, they're like, they're like, tell us about,

you know, what you guys are doing and why these cars look so different from the Euro lowriders.

Oh, let me introduce you to, you guys got to go to battle the imports.

Like, have you heard of Tokyo Auto Salon?

Like, you need to be there.

So I was such a sponge.

John Sabal talked about, and I talk about this all the time, we're both sponges and we'd love

just absorbing.

But unlike John, I was also like a big, like, let me share what I've learned.

Yeah.

You know, and not in the content creator space because we didn't have any of that.

It was just person to person.

So I was, I was taking meetings.

I was taking people out to lunch, you know, as much as I could anybody that was willing to listen,

I was going to go on a tangent on how great this movement was, how you needed to be involved,

whether you were someone doing a car show, whether you were making a product, whether you were a

brand trying to do something, whether you were creating media, whether it was a print mag and

TMR to Super Street to 360 video or grip video.

I was like all day every day.

And I think that's what people were like, oh man, this kid's like serious.

Like he's in it.

Like we should, we should just do something with him.

You know, let's partner with him.

Let's see what we can do together or who he knows that he can connect us to.

And I didn't have this thing where like, I need to, I need to like profit from someone else.

I just wanted to bridge people and like, oh, you guys are doing that.

Awesome.

I'm on to the next thing.

Of course, there's things that I worked on for myself personally that I would try to

like wedge in if it made sense, but if it didn't, I didn't care.

Yeah.

You know, so I think that's what drew people.

It's interesting as I think about it now from my, you know, my perspective or my POV

as this like kid in New York City who ran a Volkswagen car club and was throwing small events

and doing all that, not in the industry.

I was, I was so aware of who you were because I read Super Street, right?

And even though I wasn't, I didn't have a Honda, it wasn't into that.

I still saw that as the more adjacent market to what I was into because those were the people

that I was around in New York City.

Like if we were going out and cruising DPA or Francis Lewis Boulevard or something

like that are going to the street races, we were mingling with like all of the car,

all the Japanese car.

We weren't talking to the hot rod dudes.

Like they weren't having us, right?

So that was that group.

And I had friends who had, you know, TSM cars that ran nine seconds and things like that in that era.

You were, you were someone who was easy to root for.

Like I remember being excited for you when you were in fast, not hating on you.

And I don't know what, and I think it's just like, it was really probably the way Super

Street presented you because realize it's not like today.

It's not like I'm following you on Instagram and I have a parasocial relationship.

It's like, I see you maybe once every two months.

I see some of the builds you do.

I read some of the stuff you write about.

I think Super Street was one of the first magazines other than Max Power that took the

editorial staff and put them in it.

And put them in it.

And in a way that actually set the standard for what we did at Hoonigan.

Oh, it did.

Just think about it at Hoonigan.

Always about the character.

It was the car.

Eventually in the beginning it was about the drivers, but eventually it became about her,

Shrini and Zach, all these guys.

And that was parallel together.

Yeah.

And I don't think I did at the time, but when I look back at it, it's what I loved about

Super Street because I felt like I knew you guys.

I felt like I knew Nads.

I felt like I knew you.

Sure.

Right?

I didn't actually feel like I knew Richard Cheng because I think he was very much in the

background until I met him.

But the guys who were in the front and doing stuff, that was, and you were very much front

and center.

For sure.

And I think that you, like I said, you were someone that people wanted to root for it.

And that kind of goes back to the OG influencer because in many ways that is what influence is.

Like you want them to do well.

Right?

Yeah.

If you talk to TJ, Emilie, Cletus, like whoever it is in the space,

their audience wants them to win.

Right?

And that was it.

So here's one for you.

You are 18 again, but it is 2026.

Wow.

How do you navigate now?

Like, like how does RJ DeVara build the world today?

Like what would you do?

Would you, you know?

It's so different.

Yeah.

I mean, but the, it's so different, but the foundations are the same because I would just

use the platforms of today and just do what I did back then.

I think in terms of potential, it's so much greater today.

So much more difficult because there's so much noise and content everywhere.

But if you can, you know, start to stand out and have your own point of view that people support,

the world is your oyster as a term is like the world is your oyster.

In my day, it was like North America was my oyster.

Right.

And really it started as LA was my oyster and then North America and then they

somewhat got global, but nowhere near the reach that it could have now.

So I think me in 2026 would take the same foundational approach, but then use the platforms

of today.

And I think the potential would be so much greater.

And I think one of the really unique things about today versus where both you and I were,

was regionally, like geographic was such an important part of your success.

If you didn't live here, you wouldn't have met the people you met and you wouldn't have

done the thing you've done where you've got guys like, you know, Weston Champlin,

who's in the middle of the country and has built an entire thing around himself because

of the non-geekkeeping aspect of your future.

It's just so much more free and open and, you know, contents everywhere.

There isn't these, you talked about how like if you were in the magazine world, you know,

you had to know the magazine mafia, right?

Yeah.

To get on the newsstand.

And it was something that got talked about at Peterson when I was there and how they had to

buy circulation and how you have to buy to get on the newsstand.

And it's just such a different world.

But, you know, I'm going to come back to this idea of like making content about the people.

I think it's an age old story that we just implemented at Super Street and kudos to Matt

Pearson because there were no enthusiast books that really featured the individuals.

And Matt was pretty much a pioneer in that space of like, no, we're going to talk about

the different editors, what you drive, the stupid things that we do.

And then it just got carried on.

And of course, Nads took it to another level when he took over after Rich.

But as you say that, and you said that, like, yeah, I mean, I think most people are drawn

to the people and the story more than the content or the build or any of that.

I mean, of course, that's a piece of it.

But when you become larger, that's what keeps people around because you can have like one build

and then get forgotten about.

And then that's it.

Right.

But if, if they people love who you are and they're rooting for you,

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So, I agree.

Yeah.

All right.

Speaking of tuning in, we're going to tune out quick for a quick little break and come right back.

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What do you drive here today?

My Alpina.

Yeah, I have a B6 Alpina.

I had an Accord that was my daily, like right before pandemic.

Like a new Accord?

It was a new Accord as like a two liter, but I got into Euros and you get into Euros,

you get used to the luxury, right?

You've had a lot of BMWs at a couple of 911s, right?

Not too many.

I mean, I do this thing where I build cars with friends.

So they were never personally mine, but I get the keys to them and I drive them a lot.

But I've jumped all over them out, all sorts of Japanese cars.

I think my first Euro was a CLS Mercedes.

That I slammed with all the Brabis rocket parts, which I just love.

The Platinum Motorsports guys built that one.

And then I went to...

When was that like 2006?

Yeah, I'd built a couple E46 M3s for some people that look like the CSL with the active auto

work, supercharged and all that stuff.

But the CLS was my first personal Euro car.

And then I kind of fell into like I had a F01 BMW short wheelbase seven series that I slammed.

Then I had a Maserati GTMC that I loved, one of the best sounding cars ever.

Big and heavy though, not the funnest to drive.

And then I had my SLS, the Gullwing.

And then at some point when I got the SLS, I was like, okay, I can't drive this every day

because everything else I drove every day.

And so then I ended up...

My mom had a Jetta wagon, so I drove that for a while.

And then I had an Audi A6.

And then I just kept telling people this stuff doesn't matter.

But I felt like I wasn't living that.

Right.

So I was like, oh, this stuff doesn't matter.

It's stuff.

And it's a way that I try to keep myself grounded because I love too many things.

Like I'm sure you and many people into space or you just collect too many things and you

have too many things you don't need.

And so I was like, I'm gonna...

When the Audi lease was over, I'm like, I'm gonna get something like real practical.

And my friends were like, BS, you can't do that.

You can't go back.

I'm like, what's wrong with the new Honda?

I came from Hondas and they're like, can't see it.

So I was like, nah, screw this.

So I bought on a cord and I drove that for six or seven years.

And then my nephew...

That is such a transition from the SLS.

Because I remember when you had that, I was like, flashy.

Yeah.

Well, I love Gullwings.

Like 55 Gullwing is like...

And it was definitely like very theatrical.

Oh, yeah.

You hopped the door open.

And one of the...

I have a great story.

I buy the car.

I had sold everything.

It's the only car that I had.

I thought I would drive it daily, which is crazy.

So I went to Target at 10 p.m. at night in Irvine where I live.

And I remember parking close to the entrance because there's nobody there.

So I popped the door open and there's this couple walking in and they look over.

And it's not the nod of like, cool car.

It's like, okay, douchebag.

And I was like, oh, yeah, maybe I can't drive this car every day.

And it was before the suspension.

It was just like you got either the normal or track suspension.

And the guy that bought it before me had the track suspension.

It was super stiff.

So then I got into having a daily next to whatever the collector car was.

And then at some point, I was like, I wanted to call myself out on my own BS.

Like, can you drive something that's just normal and plain?

Which I got the Accord.

And then my oldest nephew needed a new car.

So I sold it to my brother for a cheap.

And I started looking for a new daily.

I was like, ah, it'd be nice to get something like more luxury again.

Because it's like six years in, right?

And it just progressively got worse.

And I don't know, like people like, oh, daily Alpino.

All right, you know, like going to get something like not so crazy.

And I'm like, well, I ran into this car at six years old.

It had 4800 miles.

How do you pass that out?

No, it's a good deal.

How do you pass that?

And it tanks in value because it's an Alpina and no one really knows about it.

Unless you're a car fan.

So yeah, I love it.

It's been great.

Yeah.

I see you got TEs on it.

It's yeah, which a lot of people either love or hate.

No, I love it.

Yeah.

I mean, TEs kind of were, Vinny and Atron, I talk about this all the time.

Like they kind of work on everything.

But being that it's an Alpina and everyone knows the Alpina wheels, which I love as well.

But this one has like the chestnut brown and tear and to me like bronze and green,

just like, I'm like, oh, I got a bike.

And the Supra being a 5 on 120 and and Vogue Racing making a bunch of stuff for the Supra,

you just try to match the right size and offset because, you know, for a long time,

they didn't make TEs in 20s.

Yeah.

And this car came with 20s and it looks right on 20s.

So for a long time, it was really hard to get TEs in anything out of the traditional

site like Japanese.

Yeah.

Because four by 1143

The first couple of cars, Jim Conner cars that Ken had, I put TEs.

And I remember working with Eddie on it and just trying to be like, yeah, like, hey,

what can we find?

Sure.

What do you have?

Or can we have to re-drill them because it was like 5 by 1, 12 and all this weird stuff.

Yeah.

And I love green.

What about you?

Like what's, you have like 12 cars right now or something?

Well, that's that's cute.

I think I don't even know where I'm at right now.

I think it's like 26 or 28.

Wow.

It's double or triple that.

Yeah.

But so why, why, why don't you get rich?

Because I know Adam, I heard Adam, as he has the same thing where he just does.

He is like a hundred.

He's like a hundred.

He's so insane.

And then we had JP performance on last week or two weeks ago and he said he has like a hundred

and like 60 cars or something.

But even 26, like what's the versus like I'm going to get rid of stuff and get something different.

Yeah.

Sure.

I, well, first to kind of, you know, your idea of like, I need to have this normal car.

I'm actually going into that mode.

Okay.

Right now.

So two years ago, I had this like daily kind of commuter car was an Audi A1, which is still

weird because they don't sell them here in the U.S.

But it was a regular car and it was new and it had Bluetooth and things like that.

Right.

But I found like I just drove it every day and I didn't drive any of my other cars.

Okay.

Because it's easy, right?

Right.

It's easy.

It's like just outside.

I don't mind parking it anywhere.

Like it's, it's just easy.

That was my accord for sure.

And I would just always go to it.

And then all of a sudden like eight months past, man, I'm like, man, I have like barely

driven any of my fun cars.

Yeah.

And I started to realize I was like not enjoying the hobby as much and I felt more and more

like work.

Sure.

And I'm sure you know this.

Yeah.

You work in this business.

Yeah.

Some days are really fun and some days are just work.

Yeah.

And I was having more and more of the work days.

So I sold it and I was like, okay, that's it.

I'm only going to have cool cars.

Okay.

So for the past year and a half, I've only had like, quote unquote, cool cars or cars

that I think are cool, which means I don't own anything made after 2002.

Wow.

Which.

Realize like as far as the rules go, that means everything I own is a classic because 25

years old is a classic.

Yeah.

So I'm in that space and I mostly drive a car from the 70s.

So I drive my yellow rabbit all, I mean, my green rabbit all the time.

And then I've got like a 90s RS2 that I drive.

Okay.

And with a six year old, sometimes you realize like this is a very irresponsible decision.

Sure.

Because like cars break.

And you have to like get your kids somewhere or you're still to pick your kid up from school.

And like, you know, your Brembo break has decided to separate itself from the carrier.

Right.

You're on the side of the road.

Like I've had AAA literally investigated me last year because I had too many toes.

Oh, wow.

And you have the highest membership.

Yeah.

And of course I've got like the premium, whatever.

And it's like, no, it's like, I'm not defrauding you.

I just have a lot of cars that are all unreliable.

Right.

So I actually just recently, like I just paid for it yesterday.

I picked up a D4 Audi S8.

Oh, wow.

That's just like a stock.

Yeah.

But like it was super low miles.

So it's a 2013, but it only had 29,000 miles on it.

And it was a really good price.

That's a new car for you.

And that's going to be like my newest car right now.

Yeah.

I have a problem with new cars.

I don't like a lot of, I don't like the big screens.

I don't like a lot of the new technology.

I'm kind of in the same.

Yeah.

So like to me, I feel like the cutoff of like.

What's your cutoff?

Yeah.

For like a, for like an enthusiast car, it seems to be like 2006, 2008.

And like probably when they made the last Evo 9 is kind of a good cutoff for me.

And then for the new cars, 2013.

And then I say for like a newer car where I don't feel like it's got too many bells

and whistles, like just the right amount is probably like 2015 or something like that.

Like, for example, I like adaptive cruise control.

But I don't like a car that steers me back into the lane.

Right.

Like there's a certain level where it just went past my overton window of technology.

I feel like 2019 for me is that sweet spot because a lot of stuff after 19 went to digital gauges.

And that's one of my like the, the B6 versus the B8 Alpina, the B6 still has.

Yeah.

That's huge.

Regular gauges that are blue, which is super rad, right?

But you get in the B8, which is the kind of the next generation after it's all digital.

And granted Alpina to like modified it.

So the tack is blue digitally, but it's not the same feeling.

Yeah, no, I can't.

Yeah.

And then all the Ados stuff too.

Explain to the audience all the Ados stuff because that is something that's coming into.

I forget what the acronym is, advanced dynamics, something systems, adaptive systems or something.

But it's basically all of the stuff that controls if a car, if there's a car in front of you and

it breaks for safety or lane departure or any of these sensors that keep you safe.

That's all the Ados systems.

And you watch all these reviews where everyone gets in a sports car and they're like,

I got to turn everything off every time I fire it up.

And that's just part of, you know, regulation.

Yeah.

Right.

And I feel like 2019 was about the end before all of those things just started to be integrated,

even before the regulation of like, it's a safety standard.

We're going to put it in.

Like the Alpina has the one where it kind of shakes if you're,

right, if you hit this edge of learning, you can turn it off.

But the new cars like everything's on and you got to turn it off one by one and it's in a menu.

And they get really aggressive.

Yeah, they get really aggressive where like if you're on cruise control or completely slow you down or

whatever the case may be.

So a lot of the Ados systems are those sensors that keep you safe.

But also, you know, if you want to turn them off, it's a chore because you have to do it

every time you fire.

It's not like you change the setting and it stays.

I think 2019 was kind of that last year where you can turn things off and it will just remember that.

And some manufacturers are later like, you know, Aston Martin owner,

mine's a 23 and I think in 25 that started.

So I have the kind of the last generation like a 2019 and the BMW world before all of that

became the norm.

So to me, that's kind of like a sweet spot.

You still get the map, your iPhone still connects with it, but you're not having to turn all these

systems off and, you know, and it's not, if you think about it's not that big of a deal.

Yeah, but it's a pain in the ass.

It's funny though.

I am so analog in the cars that I drive that I'll fly somewhere and rent a car and get into

like the most basic rental car it hurts or whatever and be like, what is all these gadgets?

Like what is all of this doing?

Because now I'm not journalism anymore.

I don't drive as many new cars and sometimes I'll just get into a new car and I'm like,

this is too much.

Like there's just too much going on.

Recently, a few months back, I did a film with Boston Legacy Football Club and we had

Leah Block driving a Hyundai Ioniq 5N, which like as far as EVs go, I really think the thing's cool.

Yeah, I've heard really, I've sat in one.

But we mounted a camera to it.

So we mounted a Moto Crane camera arm to it and it, the whole day we were having problems with it.

And then eventually we realized it was because all the sensors thought we were getting into

a car crash constantly because it kept seeing this thing, which was the camera moving around

the car because the whole conceit was like, we're going to put Leah in the camera car and

have her drive the car and drift the camera car as it was filming.

And we just struggled the whole day.

And eventually I called one of the guys, engineers over at Hyundai.

And he's like, oh, maybe it's this.

And sure enough, like we turned all that off and the thing finally worked.

I was like, ah, yeah, because it just every time the camera would move, it'd be like,

you're going to get into a car crash.

Just shut it down.

Yeah, everything like limp mode.

Yeah.

So, but do you have any project cars or like, are you?

The last major project car.

So I got burnt out, like most people do with that stuff was when I joined SEMA,

I didn't have anything.

I just had my Accord, which was lowered on wheels, but I'm like,

how can I join SEMA and not have a project car?

So I ended up wanting something analog, really wanted something Honda, because that's my roots.

Started looking.

Really, you're like an Integra guy, right?

That's kind of.

First car was Integra.

So looked for an Integra type R DC2 because it's one of the cars that I'd never really

owns and I really love the Japanese front end.

Of course, it's one of the best.

It's one of the best.

And so I started looking for one, talked to the guys at top ranked and it was just,

it felt really expensive for what it was.

What are they going for?

At that time, there was in the thirties and forties and then I wanted to make

Mines California compliant, which is another 10K, like eight to 10K.

And so it was like 50 grand for this car that wasn't super clean, that I needed to do some

restoration on.

Chap White always, you know.

And then I was like, you know, one of the cars that I really loved, because I had an NSX for

12 years, was the NSX, but even more so was the S2000 that was in Fast and Furious.

And I only had that for 18 months because we sold it to them, right?

For it to become the pink car in the movie.

But I really enjoyed that car.

I didn't think I was a convertible guy until I had that car.

I thought Honda transmissions were good, but then I got, when I had the S2000s,

like this is one of the best transmissions ever, ever, ever.

And so I just remembered that and I was, I started looking in the market and found one for like 30K.

And so that was my project for a while.

I knew Kenji and the boys were developing a version two of their turbo kit that was going

through carb-con clients.

We were at SEMA, we were actually doing a lot of the emissions testing for it.

So I knew that was coming down the pike and I was like, ooh, a turbocharged S2000 that's

carb legal, like that's going to be it.

So as you approach 50, that is like super cool.

It's super important, right?

And working for SEMA too, like you got to do it above board.

So I did that and I made it a tribute build.

A car came to me through a friend like, hey, there's guys selling one.

I'm like, what color?

Black with red.

I'm like, oh, serendipitous.

My first one that I had, that was Johnny Transcar, was black with red.

So my thought was if fast, it's kind of like your questions.

He made like me in 2020, was this at that time 2023 or 2022, somewhere around there?

How would I build this car if fast one was just coming out with modern day parts, right?

And stuff that I could get now.

So that car is very, because a couple of people that have built recreations for fast cars were

they found out I was getting the S2000.

They were like super excited.

Which version are you going to build?

Johnny's version or Suki's version?

I'm like, neither.

Like why would I want to build one of those?

Like that was my car back then.

Like I want to build the new version, the RJ version for now.

Yeah, there was a 20th anniversary bumper that launched 2020, I think 2021 or 2022,

that made the car look like a modern S2000.

And I saw the evasives S2000.

Are you familiar with this car?

Such an amazing concept.

And so that inspired me to be like, oh, I'm going to use that as inspiration and create my version of that.

So that's the last project car.

Wogan wheels and roof and turbocharged and brambles and all the things that we do.

The S2000 is one of the few cars that makes me wish I was shorter.

I went to one of the Honda press events for the S2000, got there and didn't fit and couldn't drive the car.

Wow, that's a bummer.

Literally, even with the top down, it put the top of the windshield right in my eye line.

And just like, just did not fit.

It was like a track event, like the helmet sticking at the top and I was like, this doesn't work.

Yeah, I guess most of the, a lot of the Hondas don't work for you.

A lot of the JDM cars won't.

It's one of the reasons why I like Euro cars is because I just fit in them.

Everyone thinks I don't like JDM or Japanese cars.

It's like, no, I just don't.

That's why I like EVOs because I fit in an EVO.

So they listed thousands of my analog car and then I bought the replacement for the SLS.

So do you still have that now?

Yeah, I Kono'o'o with someone.

I love Kono'o.

You love the Kono'o, huh?

Yeah, because then I don't spend as much.

I drive the car like once a month, maybe two months.

And the guy, really close friend of mine was looking at one and wanted to track and I'm like,

let's just build a weekend warrior cars and coffee track car.

So the challenges were on club sports.

So you can imagine how stiff and Chris at KW put street springs in it.

It's still a club sport shock.

It's still stiff as hell.

I feel like I'm going to lose my kidney every time I drive it.

But I still have that car.

Super enjoy it.

I'd love to do another analog car.

I've been, I put into TJ's ear that we should do a co-lab car,

like a new school, old school build.

That's a good one.

And he's like, you're not serious.

And I kind of wasn't, but I kind of am.

So what would you build?

S15.

Would love an S15.

I think that car could launch now, new, and it'd still be good.

Yeah, probably better than the last thing Nissan launched.

Yeah.

And I just, so, so I need to get back in his ears like RJ,

if when you're serious, text me like, let me pay off some cars first.

But I did replace the SLS.

So my European collector car is an Aston Martin Vantage F1.

Oh, nice.

Which is the last, this lasts before all the Ados stuff.

And then you interior and a lot of people complain

because it's the old Mercedes stuff.

But to me, it's perfect because my iPhone works.

And it's, you still use the little ball or not,

not the track pad, but the little circular thing.

So I love that car.

It's green.

I'm super into green cars right now.

The Aston green is like, like chef's kiss, you know.

And the F1 is one of those.

They kind of own the green.

Like the British do, they do British racing green very well.

When I was looking to replace the SLS,

I really got in the zone to get an F car.

And I almost got an F12 because I still want a V12 Ferrari someday.

But I also really wanted a green car.

And you're not going to find an F car in green.

It's like, it's rare.

And even if you did, it's astronomically expensive.

And so I started looking at all the British cars

like Jaguar, Bentley, Aston and you know, Aston's one of those brands where like

everyone loves it, but nobody buys it.

I know.

I have TJ and I talked about this.

Yeah.

And he got the new V8, his last generation V8 Vantage.

And I love quirky things.

I had the SLS because it was quirky.

It wasn't the 911.

It wasn't, you know.

And so the Aston kind of just spoke to me that way.

And I didn't think it would drive as well as it does,

especially the F1 edition, which is basically like their S version

for that generation.

They didn't make any S versions.

Everything was like an AMR or, you know, something ultimate, 770 ultimate.

So this, the Vantage was just called an F1 edition

because they had the safety car.

And I remember being so shocked at how good the car drove.

And I talked to a lot of journalists like Bassum or Johnny Lieberman.

You're like, oh, you have an F1.

That's a good car.

It's like a nod.

You know, like, oh shit, I didn't even know this, you know.

So I love that car too.

And I'm hoping that that one doesn't leave the stable.

And I don't ever want to get to 26 cars, but the S15 would be one.

And then I want a shooting break of some sort.

Are you a fan of, well, you're a hatchback.

I love hatches.

Yeah.

I mean, a shooting break is just an adult hatchback.

Bigger.

Yeah.

Usually bigger.

Yeah.

So if you were to get a shooting break,

what would be the shooting break car that you want?

Or the funky clown car.

Are you a clown car fan?

Yeah, I am.

I am.

Z3 or Z4?

I like them both.

Actually, we did an episode here.

We argued like greatest drivers that are cars before 2010.

And I made a strong thing.

Z4.

The M-Coupe Z4.

Yeah.

Like, car was so good.

Yeah.

Such, such a good car.

I still look at car gurus all the time for it.

It's still, they're not, you don't find them around a lot now

because I mentioned on the pod, people send them to me all the time.

Sure.

And I'm not a BMW guy, but that's the one I would buy that.

I also really like E39M5s.

Obviously E30s.

I really like his eight series.

Oh, yeah.

The old eight series.

I think that's just the hip hop in me.

Yes.

Like, it just seems like the kind of car like,

like Nodz had one.

JLL had one.

Daryl Strawberry that had a real famous eight series.

I'm sure.

Yeah.

It was like Candy Apple and stuff.

And I mean, as a kid from Queens, you gotta love that.

Is there an Audi that you don't have that you would love to have?

Because I know you're a big Audi guy.

That's your character number one, right?

I like the B7 RS4, which is like the 2007, 2008 RS4.

We got them as a sedan here.

I prefer the Avant.

I like RS4, the B5 RS4.

Vinny just picked one up.

Sure.

And he keeps joking and he's going to sell it to me.

But I have, but I already have an RS2.

I don't know.

There's a part of me that sometimes wants an R8.

Okay.

And I'll tell you which one.

Which one?

The V10 gated.

Would be the move.

Generation one.

Yeah.

But I love generation one.

Yeah.

But I would actually really take any.

If there was the right price on a gated V8, I would do it.

But the V10 is, it just sings.

It sounds cool.

I'll tell you why though, because I think I would drive it more.

It feels more like a daily driver than like this 360 does.

And I've driven, I was a journalist in that era,

the Gyarto and that side by side,

even though it's the same car in essentially,

there's something about the Audi that like you could like park it.

Yeah.

Whole Foods.

Yeah.

I just, I don't know what it is.

It just, it's, I guess it's the same thing that happened to you that night in Target.

It doesn't yell douchebag as much as other super cars,

but it's like a super car in sensible shoes or something.

Because it's still an Audi.

I don't know.

Lamborghini is one.

I was a partner in a business.

We bought the Gyarto.

They make great cars.

Yeah.

But a lot of enthusiasts don't get it because it comes with this baggage.

Yeah.

I have to do sure it's a stigma.

Yeah.

And you're like, they make such a great car.

Yeah.

You know, would you agree that the first gen R8 is basically the NSX redone?

Like that was my, because I was a, I was an NSX owner for 12 years

and I was always waiting for them to come out with a new one.

And they had the, the HSC concept and then the HSC.

The first gen V8 R8.

For me would have been what the NSX should have been when Honda Acura was looking to

launch the new NSX before the twin turbo hybrid one.

They had all these concepts, HSC concept, HSV.

They even raced it in JGTC, the HSV concept.

And they talked about a V8, a V10 because there were an F1.

And then the R8 came out and I was like, that's the new gen NSX.

I never thought about that.

That's an interesting take.

And I'm, I want, I don't disagree with, I went to the international launch,

which they did like outside of Phoenix for the R8 when it came out.

And so I was one of the first people in the war.

I was literally the first people in the world to drive it.

And I remember thinking like, wow, this is really good because I had driven

Ferraris, I had driven Lambos and they all had like a little bit of like,

oh, just look past this part.

Look past this one thing that's like the fit and finishes are good on.

But because it was Audi and Audi was killing fit and finish in that era,

that it just like you got in here, like the shifter, like everything just felt right.

The placement N is someone who's six foot eight.

Like I fit for all of it because it looked really cool.

Yeah, it looked really good.

It was a good design era.

Yeah.

So if, if you had to sell all your cars, all 26 and keep one or buy one,

what would that one car be?

This conference, this has come up a couple of times and I answer it different every time

because I think it depends on the day.

Is there three years a day?

So for me, like the most important car to me and my own collection of cars is my 9-11.

Okay.

Right.

I just love that car.

Sure.

Whenever I get in it, even just getting in it to move it out of the garage for us to film this,

like I get excited by it.

Like I just like it.

That being said, it's not a car I could live with every day.

We'll give you a daily.

Oh, if I get a daily, that would be the one.

I probably that or...

Is there something...

Or I really do enjoy my RS2.

Okay.

Is there something unattainable?

Like that's crazy, crazy, like...

I'm not, like, of course, like everybody, like I love things like an F1 or like...

Yeah, McLaren F1 is top of the 14.

Yeah, or like an F40 or things like that.

But I don't know, I kind of dream a little bit lower.

Like I like simpler stuff.

Okay.

Yeah, I don't know.

It's a tough one.

I've thought about like if I could only...

I have a friend, Justin Osmer, I don't know,

you know Justin and the Fordsman?

Yeah.

And like he has an RS6 and I spoke badly about the RS6 on the pod and he was like,

oh, I can't believe you did that.

And I was like, you know, if I had to only own one car, that'd probably be it because it checks

a lot of boxes.

Sure.

It's a great dad mobile.

It's still fast.

It looks cool.

Like it's...

What was your comment on it?

You feel like it's overdone?

Because I just listened to that on Drive-Up.

I felt like it was...

I felt like the RS6 breaks what I like about Audi because I think Audi is about subtlety

and that thing is not subtle.

It's not subtle.

It is not subtle.

I would take the RS6 over the M5 wagon, hands down.

The new M5 wagon is too big.

It's too heavy.

That to me is like...

Yeah.

But I'm very excited about...

Did you see the Alpino concept that just got launched?

You know, BMW design language, I know you're not BMW guy.

Lately hasn't been the greatest.

Yeah.

The big nostrils and everything.

Yeah.

And then I'm still like...

Also the new door handles bother me.

I'm a big door handle guy.

What's your favorite door handle of all time?

An Audi door handle.

The classic recessed where all it is is the pull out.

Like I like pull out handles more than the latch.

Yeah, the latch.

The lever style door handle.

Is there a specific door handle?

That door handle on the RS2.

Really?

So much so that I don't know if you know this, but in the books I can

community we used to cut those door handles off of

Audis and put them on Volkswagen's.

We did.

Because it's like such a clean looking door handle.

Yeah.

Yeah, there's just like for example, I love FD RX7s because I love the way that

they integrate the door handle into the top of the door.

You can't tell.

It's just super clean.

But meanwhile, even though I've owned them like GD STIs or you know WRX's, I hate the door handle.

Like the door handle feels like an afterthought.

Like they designed the car.

Sure, super functional.

And then they were like, I don't know, can we order a door handle from somewhere else?

Just stick it on.

It also bothers me about like Corvettes because like the Corvette door handle on like the C5

is the same door handle from like the Lumina because it's like a part spin door handle.

But I think like, but the new door handles on the new BMWs are just like,

it'll drive by and I'll just stare at the door handle.

Like why did why?

What is that?

So I don't know.

I am a fan.

Aston's kept the same door handle for such a long time now, but it's,

you know, it's got the three bars on it and kind of now it kind of flips out in Me Too,

but before you would kind of, but it kind of was,

No, it was good.

Kind of hit it.

It was really good.

It was a really good door handle.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm not surprised they've not changed it.

I think I read somewhere that you said you originally wanted to be a car designer.

Originally, but you couldn't draw.

I can't draw to save my life.

I got wanted to go to Art Center so bad.

I had friends in Art Center that I worked with on different projects.

My brother wasn't also an artist growing up.

He was a great illustrator and he went to Art School to,

he went to Otis for a little while.

He didn't finish, but I just had this dream because you want to be like your older brother.

Yeah.

The only thing I could sketch was Snoopy.

So I have this affinity for like anything Snoopy collab

because it reminds me of being like eight.

It's so funny because I, so I was into graffiti as a kid,

which a lot of other people in the graffiti are really, really good at drawing,

but I wasn't.

I was good at letter work.

And I like understood typography, but it didn't translate into drawing.

And I taught myself to draw goofy.

So to this day, every character I draw is based on goofy.

Like the way the eyes, the nose and the mouth, like everything,

like I'll draw for my son.

And I'm like, I'm like, he's like, oh, it's not like in my head.

I'm like, that's me still stealing goofy when you probably doodle that over a thousand times.

I'm in the same boat.

Similarity.

So I tried and not, I didn't even try.

I just say, we get into this detailed conversation of door handles.

That's like a very designer.

That's a very design.

I'm a huge fan of design.

Car design, fashion design, sneaker art.

There, there's a, I went to Pebble Beach for the first time in 09

as a guest of Barry McGuire.

And I remember some, we were like driving down from a wedding in San Francisco.

We were going to be there for a few hours and drive home.

And the SLR Sterling Moss was there.

Which is like, I never, I never thought one, I'd see one, which is like 30 in the world.

And I remember walking around it and sitting in front of it for like 30 minutes.

My friends were like, we got to drive home.

Let's go.

And I'm like, wait, wait, wait.

I don't know if I'm ever going to see this car ever again.

And I would sit like next to the, the side exhaust on the fender and like just absorb the design of it.

And yeah, I think.

And you're saying the original, the original.

No, no, it was the actual.

The McLaren, Mercedes.

So in the episode, I don't know if you heard this episode where, where we talked about the moat,

don't meet your hero cars.

And Matt Farah said that the SLR is one of the worst supercars he's ever driven.

Well, and the SLR to me.

But I get it from a design aspect.

It's definitely, it was definitely something very unique, you know.

Very, but do you know about the Sterling Moss version?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was like the speedster.

Yeah, it was like the 727, right?

Which was.

Well, there was the McLaren SLR and then the 722.

That was at the 722.

But then they made one called the Sterling Moss, which looks, their idea was the modern day version

of the Sterling Moss race car.

Right, right.

So it was the SLR without the roof.

Right.

So it just had like a little.

It just had the windscreen.

Yep.

And then, and it had a different rear and, you know, it was a true speedster.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like in a modern day and had this long, I love long hooded cars because they're on big 50s and 60s,

like European car fan, E-type Jag, 300 SL, any 250 Ferrari, right?

Any of that stuff.

So that was the one thing about the SLR.

As a normal car, it didn't look the greatest because it was too derived from F1.

But as the Sterling Moss, it was like, oh, oh, yeah.

So I sat there forever and, you know, that's kind of my love for design peeking out and the

frustration of like, I wish I could design something that cool, which is why I built so many cars.

Because it was that creative expression for me.

Like I would always joke that I was just a glorified parts picker and stylist and not a car

builder because at a certain point I didn't want to, like I put headers on.

I didn't want to like tear the engine down or like Steph built.

When I blew my Integra up, I went to JG Engine Dynamics, which was an engine built

shop at the time and Steph rebuilt my engine because I know it was on the podcast,

but I didn't want to do any of that.

I just wanted to dream up builds and be like, yeah, that's the build.

And I would, I'm sure you were like this when you were young.

You would like take a chassis or a model and be like, I would do these wheels, this.

The paper, the paper build.

So much fun.

Which then Ford sign everything came out.

So now you can build it digitally.

But you know, it's funny because I was never that big of a gamer,

but when Gran Turismo, the first one came out, right?

I went and I played at a friend's house.

I'd never played anything like it before.

It was nobody.

It was revolutionary.

And I worked in an electronics store at the time because like cell phones were like

StarTax were like all the way.

I was like selling.

I was like slinging StarTax and Queens at this place called Nobody Beats the Wiz.

And I went to work the next day and bought the PlayStation or that with the

that came with Gran Turismo.

It's like the package box.

And I brought it home and my girlfriend at the time broke up with me that weekend

because I played so much.

I played for like 72 hours straight.

Like I wasn't sleeping and I was playing to modify the cars.

Yeah.

And I had gotten.

What was the car you mentioned?

Tommy Kaira.

Yeah.

And it's because of like that game.

Like there's certain cars that I love because of that game.

But the I have this love affair with the Mitsubishi 3000 GT because it was in that game.

And you could do like that was the first car like arrow kit.

You could do all that stuff.

And I would just play and then save it to my card.

And then I would like get a bunch of money and then I would sell it and I would go

buy and then reset the game and go buy another car just to see what you could do.

Just what you could build it.

And like that was someone like I didn't even think I cared as much about the racing.

Right.

As it was like, wow, I get them.

I get to like imagine what I want to build and actually see it because as someone who

couldn't draw, I was never able to see what I wanted.

And it wasn't until I was working in the magazine world.

It's actually funny because it was the first time we had this idea.

I reached out to John Seibel.

I was like, I have this idea.

Can you make this?

Oh, yeah.

You know, and this was early games, right?

This is before everybody was a render guy.

Yeah.

It was like John was like the first person to do it.

And someone had mentioned to me like, oh, there's this guy, John Seibel.

Yeah.

He can do this.

Seibel and you can do this.

You can do that.

Yeah.

And have you had on the podcast?

Not yet.

I haven't actually.

He's a really good one to have on.

And I like I said, I hired him to do work for me at zero to 60 back in the day.

And like, you know, and then obviously like early raw wealth stuff, like, you know,

he was the round for that.

So yeah, it was he'd be a good one to have on.

But and he was a pioneer in that space.

And now there's thousands of people who do the same thing.

But it's a cool space.

Do you think we were talking about tipping points earlier with car culture?

Maybe you've spoken about it.

I feel like Gran Turismo, Forza, even some of the mobile games are a huge contributor.

Oh, for sure.

To the culture.

Because there's a whole generation that loves Spoon GTRs because they played Gran Turismo

123 and then got into graphics and whatnot when Forza.

Allow the livery editor.

Yeah.

Right.

And then you could choose parts to mod as well.

So we talked about this moment where we felt like the enthusiast market was gone,

right, where there was like, you know, the Wall Street Journal said no, you know,

no young kids are getting their driver's license, right?

This was like this like kind of post recession moment.

The Prius is the most popular car in Hollywood.

You know, and that's when we launched Hoonigan.

So like we're literally launching a brand about car culture and enthusiast when it feels

like it's at its worst, right?

And one of the things that we would always tell people is like the community's there.

They're just in video games right now.

And they're going to emerge because we were watching what was happening in the gaming community.

And then when we did the collab with Forza, it was crazy because I would show up to events

with my 9-11 and people would be like, yo, you built the car from Forza.

And I'm like, no, it's my car in Forza.

But just the realization that Forza was bigger than anything we were doing, right?

And there were people who knew, I mean, I remember when the dirt video game came out,

I talking to Colin McCray and Colin McCray said, people think I'm a video game character.

Oh, wow.

Like they don't know I'm actually a WRC driver, right?

Both of them are champion.

When he said that to me like it didn't make sense.

And then years later, we're in this similar situation where people are seeing the unicorn

in a game or one of our cars and they don't know that those cars actually exist in real life.

They see them as game cars and then that's their entry way in.

And Hoonigan has a lot to thank to the Forza guys because we saw this huge surge in like

a new younger audience that wasn't old enough to drive yet.

But all of a sudden became aware of us and then tuned into the content we were making.

So like I think that in a lot of ways gaming culture kept the car community alive during

its worst period.

I was so excited.

I had met Kazunori Yamaguchi from Grand Turismo, Creative Grand Turismo.

I had some friends at Stony U.S. I got invited when they were making Grand Turismo 3.

They had to map Laguna Seca and Sears Point.

So I went on that trip with them and rode around in the van as they like mapped the track

out very different from how they do it now.

And then somehow got connected to the Forza guys, Dan Greenwald and everyone at turn 10.

For Forza 1 they had this idea that people would drive the game and then drive the track in real

life.

And so they got Gunnar, I think his name was Gunnar Jannard or something.

He's a pro prototype driver that drove for Panos or something.

And then they're like, hey RJ, we're thinking you could be like the gamer kid.

And I'm like, okay, cool, let's do it.

And they're like, hey, we think you guys will race in the game and then you'll compete on the

track.

I'm like, I'm not that great of a driver.

This guy's going to wipe the floor with me.

So, but that was my, I remember thinking like nothing's going to beat Grand Turismo.

Right.

And who are you guys?

Like, oh yeah, Microsoft.

Yeah, you guys are big.

You know, and I played the game.

I was like, oh, this was pretty good.

You know, it was very different.

And then as they made Forza 2 and allowed modification and then delivery, I was like, wow.

Now there's these two huge franchises.

And of course Need for Speed came out as well.

Very different, but still again, another franchise that I felt like was such a big

part of how people got introduced to cars and then also modifying cars and special cars.

Like, oh, I wanted this car.

I had to race however long, you know, and I know it was a prize or whatever.

It's funny how much of that has built sort of, I think in a lot of ways, the video game became the

new car magazine.

And I don't mean like super straight.

I mean like Motortrend and Automobile because people understood the stats because they read

the stats in the game.

So the other day, a friend of mine, Matt Kirk, he bought a Lupo Cup car, which is like a small

Volkswagen, like almost like, oh, it's almost like the German version of a K car.

So it's really, really small.

But they built this racing series called the Lupo GTI Cup series.

And most people know it because it was in Gran Turismo.

So I post the photo, not realized, like thinking about it as from a VWP over and all these people

were like Gran Turismo, Gran Turismo.

And I was like, oh, I forgot, right?

Lupo Cup was one of the things you had to do.

You had to clear to get your license or something like that.

And I was like, oh, that's so funny.

Like how so many people know about cars.

Sure.

The way that I think you and I probably know because we read the magazines where for them,

the video game was that.

And they got to, and especially like knowing how much horsepower it had, it's zero to 60

time.

Like these were things that were relevant stats where we read it in this little column

in the corner of the magazine.

They got it as like this layout.

There was a moment I was going to Supercar Saturdays at Lambo Newport in like 2014,

where it felt like kids were not into cars anymore.

And then it kind of shifted.

And I remember being at one of those meets and I hear like a young voice and I turn around

and it's like some 12 year old and he's spitting like every stat to like his dad, right?

And I'm like, oh, it's coming back.

You know, I mean, that's the old joke of like where they talk about train kids.

Yeah.

And like honestly, car guys are the exact same.

Yeah.

You could just like every every thing about this that the other thing.

It's interesting.

I went to a very similar event that you did, but it was for Gran Turismo, which was like,

we're going to take it from the track and then play in the game.

Oh, yeah.

We did it Laguna Seca.

But it was actually my first.

The only thing I really remember from the weekend was it was my first time hanging out

with Ken Gushi because he had just done the Ford deal.

And so he was like 19.

Right.

And it was like this.

And that was like before Laguna allowed drifting and he starts like drifting through the track

and they are freaking out.

They're mind over it.

But I remember like my time was like 62 seconds off the video game because like on the game,

you just like flat out through everything and then you're like, yeah, I'm clearly not a race car

driver.

Right.

That was humbling.

Yeah.

Definitely.

I tried to be a race car driver in my life.

That didn't pan out.

Yeah.

When was that?

Well, because of all the import drag racing stuff like Steph, Adam, everyone was getting pro deals.

So I had done a deal with Acura to build a front wheel drive pro car.

You know, I never finished it.

My first chassis was crooked.

I had to scrap it, paid another builder, the engine guys closed down.

So I just said, forget it.

I then tried to be a circuit driver with the RSX that they gave me.

Basically, they gave me a couple engines and a pre-production chassis to try to build a race team.

And I was, you know, I could work my way to be a decent driver and be like mid-pack.

And I was pretty quick on a go kart.

Yeah.

But I wasn't like, you know, before we started, I talked about living with dye and like dye

was so naturally gifted.

And I knew Steph and he was so naturally gifted and I had to work really hard to just be decent.

Right.

And I had all these sponsors because I was all consulting for them.

So everyone thought I had this huge deal to go race, but no, I had this deal to help them

market.

And then I just used that money to go racing.

Which is what everyone does.

So then I just never, it got to a point, it got too expensive.

And I was like, wow, I really need to focus on just making money to pay the bills.

And the racing is just using up too much of it.

So I have all this photography and like the spark was suit with all the sponsors and I had a

custom helmet.

And again, I was not bad.

But I wasn't like winning a bunch of stuff.

You know, I would go to like the go kart tracks and then other people that would race like

NASA and SCCA, they're like, oh, car show kid.

They're like instantly like this guy can't drive, you know.

And then one of my other roommates was this guy, Andy Hope, who was a Honda H1 champion.

And he would be like, oh, car show kid's not bad.

You know, and then we'd go race.

And I'd kind of win because I was pretty small.

Right.

And these guys were like, wow, car show kid ain't half bad, you know.

But that's how I was known for that's all.

That's that's the peak of my racing career.

So do you get to go do track days at all anymore?

Not as much.

So when I was at McGuire's, we were a sponsor of AMG's driving academy.

Okay.

There were a lot of times I would take media there.

And so I got a lot of track time, which is why I ended up in an SLS

because it was so capable on track and it was very surprising.

So that was the last, I probably did five or six or seven, you know, 23 day advanced

kind of track days.

I'd love to do the Porsche one, which I think is that Barbara Motorsports, right?

Barber's fantastic.

Yeah.

I've heard really great things, but I've driven Laguna a lot.

I drove Kota a lot.

I've driven road Atlanta.

I do miss it.

Yeah.

I don't, I don't believe in taking any of my cars to the track.

I'd rather go drive someone else's car.

I mean, that was the best part about being a journalist.

Yeah.

Because I've driven so many tracks in other people's cars.

Do you have a favorite one?

In the U.S., it's probably Laguna Seca.

I do really love Barbara though.

I mean, Barbara is a fantastic, I think I drove a Lotus there.

I forget what I drove there, but it's just a fantastic circuit.

And I like the shape of it.

I like VIR a lot.

Okay.

I haven't driven VIR.

Internationally, Nerva Green is like, it's just, yeah, a bunch.

Yeah, it's a real, we were, me, Vinny and Ron were supposed to race to 24.

I heard about that, yeah, in Hyundai or something?

Yeah, with Hyundai.

And so we were preparing for that.

Live there for two months or something?

Yeah, that was, there was a whole thing and unfortunately it all fell apart with the

sort of how things ended with him again.

But that's always been, like I would, I would love to go spend three months live there.

And just buy like a, you know, a ring weapon and just go and drive it.

What would be the ring weapon?

That's a good question.

Because I think that's probably, yeah, I don't know.

Would you start in a lower car that progress like that?

Yeah, yeah, I am definitely like, Vinny's the kind of guy who like wants to go drive

in a GT3 RS and like, I'm like, I'll go in a Lupo Cup car to start.

Like I like bringing the slowest thing possible as fast as I can go and then upgrade,

especially as I've gotten older.

Like I've driven really fast cars on track and I don't like thinking about the math of the speed.

Do you know what I'm saying?

Like we're like, fuck, I'm moving right now.

Like I kind of,

Where your foot starts to,

Yeah, where you're like, don't look, don't look.

You have to yell at your foot not to lift like versus like being in a car where you're just like,

just manhandling it through corners.

Like I prefer to be at 11 tenths than like be nervous at an eight or nine tenths in a car.

RS will definitely scare you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're living daylights out here.

Yeah, so, yeah, so I don't know.

I think that there's that and then I don't know, I've driven,

I've driven a bunch and it was super fun as a journalist to do that.

I missed that part of it.

It was really fun.

I don't get out on track anyway near as much as I should.

I think the last time I was on track was like two years ago in this Ferrari.

We always talk about go, I built this S2000 to be a weekend track car for four years, three years.

Yeah.

Zero.

I keep thinking I'm going to get back up to Willow Springs because I know a bunch of people who work

there and like, yeah, because that's the last thing I did was streets in the Ferrari.

But streets looks beautiful now with all the runoff and everything.

Yeah, yeah.

I'd love to try it.

It looks good.

Okay, we need to make a package.

We should do that.

Yeah, we could go slow, slow man car day out there.

Just chilling.

But yeah, I don't know.

I love racing.

I was also that person who wanted to be a race car driver but knew I didn't have the means to,

which is one of the reasons I went to journalism.

I think one of the jokes is like, if you're not fast enough to race right.

Oh, wow.

I guess I kind of fell into that as well.

Because you could still get the access, you could still get to the cars,

you could still kind of do all of that.

And then when I met Ken, I was actually trying to make a real strong effort to start rally racing.

Sure.

And then Ken was like, okay, I want you to come and help me run my team and do all that.

I'm like, cool.

And I was building a rally car.

Do you know Supi?

Yeah.

Yeah, so Supi.

It's four of the days actually.

Yeah, yeah.

So Supi was building a rally car for me and it was like sitting at his shop when he was running LM24

after RPM.

And I was like, okay, he's like in my head.

I'm like, I'm going to race rally and I'm like, I'm going to prep for it.

And Ken's like, you can't race the same series I compete in.

And he's like, you have a job you have to do while I'm there.

And I was like, oh, right.

All right, Supi, sell the car.

And then that was pretty much like my last real intention of like trying to go do racing.

But I don't know.

I hope I have this like next chapter in my life where I get to be like a gentleman driver and I

show up and go do track.

Like Jeff Swart.

Like I want to be Jeff Swart where like my greatest racing I do in my 50s and 60s.

I'll try and join you.

Yeah, that would be fun.

I'll try and join you.

Yeah.

And you could be a car show guy and I could be like, you know, whatever film director guy

or whatever it is that I'm going to call.

That'll be the name above our door.

Yeah, yeah.

Film director guy and car show guy.

Yeah, exactly.

What is your next, because I know this has been a topic in a few of the pods.

Like what's your next, I know you're working on or finished Drifter.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, that's I've been done with that since last year, but obviously still.

Yeah.

Are you working on anything you can talk about or?

I've got two different feature films that are like in early stages of me doing kind of the

same thing I did for Drifter, which is like second unit director work on action.

And I love that.

Like if I could pick anything in the world to do.

That would be it.

That's the next, I really, really like stage of Scotto.

Yeah.

And it's interesting.

And I think that's why like when we talked about Fast and Furious, it's why I like Tokyo

Drift because I can respect a lot of the driving that was done in that.

I would still do different, but still I love, I know that a lot of it was done for real and

I like the practical side of it.

So that part's interesting.

But what I learned with this film with Sung Kang, Sung was extremely gracious with like

giving me room to do my thing.

Right.

So he kind of let me, you know, really, you know, choose how the action scenes were going

to happen and develop those and work with him on it.

But there was also a couple of moments where they let me step in and do some narrative work.

And that's not my specialty.

But I was like, wow, I really actually really enjoy this piece.

Because you're writing a few things, right?

I helped them with some of the scenes in the car scenes.

Like so one of the scenes, a bunch of the stuff would die.

I built it, built around for him.

I haven't watched it.

I haven't seen any of it.

Oh really?

I'd also sung.

Hook a brother up.

Yeah, I, there, I can't, I can't, it's, it's, there's going to be an announcement soon,

but I can't, I can't talk about it yet.

But yeah, there's, that was really, really fun.

It was 30 days on set.

It was brutal, but it was, but I loved it.

And I realized like this is what, I would love that to be my life.

But not just the car stuff.

I enjoyed the, I just enjoy putting the package together and making things.

Yeah.

And it, it felt somewhat similar to like the magazine days, or it's like, you make all

these things and all these different pieces.

And then you compile them where YouTube feels a little bit more fractured than that.

It wasn't the same sort of experience because it's like, oh, it's very singular.

Yeah.

And I love sort of that, like that, that bigger package building.

So there's that.

I'd love to see you do a project that's more car cool.

Drifter is a great, it's like the drifting side or something.

I think you had spoken about or maybe Will was asking you like,

how would you write a spin off for fast?

Right?

Yeah.

Let's say it's, it's my character who had 23

Let's do it.

This is what we should do.

This is, we should do the spin off.

That's like 33 lines.

Yes.

My favorite.

Danny Yamato.

Yamato, yeah.

Saabal is always like, he does this hashtag like bring Danny Yamato back.

Just for fun.

Cause he's, he's that guy's my friend like that.

And I mean, but I like am actually shocked because of how valuable the,

the IPS at a fast and furious is that they haven't done more spin offs.

I know they've just started to announce that they're going to do a TV series and all of that,

which is great.

Cause I think there's a lot of world, but if you go back to the first one,

it's like, whatever happened to heck there.

Yeah.

Like there's so many things you could, there's so many pieces that you could pull together

and build new stories from.

You could build back stories.

You could build all these things, which I think could be great.

We need to work on a, on a project that's very nineties.

Yeah.

I agree.

You know, I think, I think that, um, one, I think the, the communities out there for it,

they want it now.

There hasn't, while there's been really good movies that have cars in them,

like baby driver and whatever, there hasn't been another car culture movie.

And if we're being honest, well, fast and furious, it stopped being about car culture.

No, it's a spy movie.

I mean, it's the Avengers reference.

Yeah.

It's everything else.

And it's like, I really think that the car community would support another good car culture,

not a racing movie, the car culture movie.

Suppose that they're going to try to go back to it in 11 is what they've said,

which I don't know how you walk back from going into space in the Fiero.

Yeah.

It's, it's, I, to the moon.

To the moon.

And it was so funny to me.

And I was in the movie theater because I still love watching in the theater, even though.

I went, me and Hurt went to go see it.

And I remember satting.

I was sitting there.

I'm like, and I blurted out Fiero prices just went up.

But yeah, I think it'd be great to do.

I mean, you're the perfect guy because you were in hip hop culture.

You're very nineties.

You were in car culture that were in the nineties.

Like I couldn't think of anyone.

There aren't many people that could bring that two together because it would be a culture movie.

So I'll tell you what my ultimate dream would be is to write and direct

Fast and Furious one.

If it was never moved to Los Angeles.

The New York side.

The original New York story, which was based off the Vibe magazine article.

I think that I think doing that justice and like really gritty, like the, you know, they,

those guys were based in Yonkers, the Bronx, running the, like that was a sketchy time in

New York where like just living in New York was a story.

Like you don't need to be, you know, robbing international team pens.

Like you don't need any of that because it's just what these guys were doing to pay for their cars

and the people that they were around and all of that is like a real true life story that I

think would just do well.

So you got one of your next projects.

That would be great.

Well, I think someone owns the IP to it.

So they'd have to invite me to come do it.

But it would, maybe this will be the, what gets it out.

Or we're making the call out there.

Have they ever reached back out to you?

Like if they ever said, Hey, we'd like you back.

No, not really.

Then had reached out a couple of times.

I remember coming to the triple X set when they wrote the script for a fast two.

Cause Rob Cohen, who was the director who became a friend, did triple X with Vin.

And I remember going on set like, what do you think?

We're thinking it's a one and done.

And then I didn't hear from them for a while.

Then Vin started his production company where he was doing gaming and cars.

And he had an IP idea for another, you know, property that had him as a, as a driver.

And it wasn't fast.

And this is before he jumped back on.

And that was the last time I had to heard from him.

And that was it.

You know, Paul and I would talk here and there, but Paul wasn't really as involved in,

in the production side of things like Vin was.

So I've just watched from afar.

Yeah.

Um, three was Justin's baby, you know, Toshi from who did apex USA was the one that consulted on that

because you know, there were friends and they, they had a different vision, which,

you know, became Tokyo drift, which was pretty amazing.

So yeah, it was like kind of, it was a one and done for me to be honest.

Yeah.

It was fun.

You know, I enjoyed it.

It helped propel my career into this stage of being a consultant for product development

and marketing and whatever else I did in that eight to 10 year span.

So it'd be fun to kind of jump back in it.

You know, I still get residuals now, which is crazy.

Wait, really?

Yeah.

25 years later, because Danny Yamato was a character.

Mailbox money.

Yeah.

It's, it's, it's enough to buy a pair of sneakers or have nice dinner,

but it's still 25 years ago, which is crazy to me.

And I know they're going to launch it in theaters in August.

So I'm wondering if I get a residual from, from that I'm assuming I do.

Oh, they're bringing the original movie back.

Yeah.

Could I got remastered?

Oh, very cool.

Yeah.

And sometime in August, right around car week, I think.

Oh, cool.

Is it coming through like, is it being done by the studio?

So it'll be everywhere.

It's not just like, what was it?

Phantom or whoever does?

Yeah.

It's definitely universal.

Okay.

Very cool.

Like playing up the 25th year anniversary.

That's a super smart idea from the theater side.

Like I'll go see that.

Yeah.

I think it's only seven days is what I've read.

You know, they've got the rollercoaster that are promoting that.

Right.

So there's milking it, which for me, great.

I, I'll take a little bit of extra money.

Is it interesting to you when people talk about how they get into cars now?

And a lot of people mentioned things like Fast and Furious,

because we obviously were in it before that.

It's surreal.

One of the most surreal moments I was at top rank, they had an open house and a couple

of friends who had done work for GT channel, Taro and a couple of guys from Japan, Masa

and Katsu, they've all moved on, right?

But they were part of the best motoring and hot version.

So they're here for the top rank deal and they're like, hey, RGM, we have a friend that

really wants to meet you.

He's really, do you mind?

I'm like, all right, cool.

Like that doesn't really happen to me anymore.

Like what's the story?

He's like, well, he owns a really big GTR tuning shop in Japan.

It's called Garajushita.

Have you heard of him?

Like, yeah.

He's like, well, he didn't know what he wanted to do before he started Garajushita.

He watched Fast and Furious and that's what helped him decide that he was going to do,

have a life, you know, kind of modding cars and restoring cars.

And he knew you had a big part to do with it because he had the DVD and, you know,

I was in the extra section.

Right, he watched the back section.

The back section.

And I was like, wow, this is like, that's like, kind of blew my mind a little bit.

So in that same vein, because we were in the scene before, I don't really think of people

getting in the cars because of the movie.

More so through like video games and stuff like that, like we talked about, but

the movie being like that kickoff point is still very one humbling and surreal to me that

because I had a small part to do in launching that franchise.

So there's definitely like a proud moment there, regardless of what you think of the

franchise or not, like having that impact is something that really drives me from like a

purpose perspective.

And so yeah, it's really, for me, it's like, wow, that's amazing.

Makes me feel real good.

Like I've done something in my life.

It's a really good feeling.

I've won awards.

I've done all these things.

When someone comes to me and says like, oh, I got into cars because of Junkana or because

I started watching the Hoonigan and I'm like, cool, that's awesome.

Because like to think you can usher people into space.

And that was always something that was really important to I think both Ken and I, Ken obviously

was in skateboarding and it was always about like bringing the younger group in.

But as we were, as I mentioned, in a period where it felt like people were leaving car culture,

this idea of like, how do we bring these young kids in?

Like how do we get them interested?

How do you get excited?

How do you get them excited about it again?

And it was always about entertainment for us, right?

Like how you do that.

And like if there's anything I'm most proud of, it's not like all the views and everything we,

it was the people who said, I wasn't really even into this and these kids in my school

showed it to me and like now I got a project as 13.

You're like, hell yeah, that's awesome.

You now have the same addiction.

Yeah, I mean, that's the story of my life.

That's why I'm at senior at the end of the day.

We're the people behind people.

It's a swindlers quote.

We're the man behind the guy.

The guy behind the guy.

And my trajectory in my career is, I talked about it earlier.

It's like, how do I get people involved?

How do I get people excited about this thing that I love, this thing that you love, right?

You can see that there's a true point thing that we both have in the things that we've

worked on, the projects that we've put out there.

And for me, SEMA is kind of that entity that's been there the whole time.

It's more business oriented, right?

But I'm really curious what the SEMA thing because I have sat on a couple of different

like task groups and things for SEMA.

And those were for me, they were all unpaid.

I did them because I really care and I want the community to do better.

So I did like a media and communications task group.

I worked with Mike in the past before he was president on how we deal.

And this was when takeovers were earlier.

But how we deal with some of that stuff and different things along that.

Because I care, I love this culture.

It's a community.

It's something like it's the give back piece of keep this going.

And I will admit, there's always been a part of me that has question like,

do I eventually end up at SEMA?

And I don't mean looking in a bad way, but I could see that where value ends there, right?

So and I do want to actually talk about the McGuire days because I was really surprised

that you were at McGuire for so long.

Me too.

Because you did, you were doing so many things.

You have a wheel company, you had die cast.

You were doing so many things.

And then you're like, I'm going to go spend whatever a decade at McGuire.

Which seemed like a seemed different from your initial trajectory.

We can go back to that.

Well, we're on the SEMA thing now.

What attracted you to go to SEMA and kind of to do that?

Yes, I'd been at McGuire's 3M really.

Cutting my teeth, learning kind of publicly traded life.

Big corporate.

95,000 employees sold in 100 plus companies.

And so I stayed at McGuire's 3M because I was learning so much about global business

and how global business run in a multi-hundred million, multi-billion, tens of billions

perspective.

And I didn't feel like I might not ever get that experience again.

Right.

And so I thought I'd be at McGuire's 3M for two years.

The recession hit, all my stuff fell apart because everything that was an extra program got cut.

And McGuire's was a client.

They offered me a position to do some rap stuff.

And that's how I started.

And then I ended up having a boss who just gave me opportunity after opportunity.

And then I started to dig into understanding the business that goes behind what it takes

to build a multi-hundred million dollar company, a multi-billion dollar company.

And that really was just so engaging for me.

And then I got to a point where I'd lived the movie 34 times over and I was like,

what's next?

And so I interviewed maybe after like year six or seven, multiple times, OEMs, other places,

and nothing seemed to fit.

And then the SEMA opportunity came.

And I actually, a friend of mine that worked there like, hey, our VP of marketing left.

I'm like, oh yeah, I saw that.

Let me, and it was a good friend.

I'm like, let me spread the word, let me help find someone.

And that person said, no, RJ, I want to recommend you.

And I was like, no, I'm good.

You know, I'd stock options, golden handcuffs.

I'm like, I'm good.

I'm not leaving this place.

And she's like, no, RJ, you've been coming to SEMA since whatever, like 20 plus years.

I'm almost at 30.

You know this, like you love the industry.

You could do some good here.

And I thought about that.

And I had done some work with a life coach, career coach, about like finding my purpose

at that time, or not, before then.

And I was kind of reverting back to like, what is my purpose, right?

And at that, by this point in my life, I decided my purpose was to help people

build better versions of themselves, which included organizations, which included myself.

And then I thought about the SEMA opportunity and then I ended up meeting with Chris,

who was the CEO at the time, learning a little bit more of what their goals were.

And then I kind of fizzled out and then Mike became, was kind of interim CEO.

And so he called me and was like, hey, you're still interested.

And I said, he kind of, you know, and then I had a great meeting with him and just really

thought about like what SEMA does for the industry.

And I was like, to your point, like there's a piece that's like, I at least have to

spend some time to see what I could do to help, protect, prolong, spread this industry

that we both grew up in, you know?

And for those listening who only think of SEMA as the show and realize that that's just a like

a really small percentage.

Can you just give a real small nutshell of like everything SEMA does?

Sure. So SEMA is a nonprofit one.

Not a lot of people realize it's a nonprofit.

And the nonprofit's goal is to just to foster the success of the aftermarket, right?

Most people see that through the SEMA show or the PRI show.

And that's the organization giving an opportunity for manufacturers to meet with buyers or

manufacturers to get exposure for new products.

And it's become its own juggernaut.

Both shows have their own audiences.

Behind that, and that generates most of the money that we then reinvest back into the industry.

And so we have a lot of other programs that are more investment pillars.

So as an example, SEMA garage, you talked about it earlier that Mike Spagnall, our CEO,

came to SEMA out of retirement to start that 10 years ago or whatever it was.

And the garage really helps with product development.

You want a 3D scan something.

You want CAD data for a particular vehicle because you want to create a prototype.

You create an exhaust or an intake and you need to run it through emissions, compliance testing,

and get the paperwork filled out for carb.

We do all of that.

But we pretty much operate that at a loss because we want the rates to be favorable

to the industry.

So that's one big part.

And didn't you guys just, I just read something the other day, like there's some new thing in

the past that now the government's allowing you guys to actually carb approve?

We have a thing called SEMA certified where we take the testing rules that carb applies

and EPA applies to be compliant for emissions compliance.

And we created something called SEMA certified.

The EPA just announced that they will accept that as good enough to be EPA 49 state compliant.

We're still working on a new bill in California that recognizes SEMA cert as proof to also be

carb compliant, which is huge, which is huge.

So that's one part that some people know about, but not everyone.

And for those listening, like if you run a small company and you're trying to make things

that the EPA regulate, nowadays it's almost impossible.

It's hard.

It's expensive.

But you guys are making it a lot easier for that.

Because in the 2000s, everybody was making everything and it was a lot more sort of loose.

Well, and they weren't cracking down as much.

They weren't cracking down.

So even if it was illegal, you could just be like, offered you some and everyone got

by on that.

But now they're cracking down on it a lot more.

So that's one part, product development.

Another side is SEMA's product distribution.

So we have a division called SEMA data where we standardize people's product data so that

if you're a small manufacturer, a big online store, whether it's a JAGS or a Summit or an

Amazon or an AutoZone, can intake your data and sell it.

Again, another thing that isn't the cheapest thing in the world to do.

So we just make it accessible.

So that's another thing that SEMA is really big and known for, the government advocacy.

You guys also will measure new cars.

Yeah, that's in SEMA garage.

SEMA garage, because I remember talking to Mike about that, which is again, if you're

a small up and coming designer, you lose two or three years in development because only a few

people get invited to go see what the new Ford Mustang is going to be.

They have to buy one usually.

So we work with the OEMs to get access to the manufacturers to do measurements, test fitting

before even the vehicle comes out.

So that way, when it comes out and they're at SEMA, they already have the new part for the

latest Bronco, 4Runner, Mustang, Supra, GT, whatever it is.

So what is your day-to-day like at SEMA now?

It's madness.

Because as the marketing VP, I basically lead a team of individuals that's like an internal

agency, much like an ocean is for Hyundai.

And so every day, there's about 30 or so stakeholders that we serve.

So every day, my hat's just trying to kind of guide the madness that we as an internal

team have to serve all these business units in terms from a marketing and communications

perspective.

A lot of my time does get focused on SEMA show, SEMA fest, membership, the things that create

revenue because that's, we need that to be able to function and to do all the things that we do,

whether it's SEMA garage, SEMA data.

We have a huge volunteer program, the things that you were a part of in councils and networks,

where for different segments of the industry like trucker off-road or automotive restoration or

future leaders network, we offer all these events where you can network and build yourself up or

build your business up.

And so all of that costs money.

And so we need to continue to generate more money to do even more along with the stuff that we're

doing on the government advocacy side.

We're a huge part to the reversal of the EV mandate and having the choice in 2030 to

not be forced to buy only EV, whatever it's going to be, hydrogen, synthetic fuel, EV.

I mean, EV is a part of it, plug-in, plug-in hybrid.

So that was a big part.

We spent quite a bit of money.

Which reminds me, I texted Mike like two weeks ago and I was like, dude, I have a really good idea

to get more like SEMA action network stuff out there.

And he was like, cool, let's set up a call.

And I never did.

Yeah, yeah.

So Mike, if you're listening, call me because I've got a really good idea.

Because I think none of people know about sort of what you guys are doing,

looting the lobbying side, because that's really important for the community.

We all sit, we all bitch and moan on Instagram about this and, you know, I got this and I got

state ref and it's like, yeah, but like you complaining on the internet isn't going to help,

but us as a collective group.

With lobbying behind it will actually help.

Yeah.

Our government of Ferris teams has a saying, no spaces, no races.

Right?

If you don't have the space, like a racetrack to race, like a lot of that then starts to die down.

You know, and then the businesses cease to exist and the whole.

It's still like a 50, what, $8 billion business or something.

Over for like $52, $53 billion.

And then the economic impact is like $337 billion or something crazy like that.

So we're an industry that gets noticed.

That's the great thing about our government of Ferris seems they really reinforced a lot of

the data that's out there.

Like we affect 1.3 million jobs as an example.

And so when politicians hear that, they stand out and go, oh, okay, we're going to listen.

And so it's, you know, you feel very, I myself feel very proud to be part of this

organization that's fighting the good fight.

I don't know if I'll stay there forever.

I said that when I was at 3M.

I thought I'd stay for two.

I was there for 12.

I'm on year four or five, completely enjoying what I'm doing.

Still learning SEMA Fest as an example is I never thought I'd be a promoter of a concert.

Yeah.

I was there for the first one.

Yeah.

You guys were there.

Thank you.

Yeah.

We still use the photo of the Mustang a lot.

Sweet, sweet.

And hopefully the car, he like jumped over the car, motor home,

but he like rotated midair.

So he was like through the roof.

He was like, yeah, it was basically kick flip the car.

Gabby Downing's boyfriend at the time.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Jim York.

Jim York.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So still learning.

Yeah.

Finally in a groove because the first one we were just drinking out of a final.

Yeah, it was crazy.

There was no tomorrow, but.

My ultimate moment, by the way, at that event and for those SEMA Fest was this festival,

like a music festival with cars that was sort of adjacent to SEMA.

So it kicked off on like Friday right before.

It was weird because I had actually already left Hoonigan,

but the concept for doing SEMA Fest was this idea that we'd been talking about with you guys.

Sure.

I remember when you first came on, you showed up in Hoonigan,

like what are you doing here?

You're like, I work for SEMA now.

And we had been talking about wanting to do something with you guys forever.

So I was like, okay, I'm going to stay on to do that.

I hadn't announced I'd left yet.

But the best part of it the whole time was Bush went on.

And we got like our schedule was off.

So we were still putting on this like crazy show with like cars flipping and all this stuff.

And apparently Gavin from Bush asked if we could shut up.

And I was like, that was like, and then everyone, and then we heard it on our side.

And because he used to date, what's your face from?

No doubt, Gwen Stefani.

Everyone just started chanting team Gwen.

Team Gwen.

And I was like, this is just a fun pop culture moment right now.

So yeah, I just saw the three 11 was there because I secretly,

Are you a big three 11 fan?

Not a big one.

I was secretly 11 fan, which is now no longer secret because I just said,

but I, you know, it's one of the things I'm like, I kind of like the real.

Yeah, we just did the announce yesterday.

So off springs, the headliner, Jimmy eat world three 11 and the alive.

So we're excited about the lineup.

I'm personally more of a hip hop guy.

So it's a little bit, you know, detached, but have you guys not gotten any hip hop?

Not since the first one.

Yeah, we had Luda and Wes Khalifa that first one.

But our, our crowd really loves rock music and punk rock.

And that's what makes sense, especially since we moved it

to the Shima Shiro campus and there's only like three or four bands and it's only one day.

It's just what makes sense.

It sells tickets.

Do you ever back in the day when dub used to do the concert at SEMA?

Yeah, that was always good.

That was always good.

And then they moved to the beach and the club and stuff.

So it's, it's really exciting.

My day circling back to his question is, it's just full of meetings.

I'll be an 88 to 10 to 12.

Me.

I'm today, I told my, my team, maybe I don't want to ever work at SEMA.

So I was the fun, the, the funny part of it was when I left 3M, our inside joke at 3M is

stood for meetings, meetings, meetings.

As you can imagine, multinational company, right?

90000 employees, you're in meetings all the time and all over 3AM, 3PM, 9PM, because

you're like, Oh, it's a call with China.

It's a call with the UK, whatever it is.

So I left thinking, Oh, thank God, I can let go of that.

And then I got to SEMA.

It's like, it's just as bad.

I have this app idea.

And if anyone listening decides that they want to like, you know, make it themselves,

like vibe coding it or whatever, just give me like 10%.

I want to make an app where it plugs into like Zoom, Teams, Google, and it takes everyone's salary

and it shows how much per minute the meeting is costing us.

Because I think we would have less meetings when people went, Oh my, look at how much this

meeting is costing us for everyone, for these 13 people to be in the room.

Mike Spagnola, our CEO, he'll do that actually.

Oh, really?

He's like super financially minded and full goal.

That's just the way he runs things.

He'll stop sometimes and he's like, This is costing us a lot of money.

Like let's wrap up, you know, like so.

It's true.

It's like, why are we all here?

We don't need to do this.

It's pervasive and we're not even that large of an organization, but because we,

I think most organizations want to be a collaboration culture.

That you end up having way too many people in the meeting.

Well, I'd like to keep informed.

It's like, you'll get the meeting notes.

You don't need to be in a meeting.

So can I hit you with some hard SEMA show questions?

Sure.

How are you, and this is a task force I said.

Okay.

So I know a little of the internal, but you know, I think there's this really delicate line that

the show lives.

Sure.

Where part of it is that you are in, you know, you're literally a manufacturer's association

that is a nonprofit that is funded by these manufacturers.

But you're also probably the most important car show in the world.

Right.

Yeah.

My VP of events would, would like roll his eyes because he doesn't see it as a car show.

But it is.

Yeah, it's like we, like every influencer, every creator is building a car that will end up at

the SEMA show.

There is an entire cottage industry of money being spent to program YouTube content and

Instagram cars are the stars to release cars at SEMA.

If, if you only showed parts, if you guys banned cars, it would feel like, yeah, I mean,

it would be closer.

I guess like Apex was only, but like where it doesn't, it wouldn't be the energy and

different energy.

It would be business energy only.

But there's like, I know that this is a huge fight internally because some manufacturers

just really want it to be a B2B.

Yeah.

And the show has been going the other way now, like Fridays have like open to the public.

You've got SEMA fest, things like that.

I have always been obviously helping you guys do the burn yard out front and all of that

that kind of day.

I see the value of this being really exciting to the industry.

And I think it's this cool thing that people want to come to.

I think it's great that people print their own badges and steal badges.

Yeah, I'm going to close my eyes.

No, but I, it's good.

You want something that people want to sneak into, right?

I mean, that's a good thing.

I know it's bad from that side, but you, the fact that this is this thing that we used to kind

of give like a golden ticket to SEMA where people would get to win a chance to come and

go to SEMA and like meet, you know, Ken Block.

And like for them, it was just as exciting to walk the SEMA floor as it was to hang out

with Ken Blockford, whatever, 20 minutes, because it felt, and I remember my first SEMA,

which was 2003 or 2004.

It was like crazy to see this thing that used to only be two pages in a magazine or

three pages in a magazine.

You're like, oh my God, it takes like three days to walk this thing.

It's hard to explain to anyone that's never gone, right?

Much like Car Week or Festival of Speed or Tokyo Auto Salon, it's like, it's just a mecca, you know?

So as someone who's on the marketing side of it, how do you parse this?

Like the, what a lot of the manufacturers and the people who are part of the organization

want it to be versus like the element that it has become the ultimate display for car builds.

It's a tough balance for sure.

And I would say it's shifting more so now in the last five years than ever before,

where pre-pandemic, I would say most, and I wasn't there yet, but most of the data from

the exhibitors said, we don't want it to be a public day.

We want it to only be B2B, some crazy percentage.

This is when I was on the task force.

I remember that.

Yeah.

And then it started to shift partly because of the pandemic.

More exhibitors became open to a public day because they had all, many of them,

not all, had to build a D2C business.

And so now the idea of talking to a cut, like an end customer, wasn't as off-putting.

It's still a tough challenge for us.

It's still 50-50 where like 50% are like, yeah, all week public, you know, or two days public,

whatever it's going to be.

And another 50% like, no, let's keep it B2B.

I'm a two-step or three-step distribution business where I don't sell direct to consumer.

I sell to a wholesaler or a jobber.

So that's the toughest balance that we as an organization are trying to juggle.

From the marketing side, we have different campaigns for different things.

So we have a campaign to prove the value of the show to anybody that's an exhibitor.

We have a campaign to prove the value to anyone that's an attendee, whether you're a buyer

or your media or your content creator or something else.

And then we have a different campaign if you're just an enthusiast, right?

And you can come open to the public day on Friday and cap it off with the CMA Fest concert.

So that's our best way of trying to juggle.

Larry was just in our office yesterday.

Larry Chen, who's our artist of the show right now, and he's like, same as you,

like why isn't public day two days or all week?

And I would say certain halls.

I also get it though, because as someone who would get,

people are like, can you sponsor me?

Can I get this free?

Like your marketing guys end up spending a lot of time dealing with the public,

which like really isn't industry related.

And you end up having to deal with that.

And the other one, which I hate to say, but it is true, is like all of a sudden,

like loss prevention, all these things become a bigger problem when you have more of like an

open space and it's not just industry.

I mean, yes and no, because ours are open to the public ticket is not a $10 auto show ticket.

Right.

You're like pretty much a hundred bucks plus.

So you really have to want to go.

Because it's not like a small amount.

Will you still have more challenges?

Of course.

I think it's really up to the exhibitors to look at themselves, look in the mirror and be like,

well, we go to all these other events.

You just got to change your hat.

Right.

Like if it's not a person with a shop or a WD and customer like,

oh, you're really interested in that part.

Where do you live?

Oh, you can go to this shop or you can buy online here unless they have their own online

solution because many of them do now.

So part of it is just in the hands of the industry because our VP of events, Tom Gattuso,

his famous words around the CMA show is we're just a reflection of the industry.

Right.

So as the industry moves there, we move there.

Sometimes we move one step ahead.

We can't move five steps ahead because we need this relationship between the exhibitor,

the attendee, whether it's business or enthusiast to continue to exist.

And if you get it to be two one-sided, you lose the other.

And look, the need for CMA has completely changed for the manufacturer.

20 years ago, you were showing up.

You were doing orders.

You were literally doing the business.

It was all distribution.

It was everyone was doing their year worth of distribution and all of that and doing a lot

of their deals.

And even in the magazine era, we would sell most of our advertising on the CMA floor.

Like there was a quota for the ad guys like Gordon Ting and people like that.

I think that's how you and I actually first met.

I was thinking about that.

Probably a rides party or something like that.

You know, like had to sell a certain number of pages while we were at CMA.

I don't think that's true anymore.

I think it's now become a presentation that actually, and I think rightfully so,

is developed and created for social media.

Because that expands what you're doing.

If you're smart about it.

Yeah.

Because there is still a very real part to the business side.

Yeah.

Especially if you're a new company, you don't have distribution.

You still use the CMA show.

Like you want to meet buyers, right?

And there's a ton of that that happens, especially if it's a new company or there's a new product.

The thing that's really elevated it from a marketing and branding perspective is the reach of digital.

You know, before magazines came and we would meet with editors and

when I was at McGuire's and I was the steward and actually that group reported to me and

we were spending astronomical amounts of money to have three different activations.

But it was really, we didn't need any more distribution.

Like by the time we, when McGuire's got to CMA, they knew exactly what products would be on the

shelves of AutoZone, Walmart, O'Reilly, whoever.

We use it as a platform to launch new items.

And when digital media became even bigger, it became even more important for us to leverage

you know, kind of meet and greets with media that would then shoot video right there and

content creators and all of these things that before 2014-15 wasn't there.

And now like if you're a smart exhibitor that has some maturity,

like CMA is one of the best platforms to use because also just the search volume of that week

is insane because the event's going on.

Much like there's a great search volume for hypercar and exotic car stuff during car week

and other things for festival of speed and there's these like tentpole moments in the year.

When we were at Hilly and we did a show called the One Hour Seamers Special

and we would get our overnight pass.

So we got to walk the show when no one was there and it would kill the editors because we would

you know, make an hour long show that they had to edit that week.

It had to come out that week.

Sure.

You know, at the end of the week or it had to come out, you know, the Monday after,

the absolute latest and you know, the editors and the producers always like,

why does that have to come out so quickly?

And I'm like, because right now everyone's searching CMA and they would do a million views

every time because people wanted to see have the CMA experience and they got to have that by us

walking them around the show.

And it's like that wouldn't do well a month later because not as well.

Not as well.

It would still do but like, but that moment everyone's on CMA as someone who used to constantly

launch films at the back half of the year.

We would never launch a film at CMA.

We did it once, but we realized that the there was so much noise coming out of CMA that it

wasn't good for us.

Did you like start doing a week before?

So what we would do is it the week before.

So that way we would ride second week into CMA and there'd be all this excitement about it.

And now like Toyo's got, you know, B.J. Baldwin's truck hanging or the Hunicorn.

And now everyone had seen it and then there's like a second hit that we would get it.

Or we would announce the film was coming at CMA, do a party and then like, but then it wouldn't

come out for like another two weeks because it literally sucks all the air out of the space.

And that's a great thing.

It's a great thing.

And as a marketer, it's one of those things that it's like use it for what it is.

You know, it's a platform.

So that's what I, when I meet brands now and we talk about it, you know, because of my

history with the show, I mean, my first show, oddly enough, I went to Tokyo Auto Salon in

the CMA show for the first time in 97 and I haven't stopped.

If I remember correctly, the Tokyo Auto Salon was like how you first started with Super Street, right?

Yeah.

They were like, hey, go do this thing.

Well, I told them they had to go.

They didn't have budget.

So they gave me film to shoot it.

And I wasn't a shooter and I'm like, this is going to suck.

And they're like, if it sucks, we won't use it.

And then I came back and we developed the slide film and it was, and Matt was like,

this is good enough.

He's like, can you write a story?

I'm like, I'm an engineering student.

And he's like, that's what we have copy editors for.

That started my career at Super Street.

But I went to CMA the end of that year in 97 and I've watched it through all of its phases.

But, and I've been editor, car builder, small company selling body kits,

big company selling car wax, now production.

You just got to look at it as what's, how do I use it as a platform for whatever I need to do?

And that's the smart way to look at CMA.

Because if you get pigeonholed into one story, like, oh, I don't need it for that.

It's like, yeah, because you've already done that.

Like you use it for a different reason.

And I think that's where some people get stuck.

You know, like, oh, I don't know why Fisage still go to the CMA show.

Like you just got to be smart how you use it.

So were you involved in the like creator of the year project and all of that?

A little bit.

You know, that was more of a steering committee to your point.

I was aware of it.

We dirt, you know, most of the steering committees don't have anyone from staff.

It's meant to be done by volunteers.

So I knew about the people steering committee.

Yeah.

I knew about all the people that got nominated year one.

I hosted the table actually, which is really weird because there's going to be one winner.

And so I had made a recommendation after the second year to not have all these nominees

because then everyone just feels like the first loser, especially if they've been nominated

a couple of times.

So now it's just, we just have a winner.

Yeah.

And it was Weston this last year.

So I'm really curious to see who it is.

And I never learned until like a week before like staff is really, I think it's part of

the bylaws that it's kind of kept out of that.

So we don't sway it in any way.

I just bring it up because I would say that one of my critiques of SEMA a few years back

was that creators couldn't get badges.

Like there was no way in for that because they weren't traditional media.

If they weren't associated to a company like Hoonigan, they weren't getting in.

So like we'd be talking to guys who were like really big in YouTube.

And they're like, oh, you're going to see me?

They're like, I can't get a badge.

You're like, what?

Yeah.

So it was cool to see sort of not only a reversal of that, but then like the breeze of the space.

I mean, we love even letting creators who have a thousand followers in because it helps

build their page.

As long as they're creating good car content, we're going to let you in.

Yeah.

You know, if you're not, even if you're huge, we may actually not let you in from a media

perspective.

But we've really embraced that.

I mean, I think there's about 2,500 people that sign up that get through approved as media.

About 1,500 are some sort of digital creator where they're creating content on social or

on a blog or whatever it is.

And that's a huge percentage, right?

I forget if it was last year or two years ago, I went to SEMA.

I went in for just a day or day and a half.

And I've been going for 20 years and it just didn't occur to me that I didn't have a badge.

Like I literally drove to Vegas.

I got there and then I went, wait, I'm like not here with that.

Like I had never not been there as part of an organization, a production company or whatever.

I like just texted Mike.

I'm like, oh, can I get a badge?

Yeah, yeah.

Went to the show office probably.

He was like literally like opening day.

He's like, I cannot believe you don't have this sword.

And I'm like, I don't actually currently work for a company.

How was that feeling?

It was kind of like you had, I think you sold and then you left, right?

Yeah.

So I sold them again almost five years ago now, stayed for two years left.

And I left the industry because I had a non-compete.

So I went and worked for Super Plastic and they made like kind of like a kid.

Actually the guy who started Kid Robot started Super Plastic.

So it was like they were in the vinyl toy space, like collectible space,

but they also did animation stuff.

So I was helping them produce and build out animations.

And like I did this experience at area 15 for them called Dopameme

and like all these different things.

So I was doing that at the time.

So I was completely out of my mind.

I remember that.

Yeah.

How did, what I, I don't like, I try to think about like if that ever happened to me,

like walking in and not being tied to anything.

Yeah.

It was kind of, it actually a nice year.

Okay.

Um, first off, as someone who has done the Saturday to Sunday.

Right.

Seema run multiple years.

I mean, I did it my whole time.

It rides in zero to 60 and I did it a lot at Hoonigan

because we'd be launching things or when we started doing burn yard.

We were moving in on Friday before, right?

And now all of a sudden I show up and I'm like just in and out for the day

or in after two days.

Like it's actually not enough time.

You need more than 48 hours to walk the show.

If you want to walk the show.

If it's like you and I were like, you know, so many people,

it's a huge reunion and you're catching up with all these friends.

But it was actually, I had no business there.

Yeah.

Which was amazing.

Yeah.

Because it's people like, what are you doing here?

Yeah.

What are you, I'm like, I'm just here.

I'm just here because I've been here for 20 years.

I don't know what else to do in November.

Just time a year.

Yeah.

I'm like, I'm just here because it'd be weird not to be here.

Pandemic year was really odd.

Yeah.

That I was like, I don't, I don't know what to do this week.

Yeah.

I mean, granted you couldn't do it.

Like I guess I'm going to celebrate Halloween.

Yeah.

It was really odd.

I've gone through the rate, right?

Like when you do SEMA for long enough,

and you maybe can't agree because you work there now,

you get to this point when you start saying you hate SEMA.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah.

Right?

Like when I say I mean the show, right?

Because it feels like this thing you have to go do.

Sure.

I definitely had a little moment of that in my life,

but I've had a lot of fun at SEMA.

Yeah, me too.

Like the parties, like getting to see all your friends,

especially being East Coast for so long.

It was that one time a year that I got to see everybody.

I met a lot of you.

It was the coming together.

Yeah, it was the homecoming.

You guys in that area.

So it was like, I first met, I met Nads

because when he was doing Rice Boy TV,

and I'm like sitting with him in the media space, right?

So like I always loved that part of it.

And I still, and I want to choose my words

because I don't want to sound like home so famous,

but one of the things I dislike about SEMA now

is it's very hard for me to walk through SEMA

and enjoy it because I get recognized.

My first couple of years there,

I would do like all the main days.

And then usually Thursday, the marketing guys disappear.

And my favorite thing was on Friday,

I would just walk around the show

and just really become a kid again.

And look at how they did that latch or that,

or this new product.

And just really enjoy it as a consumer

more than as a peer-review industry.

Which happens a lot.

And I try to get those.

And that's why I would always get the night pass

because on the night pass, you get to walk.

But you don't get to talk to people,

but you get to see a lot of things.

The last couple of times I've gone,

I haven't had real business there.

And it's great.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's great because you just kind of walk around,

you catch up, you do this, you do that.

It's really just a car show again.

That's me at Car Week and at Auto Salon.

Auto Salon is a little bit of work, but...

Yeah.

You know, I've never actually,

this is gonna be crazy to say.

You haven't been to Auto Salon?

I've never been to Japan.

Oh my God.

I'm going to Japan in three weeks, my first time ever.

But I've never been...

I want to talk to you afterwards.

I've never been in one of the reasons

I've never been is, one, I don't fit in the cars,

but I've always worked in groups

where there was someone else more interested in the Japanese.

So like guys like her, when I was at zero to 60,

there were other writers who either knew it better

or knew the space better.

So I would always send them in.

In my head, I always thought the opportunity would come.

And then 20 plus years passed and I never been.

So an opportunity...

What are you going for?

Idler's Race or WB.

Oh, are you gonna drive?

I wasn't invited to drive.

I'm actually going out there to help tell a story.

But Toshi was like, hey, I have a spare car.

So I might drive on there.

You're there.

Yeah.

What track?

I don't even know.

It's all kind of brand new.

And yeah, it's just something that's kind of exciting.

We got a chat afterwards.

But it's one of those things where I kept thinking,

I'll eventually go.

And I just never been.

Like I've been so many places in the world

but haven't been in Japan.

That's a lot.

Yeah.

Meanwhile, your introduction into the industry started

because of a trip to Otisalon.

Yeah.

It was industry side of it, not just the easier side.

It was...

What was it like back then, compared to what it is now?

It's still very similar.

Really?

Actually, I mean, there's a few things that are different.

There's a lot more things in English.

Or like English characters where before it was all Japanese.

You got lost a lot.

The first Otisalon I went to was in a different venue.

So it wasn't as big.

But there was definitely some booths that were just as large as OEM booths.

Oh, yeah.

And that's changed over the years, of course,

because it's gotten more expensive.

But tuning culture in Japan has its own ebbs and flows.

I mean, there was a huge decade where nobody brought any new cars out

because the money just wasn't there

because Japan still isn't in a recession, sort of.

So luckily, it's kind of turned back around the last five years or so.

But from like, I felt like from 06 to 2015,

there wasn't a whole lot going on.

Like they were trying to fix up Priuses.

And it wasn't like our Prii or whatever it's called.

And so there wasn't like a new GTR coming out

or a new thing to really modify.

So I felt like they've had their struggles,

but I still love going Otisalon.

It now feels like it's kind of back to that early energy

because like all of the creators are going out

and there's like a huge market and now everyone goes

and then like going to Ebisu is like part of the week

and everything like that.

I see a lot of times I'll see more people in Japan than I do here.

I know that's what, right?

And it's like, oh, hey.

My joke always was we go to Vegas just to see everyone who lives in like,

you know, the South Bay.

Like you live 10 blocks from me, but I see you in Vegas.

So now they're trying.

It's like coming together, you know.

So while Nads was on the show,

he talked about you guys going to Japan.

And getting into some like particularly crazy stuff.

And I think he was like,

I don't know if I want to tell the story because of RJ.

Do you want to tell the story?

Yeah, we were talking about there's moments now,

I think that you and I will be like, nope.

We're like adults now.

Get me out of the car.

So there was a moment Nads on his pod talks about, you know,

we went to Osaka, we went with a company, Signal Auto.

We got, they took us everywhere.

So the late night drifting, which is what the Nads,

that story that Nads told we had to brace himself.

And then there was another night that we were going to dinner.

And the owner of the company had a crazy like, you know,

like a color shift, purple, R34, not midnight purple,

but kind of one of those house of color colors.

He's like, I'm going to give you guys a ride.

It's kind of like a bonsai run, you know.

So we get in, this car has two bride seats, bride seats,

four of us getting, he's like, he wants to pack the car.

And the dairy sitting up front, I'm sitting behind him

in front of this carbon Kevlar bucket.

And then our translator is the other person in the seat.

We get in, the owner says, we're like putting our seat belts on.

He's like, oh, no seat belt.

No seat belt.

And we're like, okay.

Like, you know, we're trying to be like gracious guests.

We're like, okay.

He's like, okay, trust, trust.

So we're like, all right.

That's like something that if anyone who didn't have

like a Japanese accent explaining this to you,

you'd be like, go fuck yourself.

Yeah, exactly.

It was like, but somehow you're like, oh, this is the spirit of race.

I have to do this.

So we take off and this guy's going for it, you know.

And he's got like two settings in the car.

I think he's done a street setting.

So it's probably making like 6, 700 horsepower.

But it's an R34, right?

And he's just booking it on like Osaka freeways.

And we're, I forget, it's like an interchange of some sort

and the traffic backs up.

And he kind of sees it late and he starts breaking

but he forgets that we're like full of people.

And so now I don't know how fast we're going, but we're going fast.

And so now like he starts to break really hard.

And then he starts screaming.

I thought he was saying low boost, but he was saying like no,

like no brakes or something.

And we're like, careening towards like the back of this miniature

like mini van.

And I'm like, and I'm looking at the windshield.

I'm looking at this carbon Kevlar seat.

I'm like, I'm going to die.

I'm going to die.

Remember, I was telling you like there was one moment,

I will not do that anymore.

Because I literally thought like, we're going to hit this car.

I'm going to fly towards this carbon Kevlar seat.

And that's it.

That's going to be the end of me.

So he lets off the brake.

Luckily, he gets slow enough that he lets off the brake.

And he kind of ricochets off the car next to this car

that we're about to hit.

So he kind of ricochets in this car.

And then he kind of kind of bones out again and calls

like his people and be like, you know, I just ricocheted off

this car, make sure you like you go to them.

And we're going to go do the apology thing.

And make sure nobody's hurt.

But that was like a moment of like life flashing in front

of my eyes.

And that was that was it.

That was that's the that's the John Naderi and RJ almost died

story in Osaka.

Are you now like, you no longer get like you don't go for

rides like that anymore?

I'll get in a track car with a race car driver.

As long as I'm harnessing it.

Like, you know, there was another thing that I did

with valveline called drifting 101.

Where we got Kichi Tsuchiya, the drift king, to reproduce the

drift Bible.

It was a valveline thing that we did where we wanted drift

Bibles.

Yeah, so good.

So valveline had had a goal to get a coupon for oil in the

hands of everyone that walked into hot important nights.

And they came and we said, RJ, do you have any ideas on

like how we do this?

And it doesn't end up on the on the floor because it hot

important nights, you would turn on the lights on, you

would see all the stuff on the floor.

Like people that, you know, they're trying to give away

whatever they're like, we want to give away a coupon for

a carton of oil, but we don't want it and we don't want it

to end up on the floor.

I said, how much money do you have?

And they're like, we've got a decent budget.

You got any ideas?

I'm like, yeah, I've got a pretty crazy one.

I'm like, do you know that you sponsored this guy called

the drift king?

Because I'd seen this option magazine where this is huge

valveline logo on his race suit.

And they're like, no, why?

Why does it matter?

I'm like, well, do you know this movie called Tokyo Drift

is coming out?

And there's this whole drift series called Formula D and D1.

And he did this thing called drift Bible.

I said, if we remade the drift Bible and put the coupon

in the DVD, I guarantee you none of those will end up on the

floor.

Hmm.

Like, can you make that happen?

I'm like, I have some friends, right?

So I call Taro and I'm like, yeah, you know, I'm like,

can you kind of get a hold of Sachiassan and ask him if

he's down to do this?

He's like, yes.

So we end up doing it.

We do it.

We film it after a D1 event.

It might have been the Fontana one that you spoke about.

Kazama's car was the K office car, which is Sachiass company.

So we brought that car out and we filmed, we refilmed drift

Bible.

At the end, Sachiassan was like, RJ, I want to give you a ride.

And we're at Willow Springs at Horse Teeth Mile.

And he's like, and that wasn't really him, but the production

team was like, seat belt him hand, but make it loose so he

flies around.

And that was the second time I was like, and after that, I was

like, never again.

Yeah.

Because I almost got like, you know, got sick.

Yeah.

Because I was just flying around the cockpit so much.

My two sketchiest times in a car, one was in Sweden.

This was before anyone really knew what Gattville was at the

time.

We went out, we didn't even know what it was.

We went there with zero to 60, a friend of ours who was,

actually we went to Norway, a friend of ours who was

Swedish was like, oh, you should go to like, you know, you

should go to Scandinavia.

They build these crazy cars.

And this was before engines swaps from foreign

manufacturers in a car was the thing, right?

Well, you're like, oh, I'm going to have a, you know, a BMW

engine in my Mercedes, right?

Like no one was doing that here, but they were doing it

there.

So we went zero to 60.

And this guy was like, oh, get my car.

It makes 1200 horsepower.

Sure.

1200 horsepower was like not something that my brain knew

how to understand.

Sure.

The Bugatti Veron, which had just come out, only had

a thousand and one horsepower.

I thought he was lying.

Okay.

We got into a car with no seatbelts and it was like

Mercedes SL convertible that made like 1200 horsepower.

And we went down this narrow road in Norway.

And I just remember thinking like, well, it's been fun.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, like the car was all over the place.

Like it was just like the wheel spin the whole time.

And there's just like houses and telephone poles and just

not the kind of place to be doing this.

And then I got out of the car and I'm like,

I'm not doing that again.

And then another time was in a donk.

I got in a donk that had like a ton of power.

And at the time, I remember it was probably like 600, but it's

sure.

And, but the guy didn't know how to drive.

And the car stepped out and he was just like, and I'm like

wanting to just be like, move over, let me do this.

Because he was doing everything wrong to collect the car.

And amazingly, we didn't hit any of the cars on the street

in North Carolina.

But like, again, like no seatbelts, like convertible.

Like I don't know why I'm just never getting into a convertible.

Again, now that I put those two stories together, but yeah,

I'm now convertible.

They were both convertibles.

Scary.

I just, I think I'm just now at an age where I just have no

interest of like someone showing me how fast their car is.

And like people want to prove things to you.

It's always bad.

Yeah.

No.

I mean, I've been in a lot of race cars,

rally car drivers, very scary, but harness, helmet,

Hans, you feel a little safe.

You feel like there's something there.

Yeah.

Like honestly, we were just saying like, I won't ride with Zach.

I was like, we were talking, that's how we talked before that we

started this guy, you know, Zach from Hoonigan.

From Hoonigan.

He doesn't ever put seatbelts in any of his trucks.

And they all, they're all like, they're all like old fashioned leaf spring

trucks that make a thousand.

That's a hard spot.

Oh, that's scary.

I met Zach on F1 Vegas.

We were part of a, or racing bulls or something like that.

Oh, yeah.

Cool guy.

Yeah.

Cool guy.

Yeah.

He's a, he's an interesting one because he didn't like cars when he started at Hoonigan.

Really?

He was just a really good editor.

And he was working.

What's his whole life now?

Well, yeah.

So he was working with, do you remember, well, you know, pro science, are you

familiar with that?

No.

So there was this guy, his, his like stage name was Dom Mazzetti.

Sure.

And during the recession, he was like a writer or whatever.

And he did a bunch of these like funny skits.

And then he was, he became really successful on YouTube doing kind of these skits.

And he liked cars.

So he did this thing called NARPM.

Okay.

And him and Zach worked with him on that.

But Zach was a motorcycle guy and he came to Hoonigan.

Right.

And we, we had him editing, but he was really funny.

So we immediately put him in front of camera, but he was a bike guy.

And I eventually said to him, like, hey, one of the fringe benefits of working here is

like, people give you parts to build cars.

Yeah.

He was like, huh, so he built a car and sold it.

And was like, oh, this is a good business.

And now he's like, I don't even think he rides bikes anymore.

Now he like, all he does is build like big, big bikes stuff.

No, I had a jigsaw when I was younger, but yeah, I never, I don't know, never really hit

the same way.

Yeah.

Because I feel like there's an inner section sometimes.

Yeah.

Four wheel, two wheel, all right.

I'm really big and I look really goofy on a motorcycle.

And as someone who like, I stopped riding BMX because I look too goofy on a bike.

It's like, I think it's six foot eight.

Like it's just like, I probably look fine on a Harley, but I never had, I only had

interest in sport bikes.

So I had like a, when I moved here, I had a bobber,

but I enjoyed building it more than I enjoyed riding it.

Yeah, especially in LA.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah.

I almost got into bikes, but it scared the living daylights out of me.

So I'm like four wheels.

What'd you do?

What were you riding?

It was mostly like, what is it?

R6 stuff.

Okay.

Yeah.

That, that, that kind of size, 600.

I had a play brother.

He's the guy that brought me to the street races that made me help me fall in love with cars.

He used to flip bikes.

Oh, okay.

So he would buy them, fix them up, flip them.

He would pick me up.

I ended up working for him at a copy service company and he would pick me up from school

on a bike and I would jump on the back of it and he taught me how to ride.

And I was like, oh, this is, yeah, yeah, this is scary.

The, it's funny because for me, the, the reason I first got really introduced to bikes was

a buddy of mine who was the publisher of mass appeal was we got really into bikes.

And I at that point just liked working on things.

Right.

He didn't really know how to work on stuff and he had bought like a crash bike and then

he bought like a two, basically two crash bikes and we made one good bike out of it.

But then I took all the leftovers and built another bike.

So I was riding this like full like Mad Max, Frankenstein style bike.

And of course, because I grew up riding BMX, the first thing I tried was nose wheelies.

Like I barely could, like I barely understood like how to steer through a fast turn, but

was already like trying to do tricks and stuff.

So yeah, I was, and this is like in the middle of the city.

So clearly that wasn't a good idea.

Did you destroy that bike?

So yeah.

Yeah.

So, and then, and then unfortunately a friend passed away and I was like, all right,

I just don't want to do that.

Yeah, that, that was the other thing people would, it's not like if you go down, it's when

you go down.

Yeah.

That's, I mean, what do they say?

It's like, there's a, there's three riders.

There's like those who will crash, those who have crashed and those who won't crash again.

Yeah.

And it's like, that's the three ways.

And it's like, that's unfortunately my history with bikes is that.

So the old with age comes a cage.

So yeah, I enjoy cars.

So rally racing is still in the cards for you or no?

Um, I would, if there was anything either rally racing or hill climb,

or the two things I really like.

Have you, have you, have you been to pikes, but you've never driven?

I've never driven pikes as competitive, competitively.

Yeah.

I could see you doing that.

That would be really fun.

I really enjoy the European style hill climbs that are like two miles or three miles long.

That's way more popular on the East coast.

It's actually what, I don't know if you know this, but Ryan Turk's been doing a lot of that.

Really?

I didn't know that.

Yeah.

So Ryan's been competing in the, like the New England hill climb association.

And it's crazy because like you have Ryan showing up with like,

you know, I think he's running the Celica there now, but there'll be guys who will

like, will be in like old NASCARs guys who will be in like open wheel cars.

It's like, it's, it feels very drag racing.

It's like run what you brought, which there's an element of that at pikes too.

But I really like that.

Pikes, it feels like it's becoming more commercialized and professional

than just run what you brought.

Well, especially ever since it's become all paved.

Yeah.

Because all paved has brought a new speed to it.

And there's like now a new goal to chase.

Right.

I think one of the problems and Will Roghi and I who both have this, this like, you know,

affinity for pikes, we always talk about, you know, is this the golden era where like

everything's fast again?

Or was it the original like?

On a dirt.

Yeah. The Rod Millen era where it was like all dirt, right?

The in between era, which I think we were talking about before felt like things slowed down.

I think they actually got to this point where they just weren't breaking new records, right?

Like monster kept going there and, you know, just couldn't get into the, you know,

get into the nines, couldn't break the 10 minute mark.

And I think whenever sport has no more progression, like there's less interest for

manufacturers to show up and because of that, there's less excitement where right now,

it's like every year there's like a new story coming out of Pike.

So it's, it's pretty interesting.

But yeah, I don't know.

That I think I also really like endurance racing.

I think that that's pretty cool.

I don't know if I would, I don't know if I would do it, but I only because there's

so much commitment that goes into it.

But you know, if like, if, if there wasn't everything else in life, right?

Like if I didn't have to worry about like my mortgage, my kid, like all those other things.

I think the three events that I think would be really any rally race, I don't really care.

The Nurburgring 24 hour and the Baja, the Baja 1000.

I did a, I've done a lot of filming in Baja and I've like worked with a lot of teams and,

and trophy truck teams guys like BJ Baldwin, Bryce Menze, so on and so on.

And like that just seems to me, it's so like raw and lawless that it feels like it's a really

good bucket.

Do you want to do a trophy truck or something else?

I don't care.

I would do it like, like, I don't think I have the speed for a trophy truck.

I think doing it in like a class five or something like that would be fine.

But yeah, I mean, we were going to do, we were supposed to do that with a, we built this

Baja bug called scumbug at Hoonigan.

And that was the original plan to do it.

But I think we actually realized like we didn't have the budget to do it the way

really needed to be done.

Like, but like chase trucks and all of that.

And yeah, we, we did it because be of good rich, like there was a little bit of money,

but they didn't throw us enough money to like really do it the right way.

Understand how expensive racing is.

Oh, racing from Baja in general.

What would you do?

Oh, that's a great question.

I would, I really fell in love with circuit driving, even though I'm not that great at

it.

So I'd love to do like a one make series.

I try to drive open wheel.

And that is some of the most challenging.

And I drove it with no arrow, it was like a formula Ford, you know, with a dog,

gearbox, a dog sequential gearbox.

I cannot heel toe to save my life.

Really?

Yeah.

Like I've, I've tried to learn different models where you put the foot aside, you roll your

foot over and maybe because I've been trying on so many different configurations that I

haven't practiced enough one style.

I kind of told myself I would do that on the S2000 because that's a great, you know,

um, pedal configuration.

But yeah, through my life, I've just not been like the great heel toe downshift person.

It's funny.

I was, it was something that I struggled to learn at first because my feet are so big.

And then I went to Bob, do the Bob Bondurant school.

Yeah.

And Bob was like, at the time it was quite, it was C5 Corvette and Cadillacs.

Okay.

And I had to drive the Cadillac because with the cage, I was too big for the vet.

And Bob was like, oh, just do it this way.

And it was like more of like, it was more of like a toe, like a roll because I couldn't do it the

other way.

Like I was just, my foot just didn't work that way.

And I was like, my knee was all caught up and stuff.

And then yeah, that was kind of like what clicked.

I don't know.

I really, yeah.

It's tough.

I mean, I can do it, but what happens is I put too much brake pressure and it does the

lunge forward for the, for the downshift.

So that's what I'm trying to work on.

I used to always practice on the street.

And what I realized the worst part about that is, is you're not putting the right amount

of pressure and you'd always be off on your timing.

And then like, but I learned that like that on track, it just kind of would make sense.

Yeah.

So circuit would be my goal.

If I could, you know, do something from a racing perspective, it's this dream of being

a gentlemen driver, just like you to show up.

It would be cool.

I mean, I love racing.

I think like I have a little bit of interest in doing, have you ever heard of Lucky Dog?

No, what is that?

It's kind of like lemons, but with like, they take themselves a little bit more seriously.

Like I think lemons is very much about like the joke, just have fun.

Yeah.

Which like I have nothing against, but Lucky Dog tries to be a little bit more, it's an

endurance race.

Okay.

We were looking into it just to get endurance training to go race the Nürburgring and they

have a lot of events local.

So you could go and do, you know, 12 hours of Chuck Waller or something like that or

Thunder Hill and whatever, and they do a bunch and everybody's running like, you know, a mix

of cars, but I think it, you know, it has like a spend cap.

So guys are running like, you know, E39, you know, five series PMWs and other guys are

running, you know, E36s, but like there's not so crazy.

Yeah.

And I think everything has to be before 2000 and something.

So it's like older cars, but like it looks the part.

And again, no knock on lemons.

I, lemons is cool.

I have a bunch of friends who do it, but aesthetically, I love motor sports as an aesthetic.

And like if a vehicle next to me shaped like a chicken, it just feels like I shouldn't be there.

It's not serious.

Yeah.

We're like, like I actually, I pitched an idea to a friend of mine.

I'm like, I want to do a Jedda, a Volkswagen Jedda single touring car, like VR6 touring car series.

That's all 90s Jeddas because they're not fast.

Right.

But like the Jedda looks like an old touring car.

It looks good on like an 18 or 19 inch like touring wheel drop down and great 19s massive,

but that is what they ran on the touring cars back in the day.

And you could, and the VR6 sounds good.

And like that's actually what matters.

Yeah.

And there was this video that was circulating of a Jedda like, you know, series from the 90s.

And the cars are like bouncing into each other, like going over the curves.

It just looks really cool.

And like that looks like fun to me because aesthetically it also looks really good.

And we were discussing building this series idea and I said, we'd have to control everyone's livery

because all it takes is for one car to not look cool.

And it ruins like the whole fleet.

It's like, it's why JGTC and DTM and all these things looked, were great because the car is all.

Yeah, it looks great.

You know.

Okay.

We'll have to, we'll have to make a pack to do it.

Gentleman's race.

That's a good one.

I'm going to give you, I'll give you, I want to give you one last question.

We ran late.

I thought we were going to end it two hours.

We were like an hour forward because by the way, for everyone listening, it is a warm day to

alarm each and we do not have air conditioning.

It is not just RJ's amazing skincare treatment that keeps him looking this dewy.

It's that it's about 90 degrees in here.

Yeah.

What do you think are the it cars right now of new cars you can buy in a dealership?

Because we were, I think, spoiled when we were coming up with what was available in the 90s.

The 90s stuff was a golden era.

We didn't realize how good it was.

It's a question I get from a lot of younger kids.

Sure.

Like what's the car I can go buy that's either brand new or a few years old that's like the next,

like cool cartoon build and all of that.

It's tough because so many of the cars have so many aids that it's, you can get a cool car that's

fast, but from a driving, like it fills your driving soul perspective, it's like tough.

You know, especially if you've driven something more analog, but my girlfriend's actually looking

for a new car and luckily she drives manual.

So we just drove GR Corolla and Integra Type S.

Both of those cars, I think, are great, cool cars that you can get now slightly used or new.

You could still mod them.

You still have fun with them in the same way that we did in the 90s.

I think there's less and less of those, unfortunately.

Like the sports car world, they're all great.

They're all fast, but they might not be as great and fun to drive.

Especially for the price.

Because I mean, even the Aston that I'm in, if I spec that in the new generation

Vantage, it's like 50, 50% more than what it was.

And it's got all these aids and it's heavier.

And so, I mean, I think, you know, the sports, I mean, Porsche does such a great job and granted

the new GT3 is heavier than it's ever been.

But these are all expensive cars.

Like you're thinking about a 25-year-old.

What do they get?

Like I think the GR Corolla is a very, it's on the upper left.

Yeah, it's still 45 to 50k, which isn't cheap.

But I guess that's the average price of a new car now.

So for that, I would say GR Corolla, the 86 GR as well.

That's the one I think everyone goes to.

That's really good.

I mean, its balance is great.

You can have a lot of fun in it.

The Integra Type S, which is basically a Type R that's been tuned differently

and has a different vibe to it.

You know, I grew up in front-wheel drives and the traction that the latest Type Rs and Type

Integra Type Ss have is way doesn't have the torque steer.

It can put down 300 plus horsepower, no problem, which is just, it's just a fun car to drive.

So I think those would be the main.

I'm trying to think if there's anything from Subaru.

BRZ, which are basically the same thing as the 86.

And I feel like everything else has gotten big.

Moving away from what the WRX was.

Yeah, they're definitely more of the overland markets that does more trucks.

What's in the VW world?

I guess, GTI or R, but like they're all bigger and heavier.

They're not like speak.

I mean, but that's the standard.

You have to measure it on that.

Not a current thing.

Yeah.

I wish they brought GR Yaris here.

Yeah, I know.

That would be, I agree.

That's the right size car.

And that's what they race for, for rallies.

Right.

The Yaris, right.

That would be my, I would get that for every day.

I was just walking past like an older gen Yaris the other day.

And it was just sitting like perfectly framed on a street.

And I was like, that's a pretty good looking car.

No one really ever built it.

The Honda Fit became the cool small car,

but the Yaris just had a cool shape to it.

I think if you're young, you have to go used.

I know, that's it.

You know, because there's everything so expensive.

But you think about it from our generation.

A lot of us were building cars that were only a few years old.

Sure.

Yeah, we were building older cars, but like the Integra was new.

Yeah, fairly new.

But you were still new.

Like my Volkswagen that I bought, when I first got it,

you could still buy it in the dealership.

I bought it used, but it was like a few years old used.

Now it's like kids are buying the same,

we're all fighting over the same cars.

Same cars, yeah.

We're all fighting, the other day I refer to it as automotive gentrification.

Because it's like we're all fighting, like everybody wants the same.

Yeah.

Like you're looking at a DC2, so is a 23 year old.

Because all the, we like stopped making fun cars or something.

Well, a lot of so much change in suspension geometry and for like manufacturing and costs.

So like there's not many cars that are double wishbone and they're not manual.

And even in the gearboxes, because they make so few of them,

or isn't fully sorted.

And let me ask you, we can end on this one, but from a SEMA side,

are you guys actually seeing an aftermarket go back in time a little bit?

Because for so long, so much of the aftermarket was about cars

that were within the first two or three years, unless they were like muscle cars.

Sure.

But are we starting to see a return to golden era?

Like I am obviously, I have a small POV because I see the brands that I like

building stuff for the cars I like, but from a SEMA perspective,

how are they dealing with the fact that we struggle to name a bunch of like

little new it cars for younger generation?

Trying to think of the research, you know, the research is showing a lot of growth more in

off road trucks, SUV and CUVs.

So it's on that side, it's growing in terms of accessorizing and modding.

I guess that's it.

I guess I don't think about the truck spaces just exploding.

Exploding.

Especially like overland.

So on the performance side, it's much more difficult because there are not as many new

platforms.

So there are brands that are having to find niches because there's also a lot of cars where

the factory stopped making things, which was kind of a lot of the hot rod stuff, right?

So you have a new body from this maker that makes a body of your panels for whatever.

You can get AE86 brand new bodies.

Yeah, isn't that crazy?

Like straight to your door.

So I think that's going to be the next wave because even like Honda announced, you know,

they're starting to redo parts for NSX, right?

Nissan and Nismo has had a refurb program for GTR for a while.

And I'm curious to see if more companies jump on that bandwagon.

Like good luck buying an old 90s Honda and trying to find weather seals.

Oh yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

And take you like 10 years to build one with new parts, right?

So our brands or manufacturers are going to notice this void and start to build components

for it.

Which is what the market for classic cars was forever.

It's just these are the new classics.

And it's especially being like all plastic and rubber that's like all deteriorated.

And there was one comment that someone made like, yeah, the cars for the collector cars

for us are 90s cars that are built with a lot of plastic parts that are going to fade and crack.

So I think there is an opportunity here for whether it's a 360 or a Golf or an Integra

or a NSX for even my S2000, which is an 09.

There's things that need to be replaced.

And I don't know if I can get it.

I have a 86.

I have a car, I've been an old, you know, curly.

Hachi.

I actually have a 511.

No, a coupe.

Oh, yeah.

Not technically a Hachi, but SR5.

Yeah, sorry.

Yeah.

And I hadn't, the car came without taillights.

And I had no idea that the taillights were going to cost a G.

You know, like I was like, oh, good deal.

Like I was like, oh, I don't have any taillights.

So I was like, that's fine.

Right.

And then you're like, people are like, oh, they're like, you just can't find them.

Yeah.

And then if you, I was, and it's like stuff like that.

And there's no one making, you know, like, oh, replacement taillights.

I was like, how does that not exist for a car that seems so popular in a space?

It feels like there's a window right now because there's a lot of data that shows

the cars that are increasing in value the most are these 90s cars that everyone's fighting for,

whether you're 20 or 40s, or maybe even 50s like NADS, or even in the middle in the 30s,

like everybody wants like a cool 90s car.

We're all fighting over the same hot girl.

Yeah.

So it's like it's going up in price, but then you can't find any parts to restore it.

So you're just like, so, I mean, I'm hoping that as that need becomes even more of a void,

isn't filled that manufacturers start to wake up.

I mean, you've got people that are doing RestoMod 911s, Gunther Works, Singer, you name it,

and they're selling it for a million dollars.

Not that we have that kind of money, but what is the more attainable version of that?

You know, is there a Gunther Works version of an E30M3?

Is there a Singer version of a, you know, an S2000R version that evasive does,

it's more accessible than what they spent on that initial one.

So, yeah, that excites me actually.

I have one last question for you.

Like, you've seen lots of things, you're seeing lots of things.

What's the one thing that really excites you in the culture, in the industry?

Yeah, that's a really good question.

I think probably the thing that most excites me is seeing the excitement in a younger generation,

because I owe so much to this hobby, right?

I feel the same way.

I owe so much to it.

I grew up in New York City, was around a bunch of crazy shit, and cars were a safe path out.

Kind of saved your life in a way, right?

And it then became, and then it was this thing again, when I got into a career space, right?

And I failed out of college, and then was able to still be successful, because I leaned into that.

So, I really want that to keep going.

And I would say a few years ago, I was sitting with a bit of a bleak outlook,

especially as you hear, like, oh, it's only EVs.

And I'm like, oh, this is just going to change.

And not saying that it wouldn't continue, but it wasn't going to be a thing that maybe I recognized.

And then I go to a car as in coffee and some 17-year-old kids, like, dude, is that an RS2?

I'm like, I can't believe you know what this is.

It restored your faith.

Yeah, and it just like, it makes me excited that there is this younger generation that is excited.

Like, for example, this show is a bunch of old dudes who come on the show, and we rep.

Where the old dudes now?

We are fucking the chopped unks of these young kids.

And like, we come on the show, and we reminisce about the nostalgia,

and how good it was when you had to read something in a magazine, and,

oh, look at this, that, and the other thing, and there were no technologies.

But most of my audience is actually still under 35 or so, 32.

So it's like, that's a cool thing to me, because even though it's all,

there's still a younger audience who's looking at this and saying, yeah, I like this,

I like the culture of it all.

I have a mixed feeling of how hype it is right now, because I've, you've been there,

I've been there.

Yeah, a couple of times.

It's a tidal wave, and we all know what it feels like when the wave pulls back out,

and all of a sudden, a ton of people lose their jobs,

because everyone built up to support this, and then it falls out.

So that part worries me, but I don't know, it's cool to see the new enthusiasts in the space.

Yeah, I don't know.

I think right now we are at a really strong moment, and I just kind of want,

like, as a culture, as a community, like, I think that's good.

There's obviously a bunch of bad things we have to fix.

Sure, that's every generation.

But it always is, right?

I mean, takeovers, you know, street racing had its own issues, takeovers have it now.

I think it's different.

That's its own pod, but, you know, the issues we're dealing with, you know,

EPA and all those, we'll figure our way around them as long as there is a younger,

enthusiast audience that wants to make it happen, because at the end of the day,

there is a business behind it all.

If enough people want to do it and it creates enough jobs,

well then, like, a piece of it has to exist, right?

I'll end on my philosophy that I think it'll always be around, whatever the platform is,

because I think there's an innate human want to personalize things and make it your own.

And even when there was the law, I remember I would give these presentations

at 3M and McGuire's, like, they're not getting your license at 16,

but they're getting it at some point when it makes sense to get the license, right?

Whether it's 25 or 30, because at some point, like, you want to have something that resembles

your success or your personality, whatever that may be, and it just shifts.

And I feel like that that that's why people are collectors, it's why people personalize,

whatever it is that they have. And to me, like, the vehicle may change, the platform may change,

the proposal may change, but this love to do something that's personal and then to share

that with other people, is it going to continue with or without AI, digital?

You know, for the SEMA show, the PRI show, we're seeing a resurgence, because people want to see

things in real life, because it's hard to tell what's real and isn't real on screen anymore,

and you kind of want to, like, touch grass, right, and feel it yourself, and see it for yourself.

So I'm very hopeful. Hopefully the wave is a tidal wave that continues for a long while,

and there isn't this pullback, but that's just me. I always look at the glass half full.

Yeah, you have a bit of an optimistic.

Yeah, I'm very optimistic. I get very excited in the things that fascinate me and the things that

bring people together and the things that push, like, progression and momentum. So

it's worked for me for 30 years, so I'm just going to keep riding the wave.

Well, I want to tell you, I think you've officially beat TJ's record.

Really?

Yeah, you haven't beaten JP's, but I think you beat TJ, and I think I feel like that's what

you came here for, right?

Not really. I thought we'd be done in two hours, too, but...

So did I, but then, like, you know, then you just get a groove.

Groove, yeah.

I noticed with the pods, in the beginning, you're like, oh, when am I going to make it to an hour

40? Like, I feel like we're, and then all of a sudden, you go, and that's, I think,

with the audience likes the most is when you get into that sort of flow state. So thank you,

dude, for coming on. I appreciate it.

I appreciate it.

It's been good. And then I want to say, too, thank you for everything you've done for our

community. You have done a lot. Like, I was there when I was not in it, and I wasn't in the

industry, and I was rooting for you.

That means a lot to me. Thank you. Hopefully, I can keep giving more.

Sweet. Maybe one day we'll both be at SEMA.

Maybe.

No, we're going to go with gentlemen racing.

And we're going to go make the first Fast and Furious movie over again.

Yes.

Yeah.

Set in New York City.

All right. Because I know people make deals with you when they come here.

That is it. Usually, we wait till the end. You set the deal in the beginning,

but it's always like, hey, what's the deal? What's the thing we're going to go do?

Okay.

So, all right. Thanks, dude.

Hi. Goodbye. Goodbye.

Each week, you hear me talk about how great he waves sunglasses are. But today,

I want to talk about their co-founder, Justin Hurdle, and his fantastic tasting cars.

Here's a quick sampling.

Top of the list, he has a sick third gen LSA powered, sequentially shifted Pontiac GTA.

On the flip side, he's got a 190E Cosworth Evil 1, if you know you know,

plus a proper vintage NASCAR in the iconic Tide livery. What else?

A Rad C for a vet, a race Miata, a GT3 RS, oh, and another NASCAR. I can't keep track.

Speaking of, he tracks all of his cars, but the pinnacle of his collection,

a 92 Kenworth Custom Hauler slash motorhome. I've never been more envious.

Anyway, go check them out. HeWayVisual.com and help support a fellow vehicular hoarder.

So what if all of his run?

I'm a tool dork. My obsession might even dwarf my addiction to cars.

I love collecting unique and specialty tools, which is how I initially fell in love with Werra.

First off, they just make aesthetically pleasing tools. They feel good in your hand,

they have a great finish, their sizes are universally color coded, and they are super strong.

In two decades, I've never broken a tool from Werra. I wish I could say the same about my other

tools, but the thing I like the most about Werra is that they create clever solutions for your

wrenching woes because you need overengineered tools to work on today's overengineered cars.

So if you're ready to step up your tool game, whether it's the Zyclop Ratchet or the Joker

Wrenches, find them at Werratools.com. Let's face it, living the low life does come with its drawbacks.

When I first got my RWB911, there were only three gas stations in all of Long Beach I could get into

without ripping the front bumper off. Luckily, KW Suspensions then introduced the HydroLift system

to raise your car to adult heights. The HLS2 lifts the front axle while the HLS4 lifts them all.

It's available as a complete kit or an add-on to your existing KW coilovers.

And it works out to 50 miles an hour, meaning you don't have to take every dip in the road at that

douchey 45 degree two mile an hour crawl. Check out kwsuspensions.com to find a kit for your slammed ride.

Original notes