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Concept
halo car
A super-expensive, ultra-high-performance car that a company builds to show off what it is capable of. It acts like a mascot for the brand to make all their other, cheaper cars look cooler.
Person
Magnus Walker
A famous car enthusiast and builder with a long beard and dreadlocks who became well-known for customizing classic Porsches in a cool, rebellious style. He started out in the clothing business before his passion for cars made him an internet celebrity.
Car
Porsche 911
The most famous sports car made by Porsche, recognizable by its round headlights and curved shape. Unlike most cars, its engine is located in the very back behind the rear wheels.
Car
Ferrari F40
A legendary red Ferrari supercar from the late 1980s with a giant wing on the back. It was built to be as light and fast as a race car, with no carpets, no radio, and no power steering.
Car
Porsche Carrera GT
An incredibly fast, rare Porsche supercar from the mid-2000s with a loud V10 engine and a manual gear shifter. It has no modern computer safety nets to help the driver, making it famous for being thrilling but very dangerous to drive fast.
Person
James Dean
A famous Hollywood actor from the 1950s who loved racing cars. He tragically died in a crash while driving his silver Porsche race car, which he had nicknamed 'Little Bastard.'
Car
Porsche 550 Spyder
A tiny, low-slung, open-top Porsche race car from the 1950s. It is incredibly rare and famous both for winning races and for being the car actor James Dean was driving when he died.
Term
air-cooled
An older type of car engine that cools itself down using air and a fan, instead of using liquid coolant and a radiator like modern cars do. Enthusiasts love the unique sound and simplicity of these older engines.
Car
911 930 Turbo
A classic, very fast version of the Porsche 911 from the 1970s and 80s that used a turbocharger to get extra power. It is famous for being difficult to drive because the power would kick in suddenly, but it is highly prized by collectors today.
Term
slant nose
A special body style for the classic Porsche 911 where the front of the car is flattened out and has pop-up headlights, making it look like a race car instead of having the usual round, upright headlights.
Term
whale-tail
A nickname for the large, flat spoiler on the back of classic Porsche Turbos that looks like the tail of a whale. It helps keep the back of the car pressed down to the road at high speeds.
Car
Lamborghini Countach
A legendary, futuristic-looking supercar from the 70s and 80s with sharp angles and doors that open straight up. It is one of the most famous exotic cars ever made.
Car
Ferrari Berlinetta Boxer
A classic, low-slung Ferrari supercar from the 1970s and 80s with a flat 12-cylinder engine mounted in the middle of the car. (Note: The podcast host mistakenly calls it a 'Ferrari Boxster' due to a slip of the tongue or transcription error).
Car
Porsche 356
The very first car that Porsche ever made. It is a small, rounded, classic sports car that paved the way for the famous 911.
Car
Porsche 968
The 968 is a front-engine sports car made by Porsche in the early 1990s. It is known for having its engine in the front and its transmission in the back to help balance the car's weight.
Car
Porsche 928
The 928 is a classic luxury sports car made by Porsche with its engine in the front instead of the back. It was designed to be comfortable for long road trips while still being fast.
Car
Porsche Boxster
A smaller, convertible Porsche with its engine in the middle of the car. It is cheaper than a 911 but still offers amazing handling, and it famously saved Porsche from going bankrupt in the 1990s.
Car
Porsche Cayenne
Porsche's first SUV. Purists hated the idea of a Porsche family SUV at first, but it sold incredibly well and made the company enough money to keep building sports cars.
Car
Porsche 911 S/T
A very rare, expensive version of the modern 911 designed for driving purists. It has a race-car engine but a manual shifter and no giant wing on the back, making it look more subtle.
Car
Porsche 911 Turbo S
An incredibly fast, all-wheel-drive version of the modern 911. It has twin turbochargers for massive power but is still comfortable enough to drive to work every single day.
Car
Alpina B10
The Alpina B10 is a modified, high-performance version of a mid-sized BMW sedan. It is built by a specialized company called Alpina to be very fast and luxurious for highway driving.
Part
center lock wheels
Wheels that are held onto the car by one giant bolt in the middle instead of five smaller bolts. They look cool and are used on race cars, but they are very hard to change on the side of the road if you get a flat tire.
Part
PDK
Porsche's special automatic transmission that uses two clutches instead of one. It changes gears much faster than a human can with a manual stick shift, making the car accelerate faster and drive smoother.
Car
Porsche 911 GT2
An extreme, race-ready version of the 911 from the early 2000s. It has rear-wheel drive, twin turbochargers, a manual shifter, and no electronic safety aids, making it highly respected and feared by drivers.
Car
Porsche Macan
The Macan is a small luxury SUV made by Porsche. It is designed for people who want a practical family vehicle that still feels fast and sporty to drive.
Car
Porsche 918 Spyder
An ultra-rare, high-tech hybrid supercar built by Porsche in the mid-2010s. It uses a screaming V8 engine paired with electric motors to achieve mind-boggling speeds while still being surprisingly easy to drive.
Car
Porsche 959
A legendary, high-tech Porsche supercar from the late 1980s. It was originally built for off-road rally racing and featured advanced technology like all-wheel drive that was decades ahead of its time.
Car
Bugatti Veyron
The Bugatti Veyron is an incredibly fast and expensive French supercar. It is famous for being one of the first cars to reach a top speed of over 250 miles per hour.
Car
McLaren P1
An incredibly fast, aggressive hybrid hypercar from McLaren. It combines a twin-turbo V8 engine with electric power to deliver wild, race-car-like performance on the street.
Car
Rolls-Royce Cullinan
The Cullinan is a very large, extremely expensive luxury SUV made by Rolls-Royce. It is designed to offer the ultimate level of comfort and luxury, even when driving on rough roads.
Car
Rolls-Royce Phantom
The Phantom is the largest and most luxurious sedan made by Rolls-Royce. It is built to provide the quietest, smoothest, and most comfortable ride possible, often for passengers who are being driven by a chauffeur.
Car
Lotus Europa
The Europa S is a small, lightweight two-door sports car made by the British company Lotus. It was designed to be slightly more comfortable and practical for daily driving than their track-focused models.
Car
Lotus Esprit
The Esprit is a classic, low-slung British sports car with a distinctive wedge shape. It is well-known for being featured as a submarine car in a James Bond movie.
Car
Porsche Boxster Spyder RS
An extreme, loud, convertible version of the Porsche Boxster. It uses a high-revving race engine from the 911 GT3 and has a lightweight fabric roof that you have to clip on and off by hand.
Car
Porsche Cayman
The Cayman is a small, two-door hardtop sports car made by Porsche. It is designed for sporty driving and has its engine placed in the middle of the car for better balance.
Car
Dodge Super B
Car
McLaren Artura
The Artura is a modern, high-performance hybrid sports car made by McLaren. It combines a gas engine with an electric motor to deliver fast acceleration while reducing emissions.
Car
McLaren 765LT
The 765LT is an extremely fast, lightweight sports car made by McLaren. It is designed primarily for driving on race tracks but is also legal to drive on public roads.
Car
Mclaren F1
The McLaren F1 is an extremely rare and expensive high-performance sports car from the 1990s. It is famous because the driver sits in the exact middle of the car, with room for two passengers slightly behind on either side.
Car
McLaren 570S
The 570S is a fast, modern sports car made by the British company McLaren. It features doors that open upwards and is designed to be driven on both regular roads and race tracks.
Car
Ferrari 288 GTO
An ultra-rare, beautiful Ferrari from the 1980s that was built for racing but sold as a road car. It looks like a muscular, wider version of the classic 308 and is highly sought after by collectors.
Car
Ferrari F50
The F50 is a very rare, high-performance sports car built by Ferrari in the 1990s. It was designed to bring the technology and feel of a Formula One race car to public roads.
Car
Ferrari LaFerrari
The LaFerrari is a highly exclusive, extremely fast hybrid sports car made by Ferrari. It uses both a powerful gas engine and an electric system to achieve maximum speed.
Car
BMW M3
The BMW M3 is a faster, more powerful version of BMW's standard small luxury sedan. It is built for drivers who want a practical everyday car that can also go very fast.
Car
Ferrari A250 Gto
Car
Ferrari Testarossa
A wide, low Ferrari from the 1980s with distinctive cheese-grater-style slats on the sides. It has a flat-12 engine and is famous for starring in the TV show 'Miami Vice'.
Car
Ferrari 400
The Ferrari 400 is a classic, four-seat luxury car made by Ferrari in the 1970s and 1980s. Unlike most Ferraris, it was designed for comfortable highway cruising and was the first to offer an automatic transmission.
Car
Ferrari 348
A Ferrari sports car from the early 1990s that looks like a smaller version of the Testarossa. It has a V8 engine and is currently considered a more affordable entry point into classic Ferrari ownership.
Part
IMS bearing
A small metal part inside certain Porsche engines from the late 1990s and early 2000s that is famous for breaking without warning. When it breaks, it completely destroys the engine, so many owners pay to replace it with a stronger part before it fails.
Car
Toyota A90
The Supra is a two-door sports car made by Toyota. It is famous for its speed and its popularity in video games and movies.
Car
Cayman R
The Cayman R is a special, lightweight version of Porsche's two-door sports car. It was built with fewer comfort features inside to make it lighter and faster on race tracks.
LIVE
What Porsche needs is a halo car.
Too many variants.
Yeah, there is.
But the best entry level bang for the buck is a...
Magnus Walker.
Best known for his rare Porsche collection
and his insane custom 911.
This is not a fashion statement or a trend.
It's in my DNA.
Which car do you think screams that someone is trying too hard?
It's just ugly, isn't it?
I mean, ultimately the road determines the speed.
I am scared to death of an F40, a Carrera GT,
Do you think the way the allocations of these bits and pieces
Porsches has become a bit of a scam?
Yeah, but we don't need a collaboration
with a Smeg fridge, right?
They want to kick your house out to have a GT3.
Interestingly, you said you're not a supercar collector.
Does that mean you don't think Porsches are supercars?
Yes.
It's a sports car. It's too usable.
That right there is the definition of a supercar and a hypercar.
What's your favorite, Magnus?
Favorite car that you've ever owned?
Well...
Magnus, do Porsche purists hate you?
I don't know. Maybe, definitely maybe, you know, like Oasis.
I don't really care either way.
I just kind of do my own thing.
Never had any approaches from Porsche saying,
look, you know, you're messing around with our cars,
you're cutting them up, you're bastardizing them.
No, I mean, it's a great question.
You know, people have been bastardizing.
That's great because that leads me into James Dean
and the little bastard, the 550 Spider, right?
People have been, to use your words,
bastardizing Porsches since day one, pretty much.
So modifying Porsches, outlawing them,
whatever you want to call it, is nothing new.
The greatest thing about Porsches,
especially early ones, mostly air-cooled, is everything is interchangeable.
Not so much now, but back in the day,
it's pretty easy to bolt things on to make them go faster,
handle better, stop shorter, bigger motor, bigger horsepower.
So it's just natural progression.
And I'm just sort of doing what I want to do with my own cars,
not trying to make anyone else happy.
You know, I fell in love with Porsche
when I was 10 years old back in 1977.
My dad took me to the London Alls Court Motor Show.
I saw the white martini poster on the stand.
I came back with a poster and a program.
I wrote a letter to Porsche in 1977 when I was 10 years old,
saying, hey, I want to design cars for you.
And believe it or not, they wrote a letter back saying,
essentially call us when you're older.
I never called them when I was older,
but here I am almost, almost 50 years later.
And I'm still as passionate about Porsche than I ever was.
So this is not a fashion statement or a trend.
It's like flavor of the moment that I just drank the Kool-Aid.
It's in my DNA.
It's kind of in my blood.
So it's just all consuming.
So that Porsche would have been a 930 Turbo.
White 930 Turbo, that was the poster on the wall to me.
You know, there's a slant nose version of it right behind me.
When I think of Porsche, that's what I think of.
That silhouette, wide-bodied, looks fast-standing.
Whale-tail.
Yeah, I think any kid growing up anywhere in the 70s and 80s,
chances are you had three posters on your wall.
The Turbo, Lamborghini Countach, Ferrari Boxster.
That, those were the hero Athena posters on the wall cars
that everyone related to in that era.
And you know, growing up in Sheffield,
you know, it wasn't like Porsche's were a common sight.
We grew up working class,
but it was an aspirational goal to own one.
And I achieved that goal when I was 25,
15 years after that infamous London Olds Court Motor Show in 1970.
What was your first Porsche?
Ironically, it was a red slant nose conversion,
kind of like that silver one, wide-bodied Turbo,
being modified.
So my first Porsche was a 74911 that had been modified
with a wide-bodied slant nose kit on it.
Very Miami Vice.
And these are polarizing.
You either love them or you hate them.
It's like the bad boys' chop shop thing, right?
And it was just one of those things I had to have won.
And back then, when I acquired my first one in 1992,
they were affordable.
You know, you got to remember, I grew up in Sheffield,
but I moved to LA in 1986, 40 years ago when I was 19.
I left school at 15 with two old levels,
was on the dole, bumming around.
And then I did Camp America, worked on a summer camp with
inner city underprivileged kids north of Detroit.
Took a trailways bus from Detroit to LA.
It was like the land of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
And the point to my ramble here is Porsche's biggest global
market, 78 years later, is still America.
The epicenter of that market is California.
And the epicenter of California is LA.
It's the car culture capital of the world.
Silverstone may be the center of motorsports,
but LA probably still is the car culture capital of the world.
So Porsches were common and they were affordable,
unlike Ferraris and Lamborghinis and other European exotic cars.
Porsches were obtainable.
The first one I bought for not a lot of money,
and it represented a real sense of personal achievement.
A dream come true.
I set a goal and I achieved that goal on my own merit.
So how much was the first Porsche you bought?
$7,500.
$7,500.
Dollars.
Dollars.
And was that new?
No, well, in 1974.
Yeah, but was it new when you got it?
What do you mean new?
No, we got it in 1991.
I got it in 92.
92.
So no, the car was, you know, 20-odd years old
being modified at that point.
But I've bought a lot of Porsches for 45 grand,
you know, all day long in the 10 grand.
Turbos were 20 grand and then they doubled and tripled
and doubled again.
But the point here is Porsches were obtainable.
For me, it was an aspirational thing to own,
but it was an obtainable car that I could actually afford to own.
So it ticked a lot of boxes and then when I got it,
they're just so well built, so well engineered,
they're built to be driven.
You'd see a lot of high mileage Porsches,
unlike Ferraris, because they were well engineered,
they were reliable, they were ergonomically comfortable.
Everything was right, the seating position.
It just felt supernatural to me and I just clicked with it
straight away.
So I've owned Porsches for the past 35 years.
How many do you think you've owned?
Oh, I lost.
I stopped counting over 100.
You've owned over 100 Porsches.
Not just 911s.
When people think of Porsche, they probably think of 911,
right, the real purest.
But in reality, it started with the 356.
We all know that back in 1948 in Guamund, Austria.
But my goal was one of everything, front engine,
mid-engine, rear-engine, air and water cooled.
So all the transactional cars, the entry level,
924s, 928s, 944s, 968s, 914s,
and then almost one of every generation of 911s.
I haven't reached the point of what you would call hypercars
or supercars, the 959s and the Carrera GTs
and the 918s.
But that's what I call OPP, other people's Porsches.
And the greatest thing about the Porsche community is...
You down with OPP?
You know me, I'm down with OPP.
Yeah, I mean OPP, other people's Porsches.
You don't have to own them to experience them.
And that's what's great about the community.
Here we are celebrating 75 years of Porsche cars,
GB, and 65 years of the Porsche Club Great Britain.
This is the second oldest Porsche Club in the world.
The oldest one ironically is the one in America,
Porsche Club of America.
But we're like-minded people coming here
to celebrate all things Porsche.
Not just the new greatest Whizbang 992,
big wing GT3 RS, blah, blah, blah.
It's the whole heritage.
So you come for the cars, stay for the people,
everyone's got a story.
And you know, it's just great listening to people's stories
about their Porsche journey.
How did they get the first one?
You know, there's a lot of stories about
hand down from the father or went on the first date in it
or the first car they owned or raced or whatever it may be.
So it's just a great place to be, great community.
So I'd like to shout out Porsche Club
because they've let us come here, meet you, set up,
given us access.
So big thank you to them.
I don't want to upset you too early,
but you said something to me about the Spider RS on your way in.
Yeah, that's got more to do with the stereotypical clients
that I deal with that are Spider RS owners.
Do you like the Spider RS?
Well, I've never owned a convertible.
It's something about winding the hair and beard in the face.
So I'm not a fan of it, but I'm not a fan of convertibles.
I've never owned a target.
I've never owned a convertible.
What I will say that I've noticed here is,
yesterday I did a little poster giveaway.
I spoke to hundreds of people and it's kind of surprising
how many people are boxed out and came in owners here at this event.
I know, it's madness.
Way more so in the States.
And I walked around the car park at the hotel at Mickey Mouse Hilton Garden in
and 50% of the cars in the car park were actually Boxster and Spiders.
So that seems to be, you know, Porsche's stopping making them,
but yeah, people still want them.
And it's the 30th anniversary of the Boxster.
And the Boxster sort of, the Boxster and the Cayenne saved Porsche.
Oh, wow.
Because they were struggling 30 years ago.
And I will say, people ask me all day long,
what's the best first time entry level Porsche or best first time Porsche?
And I go, really, a Boxster.
You know, unless you've got all the money in the world
and the sky's the limit and there's a Porsche for every budget
from 500 bucks to 50 million, right?
But the best entry level bang for the buck
without a question of a doubt is a Boxster.
Like that one right there, that silver one with red 67,
that guy paid a thousand bucks for that car.
Yeah.
Unbelievable.
Wow.
I remember when those cars came out, 98, 1998, 1999.
Yeah, right there.
Yeah.
And obviously our market's always been an over list market,
you know, get cars that people can't get, charge a premium for the cars.
And, you know, these cars were 35, 40 grand when they came out in 1998, 1999.
And I remember my dad charging 50% over list for a Boxster
and selling them like hotcakes, couldn't get enough,
could not get enough of them.
And they would go instantly, 20,000 over list for a 40,000 pound car.
Wow.
In 1998, 1999.
I mean, that's sort of like what's happening now
with people trying to get allocations for STs and Rs and, you know,
sport classics and all of these things that to me,
they're just like 57 varieties of the same thing done slightly different.
I mean, that's kind of Porsche thing, isn't it?
Yeah, they're like the Heinz 57 varieties.
I mean, of too many variants now.
Yeah, there is.
And, you know, to me, it's not my favorite thing about the Porsche world right now.
It's kind of my pet peeve on these people that are just coming into the market
or it's more of a status symbol, getting an allocation,
paint to sample, not driving them, not putting miles on them.
My daily driver and the newest car I own is a 2014 991 Turbo S
that currently has 209,000 miles on it.
Spocked on the street in Hollywood, never in a garage.
It's my daily driver.
Is that 997, 991, do you say?
991.1, Turbo S.
So 2014, 12 years ago, that was the king of the hill with Porsche.
You couldn't get anything more badass than that really back then.
But the average mileage on those cars is probably 30 to 50,000 miles max.
People just, you know, that car is so practical.
My wife and I drove from LA to Denver.
That's 1,050 miles, five states, over the Rockies at 14,000 feet.
We did it in one day, 1,050 miles one day.
We didn't get out of that beat up.
My ears weren't ringing.
As great as a GT3, GT4 is, you don't want to do 1,000 miles in my age in one day.
No, no, no.
You can, but the not necessary.
The seats will kill you though.
The sports seats, they'd kill you.
I mean, the comfort seats that are in a Turbo S.
I don't think you can go in any variant.
I don't think you can go from A to B faster on roads than in a Turbo S, in any car.
And probably fairly comfortably.
It's quite small, it's quite narrow.
You can see every corner of the car.
That's so quick, it's just insane.
I mean, ultimately, the road determines the speed.
And by that, I mean, if you've got 2,000 horsepower in a hypercar
and you're in a 200 horsepower box, you're not getting from A to B 10 times quicker
with 10 times the horsepower because the road determines the speed.
So with a Turbo S, when I first got it, I actually didn't love it.
It fell into my lap at a really affordable price because it had 159,000 miles on it.
How much?
Sorry to jump in.
What's that?
How much did you pay?
Sorry to jump in.
Well, it was 2014 991 Turbo S. I paid 60 grand for it.
Had 159,000 miles on it.
Unmodified one owner car.
And this guy was in it probably 250 grand because whatever it needed, he took care of it.
Wasn't that an engine rebuild at some point, surely?
It wasn't at it.
He replaced the transmission at 120,000 miles.
It cost him 30 grand and he was probably in it a minimum of 250.
So it wasn't this modified car where four bros had thrashed the shit out of it,
trying to boost it to 1,000 horsepower and did track days in it.
This was a mature owner that did freeway miles.
So if I wasn't even looking for one, I was looking for a 997 Turbo
and my buddy said, hey, I've got a 991.
I go, I'm not really interested.
He goes, I think you're going to want this one.
I go, why?
And he told me why.
High miles, one owner, low price, went to look at it, drove it, bought it on the spot.
But when I drove it home and when I got out of it, I didn't look over my shoulder at it
and lust after it.
And I wasn't really connected with it to begin with.
It was so efficient, but I felt like it wasn't engaging the sensors.
You were disconnected from the speed.
Like triple digit speed felt like you were doing 60.
But little by little, and there were a few things that irritated me about it,
like center lock wheels on a street car are annoying.
Because I must have had half a dozen punctures because LA's got really bad roads
and nails and shit like that.
And you just can't get a center lock off on the side of the road
unless you've got the wrench on it.
So anyway, I didn't like that.
I didn't like that it was PDK because I figured had to be a manual.
But let me tell you, it's as fast as any GT3 car in the canyons.
If you're in LA's bumper to bumper traffic doing 10 miles an hour,
PDK is a godsend.
Maybe I'm getting old, but it's got all the things I used to not like.
Air conditioning, sat nav, a radio, Bluetooth,
all of these modern amenities that most of my other cars don't have.
But little by little, I sort of realized this is the Swiss army knife of 9-11s.
And it wasn't until I did 1050 miles in one day that I realized this is the go-to car.
You know, like I'll let a valet park guy park it.
I won't let a valet park guy park any of my other Porsches.
Like I say, it's not parked in a garage.
It got hit on the street in Hollywood.
It's not this precious object that I'm so concerned about.
Like I had a GT2 that, you know, I was more concerned about that.
It was too nice for me.
But I had a 996 GT2.
Yeah, I've just sold one.
A really rare one of those actually.
A Gen 2.
996.
996.
Yeah.
They made, I think, 14 for the UK.
Wow, that's rare.
I mean, that's a low volume production car in 996 GT2 anyway.
Total production over that three year run was 500 units.
And I can't understand why a 996 GT2 has not gone like this.
She's still gazing it.
But you know what?
No one cares about that when those headlights are on a GT1 and they're the same headlight.
No one ever talks about that, right?
And you don't see the headlight when you're in the car.
And I've had both Gen 1 and Gen 2 of 996.
And Gen 1 headlights, actually, to me, the fried egg ones look better than Gen 2.
But you know, it's kind of like the thing of...
Yes, they do.
It's sort of, I think, part of the Achilles' Hill with the 996 is,
it shared everything with the Boxster on the front end.
Cosmetically, you know, it's kind of the same look.
So it's like, this is the downfall with Porsche.
They're doing too many cross-platform part spin stuff, like back to the Turbo S.
One thing that annoys me about it is the plasticky switch gear.
They're the same as in the Boxster.
Not putting the Boxster down.
But if that was an Astoner or Pagani or something like that,
it'd be like a high-end knurled turned aluminum billet, something that didn't
look like every other switch in your Macan Boxster or whatever, right?
It's this sharing of parts across a VW group that doesn't...
It's not a luxury item.
Like, Porsche is in this position now where they're kind of struggling a bit, right?
They put a lot of eggs into this electrification bracket that didn't work out.
It's just troubled times.
And it's an interesting point in the history of the company,
which obviously they will come back from, but they were ascending so high
up until this misstep with, we've got to go all electric.
And now that seems to have bitten them in the butt a little bit.
So I want to come back to the electric and the Porsche journey.
Got some questions on that.
But you've got a very fascinating story.
Could you share it with us?
How much time are you...
I'm pretty sure he's got a few fascinating stories.
We've got as long as it took your beard to grow.
That's how long we've got.
That's about 10 minutes.
Yes.
How did you make your money?
This is called cars and money, so we like people's backstory on how they afforded their
supercar collection.
OK.
All right.
Well, I don't have a supercar collection, but I'll tell you my story.
I mean, my story starts in Sheffield.
I'll start it when I left school at 15 with two oil levels,
because I think that's a pivotal point.
Well, that's a bit further than he got.
Yes.
I made it till 11 years old in school.
But I don't have any proof, though.
No certificates or anything.
You are now my hero.
School wasn't for me.
My background, I guess, in a way...
I didn't realise at the time, but my mum's family were street market traders.
They sold stuff in markets like the Sheffield Chief Market,
cutlery and pots and pans and stuff like that, pottery.
And I think that's where my entrepreneurial spirit came from.
So I left school at 15 with two oil levels.
No idea where I was going.
My sister's like what I would call book smart.
She went, she got like 12 oil levels,
3A levels, went to university, got a degree.
I went the opposite way.
I was on the dole, odd job in, working as a construction labourer,
living with my mum and dad.
Pretty much up until I left England in 1986,
when I was 19, to do Camp America.
I worked on a summer camp with underprivileged inner-city kids north of Detroit.
So my goal was to get to America,
growing up as a kid in the 70s and 80s.
I watched a lot of American TV shows,
Starsky and Hutch, Kojak, Rockford Files, Chips,
Dukes of Houset and they all centered around American car culture
and American cars and music.
I grew up rebellious, listened to heavy metal.
So these ingredients at an early age became this outlaw spirit of
getting into heavy metal at an early age was a rebellious thing.
Leaving school at an early age was a rebellious thing.
I don't like being told what to do, you know.
So I was on my own sort of path,
but I didn't really know where that path was taking me.
So when I arrived in LA in the summer of 86,
that represented the ultimate freedom.
Literally I knew no one and I arrived with,
probably I swear to God, 200 bucks in my pocket.
But when you're young, you're fearless.
How bad can this be, right?
Failure to me was going back to Sheffield,
to my mum and dad's house and the doll.
And I was on the boardwalk in Venice Beach
and I was walking past the stall
and Venice Beach is like Camden or Portobello.
It's like the epicenter of that sort of scene.
And there's an English guy literally said to me,
hey, do you want a job?
He was selling seconds from the gap, the gap retail store.
And I became a hawker, the guy standing outside the booth,
step right up, come on in, one for 53 for 20,
four for 15 type of thing to get people into this booth
to sell him these seconds from the gap.
Which come from your family's market trading days, obviously.
I didn't realize it at the time, but yeah, it did.
And then that evolved into,
I saw someone selling vintage clothing.
And as a kid, my mum had taught me how to sew
and all I did was make my Levi jeans as tight as possible
and sew patches on my denim jacket.
But it was a skill that I'd learned
which I didn't realize later came in handy where
I would go to yard sellers and thrift stores
and buy old vintage Levi's and cowboy shirts
and just vintage clothing like Camden Market Style
and sort of repurpose them at this booth on the boardwalk.
Little by little, first day I might have made 20 bucks,
second day 25, 50 bucks, 100 bucks.
And it was gradual and it was an all cash business.
So that was how I got my start from the booth
on the boardwalk in Venice to wholesaling.
And I did a trade show in New York in 1991
and the Gulf War had just broken out.
And I was doing all these crazy stars and stripes,
Uncle Sam Toppats and stuff.
And I got an order from Disneyland, the theme park.
And they bought 144 of each hat and there were 12 hats.
And then within six months I had orders
from Universal Studios, Six Flags, Magic Mountains
and all these theme parks.
And then I started selling this little chain store
called Hot Topic which was like a punk rock retailer
in shopping malls and they had five stores.
But within the next five years they grew to over 500 stores.
So I started doing volume making thousand pieces,
5,000 pieces, 10,000 pieces.
So it just kind of went from this humble beginning
of selling second hand clothing on the boardwalk in Venice
to building this retail wholesale operation
where I was a designer and interestingly,
I'd overstayed my visa and didn't leave the country
for 14 years.
I'd been able to get a social security number
for banking purposes.
I was making cash business.
I was employing US citizens and I was paying tax.
So on one hand with the IRS, I'm paying them money,
I'm making money.
With the immigration though, I'd overstayed my visa.
So it was this tricky thing where I could leave the country
but I might not get back in.
And at that point, I'd had a little taste of success.
By 1992, I'd bought my first Porsche
which represented this ultimate success
with the money that I'd made that I just described.
So I'm like, I can't leave.
So I didn't even leave the country until 2001
when my sister got married and I just managed
to get a green card through this thing
called first preference that they give to artists,
usually musicians and actors.
And you have to show you have some skill
where you're not taking jobs from a US citizen.
So I had to get letters of recommendation
from stylists and magazine designers
and clothing people saying I had some artistic talent.
But the key was the fabric of my thread
and the three things that I've done in LA in 40 years
with no experience and no education
are basically clothing design, property development
and then modifying cars.
And all three of them I have no experience
in no education in but I'm passionate about them.
And is this the thread of buying something undervalued,
used, tinkering with them, upgrading them?
Because I have a property and we buy stuff.
You know, we like Worst House Best Street.
We like shops that are empty
where there's space above to convert into residential.
Right.
I mean-
It sounds like a theme across all those things.
Yeah, I mean ultimately I like old things.
I've never owned a new car.
I don't like new things but the clothing was vintage.
The buildings that I purchased
were former industrial buildings.
Like I've got a 26,000 square foot warehouse
where I converted to a live workspace.
So it's a former industrial building
that I rehabbed through adaptive for use as a live workspace.
So you live there and have you got your cars there as well?
Yeah, I haven't lived there in 20 years.
It was the type of thing where I was renting a loft
and renting a warehouse.
Yeah.
And after like seven or eight years
when I was in my mid 30s I'm like
why am I paying two people's mortgages?
I should own my own property.
Yeah.
I hadn't thought about that before
but by that point the business was doing pretty good
doing seven figure business.
I'm like why am I wasting money paying someone else's salary
through rent on their mortgage right?
I should buy my own building.
So owning the building at the time
I'd converted to a live workspace
where I lived in a 12,000 square foot loft
around my clothing company out of downstairs.
And then the clothing business was doing pretty well.
That enabled me to buy more cars than I ever thought I could own.
But then what I didn't realize was two key things happened
purely accidental.
But you have to see this opportunity
and take the opportunity.
In 2001 right after 9-11
there was a whole wave of adaptive reuse
of former industrial buildings
getting converted into lofts.
And in the LA Times, Sunday Times color supplement
there was like a 10 page spread on lofts
and loft gentrification.
And ours was the featured center fold out.
And from this spread in the LA Times
we got a phone call from a production company
saying, would we be interested in renting the building
for a music video?
And we had not really any idea
of what they were talking about.
It hadn't occurred to us.
The music video turned out to be a Missy Elliott video.
And 25 years ago, hip hop music videos were big budget.
What was the song?
Can you remember?
I don't even remember the name of the song
because we've probably done 2000 production days since.
Oh right, okay, yeah.
On our peak we were averaging
well over 100 days of production.
But this first one was pivotal.
I don't remember the song
but it taught us a lot of things we need to know
in one day.
And production was like a 12 hour day
which became a 20 hour day.
You know, we gave an inch, they took a mile.
The scenario would be, hey,
can we shoot a little scene in your garage?
Sure, I'm like, I'm a bit green,
trying to be friendly.
Sure, no problem.
Before you know, there's like another 200 people there.
What's going on?
We're shooting a party nightclub scene.
Then they said, can we shoot a little scene in your office?
Sure, no problem.
Before you know, there's like 40 other people there.
What's going on?
We're shooting a cell phone commercial time
for Verizon's cell phone.
So, you know, I gave an inch, they took a mile.
And when that one day ended,
and I was my own location guy,
sight rep, Mr. Nice guy,
getting taken advantage of,
the 12 hour day became a 20 hour,
physically a 20 hour day.
And at the end of that 20 hour day
they started at 6 a.m. on a Friday morning,
ended at 4 a.m. on a Saturday morning.
I literally said, fuck, I'll never do that again.
But once the dust had settled
and we realized how much money
we made in that one day,
that was when we said, oh,
maybe we'll do this filming thing.
And then over the next couple of years,
we lived in the building and filmed at the same time.
And we probably only filmed 12 to 20 days a year
because waiting for a production company to break down
is like waiting for paint to dry.
But in 2004, a little over 22 years ago,
we did this Bruce Willis movie called The Whole 10 Yards.
And they were there for a month.
And they paid us a boatload of money
and rented us a house in the Hollywood Hills.
And at that point, the light bulb flashed.
And we went, I bet if we didn't live here,
we'd film all the time.
So we took a leap of faith,
rented a house in the Hollywood Hills,
moved out of downtown LA.
And then we went from part-time filming
of those 12 to 20 days
to well over 100 days of commercial filming a year.
A lot of reality shows, American Idol,
America's Next Top Model,
we probably did a dozen reality shows.
And they'd be there two months.
And then lots of TV shows, music videos,
crime drama, film, commercial.
So that was how we accidentally
fell into the film location business.
Now LA's a movie town, Hollywood's there.
They film all the time.
So that next 10, 15 years cycle
was just a run of pretty lucrative profitability
because unlike the clothing industry,
where we're constantly creating new trends
and re-evolving with the film location business,
we just maintain the property.
And then over time,
we ended up buying six pieces of property.
All right, you still own them all?
No, I've let them go over the past 20 years.
But made on them?
Timing's everything.
Yeah, because what happened was
this area known as the Arts District became like Soho.
So, you know, just like timing with cars,
like when I was acquiring the early air called 9-11s
for what at the time were like affordable prices,
and then they doubled, tripled and doubled again,
the property did the same thing.
So what I bought, let's say for 10 bucks,
might be worth 200 bucks.
Yeah, wow.
You own multiple properties.
Right.
You own, do you own your showroom and all the estate there?
Yeah, we own everything.
Yeah.
Own everything I always have.
Haven't, I don't know if we can talk about this,
we can cut it if not.
But you're thinking about building another one, aren't you?
Yeah, so 42 years ago,
when my dad moved down from Scotland,
also had a similar story,
family with market traders basically,
a carpet, carpet shops,
cash and carries, that kind of stuff.
And my dad got into the car business.
At a young age.
And anyway, he moved down from Scotland,
moved down to the Midlands,
and acquired this plot of land
where there was planning for a bungalow
and there was an existing barn there
that would probably house 16 cars.
16 cars would have been too many at the time.
All of a sudden as time goes on,
the 16 cars fill the showroom
and then you've got 16 cars outside.
And then you've got 32 cars outside
and 16 in the showroom.
And then we build another showroom
89 years ago,
very state-of-the-art,
three floors, glass floors,
car lifts, very, very state-of-the-art,
really nice.
Thinking that we've put 60 cars in there,
we've still got the other showroom
that would fit 17, 18 cars.
We'd never have every car at the showroom
because they're getting serviced
or restored or paintwork
or there's always something going on.
But now we're at the point where
we're back to 16, 20 cars outside again.
And a full showroom there
and a full showroom there.
So we need more space.
So I moved from South Derbyshire
from Swabling Coat.
I moved to a place called Henley and Arden
in Warwickshire, bought a nice house.
At the house, history repeats itself.
There is an 8, 9,000 square foot barn
because the house has got a lot of land.
I don't use it for agricultural use
because I'm not a farmer.
I don't have tractors.
So I'm going through change of views
at the minute to possibly open
another showroom at a different location
which gives us more variety
to expanding all the time, isn't it?
So yeah, we're currently on with that
as we speak here.
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So interestingly, you said you're not a super car collector.
Does that mean you don't think Porsche is a super car?
Yes, Porsche needs a super car.
One of my rants is,
where's Porsche's halo car?
You know, it's right there, the 918, right?
But that sort of came out in 2011, 2012,
was on the street in 2013.
So that car is 15 years old.
That technology is 15 years old.
Porsche is rolling out these over variations
of STs and sport classics and whatever else.
You know, they're going through the alphabet, right?
We're going through the old back catalog.
Do you class them as super cars?
What?
A GT3RS, a Turbo S, a 911 ST.
Exactly, thank you very much.
You don't either.
They're not super cars, they're not hyper cars.
What Porsche needs is a halo car.
Like the trifecta, we've got one here, right?
959, there's a Carrera GT there,
and there's a 918 there.
So where is the halo car?
Like GT3RS is great, but it's not a halo car.
You know, Porsche, I think,
put all the regs in that Mission X basket
of that's going to be the replacement electric,
but nobody wanted that, right?
And they can't pivot that platform and go,
okay, we're going to go hybrid.
You know, it makes McLaren and Ferrari and Lamborghini
look pretty good because they didn't go all electric.
They were still making halo hyper super cars
that were hybrid cars, right?
You know, you talk about Pagani and Koenigsegg.
You know, Christian von Koenigsegg, this guy,
he's like the Viking hero.
You know, I visited Koenigsegg last year,
and he was like, he's a national hero, that guy.
People relate to him from an aspirational point of view.
As great as Porsche is, and as much as I love Porsche,
they don't have an aspirational super car in their lineup.
They don't have it, and they need that.
Everything else is great, but that's what they're missing.
Right. Do you think they could ever make one?
Oh, 100%. They have made them.
You know, a Carrera GT, you know, that went head to head
with an Enzo, with a Mercedes SLR, with a Bugatti Veyron,
and you know, look at the prices of them.
They're one of the best cars in the world to drive.
One of three cars in the world that I am scared to death of.
I am scared to death of an F40, a Carrera GT, and a P1.
When you drive those three cars hard, honestly,
you don't know which way you're going to face,
and you're hoping for the best.
So that was a great car.
The 9118 is rapid, absolutely incredible.
Boring, though. So boring.
My 82-year-old mum could get in a 918 and drive to Starbucks
and go through the driver's unit.
She couldn't do that in the Carrera GT or 959.
So this is the argument that a lot of Porsche owners hate me, by the way,
but only because I'm most new Porsche owners, right?
Most fighter RS owners.
My next-door neighbour, who I sold my house to where the showroom is,
and I sold him, but he's always been in the area, loves Porsche,
and I had this conversation with him the other day.
I was trying to sell him a Rolls Royce Cullinan,
and we're talking about other cars.
I said, you need a supercar.
He said, Carl, I've got a 992.2 Turbo S convertible.
Not a supercar.
So I said, that's not a supercar.
He's like, fuck off, it does 0-60 in two and a half seconds.
Doesn't matter.
I said, I don't care.
My wife can take that to the nursery or to the garden centre or somewhere.
You can't take a Lamborghini SVJ to the co-op and not stand out.
You can absolutely blend in with everybody else in a Turbo S or a GT3
or whatever it may be.
It's too usable.
They've made the car too good.
Are you ever going to be able to convince the Germans to do what you're saying?
Because isn't that a benefit what we're just saying here?
I would love Porsche to make a car that is absolutely insanely wild.
That's just not in there.
That is not usable.
It's not.
I mean, that's what they need to do.
But they've done these concepts.
Like, you know, the 992...
The last car they've done that with was a Carrera GT, in my opinion.
Yeah, and that's an old car now.
That's where they need to be today, to build these halo cars.
Not churn out.
It's like a GT3 RS, right?
They've obviously maxed out the performance from that
natural-aspirated power plant to meet emissions.
So to make that car go fast on all the variants like the ST,
big wing, big diffuser, ST's got shorter gears,
light and fly wheel, smaller diameter clutch, sound deadnings out.
So you get an ST, it's juddery, it's buzzy.
It's not actually as fast as you think.
They'll say it revs to 9,000 rpm, but when do you get to keep
your fuck planted at 9,000 rpm for long, on public roads?
Especially here in the UK, with cameras everywhere, right?
It's back to the road determines the speed.
So they're building these cars which are not halo cars,
but the cars that people want because it's become this status symbol.
From a usability performance point of view and everyday world driving,
they're actually no faster than the generation before,
because all of these diffusers and big wings slow it down on the street.
On the track, it's a different story.
But the too much of a track car for the street.
And people are not driving these cars because they don't want to devalue them
because, you know, the going up in value is kind of crazy.
The value that, let's say an ST that came out two years ago,
it might have cost 300 grand US dollars,
in the US now it's a $600,000 car.
They've doubled in value, but people are not driving them
because they don't want to devalue them.
But for me, I'm coming from this point of view of,
I invest in smiles per mile and memorable moments,
not dollar return on the back end.
So it seems people are just making money, I'm fair enough,
but it's creating a generation of Porsche owners
that are not actually using their cars for the point of what they were built for,
to be driven.
Porsche is not building these as investments,
I don't think even though they know they are,
but it's like everyone's got to feel special and it becomes their identity, right?
I got an allocation for an XYZ and painter sample deviated stitch in
and I'm the only one in the village with it.
Well, yeah, I mean maybe, but you know,
that's not what I'm interested in.
I'm more interested in the guy who's driving the car with 500,000 miles.
So what's the most you've made on a car?
I once bought a car for 25 grand and sold it for 400.
What car was that?
64 911.
Wow. And how long did you keep it?
About 10 years, didn't do anything to it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wow.
But I once bought a piece of property for 40 grand and sold it for two and a quarter million.
So timing, timing, your car, your show's cars and money.
Yeah, buy low sell high.
But it's timing, you can't just go, okay, I want to buy something low.
You have to have that leap of faith.
It's not low at the time, is it?
At the time is market value.
It either feels right on the gut feeling or not.
You know, the piece of property that I bought for that price point and sold for that price point
was such a convoluted deal, but it just made sense at the time.
But it was this little pocket thing that most people would have overlooked,
you know, not big enough or too small or whatever.
But then it became like prime property.
So you say your gut, but don't you build a nose for spotting something with experience?
Got a nose that connected.
In those throat, they're all together.
It has to feel right.
But it feels the gut, because I know you had a big TED talk on the gut.
I did a TED talk in 2014 called Go with a Gut Feeling.
Yeah, and that's like 10 million views or something.
But surely to have the gut is from years of experience.
Yes, that's part of it.
It comes over time.
But you can have a gut feeling that something feels right with no experience.
You go, fuck it, it just feels right.
I'm going to do it right.
But you could make a big mistake doing that if you don't know what you're doing.
That's the difference between someone a doer and a sayer.
Yeah, that's like, fuck it, we're here now.
How bad can it be?
We'll figure it out.
That's one of your favourite sayings.
Fuck it, we're here now.
I can relate to that.
Because when I bought that building in 2000, people thought we were crazy.
Now it's the best thing we ever did.
But as an entrepreneur, you want people to say you're crazy.
That's the sign you're doing things right.
Sure, that's back to the street smart, heel-dez wins, British Bulldog.
How bad can it be?
I'm jumping right in.
And also, not overthinking it.
Yes.
A lot of people are like, I don't know, how's this going to be when I try to sell it?
I don't think about that.
I'm in the moment, make the most of every moment.
A spreadsheet will only get you so far.
When people would say to me at school in a careers meeting,
where do you see yourself in five years' time?
I'm like, I don't know where I see myself in five hours.
And I'm not really much different now.
I'm going to be 60 next year.
This is my 40th year in LA.
I spent 19 years in Sheffield.
So maybe for the first time in my life,
I'm thinking a little bit differently in the sense of I'm two thirds through my life.
Right?
So what are the next 25 years going to look like?
Because the past 40 went really quick.
So now I'm in this lessies more phase of letting stuff go.
These material possessions that meant something at a certain time that you chased down,
no longer are significant to me.
No longer have the meaning they did, the relevance.
So it's lessies more.
I travel a lot.
When I travel, I don't have keys in my pocket.
I'm not worrying about the warehouse or the cars.
It's the ultimate freedom in a sense of this point in my life where
I don't necessarily need all these material possessions because
I'm not getting anything from them anymore,
whether it's guitars or watches or stuff like that.
And before I let the cars go, you know, I talked about watches and
I'm back to the same thing of, I don't have one of the same thing, the seven turbos.
I'd have five of the same Omega Speedmaster watch
because it's back to that I've got to go look at a flea market.
I've got to work a deal.
I've got to buy one, right?
So in the end, you're a mass things that you acquire, but you don't necessarily use.
So before I let the cars go, I let 18 vintage watches go.
And they were just basically Omega Speedmasters, Porsche Design Watches,
and Heuer chronographs.
Any Monaco watches before that?
No, I'm not a fan of the Monaco watch, the square face.
I'm not either.
I'm not like Pasadena's and stuff like that.
Chronographs, but that's too bulking square.
But the model to this story was I'm not a box and papers type of guy.
You know, so they were literally in a ziplock bag in the bottom of a filing cabinet.
And I have a buddy who's got a boutique watch game,
and he was kind of mortified that I'm storing these watches like that.
I've got a buddy that's designing his own watch and I'm into watches, but
like cars, they're not these precious objects that are wrapped in velvet.
They were just literally in a ziplock bag on top of each other getting scraped up.
And I said, fuck it, I'm going to let them go.
My buddy sold them at market value.
They sold out in one day.
And that was when I realized I can live without these things.
And I didn't miss the watches because it was just in the bottom of the filing cabinet.
I've sold a lot of watches recently.
And people don't understand you've got to store them.
Insurance.
I had one watch where the insurance just on that watch was six grand a year for one watch.
And I never thought I'd say it because I don't know.
I felt like this has been this minimalism trend.
And I thought it was just maybe a little bit, I don't know, hippy and let's all be honest.
We actually like nice things.
Who wants a shitter car? No one.
Who wants a shitter house? No one.
But there comes a time when the things own you rather than you owning the things.
Right.
And it's better to get a few less things but more special.
Quality of a quality.
To you.
Yeah.
Always. I'm always of that.
I'm always of that mindset.
Quality of a quality.
Quality of a quality.
You saw that in Rolex, didn't you?
Yeah, I'd done the same as you.
I acquired like seven Rolex Daytonas.
Right.
How many do you need?
Fuck me.
You don't need one.
You don't need any of them.
You're just going to swatch.
I'll have a 79 one that I kept because that's my birthday and I'll get a 2011 one for my son.
That means something and then that'll do.
I had a chocolate face, a white face, a black face, a platinum, a diamond.
For fuck's sake, it's the same watch.
You know, it's the same watch.
Now you just have loads of Nautiluses.
Now I have loads of Nautiluses.
So I just, I like something.
I think, right, I want every variant of that.
And then I get it.
And then I just...
You and I kind of similar that sense.
It's like, back to this collectability.
Like in generic broad strokes, right?
Let's say you're a watch guy.
Generically, you can say I'm an Omega or Rolex guy.
I've never been a Rolex guy.
Always Omega.
If you play guitar, you're, okay, Gibson or Fender.
I'm a Gibson guy, never on the Fender.
Porsche or Ferrari.
Well, I'm a Porsche guy, right?
So there are these generic broad strokes of you're either one or the other.
And then you go down the slippery slope, the deep dive, right?
The hunt.
It's all about the hunt, the fill the chase.
I want it.
I want something you can't get.
And then when I get it, I don't want it.
You might need therapy.
At least they're married for this along, mate.
How have you done that?
Because my wife makes me believe that I can't get it every day.
That's right.
That's probably the secret.
That's the secret.
He's a goal-oriented guy over there.
Yeah, I just, you know, this is an off-catalog piece that isn't,
you know, you never see another one.
It's impossible to find.
I've got it.
I haven't wore it for three months.
It's just a headache to go to the safe and get it.
Oh, it's a headache to get it.
You know, so, and I don't really cross the problem over there.
No, but like, I don't, I'm not in love with it.
I was in love with the whole process of getting it.
Right.
I'm now not too in love with it.
I've got to story a bit like that.
You know, I'm an Omega Speedmaster guy early once from the 70s.
And when Swatch did the Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch, right,
my wife got me one for my birthday.
And that watch is, I don't know, maybe it's $200 watch.
And I took off the Omega Speedmaster, which was an early one,
the first one I'd ever bought like 20 years ago,
put on the Swatch Omega and it just felt great.
I never went back to the Omega, just wore the Swatch.
That was it.
And then that kind of became trendy.
And then when it became trendy,
I guess it was trendy to begin with.
But when I started seeing a lot of people wearing the same watch,
I stopped wearing the Swatch.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's a bit like, it's a bit like with Porsches.
Like now they've become real trendy.
So now my wife and I are in our vintage Rolls Royce phase.
60s and 70s, shadows, shadow cubes and, you know,
shadows from the 70s.
60s and 70s.
Well, I've got a car the minute you'd really appreciate, actually.
The Bentley Continental Turbo R, that's what I want.
So I have one of those as well.
Mullerna, white body.
It took him 18 minutes.
White body, that's what I want.
That's what I said to the car.
We'll talk about that in a minute.
And by the way, he's done 107,000 miles,
so it's right up yours.
We're going to work a deal.
We're going to work a deal.
So, but I've got a Rolls, 1970 Rolls Royce Phantom 6.
Okay.
The first owner was Elton John.
Oh, that's pretty rock and roll.
So that is, that's a rock and roll car.
Yeah.
What I love about vintage shadows in LA,
first of all, they're affordable.
It's back to when I was buying Porsches for nothing.
Like we bought a 72 chrome bumper shadow for eight grand.
Burgundy black, great patina, running driving car.
Like people are afraid of them
because they think they're expensive to maintain,
which in a way, electrics can be,
but the pretty simple, carbureted,
three-speed GM automatic, V8, you know,
if they're driving, it's like any vintage car.
You got to keep driving them,
keep the fluids going through,
that way they become reliable.
And they're a daily driver at that point.
But what we love about them is
they just represent spectacular build quality
and value for money.
The for eight, 10 grand, that buys you a 924,
that is not the same build quality as a vintage Rolls Royce.
And they're not cool, but no one looks at you
like you're a douchebag in a vintage Rolls,
like you might doing a new Rolls, right?
So it says rock and roll chic.
They're in cool colors.
They force you to slow down
because you can't go more than 65 miles an hour.
This is in a vintage Rolls going straight at 70, right?
Bouncing all over the place.
Yeah, but every journey's like
this little nostalgic adventure in a way.
And it's just kind of cool
because you don't see them, they're not everywhere.
No hipsters are driving them.
You know, there's this whole hipsterification of cars right now.
It's over curated, right?
You know, here I am with my Porsche starter kit
of my fancy watch and my Leica camera
and my vintage leather jacket.
And it's all over curated.
That don't happen in the vintage Rolls Royce world.
This is a bunch of old boys.
And anyway, that's what we're into right now.
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Any car you wish you hadn't sold?
No, no, I, no.
Okay, which one has gone up the most since you sold it?
You mean after I sold it?
Yeah.
I don't know if any of them,
because I literally sold them three months ago.
So you've never sold any before that?
You haven't sold some 10, 20 years ago?
I mean, probably the car that put me on the market
was this 72 STR wide-bodied thing
that was on the cover of road and track in 2013
that I sold at the Gooding auction in 2013.
No reserve car.
And it had an estimate of 75 to 100 grand.
Hammered down at 275 plus the 10% price.
No way.
With 302 grand.
And I wrote a story for Total 9.11 about it,
because I had modified it.
And the guy that bought it was the Ingram collection,
one of the biggest collectors in America
and they'd never owned a modified Porsche.
But they have everything from Gaumann Coupes to 9.18.
And I wrote this article about when I sold the car,
I sold it with the original numbers matching 2.2T motor,
2.4T motor.
But the moral to the story was the car was worth more modified
than it was stock.
If I had restored that car back to stock,
it was probably at the time a 60 grand car.
So that car I sold for 275 in 2013, 302 without hammer,
it recently sold again to a client somewhere in the States
for 400 grand.
So that had still gone up in value,
you know, 25% from where it sold 13 years ago.
But I don't really follow cars that I've sold.
Ironically, they sort of crop back up as X Magnus Walker 9.11.
These sort of crop up quite often.
You know, one of them cropped up recently,
it was a car I'd done nothing to,
but I had a title in it in my name from 2009.
And that might have been something that I sold,
let's say for 20 grand, you know, however many years ago,
that is 17 years ago, that might now be a 200 grand car.
But the thing is, as soon as you make the decision
that you want to sell it,
those people who sell cars and do track them and follow them,
they probably didn't want to sell the car in the first place.
They're still attached to it.
You know, they're still attached to that model.
You've obviously just thought, right, I've done that.
I don't care, good luck to somebody else who buys it.
I'm not missing anything I've sold over the years.
Because to me, I'm always like,
I kept the ones I really, really wanted.
So I have no regrets of letting...
What's your favorite, Magnus?
What's your favorite car that you've ever owned?
My 76 Turbo is really significant.
277 is a significant car.
That's the second Porsche I ever bought.
So your 76 Turbo is a four-speed 930.
Four-speed 930 just happens to be
the first US production turbo ever sold.
Three-litre.
Three-litre.
I've got the same car.
Lifelong LA car delivered to Bob Smith Porsche in Hollywood.
Rumor of the story originally ordered by the actor Robert Redford
who never took delivery of the car.
That story's been with the car since day one.
There's no proof that Robert Redford ever ordered that car.
But that's Hollywood for you.
It's a true Hollywood story.
But it's literally the first US production turbo
ever sold, verified by the factory.
What color is it?
Silver.
It's like eight different shades of silver.
Yeah.
Because you know, it's driven...
Never been restored.
Yeah.
It's got like a peanut butter interior to it.
And it just drives great.
But it's the first turbo I ever bought.
And I fell in love with Porsche as that 10-year-old,
as you know, based on a turbo.
So for me, turbos by today's standards
are not great driving cars.
But they're a car that really makes you recalibrate your sensors.
Because the gear ratios are so wackily tall,
like first gear is 50, second gear is 95, third gear is 120,
and fourth is the rest.
The boost is like so delayed when it comes on.
It's a short window.
You only got 2,000 RPM of boost, maybe from 3,500 to 5,500 RPM
by six grand.
It's done.
And the brakes are horrible.
So you really have to plan your maneuver ahead.
They're not a slice and dice car.
They're a great GT sort of touring car.
They're not a great hot rod canyon car.
Because you're always in the wrong gear ratio.
But you've got to recalibrate.
Let's say you're in second gear,
you know, come to a left or right and turn in a turbo
if you're doing 30 miles an hour or 20 miles an hour.
You've got to downshift to first gear.
100%.
Because you blip the throttle in second, you're going nowhere.
You're going nowhere.
And by the same criteria, let's say you're on a freeway in LA
and you're in fourth gear cruising at 60,
and you want to pass someone.
Second.
Second fucking gear.
Yeah.
So it just is oddball because you can't like,
you're in a 915 3-liter, maybe you downshift to third.
But to go from fourth to second gear at 60,
that's the only way to make progress.
So if you want to drive on boost in a turbo,
you cannot short shift.
Otherwise, you're just out of the boost RPM range.
So it's really, you cannot short shift.
You've got to shift all the way almost at red line all the time.
And then you've got to recalibrate this bike down a first gear,
down a second gear, from fourth if you want to pass someone,
and then allow plenty of space to break.
I remember the first 930 turbo I ever bought.
It was about 20 years ago.
And a friend of mine who I used to play on the football team with
said, hey, my next door neighbor's got a Porsche wants to sell.
So what is it?
I don't know what it is.
I think it's a turbo.
I'm thinking it's a 997 turbo, 991 turbo or something like that.
Anyway, called the guy, yeah, 1976 930 turbo.
I paid 27 grand for it.
And I remember I had to jump start.
I'd never been driven for a few years,
needed a bit of work doing to it.
But I remember driving it back from North Nottinghamshire from Newark.
You'll know Newark.
And I'm driving it back.
I remember calling me dad.
I am 18 years old and I called me dad and I said, dad,
in 1976, this car must have been a fucking spaceship.
Like it must have been a UFO.
The speed and the acceleration of that car in 1976.
I said to him, because obviously we were talking 20 years ago,
I said, dad, in the time between 1976 and now,
Porsche have come nowhere.
They've come absolutely nowhere with their cars.
This is way better to drive than the new 997 turbo.
997 turbo is dead.
It's boring.
You know, this car felt the same speed.
It felt faster because it's smaller.
You know, it's so quick and the brakes are shit.
And like you just said, you know,
I'm in second gear and just boosting, you know,
great car, great, great, great car.
And that car still stands out, right?
Because you can go look at 992s today
and it's sort of at a glance hard to tell what is what.
Is that a turbo?
Is that a 2C4?
They're all wide arch now, aren't they?
Yeah, that car, which is now 50 years old, a 75, 76 turbo,
still stands out like nothing else looks like it.
And it does not look dated.
It's still like...
The Foo shall always.
Yeah, still the vision of this is what a fast car should look like.
But it's not a supercar.
No, it's not.
No, it's not.
It's a sports car.
It's a sports car.
You compare it at the time to a Lamborghini Contas in its day
or a 365 BB.
Right.
They were, you know, they were, they were supercars.
This was a Porsche's a sports car.
It is a sports car.
I have this, I have this and I get so much stick over it, Magnus.
It's unbelievable.
So many people, you don't know what you're talking about.
It's quicker than a Pagani.
It's okay, it might be.
But it is not a supercar.
Let alone nowhere near a hypercar.
It's, it's a sport car.
It's too, too usable.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
It's like, you know...
Too usable.
It's too usable.
Well, that's the difference between the 365
Berlinetta Boxer and the Kuntas and the turbo, right?
Exactly.
The turbo is actually practical daily driver.
Kuntas, not a practical daily driver.
Never.
Visibility or just ergonomics.
Forget about speed.
It's like you're getting a Kuntas.
I'm like this, like uncomfortable.
My forehead's hitting the wind shield.
It's just everything about it is ergonomically wrong.
You might as well be like in a, in a Lotus Europa
or Lotus Esprit where you're skewed like this, right?
You know, and those are great cars, but they're just,
they're not comfortable cars where you can do miles in.
But it's a sense of occasion.
Yeah.
And the doors go up and it's, wow, wow, look at that.
That right there is a definition of a supercar and a hypercar.
Yes.
It's not for me the performance.
It's the wow factor.
Like I once drove a Pagani wire and talk about drama, like just parked,
like all the doors come open, right?
And everyone's around it.
It's just unbelievable how it draws attention
because it's like sort of this alien thing
where as great as 911s are, they don't draw that drama.
The purpose, they don't draw the drama.
You know, they kind of blend in.
Ironically, my 991 Turbo S just blends in.
And originally it was the thing I didn't like about it.
I'm going to modify it and do this side and the other.
And in the end, I just painted the hood black and left it
because I decided not everything needs back to,
not everything needs to be modified.
Do you think the way the allocations of these bits and pieces,
Porsches, has become a bit of a scam?
Yeah.
It's my, it's kind of irritating to me
because it didn't used to be like that.
It's sort of, you know, it's a broken record story I know,
but Porsches becoming more like Ferrari
and they never used to be like Ferrari.
Well, in the sense of you can't just, you know,
you've got to buy other things you might not need
to get something you want.
Not even cars, watches, bikes.
Well, that's the other thing, right?
You know, 12 grand from bike.
What if you don't cycle?
Forget about car.
You can't wear your Rolex.
You've got to wear the Porsche GT3 watch.
That is another 15 grand.
Right.
With the matching deviated color thing on the sweet pan.
Or don't get me started on the eight grand
espresso machine or the Smeg fridge, right?
You know, the only kick your house out to have a GT3.
Yeah. And the best they can do is, okay,
here's a martini stripe golf livery on a fridge.
Can't we be a bit more creative than that?
Yeah.
But we don't need a collaboration
with a Smeg fridge, right?
Do we?
I don't think so.
I mean, I wouldn't go out and buy a Smeg fridge.
So why do I want a Porsche one?
I wouldn't go out and buy a Porsche.
So I don't want a Porsche.
I would like a new Porsche.
Like I wouldn't want a Porsche.
A Porsche Smeg fridge is not what I want.
It's not in my list of things to have.
It seems we're in this world of things
that are too driven by marketing, right?
And I think that's the disconnect of everything seems
a little disposable and transparent
and made for an Instagram buzz feed.
And, you know, it's a few things that, you know,
wind me up like this, you know, 919 street car
that they made for Penske that street legal,
but yet we know it's not.
And, you know, Porsche seems to do these things
like they create these standards of, you know,
the world's fastest car on an aircraft ship
or the world's fastest car inside a stadium.
I go, it's kind of a relevance, meaningless, right?
It's just Instagram fodder.
It's over curated.
It's not significant.
It's not relevant.
We're not actually competing against someone.
You know, it's like when they brought out the Dakar
and they've got the 40th anniversary
and they've got Jackie Akes in the Sahara Desert
on the Oracle rug with the chair out.
And this is great.
It's heritage.
But what they should have done was actually taking
that Edith car that said the altitude record
and had it do the Dakar
and use their clean synthetic fuel to prove that point
and actually compete wheel to wheel
with other manufacturers in an off-road race,
whether it's a bar 1000 or the Dakar, right?
Not just stick rough roads on the side of a Rothman's livery
and park it on a, you know, golf bunker
and say we're going off road, right?
Why not go do the Dakar and compete against them?
Put a roof rack on it and all of a sudden it's the Dakar.
Right. Well, maybe they didn't do that
because they might not have a guaranteed victory win.
So we don't want to compete if we can't win, right?
We'll just create some internet fodder for the ground
and it'll look great.
Which car do you think screams that someone is trying too hard?
Oh, GT3 RS.
Out question.
Would you agree with that?
In the Porsche world, 100%.
Yeah.
I mean, personally, I am, people take me like,
oh, I don't like Porsche.
I do.
I love a Turbo S.
You can daily a Turbo S.
That's the Swiss Army not true.
It's an incredible car.
It's an incredible car.
I would much rather have a Turbo S over a GT3 RS.
A GT3 RS is not me.
I don't go to the Nurburgring every week.
I go out to dinner.
I go to the gym.
I live quite a very normal life.
I'm not, you know, a racer.
I look at someone in a GT3 RS and I think,
and he's got his wife and his girlfriend
in the passenger seat and I think,
where the fuck are you going?
Like, where are you going?
Is this guy wearing his Porsche design watch?
He's got the cap on.
He's a full kit wanker.
He's got the cap on the watch.
He's got the mountain bike.
He doesn't cycle.
He's overweight.
There you go.
He's overweight.
And you wonder why Porsche drivers hate you.
But this is a fact.
He's telling reality.
This guy is not telling the truth.
There's one round here somewhere.
I'm sure we'll find him in a minute.
There's 50.
What are you on about?
There's 50 of them.
There's a lot of them here.
I completely, but to have a GT3 RS is,
look how good of a customer I am with Porsche.
Look how of a Porsche enthusiast I am.
I've got so much downforce and blah, blah, blah.
Mate, where are you going?
You're not going to the Nurburgring
because your car's done 500 miles in two years.
Because you're scared to drive it
because you want to make over lists of the car.
Back to my point.
Buy a Turbo S, do 50,000 miles in two years
and go, wow, that was a fucking great car.
There you go.
Smartest thing I've heard all day.
And what do you think about the Spider RS?
Oh my God.
What I don't get about these Cayman GT4 RSs
and these Porsche Boxster Spider RSs,
they cost the same money as a Turbo S.
That is the same price.
That's a thick end of £200,000 car.
And when they first came out,
they were selling for £300,000.
They were making £100,000 over list.
It's a Cayman, it's a Boxster.
What are you doing, mate?
It's a rowdy car too.
It's a noisy, clanky, rowdy car.
If you want that car, spend the same money
on a GT3.
And non-RS GT3 is a good car,
but I would go full comfort seats.
I wouldn't go bucket seats.
I wouldn't go club sport.
I like a GT3 touring manual.
I think that's a really good car.
The same money I'm going to buy a Spider RS
that I can't even put the roof down without getting out
and manually unclipping it.
It's a really awkward looking roof.
What do you think of them?
I'm not a fan.
No?
Not a fan of the roof.
And when you meet the owners, mate,
my God, you'll hate them even more.
Do you want to tell us about the owners?
Well, thanks for getting a round of applause here.
The three...
Do you own one?
No, OK, good.
So...
The once won them.
Yeah, he's not the co-host.
Hey, listen, I can sell you one.
So for the three...
What color do you want?
The three Porsche owners left in the world
that still like you.
Tell us about those car owners.
Well, I mean, they know more about that car
than the people who built it in Porsche.
They know more about it.
What's wrong with that?
Unless you're just...
You're happy to listen to how much they know about the car
and why they've chosen that over a GT3
and how right they are with everything they do
in the pounds per torque and the blah, blah, blah.
Mate, honestly, it's a Boxster.
Yeah, it's a lightweight Boxster
with a roof that you can't put down unless you
and your mate get out and do it together.
Maybe that's why they buy it.
Maybe they want to hold hands and put the roof down together.
I don't know.
Maybe that's what they want to do.
I don't know.
But they're headaches.
They're hard work.
And people call the showroom sometimes and go,
look, I've got a car.
I've got a Boxster RS.
I know it's not your thing.
I'm like, look, I don't care.
I'll sell anything.
I don't care if it's yellow or pink spots and blue seats.
It's got a price.
But you know, it's not a car you'd ever see me ever drive, ever.
It's a polarizing thing.
But you know what?
Like train spotting.
But you know what?
You know what?
A Porsche Boxster, in general, is a really good car.
Right.
Really good car.
It's just a Spyder RS.
I don't get it.
I just don't get it.
It's an entry level car at flagship level money.
He's not wrong.
Have you got a Porsche tattoo?
No.
Because how many tattoos you've got?
One.
No, you haven't.
I've got a motor tattoo.
Just one continuous one.
Yeah, one continuous one.
You know, ironically, I've got a Super B tattoo.
I used to be into muscle cars.
So I do have a Super B tattoo.
Don't have a Porsche tattoo.
Why not?
Never wanted one.
No?
No.
I mean, you're proper a brand ambassador, aren't you?
I'd never say I'm a brand ambassador.
You know, I'm a fan of the brand.
I'm a man with a beard.
I'm here.
I'm having fun.
But that's about it.
And your hat.
Do you mind if I ask, do you change the dried flowers?
Great question.
You know, I'm a mad hatter.
I've worn a lot of hats.
This hat is significant because I made it for my wedding.
I got married to Hannah, my wife a little over two years ago.
I married June 17th, 2024 in New York City in Washington Square Park.
And I'd been looking for a hat and I couldn't find a hat I liked.
So I made this hat.
I physically made the hat.
And then I'm always out walking.
My last name is Walker.
I'm the guy that monitored steps and walks 10 miles a day with my dog Willow.
So I'm always out walking picking wildflowers.
So most of these flowers, some of them are from LA,
some of them are from New York.
But the ones that are not completely dead were picked in my mom's garden
in Sheffield on Friday afternoon.
Oh, wow.
So I'm just a walk-in flower show.
That's it.
I'm a mad hatter.
And will you keep changing them?
Yeah, I keep changing them because you know what happens is
they dry, they fall out, they break.
You know, I'm flying back to New York tomorrow.
They're going to break on the plane and then I'll put new flowers in.
So I'm just a crazy mad hatter guy.
But I made the hat for my wedding.
So there's a lot of significance there.
Yeah.
So today is obviously Father's Day and my dad passed away last week.
I'm sorry to hear.
And thank you.
I know you've dealt with grief yourself.
And it's probably not a normal question for Carl's money,
but it just feels right to talk about how have you managed to move on
from grief of losing your first wife and remarrying?
And if you don't want to talk about it, it's fine.
No, it's fine.
I lost my dad as his father's day.
My dad passed away in 2012.
So that was the first loss.
Him and I were not close.
I'd been out of the country for quite some time.
But in the latter part of his life, we sort of got back together.
You know, as a teenager, as I started this conversation over an hour ago,
rebellious youth, heavy metal guy, of course, I clashed with my dad.
Later on, that relationship sort of got somewhat normal.
But I didn't really see him a lot.
My wife, Karen, who passed away on this date here,
we've been together since 1994.
We met at a trade show in New York City.
She was my Georgia peach from Atlanta.
We were just in sync.
And everything I've talked about, we did together.
What I talked about, we bought the building.
It was Karen and I.
We would just finished each other's sentences.
We were partners in crime.
We just collaborated really, really well together.
And we thought we'd be together forever.
You know, we let a rock and roll lifestyle.
And in the end, without getting into details, a rock and roll lifestyle bitters.
We thought we'd dodge a bullet and we didn't.
It just, life can be cruel like that.
And I never thought that would happen, but it did.
And you don't know how you're going to recover from that.
And people deal with grief differently.
Some people go to therapy, I didn't.
I just sort of traveled and sort of, I'm still dealing with it 10 years later.
I'm still, I'm still dealing with this.
That loss is always there and it'll come back up in some situation.
So it's never not there.
But it was tough.
It was hard.
It was like, I didn't think I'd be able to sort of continue.
But the silver lining, if there is one was 18 months later,
I met Hannah who became my new wife and I met her at a Formula E race
in Red Hook, Brooklyn in New York City.
She's a writer, journalist for Bloomberg Business Week.
And she's my second lease on life, my second chapter of life.
You know, I met her when I was almost 50.
Well, I just turned 50 actually when I met her.
So that was the silver lining to a very, very traumatic loss.
But if there's one learning lesson here is life goes on
and you've got to make the most out of every moment and every day and every opportunity
and not overthink things.
Be nice to people.
I'm a big believer in that what goes around comes around.
But life can be cruel, but life can be great.
And I've got a second chapter on life, a second leaf on life with Hannah Elliott, my wife.
Well, thank you for sharing that.
No, no problem.
Appreciate you sharing that.
All good.
What's the secret you've never shared or a story you've never told?
Can't tell you.
That's exactly why I asked.
That one that popped into your head.
Yeah, anything you've not shared before that you might want to share with us?
My whole name is Magnus Lucien Titus Bennett Walker.
I don't tell people that.
But that is your way of saying fuck off that I'm not going to tell you my secret.
No, no, no.
I think there's a teachable element there as well.
As a kid growing up in Sheffield in the 70s in a sea of David, John Pauls and Stevens,
I got picked on beside a strange name, Magnus.
Scottish name.
What's that?
Scottish name, no?
Yeah, Scottish Norwegian, but not common in Sheffield.
No, of course not.
So kids would pick on me, call me Magpie and stuff like that.
And I didn't realise at the time, because I didn't know, but there's a Johnny Cash song
called The Boy Name Sue.
And I didn't realise that built character of getting picked on just made me harder
and not give a fuck about what people think, right?
Yeah.
So I don't tell people my name's Magnus Lucien Titus Bennett Walker,
because I was kind of embarrassed by it.
You know, it doesn't fit on my passport.
People get it wrong.
It's just, it's a weird, I had an issue with a strange name, right?
You know, we grew up working class, but we've got these odd names.
And you know, my mum and dad weren't hippies,
but maybe they were more creative than I gave them credit for.
You know, my mum's 83, she's going to be here in like,
you might even be coming in right now and you'll get to meet my mum.
So you know, without my mum, I wouldn't be here.
That's not answering your question, but you know, it's kind of an interesting story.
I think it's good.
We'll leave it there.
Especially on, you know, Magnus is a very, very, very normal name
compared to the names of 2026, you know, like,
Like, Venezuela.
Or like, like Apple or like, you know, fucking whatever.
Marmalade.
You know what I mean?
People just call their kids fucking anything now, don't they?
Like, it's ridiculous.
They don't, they obviously, the parents do it for attention, don't they?
You know, they just want to like, of...
I reckon it was the Beckums who probably started it.
Wasn't it called in this?
Their names are not that bad though.
Yeah.
And then the fellow from Coldplay, named his kid Apple.
Fellow from Coldplay, Chris Martin.
Chris Martin.
Named his kid Apple.
I mean, Apple.
Do you know what I mean?
Do you get it?
Fuck the ball of fruit, Apple and pears.
I just, you know, I don't...
I get like, names of places and countries and stuff.
You know, some cities are named after a person.
But, you know, 500 years ago,
an Apple was not named after a person, was it?
It's not, it's not a human name.
I absolutely love it when you just don't get something.
I just don't get it.
No.
It's great.
How many fucking floating spiders are there?
I'm sitting about 15 crawling up your beard.
It's warming up, yeah.
I think they've all come from Magnus's hat.
Yeah, maybe. Cross pollination.
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Right, could you honestly rank these supercars, these brands?
We've got McLaren, Lamborghini, Porsche, Ferrari.
Rank them.
Start with the bottom four up to the top one.
Ranking on what?
Performance or just brand?
You just rank them.
Awareness.
Whatever you think.
Worst to best.
I mean, they're all, is Ferrari, Lamborghini, McLaren, Porsche?
Yeah.
Depends on what we're ranking them on.
You know, if you're ranking them on brand awareness,
all right, Ferrari, that would be like brand awareness number one.
Then if it's a supercar type of thing, Lamborghini's number two.
And then if you're following that theme,
McLaren's number three and Porsche's number four.
But if you're ranking them on fucking performance and engineering
and practicality and value for money, it's reverse it.
Porsche number one.
You wouldn't rank a supercar brand on practicality, would you?
We've just talked about how Porsche isn't a supercar.
We threw it in there.
I mean, to me, when I think of supercar, hypercar, is Pagani, Koenigsegg, you know.
Pagatti.
Yeah, that's, that's what I think of supercar, hypercar.
Yeah.
You know, is McLaren a supercar?
Is McLaren a supercar?
Yeah, I think McLaren is a supercar.
Does anyone drive a Senna?
Not, they don't do very many miles in them, no.
I mean, because that car is not a road, it's not a road car, that car.
It's too hard for the road.
Because it's a supercar.
Because it's a supercar.
So maybe that's the definition.
Yeah, no, that is the definition.
Well, a supercar is not a road car in the sense of...
Go to Sainsbury's and pick up a sandwich.
Yeah, you should be able to do that, right?
Put your groceries in it.
I mean, is there much luggage room in a Senna?
The thing with here, McLaren, is you all kind of look the same.
Is that a 677, 2750?
Yeah, like Porsche.
Yeah, completely like 57 varieties, like Heinz, like Porsche's Heinz, right?
57 varieties.
Yeah.
But McLaren have...
I mean, look, they do lower variants, the 540, the 570, the Artura.
I mean, they're just...
They're built like shit.
They're shit cars.
I don't believe that.
I mean, the finish is still not great.
The finish is terrible.
Even on the good ones.
Yeah.
I'll sit in one.
I'll look at the left fender and right fender.
I go, these gaps are not even.
No.
Not even.
No, that's right.
There's no consistency there.
This one might be 3 eighths and that one's a quarter inch.
And I can see it.
Or you're inside, right?
Dash comes around.
There's the A pillar, B pillar.
Door top comes around.
Doesn't meet the dash.
It's curved, right?
And so it should flow together and the seam should join.
And like one slightly higher than the other on the left and right side.
How can they not get that right?
But if you've got a McLaren 765LT, which is an unbelievable performing car when it works
and it doesn't break down and the doors go up and it is a temperamental car
because it does have warning lights.
Sometimes it does break down.
That's a super car.
Right, right, right.
Well, I will go back to McLaren F1, right?
This is a Holy Grail car.
Of course.
Maybe the Holy Grail.
When you look at that car today, that car is still relevant and significant.
That doesn't, you know, I'm not getting confused with an F1 because there was only one.
It wasn't like, I'm getting confused with a 650, 670, 700, 720.
Because to me they all look very, very similar.
But yeah, it was only one F1.
Don't you think these brands mug off the people who buy the higher end ones
because people can basically get virtually the same car for half the price?
So as someone who owns the better ones, doesn't that piss you off?
But this comes back to the whole Boxster scenario for me.
This is why I've got...
It always comes back to the Boxster.
Yeah.
This is why I think a Boxster is a really good car
because it's built for the entry level Porsche owner who hasn't got 300 grand for a 911 ST, right?
And then they try and make a variant that costs 200 grand.
He's not wrong.
Like...
He's saying this point again.
It's like three times he's said it.
He's repeating this point, but what am I wrong?
So like, for instance, the lower models of a McLaren,
they're not built for the people with a bigger budget.
They're built for their own audience, which is good.
The only reason I don't deal in the lower models
is because they're far too problematic.
They are built like shit.
They're corroded to death.
They're so temperamental.
The electrics are terrible.
They're just a headache.
And realistically, I can't earn enough money out of a car of that value
to deal with a year of headache of repairing someone's car
and putting it right and picking it up and dropping it off
because I didn't build the car, but I know how badly built they are.
So that's just a headache for me.
So I'm just staying away from that.
To be fair, with all Porsche variants, no car is a headache.
You know...
Back to the raw reliability.
No, you don't look at a car and go,
you know, that's going to have that problem.
That's going to have that problem.
What's the most problematic car you sell through your dealership?
It would be McLaren.
Yeah.
Any particular one?
Yeah.
570...
Well, I don't deal in them anymore, so...
But it would be a 570S.
What is the number one brand volume-wise based on units you sell?
Ferrari.
Ferrari.
Yeah.
And what does that break down a model?
What is it?
It doesn't break down into model.
Okay.
There's so many variants.
And you know, I just don't sell new cars.
I sell cars from the 60s to 2026.
And I've got a variety of all brands of all ages.
So, talk to me about the F40 market,
because these seem to have just doubled and tripled in the past year, right?
Yeah.
What's going on?
A lot of F cars in the Ferrari brand.
F50, F40, 288, Enzo, LaFerrari, they've all been the same.
The Ferrari 5.
Yeah.
Well, the 6 now with the F80, but yeah.
288 GT, that's a Holy Grail car, right?
Yeah.
How many?
It is.
What are they now?
Four and a half million?
It's kind of nuts, because you look at them and like broad stroke, I know,
but it's a 308 GT beyond steroids, right?
I think I might get slanted for saying this, but I don't care.
It wears a very important badge, that car, the GTO badge.
So, the car before it was a 250 GTO.
And then directly after that, the next GTO was a 288 GTO.
And from then, then only ever made one other GTO car, which is 599 GTO.
I think an F40 made a 288 special, because an F40 came after a 288.
It's in the same family.
And an F40 was such an unbelievable car.
It forced people to look back and go, wow, a 288's a really good car as well, you know,
because they only made 232 of them and there's the Super Rare and the V12 and blah, blah, blah, blah.
And an F40 is the son of the 288, even though they're absolutely nothing alike,
but they are from the same family.
So then when an F50 came around, which is an incredible car, and then an Enzo and then a LaFerrari,
I think they are all helping a 288 GTO's price.
Bringing it up.
Because there's nothing, I don't think, very special about a 288 GTO apart from a rarity point of view.
The looks, beautiful to look at now.
It's a 308 with a body kit.
There you go.
That's what you said, yeah.
That's what I said.
Yeah.
All right.
It's got an important badge.
You take that badge away from that car, it's a fraction of the price.
Talk to me about Testerosa's.
Love a Testerosa.
Me too.
I own one.
So do I?
White one, Miami Vice?
No, no, the classic.
1989.
So you got a red one?
Yeah.
What is that market like today?
I've just put one up for sale last week, which has done 18,000 miles.
Almost same as mine.
Very low ownership.
What age?
It's an 89 car.
Okay.
So it's not a single wing mirror, it's not a special color, it's just red with cream.
But a good car, and I'll put that up for 180,000.
What were they three to five years ago?
I paid 105 for mine maybe five years ago with a little bit of a premium for the auction.
And then where's a 512 boxer, billionaire boxer?
See, that's an unloved car, you know.
Why? Why is that an unloved car?
You tell me, what a car.
Why though?
I don't know.
I don't know.
You know everything.
How can you not know this?
Well, the first car I bought for my personal collection was a 365 BB.
I loved the six exhausts at the back, little PSU to exhaust six of them.
Six brake lights at the back.
It was at the time, it was the fastest car in the world when it came out.
What year's that car?
71.
74?
Okay.
How much are they now?
I saw mine, well they've come down a lot.
What are they now?
I bought mine very low, once again timing.
I bought mine for 90 grand, spent a bit of money on the car to kind of restore it,
but had a deal with Ferrari that they restored it because they were opening up a Ferrari restoration
program, they wanted to use my car as kind of a mule.
So they did, spent probably 50, 60 grand on it, sold it for 440,000.
What are they today?
200,000.
When we buy properties, we find the stuff that's unloved because it's the cheapest.
Well, yeah, I mean that was a 308 GT4 Dino or it was the Ferrari 400, right?
A Mondial.
Oh, I mean that's so unloved.
Is that still like 30 grand?
Yeah, still all day long.
Or a 412i.
Fuck you, what a car that is.
I kind of want a Mondial Coupe.
I kind of want one.
You want the most unloved.
That's a bit of a heavy metal rebellion, isn't it?
You look at how many of those were made back in the day, I don't know the numbers,
but it was a very rare car, a Mondial Coupe.
I've just got rid of a Mondial Roadster, Converse Spider.
No interest in all that.
And it's just an ugly car, I mean it looks nothing like a Ferrari,
but at the same time you can go and probably buy a Mondial Coupe for 40 grand
and you've got a Ferrari, 70s Ferrari.
You just can't drive it anywhere or turn up anywhere in it because it's so ugly.
And it's a little like a Ferrari.
And I'm not sure it's going to get you from A to B without breaking that.
Yeah, I mean it was Ferrari, it's pinnacle of unreliableness.
What about a Ferrari 400?
I'd walk.
You wouldn't run, you'd just walk.
What about the 348?
Because I think they just bought one last week.
I like them.
13,000 miles.
Now I'm buying these things that are like sleepers.
There's 996 GT2, Gen 2 car that I told you about.
Sleeper.
Sleeper as in you think it's going to go up in the other year.
It's one of 16 UK cars.
Anytime you sell a car as a sleeper and you've got one for sale,
I have to be sceptical because you are the best salesman in the world.
It's sold overnight for a price that I didn't think it would ever achieve.
What's that?
200,000.
For what?
A 996 GT2.
That's kind of where I think they should be.
They should be more than that.
Obviously they are.
So they're not asleep or any more then?
It's sold overnight.
But I mean I thought this car, you know, as a gut feeling, 150 grand.
No, to me that's a car that should be going like this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And my point is it's a sleeper.
In a minute someone's going to wake up.
That car's going to be 300,000 in a minute.
Look at a GT3 4-liter, right?
Yeah.
How much are they today?
An RS.
Yeah.
800,000.
How did they get to that point?
That's not an 800 grand car.
No, but yeah, people are paying that.
Yeah, they are.
I mean, they are.
I know firsthand they are.
Right.
What are you putting your 348 up for?
90 grand.
Hey, hey, look, look, that's my mum right there.
Linda.
Hey, there she is.
Without her, I wouldn't be here.
True.
True story.
Yeah.
Yeah, so that's 348.
13.
I think they look nice.
They look great to me.
13,000 mile spider or manual.
What's the market on that?
90 grand.
And then what about a?
It's a problem with the engine out and the cam belt.
That's a 355 and 366.
Yeah, but 348 also have to have a cam belt service.
All right, if you do the research on those,
they do say that the maintenance is a pain.
But that's to be like talking to a Porsche owner
about a 996 and a bitching about IMS bearings
and ugly headlights.
But we sort of covered that with no one cares
when it's on a GT1.
Yeah, I mean, look, it's not the end of the world.
It's not a Bugatti Veyron.
I mean, the car doesn't,
the car costs as much as a good service on most cars.
You know, it's a 90 grand car.
You know, so you go enough to spend two and a half grand
on a cam belt.
He has got one in stock.
So just always.
Every four, every four years.
I think the 38 goes up.
I think the cool.
Every four years you spend two and a half grand
on a cam belt service.
Well, fucking cry me a river.
I think on this, I guarantee it's going to go up
more than that in the two and a half years
than your cam belt service.
So I think a white coupe with a red interior,
343 48s, cool looking car.
I mean, the cool, but that's not that.
I've never seen that in the UK.
Right. That's pretty rare.
Yeah. I had a white Tester Osser four or five years ago.
Full on Miami Vice.
Would you buy three for right and drive white
with navy blue interior?
Good combo.
Would you buy 348 or 355?
Uh, well, they're not the same money.
It's not comparable.
Well, you can.
All right. All right.
Here's something more comparable, 355 or 360.
I'd buy a, you know, a 355 GTS manual.
That looks better.
Maybe the 360.
I might be the only person that thinks a 360
is a really ugly car.
No.
Because I felt like I'm the only one.
I don't think it's really ugly.
I mean, I'm not going to say it's the most beautiful.
It's really ugly.
I'm not going to say it's the most beautiful car in the world,
but I think it's quite nice.
Oh, yeah. Well, I'm obviously the only person.
Just what you like.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, they've got it so much better on the 430.
There's nothing wrong with being the odd one out.
I like that we're talking Fryer at a Porsche show.
It's good.
Look, it's shot in a minute.
Asked to leave.
I often get asked to leave these kind of places.
Don't surprise me.
You nearly left on your own.
You were pissed off coming here, weren't you?
Well, I turned up to a Porsche event in Rolls-Royce.
They weren't loving it.
What type of roll are you pulling?
A Cullinan.
Cullinan.
Yeah. With all the modifications on it.
Oh, yeah. You'd love it.
Wide arch, lowered, carbon kit, 24-inch wheels.
Yeah, one of those tri-hard cars.
I mean, it's a boxed-to-spider RS owner's fucking dream.
You're that guy in the Rolls-Royce world.
Magnus, final question, because I know your mum's turned up,
and thanks for giving all your time.
And then I got these poster-signing giveaway coming up.
Give us a couple of little tips on what cars you think might appreciate.
What's unloved?
Maybe a couple or three in different price brackets.
Well, boxed-to-spider RS, right?
Leave that market to me.
Cayman R is a car I like, which I think is already sort of going,
but maybe under-appreciated.
996 GT2, we already talked about that.
For me, Bentley Continental R,
I think that's already exploded, right?
The T, the R?
No, it's not.
You don't think so?
No.
All right, so that's the car.
Do you want to talk about the car that I've got?
All right, of course.
What do you want?
So, it's a Continental R-mull and a wide body.
Yeah.
Silver.
Yeah.
You love silver cars.
What's the interior?
What?
Dark navy blue.
Oh, good combo.
Right.
Really good car, 107,000 miles.
All right.
60 grand.
Sounds like a deal to me.
There we go.
Is that the market?
Yeah.
I mean, it should be 100 grand car like that.
It should be.
I mean, it's worth 40 to me, I think, right?
It's right-hand drive, though, so...
I got no interest in right-hand drive.
Oh, you want left-hand drive?
Yeah.
I never owned a...
Well, I've never owned a car in England.
I owned a right-hand drive...
75 Turbo, copper-brown metallic.
Porsche only made 34 of them for the world.
Only two were copper-brown metallic.
I bought this car in Australia, shipped it to LA, restored it.
It was red when I got it.
Never drove it, because, like,
it wasn't so much shifting with the left hand.
It was muscle memory.
Like, I'm so used to rear-view mirror here.
Yeah.
I had to think.
It wasn't second nature that I had to look in my left side
for the rear-view mirror over here.
So, I just never clicked with the right-hand drive car.
But to answer your question,
that car that he's got is one that I think...
I also love.
One of my all-time favourite cars is a Bentley Continental Sedanca Coupe.
What year is that?
Oh, that's a...
2001.
It's the Targa.
If you've got one in store.
It's the Continental T Targa.
No.
If I bought one, I'm not selling it.
I think Bentley's in a tricky position now.
Those cars were cool back then.
They're kind of going down the road.
Porsche's going a little bit.
It's like the Continental GT is a tired car
with a great powertrain.
They need to make something a bit more sexy,
like an Aston Martin, right?
And introduce that.
They've got the Bintega.
They've got the old man four-door,
whatever thing they call it.
Flying spur.
Yeah, flying spur, which is...
You've got to be over 70 to even want that.
Yeah.
Continental GTs.
Like, they're putting these splitters and diffusers on.
I mean, it's like a...
It looks like an aftermarket tuner car that's at SEMA.
They just need to design a sexy silhouette.
Still, you know, update the Continental GT.
But I have a new model that sort of competes with Aston Martin.
That's just cooler without adding on carbon fiber splitters.
But why break something that isn't broken?
Because it's not working.
Why fix something that isn't broken?
Yeah, yeah.
That car does great for Bentley.
You think it does?
You think?
Yeah, I mean, how many Bentley GTs do you see on the road?
You see a lot in America for next to nothing.
I mean, talk about an incredible amount of money.
Yeah, they lose an incredible amount of money.
They depreciate it, but that's not Bentley's problem.
That's the owner's problem that buys them.
Well, it's a market problem that owners don't want them.
That ultimately determines the market.
The problem starts from new, where you get...
That car today, the top of the range Bentley GT is 300,000 pounds.
It's a lot of money.
It's a lot of money.
But Bentley will give you 65 grand off one to buy as a new car.
If you put it on finance, and if you do this and do that,
and other promotional things.
So they're off to a loser before you start.
Right.
I don't want something I get discount on.
I want something I can't get.
Yeah, exactly.
Back to aspirational.
Exactly.
It's not an aspirator.
Then when I get it, I don't want it.
That's why you need a supercar.
Yeah.
But you don't want that either.
Just don't buy that one bike for the third time.
I probably will.
We should probably end it right there, I think.
Yeah.
That's a wrap.
Thank you very much, Magnus.
Really enjoyed this.
Where should people follow you?
Where are you mostly creating content nowadays?
Just wherever there's a bid convention.
Maybe Instagram, if you want.
So Magnus Walker.
Something like that.
Yeah, yeah.
Walker talker.
Yeah.
No, it's been great.
Thank you.
I love sitting down and bullshitting around.
I've learned about you guys.
I've learned about this guy.
We seem to be on a similar wavelength.
So it's all good.
Thank you, Magnus.
Really appreciate it.
Thank you guys.
It's all right.
Thank you.
Cheers.
About this episode
Legendary Porsche collector and customizer Magnus Walker joins the show to share his unfiltered thoughts on the state of the brand today. From criticizing Porsche's lack of a true modern halo car and the "scam" of modern allocations to celebrating the humble Boxster as the ultimate entry-level sports car, Walker pulls no punches. He reflects on his journey from a working-class kid in Sheffield to an LA-based outlaw builder, explaining why he daily drives a 209,000-mile Turbo S and why modifying Porsches is in his DNA.
air cooled
center lock wheels
halo car
IMS bearing
James Dean
Magnus Walker
PDK
slant nose
whale tail
Alpina B10
BMW M3
Bugatti Veyron
Dodge Super B
Ferrari 250 GTO
Ferrari 288 GTO
Ferrari 348
Ferrari 400
Ferrari F40
Ferrari F50
Ferrari LaFerrari
Ferrari Testarossa
Lamborghini Countach
Lotus Esprit
Lotus Europa S
McLaren 570S
McLaren 765LT
McLaren Artura
McLaren F1
McLaren P1
Porsche 356
Porsche 550 Spyder
Porsche 911
Porsche 918 Spyder
Porsche 928
Porsche 959
Porsche 968
Porsche Boxster
Porsche Carrera GT
Porsche Cayenne
Porsche Cayman
Porsche Macan
Rolls-Royce Cullinan
Rolls-Royce Phantom
Toyota Supra
Original notes
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Legendary Porsche collector and "Outlaw" designer Magnus Walker joins the show to talk cars, cash, and why he’s completely over the modern supercar market. From buying his first 911 with pocket change to flipping properties for millions, Magnus delivers an unfiltered reality check on today's hyper-inflated car culture, explains why the new Porsche allocations have become a total scam, and reveals why he’d rather drive a vintage, $8,000 Rolls-Royce than a brand-new, million-dollar hyper car…
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"What Porsche needs is a halo car. You can blend in with everybody else in a Turbo S or a GT3, it’s too usable. They’ve made the car too good."
"I invest in smiles per mile and memorable moments, not dollar return on the back end."
"I’m more interested in the guy who is driving the car with 500,000 miles. It’s creating a generation of Porsche owners that are not actually using their cars for the point of what they were built for: to be driven."
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