TVR Cars and Whisky - guest Aaron Forrester

This is Hart Park and brought to you by Right Hunt and Right Toyota out of Scottsdale, AZ. I'm your host, Jay Finney.

Coming up on today's show, Aaron Forster is here in studio.

We talk about cars, we talk about coffee, we talk about his TVR and whiskey. But first, someone backed a

vehicle into a dealership in California.

A lot of people were injured. I keep telling you guys, every

time this happens, this happens a lot more than you think.

Think the number was 25,000 * a year where a vehicle goes into a building, whether intentional or unintentional.

Got to keep your head on the swivel even if you think you're inside. Coming up, Aaron Forrester.

All right, before we get to Mr. Aaron Forrester, who was back

with us for the third time at least maybe the 4th, 2nd time.

No, no, you were on originally. Let me get through this read

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get your first month free, upgrade your tech and get back to business. Yeah, it might actually be that.

I know a guy, he's local too now.

No, that's the thing. It's like when it comes to like

that type of tech, I mean, I was just looking up new laptops because I've actually when I bought my laptop about 10 years ago, I bought like the highest and I could afford and it's last me all the way up until now. But it's after 10 years starting

to show its age and then and then now everything is in the cloud and integration, it's just becoming more of a pain in the butt. So actually sounds really

helpful. Well, like I said, I know a guy,

so yeah, you. So you.

So you think this is your second time on the podcast?

Yeah, well, if you don't. I count them all.

So, OK, I know I I dropped by here when we were talking about the, the Tempe Beach concourse that was I want to say almost that was three years ago about. Three years ago, 2 1/2.

Three years ago. So that was was that previewing

the first one? Yeah, I believe so.

That was three years ago, because I thought that.

Was the only one. OK, so let me remind you the

very first time. So this is the second time

you've been in studio, OK, But it's not your second time on the podcast. It was the first time when you

were introduced, we talked about your RX7.

Yeah, you're one of the original members of the Arizona Avengers, right? Maybe the founder one of the

founding parties? The founder?

Yeah. There you go, your cool Iron Man

thing you made and you taught me that.

It's not necessarily called cosplay, it's called something else. I don't know what's the other

word. It's pretty much just considered

cosplay at this point. It's at this point it's Yep.

Yeah, I mean, there's costume mean and then there's cost cosplay. And you kind of got famous in

that Ave. because you did the Rocketeer thing.

Sort of, yeah. I mean small window, like

basically it's a whole thing. Big fish, small pond like any

any fandom whether it be Marvel or Rocketeer in this case like doing like the buckles and then a certain Hollywood prop manufacturer. I can't substantiate this in

fully without seeing it in person, but effectively stole my my design. Sure, that happens a lot,

honestly. Yeah, I actually sent him an

e-mail and he basically said talk to my lawyers.

And I'm like that his go to response was talk to my lawyers and I'm like wait, wait, wait, wait.

And he found, he said he found a box folding like no, no, no, there's only three of these buckles in non existence and they're very, very well documented.

Everyone knows where they are and magically you throw them in every single one of the films you work in now.

That's slimy dude. Yeah, so.

And apparently he has a reputation.

It was in Stranger Things was where I saw people actually sent me like, dude, is this your buckle?

I was like, what the? So I haven't seen Stranger

Things but I know it's got a cult following.

Right, So Long story short, I it's like not it's not worth it to me to go after like because it was on camera for like a whopping 5 seconds. And apparently he throws it into

other like kind of sci-fi stuff because it's a really, really neat design. But it's still like, did I mean,

come on you, you bought my design?

Like well, it's a 3D printed don't you don't sell the 3D files, but you bought the design and just basically stole it.

That sucks. So what are you?

What are you drinking on across the desk here?

So for those watching, I have actually rated Jay's Liquor Cabinet and got a a nice little DRAM of a Nika from the barrel from the barrel. Thank you Japanese whiskey.

So it's just nice and neat. I'm not one of the people who

puts a drop of like distilled water or put it on ice.

I actually just like a nice neat pour.

Which the Scotch do which you'll find out.

Right, yeah, so to that and just my whiskeys in general is just kind of funny because I actually didn't start drinking until like my late 20s or was it early 30s? Either way, a lot later.

And when I went, I went straight hard, I mean.

And so it's kind of interesting because when it comes to whiskeys, I like yeah, single malt.

So like Japanese whiskey, but who got their education from Ireland and from Scotland and the English as a whole.

So that's why a lot of the flavors are there were similar.

But yeah, this is great. So thank you.

I appreciate it. And one of these days, we'll

have to. I I was telling you, like I have

that full cast drink, Abalore and that thing.

It's just so good. And.

The crazy Is it PD at all? Like what's their flavour

profile? No, so it's a space side.

So like Lowlands single malt has Asian Sherry casks and so it has like it's just a nice French oak taste to it.

I know a lot of there's a lot of ex bourbon barrels that they'll use for aging, but now this is French oak with Sherry and then it's full cast strength. I mean that's kind of like my if

I want rocket fuel, I think it's golly, I want to say it's in the 70% range. It's it's up there and where

this is like in the 50s, right? So for me, I was just like, oh,

that's nice. Like, oh, a nice, a nice mild

thing to sip on. Right.

And then like I'll have like my my Abalor Abenod for those who drink Scotch, it's actually it's great.

They have two, they have a Sherry cask and then they have a bourbon cask. And I tried both of them, the

Sherry one better. Because I think I have what is

it called Abalor. Abalor Abenod.

Yeah, I had an Avalor. My wife actually got me one.

Yeah. It was, actually, and it wasn't

bad at all. Yeah, it wasn't high octane.

Yeah, these ones are specifically the really high end ones. But like my favorite go to

scotches are Isla's. So I want it to taste peaty,

smoky. I want to be licking a campfire.

And I said. You do or you don't.

I love it. Yeah.

You like Octomor? Yeah.

Yeah, or like Compass Box does, like Pete Monster, some other really good ones. Ardbeg, They're a little bit

more iodiney and it tastes like a Band-Aid.

I know that sounds like a horrible description for a lot of people who maybe wasn't even watching.

Maybe it was an Ardbeg and I had one of the A's.

Yeah, but there's, there's, it's a bunch of A's.

But it's one of the ones we've been talking about.

And it's kind of funny, my wife can't stand it.

So I'll be like, oh, it has like the nice inky iodiney.

He's like, why would you want to taste Band-Aid?

Or why do you taste like iodine? Like trust me, it's like, it's

different. But with my Lefroig, it's AI,

usually I get what's called a quarter cast, which is really neat because first of all, it's a really, really great price.

So what they did was when they're hauling Scotch across the countryside in Scotland, obviously you see the full barrels were just too big for like the donkeys and the small horses. So they would literally make a

quarter size barrel. That's where it came from.

Yeah, So what that's funny so it was 1/4 cask so it literally a quarter of a barrel full of the whiskey.

But because it was also smaller it got exposed to more the oak for proportionately. So it is actually it's really

really potent on like the the barrel and also because of where Isla is in relation to Scotland you all the salty air.

So not only is the peat different, the like the dead things are different in the in the peat bogs.

And then as you have all the influence of this assaulted air creeping in through the oak, which is really, really nice.

And this is the non automotive automotive.

No, that was good. And then and I'm drinking the

Nick Offerman a Lagabulin just seem to come out with a new one every year. If you finish that before we're

done, I can go into the closet there and crack out that shibui.

Nothing sacred, you know. See.

That's good. Yeah, nothing is sacred.

Like I see these bottles for like $2000 like in the store and I'm like when people just buy and sit on it, it's almost like drive once again, kind of connected to cars.

People will buy these beautiful cars and then they never drive them. It just sits like a museum

piece. I'm like, and specifically like

whiskey's, it's food. It who was it like Benjamin

Franklin or somebody one of our founding fathers is like, was it a beer? Is God's proof that he loves men

or something like that? But also like how like we a

society and culture, it's, it's that's how we communicate like pubs and drinking and food and like, so if you're behind something just to sit on it outside of a special occasion, like it's just a waste. Yeah, I think it's the

collectible. Like as guys, I think more so

than than females, we like to just hoard shit and collect stuff, you know, and if we, the more money we have, the more shit we have. But not everybody, of course.

But it's, I have some stuff in the closet that I haven't opened. But there's an entire like

trade, second hand trade. And you can't legally do it.

But I've got friends. If I really want something, I

call my buddy up, say, hey, can you give me this?

He goes, yeah, I got 10 of them. How many do you want?

Right. I mean, and so like we were

mentioning off cameras for how there when Mazda, I said when they were launching the FDRX 7, they actually commissioned to have whiskey made. It was a super Nikkei Nikkei

whiskey. And it like this kind of like

almost teardrop looking bottle, but it was flat faced and then a sticker of a set of Feeney on it.

And it's actually exclusively for Mazda.

And I was like the red FD and those go for big bucks now and it's kind of the only way you can find them.

Every once in a blue moon you'll go on to like the the buzz bid or like basically the YouTube or I don't know YouTube, but Yahoo Auctions. For liquor.

No, in Japan they sell just on their equivalent of eBay.

It's a. Like buy E.

Yes, buy E Well, you have to go through buy E because you're like an American for dollars, but you can just it's literally buy now like other eBay. And so I I'll pop on there every

now and again looking for a very like specific like Mazda speed stuff and also like the Japanese whiskey because or even an empty bottle because it's really neat and it's collectible.

But at the same time, if I were to get out, I'm like, OK, I'm cracking this open and with me and my other RX7 buddies here, it'll be cool. Just, and it's probably like one

of those things where like it's probably sat too long or it's been the sun and it oxidized. It's kind of like drinking like

a Corona that's been sitting out in the sun too long.

Something it's really, really bad 'cause it's a clear bottle, it's not in the bar. So the Kingsman.

Oh, there's for bourbon. Yeah, well, they have the

Statesman bourbon, which actually isn't bad, but they have a Kingsman Scotch. And it was, that was, that was

from the first movie and then the Statesman was from the second movie. And you can get it, the

Statesman stuff and it's not bad.

It's like 80, I think $70.00. In fact, I actually have one of

their bourbons in the closet. That's a It's a King Ranch

edition, which is only available in Texas.

Oh, that's fun. Yeah.

Is that when you like you or did your drive over to the NS?

NS Expo, yeah, but my buddy grabbed it and saved it for me.

The one I was talking about earlier, because he's out there, but the, I think it's Glenn Dronage is that you know how they have those scotches. There's a lot of Glen.

There's a. Lot of Glen, right?

But one of the Glen's, I think it's Glendronich maybe, but they had the Kingsman Scotch edition. It's fun.

I think there was X amount of bottles and there were 1200 back when they first popped out and they were sold out immediately.

And that's that's something I would love to have.

So that's like my version of your Mazda bottle, you know?

What I mean like, how would you drink it?

I I think so OK, the bottle would be cool to have and you know, it's just the stuff that's made for drinking, but.

Yeah, and and I got stuff. I I have a bottle I've been

sitting on a bourbon barrel aged an imperial style does aged in port wine barrels from the brewery on California, but sit on that for nearly ten years is which is you actually can do because it's alcohol. It's like 21% alcohol and a

beer. Right.

I've always said that's going to be cracked open on for the birth of my first child, so gotta get working on that.

Gotta get working on that. Is it with?

Are we in that window yet? Hopefully soon.

Hopefully. OK.

So, so it's, it's more than nine months out at this point then is what I'm asking. Yeah.

So you're on your second TBR. Yes.

So the last time you were here, we talked about you're, I don't even know, we talked about Tempe Beach Concourse and I have some questions kind of where we're at with that, you know, these days.

So let's get to the TVR stuff. Now you have a new one.

You want to tell us what it is in the process and you also kind of have a TVR business. Yeah, so.

And thank you also because over the years you kind of reached out to me and asked me for my opinion on things.

So that's pretty cool when someone can ask a nutty person like me my opinion on things. Well, what comes down to it, I

mean, like you talk to a lot of folks who are in different genres and like anything like we all find our niche and what we like and what we don't like. So perceptions are can be skewed

because of that, right. And so for me to say, hey, I see

it this way. Do you see it this way or have

you heard so but to your your point, shortly after I got my Cerbera, so it was the 4.2 liter V8 Servera.

It was the 97 sold it to fund my.

So I think you would just had it got it at the time because this was just before you wouldn't be able to.

Yeah, I did my my review. So I mean, for those who don't

know, like actually outside of Jay Leno and Doug Demiro, I am of the highest views of TBR content for an American.

I am, yes, of course, the TBR like the Top Gear guys, JM, there's a lot of people in the overseas, but for United States, I've been kind of dubbed, but as within the very, very, very, very tiny community as like the unofficial spokesperson of TBR.

So I'm sitting in front of a TBR influencer.

In a manner speaking, yeah, I hate that.

But at the same time it's kind of cool because I mean, I've got to meet some amazing people and I'll tell you some of the story that about specifically about the Tuscan stuff.

So I had my Cerbera 2 + 2 VA, had a lot of fun with it, but it was never my go to. It was like stepping stone into

like the TBR world. I want something weird, fast,

different, lightweight driver's car.

Got what I wanted, sold it on. Bring a Trailer got a good price

for it and started a import business called TBR Imports.

And from that that point onward and started really, really networking a lot with the folks in the UK to some degree parts of like the continent of Europe too, but mostly UKI would say about 95% or more of all TBRS are going to be just in the one in the UK. You know, there's some in Japan,

a few other places, but that's not so along that process over the course of like a year or so, building out the website, building out the business. And also I was able to find the

actual 1999 TBR Tuscan show car. So this was the the actual 1.

So TBR debuted the Tuscan, which was seen in Swordfish, which was also in Gran Turismo and all these other really, really cool like 1990s. Anybody who from that era, they

knew that TBR was like the crazy powerful and you couldn't really handle it on, on playing PlayStation, like impossible.

And the concept debuted in 1998, totally crazy looking.

This kind of peachy pinky purple transition, like they were doing like flip paints before really anybody else was doing it big time. Some of the colors that you see

now at Lamborghini's popping out, or like McLaren's popping out they were doing 2530 years ago.

Right, right. And then in 1999, they debuted

the show car. And then Richard Hammond, when

he was on Men and Motors before he was on Top Gear, reviewed it very, very brief, briefly. It changed hands a few times and

he got a full rebuild, top to bottom, soup to nuts.

And the owner was open to selling.

The guy had only owned it for a few months.

I was like, OK, I have a client who wants to stay anonymous, but he lives in Connecticut and he's he wants something.

He wants a flip paint. He wants something really

special. And this is the earliest

registered production. What's a flip paint?

Is that the? Is that the name of the OK?

Yeah, So it's technically called a reflex charcoal.

So depend on the light, it looks like purple or green or charcoal. It touches.

It's really, really neat. It really needs light.

So my client in Connecticut is like you say, hey, here's my budget. So I made an offer to act as

middle man. And as my broker said, hey,

here's the offer done. The guy's like and he only had

it for a few months because it like he bought it almost immediately put in the storage because they can't drive in the winter. And so he's like, I've only

Droid like driven like a few times, but the price he's going to pass up. And then but I don't feel so bad

for him because he actually was very happy because he bought an ultimate GTR with it. So basically street legal track

toy track weapon. So he went from a Tuscan, which

actually was punched out from a four liter to a 4.3 liter by TVR

powers, which was the former performance arm of TVR back when they were still in business. So it was like racing green was

like this aftermarket tuning. They they kind of did all the

the really close, almost like AMG, right, right.

TVR went bunk out of business. TVR racing green turned into TVR

powers, like powers performance. And so they to this day, they

still do all the proper rebuilds and all this.

So it's really, really like the go to place.

How many, how many TVR's approximately are out there?

Because there's what, 3 or 4 models?

No. Three models.

Those are a lot more models than we think there.

Are they started building back in 1946?

Okay, so let's let's let's take a step back and say of the pop culture. The pop culture TVR models is

introduced to Gran Turismo and other swordfish and other things. So you got.

The Cerberus. The Sigarrus.

The oh, you kind of have to, you kind of have to actually go a little further back to kind of get some context.

OK, TVR became big on the scene. Actually, in 1960s racing, they

were known as Cobra killers. So they were when Carole Shelby

was dropping Ford engines into British aces.

At the same time you had a gentleman Jack Griffith in New York who took ATVR Grand Toura and dropped a Ford V8 into it as well. But it was a fiberglass chassis

on two fiberglass body of tube chassis as opposed to the British aces like metal chat like metal car.

So it weighed less. Shorter wheelbase as well.

So power to weight ratio was even better.

They're kind of goofy looking. If you there's actually there's

a gentleman in town who has the very last one that was built by Jack here in the valley actually for sale.

It's like over. It's like 120 grand full

restoration, 8 year restoration. It's beautiful.

And I actually got to sit in a different 1 he has there.

It was actually by a client, same car, but effectively it was an actual track car. He actually tracks it.

I'm going to tell you I'm I'm definitely not British because I could barely fit in that car. But once you're in it.

And you have good teeth. Attacking the fluoride.

So the 1960s TVR was a really big deal.

And if you watch this last year's Goodwood revival, there was a brilliant race where like we're talking like the V8 Cobras and the the, the king of the Griffith, Jack Griffith.

So an American got attached to like a British car manufacturer's car name because of his contribution of throwing the V8 in it. It was really, really cool.

And they were faster, but like I said, although kind of goofy looking. Then the original Tuscan, they

came out in the late 60s, early 70s.

He made very, very, very few. That was the first iteration.

It was effectively a more sportier version of of the cars at that time. Killed it.

They went through the typical wedge era design of like, like they're in the like Le Maids and all that kind of stuff.

In the flash forward finally into modern day pop culture, what we think of in nowadays term, which kind of started off with in the mid 90s with Peter Wheeler, who was the guy who took over and he was just like one man vision kind of ideas.

Like I got this really cool idea, let's build it and do it.

OK, fine. The Cerbera and the speed 12

like obviously that's a big one that wouldn't those.

Is that a real car? Yes, I'm actually hope I may get

to see that in my trip to the UK next month.

Fingers crossed. Is it basically bulletproof?

Like can you just ride around an Oval and rub up against the wall like you can on Gran Turismo? Just floor it on the high speed

track you just like, I'll just ride that wall until I get A twist straight away and then just punch until I don't like 250 mph. So they actually had two.

They had a concept which was just the speed 12, which kind of looks like very Uber alien. And then they had the Cerberus

speed 12, which was had nothing to do with the actual Cerbera.

I mean, aside from a name because chassis was different in carbon fiber. And then the only street legal

one just went up for auction last year and sold for like 3/4 of a million, which was a smoking deal because it's one of one. Are all their cars fiberglass?

Fiberglass tube chassis with the exception of the Cerberus B12 and then later on they had the Typhoon, the TT440R, which was eventually going to be the Tuscan R, but I'll get to that in just a second that actually just they made.

My fucking your story. Up.

No, no, no, you're fine. So you had the Cerberus and then

at that time they were putting Rover V Eights into all their cars. BMW bought up Rover and so the

right we got to keep things British.

So we're going to develop our own engines.

So they developed the V8, which was in the server, which I had when I was talking about last time.

And then also the speed 6. So you had speed 8 and speed 6

or the AJP 8 or AJP six. It was just speed 6 just was

more sexy and it sounded better, right.

So you have the Serbra then rolls around 1998.

The concept of the Tuscan 1999 was the debut of the actual production model. It didn't really hit.

They had 13 pre production versions of the car that were at dealer demos. They I actually did a whole

video on YouTube about that talks about all this as well leading up to like what makes the Tuscan so special.

And then 2000 hits. Finally, the press embargo goes

away. People get them to drive them,

enjoy them. And then in 2001 it debuted in

Swordfish. So once again, a movie known for

the car and the and the chase and the music.

Because it's Paul Oakenfold. And that's.

All I remember about Swordfish is the album cover and Paul Oakenfold was ready. Steady.

And Halle Berry's boobs. I mean, that was the first time

she went Berry. Yeah, I don't, I don't even

remember her doing that. I I watched the movie once and I

thought it was boring and it sucked.

Yeah, it's a highest movie, but I need.

To watch it again, honestly. So originally in the story, it

was supposed to be a Lamborghini Diablo.

And then the director's like, no, we want something that looks a little bit. More unique.

More unique and different and so they brought over 4 TVR Tuscans and what's called reflex blue it's absolutely beautiful flip colour paint and then Terry was like that turquoisey green kind like the old Diamondbacks turquoise with purple and then they actually like shot up the hood actually put a little charges underneath so I talked to the gentleman who was responsible he was a production manager he's.

What's cool? Man, yeah.

So he, I got to chat with him. He actually still very much

around and he's involved in TR, the TR 12, which is there's an obscene, we'll get to that. He they brought over four and we

just got to chatting about the whole process of bringing him over and how it was a really, really neat experience.

And then the other models since then that are actually not as popular but or I should say not as known technically more rare because they're they were less desirable as like the T-350.

And then also the Tamora, which is a convertible of the T-350, then T350C, which then takes off the roof.

And then last but not least is the Sagris or cigars depending on your. So which one is it?

Do you know? Is it Sagris or cigars?

I only know. Well, are we, are we going to

speak the the Queen's English or are we going to talk American?

Because. It's too American like.

American. Versus aluminum?

I know my wife like she, we, we talked about this like it's aluminum showing to us, aluminium like no, no, no.

Aluminium sounds cooler. It sounds cooler, but it's they

also call Z Zed. Zed, which is stupid.

It's. Not zebra, Zebra.

I'm like, all right, come on. Also, they pronounce it in a

word like that. Yeah, In Canada, I don't think

they pronounce it in a word, but by itself it's all zed.

Like a BMWZA, it's Z8, it's not AZ 8, so little things like that. So in Americanese English, it's

Sagaris is what it's commonly referred to.

And that was like the the end of the production.

The Sagaris was supposed to be a race version of the T-350, and that was right about the same time when they introduced it to be. It was like ownership changed

from. So Pierre Wheeler laughed and

Nicholas Smolinski was a Russian billionaire boy.

He came into the into the picture, bought the company, tried to save it over the course of like 3-4 years.

But the problem is it was just it was too late.

The ship had already sailed. Something you can actually catch

on my YouTube video. Apparently we almost got Tuscans

here in the United States. No kidding.

So this was a really, really deep lore.

There's a lot of. Do they not want to crash them

or? What?

No, it's actually wasn't even that it's.

Usually a hold up. You're right because it's a

fiberglass body, there's no bumper, no five mile per hour bumpers, there's no fit. It's all one piece is you.

The whole car is basically one piece with exception of the doors trunk in the hood. So you if you hit something a

lot of insurance companies in the UK, we'll just.

Right. Write it off because you have to

literally chop off the entire rear end of the car, graft in an entire fiberglass booty or front or Fender because it's all one piece. But as the story goes, I'm

trying to remember the name of the gentleman who started McLaren car. Like actually McLaren back, not

Gordon Murray I. Think it was like Nigel Peterson

or something. Something, yeah.

I just made that up. Sounds sounds very British name,

but the the gentleman who he passed away he actually had one of the most beautiful spec McLaren F ones like this kind of golden bronze and Browns this beautiful one.

I think actually the guy Mr. Bean bought it like Ron Atkinson

I think bought it but. Mr. Bean's real name.

Yeah, he's Ronat. Ronat.

He's. Just Mr. Bean to me.

Yeah, he actually, yeah. He had one of the fastest times

on the Top Gear test track. As a driver, No driver?

No kidding. Yeah, go back and watch some of

those episodes. He's a really big car

enthusiast, almost like Gordon, Randy.

And you wrecked the car like two or three times.

I think he spun out a couple times.

Yeah, but. And it's kind of funny because

he's like, he drives like Mystery Bean with his glasses on. He's all looking with his

helmet, all kind of. That's pretty cool trivia.

But so the gentleman who actually worked with Gordon Murray to get the original F1 to production, he was working with TBR at the time on the early 2000s to we're talking like 2000, the year 2000, Sure to build a company called South American Sports Cars. And they were going to the plan

was to build in Brazil and Sao Paulo with my wife.

Because like Portuguese Sao Paulo, like Super Nasal is.

She Portuguese. Yeah, she oh, she's, she's

Angolan, so they speak. So yeah, Portuguese colony.

But it's kind of funny because like Brazilian Portuguese is nothing like it's like English pork, English, American English versus English English only differences.

Like I have a Co worker who said like his girlfriend's from Brazil, she went to Portugal. She couldn't understand what the

Portuguese were. Saying it's different.

Right. It's different, different

dialects. It's like Spanish and Mexico

versus Spanish and Spain. Well, it's even like, so my

wife's Puerto Rican, the family's Puerto Rican.

We went to Puerto Rico two years ago and my wife's like.

Well, yeah, dialects are different.

And then you get used to like your vowels and also wherever you're living. So the they were going to open

up yeah, the South American sports cars and they were going to produce in Sao Paulo anywhere between 200 and 500 Tuscans for the and left hand drive for the US market because labor was super, super cheap. It was shipping wise is closer

regulation is very, very business friendly, but 911 happened. Oh, that close.

It was that close. Wow.

And so not because of all the happenings of 9/11, it died and it was never brought back again. The business never happened.

That was the only time. Because as it's been reported,

TBR was getting like 50 calls a day for like months after seeing the Tuscan on Swordfish for Americans wanting it.

Oh. I'm sure.

Right. Give me, give me, give me.

What is that card? How do I get it?

Right. Exactly.

It's beautiful. It's in its own way is

different. So, OK, so hold on exposition.

I'm sorry, but so Fast forward to where we are now.

So my client in in Connecticut gets the very, very, very first TBR Tuscan under the 25 year import law.

It's not the first Tuscan in the United States.

There's guys here like in California and Florida.

So if they haven't like registered in like I.

Know of a few cars, yeah, that are waiting that are already here? Yeah.

I mean, they're, so I'm not going to give them addresses or names or anything like that, but there's cars here that are registered in Canada. They go back on a yearly basis,

they go back, but the very, very, very first one under the 20 figure is the actual show car that was brought over.

And it's absolutely stunning. And then the, as far to my, to

my knowledge, to my understanding, mine's a second.

So mine is a, it's called reflex purple.

So it's very, very similar to the reflex.

Charcoal. It's a beautiful color by the.

Way absolutely gorgeous. For those of you who are not

familiar with it, the closest color you're going to find is the Ford Mystic Chrome. That's probably the closest

color you're going to find. The difference is you don't have

to go to Ford and paint arm and a leg and get rid of all this kind of stuff. It's made by a company like

called Spectraflow. You can still get it, but it's

like a couple $100 a gallon you it's effectively a crazy prismatic clear coat effectively that you have to spray over a different color. And if you try to do touch up

paint, good luck. So you mentioned a gallon.

Do you have any idea how many gallons it takes to paint a car?

I have no idea. I've never.

I've never even wondered till literally right now.

I've never painted a full car. When I was younger my dad used

to teach me how to do just basically everything and we converted our garage. We had a 2 car garage and we

lived in a in a county where there was no no emissions in San Diego and stuff like that. Nobody cared.

We had an acre and three quarters how it was basically farmland. Mine is blown.

That would exist anywhere in California.

Yeah. So at the same time, it's like

we're far enough away where it's like no one's going to smell anything. Because if you've ever been

around like a paint booth, it's like it's it's very caustic smelling, unlike like the cyanide paint, like I said in my server. Yeah, that's a fun one, cyanide

based paint. So we we converted our house in

San Diego, we converted our two car garage into a paint booth.

So we had a window and then we had like the garage door.

So we draped plastic and the whole thing, the window and pulling it out, taking the hose, wetting the floor.

So obviously any or sprayed stays on the floor with my poor mother. We had like the whole mud room

in between, like the the garage, but it didn't matter.

Like the whole house. It permeated the whole house

smelled like a paint shop for like months.

So, but my dad would teach me how to spray cars.

So like his boss is like somebody keyed his his old Porsche. So he taught me how to do it and

we did we try to color match and then I had a 86 Porsche 944, which was only like a few years old, but somebody hit the rear quarter panel. So my dad taught me how to pull

the body panel out. We actually got to spray it and

it's black, cheapest paint and didn't matter.

So all right, this is how we do it.

And so I had to do all the bitch work.

I had all the sanding, all the wet sanding until you're like you're you lost your fingerprints and stuff.

But never, never painted a full car.

I've done panels, done a lot, never what?

Would you guess? Couple gallons.

That's what I would I would guess too because one gallon I could like I could cover this studio with one gallon depending on the brand, Yeah, but I might be pretty low if I need touch up. Right.

Or if you do like a couple layers and that's the thing with and. You have to thin it out on a

car, right? And it might be a deal.

You have no idea if it's OK. I was going to say I have no

idea how to. Add something to it.

Yeah, so you use hardener and lacquer thinner the most, not most paints, but with these flip paints, that's the other thing too, is not only are they really expensive, you can only get them really for like one place, for one supplier.

And that was what's really neat about the the Tuscan I brought over it was when I was shopping for it, I knew I wanted something very iconic. So when you think of ATVR

Tuscan, you you think crazy paint, crazy interior because the car looks nuts. And I found one I found, but it

needs some love. It was a driver.

It is a driver's car, but it was very, very well maintained.

It's a driver's car that nobody fucking has.

Well, that's two, Yeah. But when I say driver's car, it

actually has like 70,000 miles, which to American for a 25 year old car doesn't sound like that much.

But in TBR world, that's a double of what it normally a lot of them that are in really great condition or like in the 35,000 mile range, which is really weird because they actually they still go by miles and they do like this weird combo in the UK.

So all like the odometers actually for this vintage still say miles. So a lot of the really nice cars

are like I said, in the 30 range, mine 72 and everything was there. Most of the body looked great,

but it had 25 years of acne on the front.

So like Rd. debris chips, Yeah. Funny.

Yeah, like little pops and chicks and sure, I get it so.

And also from the factory. So it's kind of normal now,

especially with Porsches, they have like a little tiny little service hood. You pop open, oh, there's your

fluids, no big deal. And then if you want to work on

it, OK, you crawl, need to take off a panel or you take off the other panel, like like 4 to 6 bolts.

You have access to the engine. That's normal.

Now for sports cars, the TVR, you have a little tiny little service hood on the front one, get your fluids.

And then the giant massive hood is held on by bolts.

So if you ever have an engine fire or you want to work on it or anything like that, you have to get another person to take it off by two people. A very common thing that has in

the UK is like due to a hood conversion.

So there's a couple little little catches and then they put some gas struts or custom built. It's all a custom kit.

So at the very least, it allows you to actually open up your hood to put out a fire, because the Tuscans were kind of known for catching on fire. Why is that?

So it's not the typical British electronics like you would think, which is very common like people think, but.

I think electronics to think of German electronics because of the BMW. Well, BMW and then Mercedes had

their biodegradable wire loom and some of the old.

What could go wrong? What could go wrong?

Oh yeah, or like all the the mass amount of hydraulic pumps for the top. Oh my gosh.

Right. So no TBR has a lot of brilliant

ideas. So if you look at the inside of

a Tuscan, you have all this beautiful machine, aluminum machine, brass, custom built leather wrapped stuff in it or vegan leather if you, which is, yeah, vinyl, but it's.

Vegan leather sucks, yeah. It's horrible.

So it looks very exotic and very alien like, but also very like.

So you have this beautiful brass gauge set in front of you.

It's just really, really nice and it feels great too.

And then there's all these afterthoughts, thoughts like, oh hey, where do we put the battery?

Kind of important. Kind of important, Important.

Oh, wait, we didn't make our hood to be hinged or to open up like a conventional hood. So what are we going to do in

case the battery's dead? How does the hood open up?

Well for mine I I did a hood. Is it like up to the side the

entire thing like a Corvette? If my fingers are the front of

the of the car, it's like a clamshell, so the hinges are on the front. OK, Yeah.

Like if you think like a lot of just British cars, the whole clamshell, except for it's not the fenders, it's just the hoods. Like a traditional Corvette.

Yeah, I can also call it Corvette.

Yeah, but you have the little service 1 which is hinge, which is fine, but the main 1 was bolted down.

So the solution was to put the battery in the left Fender well.

So in order to get to the battery, you have to take off the left front wheel and then there's a fiberglass panel that's screwed that's. Not inconvenient at all.

And then has like black silicone seal around to keep the water out. So if you want to ever get to

your battery to replace it or you're like, OK, that's how you have to get to it. So to make it a little simpler,

well, hey, we, we can have a little jump, a jump connector.

So they, what they did was they got an Anderson plug.

And if you've never seen an Anderson plug, it's basically this plastic block that's per that nobody else uses.

And we're going to They put it under the Fender, pointed down towards the ground. It's called the Anderson plug.

It's the Anderson plug. It's like a square rectangular

block and there's two little metal tangs inside.

And then you have a, it's like a male and female kind of goes over each other. The two connections touch and

then they put like a little rubber cap over it.

Well, the problem is just a little rubber caps like or like the strap that connects it rots, the thing falls off and then you have your battery, live battery terminals pointed to the ground.

We're talking like within 6 inches of the ground getting wet, getting Rd. debris, getting whatever.

And it's England, so you know it's going to rain at some point. So either the terminals corrode

and rot out, or it you get something in there and arcs.

And now you have an electrical fire.

Oh, and by the way, you can't put your engine out of, you can't put the fire out on your engine because the hood's bolted down. So it's not the best design.

So what's? You have a custom version, so

yeah. So I did a hood conversion that

was on the I. So before I came over here from

the Uki had him respray the entire almost like 3/4 of the car completely. There's a guy at this Windrush

paint works in the UK. He specializes in just flip TDRS

especially but flip paints are like his speciality.

Brilliant work. Surprisingly paint work is

really cheap in the UK compared to the United States.

Like. Yeah, actually not here.

It's really expensive here, but like there, it's really reasonable. And then I had him do the hood

conversion and the very, very first thing that I had that I did when as soon as the car came over here was I moved my battery connection under the hood. I went on Amazon, got a $35

standard remote battery like relocation kit, drilled some holes, rib nuts, the whole 9 yards.

And now it's like, oh, my battery's dead.

Hey, look, I can actually get to it.

So I've had it for a few months and it's, I kid you not, it turns heads faster than anything I've ever seen.

Because no one sees it. One sees it.

Let me ask you this, why the TBR?

Why TBR? That's actually a really good

question. I get that this question pretty

common. I only ask good questions, but

if you get it pretty common then maybe not.

Yeah, pretty often. So if you think about it, car

enthusiasts as a whole, I would like to say I'm a car enthusiast who wants to have a good driving experience.

Yeah. Someone.

You have this and you have a beautiful RX7.

Oh, thank you. The, The thing is when it comes

to modern day sports cars, and I've been seeing this more and more commonly on a lot of podcasts, is that all the new supercars are coming out. It's the same car as just

different window dressings. They're all 1000 horsepower.

They're all like like hybrid this or something like that.

And you're, it's not even usable.

It's and they're also unobtainable for most people.

You talk to a lot of like the car journalists and what's the best sports car and you can buy right now.

What do they say? Miata.

It's still the Miata. It's been the Miata for like the

past 40 years. Like, well, I'm sorry, 30 years,

but it came out in the early 90s because bang, like dollar for dollar, bang for the buck, it still offers the best driving experience compared to anything else.

But it's crazy though, because I would never consider a Miata a sports car, but it is. It's a great track car.

So I guess because of that, it's a sports car.

Right. And I mean, it's a.

It is a because. When I was coming to high school

in the 90s, it's it was totally a chick car.

It was. We call them Skittles.

With the yeah 'cause I think bright blue exactly, they had like 3 or 4 colours. And all the all the senior

chicks had a skittle but that our Volkswagen Golf I think.

Oh, golf convertible rabbit. Yeah, the rabbit.

Yeah, the. Rabbit.

But two or three generations later, you learn that they were just beasts on the track. Oh, absolutely.

And it's like now that's if you were to ask me what's the best track car for the Bang, Bang for the buck, I would say probably Miata still and still so. I guess it's a sports car and

this goes back to it because what makes a good sports car in my opinion is connectivity. So if you're trying to have that

one with the machine experience, OK, feedback through the steering wheel, you're the butt Dino.

How you feeling going around the corner?

Yes. 2000 gets that too, but yeah, you can probably get more

Miatas for the bang of the buck. Right, in 2000 when S 2000s

before they shot huge money for you're getting like talking on POS like with a top that's just raggedy, which is like something like the 20s and 30s for somebody that told POS you can still pick up Miata for less than 10 grand, right?

Yeah. Is it not as fast and certain

things? Maybe not as sexy.

Not as sexy, it's not as big, but it, I mean, it checks off all the boxes for the most part for a sports car.

So actually I had a Miata for years.

I drove Porsches for years. I used to work for a Porsche for

Gosh for eight years. Was you Porsche?

I managed all the online content, so the website development and I would basically also handle me the initial point of contact for all the online sales.

So this is really before Porsche North Scottsdale specifically was they just cracked open like, hey, we're really going to dive into online sales. So I helped usher in there.

I just say foray into online sales at that point.

And within like the first year, I was able to help increase sales by over 25% just by instantly answering emails for PT 6. And then also just helping build

out inventory and build out the website.

But anyways, so I've been around sports cars, like traditional sports cars like Porsches and like Mazda, which is kind of like the Porsche of Japan in my opinion, has a very similar ethos for driving driver engagement.

So this is where, come to Aaron, many, many years later, I want to buy another car. I want to buy another toy.

Sure, some of the different. Something I was looking at

Porsches again, I was looking at like 997 S S Great car.

It's reliable for what it is and parts availability.

But that was also at the time when everything was going to the moon, like air cooled like 99 threes bases.

We're going for like 6 figures kind of stuff.

I was like, oh, you got to be kidding me.

I didn't want to know the Miata I've had and I had the 1.8 liter

Miata for many, many years as well.

So I was like, OK, what are I want some analog cars.

I don't want to fight computers. I don't want to have to just

deal. I want to just have a good

driver's car. I.

Don't want to break the bank? Right.

At the same time. So I just started looking

through what was available and I came back to one of my childhood like my wish list cars, which were like unobtainium and that was TVR. So wait, wait, wait, what's this

25? I knew about the roughly what

the 25 year law was about. There's a lot of lot of nuances

that people don't understand. And also at the same time, it's

very simplistic. So and then the show and display

thing, that's a whole other can of worms.

People don't. That's not easy, so.

That's kind of the the way to get through the yes, get around the 25 year. Thing.

Well, but it's there's more to it than that.

It's actually. It's just not as simple as.

No, I'll explain that in a SEC. But so I saw TVRS and like and I

watched all the Top Gear episodes.

I watched all these other like this, all the content I could.

I was like, man, went on the forum.

OK, I'm going to dive full like full head in into this pond of TVR like ethos in history. And their heritage is really,

really cool. And the way it they were built

in 1946, how they were like the whole brand, the the culture.

Also the community is very, very small, close knit, has a very, very portial community, like community where everybody knows everybody. And then also like there was

there's a gentleman who was the former factory manager who just passed away. They just had his funeral.

And the gentleman who's the main liaison to TVR with the left of the corporate and the TVR car club was like, it was attended by dozens and dozens of former TBR employees, like the actual factory workers were. So they're all super close, all

still showing up. So it also means if you, if

you're a jerkface and like you kind of mess up, you're kind of on the shit list. So it's a real, it's a true

driver's car. There's no assists.

You're the Peter Wheeler era car is like the late 90s.

So, well, why don't you have traction control?

Why don't you have ABS? Why don't you have airbags?

And Peter Wheeler is his ethos and his mentality about all this kind of stuff. Probably because they were

broke, but he felt they were. They made people feel safer than

they actually were. Overconfidence that It's like if

you don't know how to brake properly if you're not using your throttle. Which is a criticism of a lot of

modern right sports cars. So like in my RX7, my FDI don't

have traction control by the ABS somewhere.

I've actually used my ABS a couple times.

We got a pucker factor of 5 and you're like I'm glad I had it.

But the same time like that's all I really have.

I took out my airbag for a prettier wheel, but that's it really the only safety mechanism that I have on it.

Just like with my TVRI, have no traction control, no ABS and my throttle is crazy long. So to have something different

and unique, that's why. Different.

Unique. So why?

Why TBR imports and just? You saw it as an opportunity.

Partial an opportunity. I'm not the only one so.

How many importers are there for TBR specifically?

Because I know there's a. Lot of importers here, including

that's basically me. And then there's two others.

One gentleman has been just importing all like mostly the classics, Becky. So we're talking like the

vintagey ones? The pre Gran Turismo cars.

Right even up into the some of the 90s.

OK. And some servers but not so

much. He's more towards like the

vintage TBRS. Then there is another company

based out of Tucson technically, but also Vegas.

Little close. Yeah, this is a, this is a huge

country we're in and there's two of you guys in the same state.

Well, it's because Arizona's registration situation.

With tech, the Southwest is really, yeah.

But so they, they cater towards high end clientele, people have more money than they know what to do with.

Whereas my target demo is me. It's hey, I want, I saw this car

everyday people. I wanted to get this car.

I, he helped me get it over. And that was a whole my mantra

of opening up TVR imports is not to turn this into a full blown business and try to make like a dedicated company.

I'm like, no, no, no, this is a side hustle because not only do I get to network out with a lot of folks in the UK, I get to hear their stories, which I which is so cool.

Like I said, the amount of stories come out this little tiny small company are just astounding.

But I also help other people who are similar to me who saw this car they wanted they they got. How can we get it to them at a

reasonable price? Yes, I do.

I'll collect a small fee for my services but I don't make it absorbent or absorbent, whatever the word is.

And there are others within the community who will mark them up insanely high. Because they know they can.

They know they can. They're dealing with people who

have more money than cents. Right.

So for me, I'm like that's not my target demo.

My target demo is this the average person.

So I will elect between now and the end of the year they'll through my business because some of them are waiting in storage in the UK until they can be 25 years old.

But it'll be about a dozen TBRS between this last October and.

Not bad. It's not bad.

I'll include my cars included in that number.

So technically 11. So that, which is really neat

because I'm actually going to the UK next month and starting off in Scotland and I'm working to with some of the interesting individuals in the UK to, to, to visit a few very special sites.

And also I was feel very, very honored.

There's a company called HBC Classics who I partner with down in Sussex, which is really it's like South of England by about an hour and a half by train. I.

Was gonna say, isn't that New York right?

And. Jersey or something.

There's like a Sussex somewhere over there.

It's like West Sussex. Or yeah, something like.

That well, Meghan Markle is the Duchess of Sussex of Sussex.

Maybe that's where I've. Heard Yeah, she's, Yeah, she's

yeah, That's Meghan Markle, but who cares about her?

She's great on suits. Never saw it but it's.

A good show it's it's it's easily to get hooked on.

The HPC Classics is hosting a cars and well, technically they're doing like a breakfast. They're actually doing like a

bacon and eggs breakfast instead of cars and coffee.

Bangers and mash, cars and coffee.

Yeah, and they're hosting ATVR like themed cars and coffee while I'm there for my trip. So I'm really excited to meet a

lot of the folks from the UK. It was it just timing the timing

was perfect or was it? Like, hey, it's going to be the

spring opener, parents. Come in, let's do this.

If I'm being prideful, it's going.

To be prideful. It's an honor of me.

All right, that's cool, man. That's cool as shit.

But. What's the reality I.

Don't know if there is one. I think that we'll take that

one. Yeah, fiction.

Fiction is often more interesting than reality. 1000%.

So it'll be really, really fun. So that's TV are getting into it

and it's one of those things where if you're looking for a car that is Viper esque, you're talking this raw power, really sharp handling crazy and styling, reasonable prices and you don't mind all the idiosyncrasies that come with a British car. It you can't beat it, you just

can't. So that's my story with with why

TBR is just it's probably. The And you have a raw event

coming up at the warehouse. Yeah.

Rebecca's. Yeah.

So Rebecca who? And I wish I could be there, but

I'll be out of town because I'll be at a celebration of life.

So yeah, that's a better excuse. Yeah.

Thank you. So the so Matt and Rebecca, the

folks who run the warehouse, they host regular events as you know, this different theme, they're trying to make it a little different, which is really, really cool.

Not just a parking shell. I agree.

And this event that they're hosting in a little over a week is called obscurity. So I actually I got to be my be

a James Bond a. Little over the week at the

time, we're recording this on Thursday, but it will literally be next weekend. Correct.

It's like the 22nd and that's the whole point of it is there's some French cars that are going to be there.

There's some weird Italian cars that were mainstream brands.

We've never heard of this car before.

They did a little kind of advertising photo shoot.

I got to like drive in the basement.

Totally creepy, by the way, if you I.

Didn't even have one. Yeah, it's really, really creepy

down there. Basements in Arizona.

It's haunted. It's one of the more, their

basement is actually one of the more haunted places in the Arizona. And there's a, there's a couple

things. They're like, kid, don't touch

that. Yeah.

There's a ball down there. They like, don't touch the ball

like a little rubber bouncy ball and it it moves around the basement and nobody touches it. Yeah.

I'm intrigued. Yeah, so they're like, I just,

they're pretty sure. It's like, it's really haunted.

I'm not. The book a private tour or

something? So because apparently like a lot

of people like back because of Sunkist factory all those years ago. Circus factory?

Yep. Apparently some people have died

there and so much stuff happened.

But anyways, so we did like a little photo shoot and video video shoot and it looked looked really, really cool though where they advertise it. But the event is going to be

super limited. I think only a couple 100

tickets so, but it includes like hors d'oeuvres and drinks and photographers can get there early because it's stage.

We staged very, very nice and all curated cars that are just really, like I said, obscure. It helps when Rebecca is all

about that, yeah, as a photographer and she has an eye for creativity and she's really good at that.

So I think that really helps. Yeah, so it's going to be a

really, really cool event and I'm going to get to showcase the Tusk in there. And then the plan is eventually.

So I don't want to spill all the beans, but in the coming year or two, I'm going to have another TVR head of the United States.

That's me kicking off my bucket list, so.

Speed 12 from Gran Turismo you guys saw it heard it here first that's the car and it's. You can't even mess up the

fiberglass. You literally ride the walls

around Phoenix International Speedway, Raceway and.

I might actually get to see one, that'll be cool.

So when I go to that when I go to the UK, so I'm going to try to document this I'm working to out to try to visit a helical engineering who makes the TR 12. So they were seen at SEMA a

couple years back and it's in homage.

So they can't call it TBR, obviously, but helical they did a thing was an Aston V12 that they twin turbocharged and put on a fiber or a carbon fiber body rear wheel drive manual transmission car. And even like drive Tribe did a

recent video like in the wet and it was just uncontrollable, which it fits the car. But they actually recently

discovered, so the speed 12 engine was totally bespoke.

So they had they made three cars.

One had the actual speed 12 engine and it broke the engine dyno. So they had to actually when

they got another one, they had to, they had to shut off one bank dyno it and then to the other bank.

And they just kind of played the math.

So depending on the tune is a minimum of like 700 horsepower with a potentially spicier tune up to 1000 on a 7 something liter V12 like naturally aspirated engine.

The blueprints went missing for this like all like the build stuff. So if you wanted to fix it.

So everything, anytime that like the engine was started there, it was always concerned about, Oh my gosh, if this breaks, we don't have a backup engine. Because there was another

concept that had an Aston V12 as well as a test meal.

Which is kind of funny because even Mercedes when they were building the McLaren SLR, they use the TBR server as a test meal. Interesting.

They granted I can. Kind of see it.

Now they had this weird kind of nostril.

For that long ass front end. Right.

And so they had the space and that's the way the engine worked and this funky nose on it. But yeah, they bought multiple

TBR servers to convert into test meals for the McLaren SLR.

So that aside, it was always kind of like, OK, well, what did we do? Because then the third one that

never really ran well in the last few months, they actually found the the blueprints. They actually found it.

Where were they? Who knows?

Well, because the factory, as of last week got torn down.

The original Blackpool factory where TBR manufactured cars for decades and decades. Granted, they've been out of

business for oh gosh, 20 years at this point.

Well, even though they're yeah, they're technically around, but not really the factory officially got torn down.

And so as people were going through stuff, they found the actual machine blueprints. So TVR powers and also helical

primarily through helical they are going to try to rebuild and like make another speed 12 engine based on the original design. Because the and also the John

Ravenscroft, Ravenscroft Razencroft he's he is part he is one of the three main main names for back in the 90s, he had Alan Mehling, Peter Wheeler and John Ravenscroft and the AJP 8 so AJP. So he was the Jay in the AJP.

He's consulting with them on trying to bring this V12 back to life. Interesting.

So I'm really excited to hopefully get to see it.

Hopefully they'll let an American at least take red shotgun, and the weather's nice enough where they probably wouldn't let me drive it at all. But you.

Never know, man. You never know.

You never know. Hey, we got this guy from the

States. He's a big fan.

He's importing this stuff. There's not a lot of these cars,

not a lot of these people. You'd be surprised.

I I'd be surprised if it wasn't like, hey man, you want to take it for a spin? Or at the very least put around

the parking lot. Like just keep it keep it under

100. I think the cops know you're.

Oh yeah, they know I'm going to be driving something illegal.

Well, that's an out then. So here's what we'll do.

We'll take a really quick break and then we'll come back and talk about Tempe Beach Concourse.

Yeah, there's some sad updates with that.

Well, good, good news and bad news.

Like when I was in. I'm cracking it open for you,

buddy. Here you go.

I'm on it this Shibui 18A Sherry cast single grain and.

So basically a Japanese single moment.

Thank you, Sir. No, this is awesome.

Thank you. Who's from Okinawa?

You know what Okinawa actually does?

Coffee as well. The only thing I know about

Okinawa is. Karate Kid too.

Yeah, like doing like the what was like the little doll, the kata karate. Yeah.

Yeah, cuz like a friend of mine, actually, she's from Okinawa and that's cool. But I was looking up for coffee

because I was like, she goes back a couple times a year.

I was like, how cool would it be to have like a Japanese coffee and a Japanese like artwork coffee tin?

Because they don't, they don't export it.

And the people who all take back, there are a couple people, but they want like. Buku bucks.

Buku Bucks, yeah. For.

But if you go there, it's not Buku bucks, it's just whatever you can put in your carry on or your check in.

Right. And I was like, dude, I can.

I'll pay the extra $2550 to. Oh, 100%.

It's kind of like the this don't SW doesn't fly there.

So thankfully you don't. They're holding debacle.

Are you sure Southwest Airlines doesn't fly to fucking Okinawa, Japan? Hawaii.

Yeah, they do. Regional, international, that's

what we just did. So that's actually a natural

Segway over to the coffee. So let's talk about.

Yeah, let's talk about the coffee.

So we talked about that last time you were on.

Yeah, a little bit. And which one of these 10s do

you wanna hold? I have 3 of the.

Actually right now I think you have 4.

I actually have more than that. I have six different options.

So what you have behind you? So I'm handing you the nuts and

bolts. Nuts and bolts.

So if these are full, that tells you.

I didn't really like the coffee as much but.

We're you're not a big fan of flavored if I remember.

That's it. Yeah.

So it's not your coffee as much as we're not really big and.

It's still flavor. So.

So my wife and I, so she was a little too shy to show up, but she and I just, she wanted to, she always wanted to have a little coffee shop. Yeah.

And I'm like, I have noticed I had to open up a coffee shop.

But I love automotive stuff like Carson Coffee.

Sure. So let's blend the two and let's

do an automotive coffee and I found a food grade coffee tin and had like a little check valve and everything like on top like you would for like the little bags you get in the store and then like the the seal and everything.

But it's all automotive theme. That was the whole point.

Like, OK, well, what's what makes a little bit more fun?

OK, well, although like the base ones, like the light medium and dark roast, those are going to be oil weights.

And so the so the the darker the roast, the heavier the oil.

So yeah, like 5W30, then 10 W 40 and then 20 W 50 for the dark roast. And then anything that's not a

flagship, like like base, like there's not unflavored or basically, yeah, unflavored for one or not.

Special edition is going to be fun, kitschy art, so and it's like, so the caramel coffee is technically called 10 millimetre because you can never, you never have enough 10 millimetres around. Right.

Or you can never find them when. You need it, you never find it

when you need it. Or like every garage needs a, it

needs a a tin or a can of nuts and bolts.

That was the whole point was working like all those kind of things. So I have a few other ideas like

blinker fluid like. There's there's novelty blinker

fluid that you can buy. Oh yeah, absolutely.

Or like you know, wire loom smoke, there's all those kind of fun things. And then I have an Italian

espresso called Martin. It's in a martini livery looking

tin. So they only get a I'm almost

out of those. So there's only a, just a 100

of. Those how about a like a

transmission fluid or? I have a lot of, I have a lot of

really fun ones, like I'm just keeping to the side.

I actually was talking to the owner of Shift Cole Brew.

So they're here in town. They're actually just for those

of you who haven't, haven't had it like it's canned.

They're also have like Nitro cold brew and got to talking coffee, totally different demographic.

They are opening up a coffee shop up in Scottsdale area like close to they're trying to at least obviously construction permits, all that kind of stuff. But I think this can be up by

this coastal quarter and he's we're talking about having like my stuff on rotation there as well for regular coffee and then also like. Really neat.

Man Yeah, absolutely. So he's gonna have the Nitro

cold brew, then have like other guest ones like myself and he love the idea because they're automotive theme.

He's a car person and also motorcycle person.

I'm also like with Ravi, who owns A.

We don't lift, he sells. Out to Ravi, Yep, it was your

first like customer facing retailer.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So super.

He approached me and he's been like this solid guy said, hey, I want to have this in my store. So I've been selling there, just

been selling mostly online and then also like in person and selling our first in person was at First Fridays and which is kind of interesting because you think like arts, the festival and all these foodie stuff. And then I was, I was there with

like modded culture and also with Mint Shade Collective who does all the hot wheel selling. So amongst all these artisans

and food stuff with this little, tiny little section of automotive themed stuff. And so my wife and I were just

selling a person slinging ground and whole bean coffee.

And people are loving it, especially as gifts.

And then there's also like subscription clients who are obviously customers who are subscription based.

It's been an interesting journey so far and I'm working on doing a exclusive one that's coming out for a very, very neat event.

I'm going to keep that on the DL.

Private label. Thing got a private label

there's only doing 150 tens for that.

So but it's it was exclusive order just for this very, very neat event that's going to be happening in early April.

So keep an eye out for that because that one also was is a vintage based on a very specific oil can.

And the IT looks, I'm not going to lie, it looks really slick.

You know, we're going to have to maybe talk about that because I think you launched maybe a year or two late, right?

That's pretty good, right? That's really good, yeah.

I did. So we're we, we both.

I just took a sip of mine probably 3 minutes ago and you saw a look on my face and you just took your first sip and the flavor stays with you too. Yeah.

But had you launched that maybe a year earlier, I probably would have tried to do something for NS Expo 2022, right?

But we'll have a conversation after this because, and I'll have to bounce it off a few other people, but I think it's kind of cool to have. A yeah, it's really, really

neat, especially for like automotive culture.

I have had people who like, I don't drink coffee.

But. But can I buy your tins?

Exactly. So I, I kid you not, there's a

gentleman who went into Robbie until we don't left and he's actually he's he, he's like, like he's LDS.

So he's Mormon. He doesn't drink coffee.

And so he's like, I want these in my garage.

So he bought, I made a custom order of like, here's all six of my 10s just so we can throw him into his garage shelf.

Wasn't that the joke about LDS is as long as there's not another LDS around, you can do whatever you want?

I'm not going to get into that. OK, I grew up LDS so I know.

That's why I asked you that. Yeah, yeah, you're talking about

you. Cannot confirm.

Really denies what you're. Saying, yeah, I'm not going to

talk about the the Sunday Mormons now.

As we drink our shibui. No, this is great.

So it still drinks light like like a Japanese whiskey, but actually it's got like the dark like Raisin E notes, like you would get like an older little Scotch.

It's almost earthy in a sense. Yeah, I have some.

Mushroom. Yes, yeah, I have some.

It's Shibu. It's Shimada.

Shimada. Yeah, I'm not as familiar with

that you have. To take a flavor of.

That because I love Japanese before you leave.

But a dear friend of mine bought me that and it tastes very mushroomy to me. See, for me, I like the flavor

of mushrooms. This texturally, I can't do it.

Yeah, I, I just, I can't. That's the first note that hits

me, but yeah, so back to the coffee.

Yeah. So it's we're, I mean, because I

have my day job and I have the import business and I have a wife and a social life. And I have a wife.

Yeah. Yeah.

So he didn't mean it like. That love you baby Yeah so just

and then we do want to have a family as well so there's it's one of the things it's still a side hustle that we're just trying to do but every single 10 like we we pack them we label them by hand it's. Still.

Yeah, and just so we take hours and we put on, we Don the whole hairnet and gloves and everything it all.

Is there like a glass of wine or anything next year?

You guys just like, no, it's like a clean like drug scene.

It's like you instead of packing like.

It's like the scene off of like RoboCop.

Like, do you? Guys have the strip down.

So isn't she like her her night gear and you're in you're like sleep boxers. Is it that like clean?

No. It's not that, yeah.

It's like we don't have to worry about people smuggling stuff, can we? All right, all right.

But yeah, so we we do want to make sure everything is like, sanitary. So make some masks and

everything. So, like, no hair, right?

So it needs to be safe, right. It's still considered to be

cottage. Blowing my mind because I never

in a million years would have thought about that type of prep, but I guess it makes. Sense it's considered to be a

cottage good like jams, jellies, pies, tamales, all that kind of stuff like that like in Arizona this goes actually this is going to be a really good point with our current governor.

So cover our governor of the key Hobbs.

I have an opinion about her for automotive wise very, very bad flavor in my mouth. So they recently signed like you

can do tamales and stuff like that, but you have to have like labels on it and it's totally fine to select by like like your abuela and it's cool as long as you don't, I don't remember what the actual amount. Is it considered to be cottage

goods? And you can sell fine.

But as soon as I start selling actually coffee, like liquid coffee, then I have to get food handlers licenses, and then it's become just like any type of food trucks or any type of like business that sells actual food and drinks.

So but selling coffee beans and coffee grounds, as long as I don't add anything to it and we're not talking flavored coffee because that's part of like the whole roasting process.

And then, well, that's right. Because you can get your

products right ground or whole beans.

Correct. So, but if I was actually like

adding something to it, like adding like chocolate into it after the fact, then all bets are off.

Then you have to do nutritional and then once it reaches a certain point, then you have to have a commercial kitchen.

It's really, really expensive and also licensing.

But this actually, so the governor, in addition to signing this right for cottage stuff, this actually affects the Tempe Beach concourse, which last year was a great year.

We got lucky in the very first Tempe Beach concourse that it's a two year waiting list to have events there at Tempe beach super desirable central location.

Great. And just the photos that come

out. It was great.

It's cool. The gentleman who was the actual

spokesper or he's again the organizer.

It was a car guy. He said, hey, we just had a

cancellation. It's in the middle of March.

You guys want it? Yes.

And the way it works there, because it's it's at a City Park, they have to make it more accessible for costs and stuff like that. So it actually was decently

affordable for a car event. And then how it works is they

assume that you're going to have it there every year unless it's a one off event. So you kind of have a generic

place in line. Effectively, they hold your spot

for the next calendar year. Penciled in every year.

More or less this is how you have like the same events like the like the Aloha festival and a lot of other like Oktoberfest.

Every outside those one time events, it's always going to happen, right? So we had our second.

So first year, unfortunately because of the weather, we had to shuffle cars around, kind of squish them and move them and.

There were a lot of complaints, but if people look, it's like I'm glad I've sparked on the cement, yeah.

We we try to keep people out of the muddy areas as much as possible. And then it was it was not ideal

just because of weather. And all the nails that people

were thrown off the bridge. That was weird.

That was another thing, too. So the first year, the Aloha

Festival was awakened beforehand, and they're screws.

They weren't nails, they're screws.

I didn't know that the Hawaiians got down like that.

So the all the areas that they had set up like their their stands because it's a 2 two day event, they were using screws and they're told just to hang on to them.

They were just zipping them out. And so we actually had the

entire crew, all of us were down picking them up by hand, one at a time, picking up, trying to. Find like metal detectors and

shit. Not not metal detectors, but so

year #2 rolls around, the Aloha Festival once again, the Hawaiian Festival the weekend before.

So this year, like this last year, we bought those magnets like strips on wheels. And so Chris and I, I kid you

not, the day before, we are doing laps back and forth, cleaning debris up left and right, anything you can think of. Thankfully, we didn't find any

syringes, so just making sure it is best.

And then because of the weather was perfect, We were able to stretch out the entire event. It wasn't so crowded.

It went off without a hitch. I mean, it was even Chris is who

runs a monoculture, who does a lot of events.

He's like, they were actually kind of worried that it was going so well. Well, except for the people who

peeled out. Right.

And that's what makes kind of that point.

So for those who don't know, our governor and their office are trying to crack down on St. Takeovers and also.

Not to be confused as Streetcar takeovers, which is a sanctioned event, right? Yeah.

So all those people you see on like all the social media who are doing like the Donuts, like the, I mean, people flying, getting killed, run over, shot, stupid, stupid stuff.

I mean, that's the street racing.

They're trying to combat that. So the governor has given grants

to the various cities, Tempe included, to crack down on it.

City of Tempe has decided that they don't want to have a car show at Tempe Beach Park. They don't feel that it's in

the. No, Is it just Tempe beach park

or just any car related stuff in the city of?

Any car related stuff except for the?

The event coming up. Except for the one event.

Yeah. Yeah, that's money related.

But funny how that happens. Yeah, so because we're like,

well, what about this park or that park?

And they're like, Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope.

Because they're claiming that people were like, for a static car show. So wait a minute.

So you're telling me you're going to cancel a charity car show designed to raise money for Phoenix Children's Hospital sponsored by the US Marines? And you're you're mayor.

And you're mayor, by the way, came out on video recording how he wants to keep this going, right?

So back a lot of back and forth, they decided that they don't want to have their relationship with us.

And we at the same time, we don't want to have a relationship with somebody who doesn't want us to be around.

And so we started like, you know what, we want to partner with somebody else if we want to be. So yes, we could have submitted

our application and all that kind of stuff like that, but like we know it. A little birdie said don't even.

Yeah. So we're basically like we're

going to walk away from the Tempe Beach Concourse location.

It's going to and we're working with another city in town and it's looking like, I don't know if I can say it yet officially, but it's looking. We found a new home and it's

going to the entire city is behind it, Not just the city, the entire Chamber of Commerce, because they, it's.

Good, man. Hopefully that works out because

that was this phenomenal event. Yeah.

And it's like when when events like that happen, that's that's the good of the car culture that brings the wholesomeness.

That means we're not just people who want to do takeovers.

We're not just people who want to race each other.

We're not just people who just want to.

I don't know most most people in our community, they just want a place to park and chill. Yeah, just hang out a place to

go like minded people like. 99% absolutely.

And when you do an event during the day, it's like what, what, what's going to happen? You know, people, people may

take off loud, but no one's going to sit there and and how do you mitigate that? You just put cops at every exit

and then everybody in the sentence laughs at the dumb asses. They take off like crazy and get

pull over, you know? Honestly, like people like the

like we've all seen like the Mustangs on super like on Instagram the videos like Ford. Mustangs The.

Ford Mustangs. I'm sorry y'all got a wrap,

Yeah? But no, seriously, I think when

you buy a Mustang you have to sign a contract that says you're gonna Rev your engine every time you go through a Group, A parking lot or. Something no the Revving's

Mopar. The accidents are Mustangs.

OK. All right.

Fair enough. Fair enough.

So we're really excited to grow. It is going to have an

opportunity to make it better than what years past.

So we're having a lot more partners.

So like I said, we don't want to be where we're not welcome.

And because we're trying, we truly are trying to do something good for not only the community, but also like I said, to really fundraise for Phoenix Children's.

And like I said, this good stewardship with our partners celebrate car culture. And this is something where like

I, I was really worried we wouldn't, it was going to be the end of it. And so we were just going to

like, we're going to just keep trucking.

We're going to try to find good stewards of car community.

And because Arizona is that's what I don't understand it.

People don't get it outside of California and Florida, Arizona, it's here. This is.

Here this is it. Absolutely.

The Texas boys might argue with us well.

They're gonna argue everything in Texas, everything's bigger in Texas. And put in the car community.

I'm like, no, no. But it's here cuz we're next

door neighbors to California. Yeah.

And the southwest region. We're not the Rust Belt.

This is where all you don't. Get tornadoes, I'll wrap up your

house exactly. If you if you want to go

somewhere and buy car parts, if you want to go to a U pull at car, you know place if you want to buy some classics.

I mean, you can drive from here to Vegas, here to California, and you're always going to see that car up on that hill and you're like, man, there's like 1010 trucks up there.

If I just had $1200 or $12,000, I can go up there with a trailer and probably buy one. Yeah, I, I follow some of these

other social media places, like some websites on Facebook, and they're saying like, like car spotter pages, like Houston car spotters or San Antonio or Dallas car spotters.

And people freak out when they see something I see almost on a weekly basis. We're, we're kind of, we're kind

of numb to it here. Yeah, and because this is the

other thing too, like from this kind of goes back to YTVRS is my supercars to me are not impressive anymore.

It's hard. I when I can go to any weekend

anywhere in the valley, I'm going to see something like $1,000,000 car. So what's a car that you see, if

any, that you're like anything new because you have a very beautiful, award-winning FD? You know, and obviously you have

the TVR, so. What turns my head when I have?

So what turns your head that you're like, oh, that's pretty cool, even if you don't want it yourself, What do you, what gives you a double take when you see it?

And it's, it's a good question because we're spoiled here, man.

We are spoiled because like, I'm not going to lie, like I love GT3 Rs. I guess I'm at my heart and my

core. Like my dad's a Porsche guy.

I grew up in Porsches, like Mazdas and Porsches.

I mean, those were like the cars I grew up with and like we'll just British cars in general as well on top of that.

Like Triumphs or like 1960s and 70s Triumphs?

Sure. Where it's like low power

lightweight cars, the whole ethos like Lotus, like it's like first add lightness or something like that and.

Then a mirror is a really nice car.

Yeah, I mean it. That's once again I.

Think I don't know if we were recording or not.

We talked about the Maserati MC 20s, a really cool car.

It's really cool, it's style, it's beautiful.

It looks very Italian, but it's it doesn't check off all the boxes for the cloud chasers. Really.

Enough? Yeah.

Which is? So what's the car?

What's something you? Turn my head.

Yeah. You know what?

I know it sounds, it's kind of sounds at this point.

It sounds cliche. Are the ship boxes so?

We're talking about the newer, nicer.

Cars. OK, not the venture.

Ships. Because I get it.

Yeah. You'll see something's like,

wow. That's so they're actually,

there's a guy selling a drivable Yugo here in town and there's a small it's like 4 or $5000, but it's actually it's all there.

I'm like a small part of me that wants a Hugo.

Where'd. You find it on like Facebook.

Marketplace, Facebook Marketplace, like it's like you can. Scroll through Facebook

Marketplace. Like why would you want a Hugo?

Like the fact that it's driving. Yeah.

That's impressive that someone actually had enough care for this car that the doors didn't fall off, the engine didn't blow up and like it's actually all there.

It's. Not going to rust here and.

It's not going to rust here. And so it's like, that's kind

of, and it's so odd. And ironically, Yugo is going to

be building electric cars. They're going to be interesting.

I didn't even know they were still around.

See, now it's like about a month ago that Yugo is going to be coming back. Well, there's a lot of like

global car companies that we just completely forgot about because, you know, they just didn't work.

Here in the OR like say it's Seiat is actually Volkswagen.

Yeah, with a prettier package in my opinion.

Oh yeah, Seiat. Well, we know it's a seat, but

it's actually Seiat. Yeah, they're.

All over the place when we went to Barcelona, they're everywhere. Yeah, because it's it's like,

look at the Suzuki, Suzuki, Suzuki.

Wait a minute, let's seot. Yeah, so I know it's kind of

weird, but the cars that are turning my head, like new cars are probably going to be the more unconventional ones.

They're going to be wagons. I know this is really, really

weird because as a kid. Audi has some really nice ones,

Volvo has some. Really nice ones.

OK Audi RS6 Avant. Yeah, that's a badass.

That is not the badass looking fast as hell practical.

I love the new panameras. I think they're beautiful.

I'm not I'm not into the EV camp.

I just I just I just can't get behind it for a lot of reasons.

The biggest 1 is like battery cost so 5 to 15 years.

So you're worried about the battery costs?

Battery costs also like and charging also like.

Full disclosure, me too, but as far as looking at an EV like it'd be kind of cool car to have.

Like it's like driving a washing machine.

You can get a Samsung, you can get an LG, you can get a Whirlpool. They all just they all have 1000

horsepower. They all have they.

Don't all sing to you when the when the load is done.

Ours do. I know.

It's like that stupid, annoying little Jingle.

Yeah, except for there's a guy who make it really cool.

Like you ripped that and turns really actually nice.

That's funny. But like Jordan, who you were

talking to, he's got his he's got his Ticon.

And for those of you guys who follow him on his social media, he's been doing almost like these parking lot converse, like fireside chats about life of having a using Charge America or Electrify America. His real world experience with a

non Tesla, because Tesla obviously has a supercharger network. Even if you don't have the

unlimited charging like you did on the old S models, you could still use them. And yes, there are some of the

newer cars that you can use like the Tesla stuff, but it's still not quite there, right. So this is where I don't like

the idea of the convenience. It's actually very.

Inconvenient. It's very inconvenient because

I've actually thought about this because like so Tesla had their their robo taxis at their event. And their new the the ones they

unveiled. Yes, Universal Studios back lot

and they had like the The Walking Android people actually were operated by real people and there's a whole demacle.

People thought it was AI and stuff but it wasn't.

Yeah, they're being controlled or whatever.

Or war people. So something like that.

But the robot here's my thing, when it comes to commuting back and forth to work to my office, I could care less.

It's a commute. It's the it's the time suck.

There's a gentleman I I put me in an electric car for a commute auto Dr. Waymo. I would never.

I haven't been in a Waymo yet. Would you?

Yeah. Actually, I think I would too.

I downloaded the app after. Someone.

Yeah, that's the best. Experience.

Ever. So Jason Camisa and Derek

Tampscott on Carmage and they actually did an entire episode about they compared all the different self driving taxis in San Francisco and they actually added multiple stops to see which was best. And Waymo is by far and that's

even Sanford. But there's they're not, it's

not perfect. Like you can still go like in

the weird like roundabout loop. It's so infrequent.

Yeah. But generally speaking, it's

safer. Yeah.

And also it's just, it's just freaky.

It's different. So for me, I'd be totally fine

with a self driving car to take me to and from work because there's a there's a gentleman in Florida.

I'm trying to remember what podcast I was listening to, but he said that I don't drive a car, I pay somebody to be my chauffeur. And people like, why do you pay

somebody $35,000 a year to be just your chauffeur?

And he's like, the amount of money I can make in the backseat of my car is far more than I can actually make by driving so.

Yeah, for a lot of people, I guess.

For some people, for. Some people, yeah.

So he'll spend an hour in the back seat of the car doing whatever, cutting deals, making phone calls, and that pays for his driver. She's like, that's two hours out

of my day. I never get back.

It's 10 hours a week I don't get back.

That's over 5000 hours a year. I will never get out of my life

back. So when it comes to electric

cars and like self driving stuff, I am totally fine for our commute. I think the biggest problem is

in people in our world, because we're car people, is we forget that an overwhelming percentage of people out there on the road are not car people, right? They're just trying to get to

where they're going going. They want transportation.

Yep. And that's why I've, I've always

said about that, about Tesla on this podcast.

They're not Elon Musk isn't a car person.

He's a transportation person. I wouldn't even call him that.

Well, that's, that's a Tesla is it's, it's not about cars, it's about transportation. It's and so.

It's no, it's a software. It's a software company with

that sells transportation. Yeah, but to the core, it's a

transportation company, correct. It's not a car company.

No, it's not. So like, well, my Tesla doesn't

feel like anything. Yeah, because they don't give a

fuck of what it feels like. They just want you to get from

point A to point B. Right.

And so I'm with you on that. I haven't done any fully

autonomous. And by the way, even with the

the Waymos, there's somebody monitoring those.

Oh see, I know that. Yeah, I know that actually one

of. My tours to India, I can move by

or no it's here. Oh, OK, like one of my most

loyal listeners sons used to. I don't know if he still does,

but I asked him the last time I saw him and I said, hey, what do you do? What are you doing for work now?

He goes, well, I do Waymong. What do you mean?

He says, well, he used to have a person who sat in the driver.

'S seat No no no. No, he says.

He sits either at home or location and he's responsible for like 20 waymos in any given time.

So it's kind of like the security guy target watching all the cameras, making sure people are.

That's what it is, the loss prevention guy.

So if it gets all stuck or fucked.

Up somebody's puking in the car there's.

Always somebody monitoring the waymos, but they're not physically in the waymos. Right.

They're not driving the car remotely like like video game status. He may have a he may have an

Xbox 360 controller for PC like 1/2 sitting over here.

I don't. Know well it's kind of funny

because like Amazon was trying to do like those stores that were like the self checkout ones where you just walk in and it came out no you actually had people in India monitoring you and building it out. In the I didn't know that cause

I've been to, I've been to, we went to a store like that when we were in in Portugal. It's a huge store.

There's like a giant fucking Target or Walmart inside of a of a mall and you walk in and you like you scan your card or whatever and you grab what you want and you walk out.

Yeah, so with the Amazon stores, and this came about was like a couple years ago. So yeah, he was scanning your ID

and then there was a person who literally was watching you on a camera, watching what you grabbed and put into your basket. And then they were charging your

card based on on watching you. So it's kind of funny because it

reminds me of a 1990s movie with Robin Williams called Toys.

I don't think I see it's. Actually, it's one of his more

the guy who. Robin Williams.

Robin Williams Yeah, it actually has a really good social commentary on a lot of things actually about war and because LL Cool JS in it too, which is kind of interesting.

Yeah. And then.

Oh gosh, what's her name? I'm trying to work.

But the. The gentleman who played the

second double door from Harry Potter.

Yeah. Michael Gambon.

He was in it as an American general as well.

And so he actually had the bright idea of using children as drone pilots. So he makes his video game

training center so where they think they're playing a video game because he goes into an arcade and he said these children's 8 year old kids have like this better hand eye coordination than any fighter pilot in the world.

And so he makes all these toys, right?

This is a 30 years before what we like a modern day drones.

Thinking that as you. Talking about modern day drones,

he makes toys that so they look all cutesy and stuff, but they're actually lethal. And so and he has these little

kids are showing up playing what they think is video games.

And here we are today where it's actually it's like, OK, we have drone pilots. So when you said the Waymo stuff

actually made me think of like the Robin Williams film, like toys. It's kind of weird and a little

artsy, but there's actually a lot of interesting social commentary about it. When it comes to like modern

day, going back to like the electric cars to where like my wife, she's like, hell no, she's A1 electric car.

And also for me, I also don't like the thing I don't like about electric cars. I can't fix it.

There's that. So I'm I'm this kind of goes

back to the thing I hate about a British electric or British cars in general. It's not like my TBR

mechanically, it's really simple.

It really is like the mechanical side of the chassis suspension textbooks. What you any person who's ever

turned a ranch can really diagnose like OK, fuel, air, spark compression. It's like changing out the

carburetor on a on a 2 stroke. I mean more.

Yeah, it's like, it's like real. It's really.

Pressure washer. Yeah, yeah.

Granted, it's using, yeah, individual throttle bodies.

Yeah, it's a dry sump system, but there's some higher end machinery, but it's all at the same time.

It's still basic. You can understand it, you can

fix it. It's a electronic sack.

Especially on the TVR, everything is push button.

So if something goes wrong, then I have to chase the gremlin gremlin, gremlin, gremlin I want.

My first degree was at UTI, so Universal Technical Institute.

I have other degrees since then, but my very very first one was with UTI and Ford has an entire dedicated electrical program.

Because Ford electronics suck. They are consistently like for

the American makers. They are the worst.

Hence why they developed an entire dedicated electric system. Why though?

Why do you think that is doesn't make?

Sense Why is Land Rover still the bottom of the barrel for reliability when you know you have this desirable like totally desirable product, beautiful styling because the British have always had a very beautiful cars and attention to detail leather and like burl and wood. So it's Bentley's, you name it,

and it's not until you get the Germans who come in and actually kind of get different engineering, but even then.

Except for BMW. Yeah, except for BMW.

Well if you get brand new BMW under warranty until it starts leaking oil, which is. Great.

For three years, Yeah. Mind blown.

Yeah. So, but you have British

electrics for whatever reason, like it's in Landover, it's still not good. It's it's bizarre because every

car company will struggle for like 10 years.

Yeah. It's like, hey, don't buy this

car between the years of this and this or this generation, this generation before or after you're good, but.

On the discovery they say hey, we can get the three amigos like it's called the three little lights, like the warning lights that pop up on your dash. So you got 3 amigos?

Yep. OK, and it's all on the disco

Tis like we're just consistently like known to have electrical issues. So what do you do?

You just kept driving it. And same with the TVR fashion.

The joke is, oh, it'll fix itself.

You'll hit the right bump the right way and all of a sudden it'll magically come back. Intermittent, right?

Intermittent issues. So yes, for electrical cars, I

also don't feel when you have electrical power steering, you have regen braking, electrical throttle body, like it's a potentiometer, it's not a throttle.

You request you send a request to the car.

Now you're not engaged into it. So this really kind of ties all

back together is why TVR, why my RX7, it's a driver's car.

Electric cars, modern day cars, you don't get that.

So what's going to turn my head? Yeah, the RS6 Avant is very,

very cool. Unbelievably expensive.

Like unobtainable expensive for the average person, so.

We'll get you out on the air on this because it is it is very expensive for the RS6 Avant. There's a lot of engineering

behind it, a lot of performance, but it is it's at the end of the day, it's still same shares the same chassis as just the A6 Avant. Right.

But at the end of the day, your average person isn't going to look at that and know that, yeah, but they are going to look at, I don't know, the newest Ferrari or the newest.

Daytona SP3. Right, So do any of those cars

give you a double take, even if you don't personally want them?

No, honestly, it's because I don't feel that.

So when you were a kid, did you have a exotic car?

Dreams. My posters were like believe it

or not I had the calendar. So like when this?

Means you're old enough to understand the poster and the calendar. Oh absolutely.

A lot of kids don't like the classic poster of like the reward for higher education was that coastal mansion in Miami with like the 928, the three O 8 and all the testro stuff.

Yes, yes, that was like the the tart.

I was like, Oh my gosh, that's that's why you got to go to college because reward for higher education, you get this.

And then somebody actually did an updated version of that, which is kind of cool. So for me, I actually I total

car kid. I mean, I was born always been a

car kid. I would get the the calendars at

the Scholastic book fairs and I had like the Bizarinis and the EB11 tens and. Yeah, the EB110 was like the

first like non right non Lamborghini exotic or.

All that kind of stuff was on the walls.

But I I love the DeLorean as a kid.

Interesting. Yeah, piece of.

Shit, yeah, total garbage. But I mean, you can think pop

culture for that. So even as a 12 year old kid, I

was like, OK, they're selling, I'll take one.

They're selling for like in the mid 90s for about 12 grand for grand, granted, adjust for inflation.

And so I was like, I was trying, you know, I told your old kid I'm like, OK, how do I come up with $12,000?

So once again, weird car, totally different.

So they were also they have more character, though there was a distinction, a clear distinction between a, a Ferrari three O 8 and like, well, at that point, actually earlier three O 8's Lamborghini was actually was out of the US market for a very short time as they're bringing the Diablo because they they kind of had that weird period. So there was they didn't really

have any competition. So I'd say like a Ferrari F40

versus like a Countach. And those cars couldn't be

anything alike. Nothing like.

Most overrated car in your opinion as far as exotics without ever having driven 1 because that that gives you the kind of the out right because you could be like, all right.

I don't. I just don't get it.

Vintage or modern because like because they're about two vintage because about 2000 like you really and how.

Are you defining vintage 2002 thousand cut off?

Yeah. Because that dates me.

Because you know, the countaches are completely steaming pile of shit. But I would totally take one.

Right, because also that's the other thing too.

It has character as you get into it.

It's quirky, it's weird, it smells funny.

You have to sit on this door sill to to back it up.

And yeah, it's not a considered to be a good car.

What's a car everyone loves that you hate?

Everyone just freaks out about I hate.

That you because you obviously don't like any of the modern exotics or hyper cars. Or OK, so unpopular opinion.

Yeah. Nissan GTRS I really I'm like I

or that's. The that's the modern day

Japanese Mustang isn't. It or the Toyota Supra like the

Mark 4 supress. Yes.

So I'm I'm going to meet you eye to eye on that because it's from the same I've driven, it's from the same generation as your Mazda. That's your RX7 FD, the NSX

everything. And it is the most overrated JDM

car ever in my opinion because they drive like shit.

I mean, you can make them brakes are trash.

The brakes are trash. You can obviously make them look

cool. You can make them fast as fuck.

Yeah, but you're, you're, you can walk a Lamborghini on the highway. Absolutely.

So it's the most overrated car in my opinion, isn't.

It cool from a tuning standpoint.

If your goal is to get a car that you can really put your thumb, this is signal it was. Literally the 90s Japanese

Mustang, Yeah. So like the Supra, Mark Force

Supra and the Nissan, like Skyline car, I, I think they're really overrated. Yeah, See, well, you can have

1000 horse. When I worked at Porsche, we had

a guy who traded in 1000 horsepower.

Supra. We're talking a lot of money in

this car so we can get a 9/11 turbo.

So the nice thing about working in a dealership is that can go to the wall, grab a set of keys and go for a drive as long as the boss is cool with it. It was granted, we have now we

have better turbos, but this was, I want to say about, good gosh, 20 years ago or almost 20 years ago.

So it's just so I'm driving. OK, let's go.

Yay. OK, RPMS keep going.

And then 5000, all hell breaks loose.

So it's like, yeah, you get thrown in your back in your seat and I'm just going crazy nuts. And then come time for a 90°

turn, I'm like, please stop. Oh, gosh, please stop.

Please, please, please, please, please stop because he didn't upgrade the brakes. I get it.

But once again, you're talking about another 2 to $4000 to to match it. So it's like money, money,

money, money, money, money. So in contrast, FDRX 7, yes, I'm

biased, I'm not going to admit that, but watch any video on YouTube for anybody who's reviewed like OEM, like out-of-the-box of those cars, what's the best driving car?

Mazda, even guys who have boosted them to hell and beyond, like we're doing a ton of power. Leave the brakes.

Because I've always wanted one of those.

Yeah, I. I, I consider them the

attainable car. I had the, I had the brochure

back in 199697 or whatever and well the what they were 93 to 90 what? Technically 92 for US. 92 to

what? So US was 93 to 95 the entire

production of running for the FD body at.

Some point too. So maybe it was 95 then because

I wasn't in high. I graduated in 94 high school

and it was after high school, but I had the brochure and I used to look at the Turing edition or the other, you know, I don't, I can't even. Think, yeah, so they had a base

and then they had the, they had the R1 package and the layer was R2. And then there's like the

preferred, the PEP, the preferred equipment package.

So the Touring had a the. Touring had no spoiler, right?

No wing it was. Like no wing.

Yeah, well, also the base did potentially as well, but the Touring specifically had leather interior and no wing and a sunroof. And it had like Bose stereo

system as well. Everything was Bose and every

freaking. It's still they still do Bose

pamphlet. Mazda still does Bose to every

to this day. You open up.

It's like is. It to this day, Mazda still does

Bose. System.

And I'm, I'm still a Bose junkie.

I I drank the Kool-aid so. Sure, absolutely.

I love it. I have like my Bose Acousta wave

sound like like for headphones, for my airplane flights all that. But this is the other thing too,

like from the 90s cars, like for those JDM overrated Mark 4 Supros, the GTRS, but an underrated car that I I'm really surprised like the Z 32300 ZX. Yeah, they're they're heavy.

They're a heavy pig. They're heavy, but man, you can.

Those are, yeah. So and also that's the other

thing too. They haven't gone up in price

either. So they haven't really gone up

in price from a technological standpoint.

They were actually very advanced for their time.

They're very comfortable or 2 + 2.

They stylistically they they check off all the boxes for the 1990's. The downside is like there's

like gentlemen, I know he has like one of the coolest, like 300ZX turbos. It is stunning.

Like we're talking like. What is his name?

Were you going to say Labs? No, it's not labs.

He's got an R34 conversion like he's got the the RB swap.

No, he's got the RB swap. OK.

No, no, no. This is so he has a traditional

one, but he said the problem is like the Labs is cool.

Yeah, Labs. Yeah, Labs car is really, really

cool, but it's also it's different.

Yeah, No, I'm trying to remember his name, but he lives back East now. He used to be here.

Whatever the case, the whenever he had to work on, he says you have to drop the engine in that car.

It's on the unisex is. Yeah, so anytime you want to do

anything, because even though it's a front engine, you pop open the hood, it's so tightly compact in there with a twin turbo and the V6, he's like you just you got to fix this, drop the engine, fix that, drop the engine.

So some from a mechanical standpoint, he's like it's a nightmare. But I think it's a really

underrated car. A lot of the earlier models had

a rear steering at which was really swanky for its time, really advanced, but also is problematic.

So a lot of the guys who get those, the earlier ones, they just convert it to the standard rear without the steering, just like the later 300ZX is worth. I got like overrated for that

venture stuff. But like anything that's going

to turn my head aside from like the wagons, like the modern stuff, I'm granted, like I'm looking to have a family.

So I got my I've been looking at like family cars.

My Mazda's always are always going to turn my head just because all like the if you look, I follow the JD Power reliability ratings and initial build quality.

I've been following that for like the past umpteen years.

And if you look at the top brands, what are the top brands year after year after year? Toyota, Lexus, Porsche, and

sometimes Buick. Thank you.

Yeah, mine, yeah. Yeah, I just handed handed him

the bottle of Shibuya 18. So it's but aside from that, I'm

still a Porsche person. I still I still love the

Panamera. I think it's a great car.

The Macan apparently just read Today You.

Don't like anything high end exotic slash because none of nothing you've mentioned is that.

No, and it's. Even though it can compete with

that like the like the Audi. Well, right.

I mean, that's the thing. I'm like, I, I, I rather have

something that's going to. You're lost dude.

Damn. Well, you're.

Looking at family vehicles and I'm asking you what?

What do you want? But so OK if I'm if I hadn't no

budget. No budget, no budget that

matters. Like when I asked Jordan, I

said, hey, what's what's your best car in your entire thing?

No matter there's no restrictions, no crowds, nothing. And, he said, is McLaren P.

One yeah he got it. He got his dream car yeah,

because I was talking with him as well and he's like if all is his entire stable of collection that was like that was the one and for this is the things like for me no money.

I actually the Conan Sig Jamera. OK, OK, now we're talking.

So if we're talking no budget. No budget, none of the rest of

the shit matters. Family.

None of that stuff matters. The Jamera I think is one of the

most innovative cars to come out from the in the hypercar category for a lot of reasons. Is that the one that has a

little tiny motor like this that produces like 750?

Horse or they got they were going to do that, but they got rid of it. You had the IT was like the dark

matter, the Quark engine insane amount of electric power and they had like this like free valve 3 cylinder 1000 horsepower between like. This little it's this tiny

little thing. Yeah, the engineering behind it

is just absolutely brilliant, but none.

Of that matters because they got rid.

Of it yeah right. And they're going to twin turbo

V8, but so there is a OK one. There's a book series I used to

follow I used to collect every single year is called the automotive designer the car design yearbook.

And what it was is every single concept car came out in that year just like a regular, like high school yearbook.

And then at the back of it, it had automotive designers and their history and invite their influence.

There was a car, it was called a the Peugeot RC diamonds, diamonds and spades. So this is back when people are

trying to do diesel performance cars like Audi was doing their, the, the R8 Lamar car and their diesel, which was just dominating everything. So Peugeot came out this concept

car it what it was, it was a sports car, but it was a four seater and it was mid engine and it looked like 1,000,000 bucks, but it was mid performance. It wasn't a hypercar.

So it was taking all these really beautiful elements, making a really interesting design, but putting it in a somewhat reasonable package. Fast forward 30 years, something

like that. And then Conan said comes out

with the Jamira. What is it?

It has like 12 cup holders and four seats.

It's mid engine goes like a bat out of hell.

Looks cool, but but it's $1,000,000 car.

So but it it's kind of, I've always thought, how cool would that be to have a mid engine car?

It's a 2 + 2. The only thing that's even been

closed between that Peugeot concept car and the Jamira, The only thing that's been close? The BMW I8.

It's a cool car. Yeah, it's not a sports car.

Heavily flawed. Heavily flawed, but a really

cool car. Yeah, I mean, for what it is,

there's a lot to like about it. There's a lot to not like about

it. But it's a 2 + 2 mid engine

sporty car, so different I guess.

I like the weird stuff. Well, with that being said, Mr.

Forrester, thank you for coming on hard parking.

Oh yeah, fun as always. That's all.

Everybody that's. How we get free whiskey?

Dude, anytime you want to come in the studio, I got plenty to drink. As you saw.

I went into my closet here in the studio and pulled this out.

No, it's always fun to be in stock.

So tell everybody how they should be able to get a hold of you. Yep.

So you can follow me a few ways. So either go to Aaron's

Eccentric Garage on YouTube or Facebook, Instagram.

When I do make videos, I try to they're not super frequently, but try making this good quality.

And then also for TVR imports, you go to tvrimports.com also on

social media. And last but not least, Garage

Shop coffee. I got your caffeinated

performance. So garage shopcoffee.com Also

you can if you are in the Phoenix Valley, you can go to We Don't lift racing in Tempe and visit Ravi.

Get yourself a TIN. Then you get Robbie back on the

show. He's been on a couple of times

back when I had the Builders Corner segment.

He's invited me to it. Now he's in a new location.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But. He invited me to the original

location. Every time I go over there, I

kind of look around. I'm like, yeah, this is not

really where I want to set up a podcast studio.

His new place is spanky. Is it?

Yeah, and also cuz it's is it more space?

And more space. You're starting old play.

I mean I had to sit down on one of the racing seats to work from while they were working on the NSX.

I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna sit down on one of your seats you're trying to sell because there's literally no place to sit. Yep.

And the audio, the reverb and everything.

But my commitment to, to the, to everyone watching this or listening to it is to get out there more for the people in the area. Because like I did with Jordan,

right? You know, and I got a bunch of

other schedule coming up. I mean, I might as well go to

them. No, I haven't had a chance to go

see his new place yet, but yeah, he also just had his birthday and he, yeah, he. Just turned 40 I think.

Yeah, he picked up a new toy to start racing so and then he is also doing the South by Southwest track.

Festival. Yeah, and that's blown up too.

So my bravo. I love hearing like cool stories

about people who are are good, good people who are having.

He's a great guy. Yeah, he's a great guy.

So Aaron, thanks for for showing up today and it's always a pleasure to have you on. You're welcome back anytime

you'd like. I would have loved to come to

your place so we can get, you know, videos and and put them to the car and hell, maybe I'll just.

Steal all my photos off of social media.

Absolutely, absolutely. Or I'll ask you to go and send

me some stuff so I can, you know, overlay that for people who are watching the video just as they're listening to the audio. So again, thanks again.

And you've been a great, a great friend in a great contact over the years. And thank you for trusting me

with my opinion. Even if you go the exact

opposite way, which I don't know if you ever have, but I'm just saying it, you know, I don't. Know, but no I appreciate it I.

Kind of feel cool when people reach out to me and ask me about things that are going on. Yeah, thanks as well.

Hey guys, I want to thank you for stopping by the podcast.

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Now it's stripping time. Ain't nobody got time for that

shut. Up.