Vaughncast! | Hooniverse Podcast 383

It's CUNAVERSE podcast time once again today, we're joined by a guy who quit his job to go drifting

back before anybody knew what drifting was, which I respect for the wild leap, man, of

course, it's Vonn, getting Junior. Thank you. What's going on everybody? Pumped to be back with you guys.

We're actually welcome because Dan and I have been doing the CUNAVERSE podcast for a year and

changed now and Vonn, you and I did the Off the Road again podcast a couple times. I wrote it down

and you're going to laugh. It was in February 24 and it was December of 21, so it has been a

country minute and it feels like since then you have been all around the world.

Yeah, I do things. I move on, move on, shake it, but that was a fun half.

Where are we going to go today? I'm sure everybody wants to hear about

my week with the newest Subaru Outback, but I think we... How was that week, Ross?

We actually got a blizzard and we got 18 inches of snow and I've been driving through that,

which is awesome. Less exciting than the stuff you've been doing though, to be totally honest. So

we want to talk, you know, we want to talk new stuff. We want to talk old stuff and

I think Dan, you teed it up earlier when we were talking. Let's go back in time a little bit.

Vonn, you're working on some old stuff that you're making new again.

That first car, it's been like, what, 20-something years, right? 25 years?

Oh yeah, my S13 talking about. Yeah, I restored my O5 Mustang. That's back together. It's got its

2007 World Championship winning livery on it. I drove it the other day.

And I was feeling nostalgic. I mean, I still am a little bit, but I was feeling very nostalgic about

mid-last year. And I've had it on my list to do. And so I got, you know, I was able to get the team

to knock out the, you know, the O5 Mustang. And I decided that I was going to go ahead and

commission to get my S13 redone. Oh boy. As you see, we have my first ever Formula Drift car.

We just pulled it out from being stored. Yeah. Unfortunately, it's been at the paint shop

since September at the whole other story about the quality and scenario of that. But it's going

to be done here in the next couple of weeks from paint finally. And then next step is,

is going to go to Maryland to MA Motorsports, one of my first sponsors of that car.

And we're going to put a different motor than it ever had in it. Still a four cylinder turbo though.

Still a four cylinder turbo. Okay. That's going to be K.A. swapped.

Like the Mustang's interesting too, because like that's,

it's, what does it feel like when you drive it? Like it still must actually be kind of current

to drift with it or has it like evolved so much? I did. I drove it and I got out and I said

I have zero interest to throw this on the big bang. What was it, the checks you had to write for

it? Or was it just, well, no, no, it's just, it is just heavy and lazy and it's just a whole

another like timing is like so much more delayed than our current cars. Like it's,

it's crazy. Like it literally is like getting in a modern Mustang and then getting in like a 1970

Mustang. So powertrain responsiveness is one thing. And you obviously know the difference

between like how quickly like an NAV8 or turbocharged powertrain response. Do you notice

like a difference in like chassis rigidity when you bounce between all? Yeah. I don't know that I would

say rigidity necessarily, but I would just say like the setup and the way the car, it works and its

weight, you know, and where the weight is, you know, like when we built that car in 05,

we literally went through a four dealership bottle, you know, like it wasn't a race team that

built that car. It was a guy who built Mustangs in Southern California. Yeah. I mean, like I don't

even think I don't even think the motor was pushed back. I think it's like in the factory.

It's on the factory mounts, right? No plate or anything. It's just yeah, it's not even, you

know, pushed back. So like where the weight is, how the car moves. It is just like I am

very impressed with myself and the things I was able to make. You're engineering at the most

time. Yeah, with that car. But nonetheless, it was an irrespective of like, you know, the driver,

you know, wanting to be a driver and like what the best shit, the nostalgia of driving that car

for the first time in 15 years and hearing that sound again and like remembering how to

start it and like all the flashbacks. I mean, the mental stuff that I have taped up in my,

you know, up in the ceiling that I used to look at when I would start to get like

negative emotions or negative self talk coming in and how I would divert from that. Like it was

it was a really, really cool and a lot of my team that are here, specifically one guy,

one of our designers, Hayden, you know, he's been into drifting and he's he's 23 now, 24.

He's been working with us since he was like 16 and he's been watching it since he was seven.

So like him watching this car run and what it meant for him, it just it just a lot of nostalgia

and like memories and realizations of like, wow, that that is literally the car that

got me to where I'm at right now. You know, so it was really cool and it still sounds

unfreakin believable.

We had that motor built by Hasselgren. So we started out with a Sean Highland terminator

with a supercharger and we couldn't keep his motors together. And Falcon had enough and they

went to Hasselgren who was built in the Toyota Atlantic Series 4 AGs and said, can you build

this and literally gave them a terminator motor, which is for those who don't know,

it's a 32 valve, you know, dual red cam, big mod motor. And they literally on their first try

built the most powerful NA mod motor on the planet. And that was like 5600 horsepower and it held

together and you know, we ran that. We ran it from my probably 06 to 08.

It is interesting, though, how almost disproportionate the memory is to sound

over all of the other parts of motor related experiences, you know, like power delivery,

fine seat of the pants, movement and whatnot. Awesome. But like the way it sounds and the way it

like brings about everybody getting excited is such a different thing.

It's so visceral and it just raw and yeah, was a lot of fun. Thanks for asking about that

because it's really cool to think about and I have vision now to take that car and run it up

against our current cars and like a series of like tests and let it get its ass and to do it.

Like I have vision like we'll start in a turn and the current FD car,

I mean, it is going to be miles apart. That's the evolution of technology and engineering.

Yeah, but so there's no situation where the old car might have it above the new car,

like in a slalom or like some kind of test, right, where the old car really shines

versus the newer cars that as the whole series has evolved to have as the sport has evolved,

they're, you know, they're all purpose built. So there's nothing you can kind of come up

with that might might give that one a win. Wow. No.

There's not one thing that that car would do better than our current car.

Wow. It's probably the same as the street Mustang, too.

Oh, yeah. I mean, if you took a 05 Mustang to a current Mustang, it's not even a discussion.

So so anything breaking and celebrating turning.

Let's let's play the three line game here because obviously RTR has become

since the last time you and I even talked RTR has really, really done well for itself.

And shit, you've done well for it. But the RTR for collaborations, do you

and I know you're like obliged to say yes, but are there ways that you've taken those

experiences with past cars that you've won races and, you know, had huge experiences with and

and use them to impact the cars that people can now walk into a dealer and buy?

Look, I'm not obliged to say anything. That's good. Yeah. That's good.

Yeah. I mean, I will always say it as it is and give the perspective. And

you know, what you just said is something that like I take very serious, you know,

you know, when I started RTR, it was literally for no reason other than I wanted to

inspire a new generation of Mustang. I felt that, you know, I was not a Mustang guy growing

up. We just talked about me building my first S13. And when Ford debuted the O5 Mustang and like O4,

it was the first Mustang that I was ever like really attracted to.

I remember that Steve McQueen commercial and I was 15, but I was like, wow, okay.

Yeah. And so I, you know, when we went and bought that car and built it and I started

campaigning it, you know, when I started like hooking the car up, I realized there was nothing

that spoke to me, you know, and, you know, two years of driving the car and getting

integrated with the community of Mustang and, and, you know, starting to talk to Ford,

I just like, and there's like, we got to do something to make these things

cool to my generation, to that next generation. And, you know, I had no business plan,

no anything, right? That's basically, you know, long and short of why I started RTR,

of just a passion to do cool shit and inspire a generation of Mustang. And,

and, you know, fast forward now, 17 years ish, 18 years has come. You know, the,

I'm now the same kid that, you know, had hot wheels pried out of his hands at five years

old to take rings down my parent's aisle at their wedding. I'm still the same kid playing

with hot wheels. They're just bigger. And, and also my big hot wheels also are able to be in

thousands of people's driveways. And so I take that very serious when we are creating. So the

collaboration with Ford, you know, we have our spec vehicle line. Those vehicles, you know,

basically started $70,000 and go up to, you know, 160, 180 with our spec five.

And so the opportunity to collaborate with Ford was a dream of mine since I started RTR.

And when the opportunity, the Mustang started, you know, I had this opportunity in 2014 with Ford,

but the opportunity was basically a partspin car. And this opportunity of the Mustang that we just

announced, the EcoBoost, was really the opportunity for us to take what Ford has done amazing and

really enhance it for an entry level, enthusiast focused product. So I can't disclose pricing.

It will be out like in the next, you know, very, very soon because OK to buy is coming

for that product, but it is a really well contented vehicle for the price point.

And I can say, you know, EcoBoost now are under 50 grand. This car is going to be well

under that, you know. I just want to thank you. And I want to thank you for bringing OK to buy back

into my vocabulary. I haven't heard that in a couple of years. And you have to dive in.

Dan was a Ford buy for that. I was actually going to ask, like,

did you approach Ford? Did Ford approach you? How did that first call go?

Well, we've been partners, you know, at this time. I mean, this program started in 2023.

Yeah. You know, it was there was no mistake that like they knew I wanted to do something

like this at some point. And so but when this opportunity came about, you know, it was there,

they presented it to me. And I was I was like holding back my excitement in the moment of like,

we're doing this two years ago. My RTR team and I embarked on a secret project with Ford.

My whole life has been chasing my passion. And like my purpose is like is I really believe is

like putting smiles on faces, whether it's to entertaining through driving or content or creating

vehicles for people to have fun in. And that creating can be, you know, working with Ford and

creating the drift brake. It can be giving feedback on Raptor or Bronco or creating our own

vehicles. And so to go back to my long wind and answer your question,

everything that is in this brain goes into our vehicles where possible. You know what I mean?

And I have an amazing, amazing team. But it's like the little knobs that, you know, I am a

lifelong enthusiast. So the little knobs that we turned on this and the Bronco RTR,

the other collaboration vehicle, are things that only Ford can do. You know, when we get a

spec vehicle, you know, our spec vehicles are amazing. You drive one of our Mustangs, our Broncos,

they're capable, they're fun, they look great. You know, obviously I'm a little biased, but

like we do the things to make them what I would want it to be. And what I believe

other like minded people would want it to be. But when you collaborate with Ford,

we're changing software that I can't even get to. You know, the Mustang has a unique in track

mode, has a unique stability strategy that allows you with just a single press instead of a full

advanced track off, it allows you a bit more yaw. It allows you to get a bit more sideways.

You know, we were able to get and stiffen the suspension up. We went into the parts

ban and stole dark horse suspension parts, sway bars, bushings. I was able, we were able to put

any lag in the car. I knew Ford had any lag strategy. That's beyond what most people would think,

like any kind of collaboration. But you're right, like it does, it speaks to enthusiasts. I

remember when that whole announcement came down, I was at the company at the time and

there's a lot of non enthusiast people at the company that just they make it go.

It blew my mind. I was like, it's got any lag. It's got a drift break. And I had to explain to

people, like, no, this is really awesome. Like this is you never would think a large company,

especially one that can tend to be conservative sometimes would would do something like that.

And the fact that there's an eco-boost that a normal person can aspire to. It still might be

a stretch, but it's not out of reach. That's where you're going to get the next generation

of enthusiasts. So I love that they played ball. Yeah. But it wasn't hard. The group we

had was so passionate. And really, Dan, if you worked at Ford, there's such a great group

of passionate people at Ford. And we extracted that passion collectively. And it was a really

special program. It was very scrappy. And everything that we did was purposeful.

We're at the proving ground and I started driving the car and we had a set duration

of what we wanted to achieve for someone that would go out and go drifting. And I noticed that

you pick the throttle up too much and you go to get back in it. There was just a little too much

lag and the timing was just not intuitive. You had to pick the throttle up before you wanted

the car to go for it to work. So I complained about that and then that's where we got that idea.

And then we were starting to get some temperature cuts because of the low airflow,

especially doing figure eights and smaller slower movements. And so that's when we went and

got the highest powered fan that is possible. We used a steering rack from, you know, the steering

rack that has the most steering angle possible. So we increased, I don't want to don't quote me,

but I'm going to say we got like five to 10 extra degrees of steering angle.

That's a lot. That's a lot. That's a lot. Yeah. It's a lot. It's just a lot of vehicles.

Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not Brazilian, it's a drift car, but it can drift. You know,

this is the ultimate enthusiast car. If it wears the ready to rock badge, it needs to be ready to rock.

Backroads, twisties, drag strip, drifting, whatever you want to do with it. I'm not going

to tell you it's going to beat any lap time, but I'm going to tell you that you have the ability

to have more fun than you could imagine in any of our vehicles. And so all this stuff came

from my learning of racing. And that is the road to race story from, you know, that those vehicles,

you know, the collaboration vehicle. And, you know, we can definitely get into Bronco.

Yeah. Let's talk about the Bronco. Well, you start. Okay.

Oh, sorry. Before we go there, first, I was also going to say you have your own RTR

Mustang psychodeath machines that are, you know, they take that platform and they go to

like the end of the world. And it's like full kill mode. And we shouldn't ignore that because

that has a place in the world too. Well, the good news is we make sure that our vehicles are

very linear, meaning the suspension doesn't really have a knife edge to it. The suspension and

the suspension and tire package that we choose is, you know, not the grippiest and we're

not set up to go set rack, you know, track records. And if you wanted to do that, you can adjust it and

put stickier tires on it. But the car is very intuitive for an owner. I feel very responsible

when we sell a spec 3 with 810 horsepower and a Ford racing supercharger, you know,

I feel very responsible in the way we've developed these vehicles. And

to your point, you know, we want to have something for everyone. And now this collaboration

with Ford, we now have the ability to be in dealerships all over the country,

all over North America, I should say. And for those that want more, you know,

then they can step into our spec program, which not the brag, I do want to just say

I just got my, in fact, this will be the first time I publicly shared this, actually.

But I have my color sheet for my spec five that I just ordered.

So our spec five is our top vehicle. So this color, we call it urban bamboo.

It's like a yellow, right? Like color shift. Yeah, color shifts. It's like a gold, green,

blue. And I don't know if you can see it, but then I got champagne, like light champagne colored

wheels. This is what all of our spec five owners get. And we literally just started building

spec five. So mine is, this is what I got to approve it. And it's in the queue. So

very nice. But you know,

but yeah, it's a beautiful car. And it's, you know, our spec fives every time we do a generation

of spec five, that's kind of like the pinnacle of our performance in representing us in that time.

And this car is so well refined. You know, our previous gen, the panels, the wide body at

exposed hardware, this is all integrated. You know, it's not molded in, but it's all, you know,

hidden. And we did a metal tooling for the composite. So it's like literally comes out of

the tool ready to paint. You know, I've got an unbelievable engineering team that really,

you know, does, does it the right way and takes, you know, mine and our, you know,

Lindsay, who's our lead designer and a 20 year friend of mine, we challenge them very much.

But again, it's, you know, it's like, I'm not interested in just, you know,

doing things that don't make an impact. And I'm not driven by just dollars. Like,

it has to tick the box of like things I would be proud of. I take it very serious because

automotive culture has been so important to me that if my creations and the things that I do,

you know, content racing, whatever can inspire somebody to engage in automotive

culture or get a car, go to a race and even have like automotive culture affect them,

even a small percentage of what it's done to me in my life. Like that to me is like the bigger

picture of everything that I do. And I've met friends, made a business, met my wife through

my love of cars. You know what I mean? And so that's all that I'm just curating, you know,

and, and, and the things that I'm doing are just a result of that.

It's like every kid's dream, man, it got like, get your own sort of signature line

of high performance cars, like you get your name on the dashboard, you know, it's like,

we all grew up with like Shelby and that kind of thing. And it's just like, yeah, good job.

Thank you. It is, it is crazy. And I'm often reminded what rare air that I'm in, you know,

I'm so head down, ass up, doing the thing, you know, that I rarely get to step up, except when

I had these combos and someone like yourself who worked at Ford knows these things, you know,

says something, I'm like, damn, you're right. Okay. Exactly. So I want to talk about Hammers.

Yeah, I was gonna say, we really want to talk about Hammers. Yeah, I want to talk about the

Bronco. So let's do RTR Bronco. So yeah, obviously, Vaughn, you've really gone headfirst

into the off-road stuff and taken the Bronco five years ago. We didn't even know there was

a Bronco five years ago. So yeah, so here we are. Now there's an RTR Bronco. Yeah. Well,

it's, it's kind of like, it's what happens when you have an off with your Mustang and you go,

actually, that was kind of fun. And you find the right car for it.

Well, that's how I got an off-road. I just drove my Mustang in the grass and I'm like,

all right, I got, you know, I started out of motocross. Even before drifting,

I was racing motocross. I mean, you know, as a teenager for a long time, actually. I wasn't a pro.

You know, I was a winning C-class rider, mid-pack B-class rider and, you know, and then there

would be a, and then there's pro-pro. But, you know, in, I think it's important to explain

how I got an off-road because a lot of people are still kind of surprised, even though I've

been doing it now for a decade. But in 2015, I was on the beach in Jamaica and Nitto offered me a

opportunity to go race King of the Hammers. And I was like, you know, I'm on the car,

I literally remember I'm on the beach, feet in the water. And I'm like, is that that race

with like, you know, the desert and the rocks and like, and they're like, yeah, I'm like,

yeah, let's try it. You know, it sounds like fun. And, you know, little did I know I was going to

be hooked after that. And the year that was 2016 and 2017, I showed up, you know, 365 days later

with a classic bodied Bronco, classic Bronco bodied race truck and was really committed to

starting a race. That's how I got into off-road. And, you know, RTR, you know, I personally and

Lauren, my teammate in the RTR off-road team, you know, we were obviously, you know, fast forward

2019, 2019, we were working with Ford and roughly 2020, I think, you know, we're

doing durability loop testing with the Bronco team. And it just made sense for RTR to get

into Bronco. So we built our spec line and then ultimately, you know, after the Mustang collaboration,

the opportunity to do kind of similar mindset with Bronco came to fruition with Ford.

And, you know, we just debuted that at the Detroit Auto Show. And the vision was very similar

to Mustang. Hey, how do we take all the things that we know and create a RTR vibe, right? The style,

the bright color options, the looks, you know, all the things that we are known for and make a very,

you know, conscious, enthusiast focused entry level Bronco. And we did it. And this thing is

freaking badass. And it was very similar to like the mindset of the Mustang. Okay, what are the pain

points? So boom, two, three, to keep the price point down. First of all, second of all, I love the

two, three. It is noticeably lighter when you're going through the works or when you're balancing

on rock. Yeah. I mean, we just built Bailey Campbell, you know, one of our drivers, she

she just joined us here, right? Yeah, last year we brought her on, but this year she had her new

truck. We've been building her since last year. And that 4600 class that we race at King of the Amherst,

that truck is a two three. She beat me by a second in qualifying and I had a two seven.

It's a regular, it's the regular two three. Does it have the motorsport too, not at all? I mean,

it's got tons of potential stock, but you'll be able to add and I don't know what else to

say, but I'm gonna say it. I have a prototype turbo kit that we're working with Ford Racing Parts

on right now that will work for the Mustang and the Broncos. For the two three? Yes. Google tells me

that like naked without any accessories, it's like 125 pound difference between the two three and the

two seven. It's certainly noticeable. Whatever, whatever it is, it's definitely noticeable in

the vehicles. It's why we transitioned on the race truck. And because a lot of people are like,

well, why do you why can't you get the two seven? And it's like, again, price point,

you want a two seven, you can go to our spec vehicle, you want a three liter,

you get the bad ass Raptor, like you're not beating that vehicle period for the price point.

Yeah. And you know, similar thing. What's the challenge with this? We need to be able to

have fun longer. Okay. And Ford engineering team said, well, let's use the Raptor 1000 watt fan

to help, especially in a low speed high load. So we put the Raptor fan on it. We got the Raptor

steering gear on it. So it's got the strongest steering gear that you can get.

We points of the Bronco in low speed off-roading, especially rock rolling up and

steering and heat management. So we're able to make make those improvements.

Definitely added any lag to this as well. Bronco with any lag, it's so unbelievably different.

And the thing is, like when you're off road, right, there's nothing worse than like

the millisecond, five millisecond, whatever you pick up the throttle and it's

there's a little bit of a delay. And this just keeps it right there, right? So mid corner exit,

you know, you're in the whoops and you're like timing things and you need that power to get that

skip. Like it just makes a big difference. That response makes a big, big difference.

We're also able as a base vehicle, it comes with 33s, but also has the high clearance,

the highest clearance suspension. So you don't need Sasquatch to get the higher ride height

on the Bronco RTR. The other thing that in base, you get the widest track width.

By the way that we engineered the wheels, you don't need Sasquatch to get the wider track.

You get the wider track in our base vehicle. So from a base perspective, you get

all the looks, which obviously we love the poppy colors, but you can make it tonal if you want.

B-Lock capable wheels and base comes with the Bilsteins. If you go to Sasquatch,

you get the Fox internal bypass. I love the wheels, the Evo 6 and the Tech 6. I can't pick my favorite,

but I do love the wheels. I think it's probably the Evo's actually. I just think they're

the sharp. Yeah, I love the Evo and that's why we went with it on this. And this is a

B-Lock capable wheel. So it's rock ring from factory and then you can dismount it,

mount it, and then the rock ring becomes a B-Lock. Just like Raptor. This vehicle

is the most overall capable under Raptor. And the customer for this vehicle is not a Raptor

customer. And it's just so cool. Ford and Ford Racing products right now, it is a really

amazing time. Again, I've been there almost 20 years. It is amazing time because the energy

around the product, around the opportunity, around the customer experiences, it is just

really cool shit that's going on. And yeah, I'm just pumped to be a part of it and pumped

to be in a position that I can help curate the product that fellow fun havers can get

their hands on. I always just watched so jealously with what at the time it was Ford

Performance, what they got to do, how much fun they had. And they work really closely with Roush

and just that. Those were the people that I wanted to hang out with at the company. It

seemed like you had a really good time. I do want to come back to the vehicles that you

internally build yourselves. What was that like sort of setting that up on your own? What's the

what did you have to do to do that? Because you've got paint, you've got assembly. That's a big

undertaking. Yeah. Yeah. Well, when we started RTR, it was dealer installed. I launched a brand

at SEMA in 2008. And at the time, it was really just bootstrapping. I was spending anything

I made in motorsport, which wasn't much at the time trying to like get this thing off the ground.

And it was all dealer installed up until basically 2023, where I was able to get

what's called bailment or fleet account with Ford to where we were able to get

allocation of volume of vehicles and then build them. And so I was kind of stuck with the situation

of like, okay, now I really create a problem because how am I going to build 500,000 vehicles a year?

I don't have the space here. The cash flow of the inventory and all the things that it takes

to do this. And so we ended up partnering with a group by the name of Fox Factory.

They purchased a lot of the old upfitter companies back a while ago. And so they

have three plants that do these types of builds. And so I'll save you the trials and tribulations

from 2008 until 2023. But it was just a lot of hustling and figuring it out and a lot of

realizing what it was like to be in the car and automotive industry. And I really just built

the brand on the coattails of all the things I was doing and just made sure to keep it authentic.

And I didn't have a million dollars of marketing budget. We still don't do that. It was just

very organic and authentic connecting it to the things I like doing. And when customers

would be around, we'd tell those stories and it's grown over the past 17, 18 years.

But 2023 is kind of like a turning point. Like what do we do? And I've said multiple times and

it's like I'm not fully driven by money. I just want to do the cool shit. And so

rather than going and getting a $50 million loan on my head, we went and partnered up with

Fox Factory and I retained ownership of RTR but basically worked with them for them to manage

the things that they had infrastructure to manage, the inventory, the building of vehicles,

the painting of the vehicles, the distributing them to the dealers, the 40-person sales team.

And so I basically structured our business to where we can continue to be like the dreaming,

designing, the engineering, the marketing, the experiential arm if you will is what we do here

in Charlotte. And then once we develop a product and get it ready for manufacturing, then we work

with Fox Factory and get it all executed. And so that's been, we've been doing that now for

two years. Last year we did just over 500 Mustangs and two or 300 Broncos and we're

expanding and there's been a lot of learnings but we really have a really good team working together

to evolve. This stuff is not easy at all. You can build one car, like one guy in one garage,

you can build one car, it's a whole different ballgame to build even 10 cars is hard.

Everything has to come in at the right time. So it's amazing just to see it go in volume.

So here's a potential tough question. I'm going to throw a good one at you.

So with Ford, with the Bronco, you produce the vehicles with like, so I'm a huge tire nerd.

That's ultimately what matters the most off-roading. So that's, you know,

that's my crux of existence in this world. So the Bronco RTRs are Goodyear tires,

right? They're the 33 inch. So collaboration vehicles with Ford are Goodyear tires.

And then your RTR vehicles are knit-ups. Do you have like this crazy internal conflict about

that or do you find like a way to, you know? Well, the reality is, you know, in Ford

collaboration world, there's a lot more to consider, right?

It's a validation. It's the time of validation. Even think about changing a tire. Then there's

the supply. Then there's the shelf life approval. And Nitto at this moment, you know, is not a

validated approved or production product with Ford. So, you know, when we were doing a

collaboration vehicle, I focused very much on the things that could be done within the time

frame and that we're going to make the biggest impact to the customer while,

you know, keeping all the goals, you know, in check. So, you know, yes, I'm very loyal. And I love,

I love Nitto tires. I mean, I've been working with them and running them since 2013.

And they are a great partner. And they are, you know, for the enthusiasts.

I think in 2013, I had a set of OG, the first gen Terra Grafflers.

How do you remember the tires you had in 2013? Because

you know, grip is literally everything when you have a truck with open front and rear diffs and no

center diff. Yeah. Yeah. You know, grip and not getting punctures is everything. But yeah, you

know, it was just one of those things. I was, you know, this is what it was. And the truck

works. Great. You know, I absolutely love what it is. You know, again, it's tough because I,

of course, I want to put, you know, Nitto's on everything, but we have our, you know,

spec vehicles and that's where, you know, that's not a collaboration. So we get to say exactly

what we're doing 100% on that. And we have our own validation, you know, and I don't have the,

you know, the, you know, the, some of the challenges that Ford does and why they have

their processes, you know, the way that they do. So. And so the Hammers Bronco is running what?

Nitto's. Mod Grapplers?

Truro Grapplers. Okay. Yeah. So how are you going to set us? You're going to, you're going to,

you're going to get a set and I'll be like, no, that would be woefully over, over my,

you feel like Vaughn has these for my daily. Yeah. But yeah. So, so Vaughn, how's Hammers?

Hammers was freaking brutal, dude. Well, you know, I did three races out there. So I went out to do two.

Lauren took a little digger on. Because Lauren was on, I've recorded a few shows with

Lauren and I love Lauren. He fucked himself up. Jesus. Did he not?

Yeah. I mean, he wasn't bad. He just wanted to rest his body and his head from the flip that,

that happened. I wouldn't say he was wrecked. Like I didn't really notice much. But, you know,

at least we, you know, he was honest with himself and he just wasn't feeling 100%. He asked me

to race the desert race, which I did. And we got second place to Brad Lovell and the F-150 Raptor

and I was in the Bronco Raptor and, you know, four racing America's racing team showed up and did

their job. If I could say it, but, you know, then we raced the 4600 on Friday before the big

race that you really want to talk about. And that was a great race. You know, I started

the race. Lauren finishes it. I do the desert lap. He does the rock lap. It helps us

conserve our body for the next day. And Lauren's better than me in the rocks,

especially with a short wheelbase truck. He has a lot more experience. And then that day,

Friday, oh, speaking of Friday, that's the day that they gave us the freaking third lap of 4400

race course. So we really had no idea what we were getting into. We spent all week pre-running,

which this was their plan, by the way. And then Friday, they dropped the course on us and

they're like, oh, yeah, if you want to go hike and check some of these out, you certainly can.

And so it turns out that hammers raced this year. So 4400 unlimited class, they literally

put us on lap three on buggy trails that had not been broken.

Yeah. So what's that like to you? Because like the trails change. Like

you walk them and then by the time you're driving on them, they're different.

Well, these ones, we didn't even walk because they gave it to us Friday and we had to race Friday.

So we couldn't even go look at the trail. So the first time that, you know, why didn't even make

it to lap three? Because I broke a front drive axle, our CV, and I had to make the tough decision.

I broke that. Then I smoked my winch and I couldn't no way make it through the next three

trails that would have gotten me to pit where I could fix my truck. So I had to

kill the race because I was up in the front and I didn't want to be a trail plug for everybody.

So I made the unbelievably responsible decision to just call it, which was so freaking hard, by the

way. And for context, I don't know if people know how much or what king of the hammers is,

but this is the race that you see people driving over other trucks and winching over

other trucks to keep going. So it's easy to be a trail plug.

Yeah, totally. But with three drive wheels and no winch, I was sure going to be a trail plug.

Now it's all eyes on Lauren. I'm out like the middle of lap two and I jump in a Bronco

Raptor and start chasing a race and chasing Lauren. And he's winning the race. He's got

a huge gap winning. Then he's not, then he's winning, then he's not, then he flips,

then he flips back over. It was just a crazy race and they put us through these trails

that were absurd. I mean, there was this one trail. I remember watching this.

I think it was called Bob Heen. And you basically go up this canyon and then you

make a laugh and you go up another canyon. And then if you looked at the thing that you

had to come down from the bottom, you wouldn't do it. But it's like this. So you come,

Lauren's perspective, I literally watched him do this. He drove up to this and then he backed up

because he thought the GPS line was wrong. They got out of the truck and they looked.

And yeah, bro, you had to drive down that. Like it was, I think it's called Bob Heen. Yeah,

I think that's what it was called. But it was, it was just insanity.

The last lap, it was just insane. And Lauren ended up losing the race. Ultimately,

just basically because of our winch choice. And it's not, not Warren's fault,

but prior to this race, we only had to run, you know, pull the winch maybe once, twice,

three times in a whole, in a whole, you know, race. Synthetic or cable.

You know, synthetic rope, but we were running their RC series, which is like a rock crawler.

It's a small winch. It's like 8,000 mile winch. And it works. It'll move the truck,

side by side. You had the winch, you know, and so we both burn our winches on them.

And that ultimately, you know, then he had to drive really hard because he couldn't afford getting

stuck. So he's driving hard through really big rocks and just ended up catching catching a rock

and punctured his transmission. Yeah, here's a which with the armor on the bottom of these

things, the rock that he hit, I still haven't seen it, but it's got to be freaking insane.

Something that people probably also don't realize about the nature of

like rock laden trails that you get at Johnson Valley or, or even rock crawling in the northeast is

like one truck will go up and then by the time the next truck lines up, it might be a completely

different line or trail that you actually have to square up to. Yeah, you go pre run and the

lines are all different rocks are moved. You know, people are wheeling 24 hours a day in these trails.

That's the right thing, right? Like in the morning, it goes all night. It's like a 24 hour event and

there's a stop racing. It's just a huge amount of people. Hammer town floods out and yeah. Yeah, it's

it's cool. It is a really special event. I mean, the community and the culture that's

going on and people out there, I mean, it's amazing the amount of, you know, raptors out there having

fun Broncos. I mean, it's so cool to see all these vehicles that I know forward and forward racing

are putting so much effort into just out there being used for what they're meant for. I love

that so much. And they really did like they went hard at at racing since about 23.

Their goal was hey, we want every weekend, there's a Ford vehicle racing somewhere around the globe,

at least in one series, multiple series. The Mustang is really one of the big platforms for it,

Raptor 2 and VH supercars. The old Mustangs are really getting hard. Two years, three years in,

it's paying off, right? Like it's you're just seeing a lot of a lot of fun. Like, you know,

you got to have an excuse to go back next year, right? Because so want to do better.

So what what haven't you raced? What racing boxes do you still want to check at this point?

Um, man, I'm doing the things that I want to do right now.

There's not I mean, I'm really enjoying off road right now. I'm still doing some drifting.

You know, we obviously are campaigning to drift cars with Ben and James, and I'll show up and do

two rounds this year, which I'm excited about. You know, I'm really enjoying, you know,

my efforts at Baja, you know, desert racing versus rock racing. I'm having a lot of fun with that.

You know, Lauren and I have commissioned a trophy truck. So we're I shouldn't say commission,

but you know, we we have our process where we work with our chassis guy, Igor,

Triton engineering, and then we bring it to our shop and work our magic on things.

Do you like Dakar? So yeah, I think Dakar is cool. I just I don't have the time. I don't

have the interest to dedicate the time that it would take for me to be where I'd want to be with

it. That is a very time consuming initiative to prep. Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot. You know,

and it's same like same with NASCAR was like, oh, you should go do NASCAR. And I'm like,

and the amount of seat down time and understanding and engineering connectivity that just too much

get a seat in the trucks areas. And you'd probably have less fun than you're having to another

shit, you know. Yeah. And like, I love enthusiast events. So I don't want to like be locked

in to like chasing something, because I want to be able to go to like the hyperfest and the

grid lights and the, you know, be on the ground with my people just having fun, you know, and

so for me, like I'm doing exactly what I want to be doing.

You know, I can't tell you one thing right now with racing beyond exactly what I'm doing that

I'm like, I really wish I could do that. That's a really cool thing to say because it's nice to

be living the dream, you know, literally. And that's that's what I'm doing day in, day

out. And that could shift in the future. But right now it's, you know, racing on and off road,

being a awesome father, halfway decent husband. And, and, you know, working with

with Ford racing and, and, and Ford and developing cool products for, for fellow

kids.

Grayson is four and Gunner is good.

Yeah, that's, that's Dennis to Dennis to, and I have two. So minor, minor a little older,

but it does get in their blood. The, the, the, the roar of the eight and the, the kind of

excitement of, you know, like Ross was talking about the snow. Snow does this magical thing

where it reduces the coefficient of friction. So you can have the kids in the car and you can

drift around and parking a lot. They enjoyed that when they were little, they do. I took my

three year old daughter off roading last month and she loved it. So they like a responsibility.

Yeah. Yeah. They love it. You know, my, my youngest is a little more

like wide open, like they both, you know, Gunner's got a four wheeler. Grayson's got a

PW 50 on training wheels and Hunter's a little more reserved. He's still down and like when

he gets comfortable and confident, like he pushes hard, but it takes him a bit to get

there where Grayson is just, let's go baby. Yeah. No. So I know we've, we've taken

like an hour of your time. I have one last question for me. I don't know if you've

got any extras Ross, but I was thinking, uh, you know, you've got, got the spec five and that's a

super high performance, kind of very exciting deal. And Ford itself has the GTD. Now,

what do you think those would be like back to back and have you actually have you try it?

Well, I'm the owner of the GTD. So, so how do they, how do they stack up?

Yeah. Um, and you would,

I mean, you know, if you're, if you're exploring to see, absolutely. I mean, the GTD is a race car.

Right. The GTD is literally a race car that was built into a street car. It has a,

you know, DCT transaxle. It's got a fully custom rear subframe. It's got massive amounts of

down for suspension. It's got fully custom double A arms suspension, front and rear,

you know, hydraulic suspension that drops and lowers it. I mean, you know, it's also a almost $500,000

car. So we're really not in the ballpark, but that being said, you know, you put the vehicles

next to each other and it's your opinion, what looks better, right? So aesthetically, right,

both the wide body, both have their very unique design and very different cars.

So that is up to personal opinion. Right. Um, you know, if I'm being completely honest,

I may be biased, but like when they're both next to each other, I look at the spec five and I'm

more attracted to it. But when I look at the GTD, which you might be able to find online,

it's lead foot gray. I've got hyperlime accents. It's definitely on my Instagram page.

Um, but when I look at the GTD, I have some freaking race car, you know, and it looks awesome.

Neither car looks bad for sure. They both, they have, they definitely have a look.

And when it comes to like driving experience, you know, um, you know, the GTD is

it make you feel like a freaking superhero. You know what I mean? Like I used to own a

Ford GT and the driving the GT or the GTD I feel to me is a more visceral, better driving

experience than that super car. Um, and the spec five is, is also, you know,

equally as raw minus the DCT shifts. So the, you know, the spec five is 870 horsepower.

The GTD has 810. Um, and the spec five, you know, can actually pull on the GTD,

you know, on a roll, right? That's where the horsepower comes in. And the spec five

might even be a little bit lighter. Um, but you know, look, if you're looking for a pure

performance track car, the GTD all day, if you're looking for, uh, you know, um,

30, you know, uh, a third of the price street car that can go on the track.

For ADM. Allegedly there's some real ADM going on with the GTDs.

Oh, it's like probably the dealer markup. Added dealer markup.

Um, I mean, I'm pleased that both exist. I don't have a, I don't have a preference.

I just love that they're out there. Just it, to me, it's interesting that the comparison.

Um, and there's, there's so much potential in the Mustang itself. And the GTD is,

is so specialized to me that their subframe is my favorite part of the car suspension.

So let's do Mustang knownism for a quick second. So the S five 50 and then S six 50,

the first Mustangs that have actual real suspension, the actual modern suspension.

Where do you notice the difference in the in more suspension that the GTD GTD has the most?

Is it like rough surfaces? Or is it like in the corners?

Oh man. I mean, it's really hard to like, to dial in what you're feeling based on the

cantilever suspension in the rear. You know, it's, um, you know, it creates a one-to-one

motion ratio. So like the connectivity with the car is like one-to-one the connectivity.

It's not, it's not like you're not getting like, it moves linear.

Okay. So when a shock or, or when an arm, you know, goes through its arc in a standard

suspension, wherever the shock is mounted, will create the motion ratio of the, of the vehicle.

So a motion ratio could, you know, change, but this is like a true one-to-one. So for every,

you know, movement of the wheel effectively, um, as I understand it, you know, basically the

shock is moving that much. So the connectivity of the vehicle is, is so and, and, and I

could be misstating that, but that's my belief. Like the RTRX has cantilever suspension, but that is

like a one, it's like a one, two and a half to one. Um, so every inch and a quarter equals one of what

the shock is feeling, but I believe the GTD is basically one-to-one. And so, but irrespective

of that, it's really hard to, to decipher the car because it is just so dialed. The

response of it from steering is, it is just like it's crazy. And like the drivability that they were

able to get into this race car. Now, don't be wrong. Like you're bouncing and it's a little rough on

the road, but like it's still very drivable. I literally drove it to the thing I told you,

I went to the Ford Racing Emerging today at the Technical Center and I, and I drove it there

and I had one of my team members with me and they just the whole time were just like,

can you believe this thing? It's like, yeah, maybe a little rough, but it's, it's a race car

that goes on the streets, starts every day. You can sit in a traffic jam, won't overheat,

like it, like that's the thing. It's not just the parts, it's how they're put together. Uh,

yeah, it's, it's 100%. I mean, it's a fully re-engineered race car that they put into the

Mustang, you know, and, and the five starts out as a Mustang and then we add our suspension,

you know, our full coilover suspension, sway bars, everything's designed to work with each other,

you know, forged wheels, um, the wide body and then obviously supercharger, interior and, and,

and all the bits, you know, so, you know, two amazing vehicles. I'm a proud, soon-to-be owner

of both of them and they'll both have two, you know, two purposes in, in my life and I

can't even believe you. I'm saying that I have both of those cars.

A babysitter for a little while, I don't know a place.

Give me up. Yeah.

I got, yeah, that would be no joy. That would be a, there would be no forward progress.

I got two questions and I know we're, we're all tight on time.

If you were to do a car that isn't a Ford, where would you turn your efforts?

I would do my own car. Oh, you just like ground up totally.

Would you take a chassis and, and turn it into something that you'd like, you'd really auto

I think, I think that I would probably, I probably would focus on that my development there on the

chassis and body and then use existing powertrain. Okay. So use things that are known to function.

I'm never going to, I don't see myself making the investment to be able to do

my own engine development, transmission development, drive line development program,

but I could see us developing a chassis and, you know, chassis body, creature comfort.

We've seen that. What company was that had like the, you could buy like a standalone chassis

and then like plop a raptor body onto it. What was factory five? Of course it was factory five.

Yeah, but like, you know, like, like Pantera, you know, like, like, you know, that, that,

that is a cool example of like something I could, I'm not saying we are doing, I'm not

saying we're not, but that's something I could see us doing one day is like partnering, you know,

to, to like, you know, take some of Ford's greatest stuff and then put it inside of a

chassis that we create. Now, I think that would be a lot of fun in one day. But yeah, that sounds

good. Ross, what's your second question? What was your next question? The 2026 docket. What

you got going on? Yeah, so mint 400. We are so we're doing that race. We're going to go to Moab

for off road safari, Lauren and Bailey are racing Ultra four there.

Form of the drift season starts in April. I'll be doing Atlanta, which is second round this year,

I think, and I'll be doing the last round in Long Beach. I'm really excited about, you know,

the Mustang RTR Bronco RTR with Ford coming out. So we got a lot of, you know, initiatives,

you know, to, to work around launch with that. We are working on some new product here that I

can't speak about, but some new stuff product, which I'm really excited about. It's a vehicle

we've not done before. That I think people are going to be really excited about how many driven

wheels it has. It has four driven wheels. Yep. And it will be lowered and it's not a Mustang. So

okay. Yeah. So that'll be that'll be really excited about that. We've got a time attack

program going on with Misha Shardone and in, you know, the guy many people know from driving cars

at the Nurburgring. So he's got a spec five that our partner Unitesta in Europe and he worked

together to build and we're going to evolve that. And he's going to be doing time attack with it.

So yeah, I'm really, really, really looking forward to that. And, you know, spending some

time with the fam and just continuing to follow the compass of fun and cool shit.

Oh, yeah. Whichever way that sounds like that's like the best corporate plan I've heard in a long

time. Seriously. We try, we try over here. Well, great. I'm a lot of questions and commentary.

I appreciate the time that you have with us. Anything else you want to pitch plug? I feel

like we've come to the basis. I just want to thank everybody for the love, you know, and the hate.

But no, like it, you know, the support that I get and when I meet people on the ground that,

you know, just their excitement around what we're doing. It just it feels really cool to be

seen. I don't do it for that. But like when it happens, it's like, Oh, that's really cool.

Like that impacted this person. We impacted that person just by doing what we do. And so

I'm very honored. I feel very grateful. And yeah, let's let's keep having fun friends. Oh,

yeah. And by the way, if you were one of the jerks at Chocolate Thundered King of the Hammers

throwing fireworks, starting fights, throwing beer cans. What? Yeah, let's let's be better

representatives of culture. We're not rapping yet. What happened? Idiots. Idiots show up.

They literally shut down. They literally shut down Chocolate Thundered because people were going

there starting fights, just creating a bunch of drama. They literally shut it down. And it was

on the desert weekend. I mean, I've never seen that happen normal the regular rock racing

weekend. So it seems like it's a different crowd. But it's just like, man, like we're at this

government recreation area where literally you can do whatever you want all night long.

And you know, the people going there are there for the same reason. Like,

right? It just it was crazy to me and very disappointing. And so we're we're better than

that. And, you know, if anyone in the culture sees it, call them out. Let's not make this a cool

thing. Let's make sure that we shut it down and and, you know, respect the respect people

respect the areas that we're, you know, able to play at. So anyway, that's my tangent. That's

love. Thank you. That's respect. There you go. All right. No, thank you so much. We'll have to do

this again some point soon once your schedule calms down. Yeah, man. All right. Sick y'all.

Thank you very much. Oh, nice to see you. Thanks.

Vaughncast! | Hooniverse Podcast 383

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