Connecting Car Enthusiasts: The Story Behind Collector Car Guide (CCG)

Rob Parr - Founder / Publisher for Collector Car Guide (CCG)

We are so grateful to the many business owners and managers who cater to our local industry with roots in showing and/or racing their prized vehicles back in the day or at present. We were fortunate to add more of these local experts in the new, improved version of CCG. We are uniquely the only resource that screens our sponsors before accepting their ads so you will be just as comfortable calling any business within CCG just as if a friend referred you by word-of-mouth.

Contact: Rob Parr at collectocarguide@outlook.com | 240-365-6200 | Visit Online!

        

The episode features Rob Parr, the publisher of Collector Car Guide (CCG), a comprehensive directory and resource for car enthusiasts in the DC, Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania area. Rob discusses the origins of CCG, which evolved from his previous venture, Maryland Pet Gazette. He highlights the significance of community and trusted resources in the automotive world, explaining how CCG helps car enthusiasts find reliable vendors, events, clubs, and more. The conversation touches on the different formats CCG offers, including an annual printed guide, a dynamic website, newsletters, and potential future additions like a marketplace for classified ads. Rob also emphasizes the importance of supporting small businesses and fostering collaboration within the automotive community. Listeners are encouraged to visit the CCG website, subscribe to newsletters, and pick up a copy of the guide from various locations.

• Where did the idea of CCG come from? What’s the origin story?
• What’s the purpose of CCG, what types of services do you offer?
• Let’s unpack “Recommended Vendors” + Events Calendar, ability to Advertise, etc.
• There is an annual publication (the one we picked up) – but you also offer a monthly newsletter. What types of topics are discussed/covered in the newsletter?
• What new and exciting things are planned for CCG in 2022?

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Break Fix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the autos sphere, from wrench, turners, and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of Petrolhead that wonder. How did they get that job or become that person?

The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.

Crew Chief Eric: Sometimes you might feel like being a car enthusiast is a lonely place. In reality, the automotive world is practically the only industry today where you can almost instantly form strong bonds with fellow hobbyists in short order.

But there’s so many events, clubs, and gatherings to choose from. How do you know which one to pick? That’s where Collector Car guides steps in as the ultimate reference for car enthusiasts in the DC, Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania area. With us tonight. To expand on that thought is [00:01:00] CCGs publisher Rob Parr.

So welcome to Break Fix Rob. Thank you Eric. It was a pleasure to be here today. I have to give a little bit of backstory. Why are we talking about the Collector car Guide? And it just so happens I was visiting one of our sponsors, happens to be Auto Fab. You know my favorite fabricator and I saw your annual magazine sitting in their display area and I had one of those.

Wait, what is all this? Moments and when that happens, I know there’s a story to be told. That bright yellow cover definitely got my attention and I was flipping through the magazine. I saw listings for vendors that I knew, clubs, all sorts of information and motorsports organizations that piqued my interest.

So I reached out to you and, and I, my first question, like many episodes is, where did CCG come from? Where’d this idea come from? What’s the origin story behind the collector car guide? It

Rob Parr: is a kind of complicated answer to that. It was kind of a threefold answer. I’ll try to bring it all together for you.

Back in 2002, I founded something called the Maryland Pet Gazette, and that is what we call the ultimate resource for [00:02:00] pet. So printed directory for pet lovers, and I’m gonna segue into it, so I’m not gonna talk too much about that, but there’s a point to me bringing that up. And the resource became highly popular and it became the first place pet owners would go for reliable pet services.

We’re located in vet offices, animal shelters, groomers, boarding, other locations. Although we wanted to remain a popular niche and it was going very well for many years. Started to wane a little bit back in 2018, so I started doing some analysis, what to see what was going on, and discovered two important reasons, a majority of our readers for that publication where between 30 and 50 in demographics.

So the second thing was the industry, and it’s going on also in the car, in the auto industry, is consolidated through buyouts, mergers and acquisitions. So you don’t see as many the the small parts stores, for example, some of ’em are getting bought up by larger stores happened in the pet industry as well.

I decided at that point to just strictly go online. It’s still online today on the Maryland p.com. But also I’ve been in the cars, I mean, since the mid eighties and in fact, when I was in college. [00:03:00] I started my own mobile detailing business, so that was, you know, something I, I had back then different cars.

I had Volkswagens muscle cars and even a Corvette. Participated in car shows, dabble in racing and auto cross back in those days. But I was not very handy with as far as repairing stuff goes. I could do small things most complicated. Everything I ever did, which I messed up, was a replacing a radiator in my 70 GTO.

Anyway, so with occasional repair work needed and my limited mechanical ability on a 70 GTO and a 70 Buick Gs convertible, many times back in those days it was a young guy walking into a shop. Maybe they saw me. I figured I was an easy target, whatever. I was ripped off for work. I did not need a, a recharged for actual work or mechanics would break something on one of these cars bring forward, back into 2019.

When I came up with the concept, I was actually here locally, here in Westminster. We have a. VFW and they do like a Friday night type of cruise pretty much every week. And I, I actually overheard a conversation between who two hobbyists, one guy was [00:04:00] asking about where can I get parts for certain parts from my car.

I can’t remember specifically what they were about, but I remember the questions and one was looking for parts. The other guy was looking for events going on in the area. As he spoke to each other, they each did not have a clue as to what, where to go for either of these things. Hit me over the head like a sledgehammer.

Had an epiphany. Why not provide a vetted reference guide for car enthusiasts, just like I did. Marilyn Peck that for Pet Love. So that’s really where that stems from. I’d like to consider myself more like the Henry Ford where I connect everybody. I’m like the conduit, so to speak. That’s probably the best word I use.

I’m not really per se my myself an expert like some of these other people are. But avatars write the articles. I’d rather them write the articles. They’re more of an expert than I am, especially in certain fields. And that actually by itself and, and just like with the pet publication, has steered people to the website.

Obviously we’re online, like we have SEO, like everybody else, social media and connections. Just so the demographics on this, so, you know, the printed guy is, is really between 50 and 75. The majority of the readers are, and even I’m within that category and I still would like to use a [00:05:00] printed copy versus going online.

Although I have fully access online, most of these guys have smartphones and they know most of the features of those phones and I don’t know ’em all myself. And, uh, luckily I was able to sell my wife on it. Gotta have the, the better half behind you, you know, she said, Hey, that’s a great idea. That’s where we go.

That’s how we, how we started. That’s the origin of the concept. And now we have two issues in already. So I’m working on my third annual

Crew Chief Eric: chock full of information and we’ll get into what’s in there, what services you offer and how it all breaks down. And I tell you, you know, I mean it definitely got my attention.

And like I said, when things get my attention, and I’m not saying I know everything about everything, there’s something there. And this is awesome. And you know, this is coming from a petrolhead to other Petrolhead. And that’s what’s important is you’ve got the discerning eye of. What needs to be in here, but also being a publisher yourself, having worked on other pieces, other magazines, et cetera, you know how to lay it out.

So as I went through it, I was like, man, this is fantastic. This is great. You know, how do we get involved? How do we get people to understand what it is that you’re trying to do? So let’s expand upon [00:06:00] that. You kind of gave us the background on the magazine itself. There’s two pieces to this. There’s this annual magazine as well as your digital newsletter and the website itself.

So when you put all three of those together, what types of services does Collector Car Guide offer?

Rob Parr: Okay. So yeah, the Annual Guide is really a reference guide. So the idea with behind these is basically to have something for reference. They’ll read it when they get it cover to cover, like probably you did yourself, and then they’ll file it somewhere, maybe their glove box or in their garage with their OR service manuals.

So when something breaks, they have it right on. They have something and they can hold in their hand and it’s a one stop shop. On the relevant articles in here, things that, you know, not everybody thinks about necessarily, but are important things. And then it gives me the opportunity to list all the clubs, like we have like over a hundred clubs in here and by category or, or by make even my model in some cases like Ford Mustang or versus just Ford in general.

We have some overlap where you have the, if you go onto the website and you look at. In the different pages we have there, I want, we [00:07:00] have our mission statement, which basically is my mission because of my background. I wanna steer people literally in the right direction. That’s kind of like a, one of our slogans we use, pun intended.

Yes, right, exactly. The idea is everybody, I’ve vet everybody before I put ’em in here. There’s other publications. Out there. Some are good. You know, you’ve heard of Hemmings, I’m sure, or a national company. They go across the United States. We actually all around the world when it comes to buying parts, things like that, the emphasis behind a whole thing that we, even when you go from just a printed guide to the, to the website and through newsletters, through subscribers, is to go within a two hour range.

There’s a lot of people in our backyard that can do the work. People like, like I have probably heard of stories, and you see shows on, you know, MotorTrend for example, on tv, and they’re going halfway across the country to get this thing done and across three states farther away from something else. And it’s fine, but.

The thing is there’s a lot of good experts in our area within our re I call it like rather call it a region, even though it’s local. It’s somewhat regional too, because I’ve got somebody all the way, [00:08:00] believe it or not, down in North Carolina, I’ve got Breaker racing who’s pretty famous for rear differentials and they do other things.

They build chassis for clients, things like that. So that’s probably my furthest one. But they were more like more nationally known and I’ll probably get some more of that. But most of the. Emphasis is on the local small business. And the other thing is, that’s part of the mission too, is to help the small business because I’m all, I’m a small business guy and, and I believe in entrepreneurship, so I wanna help promote the small business.

The bigger companies, they may not have the expertise that the smaller guys have. I’m not saying they don’t. In some cases, most of the time if you deal with, you walk into a mom and pop shop and he’s got a business, let’s say he is got a machine shop and he is been there 25 years, that guy knows what he’s doing.

He’s been there a long time. He’s got a reputation, but

Crew Chief Eric: well, like our favorite fabricator auto fab, I mean, right. There you go. You know, I, I recommend them constantly. If somebody ask me. Where do you get this done or where can you get a cage done, or, I need a custom part. Made you go to Auto fb. They’re in this area, right?

They’re in this journal and obviously your book was on their shelves at the shop. And what I like about the CCG is, [00:09:00] as you flip through this and what really caught my attention is. It’s not just, you know, a Yellow Pages type of thing or a bunch of articles that are slapped together. It’s really a nice blend of different genres inside of the car enthusiasts and Motorsport world.

I wanna stress the and Motorsport world. I mean, obviously there’s vendors in here, there. Some of our sponsors listening here, like Battery Warehouse and Auto Fab and, and others that we’ve worked with in the past. But then there’s also articles in here about, you know, liquid paint versus powder coating.

Right? Really technical. There’s an article in here that I saw when it was in Dvo Ganger the first time, right? The PCA Potomacs Magazine about. Restoring an air called Porsche. There’s actually a racing guide in here for the local drag strip. The ovals, one of these shots is actually from NJMP. From SCCA, you know, things like that.

So as, and, and I actually really was intrigued. You guys had a review on the Quick Jack, which is, I actually own one of those, so it’s. It spans the gamut. And so every time I flipped the page and I [00:10:00] saw something that either I recognize or knew about it, put a smile on my face. And obviously a lot of these things are local.

So for anybody that’s tuning in in California, they’re like, eh, yeah, whatever. To your point, it’s all in one spot. And this is super useful. It’s like, Hey, let me flip through here and, and one of the things that got my attention, again, places to get non ethanol fuel, like we talk about that a lot with our classic car guys, and they’re like, Hey.

Did you see that this sheet now has, you know, ethanol free fuel and you’re like, let me scratch that down. Lemme write it down. It’s in the C, C, G, you’ve already got it listed here. So that’s why I find this to be a great Cliff’s notes to the car enthusiast world and this is a great resource to have.

Rob Parr: Well, thank you.

I appreciate that. And hopefully people will consider like you, like a Bible and at least within this region, that they, if they need anything, that it’s available here. And actually that one of the things we’re trying to do. To expand is we want to continue growing our category list online as well as in the magazine.

There’s some overlap between the two. If you go online, [00:11:00] you’ll see if you go to a recommended vendors category or online, you’ll see a lot of these guys. Advertisers are by category, kind of like we did in the magazine. A little different in some ways. When you go to look at each of the examples, it’s more.

The book is static. Even though it’s great, it’s static, right? Whereas online, we can update it. We can take an advertiser’s ad, we can add photos if they wanna add them, we can have links to the, you know, I think through social media articles, we can link to articles, videos. A lot of these guys, not everybody does YouTube, but the people who do have YouTube videos, we can link to those.

Have a map to the location, so it’s a little bit more, I guess you would call that interactive. Absolutely. You know, more than anything else. So that, that’s an interactive way to get through. The younger crowd generally likes to email more today than they do to pick up a phone. I’m a, I like to pick up a phone, but there’s direct dial on, available on mobile devices so that they can do that.

Direct emails, you know, this way they have a, you know, a way of getting in touch by other means besides just the, the phone. Some of these guys that run these shops, they just don’t have any face time with the public. Some of ’em are in the back. Some of the guys, absolutely. These guys are, they’re prepping cars to get painted.

They’re doing [00:12:00] machine work, they’re doing other things. They’re not, some of ’em aren’t as people. People like we are. They’ve either got a front person in the office or they don’t have anybody. And the only way to get in touch with them is to email. I think over was an example. I can’t remember the gentleman’s name that that runs it, but I had to email a couple times before I could actually speak to him because he is usually not in the front of the office.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh yeah, yeah. They’re brazy busy and that shop is like a maze. And you know, people are always amazed. Being involved in the motor sport and car enthusiast world for so long, there’s some of these shops that I walk into and I just wave at the people and I go straight into the back and my friends will go with me and they’re like, wait, what?

And I’m like, I’ve been coming here since I was in diapers. I mean, gimme a break, you know? But yeah, to your point, the guys that are, that are doing the work are oftentimes in the back, not at the front of house, you know? But those are the ones we wanna connect people to because they’re the ones that their name is on the door and they’ve built these vehicles, you know, whether they be race cars or show cars.

Re restorations or whatever they can be of help. And a lot of times it’s like those commercials you [00:13:00] see on tv. Well, if you know, then you know, in this case maybe you don’t know. And this is where something like the CCG gives people a leg up to say, Hey, they’ve been vetted. These are what other automotive enthusiasts are saying are reputable shops to go to.

And, and when I looked at your recommended vendors section of the website, especially, and I know it’s in the book, but obviously the website’s gonna be more dynamic and more fluid. This is gold right here. This is your go-to spot. Just like we talk about for track days, we talk about h hpd junkie.com, right?

That’s where you want to go for that nationwide schedule. Of all those track events, the CG is the other side. Where do I go to find that part for that, you know, DeSoto or Ed Solar, you know, whatever you might work on next. I’m being extreme here, but the idea is that. You’ve got a resource, you’ve got this place, you know, a one stop shop for all this information.

So recommended vendors isn’t just it for C, c, G. You guys have got some other stuff going on with events and the ability to advertise and stuff like that. So why don’t we unpack [00:14:00] that a little bit for our listeners as well.

Rob Parr: Part of it is we have a list of clubs that are generic in here, and it’s a little more than a static listing in the magazine.

Eventually we’ll probably have. A list of all the clubs, but right now, at least to start off, is, this is still in its infancy. Of course. At least there’s some information because I really believe that everybody should consider joining some kind of a club out there because the, the resources are, are tremendous.

There’s an old slogan, I think it started with. Horse Club of America. What We came for the cars, but we had the friends were what we, it it, it did, it

Crew Chief Eric: changed and it became, it’s not the cars, it’s the people. That’s it. So they shortened it.

Rob Parr: Yeah. So that’s right. Now the Corvette Club says it also. So, and then we have to pick and choose because being a different interest in different cars, like I personally belong to three clubs.

I approach all these people and they all want me to join their club. And some of ’em gimme. The guy from the Cadillac Club, I think his name’s Vinny, gave me a free membership, which I never asked for, but I, I love Cadillacs too. I love them all. You know, maybe I’ll hang out sometime with one of their events.

We wanna give everybody the opportunity to see what’s out there, because a lot of people don’t know

Crew Chief Eric: about these clubs and there’s a huge upside to that as [00:15:00] well. I recently kind of was reintroduced because of COVID. Right. You know, being home and watching the races. I went to the petite Lamonts and I had forgotten that there’s all these.

Car corrals at these bigger races, especially like IMSA races and things like that. Even if Formula One races, they have this kind of stuff and you walk in and if you show your membership card, even if it’s digital, like, oh hey, I got a BMW, you know, membership, then you’re suddenly, Hey, come on into the BMW corral.

We got, we got food and we got drink and you can park your car over here and all this kind of stuff. And so there’s this extension of benefits. That a lot of people forget. It’s like, well, why do I want to join the club? I tell people all the time, join SCCA, even if you’re not a racer, support the Sports Car Club of America and by proxy, if you go in there, there are discounts for major vendors for being an SCCA member, whether it’s for breaks or it’s for tires or for whatever have you.

It’s worth its weight in gold when you [00:16:00] hook up with these clubs. But if you’re not aware of them or you’re trying to spin up your own, which is fine too. I mean, if you wanna be the the North American Eco Boost Ford Flex Club, I mean, that’s fine too. That’s fine too. But you know, it’s gonna be a small market.

But looking at some of these bigger organizations that are established, to your point, you’re gonna find friends. Whether you want to or not, but you’re also gonna have resources and the ability to exchange parts, and that’s huge. And we’ll probably expand upon that more here as we go along with the conversation.

But I didn’t wanna derail you, so keep going.

Rob Parr: Absolutely. You’re, you’re educating me as we’re speaking right now actually. And I, one of the reasons I was really interested and intrigued and, you know, connecting with you, Eric, is the fact that. You have resources I’d like to bring to, to our readers attention, especially the racing side, where you have guys that may want to, they’ve never raced before they, but they wanna try it, they want, they wanna dabble in that a little bit.

We wanna give them the opportunity to do it. So I’m hoping I can expand with your help in this racing section. Maybe have a, a separate page for that also. On our website.

Crew Chief Eric: Absolutely. And that’s, that was the whole impetus behind our [00:17:00] first season, was introducing people to what we call different disciplines of motorsport.

Have you ever heard of autocross? Do you know what a rally cross is? You know, what is HPDE? You know, all those kinds of things. And so those kinds of explanations, even though they might be basic for the veterans, is important to these folks out there that are now picking up CCG for the first time and going, well, what is an autocross?

How do I learn about that? Where do I learn more? And it’s really important that we foster that educational layer for car enthusiasts because without your guys’ help, you know, all these listeners that are tuning in, Motorsport dies. So we have to keep the interest going and it stems through not only just the sport, but through the clubs, the parts, the vendors, right?

We are all part of an ecosystem and we rely on each other to keep it moving.

Rob Parr: And this actually is a good segue to, you asked me about our newsletter, kind of a byproduct of the fact that we want to keep building this thing up in the news. Having a regular newsletter, be it monthly or whatever, is a really good opportunity to keep the eye on the [00:18:00] ball for all of our subscribers and bring in new people in, obviously, obviously helps see.

SE as you’re trying to generate more traffic to your website. Of course, part of it also, you mentioned SCCA, but I think also everybody should consider joining CMA as a member. I agree. Because CMA really behind all this and is trying to protect us because right now, and this is something that specifically this month in, uh, in February, we’re gonna cover a couple legal things that just came.

One is in Maryland where they’re trying, they wanna tax everyone with, with a car that doesn’t have go three emissions. So that’s an condition exempt, probably heard this the first time, so I just got something from them. So I’m broadcasting a, a link on there. I actually went online today to contact all the state senators and Maryland General Assembly.

As well as the, the representatives or the, I guess they call ’em delegates, make them aware of what’s going on. ’cause a lot of times the times they pass this legislation not knowing what’s going on, some of it’s because they’re political, but also because they really don’t know, you know, what are the ins and outs of all this and how, who are you affecting?

So everybody’s got one collector car that’s not getting emissions test is gonna have to pay $14 every two years. [00:19:00] Which doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but it just adds to the difference. We already have to have special rules. If you have certain tags on your vehicle, collect the street rod tags. Et cetera can only be operated specifically at, at certain times and whatever.

Now, I don’t know if people kind of bend the rules and they don’t worry about it, but still you, you don’t wanna have more restrictions. Bringing this to the attention of all the, the enthusiasts is important. ’cause then they can get involved. You know, it’s also, we have cool things on there, like spy photos or like links to spy photos.

From different sources out there. We, we’ll give them credit of course, you know, fun stuff on like at the, uh, show. We had an East Indoor show. We, I participated in that with folks at Motorama do that. So there’s a couple photos on I Candy we posted up on one of our, uh, social media sites we pointed to. So that’s really good to keep in front of people and have, also have something to look forward to on a regular basis.

And obviously this being a slow time of year because it’s winter, people aren’t thinking about really cruising around right now. Although they are, some of ’em are working on their winter projects. We found out during COVID that that was a huge thing and actually the auto industry did better. Some of our clients actually like Gunther’s [00:20:00] Machine.

Jeff said he had the best year he ever had during COVID. They didn’t have anything to do. They were not working, or they either laid off or they’re working from home. They had spare time on their hands so they could work on these projects. So they’d bring him different things to work on. They motors, whatever, and he’d do it for him.

So he had a really great year. Something continuing to further, this is always a better thing. Absolutely. That’s where the newsletter, it points to our website. Absolutely.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s an efficacy to the newsletters too, because I see it a lot on these different social networks that we’re a part of where I’ll recognize an article.

I’m like, oh, that came from PCA’s newsletter, or that came from Chris Bright’s, you know, CPX newsletter. This came from, you know, Rob CCG newsletter and, and it goes around and. These articles make the rounds as much as a lot of people are like, well, it was in a spam folder and I missed it for three weeks.

There’s many of us, like myself that I’m, I’m reading these, I’m looking at these automotive journals and that’s how I’m staying, you know, up to date on a lot of this kind of stuff. Right. And it’s, it’s really fascinating and granted. You could make the argument, well, we don’t live in the automotive industry, [00:21:00] but if it’s your passion, right?

All this stuff is important. Just like you were saying about the laws changing in the DMV about emissions and collector cars. I mean that’s important to a lot of us that do have multiple cars or that our car enthusiasts, we just did an episode last season where people of my generation, you know, not too far off yours, I’m not, not dating us and placing us just yet.

They’re starting to turn their eyes now to say, cars are the nineties. Are they collector cars yet? Is it time to invest in a car from the nineties? So the nineties cars are now on that edge too, of do they go to emissions anymore? Are they considered vintage? You know, especially here, dc, Maryland, Virginia.

What does that mean? So the point that you’re bringing up is really important for somebody that might be going, Hey, you know, that old, uh, nineties Lexus or Toyota Supra, or whatever it might be that I’m thinking about buying to do a restoration on. You know, now you have some other things to think about, some other things to consider.

It’s all very relevant. It’s just, you know, how do you capitalize on people’s attention and their time? Right. We’re, we’re constantly being bombarded by [00:22:00] information, but again, as a reference guide, the printed manual’s awesome to have. The website is dynamic and it’s being updated. So I guess that leads us into the next question, which is, how does someone contribute to Collector Car Guide?

How do we become part of your world? Help build out your website, get your name listed there, get your information out if you’re not already on the list. How does that work?

Rob Parr: You know, it’s so funny because generally as, as a, as a role I’ve been in sales for, since before college, I’d like to get some more inbound uh, sales because 95% of the sales I have are.

Me going out there knocking on doors, being aggressive without being annoying, so to speak, if possible. They call that

Crew Chief Eric: gen generating pipeline? Yeah.

Rob Parr: Correct. I pretty much generating my own, I, they say, I always go by the philosophy. If it’s to be, it’s up to me. Obviously, if I can get enough feelers out there on, on the, on the web, get more interest, you know, but I, yeah, obviously it’s getting the name out there, getting the feelers out there.

Obviously I’m open to talking to everybody, but again, they have to contact me. Then I go and do my own. Background search on them, going through my [00:23:00] sources, the people I know that I trust, some of ’em are who are in the guide. Now, also going online, checking reviews are for valid reviews, not just just any reviews.

’cause there’s a lot of fake reviews out there. And I wanna give everybody a fair shot. They have to be at least a four star though if I go across different things like Google Reviews and Facebook and some others that I trust and I can come up with, you know, the fact that they’re, they’re a decent company to deal with and like for example, there’s a company on the Eastern shore that wants to advertise.

Everywhere they can and their restoration company. I won’t, I don’t want their money. I don’t want, I don’t wanna have anything to do to do with them. They advertise in other places, but I, I won’t take it because it’s all about reputation to me more that’s more important than the money. Because being a hobbyist myself, I wouldn’t send somebody anywhere.

I wouldn’t go.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a fair statement.

Rob Parr: It’s so basically it’s one of those things where I wanna share a good experience and also very important. We wanna send people to some place that it’s gonna be the first place to go. And the only place, I can’t tell you, of all the shops and people I deal with, how many cars they’ve had from, you know, other places that have messed something up or whatever, and they, the guy spent a hundred grand, now he’s gonna have to spend more money because they have to undo the work that this other place messed [00:24:00] up and start from scratch.

So they’ve been better off not going there at all to begin with. Part of it is also education. People don’t realize, I wanna get a, I want a 70 Chevelle. I mean, that’s a very common car that people want, right? They had it when they were a kid or. Whatever their dad had one. The thing is they have no idea what, how much, how the time and energy it takes to put that together to build a car, even if it’s street worthy.

I’m not even talking about show worthy, I’m talking about street worthy. It could be at least a hundred thousand dollars to start. It goes up from there when you’re looking at rates of a hundred dollars an hour or more. Some of guys are getting $150 an hour. That money gets eaten up so quickly. So a lot people will do it because it’s a passion, but generally, most of the people that are subscribers, they car, they’re enthusiasts and they’ll, they’ll spend the money, they don’t care.

Personally me, if I wanna get something from my car, I’m gonna buy the best part I can find. If I can find, like when I got timing and chain cover from my Buick, a few years ago we redid the, uh, we had to rebuild the water pump and all that. There’s two companies out there. There’s TA perform. He was a nationally known company, and then you got another company was Chinese, and the Chinese time machine cover was $300 and the other guy was five 50.

I said, he’s [00:25:00] made in America. And I read reviews. I’m, I’m going with that guy. And I called the guy. I actually talked to the owner, which I was really impressed talking about contacting people. Mm-hmm. And I wanted, I said, I gotta compliment you. You have a really good product. I said, we installed, I’m not a mechanic, a good friend of mine’s a mechanic.

And he, I assisted him putting this, this part into the car, replacing it was. Perfect. In fact, he had improved the engineering on the product. So, you know, like, just like the quick Jacks getting the information about why are they better than, why are people spending the money on this product versus some other product.

So an education process. My job, I feel, is to help educate people. And some of ’em may already know this, and some of this might be, you know, no, no big deal. Some of this might be over their heads and they have no idea. So where they, how do they get started? Where do they go? I’m looking at an article here called Restoration Roadmap.

Solving the new issue here. So you, you gotta get people a starting point so they at least know people that are breaking into this hobby. Like you’re talking about guys, look at the nineties, well, maybe they really weren’t car enthusia, but they love the specific car back from the nineties. Well, now they have an opportunity to maybe look where, what can I do?

What are all the stages [00:26:00] involved in in taking that corn to a restoration?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, and all those TV shows you watch on, you know, and I’m not poking fun ’cause I love ’em all the, what I call restoration shows, like on motor trend and History channel and stuff like that. They make it look so easy. It’s like wave a magic wand and suddenly that rust pile is a cheves, you know, Barrett Jackson car.

Well that doesn’t happen overnight. That takes. Upwards of a year, if not longer. And to your point, probably a hundred thousand dollars to do that. Now, if you watch roadkill, that’s probably closer to what you and I could put together on a budget, you know, is grab a car to the junkyard and it barely gets to wherever our next location is.

You know, and, and there’s variance in between. But the reality is. Every journey starts with a step, right? To borrow that particular phrase. Making the right first couple of steps is super important When you’re starting a project like this, especially when you’re talking about a restoration, building a race car, I mean, I’ve said it time and time again, I have wasted enough money to pass on my knowledge to other folks to say, [00:27:00] don’t buy this part.

And it’s not because it’s an inferior part or whatever, it maybe doesn’t hold up to track use and abuse or the heat or whatever. It’s a great part for the street, and I’ve already wasted my money on it. Don’t go down that road. That’s part of that whole idea of sharing of information, and it comes down to the three Cs, right?

Communication, collaboration, and cooperation, and that’s what helps the automotive. Enthusiast world, continue to move forward is us working together, talking, sharing stories, experiences, you know, and helping each other out. Again, I applaud you for putting all this together, but let’s go back, you know, here I am, vendor A, I’m hearing about, you know, CC, G for the first time.

I want to become part of your world. I wanna advertise. How does that work? Do I just get a spot in the magazine on the website? Both. What does it cost? What are we looking at here? If I wanted to advertise outside of the vetting process, I mean you, you explained that really well. What’s the next [00:28:00] step once you go, Hey, yeah, this looks good.

Rob Parr: They contact me. Usually I like to speak with someone at least by phone, preferably if I can meet them in person, because this is a very visual, as you know, with the magazine and even looking at the website, uh, even on a smartphone, it’s a very visual thing. And they, there’s different, they can get involved specifically in the magazine, solely in that they can go online an ad with us just strictly online or they can do.

They get a significant discount with both. The minimum thing I recommend, uh, someone gives a bold blue listing in the magazine, which I believe starts about 2 45 for the year. We give everybody rates and annual, and is an annual because for me, as I do all the sales, I have to work the book by area. So I’m in different areas in different times.

So right now I’m working in specific area. Today I was, I sold two ads. Actually renewals. My goal is also to keep our existing advertisers happy. The other thing we do is something specific to advertisers I didn’t mention before. I also like to give each of the advertisers, depending on what they do, some breathing space.

So if there’s two machine shops that are next to each other, it’s first come, first serve. As long as the reputation’s good, I’ll only put one in. I won’t put the other [00:29:00] guy in. So, you know, again, it’s to try and help them maximize their benefit ’cause they’re making an investment taking a risk with me and I wanna help them out in re in return for that.

It’s very important and I, I wanna stress this and anybody contacts anybody in here, please mention, collect their car guide when you call ’em. ’cause a lot of times people don’t mention it so they don’t realize they’re getting any feedback and then they may think, well, maybe I’m not gonna do the ad next time.

So sometimes I feel like I’m going two steps forward and one step back because if I’ve got now, I’ve gotta get somebody else in here instead. Like I said, I’m trying to expand it. It’s, there’s a little bit of headwinds when it comes to trying to keep the people in the magazine. Some people, like I said, actually most people do, they do not do their due diligence to see, really see how they’re doing with, and the other publication the same thing.

They’re really do, they can anecdotally, they can get a feel of like, well, I’m thinking that business going up. I’m not specifically knowing it’s, it’s this or that, but I know things have improved. I’m thinking it’s doing better. If anybody’s got a little bit of business consultant working with them, they, they have some way, even their accountant or something can give ’em a little bit of leeway as far as.

You gotta evaluate what you’re doing here. Found that [00:30:00] most people work in the business, but most, most people do not work on the business. Important thing is that they’re in the right place. And what I tell people, you gotta advertise to the right audience. It’s some people feel like you’re throw enough ’em out against the wall, something’s gonna stick.

But if it’s too generic, it’s too far out. For example, on a popular AM radio station and the Baltimore area, I hear of, uh, one advertiser advertising certain things for cars. Now I talked to the guy before about this. He’s throwing, he’s telling a ton of money. I assume he is getting something out of it.

And you know, especially if you’ve got a limited budget, put your money into the vehicle where you’re gonna get the most bang for your buck, your, your audience. In other words, who’s your audience? Anybody out there who wants money, who wants to make money and be very successful and they’re chasing the dollar, they’ll take anybody’s money.

And that’s really where most of the publications are out. They, they’ll take anybody’s money. They don’t care if their reputation’s bad or not. The, the money’s more important to them. So, but I think that there’s a good meld here where you basically melding in the mind to speak where you have the right people in the magazine or the online, on the resource, and they’re speaking to the right people on their lending, their expertise [00:31:00] to those enthusiasts and getting them in the right place.

There have been people in the past where they’d want to advertise, and I’ll say, I, I don’t know if I’m really right for you. There was a guy who did like work on homes, but he wanted, he liked the guy he wanted to be in. The only thing I could do to bring somebody in here who’s not in the automotive field is make him a sponsor on our OR club page or something.

But generally I want to keep it specific to the industry. That makes sense. So I, yeah, I generally like to meet people and that way they get a feel of me at the same time, see, make sure it’s a good fit, and then see how I can help them, because. I’m a very visual and I can take an ad they may have done or look at their business card and figure out how are we’re gonna work in this space to get your message out there.

I’ve got an ad here from, uh, it’s called PCS Power Coding Specialists. Mm-hmm.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s

Rob Parr: a small ad, it’s an eight page ad. It’s very well done. It gets right to the point, isn’t it? People don’t have to have the largest ad to get the best re response. I’m also talking to a guy right now who’s an artist. He just got, Shelby gave him like the licensure for their logo, which is huge.

He might be better suited. We have like a couple spot ads on our website. I could put ’em under Art in the magazine and put ’em under art [00:32:00] online. The categories under recommended vendors, but because that’s not something people normally look for, I think maybe he’d be better for a spot ad on our homepage.

People see it right away. You know how people get diverted. Oh, that’s kind of cool. I’ll click on that. And then the next thing You’re on his website. Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: exactly.

Rob Parr: I wanna feel them out to see what I think is best for them based on what they do and how they’re gonna benefit. I always believe in putting other people before me because I want them to benefit first.

I, I’ll get paid eventually for doing the right thing, but if I put other people first, then. Give them what they want, then that’s really the bottom one to help them out.

Crew Chief Eric: Full call ads in the magazine, ads on the website, stuff like that. Obviously there’s a cost associated with the ads, but let’s just say you wanna get your club listed, or you wanna get your event listed on CCG or better still, maybe you’re an aspiring author or you wanna republish an article as part of the CCG website or even in the next annual.

Is that something that is available to folks and how do they go about that?

Rob Parr: Good question. So basically I call that free stuff. My goal is to help the close builder memberships up. I’m hoping they’ll, they’ll embrace our [00:33:00] resource and as a result of that, but Club Listenings are free. The events are free. I have a guy who helps me out, his name’s Tammy.

He helps me out get the, uh, list, gives me lists of events, and I also put some on myself. And we try to do it on a list so it’s more efficient to get ’em all at one time. Uh, he’ll give me events maybe up to two or three months in advance, depending on who they are, where they’re located, and so forth. Then I’ll, I’ll kind of enhance ’em a little bit if I’ve got a flyer.

I can pull somewhere, I’ll add it so they can click on the flyer for more information. That’s free. So like most people, we, we are always looking for content. Unfortunately, with the printed magazine, there’s a limited page count. I have to limit the articles to the people who buy the ads because space is such a premium.

It’s like real estate on a monopoly board and park place and Boardwalk. You gotta make everything count there, right? So there’s free stuff in the book and I don’t mind putting free clubs listings in here. Some of the larger shows are in here. I don’t put all the little show. To me, a car show is great. It doesn’t matter if there’s 25 people or a hundred people there, but we only have so much space in there.

So I usually tend to put the larger events in there. Carlisle Events is one of our sponsors, [00:34:00] so you know, obviously that’s a big type of thing. Tens of thousands of people that attend their events. But online I could do a whole lot more. There’s no limitation on space. We just started a blog on, on our website.

We’re obviously taking advertisers. We’re allowing them to provide additional, if they have blogs or they want to, we’ll post them up there. If there’s somebody else that’s got something, I’m happy to, to put it in, maybe link it on our newsletter. So there’s different ways we can get their content up. If they wanted to contribute something, I definitely would.

You have to consider who they are and so forth, obviously. And at the end we usually have to give a credit to the, the author, and then if they’re an advertiser, we’ll link to their website or if they’ve got another classic auto mall. We just posted their blog up there about. Doing estate planning, working with your collector cars, you know, that’s something people think about this time of year.

I thought it was relevant to have that up there. There’s like a little link that goes right to their add on on our website that you would find on their, uh, the recommended vendors. Yeah, I’m always looking for, obviously more information. I think another thing is the racing side of like. I’d like to get more with your help.

I think I can get that and I’ll be giving you credit [00:35:00] for anything, any contributions you guys would wanna make. And I know you’ve got your own stuff too, so that’s cool. And we can help contribute to that, share some information. I think it’ll be valuable.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, we’re all part of one big car enthusiast, happy family, right?

So we’re happy to share. And so wherever we can make that partnership work and we can make it grow, obviously like we’ve been talking about this entire time, it’s all about collaboration and working together to support each other and keep this hobby, label it as that, you know, strong, alive, and vibrant.

So that’s awesome. I mean, it sounds like there’s a. Bunch of different ways for people to get involved with the CCG. Obviously, you’re coming to the table with past experience as a publisher with a successful version of this in a totally different genre. So repeating the formula, not a bad thing, it’s just getting people’s attention and it’s about awareness.

So that’s why we’re having that conversation. But that does lead us into, so there’s been two of these annuals put out. They are annuals, so they come out once a year. What are your ideas for the future? Is it gonna come out more? Often expansions of the website. What are some things [00:36:00] you’re thinking about now that you’ve gotten through your first year and change of the CCG?

What are some lessons learned and and what does the future look like?

Rob Parr: Basically, I, like I said earlier, I’d like to expand the categories. That’s a big deal. I don’t know if the magazine, because of the way it’s. Set up is part of the thing is the way it’s published, the way it’s printed, is the fact that it has to be done in certain page counts.

You know, so the first magazine was at 40 pages, and the second one, the one you’re looking at is, is at 48. So it depends on, you know, who’s in the magazine, the size of the ads, how we lay it out, like putting three puzzles together. Online is obviously more open, but as more information becomes available to us information and as in combination of the two, we can make the magazine larger.

You know, obviously I wanna have more people in different categories online. There’s some other things I’d like to add. Uh, I was thinking toying with the idea of doing some type of, uh, and I don’t know if this is gonna work or not, maybe having some kind of a marketplace online. It’ll be a very small charge to advertise.

Let’s say somebody had. Set of wheels they wanna sell for a small charge for too much [00:37:00] time. They would, could be 10 bucks or 15 bucks. Like a, like

Crew Chief Eric: a cla, like a classified or something. I remember, I remember back in the day, a staple in the DMV was the penny saver. I’d flip right to the back and see what cars were for sale and what parts were for sale.

I mean, stuff like that doesn’t exist anymore. And it was kind of fun. I mean, then. You know, then we had the advent of Craigslist, which is neither here nor there anymore, but, and Facebook marketplace and stuff like that. But it is difficult, like there’s a lot of of junk, right? If you’re in the business of curating this and saying, Hey, we’ll accept that ad that’s a legitimate, you know, 1970 Chevelle distributor or whatever, and, and you have eyes on this, then you go and say.

You build that trust with your community, you’re that trusted advisor now to say, Hey, we’re putting in classifieds that are legit. These are known people, you know, whatever. It might be known quantities, and you can buy from them. They’re reputable or, or, or whatever. So you’re bringing folks together and I, I think that’s a good idea actually.

Rob Parr: Again, like I said earlier, it could be a conduit, but I don’t know if we’re really ready for that, even though it’s on the back end of the site and it’s set up to do that. I [00:38:00] think we need to get to a certain point where like there’s a, a threshold. We, once we break that threshold, and I don’t even know what that number is yet to actually do it right now.

There’s so much competition out there and it, it really is hard to compete against that kinda thing. I’m not really trying to compete per se. I want the, the people who want to, if they wanna make that investment of $15 or whatever it is, I certainly don’t want them to get it to say, oh, this doesn’t work.

You know, I don’t want them to look at or say, well, I tried advertising there and it does. No, you’re, you can’t get a hundred percent. There’s no

Crew Chief Eric: guarantees. Yeah, there’s no guarantees. No guarantees

Rob Parr: in the world. But generally though, I think if we get, once we get to a certain threshold, that’d be something I would push more for.

I think the blogs are, are really good to have them be adding to that as we go forward.

Crew Chief Eric: So Rob, we talked about the website and obviously nowadays it’s all about social media. So you guys are currently on Facebook. What are your plans to expand your social media presence?

Rob Parr: Okay, well, I find that what happens is with Facebook, without getting too political, that there’s some people who are migrating away from it.

So we’ve actually started a social media. We have a page on gat.com looking also at Reddit, which is got a pretty [00:39:00] large following in the car community. I’m looking into other social media for this year to input ad pages too. Where we can share, because that way obviously you’ve got one specifically for the community, but more and more generic ones that are, that have a following in the car communities that are out there, I’ll certainly wanna make sure that’s there as well.

So that’s, that’s gonna be something we’re do this year

Crew Chief Eric: and I invite you and our listeners and I wanna remind them to come visit Garage Riot, the social media network for car enthusiasts. Buy a car enthusiast, right? It’s a great place to share your stories. Post pictures. Donovan’s big thing is no kitty memes, no political rants.

It’s all fueled by petrol at the end of the day, so garage ride’s a great source for that. If you’re looking for a social media platform specifically for car enthusiasts,

Rob Parr: I’ll be looking into other types of way of expanding online. Thing, like I said earlier, maybe having a page for the racing side would be good, like we do in the magazine.

I’ll be looking to you for some more help. So, so that was,

Crew Chief Eric: that was my other question. So let’s dream big, you know, where is CCG in 10 years? Are you thinking regional [00:40:00] magazines, you know, Northeast, southeast West, things like that. Are you still just wanna focus on the DMV?

Rob Parr: Well, the thing is, it’s a great area.

I, I mean, we’re looking at the, probably getting into the, to the panhandle in the West Virginia, the western side of, of, um, Virginia. Based on my limitations, the only way I could go further than that is to, to basically franchise this business. I just don’t see how, in knowing how this type of thing works with publications, that I could get someone else in another area that would wanna be interested in doing this.

And I’m doing this more of a passion, more out a passion, even though I’d make money at it. A business, obviously we have to pay for the, the cost of printing and the web space and everything else. Obviously we’re trying to wanna make a living at it, but primarily do it because I do it. ’cause I, I, it’s all love.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, absolutely.

Rob Parr: I like to go, go to the events. I can’t do ’em all, but I like to hang out with the guys and you know, I hang the magazine, I just can’t go on hand. The magazines get my conversation, oh, you know, this guy in here and they’re looking at. Ask me about this guy and then ask me about at our warehouse or classic auto mall, whatever.

Oh, you gotta go up there. That’s a day trip to go to classic Auto Mall. [00:41:00] It’s free. You go, you walk around. I mean, it’s awesome.

Crew Chief Eric: We gotta get you to come out to one of the track events and start talking about track. I want the track rats.

Rob Parr: Well, I wanna get, I got a Corvette I want, I’d like to try tracking the grand sport I like to take out.

Oh, absolutely. You know, I’d like to get involved with that and get part of that scene as well. So I think in getting my own experience. Will help to get more of that into the book. People have different interests, obviously, but I’m trying to cover that. Ga whole gambit from showing to racing and everything in between could just be guys getting together.

I meet at a restaurant, they just have, they call it bench racing. Absolutely. That’s where the ultimate one hang out talk, you know, share experiences. Have a good time. That’s fine too. It’s a conversation piece. Really nothing else.

Crew Chief Eric: So, Rob, you know, this has been really awesome. So I wanna give you the opportunity to do any shout outs, any promotions, anything else you wanna share for our listeners that are tuning in and listening to the story of CCG for the first time.

Rob Parr: Well, thank you. So obviously I wanna give a shout to my wife, Joanne, who’s been very supportive of, of this whole thing, this whole venture. A secondly, a gentleman named Chuck McDonald, who’s been like a mentor to me. Maybe eventually we’ll [00:42:00] connect him through to you guys. He is a very well known car enthusiast and collector in the DC metro area.

Does his own weekly newsletter, and then Jack Dewar, who’s a good friend of mine, I’ve known for probably 30 years. You know, been a car guy since I’ve known. He’s the guy who helped me do some major work on my cars that I couldn’t do do by myself, and really was very supportive of me from the beginning with this.

It was a great concept. A couple of sponsors. Of course, I thank all the sponsors. Mike with Universal Muscle Cars, stored and Edge from Classic Auto Mall, and of course all the advertisers. And again, everybody who looks at this magazine and, and they go, go to our website and they see somebody in here.

Please mention if you found ’em in Collect the Car Guide ’cause it really helps support the business and help support what we’re trying to do to help the enthusiast. That’s really the bottom line to help the enthusiast. And thank you enthusiast. Thank you very much. Everyone who reads this and subscribes to our newsletter, please tell all your friends that to come online, join our newsletter and join the club, so to speak.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right. Hey Rob, I’m gonna give you a hot take. Racers love stickers. So if there’s ever an [00:43:00] opportunity for us to slap a CCG sticker on the many race cars that there are here at GTM, let us know ’cause we’ll gladly do it.

Rob Parr: Thank you for that tip. In fact, uh, I dunno if it’s a strict bumper sticker or.

Something special that they’re looking at, but

Crew Chief Eric: however you want it to look, Rob,

Rob Parr: that’s a huge tip. I appreciate it.

Crew Chief Eric: So with that said, for all the latest in DC, Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, car Enthusiast news and happenings, be sure to check out www.collectorcarguide.net. Sign up for their newsletter right from the site.

You can also check them out on social media at Collector Car Guide on Facebook. And don’t forget that you can pick up a copy of the annual printed directory at one of more than 300 locations in the DMV area, including local shops, independent parts, retailers. Events. So Rob, this has been absolutely awesome.

I appreciate you coming on here and sharing the CCG story, getting people enthusiastic about what you have to offer, how this is gonna become the [00:44:00] gospel for car enthusiast. So again, I can’t thank you enough for coming on the show.

Rob Parr: Absolutely. Love to be on the show. Had a good time talking to you, Eric.

It’s been kind. Well, we’re friends already. I appreciate that. Thank you. Take care now you have a good evening. You too. Bye now.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out on www.gt motorsports.org. You can also find us on Instagram at Grand Tour Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at Crew chief@gtmotorsports.org.

We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization, and our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to [00:45:00] our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies and GTM swag.

For as little as $2 and 50 cents a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of fig Newton’s, gummy bears, and monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports. And remember, without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be possible.

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00 Meet Rob Parr: Publisher of Collector Car Guide
• 01:05 The Origin Story of Collector Car Guide
• 02:21 Challenges and Realizations in the Automotive World
• 03:46 The Birth of a Vetted Reference Guide
• 06:16 The Annual Guide and Its Offerings
• 08:16 Connecting Car Enthusiasts and Small Businesses
• 14:01 The Importance of Car Clubs and Community
• 16:38 Expanding the Racing Section and Newsletter
• 23:25 Rejecting Unethical Advertisers
• 24:03 The True Cost of Car Restoration
• 24:39 Choosing Quality Parts
• 25:28 The Importance of Education in Car Enthusiasm
• 27:33 Advertising with CCG
• 32:53 Free Resources for Car Enthusiasts
• 35:53 Future Plans for CCG
• 41:36 Final Thoughts and Shoutouts

[editors note] I discovered CCG when I was visiting one of our sponsors and saw the annual magazine in their display area. I had one of those “wait… what’s this moments” ; the bright yellow cover definitely got my attention and as I was flipping through the magazine I saw listings for vendors, clubs and all sorts of car and motorsports organizations.

Are you interested in classics, hot rods, muscle cars, car shows, cruises and more? Keep the conversation going on GarageRiot with CCG as they sponsor the Classic & Collector Car group. Learn more about upcoming events, or CCG’s social by clicking on the photos below.

For all the latest in DMV & PA car enthusiast news and happenings, be sure to check out www.collectorcarguide.net and sign up for their newsletter right from the site. You can also check them out on social @collectorcarguide on Facebook. And don’t forget You can pick up a copy of the annual printed directory at one of 300 locations including local shops, independent parts retailers or events.

Consider becoming a GTM Patreon Supporter and get behind the scenes content and schwag!