(Hu)man in the Machine

Jeff Willis - Car guy, motorcycle enthusiast, martial artist, photographer and writer for

Jeff was born in Eureka, California to Marsha & Kent Willis, and has one sister Suzie. Jeff enjoys traveling, working out, bicycling, going to yard sales and thrift stores, and playing video games with his friends. He does not like trying new foods or exploring new restaurants. He plans to eventually write a second book on cars and motorcycles involving other countries and their cultural views on the subject.

Contact: Jeff Willis at thewestcoastprofessional@yahoo.com | N/A | Visit Online!

    

• Let’s talk about your petrol-head origin story? The who/what/where/when/how of Jeff Willis? Did you come from a car family? What made you into a Petrol-head, did it start as a kid? Or did you come into it later in life?
• Your dad wrote a book called “An Auto Biography” by Kent Willis; what was that all about?, and did it or he inspire you to become a petrol head? (As well as a writer?)
• You have a fascination with James Dean, and Porsches? Is that because of the California Car culture? Or something else?
• You spent a lot of time as an automotive photographer – do you still do that?
• Lots of eclectic cars in your portfolio  Fiat 124, VW Bug, Early Porsche 928 – why, what else past or future?
• What is (Hu)man in the Machine about? What inspired you to write the book?
• As an author/writer – are there any books you would recommend for other enthusiasts to check out?
• You also freelance for Garage Style Magazine and Exotic Car Marketplace; what else are you working on? What’s Jeff’s future look like? Is there another book on the way?

and much, much more!

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Gran Touring Motor Sports Podcast Break Fix, where we’re always fixing the break into something motor sports related.

Our guest tonight is a car guy, motorcycle enthusiasts, martial artist, photographer, and writer. Jeff Willis was born and raised in Eureka, California and in his new book, human In the Machine, he explores the relationship between cars and the people who love them. And he’s here to give us a peak, not only into his life, but the stories he captured in his new book and much, much more so with that, let’s welcome Jeff to break.

Well, thank you very much for having me here. I appreciate you having me on and wanna say congratulations on so many episodes. You have a lot of episodes, . Well, thank you very much. Yeah. Everyone has a superhero origin story. So tell us about how you became a petrol head. The who, what, where, and why. What influenced you?

Did you come from a car family? Did it start as a kid or did you come at it later in life? It [00:01:00] started for me when I was a. Seeing the joy in my dad’s eyes and the value that cars and motorcycles brought him. My dad really kind of imparted his enjoyment of cars and motorcycles and the memories that they brought him to me.

Very first car or truck that I can remember that did that was a 1950 GMC truck that he bought as a project, and then later on, after he worked on that for a while, sold. and he bought a 1951 Chevy. And the funny story about that is the guy that he bought it from gave him the explanation as to why all of the glass in the truck had been busted and broken out.

Apparently the wife of the man found something out about him and somebody else, and something or other took a baseball bat to all of the glass except the two most valuable pieces of glass. Those corner pieces of glass on the five windows. She left those alone. [00:02:00] So somehow those survived. Later on, he bought a MG Midget and would pick up my sister and I from the babysitter after he got off work.

And that was really honestly riding in a sports car, like a race car for us, because we were little. We got to sit in a little car really close to the ground, and it was just a whole holistic experience being in a tiny, small, quick little convertible. And it just was burned in my brain. And from those early days on, , I was enthralled with cars.

I always had hot wheels and remote controlled cars. Wanted to race my friends and pretend that our bikes were Harleys. And so it started young. When we talk to people on the show and you, they immediately associate California with car culture and it’s like, oh, you must love cars because it’s the epicenter of the American car culture, the the beach boys, and you know, James Dean and all this kind of stuff.

And then you kind of peel it back and you go, wait, Eure. Where is that? If you quickly look on the map, it is on the water, but it’s [00:03:00] northwest of Sacramento towards redwoods. That’s not where car culture is. What was that like growing up? That’s funny that you say that because that’s what I heard from most of the people that ever visited me or exchanged students that I knew in school.

The first thing they would say would be, where’s the palm trees? And we would say, we don’t have palm trees. We have redwood trees. It’s a little different. It’s foggy, it’s cold. 58 to 60 degrees year round. I love that sort of weather. I’m a fog guy myself. I really love that sort of atmosphere. But it was a shock to most people when they would come to California and see that this wasn’t the California of the TV shows and the movies.

That was something that never really occurred to me growing up because we still had car clubs. We still. Car shows. My uncle was a founding member. He actually was the founding member of the Chaparral’s Car Club in the sixties here. So one of the very first car clubs in Eureka was started by my uncle.

And [00:04:00] so for me, it never really occurred to me that we weren’t part of the California car culture because it really felt like we were, until someone from outside of the area would come in and say, this is weird. This isn’t what I thought California would be. So yeah, it never really occurred to. For those of us petrolhead of a certain age, as we like to say, there’s certain posters that were on our walls as a kid.

So one of our famous pit stop questions here, what was on your wall, Lamborghini? I had a, a redash on my wall and that was probably the first supercar that really lit my brain up. That and the Ferrari when we were young were all that we knew about that. Quote unquote supercars. Nowadays you have 15, 16 different brands that are considered supercars, which is great and it’s fun.

Back then, it seemed a little more pure in some sense, where those were it. Those were the upper echelon that everybody loved, that everybody had on their walls. . Of course Porsche was very close underneath that. So [00:05:00] you’re right because the Porsches at the time, you’re talking about the Kuta, you had the Ferrari tester Rosa.

Right? One of the widest cars. Yeah, in production. And then the nine 30 Turbo, which wasn’t quite at that level yet. Porsche hadn’t transcended. And we’re gonna talk about Porsche a little bit more here as we go along cuz it is a sweet spot for you. But then I remember too, Out of nowhere comes Jaguar with the XJ two 20 and sort of breaks the glass ceiling for supercars at that point.

The thing about Jaguar, I’m glad you brought them up cuz that wasn’t something that I immediately thought of when I think of cars that were really influential in the eighties and nineties, however, When I think back to the Xjs, that is one of the most beautiful cars that I’ve ever seen. I kind of like those bastard stepchild sort of models, like the 9 28 Porsche that nobody that’s a purist likes the xjs that people say it looks like a giant stepped on it or sat on it.

I love those cars cuz they’re weird and they’re strange and cool and sexy. And [00:06:00] those led to Jaguar and other similar brands, really wanting to make an indelible mark on the automotive culture and community where they weren’t really considered the Ferrari or the Lamborghini or what have you. So like you said, when the XJ two 20 came out, that was mind blowing because everybody was like, where did Jaguar come from with that?

Just blew everybody’s mind. I think that’s a huge piece of the puzzle as well. Stepping back into your past, your dad actually wrote a book called An Autobiography, a little bit of play on words there by Kent Willis. You can actually still find that book out there. It’s on Amazon as well. So what was that about, and did he inspire you to become.

A writer as well to kind of deepen your petrol headness, if that’s actually a word. It actually was the opposite. My dad has written a number of books. The first book that he wrote was in the late seventies. It was on invertebrate biology and it [00:07:00] was a college prep book for Humboldt State University.

Since then, he’s written a lot of other. . One of the most influential that I think that he wrote was about coaching and teaching. He was a coach and a teacher for 42 years, as was my mom. His love of cars for me directly translated into something that should be put into book form, and so I was actually the one that convinced him to write a book about cars and all of the wonderful memories that he had had from when he was hunting deer with his dad in a wagon.

My grandma driving a 63 Nova and him driving an Impala to his prom. All these amazing cars that people droo over now that were a little more regular back then, and he’s got all these wonderful memories that are connected to him. I said, dad, you have to write some of this stuff down because to me that’s really the only way that you can create, I guess, what you would consider kind of a time.

Where you can go back and really kind of experience some of those things that other people experienced [00:08:00] and have it written down so that those stories don’t get lost generations to come. You remember your loved ones, you remember great times that you had. These are all wonderful things that I think through writing are.

Preserved, and I think that’s beautiful. As you scroll through your social media posts, you begin to realize very quickly that you’re a Porsche file and you’ve got a thing, and you’ve said it more than once publicly too, that you really are fascinated with the James Dean story. And we had Lee Raskin on here earlier last.

Season, who is a known expert in the James Dean story and Porsche five 50 s and 3 56 s and things like that. So let’s dive into that a little bit more. I know that’s part of California car culture as well, especially his tragic death and all that. What really drew you into that world, especially that very small snippet of Porsche history, and how did that grow for you?

When I was young, I was not a Porsche fan to begin with. I thought the nine 11 s were ugly. I thought they looked. Squat, obese little turtles that had chubby hips and buggy [00:09:00] eyes and that compared to the Lamborghini, that looks like it’s going a thousand miles an hour standing still. It doesn’t equate. It wasn’t until later when I started to see some of the, like for instance, the five fourteens with the, the closed wheel base fender skirts that were the racers that I just thought were incredibly be.

And the Goler. Porsches in the eighties and nineties, the Kramer K three. Even back further in the seventies, the nine seventeens that were just wild and amazing, mirrored a little bit of one of my dream cars, the Ford GT forties. That is when I started to kind of really get into the old race car, former race car.

Car club culture, and a lot of those guys were really into those old Porsches because the Porsches were more readily available. They were more accessible, they were more affordable. And so a lot more people could experience the beauty and the fun and the heart pumping nature of those old Porsches than could say a Lamborghini or a Ferrari [00:10:00] from some of those era.

Fast forward to when I was writing my book. I met and befriended a really amazing guy named Jack. His real name is Jacob, but they called him Porsche Jack. He was born and raised in Europe and worked for Porsche starting when he was 15 years old in the factory. He got to work on 3 56 s. He got to work on some of the race teams in the sixties and seventies.

He was friends with James Dean. He was friends. Steve McQueen, a lot of these guys that were really influential. I got to have a little piece of a lot of the stories that people haven’t heard of before and put ’em into my book so that even further accelerated my love and my curiosity for Porsche’s and I became kind of a psychotic about finding more information about these cars.

I have, I think, if I’m not exaggerating, probably 150 books on Porsche alone in my collection. It hasn’t stopped, and I don’t think it ever [00:11:00] will because there’s so much information out there about different models and different stories and races. Some of ’em in my book. I can almost guarantee that nobody has heard of before.

Like for instance, when Porsche Jack saved the day in a race, there was a Porsche nine 17, I believe it was, that broke down. There were two of ’em that they had there. One of ’em broke down and so everybody on the other teams was kind of celebrating, oh, we don’t have to compete with two Porsches, just one.

and everybody thought that that was kind of the end of the day because if that Porsche broke down, then they were screwed. So then he took the engine out, he drove it three hours back to his shop. He worked on it until three o’clock in the morning, drove back to the race, put it back in the car, got it race ready.

And in the morning, both Porsches came out and everybody kind of freaked out, like, what magic is this? And he said that the announcer said, this is either the car from Heaven or the car from hell, because , we don’t know. How that happened, befriending a lot of people that were in that world and seeing a lot [00:12:00] more of the provenance and the history of the brand really kind of got me salivating for more, and that still kind of drives me to find more and more information about it to this day.

What I love about that is it falls right in line with what this show is really about too. It’s a capturing that living history, but B, it’s those lesser. Corner case stories where it’s like if you never met Porsche Jack, he probably told his closest friends 10 times and they’re tired of hearing it a thousand times over.

Yeah. But to the rest of us, it’s new and it’s exciting and it’s that little just moment in time. Even in racing history, we were like, that’s why that car came back out on the track. And you always kind of wondered, but never knew the story behind it. So that’s really cool that you’re able to talk to folks like that and bring those stories to.

In your time as a petrol head, obviously you’ve evolved, you’ve blossomed like the rest of us, but you spent a lot of time as an automotive photographer, so how did you get into that? Did you make that a professional thing? Was has it been a hobby? How have you been able to [00:13:00] expand? That started in front of the camera when I was younger.

It sounds a little silly, but I was a model for quite a while. Did some runway stuff, did some print. I was around photography and photographers a lot, and my love of cars had already blossomed and become a thing. Being around so many photographers and kind of picking up a lot of the little tips and tricks they used led me to think, Hmm, I wonder if I could merge the two and make something out of that.

And so I started taking pictures of friends cars. I wasn’t good to begin with. I still am not great. I’m still learning all the time. In fact, Study the model of camera that I have and some of the tips and tricks that you can use to get better. As I started to take more photos, more opportunities arose for taking photos for car clubs and some of the events that I put on, I created a couple car shows, and so I would create the posters and it just kind of started to snowball from there.

And as I’m. You are well aware. Once you purposefully [00:14:00] take a step into this world, you can’t step back out. You start to snowball and things happen and people talk and they let other people know that you’re the guy that does this, and things just start happening. Like I would never have ever guessed that I would be on this cool of a podcast.

Let alone having written a book about cars or anything like that, unless I just took that first lead. But along the way, you’ve also met all sorts of interesting folks. So I’m gonna name drop for our audience. People like Christian von Koze while you’ve been out photographing events like the Pebble Beach Concourses.

So any other like cool memories or things that you can share about those types of. Oh my gosh. There are so many people that I met and people that I met through other people. Porsche, Jack, in fact, did a lot of stuff with Leno and Seinfeld and all these other guys, and so it just absolutely blows my mind that I have some sort of a connection to some of these guys that I’ve looked up to for my whole life.

I know that you are in close connection with Colleen [00:15:00] from Skunkworks. I followed her for years on Instagram. Never in a million years did I think I would be sitting in her office interviewing her. Looking and photographing her Ferrari collection. And yeah, Coneg and Chad McQueen, the list goes on and on.

And when I was a little younger, I lived in Hollywood, working there in a couple different places, and I was a personal shopper for some celebrities. Some of the celebrities that I met were actually car people as well. Paris Hilton was a car person. I got to tour her blue Bentley, which was really wild.

Jeremy pn, Terrell Owens. There’s so many people that I was in direct connection with that I got to see certain cars and learn of their obsessions for certain models and brands and things like that. That still to this day, really appreci. And can’t hardly believe. I was in a movie at one point called The Majestic with Jim Carey and David Ogden.

Steyers was one of [00:16:00] the deporting actors in it, and I befriended him on the set. We actually hung out a couple times, knew that I was a really big car guy. One afternoon he said, Hey Jeff, come here. I wanna show you something. And around the corner it was that year’s brand new Lincoln, and he tossed me the keys.

He said, maybe you want to. , you know, my eyes lit up. I was 18 year old kid freaking out, you know, it was before any sort of voice activated stuff that we have now connected to our phones. And so he said, watch this. Hey Lincoln, call John Smith. And it dialed. And I just was like, what is happening? so many different people.

I mean, I could name a hundred different people, but again, it comes back to that love and like you said, that connection that all of us share. That so many more people than we realize are into this whole scene and this culture and this lifestyle. And all you have to do is ask. It’s the coolest thing. You just have to ask, Hey, can I talk to you?

Can I interview you? Can I pick your brain? And people love to talk about this stuff because they love, you know, the way it makes ’em feel and the [00:17:00] memories and. The experiences they get to have a little bit of foreshadowing there when we dive a little deeper into your book. But yeah, that is pretty much the premise there is again, the connections to the cars brought up something really important about Hollywood.

It’s always shocking when you realize how many, let’s say, behind the curtain. Car collectors. There are, I mean, you would expect, you know, celebrities, they need to burn their money on something and, and you have the ones at the front of mine, like Paul Walker, we all know he is a car guy. Name a collection.

Jay Leno, like you said, Tim Allen and so on in line. Yeah. You’re like, they’re noted car collectors, but there’s other folks in that community. That they’ve got their prize possessions, their crown jewels, the cars that they like to flaunt, that they bring down to, you know, whatever cars and coffees going on that weekend.

That sort of thing. And to your point, they got some cool stories. You take an interest in them and say you’re not in a weird way, be like, why’d you buy that car? But , why this car? Why these customizations? Like take an interest in them and to your point, they open up and they wanna tell you why they did it that way.

And it’s pretty cooler, you know, [00:18:00] reminds them of, to your point, something that happened when they were a kid. Is there somebody on your bucket list? Is there somebody that maybe you didn’t get to interview for the book that you still want to talk to? Yes, so I contacted Spike Farrison. He, first of all, congratulated me on becoming a writer for a garage style magazine.

For my book and stuff like that. But I asked him if I could interview him and he laughed and said no, and said, congrats anyways. And he did it in such a funny and fun way. I wanna try to knock that door down again and see if I could interview him, because he’s another guy that I listened to his podcast quite a bit.

He obviously has connections all across the world and great friends with Seinfeld, and I would love to interview him and or Seinfeld. I would love to interview Mr. Beast. He’s a guy that I think is kind of a secret car guy. He’s done a lot of really weird YouTube videos where he crushes RA or Lamborghini in a hydraulic press.

I would [00:19:00] really like to interview him and see if there’s something underneath that. Funny atmosphere that he creates that really kind of makes him tick because there’s other guys that are very similar to him that are very open with loving cars and stuff like that. He’s a guy that is very humble, which I think is cool.

He says he doesn’t need a lot, he doesn’t need a big house, he doesn’t need cars and stuff like that. I don’t really buy it. I think there’s something underneath there that, you know, all of us when we were a kid, had some sort of hot wheel or a video game or something that just really lit our minds on fire.

So somebody like that, I would really like to kind of see if I could work my way into this. Psyche a little bit further than anybody else has. It’s funny at first when you said Mr. Beast, I thought you were talking about Eric Banner, who is also another known Petrolhead, and he did a movie called Love the Beast.

So I highly recommend that to people that want to understand our passion. That opening monologue when he’s driving around in his nine 11 is just. Absolutely amazing, and it really does set the [00:20:00] tone for most of us that are passionate about cars, . So you’ve done a lot of events, pebble Beach and so on, and even most recently you’ve written about Velocity and Luka eight and things like that.

So what are some of the best events? What are some of your favorites? What are some that you’re looking forward to even just going to or maybe shooting as a photographer? The most exclusive, albeit most laid back show that I’ve ever been to was the Pixar car. and that was one that I never thought that I would get into.

Obviously this is a theme. A lot of things that I never thought would happen are happening, but I got to meet a lot of really great car people. I got to meet a lot of people that worked at Pixar that were kind of secret car people that came out with these fantastic old Porsches and Lamborghini and old Chevy builds and things like.

I was dating someone at the time that worked there, and so I kind of hung out at the Pixar campus quite a bit when I got invited to the car show, which was one of those things that as a car guy, I had heard about little [00:21:00] rumblings about, but I knew there was no way that the public could ever get in. So when I got invited, I kind of freaked out a little bit.

and that was one of the greatest shows I’ve ever been to. And it was so laid back and Chip Fuss was there. Leno stopped by, you know, a lot of the, like we’re talking about the Staple guys were there. It was cool to kind of just be hobnobbing around with these guys and kind of just saying, Hey, what’s up?

And you know, we’re all eating a hotdog and looking at a car together and it’s these guys that I’ve watched on TV since I was a kid. The other event that is in my mind is the one that you said, so L ult eight. The most well curated event I’ve ever been to in in my life. It was the coolest setup where there was a really beautiful, wonderful juxtaposition of the beauty and art of the cars with the stark gross industrial background.

It was all stone, weird brick. It was just a perfect mixture of the two where it really made the beauty of the cars [00:22:00] pop, and it was great for photos and the way they set up all the warehouses. . You know, there was a coffee shop in one and there was a group of nine seventeens in the other, and then, I don’t know if it was Rolex or show part or somebody had a place where they were showing off their $200,000 watches while somebody with ripped jeans was smoking a cigarette right next to it outside.

It was just all these weird mixtures of all these different kind of, Styles and cultures and stuff that I’ve never seen before, but I really appreciate it. It was so cool. So what’s funny about that event put together by Pat Long, one of the Porsche drivers? Yep. Patrick Dempsey, et cetera. Right. All those guys together, they did something similar to that at Petite Lamonds at the end of 2021 at Road Atlanta.

And I was. Privy to get into that, where they have that kind of style that they used to where the cars are in these crates, but they’re not in crates. They almost look like model cars. So they had some of the Brunos cars like Hurley Haywood’s 9 64 Turbo. Yep. Uh, one of the 9 35 s and a couple other things.

So they did a miniature version of that at Road Atlanta and here on the East Coast. [00:23:00] That’s as close as I’ve gotten to that type of event put on by the same folks. But it was awesome because the setting. In the 12 hours there at Road Atlanta. So you’re watching the endurance racing going on. You’ve got this whole hospitality thing in the cars and talking to people.

And so, yeah, it’s a really cool vibe. And if you’re fortunate enough to maybe, I guess, go to Loca Cult nine, you’re listening to this or, or one of the future ones, definitely check it out cuz they’re doing some really cool stuff. Love it. Let’s peel back another layer of this bloom and onion here, and let’s talk about your eclectic portfolio of vehicles.

You take a quick scan through your social media profile. You’ll see things like a Fiat 1 24 Spider VW bug, or an early portion 9 28, and a bunch of other things. So why, why, why these cars? How did you end up with this motley crew? So, The bug, first of all, was one that I’ve always wanted. My mom had a bug when I was a little kid, and it was funny because my dad said that he hated that car because [00:24:00] when I was maybe one or two years old, my mom would put me in the little car seat in the back.

And my dad said, as we drove off down the driveway, he would see my little head bouncing around and always worry about our safety. My mom almost got squished in that bug. Horrible pun intended. So she got rid of that. But I always wanted a bug. That was one of my, if not my earliest memory, was of the perforated seats in my mom’s bug.

The 70 Nova was just something that is one of the greatest sexiest muscle cars of all time. I think the challengers, the Novas, the Camaros, they’re all kind of in that same league. They have that big, huge back end with the meaty tires and that muscle bulldog look to ’em, and I just think those are so badass.

The Porsche, like I mentioned earlier, I have a thing for the bastard stepchild model of any brand and. I really am drawn to that car because not a lot of people in the Porsche world really show a lot of appreciation to it yet. [00:25:00] Yours is a four and a half liter, right? Yeah, it’s a 1980. Yeah, so it’s the automatic.

It would’ve been cool to have a stick, but , I’m okay with that. However, When I got mine, I was looking for that particular car, that model, and I found one and it was for sale and it was on Craigslist. I contacted the lady a day too late. I thought, ah, it’s a little more than I wanna spend. But I contacted her.

She said, oh, I’m so sorry. I sold it yesterday. I was brokenhearted, so I went and I bought a 87 vet instead. I really love all the eighties cars, the really kind of low profile, making me reminisce of my childhood kind of cars. So I got the 87 vet. Just love that thing. Just burned the tires off that thing.

A year and a half later, the exact same Porsche 9 28, came back on Craigslist and I called the guy immediately and I said, I gotta come over, I’ll take it. I didn’t argue with him about the price. It was a little more than the last person had asked. But he was a chiropractor in the Bay Area that tried to tinker with it himself [00:26:00] and didn’t really know him when he was doing.

So there were a couple things that I had to fix and get fixed on it, but then it was just a monster machine and. Since then, it’s just been one of the greatest investments I’ve ever made. I, since I bought it in 20, I don’t know what it was, 16, maybe it’s quadrupled in value, which isn’t really that important to me.

That’s not really necessarily the monetary value, but everywhere I go, people freak out and give me thumbs up. That’s a cool car. Oh, I remember when I had one of these, or my dad had one or whatever. . That’s the other thing that I really love, that my dad also really loves in his 51 Chevy five window, getting thumbs up and really kind of eliciting a response from people.

That’s part of the whole fun of driving these cars out in public, is inviting people into this chaotic fun that they create and all the memories that stir up and people really reach out to you and start conversations and. Friends and I have a, a number of other cars, but [00:27:00] those are the ones that really have a lot of meaning and background to me.

So, so if you had to buy something brand new today, what’s your hot take? Brand new affordable money is no object. What would you buy? I would either go with Coneg or Pagan. I think those are two of the most beautiful car designs of any generation. Other than that, I have a real thing for the new Corvette.

The performance of them, the look of them, the affordability of them, all of that appeals to me. But Lamborghini always has my heart. Besides Conn’s, egg and P. Any Lamborghini. I really like the new hurricanes, but I really love the 2004 Guyardo, the original Guyardo. I think that’s just such a cool compact little thing.

And that car, I’ve driven a number of ’em. That is the closest thing that I have ever experienced to. Being inside a video game. You haven’t driven a Nissan GTR then cuz it’s exactly like being in a video game. I have not. No . [00:28:00] A friend of mine had one and he said it was pretty wild. But I have never driven one of those.

You mentioned the Pagani and the Conig Zg. So would those be this. Sexiest cars of all time, or is there something else? Gosh, yes. I would have to say I think the K seg for me, the artistic value of the Pagani and all the little weird details like the little leaf shaped side view mirrors. The other car that I think is probably one of the most underrated sexy cars is the spiker C.

The interior of that thing looks like a 1940s bomber that was redone in all chrome or something. It just is so cool. And all the stitching on the leather, every single thing in that car is very obvious that it was hand done and meticulous and gorgeous. The Spiker C eight would be a very close sexiest car

So the opposite of that. Do you have an ugliest car? The ugliest car that I can think of would. [00:29:00] What I call the carved turd, and that would be the Tesla . Oh, wow. . That’s the first time somebody’s brought up a Tesla is the ugliest car of all time. Wow. I just hate Teslas. Everything about ’em. The background of them, the history of ’em, the look, everything.

I can’t stand about ’em. Well, then you will enjoy our Tesla retrospective episode, . So as we move on, let’s talk about your book, gotten to know you, but let’s get to know the you in parenthesis, man in the machine. You have it kind of an interesting way to do the title, the Human or the Man in the Machine.

So what is it all about? And like you said, your dad inspired you to write other people telling you to write, but. Getting off the blocks and writing a book is a lot different than writing an article or a short story or an essay. When you sit down to 80,000 words, it’s a hell of a job. So what got you there?

Well, yes, all of the above got me there. First of all, the title Human In the Machine. I started [00:30:00] with Man in the Machine. and I thought, since I have been interviewing so many women that have really made a big difference in the automotive culture and industry, I thought, you know, it should be human in the machine because, especially nowadays when it’s a lot more accepted.

For women to be such a huge part of this industry, I think that should be celebrated. I think that’s really cool. When I interviewed people such as Jesse Combs before she obviously unfortunately passed away, it really opened my eyes to the fact that a lot of these women are real, true pioneers in the sport, in the industry, and they’re doing a lot of really cool things.

That’s one of the big reasons why I chose that title. The original inspiration did come from my dad writing his book, but the start of it, just like you said, was incredibly hard. I started this journey in 2016 and really started to put it down pen to paper in [00:31:00] 2018. And so from 2018, all the way through covid, with all the things that you know, went up and down and I stopped and there were times when I said, screw it.

I don’t wanna finish it. I just want to throw it away and never do it again. Through all that up and down. It also was something that I really started to take hold of as far as a motivation to finish. It was a goal of mine to finish the book, to get it published, to get it out there. My ex-wife, Michelle, was a huge help in formatting and editing and things like that.

I definitely have a lot of appreciation for her motivation for me to finish as well. But it was a tough journey. It was a lot of ups and downs in life, but what kept me going, These stories that I was receiving from people, I thought to myself, I can’t keep these just to myself. I have to share these with the world.

I’m glad I did because there’s a lot of things in there that, like I said, I don’t think people have heard before that they’ll appreciate. And people and stories that need to [00:32:00] be shared and passed from generation to generation so they don’t get forgotten on Amazon right now. If you go look for the book, you’ll see the book jacket on there, but there’s no preview of the inside of the book.

So for those folks that are kind of wondering how the book is arranged, is it a compilation of short stories or are you telling a larger. Arching story that threads all of these people together. It’s more of the former. It’s a bit of a hodgepodge. I took a little bit of inspiration from one of my favorite automotive authors of all time, who I was really lucky enough to interview for the book, Tom Coter.

He tends to organize his books in short story to short story format. My book starts out with a little bit of my history, a little bit of storytelling, and. Transitioning into short story to short story, and then towards the end transitions into a bit more of a hodgepodge of things that I appreciated about the culture and the industry that I really kind [00:33:00] of just had rattling around in my brain that I wanted to get out and.

On paper. So there isn’t a real strong format followed throughout the whole thing. It’s a bit more of a free flow thought to paper kind of approach. Hyper focusing on the person that you interviewed there. So you mentioned a few Portrait Jack, Jesse Combs, Tom Cotter, ahe NF from Petrolicious is in the book.

Are there any other folks that you might wanna name drop that would get people excited to pick up a. So Ashton, first of all, was one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. He was so cool. And Petrolicious, I just have to say, is one of the greatest things that I have ever come across. He does not any longer run the brand.

There’s no, ill thought towards the way it’s run now, but I think something was lost when he left the brand. When he and his wife were running the brand, that was the most perfect storytelling platform I’ve ever seen for any automotive piece of culture. It was something that helped me get through Covid and not go [00:34:00] crazy.

It helped me through a breakup and not go crazy. It helped me to find other people like me that had similar stories. And I reached out to a couple of ’em, got to know some people that I wouldn’t know otherwise. That was just a wild experience in itself because Petrolicious was something that I was very closely connected with for a number of years.

Before I got to talk to Ashton, I got to talk to people such as Elbe Beard. She was the first female to ride motorcycle solo around the world and her book, lone Rider. That is one book that I would suggest that people go out and read if they’re interested in a really cool origin story of how someone starts a journey and really finds a value in the motivation of why and how and the people that you meet along the way and the experiences that you have.

Just so many different people that. I got to talk to interview Befriend that have been a part of this book. It’s just been a really [00:35:00] wonderful journey, and I can’t thank these people enough for young aspiring writers out there, or maybe some veterans that are looking to do their next book. Do you have any advice, lessons learned, things that you can pass on?

Don’t give up. That’s the biggest thing. I’m not a professional writer. I didn’t go to school for writing. I’m not a professional editor. But I’m really proud of this book that I created and the stories that have been told in it. It wasn’t an overnight thing that I just said, oh, I’m gonna do this, and then boom, it’s done.

It’s, it was a long process of gathering information, meeting people, interviewing them, putting the information in a format that could be understood, editing it to where it looked and sounded a little better doing formatting so it would look good in the book format itself. Finding out how to self-publish on.

I couldn’t afford to hire a publisher to publish for me and buy all my books up front. So I did self-publishing on Amazon where it’s a pay as you go thing, and I created it. So I, I’m making a dollar oh four per book or something like that. [00:36:00] So the idea was never to get rich. That’s the other thing that I would give as advice to someone.

Don’t think about the money or the prestige or whatever. Think about how your passion is going to be translated and how people are gonna receive it, and how they will best receive it and understand it and enjoy it because people are always dying for something that will make them feel good or remember a great memory that they had from when they were a kid or what have you.

Focus on the passion. Don’t give. Understand that it’s not as big of a bear or a monster as you think it is. It’s a lot of work. But if you take the steps to get there and you ask people to talk to you, they will. And if you ask people to interview, they will. Most car guys and motorcycle girls and the like, really love to interact with other people that are like-minded.

And so you don’t get a lot of nos when you ask to talk to people about this stuff that everybody. . So that’s the other thing, just kind of being bold and not being afraid. [00:37:00] We’ve interviewed quite a few authors on this show in the past, and we always like to ask them, what are some of your recommended reads?

You mentioned one Lone Rider by SBE Beard, but are there any others on your list that our listeners should check out? I have a whole stack of them here. The biggest thing that I can say, Think about what really drives you, what you’re passionate about, and then just find stuff about it. There’s gonna be pamphlets and magazines and books and shows and DVDs.

Just go out and search for it. And one of my favorite things to do is to go to the local bookstore, to the thrift store, to yard sales and find little gems that aren’t readily a. For the, the entire public to find, and you find out little cool pieces of information about the thing that you love that not everybody knows, and that’s kind of fun to find those little treasures.

I would just suggest, first of all, finding the thing that makes you tick and then doing research on where to find literature about it. Yes, I would recommend [00:38:00] Elsbeth Beard’s book. There’s a, a number of Porsche books that I would recommend as well because I’m really into that scene now, that culture. My dad’s book.

I’ll give him a little plug. , as you mentioned earlier, you also freelance for Garage Style Magazine and Exotic Car Marketplace. We’ve had both Don Weiberg and William Ross on the show previously, many times. Actually, that kind of begs the question, what else are you working on? What’s Jeff Willis’ future look like?

Is there another book on the horizon? There is. So my next venture as far as book writing is going to be something similar. In Europe. I really want to delve into the car culture there because it’s different. Over here in the States, we have a lot of stuff like muscle cars, low riders. There’s a lot of really kind of niche stuff in this California US car culture.

Over there. There’s a lot more X racer type provenance to some of the stories. It’s a [00:39:00] really different world over there that I want to explore and see what I can find out about that. And there is one other really cool thing I’ll, I’ll plug. I’m creating a brand, it’s called US Scary Monster. It’s going to be a company that helps young builders, young racers, young writers find sponsorships.

Because I know that’s one of the things when I’ve talked to people that are younger or, or when I’ve thought about things that I’ve tried to do in the past, sometimes you don’t know where to start and all you need is just a little bit of help to kind of get you going and really light that fire in you.

I always like to say, wouldn’t it have been crazy? Somebody like Hurley Haywood that you mentioned earlier, Senna or somebody like that, or you know, one of the racers now, what have you, sponsored one of those guys when they were young and doing cart racing or what have you. How crazy would that be of being part of that story?

A lot that I want to do with that. Something that I really want to get started in the near future. Well, Jeff, with that, any other shout outs, promotions, or anything [00:40:00] else you’d like to share that we haven’t covered thus far? First of all, just wanna thank you for having me on the show. This has been an honor and a privilege.

I would like to thank my parents and my sister and my ex-wife, Michelle, my friends Daniel and Bobby. Everybody else that was a part of the book that I interviewed or talked to or even mentioned that I was writing a book and they gave me, you know, a pat on the back or encouraging words. I just wanna say thank you for all that.

I hope that people enjoy my book and look out for ooh, scary monster in the future. The Human in the Machine is a book about cars, motorcycles, and the people who love them In it, you’ll hear from well known automotive personalities, authors, stunt drivers, and regular Joe’s. To learn more, be sure to follow Jeff on Instagram at Dark Side Smiley, where he posts photos and thoughts on his continuing automotive journey, as well as a link to his new book on.

And with that, Jeff, I can’t thank you enough for everything you’re doing. I think this is absolutely fabulous. Congratulations on your new [00:41:00] book, and like you said, don’t stop. Keep up the good work, keep telling and retelling all these stories out there and bringing some of these really cool ideas to the forefront.

Again, best of luck and thank you for everything. Thank you so much for having me.

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 our text at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at crew chief gt motorsports.org.

We’d love to hear. Hey everybody, crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted to remind you that G T M 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 [00:42:00] our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies and GTM swag.

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