From Trackside to Tinseltown: The Road to Petrolhead Enlightenment with Paul Wilamoski

Paul Wilamoski - Paul

Avid motorsports enthusiast, Amauteur Photographer and all around-petrol head! 

Contact: Paul Wilamoski at N/A

    

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

• 00:00:00 Special Guest: Paul Wilamoski
• 00:01:08 Life in Sunny California
• 00:03:27 Paul’s Car Enthusiast Journey
• 00:07:23 Transition to Porsche
• 00:19:53 Coaching and Mentorship
• 00:35:05 Car Culture: East Coast vs. West Coast; Exploring Southern California’s Car Scene
• 00:40:57 Meeting Car Legends and Enthusiasts
• 00:42:42 Hollywood Highlights: Working on Iconic Films
• 00:55:02 International Films and Hidden Gems
• 00:58:57 Secret Petrolheads of Hollywood
• 01:15:13 Navigating LA: Traffic, EVs, and Car Shows
• 01:21:32 Conclusion and Farewell

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,

the sand, the surf, the beaches. Tonight on a special profile episode of Break Fix. We talk cars, movies, and more with special guests, Paul Wilky.

Crew Chief Eric: We’re very excited to have Paul on the show. Some of you might remember him from his days coaching at Hooked on driving events in the Northeast before he moved to Sunny California, but did you know that he’s an avid motor sports enthusiast, amateur photographer, and all around Petrolhead.

Crew Chief Brad: And as always, I’m your host Brad. And I’m Eric. So let’s roll.

Crew Chief Eric: Pauly. Paulie. Paulie. What’s going [00:01:00] on? How you doing? It’s been

Paul Wilamoski: a minute, man. How are you? Good dude. Doing well. I’ve only been here for, what, two and a half years or whatever it, it is the rainy season in la It’s weird. It gets pretty chilly for la.

It gets, uh, like highs in like the fifties, low fifties, and at night it gets into the, it could get into the forties, low forties.

Crew Chief Eric: Do you have the may gray just like they have in San Diego?

Paul Wilamoski: No, we don’t. Uh, it’s like December gray. Yeah, it can get kinda shitty. And, uh, LA drivers are horrible to begin with.

Like the worst. Honestly the worst drivers I’ve ever seen. I’ve driven all over the world and I, I put ’em, I put ’em up with like India, you know, where it’s like a, it’s a fucking free for all, you know what I mean? Exactly. Um, and then when it rains, it’s like New Yorkers trying to drive in the snow ’cause they don’t know how to deal with it, you know?

So they don’t know how to deal with [00:02:00] rain here ’cause it rains four times a year.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. So

Paul Wilamoski: I’m doing nine, you know, 80, 90 on in the left lane. People are doing like 40 in a 70 and stuff like that. And like, it’s a shit show.

Crew Chief Eric: But you haven’t worn a stitch of actual long winter clothing since you’ve left, I’m assuming.

It’s funny that you say

Paul Wilamoski: that. A week ago I wore my only winter jacket for an evening, and it was, I was like, holy shit. I actually brought a winter jacket here and I wore it.

Crew Chief Eric: First question to that though is, was it either Tweed or Hounds Tooth. And did you wear that freaking cravat that you used to bring to the track?

No, it was a, it a, it was a

Paul Wilamoski: barber, you know, barber, that British company? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Barber jacket. And, uh, you can’t get away with that shit in la, you know, all that people wear here. Honestly, it’s weird, man. Like, people either dress to the nines if you’re in, um, you know, Beverly Hills or something like, yeah.

Yeah. Everyone else is like [00:03:00] shorts and a t-shirt or a sweatshirt. It’s so laid back and, uh, so, so

Crew Chief Eric: what you’re saying is the Ralph Furley look is totally out for you? It doesn’t work. Totally

Paul Wilamoski: out, dude. I wear like, I’m wearing like a zip up cardigan and, and a t-shirt and I probably look like an idiot, but, uh, and I live alone.

I’ve got two cats, so, uh, no one was complaining.

Crew Chief Eric: So you’re playing the part of De Niro as the crazy cat lady. I get it. Pretty much. So let’s talk a little bit about your car enthusiast past, like all the different kind of cars you’ve had. You and I have a similar background that people just happen to hand us keys a lot and we get to drive some really interesting cars.

I noticed the other day on Instagram you were behind the wheel of a, uh, RS 4.0. And so, you know, we can go anywhere with this. So let’s talk about your background.

Paul Wilamoski: Okay. Well growing up my dad owned my de Muffler franchises. So I was always around shops and my dad thought he was a good driver [00:04:00] and uh, he taught me a lot of stuff about how to do oil changes, spark plugs, blah, blah, blah.

When I was in college, I had a good friend, Mike Musto, who is a, is at Hemmings right now and he’s a big online uh, uh, journalist. He bought a Ducati and I wanted a bike. So after college we lived near each other in Astoria, Queens and I bought a triumph speed triple started riding. Then I bought a second speed triple, and then he really got into cars and he’s like, dude, you’re a big car guy.

You should get a car and go to the track. I said, okay, and I had a BMW 1 35 I with DCT, and I’m a manual guy. Every car I’ve had has been manual, but for some dumb reason, I got the DCT. So I go to a hooked on driving event at Limerock. You know, coach gets in the right seat, shows me [00:05:00] that I have no idea what I’m doing.

I have no idea what an apex is. I have no idea about anything. Obviously the first session, that was horrible. Second session, that was horrible. Third session, things started to click a little bit at Limerock, and by the end of the day, I mean I was so much faster and hooked. That was towards the end of the season.

So over the winter, I was talking to Musto and a couple other people and I was like, look, I don’t like this. BMW, what do I get? I want something really fast and stupid. So the 2013 Shelby GT 500 came out. Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s about as fast and stupid as you can get.

Paul Wilamoski: I know, man. And I put a Ford cap back racing exhaust on it and 662 horsepower, 631 pounds of torque.

It was a beast, but it’s not a track toy. I went with hooked on driving to New Jersey Motorsport. It was Thunderbolt and Lightning. [00:06:00] I can’t remember the setups, but most people, when they go to do de events, they do what, four or five events a season? I did 30. You’re drinking from the fire hose. Dude, I was so hooked and I had great coaches and all that, and I was so hooked.

The second year I started doing about, it was about 15 events in. Now this is not just hooked on driving. This is like PCA, Audi BMW and all that, and it was all over the northeast, so it was Watkins Glen, Poconos, Monticello, Jersey, and Lime Rock. So I was at Watkins Glen and I can’t remember who it was, but it was someone who’s the Joe?

It was Joe. Uh, do you, you know Joe from Joe. Joe with

Crew Chief Eric: the nine 11

Paul Wilamoski: or with, I think it was Joe with the nine 11. He and, and Scott Scott’s the cop.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Paul Wilamoski: Nine 11. So those guys are like, we’re watching you on the track, [00:07:00] dude, with the Shelby, you’re fast as hell going up the S’S on the back street going into the bus stop.

You’re like driving Miss Daisy and the car just doesn’t want to go. Right. I’m like, it’s so hard to handle this car. No, that’s

Crew Chief Eric: that’s right. It only wanted to go left. You’re right about that.

Paul Wilamoski: Just left. And I was really struggling with the car. Someone said, have you ever driven a Porsche? And I said, no, not really.

Like when I was a kid, I drove a 9 44 for about an hour. That as an extra On 16 candles or, or what? Yeah. Right. With uh, what, what was the guy’s name on that? The dreamy guy that owned it? Jake,

I always think about Molly Ringwald. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So. Someone lent me a, uh, 9, 8, 7 Cayman S at Watkins. They got in the right seat and after a couple laps, I’m starting to get used to the car instantly. [00:08:00] It’s so easy to drive without even trying because I was only, you know, driving five tenths or six tenths.

’cause it’s not my car. I was one and a half or two seconds faster than the Shelby. So this is a, a car that’s a thousand pounds less if not more, and half the horsepower that started to click. So I sold the Shelby bought a 9, 8, 1 came an s only things I really did to it was add a third radiator pads. What else did I do?

Stainless lines, you know, SRF, fluid and all that. Yeah. And boom. And I went out and I was having a blast. And then I hired, what’s his name? Uh, Andrew. Andrew, so Andrew became my mentor. I was getting quicker and quicker with the car, and he said, the only way you’re really gonna get faster in this car is if you put in a five point.

That was where I got to that gray area. Do I wanna turn the car into a ra, you know, into a race car and it’s gonna be really annoying on the, on the street, or do I want to not go that way? [00:09:00] So I put the harnesses in. I just didn’t like it. I started doing like co I was gonna do coil overs and all that kind of stuff.

It, it just turned it into a complete awesome track car. But not a street car. So I capped it at that point.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s pause there before you transition out of the Cayman, because I think that’s right around the time that you and I met. Were you already instructing at that point when you were in the Cayman or was that just before?

Paul Wilamoski: Yeah, I was instructing.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. So then we were in the instructor court together, but then we started hanging out at that first event at Palmer when I had the BMW and we were paddocked all there, all miserable together at Palmer. And then, you know, things continued from there because then we continued to work together as group leads.

And then I was the interim CI for a while and all that back and forth kind of stuff right there. So you transitioned out of that, came in and unexpectedly went into a mini.

Paul Wilamoski: It’s a fun wheel drive. So, so here we go. So Palmer was interesting because. [00:10:00] I went to it, I’ve never been on the track before. Have no idea about that track and that that track is no joke.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And

Paul Wilamoski: you really gotta pay attention at, at Palmer. So they’re like, okay, you’re gonna instruct. And I’m like, I don’t even know where the apexes are. I have no idea. So Jay takes me out and I do a lead follow for like, I don’t know, 20 minutes. He’s like, you got it. I’m like, yeah, I, I think I got it.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

’cause I remember you were coming up to me going, what are you doing in turn? Whatever. And I’m like, I dunno. It’s my, it’s my

Paul Wilamoski: first time here. How the hell do I know What the hell doing? Thank God that the, the student I had was completely like, such a beginner. Yeah. That, you know, I looked like a pro and I had no idea what I was doing.

Crew Chief Eric: See listeners fake it till you make it as a coach. That’s, that’s the mantra.

Paul Wilamoski: And Jay Teper actually qualified. Mike Musto to be an instructor back in the day. And coincidentally, he was the, uh, Jay qualified me to be an instructor with hooked on Driving and stuff. So, you know, he, he, [00:11:00] it was fine. I mean, that’s a great track.

I really love the elevation changes and, and the, and all that. So anyway, what happened was, I worked for 12, almost 12 years, I worked for Harvey Weinstein. Ooh. Ooh. I mean, I was doing, you know, behind the scenes movie stuff. And when that started to go downhill, this was all before the whole Me Too movement.

The company was sinking. We had no idea what was really going on. I got laid off.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh,

Paul Wilamoski: wow. And, um, so it was re it’s really hard in the film industry. To get a position at my level in New York, because we were the big boys, the bad boys on the block in New York after that went tits up. The, all the little companies just weren’t paying what I, what I’m used to getting paid.

That’s the whole reason why I moved out here. So when I had the Mini Cooper and I was doing all that stuff with hooked on driving, that was the, [00:12:00] what’s the word I’m looking for? Uh, I was in purgatory. Um, like I didn’t, I I, I couldn’t afford the Porsche. I, you know, I had no money coming in, but I had, my daily driver was this Mini Cooper, it was like a 2015 Cooper s and I was not a big fan of it.

The fifteens, like the newer ones are bloated. They’re completely numb and front wheel drive. So, um, you also

Crew Chief Eric: had an Acura in there too, didn’t you?

Paul Wilamoski: That’s my daily driver, dude. It’s a, a 2005 Acura, TSX, uh, six speed. I put Conies on it, Coney yellows on it, pads, and it’s a hoot. I drove that in 42 hours from New York to LA Wow.

With a, with a friend. Not, but you had

Crew Chief Eric: it on track as well, right? Or was there another Integra in the mix there? As from what I remember, wow. I

Paul Wilamoski: think I took the TSX, I never had an Integra. I think I took the TSX once or twice on the track, but the car has [00:13:00] 150,000 miles on it. I wasn’t gonna push it. I got to drive a lot of other people’s cars, you know, and uh, that was a lot of fun.

But as you know, there’s something to be said that driving someone else’s car is a nerve wracking Yes. Experience. So I’m very, very safe on the track. I’ve seen some crazy shit. I have a video actually, I should send you. I was in a, what was the last gen vet, the zero seven. The, the C seven. C seven, uh, I was in a c The good looking.

Crew Chief Eric: The good looking one. Yeah, the

Paul Wilamoski: good looking one. Yeah. The new one is, so I’m not a fan of it. Uh, so we were going down the front, the front street at, uh, Watkins Glen. There’s a guy in a Mustang in front of us, and he’s putting along at like a hundred.

Crew Chief Eric: And so were you ha were you immediately having flashbacks going?

He’s not gonna make it through the bus stop. I already know this.

Paul Wilamoski: I already know this, but, but like, so, and he’s got, you know, he’s got the chrome [00:14:00] rims and all that stuff, so I’m like, oh boy. So in front of him is an S 2000 trying to pass him on the, on the inside, on the right. So, oh, I remember this incident.

Yeah. So he gives him the point by the guy goes and he raises him to turn one and they hit, I think the Mustang did a 180. So did the, uh, the S 2000 and I’m watching the whole thing happen and you know, as you know, you get that spidey sense when something bad’s gonna happen 15 seconds out, I’m like, something bad’s gonna happen dude.

And sure enough, it was, uh, that was the only contact I’ve ever seen with all the years of being on the track. It only takes one stupid thing to ruin everyone’s day. Thank God the David wasn’t too bad on the cars.

Crew Chief Brad: Eric, was that the same event where two Miatas not to be named, were involved in some, uh, [00:15:00] Miata on Miata concept negative?

Crew Chief Eric: And Mike Crushfield knows exactly this situation. This was the weekend of the MSF level two training.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, that, that, okay, now I get it. So you

Crew Chief Eric: and I and the rest, half of GTMs coaches were in, were in with Ross Bentley getting trained and we heard about it ’cause it had happened while everybody else was on track.

Paul, let’s go back to your, your history, your car history a little bit here.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. So when you were a kid, I mean your dad owned a shop, what were some of the posters you had on your wall? What were some of your dream cars?

Paul Wilamoski: I

Crew Chief Eric: had the

Paul Wilamoski: Kosh,

Crew Chief Eric: you know, I had my man, my man. See, see? Petrolhead of a certain age all had kunts on their wall.

I’m

Paul Wilamoski: telling you. Had the Kosh, you know, I think it was a white one too. I think I had tester on there.

Crew Chief Brad: I mean, everybody had a test. My, I didn’t have the Kosh, I had the tester.

Paul Wilamoski: Yeah, I had that. And then I only had like one. Other poster, and I can’t remember what it was. Was

Crew Chief Eric: it a Fiero by

Crew Chief Brad: chance you took my, I knew it.

I knew that was coming up

Paul Wilamoski: with the speakers in the rear, in the, in [00:16:00] the headrest.

Crew Chief Brad: Was it a, was it a Fiero with a big breasted blonde on the hood?

Paul Wilamoski: No, but I, or on the front or Heather? It was Heather Thomas. No, it was Heather Locklear, whoever was on the fall. Uh, my, oh,

Crew Chief Eric: that was Heather Locklear? Yeah. Oh,

Paul Wilamoski: Heather Locklear.

It was like her on like a, like a, like a, a TransAm, yeah. Oh yeah. TransAm or whatever. Musto has, uh, the exact smoke in the Bandit TransAm. He got rid of that and just got like a funky blue TransAm, a light blue, almost like a baby type, baby blue type thing. And those things are great. They’re, I mean, back in the day when we were kids, we thought they were so fast.

I think the car has like 180 horsepower or something like that. Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: I Out of seven liters. Right. It’s like ridiculous

Paul Wilamoski: though. So you get those burnouts for the movie.

Crew Chief Eric: I got to drive one of those, A buddy of mine bought one for literally 50 bucks in high school. He bought a, it was a Navy blue TransAm with the screaming chicken on the hood and the whole nine yards.

And he rebuilt the motor. He went to auto diesel college and then [00:17:00] some places down in North Carolina to learn all that stuff. And I remember helping him put it in. And after we got it built, we drove it and I was. First it was a really difficult car to drive, but that was the first time I learned that valuable lesson of never drive your heroes because you will be disappointed.

Right. You’ll be disappointed.

Paul Wilamoski: Yeah. Even before I moved to LA I’ve been fortunate enough to go to, um, Monterey for the Pebble Beach.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, nice.

Paul Wilamoski: The whole week, you know, I would stay at a friend’s house and stuff like that. So saying that I used to drive so many of these cars around Monterey, so I drove. Do you know who Alex Roy is?

He’s another guy who did like a Cannonball record. He’s done, he did a cannonball, I think in a Morgan. So he does like crazy shit. Anyway, he had like a Citron, Citron Citron, an old one with the airbags, like the seventies one, and he was like, so

Crew Chief Eric: like a, a devo. I,

Paul Wilamoski: I guess it’s like a, or

Crew Chief Eric: Ds, the one that looks like a water bug or pill bug.

Crew Chief Brad: Is it in your Instagram feed? ’cause I think it was a Ds. [00:18:00]

Paul Wilamoski: Um, I hate that car. God, I hated it. But what was really weird about it was either the clutch pe no, it was the brake pedal, or the gas pedal wasn’t a typical pedal, it was just a button. You just hit the button. So now self

Crew Chief Eric: French,

Paul Wilamoski: dude, I’m driving this car.

It’s got a gated shifter and I’m driving it through Carmel. Okay? So now I have like three F Forty’s behind me. I have Mike Musto and a Daytona in front of me. Millions of dollars of cars all around me. And I’m on a hill like this and I’m like, dude, I’m gonna hit that F 40. And everyone’s sitting there laughing their ass off knowing that I’m sweating.

You know, my balls off. Yeah, I was, I was fortunate enough to drive a lot of these cars and stuff, but again, going back to. Driving someone else’s car. It’s not fun for me.

Crew Chief Eric: No, I feel you. And, and you know, I don’t know what it is. Maybe, maybe it’s your, your rugged New York charm that people just hand you their keys and that maybe you’re just trustworthy.

[00:19:00] That’s what it’s, right. Yeah.

Paul Wilamoski: I, I think it has a lot to do with, I’m, I’m, I’m not the fastest driver on the track and all that, but I am extremely safe. My situational awareness is very good. I learned from the best and I’m still learning every day. I was absolutely. Oh, absolutely. I was at Button Willow, uh, yesterday, uh, which is a, a racetrack, uh, about an hour and a half north of here.

And I was with, uh, Billy Johnson, pro Driver was hired by Ford Hired, he set up the GT 500, the new GT 500 Oh, wow. Before it went on sale. He helped develop it. And the Ford GT. And did Laman four times in the gt. Wow. This guy is no joke. He’s like probably one of the best drivers I’ve ever seen spending 10 minutes with him.

He showed me how to correctly heel toe. Nice. He’s like, you’re doing it all wrong. You’re doing it all wrong, dude. He’s like, you suck at it. This is why. And um, I soak it in and I was fortunate enough to be around Jay Tepper, you know, [00:20:00] Mike Arrigo, Brock Hs, Jr. Solomon Rosenthal, Billy Johnson and all that.

And all. And Mike Musto. And I, throughout the years, had amazing coaches.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s really the secret sauce, right, that most people forget, is that when you go to these de events and you spend a lot of time, you are the culmination of all your instructors. You pick something up from all of them, you pull a thread, you’re not gonna take away everything.

You’re gonna find the stuff that works for you, and then that becomes your driving style. And then as you become a coach, you try to instill some of the core values and things to other people, so then they inherit some of your racing genes or whatever you want, call it, it. It’s an interesting ecosystem, the way it works.

And we’re all a byproduct of all the people that we’ve had experienced with.

Paul Wilamoski: Absolutely. And I love paying it forward. You know this, when you’re in the car, you, when your student has that aha moment, that moment of clarity where it clicks and they do it correctly and they’re [00:21:00] happy and you know they’re happy and they’re, and they get it.

It’s great feeling. I never thought that I would be a coach. It’s, I never thought my personality, ’cause I’m a New Yorker, I, I don’t have the patience for a lot of stuff. Listen here, wise guy,

Crew Chief Eric: you’re

Paul Wilamoski: doing it wrong. You know this what you gotta do. But I was able to do it and just mellow out. Honestly, with all the students I’ve had, I’d say there’s only about.

Two or three that I couldn’t get to. Like, they were just not having it and they didn’t, we didn’t click. But everyone else, I love it and I love it when, and this happens off often when I’ll get like a random text from someone, and this actually happened a couple months ago. Like, Hey man, how are you? And I’m like, who, who are you?

And they’re like, you instructed me at, you know, Pocono like for the whole weekend. [00:22:00] And, and I did this and I did that. And I’m like, that’s amazing. I can’t remember who you are, but I’m glad that you reached out. ’cause he wanted to buy a Cayman and, uh, so he had questions on what to buy and blah, blah, blah.

And I just bought, I’m back in the game, baby. I just bought a Cayman.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, nice. Yeah. Which, which, which generation of Cayman. ’cause there’s several now

Paul Wilamoski: a 9, 8, 7, which is first gen. It’s, it’s a 2007. I found it with 33,000 miles on it. Wow. Yeah. So it’s a great car. I actually prefer it driving wise over the 9 8 1.

It’s a more analog feeling car. It’s great. I just put a cap back exhaust on it, a short shifter, and I’m flying through the canyons now. So

Crew Chief Brad: Why, why the Caymans over the nine 11?

Paul Wilamoski: The nine elevens that I’ve driven are. My favorite are the 9 9 7 generation. 9 9 7 9 9 7 2. Mm-hmm. Uh uh. You know an [00:23:00] S right? My favorite, what I really want is a GTS.

Are you familiar what the differences are? Yeah. The two inches in the back, you know, so I love that big ass in the back. It’s the hips are amazing.

Crew Chief Brad: Gotta love a big ass.

Paul Wilamoski: Yeah. It’s a

Crew Chief Eric: 70, I mean, that’s what it says on his license plate. Just like Kramer. Right

Crew Chief Brad: ass man. Enthusia ass man

Paul Wilamoski: ass man. It’s a $75,000 car.

Yeah. With thousand miles on it. So what I like about the Cayman, I think reflects off my personality where I like to be safe. And the Cayman is such a point and shoot car. There’s no drama to it. It’s very hard to get the back end to come out when you’re pushing it. When it does come out, you really gotta know what you’re doing to get it back in.

But it’s so hard to really mess up in that car. And it’s small, which I love, and it’s quick. It’s got, with the exhaust and all that 310 horsepower at [00:24:00] 2,900 pounds, it’s a blast.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. You know,

Paul Wilamoski: it’s not a fast car, it’s a quick car. It’s a little scalpel. Now, why not the nine 11? The ones that I want are a lot of money.

I will only get an SI will only get. A 9, 9 7 or maybe a 9, 9 3, which is kind of archaic if, if you guys know that kind of car. It’s archaic. Yeah, it looks beautiful. But inside looks like it’s from the sixties. The nine nine ones I, I believe are the next gen after 9, 9, 7 are big. They’re

Crew Chief Brad: grand tours now, not sports cars.

Paul Wilamoski: Yeah, they’re GT and, and I mean they’re not as big as like the BMWs, you know the m threes? No, no.

Crew Chief Eric: Nothing’s as big as the M eight. Let’s be real that thing’s like a school bus.

Paul Wilamoski: Oh man. So I really like the nine nine sevens and I probably will get one, you know, uh, that gts, that’s my unicorn right now. I’ll get it over time, but.

For now, the, the 9 8 7 s, it’s a $30,000 car. And [00:25:00] if you look at it, you know, people who don’t know Porsches think it’s a 50 or $60,000 car. And the car’s in immaculate condition. And I love it. I, every time I get in it, it always puts a smile on my face, especially after a cold start, you know, it’s a great car man for 30 grand.

Now, saying that the roads here in, in Southern California are the best I’ve ever driven on the, the canyon roads. Well, coming from

Crew Chief Brad: New York,

Paul Wilamoski: well, yeah, well, in New York I would go up to like Bear Mountain and stuff like that. And there’s like, you know, it’s like a three mile ride up and down and that was it.

You know, we had some nice back roads in Connecticut and stuff, but they were all, for the most part, uh, residential. So it was, you know how it is, you really gotta take it easy on those roads. Blind driveways, what have. Here, the canyon roads, like Angela’s Crest, the Santa Monica Mountains by Malibu and all that.

These roads are [00:26:00] legendary and they’re so fast. If you screw up, you’ll die. You’ll fly off a cliff again, being safe, I have fun, but I’m not pushing it. Like some of these people that I’ve watched, these roads are hundreds of miles long.

Crew Chief Eric: Even the PCH is gorgeous and it’s a lot of fun. I mean, not nearly as fast or technical, but if you’re out that way and you wanna go for a drive, just jump on the PCH.

Absolutely.

Paul Wilamoski: So when I’m going to Malibu to the mountains, I’ll take PCH up. For about 15 or 20 miles, and it’s a beautiful scenic, sweeping, you know, sweepers. It’s 50, 60 miles an hour because there’s a lot of cops there. As soon as you turn right and go up the hills, it turns into, uh, like Tour de France.

It’s just like this for, you’ll see signs, you know, like the, like squiggly Yeah. Next 30 miles or something like that. Yeah. You’re just like, so it’s so is is

Crew Chief Brad: Mulholland Drive included on that?

Paul Wilamoski: [00:27:00] Mulholland is great. There, there,

Crew Chief Brad: there, there’s some houses on Mulholland though, aren’t there?

Paul Wilamoski: Yeah, Mulholland is, it’s a beautiful road, but it’s extremely narrow and there’s a lot of blind curves on it.

And And is

Crew Chief Eric: it as creepy as they make it out to be in the movies?

Paul Wilamoski: Oh yeah. The Lynch film. Yeah. It’s creepier at night. Especially, that’s another thing in LA everything is pitch dark. Like there’s like one lamp post, light post every like half a mile. Mulholland is fun. It’s better on a bike because you have a lot more maneuverability.

Mulholland Highway is a bit more open and uh, that’s fun. There’s tons of stuff. There’s one curve, it’s called like the dragon something. It’s a famous curve that goes uphill and people are always hanging out there watching motorcyclists crash.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, I’ve seen that. I think I’ve seen the videos. I saw a BW flip over or something there

Paul Wilamoski: once.

Yeah, it happens like daily and it’s all because of the riders not looking ahead.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Paul Wilamoski: And that’s all it is. Which is

Crew Chief Eric: [00:28:00] something that we, we basically repeat constantly. Get your eyes up, be situationally aware. Yeah, right. Look ahead.

Paul Wilamoski: Yeah. So it’s been like a few years since I’ve actually been on the track.

So those daily rituals, you know, when you’re on the track, look up, look ahead. They haven’t faded completely, but when I’m driving on the roads, I have to keep reminding myself, now look up, look up, look far as far as ahead. Look

Crew Chief Eric: through the apex, look through the turn,

Paul Wilamoski: look through apex, look at that car that just, you know, a half a mile up and stuff like that.

And it’s great because it’s embedded in my brain. It’s, it’s it’s muscle memory.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. But I

Paul Wilamoski: still to this day have to remind myself to look up because you get lazy. You know, you, you just look at the car in front of you and react with them, and that’s the worst thing you can do.

Crew Chief Eric: We touched on your current dream car being the 9, 9 7, but what was the dream car when you were a kid?

Paul Wilamoski: It was definitely the Kosh and the, because of Miami Vice. [00:29:00] It was the, uh, the, actually I perf, I really liked the day, the Daytona that he drove before. Yeah, he got the tester. But yeah, it was the white tester until I found out that there were fake.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, they were, all of ’em were, yeah,

Paul Wilamoski: all, they’re all like, like Corvette engines or something like that on and, and all that.

And that kind of turned me off. But it was definitely Ferrari. Porsche was, uh, I love the nine 17 and uh, that was just a beautiful looking car, but I would have to say the Kosh, it was definitely because of the doors. And uh, so do you

Crew Chief Eric: think that was the sexiest car of all time? Or do you have something that’s even further out?

It’s still

Paul Wilamoski: hold up, dude. It, like Matt Farrah has one, he’s got like a red one with gold wheels on it. And I like was hanging out, looking at it and I’m like, this car is amazing. And then the reality kicks in because it’s pretty funny. You can’t see behind you.

Crew Chief Eric: No at all.

Paul Wilamoski: So when he had to reverse the car at Rad Wood, do you know what Rad Wood is?

Yes. So there was Rad [00:30:00] Wood at the Peterson, which is a big famous car museum here.

Crew Chief Eric: Yep. In

Paul Wilamoski: la He was backing it in and he had the door open, his ass out of the car, goes backwards to go through. And I’m like, that really sucks, dude.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. ’cause the, the side mirrors are useless too. So it’s the only way to see.

Paul Wilamoski: Well, how

Crew Chief Brad: does Mad Farah fit in one of those? Isn’t he like 6 3, 6 4?

Paul Wilamoski: He’s about six three, I would say about 280 pounds. 70 pounds. So he,

Crew Chief Brad: he’s a little smaller than I am. I don’t understand how he fits in a car like that. I

Paul Wilamoski: don’t know. He just bought a 3 0 8 I think.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Paul Wilamoski: Now there’s

Crew Chief Eric: a car that, oh man.

Paul Wilamoski: The Magnum PI was a 3 28 though.

Crew Chief Eric: No, a 3 0 8 GTS. And then, then the later ones he had a 3 0 8 GTS qv. But the four valve head,

Paul Wilamoski: so, and I heard you like destroy the clutches. Dude,

Crew Chief Eric: those were his car. Those were Tom Sellecks cars.

Paul Wilamoski: Oh, I did not know that.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And that, so what’s really funny is, and I’ve talked about this before in another episode, there’s a crossover he did with Carol Burnett where there’s a [00:31:00] green one and that was the loaner car because of what you just said, where the clutch was out on the red one.

So they gave him this green one and it’s like one episode. But yeah, they were all his cars and apparently he bought one for Rick and TC and like everybody and Salt, they were like multiple cars on set and they would use ’em and then, uh, they did a crossover also. This is where I’m nerd now. They did a crossover with, um, Richard Dean Anderson on MacGyver, and he borrowed Tom Sell’s car and used it for an episode on the show for whatever stupid reason.

You know, those cars are great. I’ve driven a 3 28. It’s much bigger, no more head height than the 3 0 8 does. Mm-hmm. It took a minute to get used to the gated shifter, but I tell you what, man, there is nothing like those high strung Ferrari v eights where it’s like, yeah. Where is Red Line? ’cause the gauge goes to 12,000 and you’re just like, I don’t know, somewhere around nine you shift and it doesn’t care and they sound glorious.

Oh, amazing. And then you, then you realize it’s in there sideways and you scratch your head and you’re like, wait, it’s transverse. You’re like, what? [00:32:00] So who thought, who thought this was a good idea? Tom

Paul Wilamoski: Sellick is tall as well. I think he’s like 6 3, 6 4. He can’t drive that thing with the roof on. That’s why they, they could never shoot with the rain or whatever.

I think I just put two and two together. I forgot. The reason why I love the Kosh so much and everything comes full circle here is because of Cannonball Run.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes, yes.

Paul Wilamoski: So the intro to Cannonball Run, which we all know is the TransAm cop chasing the, uh, the, the Lambo with the two girls in it. And it’s.

Amazing. And then years later I got to meet Brock h Jr. You know, and, and all that. And telling him that I’ve watched a Cannonball run 150 times. I know it verbatim. And that was pretty cool.

Crew Chief Eric: Was that the first one or the second one? Where did the color change on the car? Where they like hosted. That was the second one where they went to the drive through and Yeah.

Yeah. They hosed it down and it came out black or went in black, it came out white or whatever. Yeah.

Paul Wilamoski: That [00:33:00] was the second. Well, the second one I wasn’t a really big fan of. I’ll watch it because you know, it’s Burt Reynolds and Doug. Oh yeah, of course. Funny story about Brock h Jr. There’s a, a famous guy, he’s super rich, has his own racetrack at his house in upstate New York.

It’s a pretty cool racetrack, and it’s, it’s a, it’s a like crazy that he built a racetrack there. So, Solomon Rosenthal, uh, who’s associated with one lap of America, he was doing an event there for veterans. They were doing a TV show for wounded veterans, doing kind of like a marathon with race cars and doing this and doing that.

And the segment was them driving. Roush Mustangs. So we had Jack Roush Jr there, Brock h Jr. And a bunch of other people. Solomon called me up and said, listen, would you, could you help out? Uh, we need someone to that knows, you know, working in a hot pit and there’s gonna be a lot of people there that have no idea what they’re doing, [00:34:00] so I need you to supervise it.

Said, absolutely. So I did that and then at the end of the day they’re like, Hey, if you guys want to take your cars out on the track, go right ahead. So I had my Cayman and I’m going around the track and Brock Yates Jr. Is behind me and a piece of crap. Subaru Outback. Okay. Young in his car and all that.

And dude, I am trying to drive quickly and he is right up my butt the whole time. And we get out and he’s like, dude, you suck.

Busting my chops. And I looked down and he has no shoes on. He’s driving barefoot. Did you just, you did that barefoot? He’s like, yeah, like I like to drive barefoot. And I’m like, and you were up my butt in a Subaru Outback. That’s amazing. He’s not the fastest driver in the world now ’cause he’s getting up there in age.

But he is. One of the smoothest, one of the most [00:35:00] consistent drivers I’ve ever been around.

Crew Chief Eric: Lots to unpack here. Tons of stories, but let’s, let’s switch gears for a minute. So coming from the East coast and going west. Yeah. And I’m assuming you’ve been out to the west coast before traveling, but now you’ve, you’ve changed residency and all that.

The car culture on the East Coast is very different than the West Coast. Like, you know, we have our stance bros. There’s a lot of autocross out here. There’s a lot of tracks, a lot of famous tracks on the East coast, like you mentioned, lime Rock, Watkins Glen, VIR, road, Atlanta, Sebring, the list goes on and on and on.

The track culture in California is very different, but also the car culture’s extremely different. So what have you experienced now being there, especially in Southern California and being in the midst of, you know, some of these great fabricators and, and cars and car shows and things like that. What’s it like

Paul Wilamoski: from my limited experience here, because I’ve only been here for about, what, two and a half years.

One of ’em has been stuck in my house like everyone else. [00:36:00] So what I’ve noticed is I think car culture was created here, you know, in like the fifties and sixties and all that. With hot rods and all that. You have that element. Okay? You have cars and coffee and car meets. There’s 50 of them a day. Okay? It’s insane because the weather here is always, for the most part, great.

You can always go to some sort of car show, some club, doing some drive. All that and it’s amazing. It’s very different than what I’m used to in the Northeast, which was kind of the car shows for the most part were high-end car shows at like Greenwich and the Greenwich Concourse and, and the big event at Lime Rock where they had like everyone’s car around the whole track.

That’s like, what, a mile and a half long. Here it’s more just kind of like impromptu, A lot of them are, and. There’s a lot of money here. A lot of [00:37:00] money. So you’ll go to a car show and you’ll see $10 million Ferraris and Bugattis and you know, uh, NDAs or whatever, like all this crazy stuff. Mike Musto told me this when I moved here.

He said, listen, you’re gonna come across a lot of people that you’re just not gonna wanna hang. And you know, they have more money and all they do is show off their cars, which is cool. But I like hanging out with people that go to the track. Wanna drive. And, and have that kind of personality. It’s been difficult to find those people.

Honestly. I just started finding those kind of people that I like going out on the canyons with and driving and knowing that they’re not gonna do anything stupid and try to, you know, have huge egos and stuff like that. And that’s what I gravitate towards. So it’s great when, just like you guys, it’ll be a Sunday morning.

It’ll be, I’ll meet [00:38:00] someone in Venice Beach at seven o’clock in the morning. We’ll go up PCH, we’ll go in the mountains for a good hour and a half, two hours, and then go to this tiny little. Restaurant that’s outdoors that Steve McQueen used to hang out at all the time. You know, it’s called the Old Place, have breakfast and then you’re home by like 11 and that’s it.

And that’s great for me. The track culture here is pretty cool. People go to the track here all the time. The thing is, is that there’s only really like two or three tracks around la I think it’s Button Willow, which I was at, which was about an hour and a half away.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s Adams Motor Sports Park, which I’ve run at.

Adams is out in Riverside, so if you ever in Riverside wanna try Riverside. Yeah, if you wanna try something different.

Paul Wilamoski: I’ve never had, there’s Willow Springs, which is super famous and maybe like, and there’s like the Porsche Experience Center, which is not really the same. Yeah, there’s one other one, but that’s about it.

So, everywhere else, like, you know, if you really [00:39:00] want to go to serious racetracks besides Bun Willow, you have to go north to like Laguna, Sega, uh, Sonoma and all that. And that’s cool because Musto, my good friend for 30 years lives in San Francisco. So now that I have the Cayman, I’m like getting the itch again, you know what I mean?

And I’m like, let’s go to Laguna and stuff. And that’s inevitable. I’ll be doing that soon enough.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ll be living vicariously through you, Paul. So

Paul Wilamoski: just like, dude. No,

Crew Chief Brad: we’re gonna, we’re gonna be visiting is what you, what you meant to say.

Paul Wilamoski: Absolutely. Dude, I’ve got an extra bedroom. You guys can crash here. No problem.

Yeah, the car culture here is. Amazing. So you’ll be driving down the street and you, you’ll stop and a, I don’t know, some crazy cougar or, or, or barracuda

Crew Chief Eric: or, I’m glad we’re still talking about cars. I just wanted to make sure. Yeah, I

Crew Chief Brad: was, I was thinking that, I was wondering. That’s

Paul Wilamoski: a whole other conversation, uh, altogether here.

It’s insane. A

Crew Chief Brad: cougar in a barracuda.

Paul Wilamoski: A cougar in a, [00:40:00] isn’t that that song by heart, right? I mean, so, so yeah, there’s. Every kind of car, you’ll see everything around here.

Crew Chief Eric: A lot of ’em are more bespoke than like what we’re used to on the east coast, which all the stance bros. Where everybody’s putting ’em on bags and doing whatever they’re doing and they’re very flashy and very well put together.

But I, out west I see, I feel, still feel that there’s a lot of custom fabrication going on to make everybody’s experience in car very unique.

Paul Wilamoski: Absolutely. So a good friend of mine, uh, her name is Katherine Sutton. When I was at Weinstein, I was her client for like 10 years. She worked at Technicolor, which is a big vendor for the film industry.

We hit it off really well. She’s super sweet. She’s got a 3 56 and a Cayman just like mine. So when I moved here, I lived like five minutes from her and she’s on the board of the Peterson Museum. You know, the doors swung wide open [00:41:00] and I got to tour Outlaws the Outlaws, you know, rod Emery? I was at his facility.

Peterson had an event there. So yeah, I got to watch the fabrications there. I’ve seen a lot of, uh, the singers, Porsches, which are gorgeous. They’re out here.

Crew Chief Brad: Have you been by Magnus Walker? His, his shop?

Paul Wilamoski: I haven’t, but I see him at least once every other week. At some cart thing? Yeah, all the time. All the time.

So that road that I was telling you about, Angela’s Crest, there’s a really famous restaurant called Newcombs Ranch. You’re going up these mountains for 30 miles and there’s nothing there except mountains. And then all of a sudden there’s this tiny little restaurant in the middle of nowhere, and that’s the meeting point for cars and coffees, guys riding bikes, what have you.

It’s closed because of COVID, but it’s got a huge parking lot. And I was just there two Fridays ago. I drove up at seven in the [00:42:00] morning to get my Yaya’s out and who’s there is Magnus and he’s hanging out, he hangs out all at all these events. So you see him all the time. I like what he does with his nine elevens and he’s kind of like

Crew Chief Brad: a singer light.

I, I would, would say.

Paul Wilamoski: Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I, I actually was contemplating talking to him saying, what could you do with a Cayman? You know, and I just like, I’m curious to see what he would say on it. He actually just bought a 9 9 1 Turbo that had like 150,000 miles on it or something like that, but he got like 50 or 60 grand.

So, uh, that’s, that’s a deal and a half. And I think that’s like, its first modern nine 11.

Crew Chief Eric: So do you just see it as different, better? Do you miss the east coast ways or is it just the whole new chapter?

Paul Wilamoski: Yeah, I miss certain things about New York and the Northeast. Uh, obviously the, the main thing is my family and my friends.

I, I miss that tremendously. You know, I’m trying to [00:43:00] make new friends out here. Being stuck in my house for a year doesn’t really help. The Cayman does help. That’s a nice little gateway to, to the Porsche community.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I think it also brings you back to your East coast roots. ’cause you had one when you were over here.

So you kind of get back in that mindset.

Paul Wilamoski: There’s a bit more culture in the Northeast than la. There is culture in la, don’t get me wrong. LA is a gigantic city. It’s huge. I still get lost. I use Waze every day. But you have to search for some really cool stuff while New York, maybe I’m just being biased.

’cause in

Crew Chief Eric: every it’s ’cause in New York, everybody’s got a guy. They got a guy that knows a guy and they know the

Paul Wilamoski: place to go. People, people have guys here. They’re, they’re funny. Someone just said, I got a guy the other day and I started cracking up. I’m like, wow, that’s so New York. Yeah, the people are nice here.

Everyone is throttled back here for the most part. Being a New Yorker, I was coming full tilt boogie. [00:44:00] People were scared. So they’re like, you, you gotta chill, dude. Like smoke a joint. It’s legal here and, and, uh, relax. People are nice. The food is great. It’s much more health orientated here due to the weather.

I’m not hibernating like I did in New York since I moved here. I lost like 35 pounds. And, uh, the tacos here are frigging great. That’s what

Crew Chief Eric: everybody says, right?

Paul Wilamoski: The best tacos.

Crew Chief Brad: I can’t imagine why

Crew Chief Eric: I’ll say. So let’s shift into third and let’s talk a little bit about Hollywood, right? So you don’t have to go into all the gory details.

I think some of the listeners would love to know if you worked on anything that maybe they’ve seen that was popular. Anything related to cars.

Paul Wilamoski: All right, well, we’ll start with like movies that I worked on that involved cars. I would say, if you guys remember the Quentin Tarantino Robert Rodriguez double feature called Grindhouse?

Crew Chief Brad: Yes.

Paul Wilamoski: Uh, the one with Kurt Russell driving the Nova. With the big duck on the, uh, so I worked on that film. That was like one of the first [00:45:00] films I worked on when I started at Weinstein. The Tarantino film is called Death Proof. Yes. That was amazing. And we posters and one of the cool posters on it is it’s very retro, sixties, seventies, and it’s just the hood of the Nova.

And so I worked on that film trying to think of other car stuff, uh, or even

Crew Chief Eric: notable films that, that people were like, oh man, you worked on that. I, I

Crew Chief Brad: just saw on your Instagram you worked on, uh, sound of Metal, which I, I haven’t watched. It’s on my list to watch like really soon.

Paul Wilamoski: Yeah, that’s a really cool movie.

So the company that I work for now has a Canadian, a sister, Canadian company, and we had the rights to sound of metal for Canada. So I was dealing with the producers every day and Amazon and all that. I got all the materials to successfully market. And release the film in Canada. That movie was a pain in the butt to deal with because the movie is about a drummer losing [00:46:00] his hearing and what they decided to do, you know, closed caption files where you could turn it on or turn it off.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Paul Wilamoski: They wanted it burned in, so it’s their 24 7 because it’s, you know about people losing their hearing. They have to use the closed caption, so they’re trying to get the point across Awareness. Yeah. Everything was up the 25th hour to get this done. That’s not an easy task to do. I’m trying to think of other films.

Silver Linings, playbook, the reader, the artist,

Crew Chief Eric: do they all start with the.

Paul Wilamoski: Oh yeah, the King speech. That was a good one. I saw that one. Yeah, that was a good flick And glorious bastards. I saw that too. That’s

Crew Chief Brad: the second Tarantino flick.

Paul Wilamoski: It was Inglorious Django and the Hateful eight

Crew Chief Brad: Oh oh wow.

Paul Wilamoski: Which is Western.

And then, um, yeah, and then death proof and Grindhouse and uh, nice Grindhouse thing was a. [00:47:00] Huge issue. So the movie was about three and a half hours long. It was a double feature, right? Had fake trailers at the beginning of it, fake trailers between the two movies. And when it was released in the United States, people didn’t understand that.

So most people left after death proof after the first movie, not knowing that it was a double feature.

Crew Chief Brad: Funny though, when I saw it, ’cause I saw both of ’em, I saw the double feature in the theaters. Death proof was the second one when I saw it. Is that right? The Rodriguez film was the first one

Paul Wilamoski: then. Uh, you know, I might, I it’s been so long, it might have been people left after Planet Terror, which was the, uh, the Rodriguez one.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. So

Paul Wilamoski: saying that I dealt with international, so I deal with the whole world releasing our films. No one wanted to release this film now because it’s three and a half hours long and no one’s gonna stay in the movie theater for three and a half hours. So we had to split the movies up and release ’em as two separate films.

Now think [00:48:00] about it, if you’ve marketed and did all your post-production and everything for one film, now you have to completely redo everything and release it for international, and we did that. And those films became like the director’s cuts that were like 10 minutes longer and all that. So that was a nightmare.

So, uh, you know,

Crew Chief Eric: which other movie had fake previews at the beginning? Tropic Thunder. I’m just gonna throw it out there. Oh yeah.

Paul Wilamoski: Booty Sweat. So I love Tropic Thunder.

Crew Chief Eric: Make ’em like that anymore, but they don’t,

Paul Wilamoski: they don’t. It was great.

Crew Chief Eric: Before we get into the secret Petrol heads of Hollywood, let’s actually talk about your thoughts on some of the more recent car related films that have come out of Hollywood.

So kind of your hot take on maybe the Fast and the Furious or Rush or Racing in the Rain or some of those movies. I love Rush. I

Paul Wilamoski: think that’s a well made film. I’ve always been a fan of Nikki Lauda and, and James Hunt and the, and the rivalry there and all that. [00:49:00] And, you know, they were at Watkins Glen and all that, even though they didn’t shoot it on location.

A lot of it was all CGI and stuff like that. I really enjoyed that film, and I’m a big fan of Ron Howard, the director, the fast and Furious films, I’m not a big fan of, I mean, they’re just completely stupid, you know, they, they defy the laws of gravity and all that stuff, but I watch ’em, I’m, I have to see ’em, you know, it’s, it’s just, it, it’s pop, it’s entertaining.

Yeah. I mean, so don’t get me wrong, I mean, I love Fast Five, the one that’s in like Rio and stuff. Like that’s that one, that’s the best one. Yeah. I love Tokyo Drift. And, uh,

Crew Chief Eric: what about Ford versus Ferrari? I liked it. Very much so. You didn’t get all up in arms about when he, you know, he is doing 200 and suddenly he shifts and then the pedal goes six feet

Paul Wilamoski: further.

It’s funny that you say that ’cause there’s a couple times I’m like, how many times is he shifting gears? Every card Fast and Furious is a 14 speed. Like a tractor

Crew Chief Eric: trailer. Right. [00:50:00] So

Paul Wilamoski: besides those inaccuracies, I did enjoy the movie. Nine Outta 10 people are not gonna know that there’s, you know, the engines are inaccurate, the sounds are inaccurate and all that.

I really enjoyed it. I thought I’m a big fan of the director. It’s a very inviting film.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. It’s

Paul Wilamoski: kinda like you can watch it over and over. It’s got a very warm feeling to it. It was shot with a lot of available light. So it’s a beautiful looking film. I love that. The CGI is really, really down to a minimum in that film, if at all.

That is probably my favorite car film in the past few years.

Crew Chief Eric: Did they film at Willow Springs?

Paul Wilamoski: I think they did. I don’t know, but just watching the film, you can tell that it, it was at Willow Springs.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, it looked legit

Paul Wilamoski: at Lamont. They didn’t, that was fake. Uh, I think they shot that in Georgia. There’s probably some establishing shots and stuff like that.

Yeah. In the town that’s legit. But the actual track stuff, no, I think that’s fake.

Crew Chief Brad: So I’ve got a question for you. You, you mentioned like the original Cannonball Run, uh, you really liked that [00:51:00] film. What about the original Gone in 60 Seconds? Because we reviewed that film Yeah. Did on our podcast we did.

Paul Wilamoski: I haven’t seen that film in years.

I, I, I, I think the last time I saw it, I did a, like, a double feature with that in, uh, vanishing

Crew Chief Eric: Point.

Paul Wilamoski: So yeah, I mean, I love those films. But I’m gonna say the best driving films I’ve ever seen is Ronan

Crew Chief Brad: Ronan’s. Fantastic.

Paul Wilamoski: All right, so here’s a little backstory on Ronan. You know who’s driving in those in the cars, right?

It’s all F1 drivers.

Crew Chief Eric: Really? I didn’t know that.

Paul Wilamoski: Yeah, so it’s all F1 drivers and just Google like the behind the scenes on that film and you’ll learn all about it. That’s how I did. I love the driving in that film ’cause it’s all real. They’re booking through niece and and stuff like that and I know niece and can I know those areas?

’cause I go there for work every year. Fantastic. And John Frankenheimer is uh, who was an amazing director. So that film Vanishing Point, gone in 60 seconds. I [00:52:00] liked, I have a soft spot for the remake. Don’t. Don’t be mad, but, oh, the

Crew Chief Brad: Nick Cage. I like the Nick Cage one. I thought the first one was trash. I liked the Nick Cage

Paul Wilamoski: one.

They digging them Cannibal run still holds up.

Crew Chief Eric: But you, you know, you know what the common thread with all those older movies? I mean, you could even lump lemons in there. You could lump bullet in there. The seven ups, stuff like that. They had these epic car chases. Yeah. And they were, they were legitimate car chase scenes.

Not like the stuff that we’re used to today where it’s stuff’s exploding and it’s mostly CGI and whatever

Paul Wilamoski: is, uh, fast edits nowadays. Like, you know, like the average shot in a Fast and Furious movie is about a half a second to a second. You know what I mean? It’s like the older movies are long takes like one take camera in the car, you know, French connection, you know, like that to live and die in la Have you seen that movie that I haven’t seen?

Check out. Watch it. It’s the same director as the French connection. It’s William Friedkin. Okay. [00:53:00] Okay. He did the ex as well. To live and die in LA has amazing car chases in it. So, uh, I highly recommend it.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, there’s some terrible car Chase scene movies too. We reviewed some of those as well. And much like you talked about Miami Vice, all of them used the nine 11 as the soundtrack for all the cars, regardless if it was a V eight or a four cylinder, I never understood that, but whatever, it was always

Paul Wilamoski: a nine 11.

Yeah, I, I just found out recently I was watching, uh, rendezvous. Okay. I just found out that it was a Mercedes. With a, uh, camera on the hood with like a gimbal or something like that in the seventies. But the sound is a Ferrari.

Crew Chief Eric: Correct. And so everybody thinks it’s like a Ferrari two 50 or whatever. And it So it’s a Mercedes.

Huh?

Paul Wilamoski: It’s a Mercedes. And the guy who filmed it, it was his Mercedes and his Ferrari, so he, oh, he was doing it. So it was a Mercedes. That was an impressive film, dude.

Crew Chief Eric: It was shot in one go in the middle of the morning and [00:54:00] all this crazy. There’s a lot of myth around that movie, and, and so. You never know what’s the truth and what is it.

I’ve watched it so many times and it, it, it just, it holds up after, what has it been? 60 years if not more.

Paul Wilamoski: Something like that. I mean, it’s like, what, a 10 minute film? 8, 8, 10 minute film, all one take. It’s, I think it was shot at like five o’clock in the morning on a Sunday in Paris, and I’ve heard that there was only about three or four spotters in the entire thing.

I think they were using radios or walkie talkies and stuff like that. And there was like one hairy moment in the whole Yeah, where the

Crew Chief Eric: truck is backing up and the ladies walking

Paul Wilamoski: out

Crew Chief Eric: and you’re like,

Paul Wilamoski: whoa, this isn’t gonna work. So that was amazing. I, I watched that over and over and they just remastered it too.

So it really, yeah, it looks and sounds great, man. Too bad

Crew Chief Eric: there isn’t footage from the outside. It would’ve been really cool to see how it was made, but again, that’s part of the myth. Of that movie is not knowing what’s really going on.

Paul Wilamoski: Yeah. And then people have tried to like copy it over the years as an homage and it just doesn’t have that [00:55:00] same, yeah, exactly.

Well, speaking of

Crew Chief Eric: French films, we also, if you go back and listen to some of the other podcast episodes we’ve done, we reviewed a new film that came out of France last year during COVID. It’s called The Lost Bullet. And apparently there’s gonna be a sequel to it or a trilogy, something like that. And actually we tweeted about it and the director responded back to us, which we thought was super awesome.

But that was surprisingly good film. And some just like low budget cars and stuff. Good chasing scenes. Good action. And we were like, excuse me. What?

Paul Wilamoski: Yeah. So I was dating a French woman here. For about a year. One of the main reasons I was dating her and how we clicked is ’cause she had a a 9 9 7 2 C four s cab, PDKI, I won’t hold it against her, but anyway, she’s, you know, a, a big film fan as I am and she turned me onto that film and I’m like, really?

And I started watching. I’m like, this is kind of goofy, but the chase scenes are awesome. Exactly. You know, I was like, this is [00:56:00] actually pretty good. It’s like a cheap, uh, Lu besant, so I love Lu Besant films. So yeah, the French do make some great,

Crew Chief Eric: great stuff. There’s some really, and, and actually, and I don’t know if it’s part of your world, you’re talking about international.

We’re starting to see a lot more international programs and films come over. Things like Money Heist, Lu Pen. There’s a lot of really cool stuff like on Netflix and whatnot, and it, and they’re being dubbed in English, which is good for, you know, American audiences. You can watch it in the native language or native tongue if you want.

Right. I like the fact that we’re cross-pollinating now. But, you know, talking about Lost Bullet. I’m with you. I mean, that opening scene where he puts like the Lambo motor, the back of his cle and he, he’s trying to like run through the bank and stuff and I’m like. What the heck is this? And then after that it just, it kind of opened up and I was like, hello?

Paul Wilamoski: I’m like, Hey, I got sucked in. Yeah, exactly. In, and I was exactly like, you looking at my girlfriend, like, what, what is this shit? And, and then, and she’s like, just stick with it. And I stuck with it and I was like, oh, this [00:57:00] is great. I agree with you that I’m really enjoying the fact that films and, and television shows from around the world are becoming more mainstream now.

When I was growing up, when I was in film school, we were watching John Wu films and, and Hong Kong stuff free and stuff like Old Boy and all that stuff. That was really a niche market, you know, only certain film cinephiles would dig and now it’s all mainstream. Yeah. So every show that you’ve just mentioned, Lupin and, and have you guys seen the Bureau?

Crew Chief Eric: No, I haven’t watched it yet. No. Watch it. Yeah. It’s

Paul Wilamoski: a French show. It’s a espionage type thing. Oh, nice. Slow burn. Fantastic. One of the best shows I’ve seen in 10 years.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m a big fan of Money Heist Man. That is, that’s,

Paul Wilamoski: you know, there’s a lot of stuff around the world and I’m glad that Netflix, you know, they have the money to make

Crew Chief Eric: the card shuffling that’s going on right now, you know, with the, the Paramount Pluses and the Discovery Pluses and the Hulus and the Disney, and they’re all [00:58:00] plus now, right?

Plus this and plus that. I think it, it helped Netflix actually diversify the portfolio because I’ve been with Netflix for such a long time. I mean, in the early days, you know, going back to the DVD era, and then it was like, oh, we have the streaming service. Do you want to try it? It was like in the A OL CD in the mail, you know what I mean?

The stuff that was on Netflix back then, it was like, oh, it’s, it’s Muskrat manner with like, what’s his face, you know, Sam Wise Gaji from the Lord of the Rings is the narrator. What’s his, I can’t remember his real name right now, but you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Crew Chief Brad: John Austin.

Crew Chief Eric: Sean Austin, exactly.

So I’m like, that’s like the beginning days and there was a lot of like, really indie stuff on there and it became so mainstream ’cause it was like one stop shopping. That was the well that everybody drank from. And now I’m kind of glad that we’re back to some of the more diversified portfolio. And, and I’m, I mean, I’m a big Ang amplifi.

I love British tv, so I like tapping into that kind of stuff. And, you know, getting exposure to what’s going on over the pond. Let’s talk about who are the secret [00:59:00] petrolhead that we don’t know about. You know, we know Tom Cruise, we know Paul Walker, we know Steve McQueen and, and, and, you know, all those guys.

Were all petrolheads, but there’s gotta be some other ones that maybe we’re, we’re not familiar with. So let’s, let’s go with that. Was

Crew Chief Brad: Weinstein a Petrolhead?

No,

Paul Wilamoski: I don’t think he ever drove. He always had a driver. I don’t know about Secret. I mean, I’ve seen and met. Keanu Reeves with his ARC motorcycles. Mm.

I’ve seen him.

Crew Chief Eric: He’s got a Chevelle too, right?

Paul Wilamoski: Yeah. Brad Pitt I heard is a, uh, a big Petrolhead. The wrestler Goldberg.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, Goldberg, yes. Yeah, he’s a, he, he was on a show, I thought it was on History Channel. They did a lot of, uh, the car stuff.

Paul Wilamoski: He did a show way back in the day called The Bull Run, which is now like a rally, I think.

Oh, okay. And Mike Musto was a contestant on that show with this. Oh, okay. 68 Charger. I’m trying to think who else. I mean, so let me,

Crew Chief Eric: I’ll rephrase the question. Celebrities you have run into at some of these car shows that you didn’t expect to see there.

Paul Wilamoski: Jay [01:00:00] Leno, you see all the time. I have a funny story about Jay Leno.

Really quick. I was on that road, Angela’s Crest, and I was in my Catherine’s Haman and I’m flying up a hill. I’m probably doing about 90. In a, in a 40. Uh, but you know, it was a straightaway easy. I’m flying and coming down the hill is a yellow McLaren and it’s flashing its lights at me, letting me know that there’s a cop, and the closer it got.

I was looking like who’s driving it? And I see this big head. You mean big chin, right? He’s got a huge no in it’s like smoking. Yeah. And you could see it’s Jay Leto. And I’m like, cool. And then it was like a month or so later I bumped into him at another car van and I said, dude, you saved me from getting a ticket.

He’s like, what are you talking about? And I told him and he is like, oh yeah. He is like, no problem. Uh, I was doing that for everyone. I’m like, well that, that was a cool little story. Nice. Um, there’s a really big Porsche event every year in la. I can never [01:01:00] pronounce it. It’s like loof loin G in. There’s something like that.

It’s huge, but it’s put together by Patrick Long, I think Patrick Dempsey and another famous actor, I forgot who it was. And they do this huge air cooled nine 11 event every year. And the last time they did it was in 2019 and they did it at the Universal Pictures Lot.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh wow.

Paul Wilamoski: You get to go into the lot, which is huge.

You walk around and there’s all these air cooled nine elevens everywhere, like a thousand of them, and it was amazing. So I’m walking around and I’m like, wow, that’s a really cool nine 11. But why am I getting this deja vu here? And I look around and sure enough, I’m standing right in the middle of the town center where back to the future was filmed, the clock tower.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh wow.

Paul Wilamoski: So everyone’s freaking out about nine elevens and stuff. I’m freaking out because I’m standing next to the clock tower [01:02:00] and that was pretty,

Crew Chief Eric: I heard there’s a DeLorean still rotting on the property there. Not too far from that set.

Crew Chief Brad: Really?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. It’s one of the last of the, of the film cars that didn’t get, is it still in

Crew Chief Brad: the bush?

Crew Chief Eric: Uh, yeah, I think so. It’s, it’s like one of the last film cars that didn’t get either dismantled sold off or destroyed, and it’s like still there on the property.

Paul Wilamoski: I’ve seen on the street, I’ve seen, uh, DeLorean that are replicas of the one from the film, you know, with all the stuff complete with, um, Mr.

Fusion. Yeah. Mr. Fusion. The, uh, the, the, there was, um, fog shooting out of the exhaust ports and all that. I’ve seen the Ghostbusters Ecto one, the Cadillac seen that. I’ve seen the Batmobile, the original Batmobile. Lot of cool stuff.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, since you brought it up and you’re talking about, you know, famous movie cars, there’s been a lot of movie cars kind of destroyed over the years and there’s, you know, rumors and wives tales about like, these big just parking lots full of Dodge chargers that are out there that are just kind of rotting in the sun.

I mean, is that, is that, you know, from [01:03:00] Dukes of Hazard or whatever, I mean, is that true or are there movie cars that you can get your hands on out there and do something with?

Paul Wilamoski: I know if there is, I have no idea about it, but now you pique my interest, so I’m gonna probably have to do some, uh. Some research that would be great.

Photography,

Crew Chief Eric: uh,

Paul Wilamoski: for me, I know there’s like airplane graveyards and stuff like that. Out in the middle of nowhere,

Crew Chief Eric: you know, photography’s big. I mean, I guess out there with all these, you know, hot looking cars, it, it’s not hard to take a bad picture. Right. So any tips and tricks for aspiring photographers?

I mean, what are you using as your camera, stuff like that?

Paul Wilamoski: I use Canon a, Canon five D Mark four. I use primarily two lenses, a 70 to 200 and, uh, 24 to 70. They’re amazing cameras, but you’d be surprised what you can shoot with your iPhone nowadays. I’ve been hanging around some really, really good photographers, so I’ve been learning from them as well.

The thing is, when you’re taking a photo of a car, the difference between a [01:04:00] photograph and a snapshot is positioning of the, of the, the photo. So just taking a shot of a car at a car show is super boring, so you want to try to do what’s called the rule of thirds. If you know what that is to position the car cool.

Blurred background or something like that, or one distinct really cool feature on the car. Uh, that’s what I like to do, rather than just a regular car shot. It’s hard to take shots of a car in motion to make it look like it’s in motion with your cell phone, but it’s easy to do on those cameras. That’s kind of cool as well.

And I’m really getting into black and white again. Trying to shoot in black and white is pretty cool.

Crew Chief Eric: Nice. Not on film though. Still digital,

Paul Wilamoski: all digital.

Crew Chief Eric: Nice.

Paul Wilamoski: Yeah, I, I, everything is digital nowadays, so very cool. But yeah. Uh, I’m not as well steeped in LA knowledge yet.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right. So, while you’re searching, just keep an eye out for the defender from [01:05:00] the Viper TV series on NBC.

’cause I, man, I, I would love to get my hands on something like that.

Paul Wilamoski: My

Crew Chief Eric: second unicorn

Paul Wilamoski: is a falcon, you know, the Mad Max? Yeah. Uh, with the big, uh, supercharger or whatever on the top of it. I’ve seen a couple of those around town.

Crew Chief Eric: A Falcon XBGT. So, speaking of which

Paul Wilamoski: mm-hmm.

Crew Chief Eric: Most people don’t realize. Eric Ana’s a major petrolhead.

Have you seen his movie? Love the Beast.

Paul Wilamoski: Absolutely. So, uh, I love that film. Uh, Eric, Ben is supposed to be, I’ve never met him, but I’ve heard he is a real down to earth cool guy.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And I think that, that movie, I mean, it’s a biopic, right? I mean, in real, in reality. But I think it speaks a lot to his true personality, who he is, his humble beginnings and all that.

And if for anybody that hasn’t seen it, it’s totally worth watching. It’s a fantastic film and I make it a point to watch it every year.

Paul Wilamoski: Yeah, I pretty much watch it almost every year. I think it’s one of my favorite car films as well, especially

Crew Chief Eric: that opening sequence where he’s driving, I forget which track it is in his 9 9 3 cup car, and he is just talking.

He’s got [01:06:00] that monologue and he’s setting the stage and everything he says is true. I think of everybody that’s spent time either as a coach or on track or has done some high performance driving it, it really does resonate. And I think he encapsulates that whole feeling and that monologue at the beginning.

It’s absolutely incredible.

Paul Wilamoski: Yeah. There’s something to be said and, and I know you can, can pick this up pretty quickly too, where, uh. You’ll be with someone you’ll know right off the bat that they can drive, you know, e everyone that talks blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. My car does this, my car does that. I’m like, okay, cool.

But like, there’s certain people that have that mystique and Brock Yates Jr. Was one of those guys. What I’ve noticed over the years is that being at all these track events, the guys that look the grungiest and have like, you know, just don’t give a crap. The best drivers.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, welcome to GTN

Paul Wilamoski: all my, all my coaches, all my instructors who look like Uncle Jesse from Duke dad, uh, could out drive [01:07:00] everyone, you know, and I, and I thought that was awesome. So, yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: so, so Mountain man, Dan, if you’re listening, I, I’m sure you’re smiling right now, so we’re all good. Yeah,

Paul Wilamoski: I, I love that. And it, it was great.

And those are the people that I love being around because they just been there, done that have been doing it. They’ll take their, you know, RV with a, a tow on it and they’ll, they’re retired and all they do is go from racetrack to racetrack, and that’s all they do. Those are the people that if you really wanna learn how to drive, at least from my experience, are the people that you wanna be around.

Absolutely.

Crew Chief Brad: So I’ve got, I’ve got a question for you. You, you go to a lot of car shows and everything. You see a lot of people, there’s a lot of money out in la. Is there one particular brand or manufacturer you would say. Is like the manufacturer of choice. And the reason I’m asking is when we went to Texas for the F1 race, it seemed like you could throw a stone in any direction and hit a McLaren.

Paul Wilamoski: Yeah, McLaren seems to be the, uh, the the hot new thing. So you’ll, you’ll see a ton of them [01:08:00] all the time.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Paul Wilamoski: PCH I’ll pull over to get gas. There’ll be 10 of ’em flying by before I, I fill up completely. And, uh, so I would say McLaren, Porsche, a lot of people are big fans of that. A lot of old muscle cars, which is really cool.

But you’re not gonna see, obviously, you’re not gonna see a ton of them on the canyons and stuff like that, right. They’re just cruising along, you know, loping.

Crew Chief Brad: Are they coops or convertibles?

Paul Wilamoski: Most of the time. Coops. You do see really? Every once in a while. Oh, there’s a really cool place in Burbank called Bob’s Big Boy.

And every Friday it’s like an old school. Think of American graffiti. Okay. Uh, if you guys remember that, are you from the east

Crew Chief Eric: coast?

Crew Chief Brad: Grew up eating at Bob’s Big four. I

Crew Chief Eric: mean, yeah. Don’t have that. So they’re in the Midwest. They’re called like F Fishes or something like that. I mean, they’ve been around forever.

Yeah. Went, I

Crew Chief Brad: went to one in Ohio just like a two couple years ago.

Paul Wilamoski: Yeah, they don’t, we don’t have that shit in New York. Do we have like White Castle? [01:09:00] You got, you got pizza, you got the pies,

Crew Chief Eric: got pizza. That’s it. But

Crew Chief Brad: they got the best bagels though.

Crew Chief Eric: The bagels. Can I get a schmear? I need a schmear on my bagel.

Locks on my bagels.

Paul Wilamoski: So the Bob’s big boy in Burbank is really well known and it’s one of those places where they used to have like girls on roller skates. Yeah. The food and all that. So every Friday night there’s a car show there every Friday night and it’s always the same guys. Like, I’ve been there, you know, it’s the garage queens and stuff, you know, but they have beautiful cars, so I, I really can’t make fun of ’em.

But favorite thing

Crew Chief Eric: on the secret menu At In-N-Out Burger. Go

Paul Wilamoski: two by two or three by three animal style.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s, and a rooter flute. It’s the longest menu that doesn’t exist. But anyway, keep going. There’s, uh,

Paul Wilamoski: if you guys know Mel Steiner, not from Happy Days, right? No, not from Happy Days. Uh, it’s from, uh, the American Graffiti was shot.

Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: there.

Paul Wilamoski: So there’s two of ’em here. One of them is in Hollywood, [01:10:00] or I think West Hollywood or Hollywood. And then the second one. Is right down the street from me, right here in Sherman Oaks, uh, where I live. And uh, that’s kind of cool. Nice. So retro and all that. And you’ll see some cool cars.

Crew Chief Brad: You haven’t mentioned anything about Lowriders and Lowriders have so like, started in Southern California and I haven’t heard you say anything about ’em is, I mean, is that culture still big?

The Lowrider culture out there?

Paul Wilamoski: Yeah, it, it definitely is, but it, I could be completely wrong, but I think that culture is in a certain area of la I definitely have seen car shows where it’s, you know, all the cars going like this and all that crazy stuff, but I don’t see them at the events that I go to, uh, in Malibu and the Canyons and all that kind of stuff.

I’m,

Crew Chief Brad: I’m fascinated by those cars. They, they, they amazing. Oh, I

Paul Wilamoski: know nothing about ’em with the spinners and all that kind of stuff. They’re a beautiful looking works of art. I just don’t know where to go. I mean, if [01:11:00] I really wanted to, I can just go on Google and, and find out where there’s a car show for that.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Yeah. But

Paul Wilamoski: again, LA is so big just to go from here to like, let’s say like Inglewood or something like that, or Compton or Long Beach is an hour. Yeah. And away and you’re still in la. Crazy. So I’ve been trying to find all these little pockets of where to go and, and, and hang out. And it just so happens that I’m closer to Malibu and Venice and uh, all those areas for car shows.

Crew Chief Eric: So, since you brought it up, before I get into my next question, have you been down to the Grand Prix at Long?

Paul Wilamoski: No, I haven’t. I I was just talking to a horse experienced instructor who lives in Long Beach and he was telling me, you should definitely come down because you could see the track and all that kind of stuff.

Crew Chief Eric: So I’ve driven the streets when it wasn’t a track. ’cause I had gone down there just to do that. ’cause you could do it, it’s all in the streets. But how cool would it be if you could, let’s say on the Thursday they do an open [01:12:00] de or something like that. That would be slick. Right? That’d

Paul Wilamoski: be awesome. Or like, even if they don’t wanna go that crazy and to just have like go-karts or something like that, that would be amazing.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ll do the celebrity Celica from back in the day. Like, let’s go for it, man.

Crew Chief Brad: I, I’m still trying to convince Eric to go out there with me to watch the trophy trucks at Long Beach.

Crew Chief Eric: Dude, that’s cool. Watching that on TV is fantastic.

Paul Wilamoski: What I’ve noticed in LA is because it’s so big, if you live in certain areas of la like let’s say you live in Santa Monica, you’re gonna, for the most part, stay in Santa Monica.

In that area because it’s such a pain to get out of it, to go anywhere. So people just like stay in that area. And I don’t have that mentality yet because, uh, I’m still learning about LA and I don’t mind driving everywhere. I don’t mind saying, okay, I’ll meet you at your house and you, you’re 40 minutes away.

No problem. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll be there. Plus I love to drive, you know, so, uh, I, it doesn’t bother me, but people here are, are like, if they live [01:13:00] in Venice and I live in Sherman Oaks, uh, they’re like, no, I’m, I’m not coming to visit you. You know, like, we’ll meet halfway. I’m like, all right, whatever.

Crew Chief Eric: And I’ll never forget the first time I went out to LA and there’s that one section where all the highways come together.

It’s like the five and the 10 and the whatever. It’s like, and I think I counted nine lanes on my side of the highway, and I was like, I need to get off over there. Right. I’m not, I’m not used to that. Like, you know, our widest highways here, what, four lanes wide? I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s bumpers. Yeah.

Paul Wilamoski: Yeah. It’s pretty crazy.

So the, I think one of the biggest congestion points is. Taking the 1 0 1 to the 4 0 5. Okay. So what happens is, is that the 1 0 1 is like five or six lanes, and then to get to the 4 0 5, it’s one lane. One lane, dude. So I lived, my first apartment was in North Hollywood and my office is in Santa Monica.

Take me an hour and like 30 minutes to go. 12, like 14 miles. Oh my god. Insane. So I [01:14:00] bought a Ducati and I would take the back roads and just, you know, lane splitting is legal here. So I would just creep up, you know, to the lights and I would make it in 30 minutes.

Crew Chief Brad: What Ducati did you get?

Paul Wilamoski: Monster? 8 21.

Crew Chief Brad: Nice.

Nice bike and, uh,

Paul Wilamoski: cool bike. I put Terminis on it and, and all that. Going back to what I said when we first started talking, they’re the worst drivers and I pretty much almost die on the bike. And I actually got into a, it’s a whole other story, but I got into a really bad situation. With a guy, road rage and uh, attacked me, screwed up my, uh, leg.

I had four surgeries. Wow. God, that’s a whole other story. So that was like, okay, I think I’m not gonna ride a bike in LA anymore. If I do get a bike, I’m only going to use it on a Sunday morning at five in the morning and go to the crest or something. Yeah. LA was living in North Hollywood. It was horrible.

So I moved. To Sherman Oaks, just to bypass [01:15:00] that 4 0 5 1 0 1 connection. So I’m right on the 4 0 5. Now it takes me 30 minutes or four.

Crew Chief Eric: Wow.

Paul Wilamoski: And it’s a three mile difference. This like North Hollywood is three or four miles away from me. It’s horrible.

Crew Chief Eric: We’ve been talking a lot about the car culture, the differences, you know, all this kind of thing.

But I also find, you know, as you said, LA is huge. It’s dense, it’s one of the, you know, one of the largest cities in the United States. But I also find it, you know, as we’re continue to talk about car culture to be a bit bipolar, right? And so I wanna touch on the fact that you’re, you’ve been talking a lot about sports cars.

You got guys with the McLaren’s and the Ferrari’s and the Porsches, and then you have the other contingent, right? And I’m not, I’m not here to throw shade, but I’m talking about the EV revolution folks, right? So yeah, look, you got this weird seesaw going on where you have a huge car culture, people that are invested in the petrol world, and then you’ve got the other side where it’s all about the Teslas and the Priuses and the, the Nissan Leafs and all that stuff, right?

So, oh,

Paul Wilamoski: I’m glad to talk about those guys. I mean, out here, the biggest thing is the Prius in the left lane. [01:16:00] It’s weird here that in New York, at least, if I’m in the left lane and I’m doing 80 and you’re doing 70 a lot of the time. They’ll get out of the way. Maybe every once in a while I’ll flash my lights really quick and they’ll get outta the way.

That does not exist in la It doesn’t. I go faster on the 4 0 5 in the right lane than in the left lane. I pass everyone, I don’t get it there. I don’t know if it’s a sense of entitlement, just lack of situational awareness or they just don’t give an F. So that’s the Prius problem with Teslas. They’re all over the place, dude.

All over the place. But I

Crew Chief Eric: mean, are you seeing a shift or is there more of a blend? Like the guy that’s got the McLaren, he DA is a Tesla or something like that? I mean,

Paul Wilamoski: yeah, I think the guy that’s got the McLaren is probably, uh, daily a, a tie can. You know, and so, I mean, look, the Teslas are fast as hell and they actually handle pretty good because of the lo, you know, the center [01:17:00] of gravity thing.

I do love them. I would love getting a model three as a, as a daily. They’re just so bland. There’s only like, what, three colors? You know, four colors so that you see ’em all the time. Every once in a while you’ll see someone that like put a matte wrap on it or something like that, and that’s pretty cool.

I’m seeing a lot of them on the road now. A lot. I think it, it is definitely the wave of the future. You know, every car is gonna, it didn’t be who just said that they’re not doing combustion engines in it. Audi.

Crew Chief Eric: Audi did, but that’s, I mean, VW said that a couple years ago and they’re the parent company, so it was only a matter of time.

Look, I, I, I think it’s smart

Paul Wilamoski: and I think it’s the way to go, but you know, these cars that we drive are always gonna be around. I’m glad that you have the option now to, to do both. Hopefully not every car in the future is gonna be electric. They’re still gonna do internal combustion, naturally aspirated, you know, engines and stuff, but who knows.

Crew Chief Eric: So what’s the infrastructure like in, in LA [01:18:00] for all these EVs? Or is it just everybody’s got a garage? I mean, there’s, I’m sure there’s plenty of street parking, just like in New York. So how are these folks managing,

Paul Wilamoski: you know, LA being so big, there’s a lot more space here than New York. Okay. So get, finding parking is extremely easy.

And it freaked me out because I was like, I gotta leave 20 minutes earlier ’cause I’m never gonna find Park. And it’s like, whoop, you’re like the only car on the street. You know what I mean? Plus there’s like garages everywhere and it’s like a, like the public parking and it’s like a dollar, you know, maybe $2.

And in L in New York, it’s like $50 for an hour. So that freaked me out too. So I was like, uh, wow, this is amazing. The infrastructure here is different. There’s like power stations or whatever they’re called everywhere. And because there’s so much space, people have garages all the time. And, uh, the more modern buildings in townhouses or apartment buildings have designated bots for EV cars, [01:19:00] which is very cool.

The last apartment I lived in had like one complete floor just for EV charging.

Crew Chief Eric: Wow. That’s pretty cool. At least some forward thinking. I mean, I think the challenge we have here on the East coast is we’re always kind of concerned with the mileage game, the range game, right? But because I think the problem is the infrastructure is so much older because, you know, the east coast was settled first.

There’s a lot of old, you know, look at Boston, look at dc look at Philadelphia, right? Retrofit all that infrastructure is, is a very big challenge. And people are like, well, why can’t you just do it because you can’t, you know what I mean? It, it, it doesn’t happen overnight. So it’s very interesting to see the difference West versus east out here.

Again, because of

Paul Wilamoski: space. They are very forward thinking out here and, uh, it, it, it’s pretty cool. There’s the, the care for the environment is extremely, uh, big topic here. There’s a lot of liberals and you know, and there’s a lot of people, there’s a lot of [01:20:00] hippies and all that kind of stuff. It’s, it’s la you know, it’s California.

I like it. I love it. I just want them to get the hell out of the way in the, in the left lane. That’s my main concern.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I mean, it’s 72 mile an hour. That Prius is pretty much floored, so you can only go so fast.

Paul Wilamoski: So the speed limit here, for the most part is 65. When you start going out of the city, it gets to about 70.

I have to say though, people fly on these roads except for the Prius. I’ll be doing 80 and I’ll get passed by a Celica doing 90 or, and it’s common. They just book and you know, I have the common courtesy. If I’m in the left lane and I see a guy approaching, I get out of the way going back to really quick to, uh, to driving on the track and whatnot.

This comes back to me driving on the street. Jay Tepper gave me some really good advice on how to keep my skills sharp while driving on the highway. And what he said was, do not stay in the left lane. He’s like, [01:21:00] because you become content in the left lane and all you do is just like this, go through the traffic.

You’re always looking around you that’ll keep your, you know, keep you sharp. And it’s so true. And when I was driving up the button, Willow, I was doing the exact same thing. I was in the left lane. I’m like, oh man, I wanna have some fun with this. 9, 8, 7. So I was going, but gingerly, you know, not being an asshole.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. I mean it’s, it’s like being door to door with you and 500 of your closest friends. Yeah. Not too different than the track. So Paul, it has been a blast reconnecting and, and getting to hear about what the West Coast is like and doing the compare and contrast and all that kind of stuff. And I, and like I said, you are sorely missed around the paddock.

I mean, we always had a lot of fun at the track events and it, it’s just not the same, but you know. I guess the more things go forward, the more we have to change. We have to adapt and, and come on to new things. So it’s good to hear all these new stories and and all that. So for all of you that are listening out there and you wanna check out some of Paul’s work and what he’s [01:22:00] into, be sure to follow him on Instagram at Paul W 1138.

You can see some of the fantastic pictures, some of the stuff he’s working on, and you can also check out some of the stuff he’s working on over at Myriad Pictures. So thanks for coming on the show, Paul. This has been fantastic.

Paul Wilamoski: My pleasure. Thanks for inviting me guys.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right. Listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our Patreon for a follow on pit stop mini. So check that out on www.patreon.com/gt motorsports and get access to all sorts of behind the scenes content from this episode and more.

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) [01:23:00] 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 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 [01:24:00] possible.