Growing up with Ken Block

Ken Block 1967-2023

Pro rally driver, co-founder of DC shoes and Hoonigan Ken Block was killed in a snowmobile accident on Monday January 2nd, 2023. Hoonigan and local authorities confirmed.

Block, a prolific figure in the car community, was 55 years old. He moved into the world of rally and quickly made a name for himself, developing the Hoonigan brand and creating the much-loved Gymkhana video series.

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[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.

We always have a blast chatting with our guests about all sorts of different topics, but sometimes we go off the rails and dig deep into their automotive and motor sports past. So as a bonus to the main event, let’s go behind the scenes with this pit stop Mini. So sit back, enjoy, and remember to like, subscribe and support us on Pat.

So Matt, let’s get back into it. You name dropped something huge earlier. We mentioned Ken Block and then Jim Kana, and you said you were part of that. So let’s unpack that a little bit. Tell us about what that was like and how you were involved and the making of those films that a lot of us just salivate over.

You know, we, we can watch ’em over and over and over again on YouTube. Yeah, no, absolutely. I grew up with Ken and both of us were, um, rally enthusiasts and. You know, we were doing some work in Rally. He had sold his company and wanted to start rally racing, and, and he [00:01:00] did, and he brought Travis Perran along.

And one of the things that’s cool about Ken is he always has a plan. You know, like there’s you, you’re like, oh, you’re done, you’re retired, you sold your company and you know, you’re, you’re, I think he was in his thirties still, right? At that point, he’s like, well, I’m gonna go look at this and do some things and stay on as a, you know, as an advisory person or whatever.

We went rally racing that was going well, and what we started doing is documenting that and we had a unique perspective because we grew up making skateboard films, which skateboard films by nature, you. You’re very close to the subject matter. You’re really focused on passing through the visceral experience of skateboard.

You know, skateboard action and everything from the sound to feels like you’re there. If you watch skateboard films, it feels like you’re hanging out with the skateboarders, right? And it’s raw. And so we wanted to, or actually we didn’t even want to. We inadvertently did that. When we were documenting, rallying, and so we [00:02:00] started putting out video content, and this is right at the beginning of YouTube.

So we were putting out video content at the time on like Flash Player and Windows Media and Real Player . Yeah. It was like real player. Every time you had to do a post, you’re like, no, we have to put it up in these five formats. And it was a pain in the ass to say the least. And YouTube came along and, and at the time everybody was just suspect of it.

They’re like, what’s the scale? The game changer. Yeah. What’s the scam though? Like, we are all looking at it going like, we know how expensive video hosting is. Like what’s a scam? So we were just trying to figure out how to bring attention to, really, to rally racing and the, the incredible vehicles and the incredible performances of the drivers.

Ken had kind of looked at Jim Conna and, and come up with this base concept of, you know, what if we build a four wheel drive, Jim Conna car, I’m like, yeah, it sounds sick, but sounds expensive and you know, all these different hurdles. And he did it. He’s took his own money. And, you know, everybody has these theories about like how [00:03:00] Subaru funded it or.

Somebody else. It wasn’t, it was in the beginning. Ken was taking his own personal money and funding the racing and funding. Really everything. From that point, we collectively concepted, Hey, we want to try and capture all these special moments within one video. We knew that we couldn’t. Do that out on a rally course.

We had to do it in an environment that was a little bit more attainable. We knew that people were doing different events in El Toro. We went up and looked at it, and to be honest, like it was really sketchy. You know, one of the things that I remember clearly about Jim Conna, one was, You know, we had this opening drift idea where Ken was gonna go down about a hundred miles an hour and throw the car sideways and, and drift the car and, and do a four-wheel drift and it was gonna be rad, right?

Well I’m out there first. I’m looking at the car and it didn’t, wasn’t fully caged. It was a car that was prepared by one of the guys here locally who’s a really well known Subaru car builder, cor Crawford. And you know, he put like one of the [00:04:00] sissy bars in the back. I remember looking at that. I thought this car was caged.

Right. , you know, that was the first thing. And then the second thing was I was looking at the lips on the runway and there were, there were lips that were like four and six inches tall. So in my head, I’m imagining Ken throwing it sideways, hitting a lip and doing a pirouette and landing on the roof and dying.

And I’m, I’m sitting there going like, yeah, that would be really bad if I killed Ken at this point in his life. You know? Yeah. Right. And you know, look, we went out there and we did it, and I think we completed it in two or three. It was a team of myself and my brother and a couple guys that worked for us at the time.

And you know, we put together the, the shots and the stunts, but really it was filming like a skate film. Like in our heads we’re like, we’re making a skate film with a car. That was really the beginning of it and I thought it was gonna be really good. I had no idea. No, nobody did really, you know, and again, like 10 finance part of it, we finance part of it, you know, sweat equity and equipment and all that type of stuff in the beginning.

And we just thought like, Hey, [00:05:00] this is good for everybody. , let’s see what we can do. Right. And obviously it took off, but it was funny because when we first posted it, we did the same thing where it’s like Windows media player, QuickTime, flash, all on a web host and people started watching it. A lot of people.

And then the, the web host company calls us and they’re like, Hey, you, you’re gonna owe us a lot of money. And so then we quickly then put it on YouTube and it exploded. It was really interesting for us because my biggest takeaway wasn’t that we were some geniuses or we did something that nobody else could have done.

What our takeaway is, is that people were, they were dying for good content. They were starving for it. And you know, there was all this bullshit that was constantly put out in the automotive space, and I don’t think. You know, the films like Climb Dance was a huge influence on US Rendezvous. Some of the other early films that were shot, you know, on film about LAMA and those things that McQueen Shot [00:06:00] and Garner was involved in, and people that were racers and they were like, look, we don’t care.

Put the camera on the front of the car. This is how we get the shot. Right? And so that was kind of our, our mindset and. Really due to our, our history in making films with skateboarding, cuz you, you kind of had this cavalier style of filmmaking. So I, I have to pause you cuz I mean this is fascinating and you should see Drew’s face.

He’s just like in awe here you name drop something that I don’t think a lot of people, except for folks that maybe grew up in the group B generation like I did. Know the term Climb dance, that’s Ari Vains run to the top of Pike’s Peak in the Pojo. I mean, that is an incredible film. I actually have a copy of it.

I have it privately stored on YouTube, so I wouldn’t lose it. Something like that to provide you that inspiration. I mean, hats off mad props. That’s a reach right there. I mean, outside of Rendezvous, which was one of the original. Car film shot in Paris. All in one. All in one go. We talked about that actually on a previous episode with one of our [00:07:00] guests, Paul Wilke, who’s from Hollywood and how that film influenced him and whatnot.

There’s a lot of mystery and allure behind Rendezvous as well. But I mean, again, we’re all petrolheads of a certain age, so it it’s really cool that you bring that up. Yeah, so I gotta say that’s that what you just said, Eric, but that inspiration you got Matt Spring. you guys to create what you guys created.

And I wanna say it was like the mid two thousands when I was introduced to that video. And I’m imagining everyone else who’s probably listening to this was you heard it from somebody who heard it from somebody. Yeah. And then when you saw it, the way you guys filmed that video was, In a way that no one had ever done it before.

And it was very like watching Rob Deer deck or whoever, skateboarder when they’re on the street and you’re getting like those cross shots in the action video of the vehicle. Yeah. Going through that four wheel drift. And I gotta tell you, dang, it’s coming up on 20 [00:08:00] years ago when that was done. Um, I know.

I had never seen anything like that. Like, and then the drift that Ken did. Nobody had ever filmed anything like that before. And I feel like what you guys did Springboarded other creators to film like that. Those, yeah. I was gonna say crazy low close action shots. Well, not only that, I was gonna say, I think you guys set the stage to be our generation’s climb, dance and rendezvous and whatever, like those Jim Conna videos, when you talk you.

Jim Kana and everybody goes, yeah, yeah, I know. Oh my God, it’s epic. Right? And, and, and the, the 27 versions of it later, but still they have set the bar really damn high at the end of the day. Yeah. So, congratulations. No, I appreciate that. And it’s, I love being a part of the timeline of, of Motorsport culture like that because there are a lot of things that.

My brother and I as kids and one of them were the, the couple films I just mentioned. The other one was just growing up in the era of Wide World of Sports. Yeah. You know, it [00:09:00] was a magical era of like watching TV and they’re like, oh, we’re at is man today. And we’re, they took you all over the world. To all these different things and it was, it was spectacular and very well shot, especially for that era because they had some very crazy limitations with film.

You know, like when you understand Rendezvous, there was no GoPros when they shot that. No. I mean, look at LA’s. If you look at the behind the scenes of McQueen’s movie, he’s got these massive cameras mounted in the nine 17 and like he can barely drive the, the damn thing. And they’re, the cameras are so big That, or a helicopter.

Yeah, right. . Yeah. And, and like two, the other part of it, To me that was so impressive. Is in particular with Climb dance is the sound Yes. Is like how violent and visceral it was and, oh yeah. That’s one thing that we carry forward in, in a lot of the, the work that we do. You know, even now it’s like jumping forward to why, why we, you know, are involved with the Min 400.

It was because we got tired of being filmmakers and the [00:10:00] creatives sitting on the sideline telling these old men who, you know, own. the sport, Hey, you need to do this and you, you need to allow us in there to shoot, and we need to have controlled environments. We need to do all these things. And they’re like, who are these kids?

Shut up. You know? And so it was our way of taking control and having the creatives run everything rather than the administrators, the bureaucrats, right. It was a great experience and I’m really stoked to have put our stamp down, you know, on that first film and then follow up with the second and the third.

We had a lot of fun and you know, I can’t speak higher of Ken too because you know, the guy is, he’s a very unique person. People constantly come to me and they’re like, oh, he’s not the greatest driver. He’s definitely not the greatest driver. He never said he was, he just was trying to show people really to put light.

The vehicles and the drivers so that, that people would recognize them and go, okay, drifters are bad asses and rally racing. Well, not only that, after like the big names left, group B or group B was disbanded in [00:11:00] 19 87, 88, and you were left with the, with the group A cars and whatnot, people were like, rally val, forget it.

Audi’s not there. And Launch has not there. We’re not gonna watch it anymore. So there was like this dead zone, and I think Ken, I attribute him to revitalizing Rally. I mean, yes, Colin McRay and Carlos Signs and all those names for sure. Even Yaari Monte Lala, who is now a team owner, it came up through that nineties and two thousands era of rally, but it’s just not the same.

It didn’t have the same allure. To your point, it wasn’t. Visceral as the group B cards like Ari Vaan and Michelle Mutton and Walter Royall and, and all those guys. It was a different time. It was a different place they could get away with more, but I think Ken brought it back. The thing that was most impactful and still brings the biggest question to mind is, I don’t remember which Jim Conan is, but where they closed down San Francisco and we’re like, how it goes for Yeah, yeah.

And like, how the heck did they do that? Because how do you get the whole city? To basically shut down and not have some random person walk in their dog, or they need to go go [00:12:00] jogging or go to Starbucks or whatever. I mean, how do you guys manage that? Well, to be clear, we didn’t do that one. But you pay, you pay the city, you pay permits.

It’s expensive. Yeah. You know, and that, that I think is one of the things too, that. That people don’t understand is, you know, it becomes a, uh, a race war, right? Like you do one and everybody’s like, oh, wow. Well we can do that too. Yeah. And then number two, we’re like, Hey, I, let’s go to Port Long Beach and tap the dock and, you know, do some camera effects and, you know, bring Robin and do some different things.

Kind of, you know, make it have a wider appeal than when we got into Jim Conna three, we’re like, how do we wall ride the car? That was at the auto drum, right? At the, yeah, that was at the auto. We basically pissed off France , you know, entirely. But you know, again, it was. You know, it was a lot of fun and it was, there were a lot of challenges and it was awesome.

We had a, we had a great time doing it. So, lemme ask you this. So, you know, when you watch the videos, they’re so fluid, the editing is so seamless, like you can’t really tell, you know, not much [00:13:00] where one stops and the other one begins. Obviously it took multiple days, as you said, to put it all together. I remember watching the roof Yellowbird videos, if you remember those of the guy in the loafers famously driving, you know, the twin Turbo nine 11 around the

And you could tell where there was oops moments and they cut that video and and put it back together. And you’re like, oh yeah, here he comes around that corner again. And you’re like, that, that isn’t right. So, you know, what were the technical challenges with doing Giana? Like how many takes did it take?

Did you destroy any of the cars? Oh, We were wrecking the shit out of stuff like . It’s like, that’s the thing is like, it’s funny, it’s, you know, after Jim Kana, we went on, we did a series of films for Polaris called X pk. By the time we got to that, we’re like, look, we need three cars. You know, we need four cars because, We’re gonna wreck a car and we can’t stop production.

We just need to, we, we need to drag that car out, have the mechanics start working on it and put the guy in the next car. And a lot of the stunts you’re trying stuff that you’re like, theoretically we [00:14:00] think we can do this right? And we’re literally going, okay, well, You know, Ken, I think you need to go 40 miles an hour into this and then hard break and rotate the car.

And he’s like looking at me going, based on what? You know, I’m like, I, that’s a starting point. Like, let’s do it. You know? But to your point about editing, I mean that, that’s my brother, you know, that’s one thing that it’s very special about. Us as a team is that he came from a music background, so he was trained as a, as a music engineer.

And so he sees things as a music edit, as a song, right? And a song has to have beats, right? And it has to work together. And if you’re offbeat at all people, they know it’s wrong. . And so he approached editing the same way. So the level of detail that goes into the editing was really all my brother. And it’s funny because it’s often something that’s not talked about, but you can see it now in other films that get made that are, they’re not as fluid and very, they’re not thinking about, they’re not thinking about their [00:15:00] shots.

They’re not thinking about, you know, all the different variables. I, I can tell you like, I mean, we painstakingly poured over all the details, time of day, Ingle, the sun composition color of the car, like just on and on and, and tried to make it better and the lens choices and camera techniques. And now it’s funny because I feel like I ruined the world with Slowmo because we were some of the first people to really.

It and now it’s completely overused and you, it’s like bullet time in the matrix. Right? Once if you figured it out, everybody does it now. Yeah. Then, then the other thing too is like being a petrol head and going like, okay, look, this part of what the car’s doing, that’s remarkable and that’s when you slow it down.

This other shit. You’re just coming in and you’re exiting. But this point, that’s the magic. And if you don’t understand that, you’re not gonna get the shot and you’re not gonna nail that in the edit. And you know, that’s, that’s why even with the stuff that we do with the Mint 400, it’s like, you know, after we’re done here, I gotta work on script notes for our live [00:16:00] stream.

You know, so, because I, I want it to be right. Can I say something? And you probably don’t give a shit, but there’s one thing that I noticed that was different. I noticed that you guys do a lot. Over the headshot versus the dead on shots. And so the earlier videos was very dead on and kind of off camber topper like shots.

So when we started getting like the over the headshot to see what the vehicle dynamic was doing, that’s when I realized, aha, there is somebody behind the curtain because. That then let me know that in the earlier videos I felt like Kent, like this guy is doing all this stuff. First take. But then when you pay attention to the shots, you see the different tire marks on the ground that say, oh, there was about three runs right there in that scene.

Sure. Yeah. You have to pay really close attention. Yeah. And that’s what fooled me in the earlier videos because it was a lot, I feel like it was a lot more dead on, so we couldn’t see all that. That’s just camera technique. And, and like us [00:17:00] getting to the point where Jim Conna won, we had no budget. Like, so we were, we were like, Hey, we, we were, we shot it entirely on Panasonic h VX cameras, which at the time were like cutting edge.

We were the, some of the first people on the west coast to get our hands on ’em. They were the first digital cameras to have, you know, slowmo at 60 frames per second. Which was pretty remarkable for the cost of the camera. You know, when you go back and you even look at the rally stuff that we did, , it was like we would go out into a stage, we’d find the outside of a gravel corner.

I would dig a hole. I would stand in the hole with the camera and then put PVC over the front of the camera knowing that I was getting it hammered. Just so we could get the gravel moving in slowmo. Nice. Oh wow. Wow. And we weren’t, you know, we weren’t making any money at that point. It was like, it was fun.

It was fun. But that’s the stuff that people don’t appreciate about. What goes into doing that kind of stuff is you had to dig your own hole to stand in to, you know, this whole apparatus, to get one shot of some gravel flying at, at slow motion. [00:18:00] I mean, that’s a lot of dedication for what, a, a second or two of, of video.

Yeah. Yeah. It, it’s, it’s interesting. It’s like one of my favorite, as you could tell, I’m a, I’m a big food guy, right. I’m definitely not a skinny man. You know, there’s a series that came out called Chef’s Table on Netflix. I don’t know if you’ve seen it. Yeah. But I, I love it and I really hope that somebody produces a series like that on cinematography, because I know a lot of different cinematographers who are much the same way and for.

You know, being car guys, like I can tell you, we, we drive around. I, I go fend weekends looking at locations of like, Hey, I think we can do stuff here. I want to go look at it. I’m the middle of wherever the desert. Different countries took a vacation to Japan to look at some stuff there. Pissed my wife off, but you know, it’s, Part of the deal.

If you really are passionate about something, then dedicate yourself to it. Yeah. You know, go all the way, don’t half it. And there’s always gonna be compromise that you’re forced to do, whether it’s budget sponsors or people [00:19:00] paying for stuff that you’re doing and they don’t understand it. But what we try and do as much as possible is set up a situation where, whether it’s us or people that are working for.

Where they can really thrive and be creative and take those risks and, and try things. And you know what? Not everything works, you know? But if you’re not trying stuff, then it’s all gonna be the same. And unfortunately, I see a lot of that out there. I see a lot of like, Hey, I have a red camera. I’m just gonna shoot everything’s.

Slowmo and then I look at it and it’s like crappy, like crappy composition. Like, it’s like, meh. You know, that’s not good content. I, I always use music analogies. It’s like, I feel like, you know, the first three, Jim Kanas were like the first three Metallica albums, right? Hmm. And, and then consequently after that it was a lot of copying, a lot of the same stuff.

Totally fine, right? But it’s not those first three. I’m really proud of the, the work that we did back then, you know, in those films. But I, I think it’s interesting because I’m glad that it influenced a whole generation of [00:20:00] filmmakers to go out and make different films and different disciplines. Was part of the point, and that’s what we had on skateboarding.

We had a war, you know, it was like every skateboard company would drop their skate film and you were always at war with each other trying to one up each other. Even to this day, you know, like I said, we, we did the XP one KK series for Polaris, which is very successful. Did some really wild stuff with RJ Anderson and a Polaris Razor.

You know, we continue to look for those opportunities. I. Our goal and kind of our mandate when it comes to that type of content is to go find the best drivers, the best vehicles in the best locations in the world and show people. It’s a question like, why did you guys fall in love with Rally? I could tell you the moment I fell in love with Rally, and I’m sure you have similar moments, but it’s because I saw something incredible and went, wow, that is an incredible moment that happened.

And so for us, how do we capture that and share that with other people so then they can fall in love with it? And whether. You know, rally or drifting or off-roading. That’s what [00:21:00] we’re interested in doing. All I have to say to that is amen. Amen. So, Matt, you know, normally on a pit stop, we ask all sorts of fun questions.

Like, you know, if you had a million bucks, what kind of car would you buy? Sixties car of all time, this and that and the other. But you know, we’re gonna spare you that because I have a really important question to ask you that goes right in line with everything we were talking about, which has to do with your friend Ken Block.

You know, there’s. In the, let’s say the Motorsport world that are synonymous with certain cars. You hear Hurley Haywood. You think Bruno’s Porsche, you hear Colin McRay, you think Subaru, you hear Ken Block and you think Ford Fiesta. Sure. What do you think about him signing with Audi? I think it’s cool, like I think.

You’ve gotta take those opportunities. It’s really weird to be giving somebody the gift of what I feel like we gave Subaru and then, you know, later on we gave forward and, and yeah, they paid for it. But I would always argue the fact that what they paid and what they got were com. Completely [00:22:00] off balance, right?

I’ll give you a little analogy. An average television commercial for a car is north of a million dollar. There’s very few of them that you remember. So when you look at that level of money that’s being spent on selling a car, knowing what we achieved with Jim Conno, with Subaru, and then with Ford Fiesta, I mean as far as America.

Ford Fiesta was a pile of junk, and then all of a sudden, a whole generation of kids wanted a Ford Fiesta. Same thing with the Subaru. S t I like. What was interesting about that was that that car was dope, you know, and, and you had a generation of kids who were car builders with the whole ponder movement, and they weren’t quite ma mature or they, they hadn’t graduated to a bmw.

because of money and you know, different things. So there was a gap, but there were also Volkswagen defectors in in there too. Right? The Dubbers went to Subaru as well. , yeah. And so we recognized that and we’re like, look, this is a dope car. Then nobody knows about it. Even Subaru, they didn’t understand what [00:23:00] they have.

And I’m like, this is a car of a generation potentially. And what we did with that vehicle, It lives on forever. You know, it doesn’t go away. It’s not like a television commercial that like you stop paying for and it goes away. We stamp that into the cultural timeline of automotive forever, and I think people are still trying to recreate that magic with the new cars, and it’s not quite the same.

You know, again, it’s like you have to get down on the basics, right? I’ll use the Metallica album again. It’s like I’m a big Metallica fan. They’re new albums, like that’s not Metallica, right? Yeah. So at some point you gotta put all the fancy stuff down and, and get back to the dirt and get down to the nucleus of why it’s special.

And a lot of people don’t wanna do that, man. They don’t wanna do the work. They don’t wanna put themselves in that position. It’s hard. We’ve done some really crazy shoots. That I can go into details and you’re like, why would you ever do that? And it’s because, you know, we are trying to do something better, different, more visceral, and create the impact that we felt when we were kids [00:24:00] in watching Wide World of Sports and E S P and A, the ocho, right?

you know, and like you, you kept mentioning group B. I’ll back this up into one of your questions of like, you had a million bucks or a limited budget, what car would you buy and drive? I’d buy a group B car. A hundred percent. Hey God, somebody. It would be so fun to just offend everybody violently driving around town and it’s just visceral rock.

All right. All right. All right, so since you brought it up, best group B card, in your opinion, the one you would buy if you could buy one. You know that’s a hard decision because I like ugly cars, right? Oh, oh man. He’s gone where this is going? MG Metro or something terrible. No, I don’t know like that.

Honestly, that would be a really hard decision because like, you know, the funkier, the better, the more like, you know, in your face, the better. So honestly, it’d be hard to decide. But I mean, even the Audis were dope. So, yeah, you know, it just, it just depends, right? Personal note, I’ve owned a Ur Quattro. [00:25:00] Never Drive Your Heroes.

I’m gonna say that I’ve driven an R five Turbo two. Never drive your heroes. Just gonna repeat that again. . I’ve driven a bunch of the Homologated cars or owned a few, but I, I’m, I’m fun to look at. I I remember that car. . What’s I’m right there with you. Because I grew up in a V A G family, I’d have to buy an Audi S one or even a long, a long wheel base Audi just because there’s nothing like the sound of a five cylinder.

I’m all the Boxer engine fans. I, I’m sorry. The five cylinder is a, a dragon with its tail on fire, wide open and, and that dude, that that’s, it’s funny because that’s part of it, it’s like really this hit home with me. We did an event in Germany years back called Power Days and we actually. We took Ken Block and we took BJ Baldwin.

The idea was that we were gonna go show Europe what we were doing and connect rally with off-road. And so we took trophy trucks over there and you know, we did this big event and you know, it was really cool. But one of the things I learned is [00:26:00] that the power of sound, we started the trophy trucks up and started backing ’em out of these sea crates.

Thousands of people just surrounded us. They were like, oh, that sound, that’s incredible. And. Yeah, it’s cool. This isn’t even a big block, like this is just a, you know, small block v8, like it’s straight pipes, so it’s a little bit more violent than normal, but they couldn’t understand the sound. I realized at that point, unless you grew up in North America, you’ve never heard that.

Or Australia. Yeah. And it made me understand like how valuable sound is to your experience, right. And whether. On film or whether it’s you there in person and you feel it in your chest. Right? Yeah. So that, that I think was one of the things that was magical about the group beer was like, you’d hear these vehicles and you’re like, it’s gonna explode.

Yeah. It sounded like it was gonna blow to pieces and it got louder and more violent as it got near you or near to the camera position, you know? And, and they. Spectacular horsepower. Spectacular drivers, spectacular crashes. It was totally punk rock. And I [00:27:00] think that that’s a very important thematic Yeah.

To hold onto in racing, it’s like, look, I’m a race promoter. I understand all the problems that we have with insurance and you all these different things, but we cannot lose that punk rock ethos of like, look at the end of the. What we’re doing here is we’re having a polite fist fight. And when we forget that and we, we make it too poofy, then there’s no point.

Well, and we say that all the time in the road racing world, that if you want to go to a professional event and you want to get close and you wanna get in the pit and you wanna see engineers and you wanna see drivers and take, you know, selfie with anybody that’s there, Jan Magnuson is an example, right?

I mean, we did that. IMSA is the way to go. W e c, any of the prototype or G T L M M cars. I mean, you can get in there with those guys and they’ll talk to you. They’re super friendly. You go to an F1 event, no offense, they’re great to watch. They’re a lot of fun, but it’s always, everything’s at arm’s length and it just doesn’t have the same draw.

But because IML like rally started in TransAm and S C C A and it [00:28:00] came up through that world, it still has that grassroots appeal. Much like you guys are bringing to the table with the mid 400 is, it’s such a prestigious event where you can still get in there, you can still be hands-on and, and be in the action, in part of the event, be part of history.

You know, Matt, as we wrap this pit stop up, amazing. Again, mind blowing information here. I do wanna ask one question because you brought it up and it is a pit stop question that we usually ask, but since you’re a fan of ugly cars, what’s your favorite ugly car and what’s the ugliest ugly car in your opinion?

Wow, man, so VW Bugs man. I, I love ’em. They’re funky. And it’s funny because part of it’s childhood, I guess part of it is regional, where we live. Yeah. VW. Continue to be made in Mexico for years after they were discontinued in the US up to 2003. Yeah. And so we’re right on the border. We have a lot of Mexican friends.

We spend a lot of time in Baja and they like, they go crazy over class 11 VW bug racing. And it’s very serious. [00:29:00] Right. And so I, I just love that. I love that somebody just picked a completely out of date impractical vehicle and was like, this is what we’re gonna fall in love with. Yeah. That’s rad, man.

Ugliest. Ugly of the ugly, the ugliest one you can think of the Toyota 86, the Hachi Roku that started drifting. Really like that thing’s funky man, you know? You know what you think the 80, 86 is ugly. I mean, I always looked at that as Toyota’s bad copy of the Shareco, which I think Theracos ugly too. Oh, alright then.

All right. All right, then at least. At least you can look at a VW and go like, yeah, man, that’s like a poor guy’s Porsche. You know what I mean? Like . It’s like saying, yeah, I’m broke. It’s okay. You know, like this time rolling. Well, very cool. Thank you again. This has been a lot of fun. Likewise. I appreciate it guys.

Thanks for having me.

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