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Behind the Velvet Ropes: A Virtual Tour of the Volo Museum

July 21, 2022

What do you get when you mix Hollywood glitz, antique Americana, and a rotating cast of over 400 collector cars? You get the Volo Museum – a sprawling, 35-acre wonderland tucked away in the tiny town of Volo, Illinois. And thanks to a serendipitous episode of American Pickers, we found ourselves virtually walking the halls of this eclectic institution with Jim Wojdyla, the museum’s marketing director, and our co-host Mountain Man Dan.

Volo Auto Museum Virtual Tour on Break/Fix Podcast — Photo courtesy Jim Wojdyla; Volo Museum

The Volo Museum began humbly in 1960 when the Grams family bought a farm and started flipping antiques. Their sons, Jay and Brian, added a twist—restoring and selling Model Ts. What started as a side hustle for college cash grew into a full-blown operation. By the time they were charging $1 admission to see the cars, the Volo Auto Museum was born.

Jay took the reins of the auto sales side, while Brian leaned into the Hollywood magic, acquiring screen-used cars from Miami Vice, Dukes of Hazzard, and beyond. That pivot opened the doors to a broader audience—movie lovers, families, and curious tourists alike.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Today, about 60% of the museum’s movie cars are “hero cars”—the actual vehicles used on screen. The rest are studio replicas, often used for premieres or promotional events. From Vin Diesel’s flame-spitting Ice Charger in Fast & Furious to the Ferrari from Ford v Ferrari, the museum’s collection is a cinephile’s dream.

And it’s not just the blockbusters. Even quirky cult classics like Son of the Mask and Cat in the Hat are represented with jaw-dropping builds. The Catmobile alone cost $1.4 million to make and features a rear-facing stunt driver seat, rotating wheels, and a camera-based navigation system.

Spotlight

Synopsis

In this episode of Break/ Fix, the hosts offer a virtual tour of the Volo Museum in Volo, Illinois. Established in 1960 by the Grams family, the museum spans 45 exhibits, housing over 15,000 historical items and more than 400 classic and collector cars. Marketing Director Jim Wojdyla joins to discuss the museum’s history, highlighting its variety of exhibits including Hollywood movie cars, boats, planes, train exhibits, military vehicles, and more. The tour showcases unique attractions like the 1928 Allan Herschell carousel and a variety of interactive exhibits. The episode also outlines the museum’s commitment to continual updates and improvements, making it a dynamic and ever-evolving destination. The hosts suggest that interested listeners visit the museum in person or check out additional resources online for a more immersive experience.

The history/backstory/founding of the Museum
Different sections of the museum to include sales and Jurassic gardens. What are some of your favorite exhibits?
Duesenbergs – let’s talk about classics
TV & Movie cars (Batmobile, Herbie, etc) – how does one go about acquiring a former “movie star”
Costs/Details, etc about visiting the museum. What are your plans for expansion?
Buying/Selling cars – Are all the cars in the museum for sale? What types of cars do you sell?

Transcript

[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.

The following episode is brought to us in cooperation with the Volo Museum. This episode is a virtual tour of the museum. Its facilities, all the different features that it has to offer. If you’d like to get the behind the scenes video version of this virtual tour, be sure to log on to www.patreon.comslashgtmotorsportsorcheckoutvolocars.com today and reserve your tickets to visit the museum in person.

Do you ever find yourself flipping through the channels and stumble across something that keeps you glued to a show that you’ve never considered watching before? That’s exactly what happened to me. I landed on an episode of American Pickers on History Channel, and much to my surprise, they were visiting something known as the Volo Museum.

And for those that don’t know, the Volo [00:01:00] Museum was established in 1960 by the Grams family in the Chicago suburb of Volo, Illinois. It houses 45 exhibits, over 15,000 historical items, and over 400 rotating classic and collector cars, ranging from the 1920s to modern mossel. And joining us to talk about the museum is Jim Wojdyla, marketing director for the Volo Museum.

That’s right folks, and with me co-hosting tonight is Mountain Man Ban and so wanna welcome him as well. So Jim, thank you for taking the time to take us on this virtual tour and discuss the origin and the evolution of the Volvo Museum. So welcome to Break Fix. I appreciate that. Thank you for having me guys.

I’m excited for this. So let’s kick it off like we always do with break fix and talk about the origin of the Volo Museum. So walk us through how it all got started back in the sixties and why. Volo Illinois has, I think one stoplight. It’s super tiny. It’s right on the border of Illinois in Wisconsin, and it’s just kind of a farmland.

So this family bought this farm, kind of turned it into an antique thing, so they were flipping antiques. The sons of this couple helped with the antique [00:02:00] farm, then started tinkering with cars, mostly like Model Ts. They were kind of junky, but. They’d fix ’em up, flip ’em and make a thousand bucks on ’em or 500 bucks on ’em and realize that there could be some money.

This, especially for, you know, a college kid. So they just kept doing it and doing it and flipping them and flipping ’em. And eventually they started really getting into some really cool stuff. The more and more that they were seeing this and more and more, their reputation started to expand. A lot of people wanted to come by and just check out the cars and not even buying ’em, cuz they were just getting such cool stuff in.

So then they started to charge $1 for admission to come in, and it was a Volo Auto Museum. So basically they were fixing cars up and flipping ’em, and at the same time selling ’em. They were having people come in and kind of check out the cars. So that just kept growing and growing. So for the next 30 years, it just expanded into this machine and then.

Their sons took over. So the one son, Jay Grahams took over the auto sale side and then Brian Grahams took over the museum side. He was a car guy, but he was in the Hollywood and the show and the cool stuff. And he, he was just, that’s really where he found his passion. So he started to add bats and cars from Miami Vice and Duke’s a hazard and just really started to find these Hollywood [00:03:00] cars.

And then that drew a whole different audience that they didn’t have. Cause if you weren’t a car person, you weren’t interested in coming here. Well now, even if you’re not a car person, most people like movies. So now it’s drawing in this new realm of people. And then eventually they. Got into boats and planes and trains and then carousels and dinosaurs and campers, and it just started morphing into this a d d Paradise.

So there’s literally something for everyone here. Now, so you’re mentioned like TV and movie cars, like Batmobile and everything. So how did they go about acquiring a former movie star car to bring on to the premise and show, and is it loaned out to them or how does that go and what’s, what’s your favorite one of all the ones that have been there?

I’d say about half to 60% of the cars are what they call hero cars. So that’s the car that they actually, the actors use in the movie. Sometimes some of the movies have four or five versions of the car. So we have both Fast and Furious and Ford versus Ferrari exhibits that we’re building right now. So you can see behind, so this is the ice charger that Vin Diesel used.

It shoots flames out of the pipes here. So you can see this pipe here. And then there’s one over on this side. I’ll walk over really quick as I’m [00:04:00] talking about this and then I’ll explain a little bit more. So these are the actual hero cars. That are used. So this is the Ferrari that was used in Port versus Ferrari when they did the, the Moning with Matt Damon and Christian Bale.

So basically he would find ’em on eBay motors or whatever and he would just find a couple of these cars. And as they started to become established, they always purchased ’em. They never borrowed ’em or leased them. So once they started getting a reputation, Eventually Warner Brothers Universal and these other studios when they were getting rid of cars, started to build a relationship.

So Brian Grahams purchases all the stuff over the last 20, 30 years. He’s now basically just a go-to. There’s a short list of people in the country that he’s got right of first refusal. Basically, Peterson is like the biggest. Car museum and that’s in la and then there’s a handful of other ones. What’s crazy in this little tiny town where one of like the short list of people that these studios, you know, will give us kind of the first dibs on some of these cars.

So we get some amazing deals on some of these cars and some really cool ones like the Son of Mask and Cat in the Hat. When I walk over there I’ll show you, it’s like the kind of crappy movies. But these cars are like some of the coolest cars that were actually used in the movie. And so they’re really fun to see.

So even if you’re not a car person, [00:05:00] we kind of have that. So we have about 60% are the hero cars. And then the other 40 are replicas. So a lot of these replicas still used for the studio, maybe just for like movie premieres and purchases in the theater. So there’s still some sort of a significance to ’em, but they’re not the actual movie hero movie cars.

So as you pace around this room now, where are you in the museum? Are you in the main entrance? So this was our main dusenberg room. So if you don’t know about Dusenberg, they’re basically these incredible cartoon looking machines. They’re originally built right around the Great Depression. Basically, you had a choice.

You could either buy a hundred Fords, 20 houses, or one dusenberg. Um, they were just insanely ridiculous, and they came out right during the Great Depression, so they kind of collapsed. These are called Dusenberg twos. They were. Kind of replicas that were built in the seventies, but there’s still like 500 grand a piece or whatever.

So this was the Dusenberg room, but we turned this into an ice cream parlor. So just about a month ago, we added locally sourced ice cream and gourmet coffees and homemade treats and stuff like that. So we wanted to make it more of an adventure. This is a full day now. To walk through this. So we wanted to add [00:06:00] more pit stops in areas where people can actually hang out and make a day of it.

Right now we have the Ford versus Ferrari, cause that’s our exhibit that’s coming up. In a couple months, we’re gonna have a Newberg room, which is coming up in a couple months. We’re gonna have a Titanic display. So this is a 1912 Gral. This was the car that went down. And the Titanic. It’s not the actual one because it couldn’t fit a car on a lifeboat.

That’s actually very similar to the vehicle that they used on Do Abbey. Except that one was, yeah, dark blue, I believe it was. Yeah. Yeah. And this is one of like one or two, maybe two in the world. This is extremely, extremely rare, and it’s the exact two a t. If you look at the interior. It’s so cool. That’s all the original, you know, 1912 pieces.

So this is kind of like the preview where I’m at right now. I’ll show you the carousel room with these street orchestras or these 1913 to maybe 1930s. And they’re all fully operational, 40 piece street orchestras, which are just killer and they all work. So you can put in token and listen to ’em. All right, so where do we go?

Where do we go from here? We’re kind of gonna do a circle. I mean the property is, is two city blocks of just buildings. There’s 20 plus buildings that have all the stuff. We’re gonna walk to the carousel room, but [00:07:00] these are, it’s called BOLO Station. This is gonna be our new exhibit. We just crane these trains in.

These are all Hollywood trains. This red one here that you see is from Westworld, from hbo Wild, wild West with Will Smith. So inside they have the bar that flips and has guns and all kinds of stuff on it. So we’re restoring these. So these probably won’t be done for a while still. And then this train right here is pretty cool.

This is from Inception with Leonardo DiCaprio. The cool thing about this one is it’s all bs. It’s just a truck. With an extended bed, with an extended chassis, basically. So that’s all plywood here, and then fiberglass. It’s just all, pretend this is all fiberglass pieces and if you stand and look up in there, it’s basically like a, a truck I could show you.

But there’s, there’s a ton of seats. Plane right here. This is a Harriet Jumper jet. Is that from lies? So this is from True Lies. And it was also used in Avengers. This side is painted like true lies. And then if you flip on the other side, this is the one where Hulk was thrown into the shield plane. So the other side is painted like shield.

And I’m gonna walk up this the carousel room. So this is actually debuting this weekend. We’ve had it on display. It took about three years to refurbish, but [00:08:00] this big building was literally built just for this carousel. It’s a 1928. Alan Herschel carousels back in the twenties, it was like a huge boom.

There was like 6,000 carousel spinning, and Alan Herschel was one of the biggest companies. So we finally got it able for people to ride. So this weekend is like our debut to ride it. It’s gonna be a little bit louder, but this room is so dope. This is the carousel here. 20,000 lights. It’s the 1928. It’s all hand painted hand.

Carved all the original pieces. The only thing that we had to mod was in the center. So back in the twenties, people, they were a little smaller than they were a hundred years later. There was just two tires that would kind of turn and rub against each other, and the friction would turn the carousel. Well, now as big fat Americans are jumping on it and it totally rubbed out, it just smelled like burnt rubber.

So we had to come up with a new gear system to keep it going consistently, and then not stink the whole time, like burnt rubber. As I’m walking around, you’ll see all of these are hand carved. Street organs. So most of these are 19, 20, 1930s. They’re all fully functional and they’re just, they’re so cool. We have like the [00:09:00] Coney Island Penny arcades in here and most of these games you’re able to play ’em.

I think the punching game, again, people from the twenties punching versus today it’s a little bit different, so they. Hold that off. But all self playing pianos, just amazing stuff came from California, but it’s been kind of pieced together from all over the country. So that’s kind of what our carousel room is.

So you go from something like this and then if you’re like me, your a d d, and you get bored pretty quick, I’m gonna walk over to the next room. So this has, it’s just so much stuff. It’s ridiculous and every single day, what I love about this museum is that. It’s a breathing almost on a weekly basis.

There’s a new exhibit. We’re tearing something out, we’re adding something. We bought a monster truck. We’re building this snowcat. And you can see this thing is, oh, that’s cool. A two story shopping cart I’ll show you. It’s a hot rod, so it’s just this giant two story shopping cart. You sit way up on this perch drive stick shift, and it’s got pipes and it’s a full-blown hot rod with these fat tires.

It’s awesome. So this right here is the uh, captain Phillips lifeboat. The one that Tom Hanks used in the movie. You got the steam engine here. And then I’ll tell you this stuff. This stuff is cool in [00:10:00] here. So how big is the entire campus that the bowl museum sits on? How many acres is that? I mean, we sit on 35 acres, like train tours.

That’ll go around the whole property. The buildings itself is probably about two city blocks, I wanna say. This is a desert storm hum. We just got in, we raked this up to kind of spin, but it’s all the original pieces. Most of the equipment, weapons, whatever was in it. So is that military issue or is that from a movie?

Yeah, that’s military issue. This was a desert used in Desert Storm. Then you turn around, there’s a 1924 Model T. It’s almost like an Inspector Gadget camper, like everything folded out. So this whole thing collapsed into the compartment, but then it could be a camper. So this is like one of the first actual campers that were created?

No, we have stuff for kids down here. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Which Herbie was that over there? This is the Lindsay Lohan. Herby. So, ah, the one in 2005, I want to say. Say this is the one that was in the junkyard. This was actually used in the movie. It’s triggered here. You can see the controls. So they used it in the movie and then they would take it on display.

So when kids walked by, it would talk, or they would do different things where the eyes would blink and the bumper would move. It’s on a timer now, [00:11:00] so just randomly goes on and off now. Cause obviously, If you don’t have someone just sitting here and what’s been fascinating, I’ve only been here about six months.

My biggest question was, I’m like, we have all of these movies and Disney displays. How do we not get copyright infringement for advertising this stuff? And they said basically, if we claim we have Disney displays and just leave it at that, they’re good with it. Cause you’re kind of promoting it. But if we say we have Lightning McQueen, they’re like, uh, nope.

You have to change that. They’re good with us having a. Full Disney parade. We have Disney displays, Disney, everything. But this is Thunder McQueen. So that was like the one thing that they called out, but they watch us pretty closely, which is kind of funny. Again, we’re in bolo, so you, you don’t think that they would care.

But this is everyone from Oprah, princess Diana, Britney Spears. It’s kind of like the SAR car we just sold Michael Jordan’s Bentley, and when he first brought it in, he left his cell phone in the glove compartment or like in the. Center column, and he left his phone in there with all of his contacts. So there had mechanics like, oh, you left your phone here he is like, ah, it’s just a Bentley phone.

It syncs up. And that’s just my Bentley phone. I have my other phone so you can just get rid of it. How am I [00:12:00] get rid of? But then I look at every single contact that Michael Jordan has. So we have star cars here. Then all of these are Disney displays. So these were displayed all across the world, Australia, all over countries.

So when Disney stores were at their height before the internet really hit, they had all of these displays. They were told to dis demolish them once the stores were closed, and somehow a few of these got out. Each one of these displays is probably, depending on the size, 50 to a hundred thousand dollars for collectors to try and get some of these Disney displays.

This is a Donald Trump prototype Cadillac. They only made two of ’em. So they had gold plate, they had the Trump logo here. They had a. Thing for his facts and they actually put a bump for his hair in the back of the limousine. I dunno if you can see it. Um, that his hair was fit and that’s, that was actually a custom thing that they had.

So you go from that. And then we have, Jay Berg is a car designer, so these are hot rods are just awesome. So this is a full roller skate. Hot rods. So you climb up the back here, the steering wheel right up here. You sit up in between the laces. Yeah, we take these out all the time. You know, more iconic ones like the Red Baron, the Rat [00:13:00] Fink stuff.

All of the Ed Roth, big Daddy Ross. Nice. A lot of nice hot rod. Literally had a Disney parade on our property. They had like 4,000 people. So these are all the cars that were actually used in Disney World. So like the goofy car will have, you know, wobble in the thing. So the whole thing wobble while it’s going.

And there’s speakers built into the boxes, ands a full parade car. So they’re pretty cool. Now we have this guy, I have big, oh, that’s the T, that’s the Tumblr for Batman. They made six for the movie. So this wasn’t a hero car they had. Stunt car is another one. They’re all fully operational. The cool thing about this one, this is the only one on display that’s not under licensed under Warner Brothers, and the loophole was, so they have the main ones for the movie that they used for him to drive for the closeups.

Then they had ones that would crash the walls. They had a couple jumpers that were kind of built a little bit heavier on suspension to jump. They would use those for the movies? Well, this one was one of the stunt ones that crashed and just got completely totaled. So they ditched it and they just threw it away.

But one of the crew members took it. So this one is about 80% movie screen used parts. Another 20% used to like actually rebuild it and create it. But this is pretty much all movie parts. [00:14:00] But the cool thing about this one is that he mo it so that the top would slide over. Before it would just kind of flip it.

You’d have to crawl in this one. Actually like the eighties Batmobile. This actually slides forward and you can use it. It’s so wide that we had just to get it in the building, we had to take it apart. Cause the garage doors, I mean with back tires, it’s just massive. Then some more hot rods, like this is a fully operational piano, so you can play the piano.

It’s the uh, Liberace mobile there. Yeah, exactly. Well, I didn’t grow up a car guy, but I guess this is a super iconic one too. It’s a dual engine. They have a couple of these dual engine cars, but I guess there was a ton of toys. In like sixties, early seventies of this car that you could get. Kinda like the red bear.

This is uh, the outlaw 2000 horsepower. Just a beast. Look at these tire. Absolutely. So I think I’ve actually seen that polar in person years ago, if I recall correctly, like ladies early nineties. That was a big pull on the scene and I remember going to a couple pools and I really, if I recall correctly, I think that’s one of ’em I saw in person.

Yeah, most of these, we’ll take ’em out once in a while. They all still run. We have a team of two mechanics, basically. There’s a electronics mechanic and a [00:15:00] head mechanic. But these two guys and one’s like in the seventies and encounter chars like Jimmy Stewart, who’s a very, Gary, walks around and just fixes.

So this is the cat hat. I wanted to show this one. That is Wild, wild Mike costume, but they spent 1.4 million making this vehicle. Everything works, every gear works when you drive it. The front spins. All of this is fully functional pieces. It’s a beautiful piece of just art in general, but what’s kind of cool is, so when you go in here, I was kind of looking at how you drive it and how you’d see this rear view mirror is actually a front facing camera, and the stunt driver sits back here, so he drives and looks at the camera while Mike Myers.

Sits here, it’s got a 360 rotating tire back here, and then these two are forward facing. So you can drive this, you can literally do 360 s in this car. And we’ve taken it out. It’s totally operational and drivable and they’ve spent like 1.4 million on this car. And then they use it for less than a minute in the movie, which is just crazy.

It’s a nice Hollywood budget. Right. I, I think we need a Hollywood. Car, like shootout, drag race, like you know, nobody’s done that yet. I mean totally. They’ve done a [00:16:00] couple in the past racing replica Acto one, and then we had the one from the newer movie and we raced those. The new one blew it away, but I was like, that doesn’t matter cuz that one sucks.

It’s the old ACTO one, that’s the cool one. So we have a jet powered Harley Davidson. So this is a legit, fully built, tested out. I wanted to get a video, so we’re gonna probably take it out this spring. And show it again. The only thing cooler is a jet power snowmobile. It’s a 3000 horsepower rocket engine.

It burns about three gallons of 90% hydrogen peroxide in about 45 seconds. For about 45 seconds of fun, it costs about $450 to Wow. To run this thing. It just moves. And we have a vintage snowmobile collection too, with some really cool stuff. This is technically the first motorcycle that was created. This one was first, but it’s steam.

So they said that doesn’t technically count as a motorcycle because it’s. Steam powered. So then 15 years later this came out and it’s actually fully motorized. So this is technically the first motorcycle. So I see there it says Daimler, which means that Mercedes pioneered the first car as well as the [00:17:00] first motorcycle.

How about that, the forefront about that technology? That’s a good point. Now you mentioned a little earlier that you guys will take a certain amount of time, like refurbing or building stuff. Do you guys have a dedicated team other than the two mechanics you mentioned that do a lot of the restoration?

Refurbished stuff? Not really. They kind of do ’em as side project. It kind of comes in waves. Like anything. Sometimes there’s 20 things that are broken. Other times it’ll be downtime. So we have a monster truck right now that we’re gonna be giving monster truck rides. I wanna do during Halloween now and do monster truck, uh, zombie hunts for like we dress.

You know, kind of like a haunted hayride, but you get to shoot nerve guns at zombies in a monster truck. I just think that would be awesome. We have a lot of those projects that we’re kind of building on the side for Most of the stuff is restored. We have the 2012 version of total recall with Colin Ferrell.

They built this car and they actually legit built this car that has a driver sitting this way with a steering wheel and then a driver sitting the opposite way with the steering wheel so it can drive. Back and forth. Then they have a fiberglass top that sits on top that can pivot, so the actors can sit up there and pivot.

The guys took it out. I’ll [00:18:00] have to send it after a video of the, of these guys driving it back and forth and driving it around. But you can drive it back and forth while the top spins and alternates. So it’s just it, some of the stuff is amazing. So they’ve got the car working again, but the fiberglass connections they’re working on, so that’s another project that they have in the warehouse.

So they’re constantly working on stuff, but it’s amazing for such a small team what they’re able to do. So this is the showroom. We have four showrooms. Three of them are cars that are 1985 and earlier, and then one showroom that’s 1985 and newer. So all the modern muscle. We sell about 50 to 70 cars per month.

They’re constantly going to auctions and getting new, especially every month, but at least every week there’s 10, 15 new cars in here. So there’ll be waves from like cool old Broncos. We just got a bunch of 1950s cars, 56, 57 Chevys. There’s everything. The three most popular are probably the 69 Camaro. 70.

71 Chevelle, and the 57 Chevy. So we get a lot of those, but you just get some really cool rare things. Yeah, I’m seeing lots of Corvette’s. Camaros of bearing ages, Mustangs, Lincoln’s, I mean, wow. Just what an assortment of [00:19:00] cars. Yeah. As I go to the next showroom most, oh, wait, wait, wait. There’s a square body Chevy there.

Dan. Dan just got excited. Turn around. Yeah. Square the blue square body Chevy pick up. He wants to know how much it costs. So it’s 30,000. We have a couple in the front room too. What was nice is some of these cars are 20, 30,000, but then you’ll get some of these like true Hemi Cudas that are like $370,000 cars.

So what’s along the back wall there? I see the uh, Futura based Batmobile from the sixties. Batman, I think I see one of the vehicles from Greece. So what we have and all three showrooms we have, the cars in the middle are all for sale. So these four rows and these are constantly rotating. Then on the walls of both sides, we have the Hollywood cars.

Jay Berg that made the piano hot rod and the rollers skate. Hot Rod made this Johnny Cash tribute. That’s super cool. So it’s a full-blown hot rod. All six of these wheels steer everything is fully operational that thinks amazing. About 28 foot long guitar dragster basically. And then you got the Ferrari Daytona from Miami Vice.

This is the, uh, actual hero card. This is the one they used in the movie. This is the actual [00:20:00] Corvette from Animal House. They lended out for like 400 bucks, and once they used it, it just sat in the barn for like 40 years. The owner would sell it, but only for cash if no auctions wanted to take it. So eventually we got it and we just started it up for the first time two weeks ago.

So this is all the original. Stuff. This is the 66 Batmobile. So George Baris designed these cars. There’s a slew of these that he designed. This isn’t the actual one from the show, but this is the one you can see. George Barris and Adam West signed this one. So this is one that actually came from his shop.

So they’ve used these for promotional tours and things like that. So there’s one of these in the vault at the Peterson. Is that one used on the show or is it also another replica? That was a replica as well? These are one of the most popular. Replicated cars. If you YouTube this thing, they have a company that cranks out like 30 a year.

This was built on a Lincoln, it was like a prototype car. It wasn’t actually a, it was called the Lincoln Future. Yeah, that’s right. And it was like a concept car. They didn’t actually release a lot of ’em and he got it super cheap. So he had like two or four weeks or something crazy like that to come up with this car.

There’s a couple different cars that they use the bodies for [00:21:00] when they build these replicas, but there’s like a huge nation that like builds these. It’s really funny if you look at ’em. Mm-hmm. I think George Baris designed this one as well. This is a replica that came out that’s certified from George Baris, but Glee, the TV show, glee used this in their episode, so they reach out to us a lot and re-rent these for different things.

So this was used in the show, Christine, that you see back there. Stephen King reached out to us to use that for, it’s a movie with James Franco, the JFK movie, 11 22 63, I think it’s called. Yeah. So they used that car. So he reached out to us personally and asked to use this car, which is kind of cool. And the other cool part is they got it back.

And as a thank you, he came back here, he autographed the dashboard of this car and when he was done, the ink started to run down the dashboard. It’s like never happened before. And he’s like, oh, she remembers me. Like that messed up. Steven King. These are the The monsters? Yeah, the Dracula and the family coach.

These are George Bar designs as well. And on the other side, I thought I saw a glimpse of like, of Kit and some other things. So on the other side here, we [00:22:00] have a converted Cadillac that Elvis had. This was actually another barn. Fine. This was actually Elvis’s car. We have his deed and everything. So going to the airport back and forth, you need something to have his luggage.

So Cadillac didn’t make wagons like this, but they bumped up the top and extended it so that they could carry his luggage. But this is Elvis’s actual deed to the car. It’s pretty cool. That’s awesome. This one is the son of Mascar, which is still like one of my favorites of all the cool cars here. This thing is just the detail again for this crappy bee movie.

Like how much money in detail? It’s fully operational, fully run. What is that based on a Camaro or something? What is it underneath? I don’t know. That’s a good question. I mean, the whole thing is just, is moted out, so I can’t even tell. I’ll have to find that out. That’s a good question. I’m not sure what it is.

It’ll be some. Great trivia questions like, do you know what this is built on top of? Totally. Yeah. Kit George Baris, this is from his studio as well. This wasn’t the one that was used in the TV show, but this was used for all the promotional stuff that they did for the show. So it was tied in. So it’s got the full TV screen over there.[00:23:00]

That’s awesome. Bumped out a little bit. It’s pretty sweet. And the same with the, uh, DeLorean. Is that the family Truckster back there? Yep. That it is. So you know what’s missing from this equation, Dan? You know what? I don’t see unless Jim’s hiding it somewhere. I don’t see the Viper known as the defender from the N B NBC show.

Viper. Where? Where’s that hiding? Ooh, that’s a good one. That’s a good one. It’s one of my favorite Hollywood cars of all time. Totally. That’s funny that you said that cause I just did an interview and the two people that were interviewing, one of ’em said their favorite was a mystery machine and the other one that you said was the one that you just said.

I was like, that’s random. That another person just mentioned that they gotta look into that. The irony that is probably walk past the mystery machine a little while ago and I was gonna have you stop. I was like, well, it’s not as famous of a car, so I’ll let you walk by. But I, I was a Voodoo fan myself, so.

These were both screen used. This was from Alien, the original alien. This was from the 2008 Indiana Jones. That’s like the Wisconsin duck, like the amphibious things that go in water that, that’s the Indiana Jones [00:24:00] movie we don’t talk about. It’s all good. Yeah. Right. But you know, I gotta, I gotta say, while you’re walking through here, the detail in each one of the booths, in each one of the sections for the cars is.

Absolutely just incredible. Just like those Disney displays. There’s just so much to look at. And it’s not just a car and a parking spot like any other museum, right. That you would see. So this is, I mean, the detail is just amazing. You guys should really proud of what you’ve done. Really. Even this Barbie car, we fabricated like a whole box, so it looks like it’s sitting in a toy box.

It’s absolutely gorgeous. It’s amazing what they put into, how it started and just for how small of a town this is and how big of an attraction that now. It’s like pretty much any movie, car. You Google, our Volo will come up in it. It’s just How many people do you think you get through the museum on average in a year?

I would say in the slow months, probably around 20,000 a month. And then the busy season probably tripled that, quadruple that. So we have a crime and punishment area, so this was not Bonnie and Clyde’s car, but in the thirties they made this car, they did an exact replica, and then this tour, the country in the thirties and forties [00:25:00] as their actual car, and they charged admission.

Well, eventually the police caught up to ’em and busted ’em and like half of America was pissed off that they got. Ripped off by these guys, but then it became almost as famous as the original one. So then Warner Brothers bought this car and used it in the Bonnie and Clyde movie with Warren Beatty. So this was the car that was actually used.

And then once they did it, they moved around a couple museums. They went out of business and we acquired it. Johnny Depp, this is his car from public enemies. And then we have a whole crime and punishment area that’s like medieval torture. So this is all authentic stuff. So this was a 1911 electric chair.

This reminds me of that episode of Black Mirror, where there’s that museum in the middle of the desert with all the torture equipment in it. This is fun stuff. So I’m, I like taking, especially if you’ve never been here before, it’s fun to just kind of show you all the cool stuff that we’re doing. I really like the fact that you say that you’re basically a living museum where it’s constantly changing.

You could go there and you know, and a couple months later go back and it’d beat different stuff on display, which I find, I mean, if you’re a classic, we have a couple hundred classic cars that are always rotating. So even if you come every week, [00:26:00] You’re gonna see cool stuff if you have a membership and you come here, I mean, these exhibits are changing.

We have seven new ones debuting this year. So if that tells you anything, and it’s everything from movie cars like Fast and Furious to a Titanic display where it immerses you in the experience of the Titanic and then, you know, ice cream parlors and dinosaurs. There’s just, we’re trying to do more and more to have.

The whole family come and actually not be miserable. You know what I mean? So I got, these are fiberglass, both from the fifties. They were only around for a couple years. They’re super small, but they were modeled after cars from this era. So you can see like the backs of cattle. Yeah. I think this one over here has a Corvette windshield.

Like a lot of these. Headlights Taillights. Windshields are all actual car parts. They’re really pretty. I, I do like the pink one, the, the Cadillac version one. That one’s really detailed. That’s really cool. Press yourself. Well, it’s that outboard with all the chrome on it too, and the big fins. It just looks appropriate for the water, you know?

Yeah. The Cadillac fins just go well with water. A hundred percent. That’s really neat. I’ve never seen anything like that before. I mean, these are super rare. Most of these only, there’s only a handful of them that are around because in the fifties they were [00:27:00] fiberglass. They were small, so they got beat up in smaller lakes or whatever.

You’re taking ’em out. Both just eventually beat up and most of ’em just trashed ’em cuz they were fiberglass. So they’re really rare now. So we’ll go through. This is showroom two. So again, this is kind of the same idea. It’s just a bunch of classic cars, muscle cars. They have this process, so they’ll go through, there’s a shop they just finished building that’s over on the other side.

They has all the detailing and mechanics there. So if they give a shipment of cars, they’ll go over there, they’ll clean ’em up, fix ’em, make sure they’re safe and everything is good. Then they bring ’em over here. Once they’re here, they sit until they’re ready to photograph. As soon as they photograph, they go in this turntable area where they have different fluorescent lights.

They do a full YouTube video. So on some of the older cars, like this one over here, older, I mean, been here for a couple weeks. Then most of the customers that we have are nationwide. Only about 10, 20% buy in this area. So they do these QR codes that you can scan, and it’s a full 13 minute YouTube video talking about everything about this car.

Oh, there’s a. A little bubble here or whatever, and they took it up, the air conditioning’s broken or whatever, and then they show you all the good parts and they take about 80 pictures. So any of [00:28:00] these cars that you’re interested in, they’re fully updated online and you can go on and check ’em out. They have a thing called auto locator.

So you type in the exact car, I want a 71 Chevelle green. You know, automatic. I don’t want a stick. I don’t, I can’t drive stick or whatever. You put in all your specifications. And then it goes out to like this nationwide network. So anytime one comes up, you get an email notification. So that’s where I put in the Viper Defender.

Right, exactly. So that said, is there an archive of vehicles that have been at the Volo before that you can just go back and, you know, enjoy looking at them even though they’re not there anymore? Yeah, absolutely. And even on YouTube. So Volo Museum has our own YouTube page, and then BOLO Cars, Volo Auto Sales has their YouTube page and all of the cars that they have, and they get some really, really cool stuff.

All of those videos. Up there so you can go back to the archives and just, you know, they have everything listed so you can search by certain years or you can just flip through and they’ll have some Cadillacs that are just unbelievable. And some of these sports cars that are just are muscle cars that are $400,000 that are just super rare.

They’re in here for like two days and then they’re gone. And we’re like, ah, I like that one. Ec turtle, van, blues brothers, Dukes hazard. This is the. [00:29:00] Pretty much almost the Holy Grail of General East about as much as the 66 Batmobile. There’s replicas of this everywhere, but this is one of the first generation they’re from, I think they’re built in Georgia, like the early Georgia production they’re called.

And this is like one of the only ones left for the Georgia production. So this is a super, uh, a replica. That’s not even close to this. Just sold for like $200,000 or something like that. Yeah, and I’ve seen pictures of car haulers from back when they were shooting the show that would be packed full of General Lees because they would just destroy them Car after car after car, yeah.

Shooting the show. Yeah. It was hundreds of ’em that they destroyed during the filming of that show. I mean, it was good for Mopar, right? I mean, they were making money hand over fist solid chargers. That’s the C2 Corvette from Fast and the Furious. They, they drove off a cliff or whatever. Yep. So the ice charger that you saw in front, so these are the other three.

This is the Poey Grail of those cars too. This is from the first original one. This was Vin Diesel’s car. So this is the hero car from the original Fast, the Furious. This one here, you called it from Fast five, and they [00:30:00] ran off the cliff. So they made about. 12 of these, most of them, kinda like the Batmobile were used for jumps or stunts.

This was the only one that was used for green screen. So of all those 12 Corvette’s, this is really the only surviving one, but this is the one that Vin Diesel and Paul Walker used for the closeups. So it’s in, I’m gonna guess like a lot of other replicas, it’s probably a C4 Corvette underneath. It’s not really a c2.

Right, exactly. Yeah, that’s something that like Mark Talley’s famous for, like, he built the Mach five and a bunch of other cars and he loved using c4, Corvette’s cuz there were so many of ’em. And, and nobody really wanted ’em. They didn’t have a great resale value. So it’s still a Corvette, but not the one we’re looking at.

Right. This is the last car Paul Walker drove. This is from Furious seven, and this was one of the ones that were actually parachuted out of a plane. None of that was cgi. You can see the hooks on here. And this was almost a barn fine. We bought it with a bunch of other stuff and this just happened to be sitting there.

Yeah, but where’s J? Where’s Jesse’s? You know, mark Three Jetta. I mean, come on now. This is. The 1977 land speeder from Star Wars, the original Star Wars. [00:31:00] Oh wow. It’s basically like a golf cart chassis, and they kind of pulled the wheels in, almost made it like a three wheeler because they didn’t have the cgi.

So when you see it driving on the sand, it kind of bounces a little bit while it’s hovering or whatever. But this is the actual run from the movie. The Mark five, the original one used in the movie is at the Peterson in the vault right now. I saw a couple weeks ago. Yep. It’s, I think that one’s probably larger from the looks of it, because I was shocked how small, really.

Um, yeah. Mark Talley’s, mark five is because again, it’s a c4, so it’s not a super huge car, but it’s, it’s very, very tiny. You have Eleanor, is that the Eleanor? No, it’s, this one’s a replica. I think the original one just sold for like 3 million or something crazy. Oh, the Mad Max Falcon xv g t. Even with the dinky D dog food in it.

See? So he has some foreign cars in there. That’s Australian. What was that formula car there to the right? Uh, this was actually used by Michael Andretti. This was a formula car we kind of carved in so that kids considering [00:32:00] it. Yeah. We have this one here. This is from Terminator three. This was the movie used one.

What’s cool about this is that they kind of show you how they rigged up these holes. So they put explosives in each one of these and then painted over it. And then during the movie they had a A program, so these things would pop off one at a time. They have some of the blueprints and stuff from Hollywood on how they plan the sequence of shots, so they’re all numbered.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Pretty cool. Unbelievable. The amount of detail that you have to put into a movie car is just incredible. Totally. Well, I noticed you got the dog, the Lord Express. Which they only made those for a long minute period of time. For trucks. That’s not a very common one to find, and that one looks in pristine condition.

It’s for sale, Dan. It could be yours. So the low, low price of Don’t ask Be not a Mopar guy, though. I can appreciate ’em, but I’m not a Mopar guy. It’s just a 300 easy payments. So as you walk throughout the campus, are you actually walking in and out of the museum as well as the Volvo auto sales and they kind of just bleed together?

Or is that They kind of bleed together. Okay. Yeah, so like this is the original room. When we first started that I almost hit my head on everything. So this is [00:33:00] just straight auto sales. Cause this was the first showroom. So then as they built on, that’s where they added the Hollywood. But it’s all kind of mixed together.

So even they have. You gotta check this out. This is, uh, looks like a normal ordinary port potty, but it’s actually jet powered. Looks like something off the top gear. It’s just, I dunno if you can see, I can kinda pop in here, but you can see all of the, the gears and everything. So it’s fully jet powered.

The guy that drove it initially. It went so fast that it tipped over and all the jet fuel oh leaked out on him. So he had to put like an escape hatch on the top cause he would’ve basically exploded a couple here. But there seems to be a lot of American cars here, a lot of domestics muscles, you know, old classics and things like that.

What do you have in terms of, you know, foreign cars coming through? Anything that really stands out for classic cars? Not a ton for modern muscle stuff. Newer than 85. We have a bunch that. Go over on the other side, man, this place is huge. Look, another square body, Dan. Yep. Another square body. Yeah, we got two.

We got sisters here. Is that a 21 window, t2, or, yep. [00:34:00] 23 window van, I think. Yeah. Yeah, man, those are gorgeous. That’s so cool. See you got some foreign cars. Look at that. And that looks like an MGA right there to your right. So you got a British car, so you’re good. Yeah. So there we go. See where he is. Exotic.

Good. Zar. So while you’re walking to the next building, let’s talk about what it costs to check out all these different exhibits. Is there one cost for the entire campus? Do you pay something for the Jurassic side versus the cars? Like how does the ticketing and things like that work if somebody wanted?

So it’s what’s crazy is that. It’s 1995 for the whole thing. The dinosaur park just debuted last year, so that’s a separate $12 fee. But you can do combo passes where you save four bucks on both tickets, and then you come back the next day for free. So it’s still extremely reasonably priced for how, and that’s per person per visit, right?

Yeah, per person. It sounded like you have an annual membership as well. Yeah, there’s annual membership. It’s like 50 bucks or 60 bucks. Is that an all you can eat when you do the annual food is separate? No, no. I meant terms of metaphorically speaking. Yes. Metaphorically [00:35:00] speaking. Yes. Like you can come as much as you’d like during the course of the season.

Exactly. Every single day. Yeah, every single day. There’s special events and special things we’ll do for members too that are also included, so it’s. If you come here more than once, I mean, it’s totally worth it because we’re changing stuff all the time. I’ll show you. This is the photo studio. I think we’re shooting some right now, but I’m gonna whisper so I can show you the photo studio.

But they’re shooting a video right now. Just a second. That’s the first Gen Firebird sitting in there. Good. You guys are good. Yeah. That’s like a full rotating turntable and they have l e D lights that’ll change different colors for whatever, but that’s when they make those YouTube videos. That’s all here.

So he goes through and just talks about every angle of the car. They have videos underneath basically everything. It was like 80 photos of each car that they take. So Jim, if you were flying in for the weekend, how far outside of Chicago is the Volvo Museum? Ah, great question. Uh, it’s about 40 miles. It’s about 40 miles from Milwaukee, from Chicago, and then even from Rockford, which is out, but more west.

So we’re kind of right in the central hub. I mean up here there’s also, there’s hotels and we have a Six Flags. Great America. You have a lot of other ton of lakes and boating and campgrounds and all kinds of stuff. So outside of hotels, you can also go through a [00:36:00] full weekend trip as well. All right, so this is the military old wills.

Now, these are all military issue vehicles. You guys have picked up? Yeah. Everything here is authentic. It’s all military issued. We have a helicopter as well that’s out on the front of the property. That was gifted to us by the government. Actually every, all these weapons here are, but all this is all authentic outside of the mannequin mannequins obviously, but everything else is authentic.

This was used in Banda Brothers absolutely incredible stuff. Most of someone we gotta came with the, like the desert storm hum that you saw earlier. You know what’s fun about this? I mean, here in the dmv, you know, we have the Smithsonians all in our backyard and they’re highly manicured and you know, very purposefully put together.

But I hate to say they’re not nearly as fun. Totally. Like this is just totally. Fantastic. The way this is laid out. Yeah, and it, and it flows really well. You move from one exhibit to the next and to your point, it’s good for us as adults, but it’s great for the kids too, and they can learn something along the way.

You know, trying to capture the attention span now of adults too. But even of kids, I’m, I’m adding a lot more interactive and in informational stuff through here because there’s just stories on, on [00:37:00] each one of these things that are just amazing. This is from Indiana Jones. Last said, I wanna say, I think when him and Sean Connery were driving and that’s a bmw.

So yet another form and yet another one. So Ha. So I have to ask, are any of the tanks and stuff for sale? I mean, everything’s for sale, you know what I mean? Most of the stuff is for sale. We keep it here, but we’re rotating exhibits and right now, We don’t really have room for this stuff just because we’ve moved and added a couple buildings and now these guys are kind of just sitting in the corner over here.

So yeah, most of the stuff is for sale because we’re bringing new stuff in all the time. So going back to the intro, when we were talking, you know, I saw some of this when it was on American Pickers, and obviously they’re always looking for stuff, especially with respect to petroleum and collectibles and things of certain time periods, et cetera.

So, you know, you say everything’s got a price, everything’s. For sale. I, I’m sure maybe some of the memorabilia is too, but do you guys also take donations from people that say, Hey, I’ve got this Disney piece that you’re missing, or I’ve got this other thing that would look good in the display case, or is it both ways with respect to Yeah, absolutely.[00:38:00]

We accept a ton of donations and it’s pretty cool because especially military, a lot of the people that come through the military that either their siblings died or they’re alone, or whatever it may be, they have all this amazing. Stuff. We just had someone that was a P O W in Vietnam, but they had all the currency that they used and it was a special currency that they used just for the time that they were POWs and she had like all this different currency and all this stuff and she’s like, I loved your museum, loved what you had, and just gave it all to us.

So it’s really cool. Some of the, uh, the impact that we had, I didn’t show you as we were going through the Disney stuff. There’s a hot Rod Cinderella stage coach that was made from a old school, 1800 stage coach, and so we have a picture of. The original stage coach that it was modified after, I think it was George Bar or j o Boberg, one of those guys.

So he mod the whole thing out. So this lady just happens to walk through one day and looks at the picture and she’s like, that’s me. I’m the little kid in the backseat. She’s from like Minnesota or something. And this was her family car that was changed into a Cinderella hot rod, which is so neat. And, uh, working on getting a liquor license.

We’re village approved state’s almost there. So hopefully you’ll be able to grab a couple beers and, [00:39:00] and walk through here as well. Kinda enhance. Its first one more showroom I’ll show you, which is modern cars, right? Yeah. So the 85 and newer, this area right here is set it up. It’s a massive dinosaur playground, kind of what why we call the Jurassic Gardens.

Kind of set it up here so you can have a picnic out here and just kind of hang out. Eventually I’d love to have like Beer Fest and other cool events in this area too. So you mentioned the room you’re, uh, leading us to now is 85 and newer. What brought the decision of 85 being the key year for the distinction?

It’s a fourth generation family, and I think the younger guys just like, yeah, it’s cool. It’s a six day Camaro, but modern muscle is awesome, you know, and they just, there was a market for it. So yeah. Caleb Grahams just kind of runs this side, so he’s kind of off on the other end. So let me ask you this, as you’re moving us to the next.

Showroom here. Jim, did you grow up in this area? Did you grow up around the Volo Museum? Is that what brought you here eventually? No, I, I’ve never been here until I started working here. I grew up in the area within like an hour radius. I sing in a band. We’ve been around like 20 years, so I’ve, I’ve known them really well just through different events.

It was more or less by association, social Media [00:40:00] Association, and that’s just kind of how it came about. It was just kind of a, was that a Cadillac XLR to your left? Is that what you saw? We Oh, right here? Yeah. No, no, no. That’s a Mercedes to, to your, to your right. I guess that caddy in the corner looked like an xlr, but I could be wrong.

It is. How do you do that? I’m a nerd. What can I say? Let’s see. Galo. Kuta. You have a C6 vet. A C7 vet. This one only has 980 miles on it. Wow. So this window normally shut when you shut the door to pay for this option. And it only goes down this far. So even for a half window, it only goes down halfway. And it was like a $12,000 upgrade to basically get like a cheeseburger slip through.

Is that a, that’s a Stda Baker. Avanti. Yeah. I haven’t seen one of those in forever. Yeah. Way more modern. I mean, you have C eight Corvette’s in there. All sorts of students. Yeah, a lot of That’s a CORs, a Shelby, that’s the Shelby, um, the one I think you called it, right? Yeah. Series one. Good eye. You don’t see too many of those.

Viper GTS Coop, gen two mostly Mustangs and vets are probably the most in [00:41:00] demand cars that we go through. So you mentioned, uh, cars that are in demand. Do you guys have a list of buyers that buy from you regularly that are like, Hey, I’m looking for this and you guys go try to find sub vehicle? Yeah. You got some guys that are just have stupid money that’ll buy like 10 cars in a month.

And it’s not the cheap ones either. So there are certain ones that they develop relationships over the years. You got a Gen one viper target there for sale. What, what? What’s the going rate on that? I need to know with the hard top option 57. That’s reasonable. That’s good. So these, you know, rotate at about the same rate as the classic cars do.

So if you come back here next week, there’s probably 10 new cars in here that they’re going through. Are there any that will just never sell or is everything have a price tag? Honestly, everything has. Price tag and most of it sells, even some of the bigger cars. We had this purple Hemi Cuda that was just gorgeous and that was around 380,000 and that sat for two months and that was probably the longest I’ve seen a car sit.

And then so is there another building that’s just the personal collection of the Graham’s family that is not for sale or is just [00:42:00] So his house is on the property, so he lives on the property. He built a house in the basement. They used to kind of store stuff. But he doesn’t have, I thought he’d be like this, you know, after hours he like puts on a robe and pipe and he’s like, come with me.

I wanna show you my collection. You know, for all the cool stuff that he has. And he is just turn and burn and all of the profits every year go back into the museum. So all the money they make, if they make an extra million or $50 million, they just reinvested and just buy more cool stuffs. They were very smart businessmen didn’t get attached to any of the belongings, unlike some of us.

It’s a curse. It’s a curse. I wanted to show you the shop really quick cause that’s new. That’s kind of cool to look at, especially if you guys are nerds, you’ll nerd out on that kinda stuff. Well, I’ll say for only being there six months, I’m impressed with how much of like the layout, grasp of stuff that’s there.

The knowledge you’ve had thus far in your tour you’ve given us is amazing cuz I would’ve expect you’ve been there much longer than six months. Thank you. WGN is a big TV station that’s up here and my second day here, they were doing a live broadcast, like on their morning news. [00:43:00] And so I literally just signed like the w2, like that’s all I had.

So I walked out, the crew came in, it’s like five in the morning. She’s like, okay. Well, Jim, where, where do you wanna start? And, uh, tell us what, you know. I was like looking at the signs. I’m like, I went to loaner. I’m like, what do I know about these cars? So he basically like gave me the rundown enough to like fake it.

But it was live TV too, so it was terrifying. So now after a couple of those experiences, I got pretty good, pretty quick, just cause it’s fun. I mean, every day there’s just something new that you find. And not even just the cool stuff, but the story on how they got it, the story on, you know, what it went through, even like the Bonnie and Clyde thing, like it was fake, but it’s almost a cooler story than the actual car.

So, so are you yourself a petrolhead? No. So for the fact you’re not a petrolhead, how do you feel in the environment where it’s all automotive based? Love it. Transportation based, right? Yeah. Yeah. I love it. It’s, I’m learning stuff every day and we’re nationally known. We’ve been around 60 years, so we get YouTubers and influencers all the time that want to come here just cause the collection is so ridiculous.

They [00:44:00] can get a lot of content done in one time. So I’ll be on their show almost like a hand puppet, but whatever. We go through these cars and he breaks down, he’s like, oh, this 4 27 when this is here, and here’s what this means and why this is here. And like I really get like the inside scoop. And now like it’s fun.

Like when new cars come in, I can start to tell the difference between the ears and the. Kinds and what’s rare and what’s not. This is the mechanic side. So this is when they first come in and they’re checking everything. So they have everything from cheaps to absolutely beautifuls. This the first one on, right?

Look like a early seventies. Monte Carlo, that challenger’s Ainger. That’s a Dodge Dart Stinger. Yeah, those are pretty rare too. They got a sting. I think that’s a sting right back there. This purple one here is really, really interesting. Kind of reminds me of, oh, it says Gatsby, so whatever. The movie car.

Yeah, I was gonna say it’s a doozy. Yeah. Funny. Is that ostrich interior? Yeah. You’re freaking me out with how good you are at this. I guess that’s why you have a show. Thank the other dusenberg still in here. Here. It’s bow tail. Those are beautiful cars. I’ve seen one of those in person. Only one though.

This is the one we lent out to [00:45:00] Brad Pitt. You used this in a new movie that comes out, I wanna say this summer. It’s a one title movie. I forgot the name of it. But we just got this back from the studio. So it’s a doozy boat tail then, not an auburn. Okay. Yeah, it’s a doozy. Nice. I’ve seen an Auburn boat tail in person.

They’re humongous. I mean, they’re just gorgeous. That was, that was like a trend for like a year or two, whereas like, oh, we’re gonna make ’em look like your yacht or whatever that you have, or whatever your sailboat is, you know, kind of thing. And then they just, they became passe almost quickly as they became a fad.

So, but they’re neat. Yeah. Really cool. So this is usually where, if they’re sold to come in here to get cleaned out and then transported out or. If they just get ’em in. So most of the time, whatever’s in here, no one’s even seen yet. How many of these cars would we end up seeing? Maybe crossing the field at something where like Bear Jackson or something like that.

I’m just curious, like what types of auctions these cars end up either coming from or going too. Right. They go, he flies around the country. So Mecu auctions, which is big, is actually like. 20 minutes down the street from here where they started. I actually went to high school with them. They are from this area now.

They’re nationally and they’re huge. So their prices have gone up. The owner of Mecu and the owner of this [00:46:00] place are still friends. He flies around the country because they have to buy in such large amount. I mean, a lot of people know about us here, so they’ll bring either selling consignment or bring ’em here, but we still go through a ton of cars.

So he flies out to auctions and they’re kind of all over the country. That’s a separate thing I could probably set up and have you talk about how he acquires ’em because that, that’s a whole different episode of just, it’s amazing. The operation on, it’s basically like five guys that just turn these cars.

There’s two salesmen and like five guys and they sell like 50 to 70 cars a month and just turn ’em over all over the country. That’s amazing. Looking at the future of the Volo Museum, do you see them getting more into maybe the Motorsport side or race cars or anything like that? Or is it always gonna stick with um, you know, the hot rods and, and the movie cars?

I wanna say they would stick to hot Rods movie cars cuz that’s what they’ve done. But I won’t say no because they’ll get a bug up his ass and all of a sudden we have a a 1928 carousel building. You know, I guess we’ve had a lot of people ask that cuz there’s obviously huge industries in all those, the fans are just, And there’s not a lot, at least that I know of that are around the country that [00:47:00] have that kind of stuff.

So obviously Peterson and some of the bigger places have rotating exhibits of that, but I’d love to see it. I think that stuff’s awesome. Pretty much it. I got one more thing to show you over here. Sure. The shopping cart, actually two things. So one thing I might even stump you on, this is something that I learned before I stump you.

I’m just gonna show you a couple more cool things. All right. So we have just a radio flyer. That you can drive down the street. I read about that car that somebody was driving right around for a car show or something and we were, we were laughing about it. Like, seriously what? Ridiculous. We go down the highway here, get some looks, and this guy too.

That’s awesome. But this is the, uh, the shopping cart. I love the stadium seating in the shopping cart. It’s fantastic. So I like the driver doesn’t even sit down here, he says way up at the top. The shifter is like right above it, you can see. But it’s got a Mopar thing. Yeah. Yeah. I can see it on the valve cover.

So this is a fun, we take them out. We have the trails that that go all along the property and we’ll take some of the stuff out. The mechanic is freaking nuts, so I’ll just be like, Jim, hop in. I’m like, what is this? Is this [00:48:00] okay? Like, is this safe? There’s no floor. You could just fall right through and land right on top of one of the pipes.

But it’s fun. So are you guys ever looking for volunteers to come drive any of the equipment to keep it running because. Eric and I will gladly come volunteer for that. Oh man, you guys gotta come out and see the stuff. I mean, the crews here just are really cool and as long as it’s not for sale or whatever, we donate a lot to different car shows and fundraisers and stuff like that.

So we’ll bring some of these cool cars out for people. Not necessarily to drive around. Like if it’s in our parking lot we will, but for insurance purposes, obviously. So do you know the year of the very first Lamborghini. I have to refer Eric on that one. Uh, it’s gonna be a tractor, not a car, so, oh, well done.

It’s gonna be post-war, so I’m gonna say 1948 or 49, early fifties. Good job. I’m impressed. This is the 1958. This is probably, this tractor’s probably worth more than all of the other ones here, but this, so we have this one and we have a Porsche tractor, actually, [00:49:00] is that a Porsche next to it? Yeah, this one, this is just one of the orchard.

Oh, that’s a case. Okay. A tractor. Yeah. The Porsche is being fixed. That’s one of the projects with the monster truck in the silver recall car is the Porsche tractor and the, the same guy fixes all ’em, which is crazy. But we did a promotional video where we’re like, we’re debuting our new Lamborghini. And you see like it’s all closeups.

They’ll put on like the leather glove and it goes around the steering wheel, you know, and you see like the gas. That stuff. Then it pans out and he’s just like chugging along on a little tractor. We interviewed the gentleman that runs the Porsche Diesel America company and he, he deals a lot with the Porsche diesel tractors.

Not only that, he owns the only unsold Porsche tractor in the United States. It’s brand new. It’s pretty cool. That’s amazing. So these trains I have on our YouTube channel, we crane these trains in and I put together like a three minute video of each one. Pretty cool. These cranes run on like eight tires.

That all steer independently. So this thing can crab walk and like move into super tight corner and then lift these massive [00:50:00] train cars over the museum. It’s awesome. But that’s pretty much nutshell. So Jim, let me ask you this as we close out our segment here, any shoutouts promotions or specials, anything else you’d like to add that our listeners would need to know about if they’re interested in visiting BOLO for the first time?

You know, the combo passes are really our best value because you can see the dinosaur park and everything here, so it’s like 30 bucks, it’s a full day thing, and then you can come back the next day for free. So if you come out here on the weekends, it’s a full weekend can really get your money’s worth.

Other than that, yeah, we have Titanic and Ice Cream Parlor Ford versus Ferrari. The new dudes and Rogue room, the Fast and Furious collection, all of these are gonna be a lot more interactive. There’s a documentary on Disney Plus called Imagineering, and a retired Imagineer lives like 20 minutes away and actually reached out to us.

Worked on a lot of the attractions and rollercoaster stuff, and he is like, I’m bored. Can I help you guys? And we’re like, not really. And all these new exhibits came up. So now he’s starting to help us design the Titanic display and some of this other stuff to really kind of take the displays to the next level and really draw people in and, uh, and interact with them.

We don’t want you to just, like, like you said, a lot of these Smithsonians [00:51:00] and these beautiful museums, they have awesome stuff, but. It’s just, you’re so disconnected with this. We really want people to touch and feel and experience it if they can. So that’s kind of how our competitive advantage, I guess you can say.

It’s weird cuz it’s just a bunch of buildings don’t even match. So it’s kind of, it’s like a redneck Smithsonian I guess I could say. I don’t even know, but exactly. We put a lot of passion into it and like I said, they invest everything. Every year, all the profits go right back to just make it better every year.

So that’s hopefully what people will see. It’s not just an auto museum, it’s, it’s an auto museum, but there’s just so much more that’s nobody else in the world really has, especially together the collection. So I’ll say this, Dan, I don’t know about you, but now in this post covid world as the. Museum is back in full swing.

I think we’re gonna have to make it a point to take a field trip and see this in person. What do you think guys have to I’m definitely down for that and so I’m, before you mention this there, I’m already thinking in my head what tracks are nearby, where we go out and track, you know, and then hit the museum up while we’re out there.

I think it’s time to hit Road America and get that off our bucket list there, Dan. It sounds like a plan. I don’t think [00:52:00] Elkhart Lake is. Too far from where you guys are at, but Or some of the other ones, even Gingerman and some of the other tracks. But you know, it will sweeten the deal if Jim can get us the defender from Viper.

That’s all I’m saying. And they’re gonna make it worth my visit. There’s other Viper for you to see. No, no. It’s gotta be the defender. I’m telling you. Not the cheesy one, that it turns into a boat. It’s gotta be the original defender, you know that. No that nonsense. Alright folks, if you’re looking for something else to do this weekend, how about a road trip to the Volo Museum to check out some iconic cars?

And if you can’t make it out to Illinois, be sure to check out the TV series. Volo House of Cars originally aired on the History Channel. Now available on Amazon Prime. And to learn more about the Volo Auto Museum, be sure to visit www.volocars.com or follow them on all the social media majors at Volo Museum.

So Jim, I can’t thank you enough for coming on Break Fix and giving us this virtual [00:53:00] tour of the museum and sharing all these wonderful things that we didn’t know were hidden. Basically in the middle of nowhere, Illinois. So good on you guys. This is absolutely amazing and we look forward to seeing you in the near future.

Likewise. Thank you for having me. Thank you for helping me get my steps in too. I appreciate that.

Gt Motorsports or check out volo cars.com today and reserve your tickets to visit the museum in person. 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 [00:54:00] Instagram at Grand Tour Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call our text at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at crew chief gt motorsports.org.

We’d love to hear from you. 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 [00:55:00] remember, without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be possible.

Bonus Content

There's more to this story!

Be sure to check out the behind the scenes for this episode, filled with extras, bloopers, and other great moments not found in the final version. Become a Break/Fix VIP today by joining our Patreon.

All of our BEHIND THE SCENES (BTS) Break/Fix episodes are raw and unedited, and expressly shared with the permission and consent of our guests.

Learn More

Check out our virtual guided tour via Patreon!

Volo Auto Museum — Photo courtesy Jim Wojdyla; Volo Museum

The Volo Museum is in a state of constant rotation. Each week you will see something new and exciting. All the vehicles in the many showrooms are fully prepared, restored and made available for sale.

The Volo museum is broken up into various sections or “rooms,” inside of many of the larger show rooms. One of those you’ll encounter as soon as you enter the facility is “The Duesenberg Room”

The Volo Museum houses the largest TV & Movie vehicle collection in the United States. But it goes beyond just cars parked in a show room, there are full scale and sometimes interactive diorama’s that accompany each vehicle.

Would you like to ride with Batman? One of a few original/authentic “Tumblers” that remain from the Batman Franchise starring Christian Bale. **More on this vehicle in the Audio Tour – below!

The Volo Museum houses some of the largest, and the largest, collection of original “Hot Rods” like those created by George Barris and Ed “Big Daddy” Roth (Rat Fink) and others. **More on that in the Audio Tour below!

Need a break from all the walking? Try out their full scale indoor carrousel or take in a completely animatronic Pirate concert!

The Volo Museum also contains a section entirely devoted to the Armed Forces, with authentic memorabilia donated by soldiers and veterans, it also includes real (not replica) Military Issue vehicles on display like this Desert Storm HUM-V and even a Helicopter or two.

Are you or a loved one a fan of Jurassic Park or more importantly Dinosaurs? Volo also houses one of the largest interactive and animatronic Dinosaur exhibits in one of its many out buildings.

Ever wanted to feel like Mario Andretti, Emerson Fittipaldi or Dan Gurney? Well, why not sit in an authentic CART series Indy Car and try it on for yourself?

One of the newest displays at Volo includes the Ford GT-40 and Ferrari 330 P3 from the Movie “Ford v Ferrari” starring Christian Bale and Matt Damon – what’s not to love? #becauseracecar

Volo Museum Admission Info

If you’re looking for something else to do this weekend, how about a road-trip to the Volo Museum to check out some iconic cars. And if you can’t make it out to Illinois be sure to check out the TV series “Volo House of Cars” originally aired on History Channel, now available on Amazon Prime. To learn more about the Volo Auto Museum be sure to visit www.volocars.com or follow them on all the social-media majors @volomuseum

Adults – $19.95
Children 5 to 12 – $12.95
Seniors (65 and over) – $17.95
Veterans and Military with ID card – $16.95
Military in Uniform and Children Under 5 – FREE

More information on volocars.com – plan your visit today!

The museum is a sensory overload in the best way. There’s a 1928 Alan Herschell carousel with 20,000 lights, fully restored and rideable. A room filled with self-playing pianos and 1930s street organs. Penny arcades. A two-story hot rod shopping cart. Even a jet-powered Harley and snowmobile.

Outside, Hollywood trains from Westworld and Inception sit alongside a Harrier jet from True Lies and Avengers. There’s a Desert Storm Humvee, a Titanic-era car, and a steam-powered motorcycle that predates the internal combustion engine.

Beyond the museum, Volo is a serious player in the collector car market. With four showrooms and over 50 cars sold monthly, the inventory ranges from $20K square-body Chevys to $370K Hemi Cudas. The museum’s walls are lined with Hollywood legends—Animal House’s Corvette, Miami Vice’s Ferrari Daytona, Knight Rider’s KITT, and the Back to the Future DeLorean.

George Barris-designed replicas of the 1966 Batmobile and the Munster Koach sit alongside Elvis Presley’s custom Cadillac wagon and Johnny Cash’s guitar-shaped hot rod. Even Stephen King’s haunted Plymouth from Christine makes an appearance—complete with his autograph and a mysteriously dripping ink signature.

Always Evolving

Jim Wojdyla describes the museum as a “breathing” entity. Exhibits rotate weekly. New acquisitions arrive constantly. Upcoming features include a Titanic display, a monster truck zombie hunt, and a Ford vs. Ferrari showcase. With just two mechanics and a small restoration team, the museum’s output is nothing short of miraculous.

Whether you’re a die-hard gearhead, a movie buff, or just someone looking for a day of wonder, the Volo Museum offers a rare blend of nostalgia, innovation, and pure entertainment. And if you want the full behind-the-scenes experience, check out the video tour on Patreon or plan your visit at volocars.com..

Guest Co-Host: Daniel Stauffer

In case you missed it... be sure to check out the Break/Fix episode with our co-host.

This content has been brought to you in-part by sponsorship through...

Track Shaker: One Man’s Mission to Demystify the Track Day Experience

Gran T

July 19, 2022

Track Shaker: One Man’s Mission to Demystify the Track Day Experience

For many car enthusiasts, the leap from street driving to track days feels daunting. The jargon, the gear, the prep – it’s enough to make even seasoned drivers hesitate. But Scott Hartman, founder of Track Shaker, is on a mission to change that. Through a blend of videography, motorsports consulting, and grassroots passion, he’s built a one-stop resource to help drivers confidently take their first steps onto the racetrack.

Photo courtesy Scott Hartman, Track Shaker

Scott’s journey began with a childhood crush: a 1971 Dodge Challenger in Plum Crazy purple with a shaker hood. Years later, a hit-and-run incident totaled his daily driver, and he seized the moment to buy a 2016 Dodge Challenger RT Shaker – the modern embodiment of that childhood dream. That car became his gateway into drag racing, track days, and autocross, eventually leading to a red 2015 Challenger SRT with a procharger and six-piston Brembos. After a dramatic engine failure at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Scott transitioned to a 2000 C5 Corvette FRC, a Swiss Army knife of performance platforms and a top pick for beginner track cars.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

As Scott’s motorsports experience grew, so did his reputation as the “track guy” in his local Dodge Challenger group. Fielding countless questions – from insurance to helmets to tech inspections – he realized the information was out there, but scattered across dozens of organizations. Worse, the lack of centralized guidance was actively discouraging newcomers. One friend even backed out of her first track day due to confusion and anxiety.

Get on track with Track Shaker! — Photo courtesy Scott Hartman, Track Shaker

Scott saw an opportunity: create a comprehensive, easy-to-use resource that demystifies track days and empowers drivers. Thus, Track Shaker was born.

Spotlight

Synopsis

This episode of Break/Fix features an in-depth conversation with Scott Hartman, the founder of Track Shaker. Scott discusses his journey from a car enthusiast to an expert in grassroots motorsports, detailing his experiences with various cars and track events. He also talks extensively about Track Shaker, a resource aimed at helping beginners enter the world of motorsports by offering comprehensive guides, how-to videos, track locators, and an event finder. Scott explains the genesis of Track Shaker, the need for such a resource, and its distinctive approach to making track days more accessible. Additionally, they touch upon Hartman Autosports and Racetrack Retreats, two other ventures Scott is involved in, focusing on unique racetrack projects and hosting exclusive private track events, respectively. The episode highlights the importance of driver safety, preparation, and community support in the motorsports world.

What inspired Track Shaker? And where did the name come from, what does it mean?
What does Track Shaker do or provide?
How does Track Shaker collect, update and provide their information? Is the Track Shaker schedule nation-wide? Or regional?
How often is the website updated? Are there links to the registration pages of each organization, ie: HOD, SCCA, CHIN, or Club Registration or MotorsportsReg?
Does Track Shaker have a “home track” – if so, where are you based?
We also noted that you own/operate Hartman AutoSports – what is that, and what services do you provide there?
Diversifying your portfolio even more we stumbled across… “RaceTrack Retreats” touted as Ultra-Exclusive Private Track Events On America’s Iconic Road Course Racetracks – What are some of the tracks? Events Options? Costs? What’s included?
Anything else that’s in the works, or we should know about? What’s coming for the next couple of seasons?

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Gran Touring Motorsports podcast, break Fix, where we’re always fixing the break into something motorsports related.

Jumping into a new hobby, especially motorsports, can be super difficult. It’s a seemingly impossible new world that’s been inhabited by others who already enjoy different disciplines. We know it can be intimidating, and that’s what stops many from migrating from the street to the track. Thankfully, there are communities out there that are always welcoming and willing to help out those who are looking to try something new.

As the founder of Track Shaker, Scott Hartman is devoted to helping drivers experience new and exhilarating adventures with their cars through Grassroots Motorsports. Using his experience in videography, event hosting and Motorsports consulting, he has spent thousands of hours creating and curating helpful resources found on track shaker.com.

Scott has definitely developed a unique set of skills in the automotive world, and we want to welcome him to Break Fix, to share his [00:01:00] story. Thank you very much. I really appreciate the invitation. So before we get going on all your various projects, let’s set the stage and talk about Scott, the petrol head, your cars, your motorsports experience and things like that.

Sure. Well, I started as a car guy, like most of us as a kid. First time I saw a 1971 Dodge Challenger with a shaker in plum. Crazy. I just thought it was the coolest thing ever. And ultimately that led to my first track car in 2017. A hit and run driver total, my Honda Accord. So I needed a car and I thought if ever there was a time to get a car, I wanted, now is it, so I got, I would say, the modern equivalent of that car I saw as a kid, which was a 2016 Dodge Challenger RT Shaker.

Right after I bought it, I started doing some drag racing with it, and then just a couple months later started doing track days and then later, further down the road, some autocross as well. So that’s what got me into the hobby with that car. My first track day was with track club U s A at v i r. Really great organization.

That was an awesome [00:02:00] first event to have as my first track day. Like all of us, I was hooked from the get go. So looking back, you, you’re talking about Mopar, I’m a, I’m a closet Mopar man myself. Would you say those are the sexiest cars of all time or is there something else that was on your wall as a poster?

As a kid, I. I don’t know if I would say they’re the sexiest cars of all time. They’re definitely very beastly. I am a big classic car guy. I’ve always loved classic cars. I’ve been to a lot of concor events and I just, I have a big love of certain genres of classic cars. If you’re talking about the sexiest cars, In my opinion, you know, you gotta think about Italian cars in the sixties.

A car I actually just chased down the road here in Charlotte last week is a uh, 1967 isso Grifo. Not a car. A lot, a lot of people know about. Got a body designed by Bertoni who designed a lot of the first Lamborghinis and it’s got a Chevrolet power plant. Just a gorgeous car. Things like Damaso, Paneras, you know, when I think of a sexy car, it tends to be seventies and sixties.

Italian supercars, but mopars are [00:03:00] great. They’ve got good aggression. I like the muscular stance of them for sure. In terms of my current cars, I started with that 2016 Challenger RT Shaker. And then after that I did a bunch of track stuff with that for a good three years. Then I went on to a red 2015 Dodge Challenger, S R T, and I focus on the S R T because I.

It didn’t have the supercharger like the Hellcat, but it had the Hellcat brakes and they were unbelievably good. Six piston Brembo brakes and that car, I bought it in Texas. I actually drove 1400 miles to pick up that car and it had a pro charger on it. Nasty, 600 horsepower. It was a fast car. But it had a lot of mechanical issues.

I ultimately owned that car for a year before I blew up the motor on Charlotte Motor Speedway and then watching the Camaros and the Mustangs continue to do lap after lap. Yeah, pretty much. I was kind of done with that car at that point. And now I have moved on to a 2000 Chevrolet C5 Corvette. Nice fixed roof coop.

I’m [00:04:00] hoping to make my track debut with it at Carolina Motorsports Park. It’s been in the shop a lot. It’s an older car. It needed a lot more than I expected, but I wanna get it right for the track. And we’ve done a lot of track modifications and stuff, so very much looking forward to the track debut with the C five.

Yeah, and that’s good that you went in that direction cuz that’s actually on our top 10 list of starter track cars. No, no offense for having a c5, but it’s a great platform to start with. Not as much complexity as the C6 S or C7 S and the added cost. Right. It’s sort of the. Miata of the muscle cars. If you think about the C5 can do everything.

It’s a great autocrosser, it’s a great track car. You can use it for drag racing. It pretty much is a Swiss Army knife, like a lot of other vehicles like bmw, E 46 s and and Miatas and B Rzs and stuff like that, where they’re just great vehicles for pretty much doing everything. Let’s talk a little bit more about.

Track Shaker. So you’ve been to the track a bunch doing all these different events, things like that. What inspired you to break off and create track shaker? Where did the name come from and what does it really mean? I kind of developed a reputation [00:05:00] as the track guy in my group in Charlotte. I was an administrator for a Dodge Challenger group that had 400 people in it.

People would come to me asking questions every single facet of track days, how does insurance work, what kind of helmet do I need? Any number of things. And it was really people from across the country on social media and stuff, and I absolutely didn’t mind typing out multiple paragraph long messages, answering their questions.

But having done that many times back then, it showed me that people are legitimately confused. And then I looked into it myself and found that. The information is out there. It was just spread across multiple resources. So like S C C A had some things, NASA had some things hooked on, driving, had some things, but in terms of the litany of information, and it really is a lot in terms of participating in your first track day, all being in one easy to use place that was not out there.

So that was part of the genesis for Track Shaker. And then there were a couple instances, instances that solidified there [00:06:00] really is a need for this. One is that a friend of mine, she was registered to do her first track day and I was so happy for her. I was really looking forward to doing the event with her.

She ultimately didn’t do the event cuz she was so flustered by all the stuff that she couldn’t find an answer to. She was confused. What happens if it rains? I’m still not really sure how insurance works. Will I have an instructor? I don’t know what kind of helmet to get. Not at all mechanically savvy. I can’t prep my car.

And she got so flustered that she just withdrew from the event. You know, I felt really bad because I love these events and she was a friend and I wanted her to be able to participate in something that I enjoy so much. And then another thing was an instance in a track day that I participated in.

They’re great in terms of their very affordable, but you tend to get what you pay for. This particular track day had a lot of cars on track. They did very, I would say, rudimentary driver’s meetings. This is when I was still a novice driver, but about to move into intermediate and I had a pretty close incident on Charlotte Motor Speedway going off the front, [00:07:00] straight into turn one.

When you turn into the infield road course, you’re going from 110 or so. This is without the bus stop. Chicane going down to about 40 miles per hour. It’s the heaviest braking zone of the whole course. Start finish line was the end of the passing zone, but in the driver’s meetings, they pretty much skimmed over what point buys are, where the passing zones are.

They kind of just breezed through that and what had up happening is a driver was basically mirror to mirror with me going into that turn. Now, fortunately I saw him there and I made room for him, but I mean it was a pretty egregious incident that if had I not been cognizant of him being there, we both easily could have gone into the wall.

Fortunately, before that event, I had seen great track organizations like Track Club, U S A Run great events. So I saw how a good meeting was really run. But participating in events like the one I just talked about showed that these track organizations are great, but let’s not put it all necessarily on the track [00:08:00] organization.

These drivers can certainly, to their own benefit, be a little more prepared for this. So how can we help drivers be more prepared for these events no matter what event they go to? And ultimately the goal of Track Shaker is to expand the track day hobby. And perhaps most importantly, we want people that utilize our resources to participate in track events and to feel comfortable and confident when they’re at their track events.

These two events kind of coincided to solidify that there is an a need for this and it could satisfy a growth within the hobby and really just help the hobby in multiple ways. Improving safety, obviously improving notoriety about what track days are and getting more people into it. So in 2019, I started compiling tons of information from dozens and dozens of different track day organizations to create the script for what would ultimately be our how to get on track video.

And then I can get into it here in a bit. We rented Carolina Motorsports Park and hosted a private [00:09:00] track day where we recorded that, how to get on track video. A couple months later we actually launched the website. So that’s kind of the genesis for why Track Shaker exists. In terms of the name, as I mentioned, my first track car was a Dodge Challenger RT Shaker with a shaker hood.

And when I was thinking of unique Track Day organization names, let’s be honest, there are over 200 different track day organization names. There are a lot of names already taken. So in thinking of one that would be unique and that I could trademark, you know, I searched the trademark database, uh, where there wouldn’t be conflicts.

The name Track Shaker came to mind and it worked out in terms of being a trade marketable name as well. And it’s not just an organization, you know, I, I’d love it to kind of be thought of something like Hogan, where it’s both a company. Back in the day it was the car. And also kind of a mindset. Track day drivers can be track shakers.

So that’s where the name came from. By the way, I want to do this like grandiose, almost like we’re at a monster truck show. Be like [00:10:00] track shaker, like it needs to be like super epic. I love it. So track shaker. Now as I mentioned, it started off with that track day at Carolina Motorsports Park where I rented the racetrack and we did a private track day for friends of mine on Veteran’s Day in 2019.

And the whole purpose for that event, yes, it was a full track day where everybody got hours of track time, but more significantly that was where we recorded our how to get on track video. And in my opinion, where there was a very significant need in terms of allowing drivers be more prepared for events was a completely comprehensive how to get on track video.

Because people learn by seeing right? That track day, it was a long day. It was 13 hours. We shot 93 shots. We had three video teams. We had people on track at the same time that we had other people in the clubhouse recording voiceover. It was just a whirlwind day, but fortunately we were able to get all the shots that we wanted to, and I wrote a voiceover script for this, [00:11:00] doing a ton of studying from multiple track organizations just to cover absolutely everything.

And then we had. Driving coaches, corner marshal experts advise on the script. So that what went into the video, the information that’s actually presented is both holistic and accurate. So in terms of what’s in that video, it’s 39 minutes long. In my opinion. It’s the best, most comprehensive video guide to track days, and it covers everything from.

What is the track day? How you find and register for track days, how track insurance works, how you do tech prep for your car before the event, what to bring to a track day, what to do when you arrive at the track, how to prep your car in the morning of correct driver’s seating position. All the flags are demonstrated.

We also have a very extensive segment on how passing works on track. We demonstrated point buys from multiple camera angles, including bringing in a drone videographer and in my opinion where other or how to get on track videos really [00:12:00] didn’t be thorough enough was point buys. Where the greatest need was is explaining how point buy work and making it crystal clear how the pro process works when you’re giving them, when you’re receiving them, when you wave them off.

I’m very proud of our segment that we did with point buys. I think it’s very holistic in demonstrating that. We also covered in that video getting on and off track, including if you have an off, what to do between sessions. And at the end of the event, the goal was to answer virtually. All questions that first time drivers tend to have for a track day, 39 minutes long.

But I am confident in saying that if someone watches the track shaker how to get on track video and they’re a first time track driver, they will be absolutely prepared for their first event. And perhaps more important in terms of getting back to that goal of ours and making people comfortable and confident.

They’ll know what to expect. Essentially, our how to get on track video is very similar to the first driver’s meeting and novice meeting that these guys will go through. People that watch our video will already be ahead of the game in terms [00:13:00] of they’ve heard a lot of the stuff that’s reinforced in the meetings and everything, and that allows them to just be more comfortable at their first track day.

So that is a pinnacle of our website and all of the information on Track Shaker. To make it super easy, we’ve laid it out on our Get On Track page in an easy to use step-by-step guide. So if someone clicks the Big Yellow Get On Track button on the homepage or track shaker.com, they first see that video where we encourage them to watch the video cuz then it explains everything that’s below that video.

So we have a step-by-step list of links to all of our resources below the video. Once someone has watched that, we have our track locator, which has all 100 US Road course racetracks in the country, and you can find those near you by Zip Code City or just typing in the name of the track. You’ll get a filtered list of results.

Within, say, 200 miles of you and be beneath each racetrack. It also has links to all the track day and H P D E events happening at that track. Filtered for that track, a track map for that track and the track website. We [00:14:00] also have beneath that on the get on track page, if someone wants to go straight to just events, we have a track events page.

We’ve had that from the beginning. It is the goal to be a completely comprehensive listing of all 1500 H P D E and track day, track night events happening in the country. Hosted by every organization. I completely redesigned our event finder last year to be a little bit more user-friendly. Now it has the ability where you can filter by racetrack, obviously, but you can also filter by track organization.

So if you have a particular track day organization, you wanna filter events for. You can do that. Beneath that, in the next steps, we have track maps, and fortunately last year we became the largest resource for free driver focused track maps for us road course racetracks. And what I mean by driver focused is that if you go to any of the track maps on our website, there’s room to draw the racing line.

There’s tons of room all around the track to write notes. It is what you want when you wanna prepare for a [00:15:00] track. And draw notes and draw the racing line, breaking zones, things like that. Ross Bentley of Speed Secrets, anybody that’s in the track day world, we know that name. Mm-hmm. Incredible driver coach.

He was generous enough to allow us to share his 50 speed secrets maps on the track Shaker page. So what we did is we shared his 50 driver focus maps and then we created 60 of our own for the remaining racetracks. So with a combination of the speed secrets maps and track shaker maps, all of which are on the track shaker maps page, we have 110 maps for a hundred racetracks in the country.

And these are all free to print, have tons of room for notes. They’re really great. So we appreciate Ross for letting us share those to make it more of a one-stop shop. As you keep going down the get on track page, we have links for track insurance providers, every H P D E track insurance provider. We have printable PDFs that are like, for example, a sample tech inspection form.

And this is a homologation. [00:16:00] Of a bunch of different track organizations, tech form, and it basically gives you an example of what you can expect from a tech form, from a track day organization. We also have a printable safety flag explanation page as well. Then on from there, to achieve the goal of being completely holistic, of giving drivers a truly one-stop resource that they don’t have to go anywhere else for anything they need for their track day.

We also sell the basic tools and helmets. We sell exclusively essay rated, full face helmets, as well as basic track tools like a torque wrench, tire inflator, tire pressure gauge, and we have a what to bring checklist, giving people information on what they should bring to their track day. Then we have other links as well, such as how to connect with us and buy apparel as people have requested information from us and reached out to us.

We’ve added things such as an H P D E log book, links to racing schools, links to driving numbers and track paint, protection film, and then also links to charitable organizations like racing For a l s, the [00:17:00] track shaker Get on track page is the only place on the internet that you can access for free that has literally everything you need to know.

To be able to find and participate in your first track day event and one easy to use guide for more seasoned drivers, which I imagine most of your listeners are. All those resources are accessible at the top of the website. If you wanna just go straight to track events or track maps and things like that.

The website is for sure geared mainly towards the beginner driver, but things like our track maps are also beneficial to the experience driver as well. That is a huge undertaking, keeping all that stuff up to date. So I would assume that going through Track Shaker as a portal, then that takes you to links directly to, let’s say, register for Hooked on Driving events or Chin Events or S C A through their different mechanisms, be it Andy L’s, track Rabbit or Motorsport Reg, which is now owned by Ady.

You know, things like that. So how are you correlating and harvesting all this information and keeping it up to date? Honestly, it’s [00:18:00] a lot of extensive web searching from the get go in 2020, and we launched in January of 20, 25 weeks before the pandemic. Great timing. I had a list of 160 track organizations that I would look at their schedule and apply that to the track Shaker calendar.

And now in our third year of having the website up, that list has expanded to over 200 organizations. So basically starting every December and really running through a. Early March is when the last organizations tend to post their events. It’s an active process for about those four or so months where I go through my list of 200 organizations and I periodically check them to see, hey, have they uploaded their schedule?

And then I manually enter them. So we have all 1500 Track Day and HPD events in the country. At least that’s the goal. If you are on our website and you see one that you know of that’s not there, please let us know and we will absolutely add it. So yeah, it’s just a process of going through every track day organization, uploading their schedule.

We do link directly to the event registration [00:19:00] page for each individual event. So it’s not like we’re just taking people to the homepage. It’s you want to do turn one at Carolina Motor Sports Park, April 29th. You go to the event page on our website. It takes you right to the registration page. And also on our events portal, it gives you the option, again, like I talked about, to filter by event organization, but also it gives you the ability to share on Facebook or Twitter and one click.

And then we also link to the event organization’s homepage. Within each event listing as well. So you can go both, go directly to the event and also the event host. So are you also covering, let’s say, motorcycle, H P D E events or is it just strictly cars? Are you capturing things like time trials, rallycross, anything else that might be happening at those tracks?

Because some of these are campuses where multiple disciplines can participate sometimes in the same weekend. We do not include any motorcycle events. We are focused exclusively on non-competitive track day and H P D E events in the United States. So we don’t have any events in Canada, at least currently.

Our whole goal of making [00:20:00] it easier to get in this hobby, I didn’t really want to confuse people as much as possible. So in terms of having things like time trials and multiple things, let’s say autocross or whatever, or car control clinics, I didn’t wanna muddy the waters too much by having, let’s say, 2,800 events and then the first time driver doesn’t know whether to select if they wanna do time trials or H P D E, they may not even know what H P D E means.

To answer your question, we focus exclusively on non-competitive track day, track night and H P D E events for the organizers out there, is there by chance, a self-service portal where they could submit events to you to try to take some of the burden off of you having to hand jam all this stuff? I appreciate that, but I really don’t mind entering all the events manually.

If an event organization sees that they’re not listed on our website or wants to give us their schedule in advance, by all means reach out to us. I really don’t mind all the manual entry. I’m used to it by this point, basically by me doing it, it just gets it in the right format so that it’s, it’s really sleek.

And if you go to our website, I like to think that our [00:21:00] event finder is pretty easy to use. You know, it shows you a picture of the track day organization’s. Logo. You’ll see like Jay Zilla stick out and you’re like, oh, let me see what they’re doing. It’s pretty aesthetically pleasing in addition to having a lot of functionality.

So no self-service portal at this point. I don’t really necessarily want to add that, and I’m more than happy to add things as people submit them. Are there any other services that Track Shaker provides that we haven’t talked about in this kind of one stop, get the newbie in the driver’s seat and on track that you’ve mentioned so far?

Absolutely. Our goal is to educate. And make people excited about track days. We have delved a lot into video content that expands just even a little bit beyond just the basic how to get started in track days and what track days are. So for example, we have three video series. One is called Track Shaker Track Tips, where we’ve covered things like tire management, how to make your track video overlays a lot better.

We also have a track shaker legends [00:22:00] video series, which explores people that have a really unique or impactful story in the world of track days. And we do a pretty deep dive in into their story. One of them is on Racing for als, who I’d love to shout out, uh, an amazing nonprofit track organization. And we, we tell the story of Scott and David Lloyd and how they created racing for als and it’s.

Over 30 minutes long. And another one is about m a driver, Gino Manley, who has a really great grassroots motorsport story of going from doing tons and tons of track days to ultimately participating in s a as a professional driver. So track Shaker Legends, tells interesting stories in the track day world.

And then we have track Shaker Trackside, which are short episodes, less than 10 minutes long, filmed by our various team members at Racetracks where we just get a quick interview with someone with a cool car or a cool story or something like that. Those video series have winded down a little bit, but there’s some interesting videos that both provide some [00:23:00] education in terms of track shaker to track tips and some entertainment in terms of the other two video series that hopefully get people more interested in participating in these events.

Well, since we’re doing some shout outs, shout outs to one of our previous guests, Annika Carter, and she mentioned you guys on her episode and we wanted to expand upon her involvement with Track Shaker. So notable names like Annika, how does that play into the track Shaker universe? Absolutely, and I really appreciate Annika shouting out and, uh, you guys giving me this opportunity.

So it worked out great basically from the get go. As I mentioned, like for example in writing the script for out how to get on track video, I wanted to make sure that we had multiple experts advising on everything that we do. So it’s accurate and truly comprehensive. So we have a team of multiple, very seasoned driving, I’ll call ’em, experts that have advised on things like the creation of that video.

Our various resources and then ongoing things like videos that we still do. And then we get questions all the time [00:24:00] submitted to the website. So we have people like Annika Carter. I met her because I was doing a max speed track day at Ling Road Raceway. That’s when I was in Intermediate. And they were introducing the driving coaches and they introduced Annika as one of the coaches.

And at the time I think she was like 22, and I’m like, wow, she’s a coach at 22. I gotta hear her story. So that’s how we connected. And then we have people like Tracy Gado. Who is a multiple NASA time trial regional champion, and now she’s doing hill climbs and things like that. She has got just dozens and dozens of race wins under her belt.

And then Craig Keys, who’s also an S E C A racing license holder, and he has a lot of impact in terms of track Facebook groups and connecting with people that way. So we’ve got a variety of very seasoned drivers and people from other areas of track days that help advise on our content and help me as well, make our resources be as thorough as they can.

You know, I’m not currently a driving instructor. I’ve run in [00:25:00] advanced and intermediate, you know, depending on the event. So I wanted to make sure that. I stay in my lane and rely on people. Way more experienced both drivers, but more importantly, driving instructors to make sure things that I write and things that we put out there are not only accurate, but the most easy to understand.

So basically we have a, a team of, of several, mostly very experienced drivers. Some people are more focused on the community side of like Facebook groups and things. We work together to make sure that everything we do is really accurate. So that’s where Annika and Tracy and Craig come into play for the track shaker information.

And to go back to our website, it’s really interesting the questions that we get submitted on the contact form link of track shaker.com. We get everything from people asking really specific questions like what kind of pad compound do I want for my Hellcat? There was an interesting back and forth we had with a gentleman that wanted to become a professional motorsports mechanic.

We get a [00:26:00] big variety of questions and ultimately between the five or six of us, One of us can answer that question. So when we get questions submitted to us, we have a variety of experiences and our goal is to always answer that as best as possible. By the way, big shout out to Phil and Brendan over at Max Speed Track Days.

They were on our show during season one, so you know, we always wanna remind our guests if you, if you’re hearing that name for the first time, be sure to check out that episode as well. So thanks for bringing them up. It’s pretty obvious, at least to me. I don’t know. To the audience that Track Shaker seems to have a home track, sounds like either Carolina Motorsports Park or the RL down there as, as well as Charlotte.

So is that where you guys are physically based out of, or is there something else that you call home? So me personally, I would say that Carolina Motorsports Park is the track shaker home track, so our team members are spread across the country. One of our driving experts is an instructor at Pit Race.

You know, Annika is in Georgia, Tracy’s in Tennessee. So in terms of the team, we’re kind of spread out, but in terms of all of us getting together, that [00:27:00] happens most of the time at Carolina Motorsports Park. That’s certainly the track where I’ve done the most number of track days of the tracks that I’ve done.

Carolina Motorsports Park was one of our original founding sponsors they sponsor that get on track page, so we’re really appreciative of that relationship with them. They’ve been hugely supportive of Track Shaker and we have an ongoing relationship. I love Carolina Motorsport Park. If people haven’t been, it’s a 2.27 mile 14 turn road course.

It was repaved in July of 2020 and I actually documented that repaving process that was really cool to learn about when it goes into repaving a race track, and now with the repave surface. It is such a great course. One great thing about Carolina Motorsports Park is it has a ton of runoff. It is a great track for any driver, especially the beginning driver.

Not a lot of hard walls to hit. It’s a very safe track, but it’s also a lot of fun. I love Carolina Motorsports Park. We went last year with another group and we had an absolute blast. You know, it’s always fun trying out new [00:28:00] tracks, especially stuff that’s been on our bucket list for a while. So C M P is definitely on our to be returned to list for sure.

But that kind of brings me to another question. Since you get to see all the tracks around the country and you get to input all this information, are there some that are on your bucket list still and out of the ones you’ve driven so far, do you have a favorite or maybe even a least favorite? Absolutely.

So in terms of bucket list tracks, road America comes to mind. For me personally, I’d love to do Road America, obviously circa to the Americas. An interesting one that I think. Probably doesn’t fall on hardly anybody’s list is Spring Mountain Motor Resort. Spring Mountain Motor Resort. They have three courses, and when combined, it’s only combined a few times a year.

It creates the longest road course racetrack in the United States at 6.1 miles long. It’s not like the Norberg ring in terms of having a lot of natural elevation change and things like that, but I just think having a six mile long course would be just a really cool challenge. So those are some that come to mind.

In terms of ones I want to do outside of the Southeast, obviously I tend to [00:29:00] focus on ones in the Southeast. I would probably say my favorite track is cmp, because I’ve been there so much. I’m so comfortable with it. And you know, I’ve had a few offs there. I never had a big problem. I just like that cushion of, I know CMP is a place where I can push my car and it’s probably gonna be okay.

Uh, one that scares me is the Rowl Charlotte Motor Speedway. There’s just so many walls. A lot of us in the track day. Hobby, I’ve driven on NASCAR tracks. They are an exhilarating challenge, and I love that Jay Zilla event that I drove in on the Roil last summer. Besides blowing up my motor, of course it’s a great challenge, but I’ve seen so many crashes on the RO v, including a BMW that went into the wall right in front of me, an Acura NSX that also went into the wall.

It’s a little bit hairy. I mean that goes with having concrete walls everywhere. I lo, I like that track a lot, but I probably wouldn’t recommend it as a place for the first time track driver to go, you know, get a more traditional road course and then go to a NASCAR track eventually down the line. It’s still [00:30:00] fun.

I’m not gonna say that there’s a track that I don’t like cuz I haven’t had one. They’re just ones that are frankly more enjoyable. Find ones like v i r to be really, really enjoyable. Part of that is, is just having that cushion that if things go wrong, it’s probably not gonna be too horrible versus having all walls around.

And to your point about the NASCAR tracks that we do des on, it’s the same for us up here that have experienced Pocono, right? Where you’re just surrounded by concrete and embankments. And even doing the mega course, which is all four and a half miles or so, you know, at a two minute and 20 lap time, it’s, it’s just a bit much, it’s a bit daunting even for the seasoned driver when you’ve got a Corvette blowing by you at 175 miles an hour and you’re like, is he gonna make it through turn one?

You know, that sort of deal. But the same is true of tracks like Road Atlanta, where it’s also intimidating. It has a reputation of being a car crusher because there are no bushes. The runoff is short and it’s mostly Jersey walls, you know, things like that. But that’s also part of the excitement, it’s the risk management that we employ every time we go to one of these events.[00:31:00]

Which is actually another great question. How does track Shaker get its arms around the whole concept of safety, right? Because that’s always a big concern when it comes to any of these events. So what are you guys doing to promote safety outside of the gear and things like that? What do you guys talk about or what.

Ideas are expressed on the website around driver safety. I think that ultimately goes back to how we achieve our goal of letting the first time track driver be comfortable and confident and prepared. So in that how to Get On Track video, we can go over a lot of little tips and tricks that people don’t tend to mention or don’t tend to learn unless they have a driving instructor at their track event.

There are hundreds of track days out there that do not offer any instruction. S c A Track Night in America, great organization that makes. Getting into track day is super approachable because it’s the most affordable track days in the country, but they don’t offer any in-car instruction. So little things like how to prepare your car, correct.

Driver’s seating position, things like how to properly [00:32:00] clean out your car. Also, not necessarily a safety thing, but just a car maintenance thing, not setting your parking brake after a hot session. We cover a lot of these little tidbits in the how to get on track video that virtually no other how to get on track.

Videos cover because it’s important and ultimately we have to realize that some of the people that utilize our resources are going to their first event where they will not have a driving coach. Obviously, if someone asks me for their opinion on what the best events are to get started, I always say go to one with a driving coach, and if you have to pay the extra 75 bucks for a coach, it’s worth its weight and gold.

But we try to provide those little tidbits on car preparation, proper engagement with the car, and also little things about how to safely get on and off a track, especially if you have an off. That, I don’t know if any other how to get on track. Videos, cover that, and then combining the visual demonstration of all the flags, point bias, things like that, and solidifying them with printable resources like a safety flag, explanation guide, tech inspection form.

It [00:33:00] reinforces what they see in the video and they have something that they can bring with them to the track to remind themselves of what they learned from the video. As you can tell, we tend to focus on providing things for the beginner driver, have certainly multiple resources that are of interest to more experienced drivers.

What we don’t necessarily delve into is like a super deep dive on, let’s say, driving skill, things like Ross Bentley does with speed secrets and stuff like that. And frankly, I think there are a ton of great driving coaches like Speed Secrets and Ross that do an incredible job of putting out that kind of educational content, focusing more on specific driving skills, more and more about what do you expect at your event, how do you do this event?

And then the driving instruction, they’ll get that at their event and from their driving coaches more than they necessarily would track Shaker. We’ve also noticed that you own and operate Hartman Auto Sports, so let’s dive into some of the other things that you’re involved in. So what is Hartman Autosport?

What services do you provide there? What’s that all about? Yeah, so Hartman Autosport was definitely an [00:34:00] impromptu thing that I kind of created after I started getting called for some unique projects. I got called for a really unique thing. I can’t talk too much about it because it’s ongoing. Basically, a very large commercial real estate company called me and asked if I might be comfortable advising them at a client that they’re representing on the purchase of a US racetrack.

A very unique challenge for sure. Obviously, not many people necessarily are hugely experienced with that, cuz it’s a very unique thing. But fortunately, by knowing about every single track day that goes in the country by spending hundreds of hours doing things like compiling information from track organizations, from racetracks, from creating track maps for over half of the racetracks in the country.

I learn information about every single racetrack as I get involved with all these various resources that I’ve created. And then also documenting the repaving processes at Carolina Motor Sports Park was also very informative. [00:35:00] I accepted that challenge. I knew that there would be a ton that I had to learn, and I certainly did, and it was a great learning process, and it’s been a really cool collaboration.

Where I’ve gotten to learn a ton about racetracks and part of my services to them is I’ve provided many reports on potential racetracks that might be of interest to them, and I also created a database. Of racetracks that fit the bill that they were looking for with 35 data points that would be of interest to them.

Going really granular and spending over a hundred hours researching these certain types of racetracks for this client has been a really informative learning process that I’ve been very appreciative of. And because the client is a huge organization, I kind of needed some bonna fetus, you know, so I created the Hartman Auto Sports website with more information on me specifically, and things I’ve done to help provide some more information on me and some of the unique aspects that, uh, I’ve been fortunate enough to be thrust into and then learn [00:36:00] about as I’m doing.

That has also turned into other things. Carolina Motorsports Park actually hired me to create their corner martial training video. It’s not a replacement for their in-person training, but it’s a supplement to it. As you may know, a lot of racetracks are in desperate need of more corner marshals. I developed a lot of unique experience and a great learning process from creating our track shaker how to get on track video.

I like to think that something I’m good at and track Shaker is very good at. Is making a lot of information, easily processable, synthesizing that information into an easy to digest, let’s say video resource for example. So that’s kind of what we did with the Carolina Motorsports Park Corner Marshal training video.

I went to their corner martial training, and then we filmed 119 shots over two days and created a very comprehensive corner Marshall training video for them. So that’s another big project that I was hired for. So you see, it’s quite a gamut of things that I’m called to do. I always appreciate a challenge, especially things like the [00:37:00] Corner Marshall training video.

I researched hundreds of pages of S E C A manuals and I had two expert corner marshals. Each with over 50 years of experience under their belt, advise on the script. So it’s great to learn from really seasoned veteran corner marshals and stuff like that. I really appreciate these unique opportunities that pop up and, uh, the chance to learn a new facet of motorsports.

So there’s a couple things to unpack there, and I wanna kind of remind our audience that flagging to your point, there are desperate need of new flaggers, but it’s also a great gateway into motorsports, especially, uh, de and club racing and time trials and things like that because there are programs and incentives, especially within groups like S E C A and I believe NASA as well and some others where if you corner work.

For the weekend, you earn basically dollars towards track time. So if you see track time as a financial burden, well this is one way to lessen that is by getting out there, being active, being part of it, fulfilling [00:38:00] a need by being a flagger, learning a new skill, but also earning your way towards free track time.

And that’s, that’s pretty awesome. So you can learn more about that on SCCA dot com’s website, all about their flagging program, et cetera. And we’ve written some articles that are on our website, things I wish I knew about flagging, stuff like that that you can look into for more detail. You alluded to how that can be an entryway into motorsport.

I actually have a family history with Corner marshaling my uncle who advised on our track figure how to get on track video script and was at that track day. He’s in the video. He was a corner marshal at Rhode Atlanta for decades. He actually flagged during the Epic Can-am era of the seventies. And then his son, my cousin, followed in his footsteps and was also a corner worker and ultimately ended up.

Working at a 24 hours of lamont. So if you become an S C C A certified Corner Marshal and you get enough experience, it is literally your entry to the literal world of motor sports. We all [00:39:00] know that spectator tickets at these events like Formula One and World Endurance Challenge and stuff like that are becoming hugely expensive.

Well, guess what? If you’re a corner worker, you can get invited to the 24 hours of lamont and you’re paid, and you’re right up close and personal with these cars. There’s a big need for corner work orders, and we all really should appreciate what they do because they make what our hobby is possible. They really are the unsung heroes of track days and there’s a need for ’em.

You know, you can reach out to any website. In the country via our track locator page or track shake.com, shoot him an email and say, Hey, I’m interested getting in into being a a corner worker for you guys. And in terms of being able to participate in International Motorsports events, that is definitely the most affordable way.

And plus it puts you in the thick of incredible racing. That’s a great point, Scott. And you know, it reminds me that a lot of the folks from our local W D C R region of S E C A oftentimes are the corner marshals down at the Rolex, 24 hours at Daytona. And I’m always envious of [00:40:00] that. I’m like, I’m like, yeah, I’m, I’m either there watching the race at Daytona, or I’m watching in a home on tv, but I’m not nearly as close as they are.

That’s for sure. When they’re in that corner station, you know, flagging, they’re up close with the cars. I mean, what an awesome experience. So something to definitely check out, something to pursue if, if you want to get into the sport. But there was also something else that you mentioned in talking about working with that big real estate conglomerate in that it always shocks me when new tracks are being born in the United States, and I mean, per capita, we have more tracks than probably anywhere in the world except for England.

If you look at it in economies of scale, it seems like there’s a track around every corner in the uk. We’re close cousins, so it’s not too different here. But in the recent, let’s say last couple of years, you’ve had the birth and sudden death of Oak Ridge out in Tennessee. We were all excited to see that happen.

There’s talk recently of Bader Airfield and New Jersey being turned into a racetrack in the last couple of years, and this has been a five to seven year project, from what I understand, [00:41:00] Ozarks International Raceway has come online and it seems like everybody and their brother is scrambling to get there.

So I wanted to get your opinion on maybe some new tracks that you’re seeing in the works or things you’re thinking about, maybe ones that should be revisited. I see a bit of a trend right now, and when we’re talking about new racetracks, obviously it is not a common occurrence. So if we’re talking about trends, I’m talking about, this is like four tracks we’re talking about, but what’s happening right now is there are some automotive country club tracks that are coming down the pike and kind of what I see as shift as currently is there are less, let’s call them public tracks, aka tracks that are what you think of when you do a track day.

Where most of the tracks coming down the pike right now are these automotive country clubs. The members only ones like the thermal club in California. Uh, we’ve got G2 Motorsports Park, which is another member’s only thing coming down in Texas. That is the trend right now where there are several of those in the works that I’m aware of right now.

An interesting thing that not a lot of people may have heard of, especially relevant to [00:42:00] us here in Charlotte, is Charlotte Motor Speedway is building another road course outside of the NA NASCAR oval. I don’t know if any of this is proprietary, so maybe I shouldn’t be saying this. But the road course that they’ll have outside of the oval is part of the reason it’s being built.

It’s for the Ford Performance Racing School. But I have heard from well-informed people that there will be track days there, so it’s good to see that there are a few public tracks like Ozarks, that are in the works or recently opened. It’s always really sad to me to see public ones close, like. Palm Beach International Raceway, I believe today was their last track day event.

And that’s really sad. In the last few weeks it’s come to light that WildHorse Pass Motorsports Park in Arizona. They ran a risk of potentially being closed because of a highway construction thing, but it looks like the drag strip there is going away, but the road course is staying, so that’s good. So basically a trend I see right now of most of the tracks that are gonna open in the next few years are these members only automotive country clubs, which isn’t [00:43:00] necessarily a bad thing, but we’re track day guys.

You know, we want tracks that we can drive on. Ozarks was hugely exciting to see. Uh, I actually created the very first track map for that course and it’s been cool to see that become really popular. See courses like that and then the soon to begin construction, not soon to open road course here in Charlotte, come to fruition as well.

So as we’re talking about that, it’s actually a great way to segue into another. Portion of the track shaker universe that you’re working on or, or have been working on for quite a while, and we stumbled across something known as Race Track retreats touted as ultra exclusive private track events on America’s Iconic Road course racetracks.

So let’s expand upon that. Is that similar to the idea of these private racetracks that we were just talking about, these country clubs? Or is it, is it more than that? So, to put it simply, racetrack retreats is essentially a track event hosting service in terms of the exclusivity factor. Basically what we’re getting at is we’re aiming for very small [00:44:00] run group.

We’re aiming for maximum track time, small run groups, will never put more than 20 cars in a run group on track for racetrack retreats events. It’s interesting as we’ve launched this in the last couple of months, what it’s manifesting itself as. A lot of the demand is actually from organized groups like car clubs.

I actually was on a phone call with a car club before this call, basically where we will host a track date for a car club and things like that. The actual genesis for this was another part of Hartman Auto Sports where I was brought in to a private track day event at Carolina Motorsports Park, where a gentleman with a Ferrari 5 99 G T B, basically through what I consider to be most epic birthday ever for himself at a racetrack.

He rented Carolina Motorsports Park. To himself for the whole day and he and nine of his friends just drove around in his Ferrari for the whole day. I mean, that’s a, a really incredible way to celebrate a birthday if you have the means to do it. People that may not know hosting a track day is very multifaceted.

Fortunately, as I hosted our [00:45:00] track Shaker track day at Carolina Motorsports Park, I learned what goes into hosting a track day and having a successful event. I’ve also hosted concerts and things like that that have been a good learning process. So this gentleman with the Ferrari was quite perplexed by things such as the track insurance policy, which you have to have just to be able to rent the track and all the minutia that goes into regulations and things like that.

So it showed me that there are people that are looking for a more exclusive. Kind of track experience that don’t want to deal with the dozens or hundreds of hours that go into hosting a successful track event. So what racetrack retreats is both for individual groups, like let’s say a group of friends say they wanna have a bachelor or bachelorette party at the racetrack or card clubs, and we also have corporate interest.

Basically, we craft their ideal track day with what they want to have in mind, and it’s completely full service. We host every single aspect of their track day. Everything from running the event day of, but we also do other things like mechanically preparing the cars before the event. We have one of our [00:46:00] mechanical partners take care of doing the brake fluid swap, doing the very thorough tech inspection, things like that before the event, and we have them on hand at the event to maintain the cars during the event.

If the client wants it, we can offer a completely all inclusive experience where all they have to do is show up. Their driving instructor is with them a hundred percent of the time they’re in the car. Even in the advanced run group, we have an instructor with every single driver on track. They get a massive amount of track time.

It’s a private event with their and their, them and their friends, you know, whoever they want to invite closed course where it’s just their group. We’re trying to do the max of everything. We’re trying to provide the best driving instruction. All the driving coaches are MSF level two certified, uh, Motorsport Safety Foundation in-car instruction a hundred percent of the time.

Lead follow where it’s warranted, the ability to ride along with driving instructors in the instructor’s car. That’s something that at that Ferrari event I consulted on was actually a lot of those guys’. Favorite part was riding in the Ferrari 5 99 G T B with the Carolina [00:47:00] Motorsports Park chief driving instructor driving them and really finding out what the car is capable of.

So basically what I’m getting at is, These events are uniquely crafted for what the client wants and for like individual groups, that tends to be manifested in kind of a boutique experience where again, we take care of everything, but when they get to the track, it’s kind of a lifestyle experience as well.

Obviously the best driving instruction, the safest environment, small room groups, things like that. But also things like boutique catering. There’s a track that doesn’t have any spectating facilities. We will actually, if the client wants. Set up a spectator lounge area, bring the comfort to the racetrack if it’s not there, and create a really enjoyable experience.

That’s low pressure because the drivers aren’t having to do things like adjusting tire pressures and stuff between sessions. We take care of every little facet for them, so they’re having a ton of fun on track with a ton of track time, and then between sessions, they get to just relax and enjoy the day with their friends.

Man, that’s the whole white [00:48:00] glove approach to the track weekend. The less I have to work, the better it is. This is tantalizing, you know, this is exciting. Something to think about. The tracks you’re hosting at, I’m assuming you’re starting with Carolina Motorsports Park. Anywhere else where you can reserve a racetrack retreat.

So we can host a racetrack retreat at any of the US Road course racetracks in the country. With the only exception of the seven automotive country clubs, with some exceptions, it’s pretty hard to rent somewhere like the Thermal Club or M one Concourse not necessarily can do those, but the other 93 courses, we can absolutely host a racetrack retreat at any of the other 93 US Road course racetracks across the country.

And we have a different team. There’s a lot of spillover from the Track Shaker team to the racetrack retreats team. But we have people that have experience with every region of the country. We have people in the Midwest, we have someone in Colorado, obviously a lot of us in the Southeast. So between those of us on the Racetrack Retreats team, we have some experience with a lot of the racetracks in the country and absolutely we are happy [00:49:00] to go out to California hosting an event wherever there’s a lot going on over a track shaker.

So is there anything else in the works? Anything else that we should know about what’s coming up for the next couple of seasons? What, what kind of ideas are you cooking over there? We always want to expand the track day hobby. The Track Shaker website is great and we get a ton of hits with that, but honestly, part of the difficulty of getting people into this hobby is just getting the notoriety of what a track day is out there.

Fortunately, you know, with my video experience, I’ve tried to figure out ways to make people enticed by getting into track days and understanding that it really is more approachable than they think to be able to drive their car on a racetrack. It’s not a pie in the sky thing. They can do it this weekend.

We’re always constantly expanding on the video content that we do, social media content and some educational content to try to engage with people and get them interested in track driving, which ultimately hopefully drives them to track Shaker or really any H P D E organization. The ultimate goal of of letting them experience this [00:50:00] hobby that we all love.

So in terms of things for track shaker down the pike, we might expand into other disciplines. So you kind of mentioned something like time trials, things like that. Don’t want to say too much about it, but we might expand into other grassroots motorsports discipline, just with the aim of helping people get started in those various things.

Do you see track shaker evolving or maybe turning into a hyper fast or a grid life type of situation? As we talked about with racetrack retreats, you know, that’s kind of a unique thing and right from the get go, if we’re talking about getting into event hosting, I didn’t really want to be a competitor to the 200 organizations that are already out there doing it.

It’s a crowded space and I think almost all those 200 organizations are doing a re really great job. So in terms of hosting a traditional track day, I wanted to delve a little bit away from that. So that’s kind of why you race Tracker Treats is what it is. In terms of hosting combination events. I don’t wanna say too much because it’s things that [00:51:00] may or may not happen, but I, I can see an instance in which we have a multiple discipline event that’s hosted by Track Shaker.

So, uh, I’ll just say it. So the events that I know are track days, autocross and drag racing. Ooh. So I think it’d be very cool to have a, let’s say a two or three day event where people can do drag racing, autocross and road course stuff all in one event, or, you know, have all that stuff going on at the same time.

And maybe there’s only somebody there for drag racing, but they see how cool the action is going on at the road course. Obviously there aren’t many places you can do that, but Charlotte Motor Speedway is one with Zm Max Dragway. I, if that’s gonna happen, that’s years down the road. But I love grassroots Motorsports.

I don’t do much drag racing anymore, but, uh, I, I do. Autocross and still really appreciate that. So if Track Shaker was to expand, I think it would be into one or more of those disciplines. And you know, pie in the sky, I think it’d be pretty epic to have an event that synthesized all three somehow. And you know, that reminds me of something and now I’m [00:52:00] dating myself and maybe some of our audience will appreciate this, especially being from a certain area.

You know, here in the Mid-Atlantic there used to be something in the VW community known as the Bug Out. And the bug out was comprised of an CROs, a drag race, and a circuit race, all in the same, you know, couple of days weekend. And I remember my dad way back when competing in the water cooled classes, you know, with his Mark one Rocco and GTIs and things like that.

And so it just, for whatever reason, that combination conjured up those memories. And so that’s pretty cool. So for those of you that out there that remember the bug out, you know, good, good times. Very cool. I’ll have to look into that. That sounds like a really epic event. I’d love to learn more about it.

For racetrack retreats, that’s where really, really where we have the most growth and where we’ll put a lot of focus. We’re having difficulty with track availability right now. You’ve interviewed a lot of track day organizations, you know, it’s super competitive, get to get track booking, so I think 2023 is really where racetrack retreats is probably gonna take off in terms of getting notoriety [00:53:00] for just track driving in general.

One thing that we’ve done recently is we created a video series called The Track Dedicated Lifestyle, and basically, I’m trying to think what is very viral content that the average car enthusiasts is interested in watching and how can we link that to track driving? So obviously supercar videos like Supercar, Blondie, and Shmi one 50 and Stratman.

Are the most viral content on the internet. They just get millions and millions of views. People are really interested in these cars. How can we connect that to the track world? Well, the track dedicated lifestyle focuses exclusively on track only production supercars. We’ve done episodes on things like the Ferrari F S xk, McLaren f1, GT R, long Tail Pagans, onto R BMW n one Pro Car.

Uh, we just did the McLaren Center, g t R, and basically giving four minute long episodes. They give a very preliminary rundown of what these cars are, various racing series or non-competitive areas that they’re used, where the goal of showing people that, hey, these cars are super [00:54:00] cool. These guys are obviously only driving them on racetracks.

By the way. You could do the same thing with your car. Here’s track Shaker. And fortunately that video series has done extremely well. It’s been only going for three months and we already have over 1.1 million views. So people are really interested in that series and it’s another way that we try to explore that initial hurdle of getting people interested in track driving.

And then ultimately, if they take that leap to go to track sugar.com, they’re ready to go. For anybody that has one of these track only supercars, we would love to film your car. Fortunately, we’re starting to delve more into actually seeing these cars in person and getting footage of them. For example, we have an upcoming kind of documentary coming about where one of our followers commented on one of our videos about a Ferrari five 12 B L M that they used to run with at a Ferrari Club event.

I ended up finding out that the gentleman he was talking about lives here in North Carolina, so we’re doing a documentary on his one of a kind Ferrari, which is a Ferrari built by the North American racing team of Luigi Ginetti, and it was raced at [00:55:00] Lamont twice. I had a ton of fun filming that car, and we’ll have a documentary coming out on that soon.

We’re delving more into actually finding these cars out there in the United States. If you have a track only supercar and you’d be willing to let us film it. We would absolutely love to come out and film your car so you can let us know if you have a lead on one of these track only supercars that we might be able to film on the racetrack retreats tab of track shake.com.

There’s a link at the bottom where you can reach out directly to the Racetrack retreats team and we appreciate any information on finding some of these track only supercars in the wild that we can document and get more interest on. So Scott, as we wrap up our thoughts here, are there any additional shout outs, promotions, specials, upcoming events, anything else you’d like to share that we didn’t cover?

Absolutely. So, uh, I’d love to shout out some of the track shaker team members, you know, I know that your listeners are all season drivers, so in terms of the very active racing competitors that we have on the Track Shaker team that they can follow on social media, you’ve got Annika Carter who will be in the episode that you did recently, and she [00:56:00] is on Instagram at Annika Carter underscore Tracy Gado.

She is an unbelievably talented driver and is just a great story of grassroots motorsports. She won the Max the Attack Trailer Competition, which was a hugely competitive competition. She is on Instagram at team Tracy Motorsport. Craig Keys is C Key s v t, and then we’re at Track Shaker on all social media.

Feel free to follow us there and also. Any track drivers out there, we would love to feature your awesome track photos as we feature different cars of different manufacturers from JDM to Porsche to Mopar. Uh, it engages with different groups, so if you have some track photos that you want to tag, hashtag track shaker, our tag, our account at Track Shaker, we would love to share that on our page.

I would love to shout out our sponsors, so our original track shaker sponsors from the get go. Were Carolina Motorsports Park that’s in Kershaw, South Carolina. Incredible over two mile long, 14 [00:57:00] turn Road course. Ton of fun. I highly recommend it. They’re at carolina motorsports park.com, mass Acceleration Motorsports.

They’re at mx a motorsports.com. They are one of the country’s best. Tuning and car building shops. They do everything from calibrating Ferrari two 50 tester Rosas, to building 3000 horsepower drag cars to tuning rally cars. It’s really amazing the gamut of cars that they get through there because they are among the best in the country at tuning cars.

So if you want a car build, Or the best tuning by all means, mass Acceleration Motorsports in Denver, North Carolina is worth sending your car to. K O W Performance is an awesome parts company that focuses on providing parts for Mopar and Jeeps, but they provide parts for any platform. You reach out to them, they have over a million parts available.

If you don’t see it on their website, reach out to them. They can provide it virtually everything on my track shaker, both challengers that I had and I’m also my current Corvette. The parts came from kow performance.com. I [00:58:00] get my. Hawk D T C, brake pads, cashflow, SRF racing brake fluid, my D B A, brake rotors, everything you can think of from K O W performance and their customer service is literally second to none.

He treats it like religion. It’s a really amazing how he engages with every single customer. Provides incredible free shipping and just the best customer service ever. And then Open Track Drive. H B D E Insurance provider is one of our more recent sponsors. They’re at open track.com, a great track insurance organization.

And you know, track insurance is optional, but I’ve personally had it for every event that I’ve ever driven with. And Open Track makes it super easy. They also provide some unique features that other track insurance providers don’t do in terms of providing driving instruction materials from driver coaches like Andy Lee.

They’re also the only H P D E insurance organization that insures cars worth over $150,000. So if you have a high value car, Open track is your place to go. And I also ensure my Corvette, which is [00:59:00] well under $150,000. So a big shout out to our four sponsors, open Track, mass Acceleration Motorsports, Carolina Motorsports Park, and K O W Performance.

Always appreciate their help. They help us do what we can to expand this hobby. And help drivers just have a great time when they’re on track. Well, listeners, if you are interested in getting into the hobby or the motorsport of high performance driver’s education before deciding you wanna get into club racing, rally, cross time trials, anything else that’s out there, make sure you visit track shaker.com.

It’s a one stop shop for everything you need to know before you cross that threshold and begin your journey in the motorsports world. So if you want to learn more, be sure to check out the website, track shaker.com. And as Scott said, they are available on all the social platforms, Insta, Facebook, and Twitter at Track Shaker.

And don’t forget to check out their YouTube channel, all those awesome videos that are out there. So you can get caught up very quickly. Get up to speed and get on track this season with Track [01:00:00] Shaker and any other provider that’s local to you, depending on where you are in the country. So for more details on everything that we talked about in this episode, please don’t forget to check out the follow-on article that goes along with this episode on gt motorsports.org.

So Scott, with that, I can’t thank you enough for coming on the show and explaining to everybody what Track Shaker is all about and we look forward to seeing what happens this year. We wish you guys the best of luck as you continue to expand your portfolio of services. I really appreciate it. Thank you for the opportunity and I look forward to seeing you at the track.

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

We’d love to hear from you. [01:01:00] Hey everybody, crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted to remind you that G T M remains a no annual fees organization, and our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies and GTM swag.

For as little as $2 and 50 cents a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of fig Newton’s, gummy bears, and Monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports. And remember, without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be possible.[01:02:00]

Bonus Content

Learn More

How To Get On Track – The ULTIMATE GUIDE To Track Days

So if you are interested or want to learn more, be sure to check out their website at www.trackshaker.com and on social @trackshaker on instagram, facebook and twitter, and don’t forget to check out their YT channel.

Track Shaker isn’t just a website – it’s a movement. Scott envisioned it as a brand, a mindset, and a community. The name itself nods to his first track car’s shaker hood, and the site’s flagship offering is a 39-minute “How to Get on Track” video, filmed during a private track day at Carolina Motorsports Park. With 93 shots, three video teams, and expert-reviewed scripts, the video covers everything from registration and insurance to flags, point-bys, and post-session routines.

Track Shaker’s “Get On Track” page is a treasure trove for beginners:

🏁 Step-by-step guide with embedded video
🗺️ Track locator for all 100 U.S. road courses
📅 Event finder with 1,500+ HPDE listings
🧭 Free driver-focused track maps (110 maps for 100 tracks)
🛠️ Printable tech forms, flag guides, and checklists
🧢 Helmets and basic tools for sale
🧾 Links to insurance providers, racing schools, and charitable organizations

Everything is curated manually by Scott, who combs through 200+ organizations each winter to keep the calendar current. There’s no self-service portal—just one man’s dedication to clarity and quality.

Beyond the Basics: Video Series and Community

Track Shaker also produces three video series:

Track Tips: Practical advice on tire management, video overlays, and more
Legends: Deep dives into inspiring stories like Racing for ALS and grassroots hero Gino Manley
Trackside: Quick interviews with drivers and cool cars at events

Scott’s team includes seasoned instructors and racers like Annika Carter, Tracy Gado, and Craig Keys, who help ensure every resource is accurate and beginner-friendly.

While Track Shaker’s team is spread across the country, Carolina Motorsports Park serves as its spiritual home. The track was a founding sponsor and remains a hub for Track Shaker events and content creation.

Scott’s vision is clear: make track days accessible, safe, and exciting for everyone. Whether you’re a curious newcomer or a seasoned driver, Track Shaker is your gateway to the world of grassroots motorsports.

This content has been brought to you in-part by sponsorship through...

Letter to the Editor: Viper Defender

Eric M

July 13, 2022

Richard writes: “I read an article you guys published, and there is something incorrect. It states “The exterior design of the Defender was created by Mike Sciortino (and the team at Unique Movie Cars, Hollywood, CA), though fans at the time believed that the Chrysler company built the Defender concept”

This is false. Chrysler did in fact design the Defender from the ground up. Steve Ferrerio was the exterior designer and one of people at Chrysler who built the rear working beauty cars for the show is Greg White. There is numerous reports about the car being designed by Chrysler.“

“I would hate to be a Chrysler designer and have spent many hours involved with making this vehicle and have someone else taking credit. All those photos [below] are from Chryslers Headquarters. Robert Benjamin was behind the vehicles.” (Photos provided by Richard through his connections at Chrysler).

“Here is a photo of the DEFENDER at Chryslers headquarters with the VIPER GTS concept….”

“Unique Movie cars received the cars from Chrysler and reworked them for use on the TV series. The V10’s in the beauty cars were removed and 360 V8’s were installed.

There is a great video about the car on YouTube.”

Thank you Richard for being a fan of the show, the Defender, and supporter of GTM!

Launching Car Week with Style: The Story Behind the Concours at Pasadera

Don W

July 7, 2022

Launching Car Week with Style: The Story Behind the Concours at Pasadera

Every great car story starts with a spark – sometimes it’s a roaring engine, sometimes it’s a quiet moment of inspiration. For Rick Barnett, chairman of the Concours at Pasadera, it began with a first date at Pebble Beach in 1979. That date turned into a marriage, and that car show ignited a lifelong passion that now fuels one of Monterey Car Week’s most distinctive events.

While many car enthusiasts are familiar with cars and coffee meetups or local shows, a Concours d’Elegance is a different breed. It’s a juried, competitive showcase of automotive excellence, rooted in early 20th-century European traditions. The first official Concours was held at Villa d’Este in 1929, and Pebble Beach carried the torch starting in 1950. These events celebrate not just the cars, but the craftsmanship, history, and design lineage behind them.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

The Concours at Pasadera began in 2019 as a club-level gathering of car enthusiasts. What started as a modest idea quickly grew into a full-fledged kickoff to Monterey Car Week, drawing hundreds of guests and vehicles from across the western U.S. Today, it’s a curated celebration of automotive artistry, community, and charitable giving—supporting organizations like CASA of Monterey County, the Bridge Addiction Recovery Program, and the Laguna Seca Raceway Foundation.

Spotlight

Notes

This episode of Break/Fix features Rick Barnett, chairman of the Concours at Pasadera. The Concours is an annual event showcasing modern, classic, and vintage automobiles, focusing on the history and artistry of car design, including this year’s spotlight on Ferrari’s 75th anniversary. The event supports local charities like the CASA of Monterey County, the Bridge Addiction Recovery Program, and the Laguna Seca Raceway Foundation. Barnett discusses the event’s origin, its unique approach to car judging, and the significance of the event posters. Listeners are also treated to a poignant story about a fully restored vintage Ferrari Lusso. For those interested in attending or entering their vehicles, Barnett encourages registration on the event’s website. The podcast concludes with a call to action for listeners to participate and support this extraordinary automotive celebration.

Let’s first start off by explaining to our listeners, what is a Concours d’Elegance? Some people might be thinking… is this just another car show?
- Concours are a competitive event – What does it take to enter? What level of vehicle prep is involved for a Concours?
- How does one compete? How are vehicles judged? What is the judging criteria? Are there different classes? What types of vehicles are permitted to enter in a Concours?
History / Origin of the Concours at Pasadera – now celebrating its 4th year.
- What was the kickoff, what inspired the “Hey, let’s start a Concours” moment?
- What are some of the more notable moments in Pasadera Concours history? Special guests, special judges, special vehicles…?
- Tell us about the event poster, a lot goes into that, who is the artist, how is the art layed out?
- Tell us about the beneficiaries of the Concours.
- What can guests expect at the Pasadera Concours? Food, music, vendors? Can anyone attend/buy a ticket/enter a car?
- Tell us about what makes Pasadera a little different from other Concours events. Discuss the size of the event and why that more intimate scale might be appealing to some.
- What’s in the future for the Pasadera Concours?

Transcript

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.

To learn more about the annual publication and its new website, be sure to follow them on social media at Garage Style Magazine or log onto www.garagestylemagazine.com because after all, what doesn’t belong in your garage.

A juried collection of modern, [00:01:00] classic and vintage automobiles gathered from club members and enthusiasts showcased in a luxurious, comfortable setting with awards by Tiffany and company. Guests enjoy an exceptional culinary experience while supporting the countrywide charitable causes of Casa of Monterey County, the Bridge Addiction Recovery Program, and the Laguna Seka Raceway Foundation.

The concourses at Pasadera launches Car Week on the Monterey Peninsula. And with us tonight is Rick Barnett, chairman of the Concourses at Pasadera, to explain the history and future of this beautiful event. So welcome to Break Fix Rick.

Rick Barnett: Glad to be here.

Crew Chief Eric: Like all good break fix stories. There’s always an origin behind the guest that we have on the show, and in this case, I think there’s a double origin here.

There’s your history as a petrol head, as a concourses participant, but also the founder of one of the newest concourses during Car Week in Monterey. Let’s start off first by explaining to our listeners what is a [00:02:00] concourse de gonz. Some people might be thinking, is that just another car show?

Rick Barnett: Concord to Elegance is really a cue for the Pebble Beach event that has been going on now for so many years.

And actually in using that term, it brings me back to my first car show experience. We decided to take a first time date. To a car show, August 23rd, 1979 at Pebble Beach. It was great. It was a great experience. It was a great date. I thought, I’m gonna take this young girl, Lori Smith, to a car show. We’ll have a good time.

I’ll drop her off that night, Sunday evening, and then that would be it. Little did I know that on Monday we would talk for a couple of hours on the phone, and Tuesday I asked her to marry me. Here we are 43 years later, looking back at the first car show that, uh, that I ever attended, which was at Pebble Beach and the Concord Elegance, Concord Pasadera, the concept of it started about four and a half, five years ago with club members at [00:03:00] Pasadera who were car enthusiasts that said, why don’t we put together a car show that would represent some of the car collections that exist by Pasadera members, invite their guests.

Club members and homeowners of the community of Pasadera to a car show. It started out with that concept, and it grew before the first event, which happened in 2019. Suddenly we had about 400 people that showed up a lot more than what was originally anticipated. Some great cars, cars from all over the west, and it became an event that not only was.

The kickoff to Car Week, but also something that benefited local charities as well. Today, four years later, going into the fourth anniversary of the Concord at Pasadera, Pasadera continues to launch Car Week this year. August 11th will be the press party at the club. August 12th. Friday will be the show.

And then Saturday and Sunday, uh, [00:04:00] Laguna Seka is our active. Track days for the race course and then Monday Car Week starts to kick off and gets very busy for that following week, and then Pebble Beach closes at that following Sunday. So when I attended with my Now wife, our first car show together. Car Week was three days.

It was Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Today it’s a nine day event. Pasero kicks off car week on Friday, the week before Pebble Beach closes car week. That following Sunday. For the listeners that think, gosh, what is Car Week in Monterey? Last year there were 23 car shows that happened during that nine day period of time.

23 car shows the most active car collector week, if you want to call it that nine day period of time in the entire world.

Crew Chief Eric: And that’s also followed up by the Monterey Historics as well at Laguna Seker where they actually run some of these vehicles on the track.

Rick Barnett: That’s correct. Some of the cars that are at our event.

We’ll leave [00:05:00] on Friday night after the club 100 dinner and the following day we will turn right around and become active all during the week at various shows and historic races, et cetera.

Crew Chief Eric: Rick, correct me if I’m wrong, if we touch on the origins of concourses and I have participated in some years prior, you know, helping out, especially with the, the Deutsche Mark Concourses here on the east coast of Porsche parades, things like that.

I noticed there was a big difference between a concourses and what people are doing now. You know, the cars and coffee and the local car shows and things like that. Concourses. Is competitive. It’s a judged event. It’s very stressful. I never realized what it was really all about and it stems all the way back to the early days of the automobile in France, where even in some respects that concur’s elegance of, of elegance there was to show off the latest in greatest bespoke models coming out of all these different manufacturers.

Does Concourse today still follow in that same [00:06:00] model? Is it still competitive? What is it like now, let’s say a hundred years later?

Rick Barnett: Well, it’s interesting when you say a hundred years, you’re almost right on the first Concor de Elegance was held at Villa Deste back in 1929 at Lake Como, Italy. The tradition of the Concord Elegance continued on at Pebble Beach.

Starting in 1950 and then continued there to the Hillsborough in 1956. So we’ve seen almost a hundred years of car collector concor events that have been happening all throughout the world. The Concord Elegance is a, an event that itself has gone through a series of evolutionary identifications. And what I mean by that is there was a period of time early on.

Where the Concord de Elegance moniker, if you will, was really focused more on the elegant cars that had been chosen by or jury or by the event [00:07:00] itself. But as time went on, we see that at Pebble Beach as an example, but truly throughout the world, cars that are honored in various classes are shown and exhibited at the Concord Elegance.

Events globally. As an example, Ling Moss arrived at one of the events with a Mercedes 300 SL race car. Well, you know, that certainly was not an Elegance car, but it was a race car and it had historic significance. And so these are the kinds of, you might say, evolutionary progress that has happened with the Concor events.

The Concor at Pasadera is unique in that it has each year, much like some of the others, a theme that we focus on. However, we reach out into the spirit of that theme that might evolve into other marks or other styles of cars. As an example, and this year would be a perfect example for [00:08:00] 2022, the Concor at Pasadera is celebrating.

The designers and the coach builders of Ferrari, we’re not talking about just Ferrari vehicles, we’re talking about designers who had an influence on the coach designs of Ferrari or the coach builders themselves. Of course, many people didn’t realize or don’t realize the fact that Ferrari for many years reached out into various coach builders, uh, GIA Zagato.

PanIN Farina. Of course, everyone would recognize that, but there were so many coach builders that contributed to the design and the style of Ferrari. It was just not PanIN Farina, which of course I think in most cases is the most notable. There were so many different designers, dozens of them that had contributions into the look and feel of Ferrari designers.

Coach builders, and so this year for 2022, the Concor at Pasadera [00:09:00] celebrates those designers and coach builders of Ferrari, and so we will see cars dating back into the fifties all the way up to 2022. The most recent Ferraris that are just coming off the line, our guests will be able to see the evolutionary styles of both the inspiration of the car itself.

The brand, the Ferrari, A dream that few people will ever realize, as well as the stylistic changes of, as an example of Bertoni, which is very angular would almost say focused in its design as compared to a PanIN Farina that was much more the or emotional, I would say, from a wavy standpoint. And so the guests are going to see in center court this year, 40 different cars.

Will range in style from something as simple perhaps as a a 73 Volvo 1800 Es, [00:10:00] which of course you wouldn’t expect that to have a Ferrari lineage, but it does. The designer of the Volvo 1800 Es, the inspiration of that car came from a very influential designer that had. His roots in working at the Ferrari company and so we will see cars of that style all the way up to GTO Ferraris that are worth in the millions of dollars.

In fact, there are gonna be two cars on exhibit, each one of them, historic Ferrari that will be worth over $50 million each. Anything from something as simple, if you want to call it that, is a Volvo Sport wagon all the way up to. A $50 million Ferrari, any of the influences and style designs that could have had an impact on Ferrari or its designers over a number of decades, those are the cars that the people will be able to enjoy and gain a little historic nature of.

However. That won’t be the only thing. [00:11:00] There is a section of the show that is called the Corvette Corral. 20 Corvettes will be chosen dating back to the C one era, 19 53, 54, all the way up to the current c eights that we’re seeing in the dealer showrooms. Each one of them unique. There’s a story behind each one of them, but they’ll be able to see 20 of those cars in the Corvette corral, the alumni collection, which will be 20 cars.

Chosen from past Concor events that the jury members have chosen as significant contributors to the overall inspiration of this year’s concor event. 20 cars that have been exhibited at past events that will now come back and resurface to show design styles or storyboards of cars that were significant.

Carry over into some influence of this year’s concor event. And then we even have a section called Fairway One, which is sort of an [00:12:00] inspirational area as people park their cars to come into the event. There’ll be 20 vehicles that are chosen that are all over the map, everything from maybe a Porsche GT three to a totally restored frame off.

72 Blazer, K five that has been lifted and very unique. They’ll see 20 cars that seemingly have no rhyme or influence, but technically they have an influence to the overall event. So never more than a hundred cars at the Concor Pasadera. But an exciting event for car enthusiasts of all types.

Crew Chief Eric: This year also marks the 75th birthday for Ferrari, so that’s quite the milestone there as well, to be celebrating that at Pasadera.

I like the fact that comparing this Concord to other ones, you know, maybe single mark, even something like Pebble or Amelia or things like that where they do follow the A A CA or. Or triple ca rules.

Rick Barnett: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: That say the car must only be of this, kind of this [00:13:00] bespoke ness of these years and things like that.

You’ve opened it up and that allows you to bring in people with modern classics or modern collector cars and mix it in with the vintage or more rare vehicles that are out there. So I I, I really do appreciate that.

Rick Barnett: I think it’s important that we recognize, and I wanna be clear on this, I think if we understand the future of the appreciation of the automobile.

We have to take a regard, if you will. We have to accept what’s happening at the Peterson. The Peterson has decided that as a museum, they were going to connect with Art Center, and so the Peterson and Art Center down in Southern California are. Interconnected. And what the Peterson has decided along with the art center, is that the future of the appreciation of automobiles and the art influences of automobiles need to be attractive to a younger crowd, not just the 60, 65-year-old [00:14:00] who, uh, is now decided that as a hobby, they’re going to start collecting cars or they’ll turn the hands of time back and now.

Jump in their nine 14 and remember the days when they wished they had one and they came out, what were they, $3,500 I think, or the two 40 Z In 1970, which I think was 36 95, people were jumping out of the showroom floor and running ’em up to Elkhart Lake winning races in the two 40 z. I think it’s important that we recognized the fact the people of the Peterson and Art Center have decided that the future of the appreciation of automobiles needs to have a focus.

For the young as well as for the more mature collector. It’s very important for us at the Concord Pasadera to be able to design our events each year to attract all ages. So you’ll see boys and girls that will be between the ages of 8, 10, 12 years old that are at the event. Enjoying it. In fact, last year we [00:15:00] had the first ever Hot Wheels concord during Car Week, Monterey, and we had everything from full size Hot Wheels cars that drove in to $175,000.

Hot Wheels die cast miniature. That Bruce Pascal brought in from Washington DC and everything in between. The newest 94 cent Hot Wheels car from Walmart all the way up to $175,000 Beach Bomber car from Bruce Pascal and everything be in between. Hot Wheels Cars were featured last year. We had a lot of kids that were enjoying.

That part of the show. So it’s important for us, I think, in the car collector community to recognize that in order for us to be responsible for the future of that culture, that we need to attract all ages, all styles. All types of vehicles.

Crew Chief Eric: So since you guys have relaxed the types of cars that can enter the concor, [00:16:00] has the judging also changed over the years?

Have you taken some things that you’ve learned participating in other ones and modernized them for your event?

Rick Barnett: I don’t want to contradict. I don’t know that that we’ve relaxed as far as the intent of the event. The event has a definite intent. Each year, however, as far as, you know, using the word relaxed, yes.

I, I mean, the judging is not such that the judges stick a mirror shelf underneath the car to take a look at the exhaust design and so forth to make sure that it fits within the originality of the car, et cetera, et cetera. That’s not what we’re looking for. We’re looking for interior that has been either restored, either to original or modified, and we can identify it as such.

The exterior that has been either original paint with original patina, or if it’s been modified to some degree. In some cases, there are some cars that will be shown that actually [00:17:00] don’t have the original. Color of that particular car. We’ll have a concept car as an example. This year we may have a very unique one-off Ferrari concept car that you really couldn’t judge against because there is no portfolio.

To review on this particular concept car, it’s a one-off from the standpoint that we have relaxed the judging. I think the judges are interested in the mechanical bay, they’re interested in the interior, they’re interested in the exterior. And if in fact, the car runs suitably and those are the things that they’re after, they’re not going to check whether or not the turn signals go left or right.

They’re not going to get into that detail, what they’re looking for. Is the overall assurance of the intent of the car, and that really is very much the judge’s profile for the event once again this year.

Crew Chief Eric: So that would also imply if you’re in a competition, it’s not just one [00:18:00] class. Everybody’s competing in, there’s multiple classes that these cars fall under.

How does that break out in a con, a Concord like yours?

Rick Barnett: Last year, the classes that existed that the awards winners participated in were domestic, beginning with 1940 and all the way up to contemporary times, dating up to 1989. So I think it was 1942 to 1989. So in domestic and international. Vintage pre-war, so 1941.

Earlier that was a particular class competition. Cars, obviously cars that had been used in races and what the providence was of those races. We wanted to know how they were raced, where they were raced. Commercial we had vans probably would come as no surprise to car collectors. The A 1961 panel van. Won last year’s commercial, but this panel van was valued at over $250,000.

So definitely a pristine 1961 Volkswagen panel [00:19:00] van. Of course, I still remember the days when those could have been bought off of a car lot for $1,200. Modern, classic. Those were cars from 1990 all the way through to current times. We even had motorcycles last year, which was interesting. We had 10 motorcycles that began in 1939, all the way up to current times, and then we had Hot Wheels.

So those were the different classes that existed for 2021. Now, today we see that things are different. And what I mean by that is to, in the 2022 event, because we’ve identified this group of cars that have had a design influence, either by a coach builder or a designer that had an influence in Ferrari, we’ve decided to identify the group of cars by decade, the fifties, the sixties, the seventies, the eighties, the nineties 2000, and then from 2010 to current.

So these are now the groups of cars that the judges will sift through the grouping of [00:20:00] cars in the fifties, the grouping of cars in the sixties, and they’ll pick a car that they feel best represents the design, the feel, the emotion of the sixties of the seventies, and that will be the car that wins that particular.

Class ultimately moving on to being into consideration for the best of show and the Pasadera Cup, and that’s how that will be rated this year. Pasadera Cup is a beautiful cup that was designed by Tiffany, absolutely gorgeous, and each year that cup is awarded to the best of show car.

Crew Chief Eric: Is there a multi-year champion yet?

Rick Barnett: Well, once a car has won the Pasadera cup, it cannot be reentered. It’s a one-off.

Crew Chief Eric: Do you yourself compete in the concor?

Rick Barnett: Well, I always have a car in there. I mean, I’d feel like it’d be, uh, sacrilege to be the chairman of the event and not have a car in, but my cars are not up for the kinds of competition that some of these cars that come in legitimately are just abso well, [00:21:00] as an example.

Just to give you a perspective, one of the cars that we’ll have coming in this year will be flown over from Paris into the United States and will be exhibited here at the Shoal. These are car collectors that are very serious about getting their cars in this year’s event. I’ve got cars in my collection that quite frankly.

As a young person, I always looked at, uh, even up to my current age, uh, now in my sixties, and they have always aspired to, I’ve got a 9 14 2 liter, I’ve got a Bentley Arage, I’ve got a variety of cars, M-G-B-G-T, those were all cars that were important to me as I was 16 years old and thinking someday I’m gonna end up with a cool car.

From that point forward, I started collecting the cars that I really like to drive. So, uh, those are the cars that I have in my collection.

Crew Chief Eric: So that’s good that you have your own cars in the show. So let me ask you this. From a concourse perspective, we ask this question a lot on the show, you know, what’s the sexiest car of all time you having been going to shows [00:22:00] like Pebble Beach since you know, the early days?

What is one of the most gorgeous cars in your opinion?

Rick Barnett: There are a lot of beautiful contemporary cars. If somebody was listening and they have a car that of a particular style or design, and they’re gonna hear me say what I’m gonna say, they go, oh, that guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But I think we really have to go back.

To the thirties and the forties, and look at the D haze as an example, or the heno, those cars, which were a style of their own. Uh, first of all, imagine who the builder was and imagine the shops that they had, and remember that all the bodies were. Individually hammered out, you know, they didn’t come out of a machine or a press, they were individually hammered out.

And then you, you met with the client, and the client would talk about perhaps the style of the fender that they wanted in the back and. Maybe the type of light that they wanted, whether the, some of the metal inside was gold plated or chrome, some of the thirties and forties era de [00:23:00] haze, and then some of the fifties, uh, and, and early sixties, one-off Ferraris and Maseratis, those groupings of cars.

Boy, you know, it’d be tough to pick one car, but certainly those two eras for me at least, they were amazing. They’re absolutely amazing. The whole car experience for the buyer was absolutely significant. Just rolling works of art. Of course, we see that today. In fact, earlier today I was talking with, uh, someone from Ohio.

I had a personal experience with this person. Uh, a few years ago we were in San Diego at an event. He said, gosh, I really wanna buy a Corvette. Never had a Corvette before. I really wanna buy a Corvette, and I want you to tell me what I should buy. And I said, well, here’s what’s gonna happen. I said, the zoa, which I, you know, we didn’t know what the name was gonna be at the time.

2017, I believe it was 17 or 18, said the Zuora’s gonna come out and most likely by design. It will not [00:24:00] have a manual transmission. And so my recommendation is that you get a very cool C seven with a seven speed, and if I were going to pick one, I would pick a collector’s edition C seven. Here’s the color and here’s the style that I would pick, which was a gun metal metallic that was just absolutely cool on that particular car.

And it had a two-tone, blue and black. Leather interior, just magnificent and a seven speed. So I said that if I were gonna design. A Corvette to keep. That would be the car that I would get. The Zuora’s gonna come out, it’s not gonna have a manual transmission, I don’t believe, based on the design. And so I would grab that.

Well, lo and behold, he said, well, let’s go buy one. I said, well, you’re not gonna buy one. You know you’re not. Where are we gonna get, go to Chicago? You know, we’re in San Diego. It was a Saturday afternoon. I said, well, you know, I’ll call around and talk to a Chevy dealer and find out if they can locate one.

Lo and behold, I called my hometown. They [00:25:00] said, you won’t believe it. Your car is in Carlsbad, California. Well, we were in San Diego, Carlsbad’s like, what is it? 30 minute Drive? I don’t know. So we jumped in an Uber and drove up to Carlsbad. We walk into the showroom and that car is sitting in there. Bottom line is the car was bought and shipped to Ohio, and here we are.

I, I was talking to him earlier today. He’s got this seven speed collector’s edition C seven. I don’t think there’ll ever be another manual transmission Corvette. And he’s got one that is truly unique. There again, you know, you say to yourself, well, it’s a C seven. What’s so special about it? Well, you know what?

I know I’m getting off on a tangent here, but I gotta tell you, the wonderful thing about car collecting is that a person can have a 66 Barracuda and another person can have a Willy’s, and another person can have a 3 0 8 GTS Ferrari, and another person can have a 76 El Dorado convertible, and you bring all those people together.

At a car show and you start [00:26:00] them talking about cars, and they’re all on the same level playing field. They love cars, they love the stories behind them. It doesn’t matter that one car’s worth 80,000 and another car’s worth 20,000. They’re all on a level playing field and they’re part of a collector community.

It is just special.

Crew Chief Eric: You bring up a very good point, and I wanted to ask you, what are some of the more notable moments at Pasadera? What are some of the cars that really stuck out that you were like, wow, this showed up? I mean, obviously you’re behind the scenes, you know they’re coming just like you were talking about the car coming in from Paris.

Yeah. But what are some of those? Awe inspiring moments like this car has been at our event.

Rick Barnett: I’ll give you one story that I think everybody will marvel at. I won’t give you the the individual’s name, but let’s we’ll call him Jim. And Jim. A number of years ago was at a Ferrari dealership and he walks into the Ferrari dealership.

On the floor is a early sixties, [00:27:00] GTO and a luso, they’re both on the floor and the GTO was priced at $8,000 more than the Luso. And he decided, gosh, I just can’t justify that additional $8,000. So he bought the luso instead of the GTO. And of course, you know, we know today the GTO is worth of fortune and the luso is worth a fair amount of money, but.

We’re talking about a car that’s in the three to $5 million range if it’s perfect, versus a car that’s in the 50 to $80 million range. At the time, there was only an $8,000 difference. Now let’s move on. Jim drives the car every day, loves the car. It’s a daily driver for him, and absolutely loves the car.

And one day he’s driving down the freeway. There’s a truck on the left side, and I think all of us have seen at one time or another, trucks that have lug nuts that stick way out. We’ve seen these chrome wheels on these beautiful semis that, I [00:28:00] mean, you can tell the big driver is a car collector himself on his semi.

You know, they’re beautiful colors and beautiful chrome wheels and lug nuts that are sticking out almost like a gladiator. Boer spikes. Exactly. Yeah. So these lug nuts are sticking out. He’s passing the truck on the right side. In this luso, the truck veers over and the lug nuts grab a hold of the luso from the rear of the car, absolutely trash the car from the rear of the car all the way to the front fender, like a gladiator kind of a thing where it just rips the car apart.

Now the car flips ends up. In a ditch, flattens the roof. The guy’s in the car breaks a clavicle, breaks his ribs. I think his hip as well. The car is totally trashed. It’s in the ditch. I mean, a total, you know, the ambulance comes and they bring him to the hospital and the car gets hauled away and uh, you know, is it a junker or whatever?

He won’t see that it gets [00:29:00] thrown away and whatever parted out. He gets out of the hospital. I mean, this is now a couple of years later where he is still in rehab and the car is now sitting in its destroyed condition, but the man cannot give up his car. He can’t give it up. And so ultimately, as he survives and he becomes financially able, he brings the car into a restoration shop.

And over nearly a decade, the car goes through a total. Frame up, ground up restoration from its very core and every part and every nut and bolt is restored on this car, and this was last year. Ultimately, the car ends up in Monterey for some final work by a craftsman, and that’s the only way I can call ’em months into the project.

The car is working its way through, hoping that it will be ready in time for. To be able to be [00:30:00] displayed somewhere during car week, understand how long it’s taken the car to bring it to this point, so I get in contact with a project manager of the car. The project manager tells me that maybe, maybe, maybe the car could be shown at our event, and millions of dollars have been spent to restore this car to its original condition.

Friday morning, one 30 at night, the project manager completes the car and goes through road testing and everything at about one o’clock in the afternoon on Friday, that day of our event. At one o’clock, the car arrives at our event. For exhibit and no one has seen this car, not even the owner who is in Southern California and has not physically been able to come up to the show.

Not even the owner has seen the car through its restoration process and now in its final form. But the project manager brings the car in with his [00:31:00] son and the car arrives at Center Court. At one o’clock in the afternoon in time for the show to open at two and for the guest to be able to see this car that has essentially been mothballed for almost a decade and gone through restoration.

And I’m on the phone with the owner, and the owner is choking up in emotion as I described to him what the car looks like and where the car is and how many people are looking at the car, and how enjoyable it is to have the car at the event. Now that is quite a story.

Crew Chief Eric: What a special car, what a special journey that went through.

Yeah. I mean the tragedy and rebirth. Yeah. So that also begs the question, do you guys have special guests or special judges that have shown up at Pasadera?

Rick Barnett: Sure. Yeah. If you go onto pasadera.com, you’ll see two of the judges. There’s one who’s asked to be anonymous. But if you go on to pasadera.com. You’ll see the listing of judges and also the jury members [00:32:00] that will be part of the overall vetting of the cars, and ultimately in the judges column, those judges that will be responsible for the overall awards.

Crew Chief Eric: So is this the year Jay Leno shows up unannounced?

Rick Barnett: You know, we’d love to have Jay here. I met him at an event, told him that I’d love to have him arrived. Obviously his schedule’s busy and so we’d love to have him show up, but he’s not on the. Special unannounced guest list. So that’s Seinfeld.

Crew Chief Eric: Seinfeld does that right now.

Rick Barnett: We’ll just have to hope.

Crew Chief Eric: So there’s something else very special about the Pasadera event, and that’s the event posters themselves. I hear that there’s a ton of work that goes into that. Who’s the artist? How is the art laid out? I mean, I’ve the one over your shoulder. For the listeners that aren’t seeing this in the behind the scenes, it exemplifies the Ford versus Ferrari 66 67 era of Lamont’s.

Tell us where the poster came from and the significance of it for the events.

Rick Barnett: Well, the poster inspiration came from my appearing [00:33:00] with my now wife in 1979, and I have a copy of the 1979 Concor poster over my desk. I’m looking at it right now. When we decided that I would be involved with a concor here at Pasadera as a Christmas gift, she got me a copy of the poster, which I did not get.

You know, I remember. At Pebble, when Lori and I arrived there for our first date, I parked about three blocks from the entrance to the lodge, and I think our entry fee was $35, and I think the poster was either 25 or $35 for the poster. Obviously, times have changed. It’s difficult to park your car, park your car miles away, and then bus into the Concord these days.

The poster back then, I didn’t buy. My wife decided a few years ago as a Christmas gift, she would get me the 1979 poster, which at the time was either 25 or $35. I think she paid $375 for the poster. It’s

Crew Chief Eric: inflation. That’s what all it’s, yeah. Which

Rick Barnett: I was thrilled to get. [00:34:00] So, you know, we decided that the poster would be an important part of the event.

Ken Ebert, who’s a friend of mine that has done many posters for the Concord. Has really been an inspiration to me artistically throughout the years. Me coming from now the Art exhibition community, which was my vocation in 2019. The first poster was created by, uh, Michael Henderson, and it was really the entree to what would become a very important part of the show.

2020 Simon Bull, the celebrated English artist, did the first poster for the Concor at Pasadera, and it was Ford versus Ferrari. That was the first poster and it became an instant collectible piece. There are still a few that are available, but they got gobbled up quick limited edition, both in the artist proof edition where the artist signed the pieces, as well as in the open edition, there were only 500 that were created in an open edition, 100 artist proofs.

So the Ford versus Ferrari. You can see the, the battle that’s [00:35:00] going on between the two cars, the Gulf, and then uh, five 12 in the background in each. Situation. The poster shows the center Court of Pasadera. As if it was a racetrack, and so it obviously been very well received. Then if we go to 2021, it became interesting in that we wanted to celebrate the back-to-back victory of Porsche at Lamont in 70 71, once again by Simon Bowl, who was chosen to be the artist that year.

Was entitled Decade of Champions. And if you see that poster, and again, it’s on pasadera.com, you see the, the Dunlop Tire in the backdrop with the Pasadera Tower underneath the Dunlop Tire. And then of course, the Lamont track, where we see the nine seventeens, the five 12 of four gt. And then in the background, the fifth car, we see the number.

49, 14 6. That is battling the other four credible [00:36:00] behemoths in the front. This poster, which has had a tremendous amount of collectability by the art collectors, uh, was just a super poster that was last year’s poster. Now, this year we called on James Caldwell, the son of Celebrated architect, James Caldwell.

This is James Caldwell ii. James has been the artist of the Concorso Italiano each year for a number of years. We asked James to commemorate the 65th anniversary of Laguna Seka, moving from the forest race out of Pebble Beach over to its first race at Laguna Seka. In 1957, and of course the Ferrari winning, the race being battled by the 300 SL in the background.

So if you look at that particular poster, once again, you see the courtyard of Pasadera and you see the two Ferraris that are in the center courtyard and in the backdrop. We see the corkscrew of, uh, the track and the battle that’s going on back in 1957. [00:37:00] So this is a great poster. The originals have been pre-sold.

They’re very expensive, and the collectors that have bought these originals have something that has become very significant in the tens of thousands of dollars, say exactly how much, but a lot of money that the originals have sold for. So we intend to continue that tradition each year, next year with the 70th anniversary of Corvette.

Crew Chief Eric: So what I appreciate about these, you don’t see it often though, especially with being associated with a concord. Normally you’ll see, like you said, pictures of a DHE or a Packard, or a Albo or something. Just very extravagant, very elegant. So far, all of your posters are grounded in motor sports, classic motor sports, iconic moments in time.

That really speaks to me as a motor sports enthusiast, and obviously as a vehicle enthusiast as well. So I wonder, is that going to continue? Is that going to be. The tradition, or is it always gonna be those moments in racing history, or will it maybe eventually migrate into something else?

Rick Barnett: Well, you know, who knows?

I [00:38:00] can only say, well, I mean, honestly, I don’t know. This will be my last year as the point person for the event. Next year there’ll be a new guard that will take on the overall operation of the event as it continues to grow and flourish. I can only say that there has been. A tremendous amount of appeal of capturing a moment in time, giving significance to it as the challenge of racing excellence.

That’s what Pasadera has really been about. You’re right. I think that when we look at Pebble and we are going to see, uh, in most cases a stationary car that is not focused on a, a moment in time of racing competition, but in each of the Pasero posters, we’re seeing a war. That’s really what it is. We’re seeing a war going on between automobiles, drivers and manufacturers, and we’ve captured that in each of the three posters that have had a lot of significance.

Will we see that in the future? Probably. But I don’t wanna [00:39:00] put a a, a definite on that.

Crew Chief Eric: So there’s one more important factor about the concor, which is the beneficiaries of the concor. We highlighted a few of those at the beginning in the intro, but would you like to expand upon that and tell us what they are, why they’re important, how things are distributed?

Rick Barnett: If we take a look at who the beneficiaries are, they’ve been chosen each year by someone or something that we have believed. Have been significant to the contribution and culture of the Peninsula. You know, if we look at both our sponsors, who the sponsors are, and who the beneficiaries are of the event this year, once again, we’ve chosen the Bridge Restoration Ministry, which is an addiction recovery program for men and women.

Celebrating its 15th year. Very successful program here on the Central Coast that actually has reached out to over 15 states across the United States. Hundreds of graduates that have come through the program and have had their lives changed [00:40:00] free of addiction, have drugs and alcohol. So a great program.

Casa. Which is uh, the Court appointed special advocate program that works very closely with children in need. CASA is just a wonderful program. And then finally, the Laguna SE Raceway Foundation, which is really designed to find ways of improving not only the style and design of the race course and its original intention, but also the safety of the course for its participants and its guests.

And then of course, we look at the sponsors. We have local sponsors, attorneys, JRG. Monterey Touring vehicles and Adobe Winery and Veloce Valuations. Porsche Group that is active with us every single year, there are under premier sponsors. These are the people that contribute to the event. People like RPM as an example that put money into the event.

So the event can happen without them, the event would not exist. It is the confluence of intent from the sponsors [00:41:00] as well as the beneficiaries that create such a cultural impact on the peninsula, and people from all over the world are now attending the Concor PA era. And seeing what a difference a little car show can make to many people throughout the world.

Crew Chief Eric: I think a lot of us are getting excited about this little car show you keep talking about. Yeah. For people that are interested in coming to Pasadera as a visitor for the first time. Yeah. What are some of the expectations? Food, music vendors. Can anyone attend? How do they buy a ticket? Obviously, you’ve already pre-registered for people that wanna enter their cars.

Yeah. But what about if there’s somebody that wants to enter a car for next season?

Rick Barnett: Well, next season’s registration time will be announced after this year’s event. I would just say go to pasadera concord.com and you’ll be able to see continuing updates on that. As far as what to expect at the event, the entry fee is very reasonable.

$195. What a person gets to experience is. Absolute amazing wines by [00:42:00] Adobe that they will get to experience a welcome glass of champagne when they walk through the front gate. And then of course, food that is absolutely second to none. Created by award-winning chefs that will not disappoint anyone who attends the event.

The food is excellent. The comradery is exceptional. Automobiles of many makes and models and styles can be enjoyed by every level of collector, and even if you’re not a car enthusiast, you can come to an event like this and appreciate just the overall experience of the kickoff of Car Week on the Monterey Peninsula, which has been going on since 1950.

I would say that young and old are going to attend this event. And walk away with a memorable experience.

Crew Chief Eric: How does someone get into concourses for the first time? How does somebody get into Pasadera? How do they become a concourses enthusiast like you did so many years ago, and then compete with their cars and things like that?

Would you care to give some [00:43:00] advice to somebody that’s listening to this going, you know, I’m really tired of going to cars and coffee, or, I’m tired of going to my local events. I wanna step it up. I wanna take home a nice award from Tiffany. How do they cross that threshold?

Rick Barnett: Well, if they’re an exhibitor. I would tell ’em not to be bashful.

If they are someone who enjoys automobiles and they have something special, I would encourage them not to be bashful. Get on passera concord.com. Take a look at the different opportunities to register and get your car on there. What’s the worst that can happen? The worst that can happen is that the jury says no, but you’ve had an opportunity to actually submit a registration.

To the event and be considered. So I would encourage everyone who’s uh, listening to this podcast, don’t be bashful, get online, go to pass eric.com, go to tickets and registration and register your car. Let’s see what the jury thinks. Who would’ve thought that the jury would have picked a Volvo 1800 Es to be in center court this year?

And yet, when you take a look at. The [00:44:00] design history of that car and who the designer was and the influence that they had in conjunction with their time at Ferrari. It became an obvious pick. There’s an example of, you know, a wolf in sheep’s clothing from a standpoint of an exhibitor this year. As far as a guest and attending, you know, there’s only so many tickets that are accepted into the show.

I would encourage you as a guest to go to passera concord.com, get on ticket and register. If you’re accepted, then you get to attend an event that many people, and I don’t want to sound egotistical on this, but many people have said that have attended the pass at Eric Concord. It will be. The event that they enjoy most during Car Week because there is a casual elegance about the event because it happens as a launch to Car week.

The busyness and the frenzy of car week doesn’t exist on that Friday. When you attend the Pasadera Concor, it is a relaxed, [00:45:00] enjoyable experience, not rushed. You get to see the purpose, the reason for the event. With the cultural influence, the contributions to the community, the appreciation of the different styles and car, uh, models of cars, there is a relaxed, enjoyable atmosphere of the event.

And again, people walk away from the concor at Pasadera can go online and look at the comments that come from the people they look forward to next year. And so the tickets are selling very briskly. And I would say that if you can get a ticket and be part of the event, either as a guest or an exhibitor.

Don’t be bashful. Get online and register.

Crew Chief Eric: Car care goes hand in hand with concourses and car shows. What’s in your bucket when you go to take care of your vehicles or prep them? Maybe some advice, some tips and tricks you’ve learned over the years for getting your car concor ready.

Rick Barnett: Last year, Don from Garage Style Magazine introduced zeal to the event.

It was interesting because there was. [00:46:00] Some leftover and I ended up using it on my own cars. And I’ve gotta say that the other products that I’ve had in my bucket have stayed in my bucket and I’ve used up the product that Don provided us and I’ve bought more of it. That really has become my staple in my garage.

I mean, I have eight cars and I can tell you that every one of them has had that product on their paint job or on their Chrome, or on their interior Xmal product has really been excellent.

Crew Chief Eric: I appreciate you bringing that up because we actually had the founder of Zy Imal on our show, Chuck Bennett a while back, and he explained the history of the product, its evolution, where it’s going in the future.

So if you missed that episode and you’re hearing about Zy Imal now for the first time, or you’re reading about it on Garage Tile Magazine, be sure to hop over. To our previous episode, you can learn all about Zy Imal that way. Let’s talk about the future just a little bit. You mentioned earlier that you’re on your way out as the president of the Pasadera concourses, but knowing what you know outside of [00:47:00] Corvette, what does the next couple of years look like for the Concor?

Anything on the horizon that we should be aware of?

Rick Barnett: I can tell you that the event has continued to grow, and I say grow, I mean in a very responsible manner. Tiffany continues to be involved. The quality of wines, beverages, food continues to grow in quality and experience. I will tell you there is one thing that will change next year, and it’s a spinoff from this year to kick off Car season.

Monterey Motor Sports authored the first tour, the Costa Copper Blossom Trail tour that took off from the lodge at Pebble Beach and worked its way around the old race course at Pebble around Laguna Seka on up the Central Valley through the Almond Blossom Groves. To the little town of Hilmar where we had lunch and then moved on to the town of Copper Olis, about an hour outside of Yosemite where the group gathered in preparation for a concor for this year at 2022.

It was an [00:48:00] exceptional event. Exceptional event. And so next year, while I won’t be chairing the Concor at Pasadera, next year, we will be hosting the second annual coast to Copper Blossom Trail tour in March. It’s limited to 60 cars and we had a focus on Ferrari. This year, next year, the focus will be on Corvette and it will coincide with the theme of the Concord PA era.

You can go on to monterey motorsports.com and find out what’s happening for. Next year’s tour event, and that will be something that will essentially usher in car season each year as a precursor to the Concord Pass era. You know, beyond that, I can only tell you that the enthusiasm for the event is at an all time high.

We’re excited about how Concord Pass era will continue to evolve and attract exhibitors and guests to its event.

Crew Chief Eric: That said, Rick, as we close out any shout outs, promotions, or anything else you’d like to share that we didn’t cover thus far?

Rick Barnett: [00:49:00] I will tell you this, that, you know, I mentioned the sponsors that have been a big part of this year’s event.

I’d like to provide special recognition to both the Pacific region and the Monterey Ferrari clubs that have been involved in this year’s event. They have had a broad reach. In reaching out to special cars that will be featured at this year’s event. Also veloce valuations and more imports that will be bringing to the event both PanIN Farina and Zagato cars that will be on exhibit and on display.

They are the purveyor. Some exceptional fine quality automobiles, and of course our Porsche dealer, who is the classic partner dealer for Porsche, has an influence to the car collector community that’s been very substantial. So we’re excited about all of our sponsors and what they bring to the event. The posters.

I would tell all of your listeners if they are still available [00:50:00] dating back to 2020, I would grab a hold of them because for just a few dollars you can collect. A piece of art that is absolutely significant in the car collector world.

Crew Chief Eric: The fourth annual concourses at Pasadera Honors Ferrari’s 75th anniversary and presents the coach builders of Ferrari like PanIN, Farina, GIA Bertone, SK Zagato, and others designers of Al Alpha, Romeo Lancia, and Aston Martin to name a few.

These masterpieces will be exhibited by decade starting from the 1950s, the August 11th press party honors Ferrari’s wins and class victories at LeMans since 1949 and its Formula One championships through 2022. To learn more about the concourses at Pasadera, be sure to visit www.pasaderaconcourses.com and you can follow them on social at concourses pasadera on Facebook, and at pasadera concourses on Instagram.

So Rick, I can’t thank you enough for coming on the show and [00:51:00] sharing your part of the vehicle enthusiast world with our audience teaching us about the world of concourses and the newest, hottest concourses on the block, the concourses at Pasadera. So thank you for everything you’ve done, and we look forward to the coming seasons and continuation of this great event.

Rick Barnett: It’s been a real joy to be on this program with you, and I really appreciate the time we’ve spent.

Crew Chief Eric: The following episode is brought to us in part by Garage Style Magazine. Since 2007, garage Style Magazine has been the definitive source for car collectors continually delivering information about Automobilia PETA events and more. To learn more about the annual publication and its new website, be sure to follow them on social media at Garage Style Magazine or log onto www.garagestylemagazine.com because after all, what doesn’t belong in your garage.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us [00:52:00] out on www.gt motorsports.org. You can also find us on Instagram at Grand Tour Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at Crew chief@gtmotorsports.org.

We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization, and our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to 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 [00:53:00] www.patreon.com/gt motorsports. And remember, without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be possible.

Highlights

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 Concourses at Pasadera Overview
01:26 Interview with Rick Barnett; Rick’s First Car Show Experience
02:43 Founding of Concourses at Pasadera
04:12 Car Week in Monterey
05:38 Evolution of Concours d’Elegance
07:36 Themes and Highlights of Concours at Pasadera
15:54 Judging Criteria and Classes
20:46 Rick’s Personal Car Collection
26:20 Notable Moments at Pasadera
31:38 Special Guests and Judges at Pasadera
32:32 The Significance of Event Posters
39:01 Beneficiaries and Sponsors of the Event
41:15 Attending and Participating in Pasadera
45:36 Car Care Tips for Enthusiasts
46:50 Future of the Pasadera Concours
48:53 Final Thoughts and Acknowledgements

Bonus Content

There’s more to this story…

We geek out with Rick Barnett from the Concours at Pasadera about the how the Porsche 914-6 GT took on the infamous Porsche 917 during the 1970 LeMans 24 hours.

Some stories are just too good for the main episode… Check out this Behind the Scenes Pit Stop Minisode! Available exclusively on our Patreon.

Learn More

Details on the 4th Annual Pasadera Concours

If you’re planning on attending the festivities at Monterey this year leading up to Pebble
Beach Sunday, we hope you’ll partake in the exquisitely intimate Pasadera Concours
d’Elegance. Held in the courtyard of the Pasadera golf course community in Monterey,
the Concours benefits a number of charities while celebrating a lovely grouping of cars
ranging from exotics to classics to modern and more. Learn more here The Concours at
Pasadera – The Concours at Pasadera (pasaderaconcours.com) about the first event of Monterey Car Week.

On Friday, August 12^th in Monterey, California, the Pasadera Concours will commence honoring Ferrari’s 75^th Anniversary, the 65^th Anniversary of Laguna Seca, and the Coachbuilders of Ferrari. With awards designed by Tiffany and Co., the event will be awash with vehicles designed by Pininfarina, Zagato, Ghia, Bertone, and so on as well as the Corvette Corral. Exceptional food, music, and intimate surroundings make the Pasadera Concours a truly spectacular event, well worth attending. Learn more here.

To learn more about the Concours at Pasadera be sure to visit www.pasaderaconcours.com and you can follow them on @concourspasadera on Facebook and @pasaderaconcours on Instagram.

Each year, the Concours at Pasadera selects a theme that guides its curation. For 2022, the spotlight was on Ferrari’s coachbuilders and designers—celebrating the 75th anniversary of the iconic marque. From the angular precision of Bertone to the emotional curves of Pininfarina, the event highlighted the diverse influences that shaped Ferrari’s legacy. Visitors could explore everything from a humble Volvo 1800ES (with Ferrari design roots) to multimillion-dollar GTOs flown in from overseas.

4th Annual Concours at Pasadera honors Ferrari’s 75th Anniversary and presents the Coachbuilders of Ferrari.

Pininfarina, Ghia, Bertone, Scaglietti, Zagato and others, designers of Alfa Romeo, Lancia, and Aston Martin to name a few. These masterpieces will be exhibited by decade since the 1950’s. The August 11th Press Party honors Ferrari’s Wins and Class Victories at Le Mans since 1949 and its Formula One 2022 Championships.

Pasadera’s Concours isn’t limited to one brand or era. It features:

The Corvette Corral: 20 handpicked Corvettes spanning from the C1 era to modern C8s.
The Alumni Collection: 20 standout vehicles from past events, chosen for their lasting impact.
Fairway One: A rotating mix of 20 eclectic vehicles—from lifted Blazers to Porsche GT3s—that reflect the spirit of the show.

No more than 100 cars are displayed, ensuring an intimate and immersive experience.

Unlike traditional Concours events that scrutinize every bolt and badge, Pasadera’s judging emphasizes intent, story, and spirit. Cars are grouped by decade, and judges look for vehicles that best represent the emotion and design of their era. The coveted Pasadera Cup, designed by Tiffany & Co., is awarded to the best of show – but once a car wins, it’s retired from future competition.

A Community of Collectors

Rick Barnett’s own collection includes a Porsche 914 2.0, a Bentley Arnage, and an MGB GT- cars chosen not for prestige, but for personal meaning. That philosophy permeates the event. Whether you own a $50 million Ferrari or a $12,000 Barracuda, Pasadera welcomes you. It’s about connection, not competition.

One standout story involves a Ferrari Lusso that was nearly destroyed in a freeway accident. After years of painstaking restoration – including a final push that ended at 1:30 AM the day of the show- the car arrived at Pasadera just in time. The owner, still recovering from injuries, couldn’t attend – but received emotional updates as his beloved car was admired by hundreds.

Looking Ahead at Future Car Weeks

Pasadera continues to evolve, embracing younger audiences and diverse styles. Last year’s Hot Wheels Concours featured everything from full-size replicas to rare die-cast collectibles, drawing kids and collectors alike. It’s a reminder that car culture is for everyone – and its future depends on inclusivity and imagination.

Whether you’re a seasoned collector or a curious newcomer, the Concours at Pasadera offers a gateway into the soul of car culture. It’s not just about horsepower or polish – it’s about stories, legacy, and the joy of sharing the road.

The following content has been brought to you by Garage Style Magazine. Because after all, what doesn't belong in your garage?

Garage Style: How Don Weberg Turned a Sanctuary into a Movement

Don W

July 5, 2022

What started as a freelance writer’s curiosity became a full-blown cultural phenomenon. Don Weberg, founder, editor, and publisher of Garage Style Magazine, didn’t set out to revolutionize how we think about garages—but that’s exactly what he did.

Don’s journey began in Southern California, chasing stories for over 30 automotive publications. But it wasn’t just the cars that caught his eye – it was the garages. Neon signs, vintage tools, pristine floors, and personal touches turned these spaces into sanctuaries. Some were humble two-car setups; others were sprawling warehouses. But each told a story.

One collector, while restoring a 427 Corvette, asked Don why there wasn’t a magazine devoted to garages. That question sparked a realization: Don knew the publishing world well enough to make it happen. And so, in May 2008, Garage Style Magazine was born.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Don’s love for writing emerged early – he was editing his teachers by third grade. Though he initially pursued law, the joy of dissecting Shakespeare in English lit classes won him over. A pivotal internship at MotorTrend led to freelance gigs with Hot Rod, Car Craft, and other Peterson titles. His insider access to LA’s car scene made him a go-to contributor.

Spotlight

Synopsis

The episode explores the fascinating journey of Don Weberg, founder, editor, and publisher of Garage Style Magazine. From his beginnings as a freelance writer to establishing a niche publication dedicated to the ‘garage lifestyle’, Don discusses the motivations behind the magazine and its focus on showcasing unique garages and automotive collectibles. He highlights the magazine’s transition to digital formats due to rising costs and the challenges faced in print distribution. Don also shares his insights on the future of car culture, the evolving automotive market, and the potential of new technologies in the automotive world. The discussion covers memorable garages, stories from his career, and advice on engaging and supporting younger enthusiasts in the car community.

Discuss the founding of GSM – Let’s also explore Don Weberg “the petrol-head” – Car Family, Automotive Journalism, time at Motortrend
What led to publishing your own magazine? Why Garage Style Magazine? What kinds of articles/topics would a new reader to GSM find between the pages?
Tell me about the GSM (Monterey) Garage Tours? What are some of the most famous or fabulous garages that have been reviewed in GSM?
GSM has featured a lot of live car auctions. What’s your thought on the sudden wave of online auctions?
How has the publication changed over its 15+ year run?
What are some upcoming changes to GSM? What do the next 5-10 years look like? Is the magazine going full digital?
How does someone subscribe to GSM? Or Pickup a Copy? (Free or a subscription fee?)
What does the garage of the future look like? What are your thoughts on the EV-olution?

Transcript

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

The Road to Success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story,

Crew Chief Eric: a publication devoted entirely to garages and collections, covering collectibles such as Automobilia, Petroliana, neon, and more, bringing you innovative ideas that make a garage work, such as tools, cabinets, storage solutions, car covers, and lifts as they work in a few lifestyle bits as well, like electronics and other entertainment must haves plus some luxury products like watches, briefcases, handbags, and personal items because after all, what doesn’t belong in your garage.

For over 15 years, the team at Garage Style Magazine has been devoted to bringing car enthusiasts, what’s been missing [00:01:00] from their garages and embracing the garage lifestyle. And joining us tonight on Break Fix is Don Weiberg, founder, editor, and publisher of Garage Style Magazine to explain why you need to add some style to your garage.

Welcome to Break Fix, Don. Thanks. Thanks very much, Eric. Thanks for having me today. Like every good story, there’s an origin. So let’s discuss the founding of Garage Style Magazine. The who? The what, the where, how did it all get started?

Don Weberg: I was a, uh, freelance writer for various magazines. I think I was doing 30 or 40 different publications.

You know how that works. They would send you out to different collectors and say, we want a, an article on this guy’s such and such car. We want an article on that guy’s such and such car. So I’d be going all over Southern California getting different cars and every single one of these guys had an interesting garage.

It was one of those things where you kind of start bubbling in your head. You think there’s something here, there’s something to this, you’re just not quite sure what it is. And one of the guys that I interviewed, very smart guy back in the [00:02:00] valley where I come from back in Los Angeles, were doing his 4 27 Corvette.

He starts asking me all these questions about putting together a magazine and publishing and distributing and editing and on and on it goes. And I realized I’m answering his questions without lying to him, which makes me think, wow, I actually really do know some of this stuff. And he says, you know what I think they should do?

And I said, what’s that? He said, I, I think they ought to do a, a publication about Raja. And I thought. There it is. That’s exactly what I was thinking. I just wasn’t able to say it like he was, because another thing I noticed about a lot of guys in particular, for the most part, they’re kind of shy about things, and their garage is their sanctuary.

They made it, it’s for them. So you have one of two types of guys that run around here. One of ’em is, oh, no, no, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s just my garage. Don’t worry about it. Yeah. And the guy opens it up and it’s a 40,000 square foot warehouse with all the neon you could dream of. And you’re like, dude, this, this is more than a garage.

Well, you know, it’s just my little place. Okay. Then you got the other guy. More like the Jay Leno. [00:03:00] Very outgoing, very happy to share, wants you to see it, wants you to come in here and, and look at it. Do you remember being a little boy and your friend comes over for the first time? What’s the first thing outta your mouth?

You wanna see my room? Do you wanna see my room? Because that’s your little slice of the world, you know, that’s what you made. That’s what your mom and dad gave you, and that’s what you got right there. So you wanna show it off Garage guys go both ways. They’re either very private about it or they’re that little boy he wants to see my garage, wants see my garage, and yeah, I want to see your garage.

That, that’s why we started the magazine. Let’s go see the garage. And then there’s a third guy and, and they’re usually the the worst ones because they’re like you or me, they’re normal guys. They don’t have 40,000 square foot warehouses. They have a two car garage or a three car garage and that’s it. And they’ve decked it out as well as they can.

Those are actually the guys that are hardest to get because, and I’ve heard this a thousand times. I can’t compete with the Jay Lenos of the world, and I’ve gotta remind them this is not a competition. This is a brotherhood. A guy like Jay Leno, or Jay Leno himself, anybody on that [00:04:00] level should be able to walk into your two car or three car garage that you’ve done for yourself.

Appreciate it and I think they do. We do a garage tour up in Monterey during Car Week every year. We haven’t done it for the last couple of years, could of the COVID situation, but it is really, really amazing to watch these subscribers come together and go with us from garage to garage to garage along the Monterey Peninsula during Car Week.

It, it is fabulous because literally some of those subscribers are some of the wealthiest guys you’ll meet on the planet and some of them are not. They’re just regular guys with regular jobs. They happen to love their X, y, Z car and they bring it and we tour all over, but they have a ball. I mean, it is absolutely phenomenal to watch the guy who just graduated college who has an S 2000 Honda really striking up a great conversation with the LA Ferrari guy.

And the La Ferrari guy. Yeah, he just closed a deal buying some country somewhere. I don’t know. [00:05:00] But it, it, it’s really fun to watch that comradery come together. I belong said it’s a one place where a Lamborghini guy and a Ferrari guy, a Camaro guy and a Mustang guy can all get along and put down their competition swords and they just enjoy the garage.

You see that magic? You really do You see the Ferrari guy talking to the Lamborghini guy? Civilly, you know, they’re having a nice conversation. In fact, they might even ask questions of, Hey, I’ve always been curious, why does the Lamborghini do blah, blah, blah? You see it with the Camaro Mustang guys, why does the Mustang do blah, blah, blah?

And you have these nice con conversations going on. You’ll talk to musicians and they’ll tell you about the brotherhood through music. And, and that’s there too. Very, very much so. I see it through cars. You know, I’m a car guy. I’ve been a car guy since day one. And I mean, literally my mother, my father, both of them were car people.

They were drag racers. They built hot rods. They raced up at the salt flats, they raced in the El Mirage, on and on. And I came along and it was sort of like, God, help us. Because my second word in life was supposedly Camaro. [00:06:00] And yet, and yet disappointing to my father. I can’t turn a wrench to save my life.

You want me to change a tire? I’m gonna call aaa. I, I don’t know how to do it. That’s kind of the reader’s digest of how it all came to be, and we put together our first issue. It came out in May of 2008, but yeah, it started out, I just knew a lot of guys with a lot of garages and they knew a lot of other guys with garages and.

I came along with this crazy thought of, let’s put it in a magazine and show everybody else.

Crew Chief Eric: You started talking about your history as a petrolhead, so it starts at a very early age, but let’s also explore how did you get into automotive journalism, and if you wanna name drop some of the magazines you work for.

I think our audience is probably dying to know how do we go from Don in diapers to don the journalist?

Don Weberg: You know, I can’t do math. That was learned early on. Literally four plus four is 16. I, I just, I have no idea how to do math, but I was editing my teachers in the third grade. We all knew then, okay, this, this guy loves to write.

He loves the engineering of language, if you will. [00:07:00] I really do love doing that. So we kind of knew early on I was gonna do something with writing something with language. I wanted to be a lawyer. That was what I was really stepping out to become, was a lawyer and I was in community college studying some pre-law stuff on the other side of the campus.

I was studying writing. I realized, not real quickly, but I realized over time the law professors are all very miserable. They’re very serious. They just don’t seem to be having a good day any day. And then you go over to the other side of campus and there’s all these professors with creative writing, with journalism, with English, with whatever, and they do seem to be having a good time and they are having a good day, especially in some of the English lit classes.

When you start to dissect, let’s just say Shakespeare, ’cause everybody knows Shakespeare. When you start to dissect his work and try to find the interpretation of, what did he mean when he said such and such? It was always interesting to me that you could literally round table your desks with the teacher, toss ideas back and forth as to what [00:08:00] you perceive that meaning to be.

Usually we all had a consensus, but every now and then you’d have something that was way off the wall and you think, whoa, I never saw that, that, that’s really interesting. Now take that to back to the other side of campus to law. What is law? How did you interpret what you read? Oh, wait a minute. We need to re-engineer that language so that you interpret it the way I want you to interpret it.

You see what I’m saying? But the lawyers don’t wanna hear about that. They really don’t. The law professors, they want to hear that I wrote this, and by golly, that’s what I meant. And you are dumb for not interpreting it the way I wrote. So you know who needs that, you know really who needs that? I was doing more and more and more with the journalism side and less and less and less with the law side.

And the next thing you know, I was a full communications major. I took an internship class TV show back in the day called Hard Copy. And that was a lot of fun. That got me into the Hollywood side of things. And then I took another internship that I had to go get myself by literally writing a letter or sending samples to the [00:09:00] editor.

And that was to MotorTrend. C Van Toon was, uh, the editor’s name back then called him. Van called him. We had an interview on a Friday, which if you’ve ever been around a magazine on a Friday, it’s a ghost town. There’s nobody there. So it was literally just him, me and the cleaning lady on the eighth floor went in, had a great interview with him and he put me on his freelance payroll.

I was just here for a free internship and now he’s putting me on the payroll. So that was really kind of the kickoff. And then he and a couple of the other guys at MotorTrend, Matt Stone was one of ’em. Mark William got, Mead was one of ’em. There were a whole bunch of guys who were. Really kind of looking out for me.

They were introducing me all over that building, so I was working for Hot Rod, I was working for a car craft. I was working for, you know, the whole Peterson family, so to say. Yeah. The next thing you know, I mean, before I was even out of that semester, I was already working for something like 15 titles doing different freelance work, and then it just kept going from there.

Being a car guy, I knew where a lot of cars were to Los Angeles, so [00:10:00] there are a lot of cars out there to write about, so I would just start pitching them to editors and the next thing you know, yeah, we want that car. No, we don’t want that car, but can you find us this kind of car? Yeah, no problem. That was kind of how it happened,

Crew Chief Eric: being in the magazine business.

Mm-hmm. Do you find yourself picking up other magazine, enjoying them? If so, what are your favorite magazines?

Don Weberg: Yes, I still really enjoy magazines. I love them. Admittedly, I do get a little bit jealous when I see them having better luck with advertisers than I do. But there’s a flip side, which is you’re actually glad to see it because that means there’s still business for print.

A very good friend of mine who actually helps produce the magazine from time to time, his name is Rick Rader. Rick once had a great one, which is when Mac World stops going into print, I’ll hang up my typewriter. I thought, yeah, that makes sense because Mac World is all about computers. Why is it in print?

The irony of a magazine all about digital and computers. There’s a huge irony in there. It’s actually a little mind blowing when you [00:11:00] look at it and yeah, he had a point when they quit, will quit. Because they know something that we don’t know and we better just follow that leader because we do know technology is gonna take over.

But you know, some of my favorite titles back in the day, MotorTrend was always a great one. Car and Driver I fell in love with. I’ve been reading Car and Driver since day one. Road and Track is a really good one. Rob Report has always captured my heart. In fact, Rob Report in Architectural Digest, believe it or not, or just off the cuff.

I’d say those are probably my two very favorite magazines. And if you look at Garage Style, you’ll notice a lot of design similarities between the two of them, especially older Architectural Digest. Today’s Architectural Digest is really in your face and very design heavy. And I, yeah, I just don’t like it.

It’s just not me. Those are some of the ones that were inspirational. And then you go back in the day, you’ve got Sunset, which is a California magazine. There’s a whole bunch of ’em. And uh, you know, we just moved from California to Texas. In doing so, we found a whole lot of magazines in boxes that I had been hoarding.[00:12:00]

Because I liked them. You know, we had to send ’em the recycler. We couldn’t take them with us. But it was amazing going through there thinking, oh my gosh, I remember this exact issue and this is why I kept it because on page 47 they did a, a review on, you know, it was crazy to me what I remembered about each one of those magazines.

It was really kind of scary. So I guess those would be the inspirers, if you can call it that.

Crew Chief Eric: As part of your career as an automotive journalist, you got to go see different cars and go to different places and, and locations and whatnot. Normally we would ask people, you know, what’s the sexiest car of all time?

In this case, I think, which vehicle that you wrote about is the most memorable or left the biggest impression, or was the biggest wow factor for you having seen so many different vehicles over the years?

Don Weberg: I mean, the first car I ever rode about professionally, if you will, still sticks in my mind. It was a car built by the Messian brothers, hard name, but it’s Messian Brothers.

They’re outta Los Angeles. Huge collectors. They, they’ve got a great body shop. They had a 66 Mustang [00:13:00] Fastback. I have always been a Mustang guy. Fastbacks especially. Theirs was Viper Red with white Limon stripes, very mildly built 3 0 2 under the hood. It was nowhere near what Dearborn had in mind. That car still sticks in my head, is that is still pretty cool right next to it.

Probably the second car I rode about, it was a two 40 Z that had a ZZ four crate engine under the hood. The chassis was completely done. The suspension was completely done. It really was just a vicious, vicious little car. It was spectacular. It was raspberry color. Black interior had these beautiful HR wheels on it.

That car still sticks to my head. I worked with a collector named Bruce Meyer back in the day. He had a spectacular 1956 Mercedes 300 FC that was owned by Clark Gable. That car really, really was something. It was tobacco Brown with a cognac, interior, cognac top stunning, stunning car. That one sticks to my head quite a bit.

I I, I mean the, off the cuff, I, I’d say those are the ones that. Kind of got [00:14:00] me

Crew Chief Eric: for somebody picking up Garage Style Magazine for the first time. What kinds of articles and topics would a new reader find between the pages?

Don Weberg: It really is an Architectural Digest spin because when you open that magazine, you’re gonna see.

A bunch of articles about different garages, different collections, what other people have done to their garage, to their collection. You’re gonna see some great columnists in there. We have guys, like I mentioned before, we have Rick Rader, we do have Matt Stone, who kind of a twist of things, you know, he was my boss back at MotorTrend and then he retired outta MotorTrend, went freelance.

And I called him and said, Hey, you know, would you mind writing for us? I’d love to have your name as part of the publication. And he was happy to do so. We have Phil Berg, who I’ve always considered the, uh, godfather of the Garage movement because he wrote, uh, ultimate Garages. Ultimate Garages, two Ultimate garages.

Three, we’ve got him on board, and then a host of of other great people, Lance Lambert of the Vintage Vehicle Show. Rodney Kemmerer, just great columnists who have different [00:15:00] stories to tell, a lot of variety. It’s not gonna be a lot of tricky reading. I can’t stand tricky journalist who use these big long word, you know, I guess that’s the lawyer in me, in front of a jury.

You never use a $10 word when a $1 word will suffice. And I, I think writing should be very much the same way. It’s not that people are stupid, it’s just why make them keep running back and forth to the dictionary. But I think the meat and potatoes are always going to be the garages. Everyone I’ve ever talked to who’s a subscriber and believe me in the last year, I’ve talked to a lot of them because they wonder where is the magazine.

It always comes down to, you know, one of the warmest things I’ve ever heard is because of your magazine, it made it okay. A lot of people made fun of me because I had this crazy collection of cars, or this crazy collection of signs, or this beautiful garage that’s much better than my house itself. Your magazine proved to me that it was okay, that there are other guys out there who are doing the same thing and then some to their spaces and, and it’s okay to be all about, you know, making your space look like this.

[00:16:00] And I think that’s the big inspire for me to keep going is I hear from these people all the time and they’re always telling me their stories. We have that I know of, there’s probably 10 people that keep in touch with me and they’ve been building their garage over the last five years. I keep telling ’em, let’s photograph it, let’s put it in the magazine.

Let’s do this. And they don’t want to. It’s not done yet. They don’t want to. It’s not done yet. And I’m like, it’s never gonna be done. It is like restoring a car, man. You get done with that restoration. Ah, there’s no such thing as done with the restoration because that car is gonna keep needing something or you’re gonna see something you wanna do to it and you know it’s never gonna be done.

You just have to jump in the pool and do it. So what are they gonna see? They’re gonna see a lot of great garages. They’re gonna see a lot of inspiration. They’re gonna get a lot of inspiration from those columnists I mentioned. Our advertisers are fabulous because they have products that maybe don’t really fit into car and driver, or they don’t fit into classic motorsport or they don’t fit into any of these A-list magazines that [00:17:00] we all love.

But if it’s in garage style, and it’s not that we’re not an Alister. We’re not because we’re not popular thanks to Carrie, our designer. We have the design. She has laid this thing out, incredibly beautiful, beautiful publication. The way she’s laid it out, the paper is fantastic. When we had paper, now we’re going digital, so we’re gonna have to do an annual yearbook thing, but we’ve hit the nail on the head by just bringing you a lot of different garages.

You know, when we first started, it was funny. We all kind of wondered, are we gonna run outta garages? Seriously? Are we gonna run outta garage? No. I, I, I gotta tell you, no, it was crazy because. We had our little sphere of people that we knew with garages. Well, the one guy, he knows five more guys and this guy knows five more guys.

So there’s 10 guys right there. It’s like that old perk commercial, you know? It just keeps going and going and going. We ended up having way too many garages to photograph. We still have them. We still have a lot of garages that we haven’t published because we hang out a room and it, and it’s [00:18:00] all inspiring.

People see things differently and I think they see what appeals to them. You know, we had one gentleman, he actually got the cover this years ago. He sold that property, but Fantastic garage. What was funny was. He always knew he wanted to build a garage. He just wasn’t sure where to start, how to do it, da da da da da.

Reading garage style. He was a subscriber for three years and in reading all those three years of, which is only six issues, but in reading those six issues, he figured out what he wanted in his garage. He figured out the look he wanted in the garage. And boy, you talk about meticulous, he brought stuff to my attention that I had never even thought of before.

The design of the garage, for example, looking at the outside, you have your garage doors. I think there were five of them, and then there’s a second floor with the eaves that come out on the windows. You know, it looks like a house. Well, there’s three of those. So you have three and five. Okay. I didn’t think anything about it.

Until he pointed out to me, [00:19:00] if you do four or six, it’s gonna be out of balance. And I said, well, how’s it out of balance when you have two on one side or three on one side? He says, well, you outta balance because there’s no center. If you have five, you have the center, you have this one in the middle, and you still have the two on the other side, you’ve got two and then one.

And if you look at nature, look at a tree branch. It usually has three or five or seven little branches coming off of it, not eight or six or four. I never thought about that. So then he starts pointing out in previous magazines, yeah, I saw this guy here and he did it in, you know, threes. And then this guy here, he did it in fours and I didn’t like and I thought, oh my gosh.

So people see what they want to see. I just hope it really inspires them. ’cause that was kind of the whole point.

Crew Chief Eric: So let’s take this in the other direction. You mentioned as we began the conversation about the Monterey Garage tours, and you kind of think about that and maybe go, is this Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, you know, as presented in their [00:20:00] garages.

Right. So let’s talk about those tours. What are some of the most famous or maybe fabulous garages that you’ve reviewed as a result of that? I mean, the, the Garage

Don Weberg: Tour started out as you know, that was just one of those things where, again, I have an idea, let’s try this. And it worked. You know, it would, I, I don’t know if you like the movie Wayne’s World or um, where the Line actually came from, but if you build it, they will come.

We started putting together this garage tour. We had all the connections up in Monterey. We had the restaurant, we had the people, we had the garages, and we thought, you know what? Come, you know, I’ll put it together if you guys will come. Holy cow. Our first tour, I think we had, it was a little over a hundred people that showed up for our first tour.

Second tour was pretty much the same. Third tour dropped off to about 70 people and, and you talk about herding cats, I mean, you’re literally telling people, okay, we’re gonna meet at this restaurant. We’re gonna have a little breakfast, you’re gonna get a map, and you’re gonna use your own car to go run around the Monterey Peninsula.

And most of these guys have never been to Monterey, [00:21:00] or they’ve never seen Monterey outside of downtown. They’ve never gone exploring. So most of us don’t know where we are, which turned out to be really fun. You know, here I am fretting, being nervous about, oh my God, they’re gonna get lost. What are we gonna do?

No, no, no, no, no. It was a good thing that some of them did get lost because they came out with their own stories. We found the coolest road over there, and there’s an old barn and there’s a dog and that, you know, they, they were just having a ball. There’s a lot of garages that I’ve seen that are magnificent.

A lot of ’em up in Monterey, a ton of them down in Los Angeles. There’s a lot right here in Texas. One that comes to mind as mind blowing. I mean, absolutely over the top. Yeah. Jay Leno. His garage is unbelievable. There’s one here in Texas. You can look it up online, you can Google it. It’s called the Hemi Hideout.

It’s insanity. It is absolute insanity. The man built this garage. I forget how big it is, but it, it’s got a cap, you know, that rises all the way up to the top. It has a pure [00:22:00] barbecue, not just a barbecue pit, but I mean, literally you’ve gotta hire barbecue pit masters to come run this thing. That’s how big it is.

I, I don’t know how many Hemi Cudas they built, but this guy’s gotta have a third of them. I mean, it’s just in, yeah, and then it goes on from there. He’s got Hemi Corts and Hemi Chargers and Hemi, I mean, anything from the Mopar family back in that late sixties, early seventies kind of genre. He’s all over it.

And the neon, oh my God. They literally had to start building posts that don’t hold any weight. They’re not structural posts. They were strictly because we needed something to bolt the neon to. I mean that that’s how much neon these guys are buying it. It, it’s just absolutely incredible what this man has built.

That’s probably the one that stands out the most is the Hemi Hideout.

Crew Chief Eric: Normally we would ask a pit stop question, like, if you had a three car garage, what three cars would you put in it? If money was no object, things like that. Let’s flip it around a little bit and say, you know, not of the big celebrity [00:23:00] ones, but maybe of more the regular guy kind of garages.

What’s your favorite three car garage that you’ve come across?

Don Weberg: Ooh, that’s a loaded question. There’s a lot of great three car garages out there. You know, people don’t realize what they can do to a three car garage. They see the Jay Leno garages, they see the Bruce Meyer garages, they see the Hemi Hideouts of the world, and they get a three car, and they think, well, there’s not much I can do here, but it’s not true.

Let’s just take Jay Leno for example, if you’ve ever seen his garage, he has these posters. What are they? Eight, 12 feet tall? They’re huge. Okay, that’s not gonna work in my garage. But if you look at his posters, they are original art, usually advertising art. He has blown up and sometimes he’s had the custom painted, so the car, the color matches what his car is.

So that’s pretty cool. We can’t do that. Regular guys can’t do that. We don’t have that kind of garage. I’ve got a few out 1 24 that’s been, I mean, that’s like a marriage. 28 years that’s been with me. I have [00:24:00] whole many original advertisements from magazines. You know, they’re eight and a half by 11, but I can frame that and hang it on the wall.

I can plaster my wall with 60 or 70 of those little ads, or I can blow ’em up, make ’em a little bit bigger, and then I can have three or four. Kind of like Jay Leno does. They’re bigger, they’re

Crew Chief Eric: more

Don Weberg: impressive.

Crew Chief Eric: Of all the garages you came across, which held the best secret, it was totally unassuming from the outside and you opened it up and you were like, holy smokes.

Don Weberg: I hate to say this to all the people who’ve been in the magazine. My apologies. This garage has never been in the magazine. It is owned by a 93-year-old man. He is fantastic. He’s a former designer for Ford. He worked on the Thunderbird project. He worked on the Lincoln Mark two project. He worked on the Mustang briefly.

It’s incredible the stories this guy will tell, and when you look at him, you really don’t think much about him. He just looks like a little old man with an old mobile todo. His garage is in South Pasadena, and it is by far my favorite garage. [00:25:00] It is sixties James Bond style. He’s very sixties oriented, so he is very into that modern architecture.

The colder James Bond style. What he is got is an office building that’s like a shoebox. It’s just a long rectangle, but it’s suspended and below it, that’s where you park. So back when it was an office building back in the sixties, you know it’s California real estate’s really expensive. So you gotta be creative as to how you’re gonna do this building.

So what they do is just lift the building up, make everybody park underneath it and you’re fine. Well, he, I don’t know how else to say it except for here’s the length of the building. He cut it at about the three quarter mark. So that three quarters is his home. Below it is his garage. This one quarter, he rents out his office space, and below that is their parking space suspended.

So you have free flow air going through. Well, you can’t have that when you got collector cars. So he put glass walls up and then he planted a whole lot of ivy and Shuggy, and he put some nice [00:26:00] landscape lighting in there. So when you’re in the garage and that landscape lighting is lit, you don’t see the glass.

All you see are the plants, the foliage and the lights, and then of course the cars. And of course the lighting he’s got on the ceiling, which is the floor to his house. ’cause you’re under it now. It’s all very sixties style. It’s all very spot. It’s all very, you know, you, it’s all concrete. Everything in there is concrete.

There’s nothing, you know, there’s nothing warm and fuzzy about that garage. It’s very cold. It’s very calculated. It is spectacular. And every time I talk to him, you know, when are we gonna do your garage? When are we gonna do your garage? Well, you know, I need to move this car or I gotta move that car, right?

And I’m like, what do you need? You need guys to help. I can get guys, trust me, good guys who won’t talk, they’ll do their job and you know, that’s it. Well, we can do it that way. It’s incredible working with this guy because you talk about smarts. It, it’s incredible where he’s been. But, but yeah, he would, he would probably be the one I I like the most [00:27:00] now his house.

Oddly enough, we featured his house, not his garage, but the house. Yeah, it’s incredible. The house. He must have two, 3000 die cast toy cars in his house. All in displays. They’re absolutely meticulous, you know, above his mantle, above his fireplace, where most people have a nice, beautiful work of art or something.

No, no. He has a big Mercedes grill. That’s what he’s got yet. He’s got an EAMS chair, he’s got the, the boomerang table. He, I mean, it is spectacular, if you like modern furniture. My wife, she’s not a big fan of modern furniture, so she sees this place and she thinks, eh, throw it to the junky yard. And I’m like,

Crew Chief Eric: outside of all the magazine and the tours and all this.

Bra Style Magazine has also featured live car auctions, so I wanted to talk about that a little bit and also get your thought on all the sudden wave of online auctions and the craziness that’s been going on over at Bring A Trailer.

Don Weberg: Let’s start with the classics. We’ll start with what Kom, Eric Jackson start with.

You know the guy who’ve been there, done that [00:28:00] for years and years and years. I don’t think they’re going anywhere. When COVID started, that was big trouble for auctions. Huge trouble because all of a sudden we can’t have an auction. And I’ll tell you, there was one company out there, it was rm I think it that.

I remember they had an auction coming up and it was something like the government shut everything down and four days later. RM had this auction starting. So you talk about, oh my dad, how do you hit the brakes on this and turn everything around? RM was brilliant. They simply turned to digital. They turned the entire auction digital in four days.

Incredible. But I think in doing that, they showed everybody else in the auction community, we don’t have to stop. We just have to change how we’re doing business. And I think the ones who moved faster, they were able to follow that flow and they got smarter from it. You know, you look at Mecu for example, they’ve always had the online and the phone bidding as well as the in-person bidding.

This just made them focus more heavily on their digital side. You know, they’ve got a beautiful [00:29:00] magazine too. They took it all digital. They got rid of all their print to save money, because now they’re not making the kind of money they used to. Well, then over the hill, they realize we’re actually making more money because we don’t have the overhead anymore.

We’re not traveling anymore. We’re not going here, we’re not going there. We’re not renting these spaces, renting these tents, hiring all these people, flying the people. No, no, no. It’s all online. And then they started realizing we’re making money by saving money. And I think that made them much, much smarter in the long run.

Bring a trailer was just incredible. You know, here you got a couple of guys who were messing around online. My understanding is they were passing you look at this car for sale and look at this car for sale. They’re just passing cars back and forth. They made a platform where they could do that with each other, and the next thing you know, they’re spinning it off into a world famous bring a trailer.

You know, it’s incredible what those guys built and it inspired other companies to pop up. As you know, even the big gorilla in the printing room, Hemmings. [00:30:00] When Hemmings started their auction, it was, it was an obvious sign of, okay, there’s plenty of work for everybody. There’s plenty of cars and you’re gonna go to the platform you like.

You know, it seems like the younger guys seem to appreciate bring a trailer. I think that’s ’cause just a younger hipper group that runs that crowd. Now you got the older guys too who are looking at Hemmings saying, well thank God Hemmings came along. ’cause there’s somebody I can talk to. You know, and, and they can, they can go enjoy that.

I don’t think they’re going anywhere either. There’s another platform out there called Shift Gate. Have you heard of that one? They’re coming out of the woodwork and I don’t think they’re gonna go anywhere. I think this is the new wave, whether or not the wave will kind of plateau. Plateau, yeah. I don’t know.

I, I think it will just like any business, it’s just a question of who are the survivors gonna be? Who’s gonna merge with who? I know the big guys have it. I know Bear Jackson does it. I know Mecu does it. Uh, you know, rm, a lot of these guys do the Automobilia auctions and yeah, we’re all about cars, and cars are what bring us together, but the automobilia, that’s the [00:31:00] jewelry on the beautiful person you’re looking at.

That’s the little eccentricities that we need to have in our garage. I wish we could come up with a dedicated platform for Automobilia Auctions, and they do have them. I mean, there’s automobilia.com, which is three or four auctions a year as pure Automobilia. Nobody knows about it. I mean literally, I, I’ve been in rooms with guys who do nothing but collect automobilia.

They have no idea who automobilia.com is. No clue. Nothing, none. You’ve got guys like Rockabilly auction. I think they do a once a year situation and it, it’s fabulous. The stuff that they bring to market, there’s a lot of ’em out there that are a little bit under the radar, and I wish they weren’t. They are really the automobilia people.

And if you look at it, automobilia just keeps going up. Don’t tell my wife. But I have signs that I bought when I was in high school, just getting on my car, going down to the Pomona swap meet. I see a sign that catches my eye and I tell, yeah, how much is that sign? The guy said, oh, 40 bucks, it’s your, and I said, holy [00:32:00] cow.

40 bucks for a high school said that. That said, that’s too much money. You know? So you go and you, you run the whole gamut and you come back and that sign is still there six hours later. So you go to the old man, you say, here’s what I got. I got $27 and 50 cents. It’s all yours. I just want that sign. What do you say?

Ah, yeah, sure kid. Get it outta here. I don’t wanna haul it home Anyway. Perfect. Okay, great. So I got my $27 sign today. That sign is now worth about 10 grand. Where did that come from? The damn thing is just hanging on my wall doing nothing but collecting dust and making me happy. ’cause I get to look at it and I remember the little story of the old man who sold it to me, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

Crew Chief Eric: So I attribute some of that to the popularity of shows like American Pickers. And a lot of people may not realize that, you know, they go, oh, it’s History Channel. Uh, I don’t wanna watch. That’s for old people. But what they may not realize is both the Wolf Brothers, they are very much petrolhead. That show actually caters to our community and they go after petroleum and automobilia and even cars sometimes.

And I find that show fascinating. [00:33:00] But I also, to your point, I look at the prices that they throw out there and you know, it’s always kind of funny when they show you the markup too, and you’re like, really? Okay? But I get it. You know, some of those signs that he finds. And he, and he’s got it all in his head, cataloged.

I don’t know how he keeps track of all this stuff, but he is like, this is a $10,000 sign. Granted it needs $4,000 worth of restoration or, or whatever have you. Mm-hmm. By proxy, they have exposed a larger audience of folks to that world. And maybe that’s why they go, Hey, well if he has that sign, I gotta Sinclair sign too, so mm-hmm.

So maybe it is worth 10 grand and suddenly all the prices go up.

Don Weberg: Yeah. I, I think the shows have a lot to do with it. And, you know, it ricochets too. It, it’s not just in the sign and petroleum. It’s not just in the gas and oil. Look at the cars. Quick little story. I promise I’m in my favorite place in the world.

The gas station gassing up my car and I hear, you know, an older V eight pulling in. So I, I gotta look, you know. Well, what is that? Well, it’s one of my favorite cars and you’re gonna laugh ’cause I don’t think too many people like these cars. But it was, it was a 70 [00:34:00] Chevy Nova, a little coop, just perfect jet Black, black interior, white wall tires, 3 54 barrel automatic console.

I mean, just mind boggling. This car. It was so well done. I thought it had been restored and they put the console in and they put, you know, they made it look like this. The guy driving the car was about my age. The car was his father’s car, still his father’s car. His father bought a brand new right there in Fullerton where we lived.

The father couldn’t drive anymore. So the son comes over and he exercises the cars and, you know, takes them out. Original paint, original upholstery, original console. Everything in that car was stock, original. I said, holy cow, you got, does he want sell? I mean, it doesn’t seem like he wants to sell. He said, well, I, I don’t think so, but gimme your phone number and I’ll, you know, I’ll take it to him.

Okay, great. So I give him my card, I’ll my info on it. Not a week goes by and I get a call. It’s the son and he says, you know, we think we do want to sell. And I’m thinking, oh my God, he actually wants to sell that thing. You know, how much do you want for it? And I’m, I’m cheap, [00:35:00] I admit it, but I’m thinking in the back of my head, you know.

Five to 8,000 bucks. That’s what I’m thinking, you know? Wow. He says, we want 75,007 70 what? 75,000? He says, well, we just got through watching the, uh, Barrett Jackson auction, and we saw Black Nova go through and, and it went for 200,000. So we’re thinking, I said, yeah, let me guess that Black Nova had a stripe down the side, and on the back it said, Yanko.

Yes, yes. You know that car? I said, yes, I know that car. Believe me, you don’t have a yanko. And I’m not trying to downplay your car. I want that car. Trust me, it’s no yanko. Yanko is something very, very different in the Chevy world, in any world, you know? Well, that’s what we want. We want 75,000. So good luck with that.

You know, as far as I know, they still have the car. So ricochets, you know, they watch these auctions, they watch these TV shows, like American Pickers. They watch whatever. And you know, they come up with these crazy numbers and, and I don’t know where they’re getting ’em from. I really don’t. But it’s funny. I look at my sign and I think, would I sell it?

Well, [00:36:00] I don’t know. If somebody came up with the money, yeah, I’d probably let it go. I think I’d be foolish not to. But what am I gonna get? Let’s say I do get 10 grand for that sign. The investment potential is fantastic. I had to wait 30 years for it to hit that number. So I don’t know how investors would see that.

For me to just get 10,000 bucks for something that’s just hanging on the wall. That’s pretty good. What do I do now? Where am I gonna find another sign? What am I gonna do? Am I, you know, you see what I’m saying there? There’s, there’s a moment where it just all stops.

Crew Chief Eric: I think the underlying point here is that because our cultural dynamic has changed, thanks to the proliferation of social media and internet access and all this kind of stuff, the audiences have become larger and to your point, it becomes tit for tat.

I mean, that’s why I refer to the craziness that over at Bring a Trailer where you see cars going for astronomical amounts. It’s like, where did you come up with this number? It’s insane. Also, in the 15 years that Garage Style Magazine [00:37:00] has been around, you’ve also seen a big change. And so how have you seen the market shift and how do you see it continue to change garages and the magazine itself as we kind of look

Don Weberg: forward?

It definitely has changed. You know, like I say, back in the day when we first started, and that was 2000. When our first magazine came out, so not that long ago, but long enough to have seen the market go a little crazy. I, I don’t think the prices are gonna come down on Automobilia. I, I really don’t. I, I don’t see how it’s gonna happen.

I think it’s gonna keep evolving. You know, there was a time when we all ran out there and we bought little hood ornaments or radiator mascots, and, you know, that was what we collected. Well, the next thing you know, those are suddenly becoming very, very expensive. So you think, okay, well what do I collect now?

Oh, I’m gonna go collect steering wheels. Okay, so you go start buying all these steering wheels. The next thing you know, every other guy on the planet also started collecting steering wheels. We we’re very predictable people. We all kind of follow those same patterns. Yeah. [00:38:00] Somehow the signs started going crazy.

They just started going nuts.

Crew Chief Eric: There is a question I wanna ask you, Don, the Petrolhead, which goes right in line with things evolving, which is what does the garage of the future look like and what are your thoughts on the evolution?

Don Weberg: Ah, the evolution. I like that. Yeah. All car on the table here. I have evolved.

I used to hate the the Prius. I used to hate all these hybrids and whatever. Now I love ’em. I really do. I’ve driven enough of ’em to realize, wow. I mean, yeah, okay, you’re getting 50, 60 miles at the gallon. Now granted, you can argue back. Yeah, but my 85 Civic did that too. Yes. It did and, and it did it just fine.

Would you rather be in a modern Honda Civic hybrid when you get hit by A GMC Denali or your 85 Civic? I’d rather be in the modern one ’cause it knows how to handle a hit much better than that 85 Civic ever did. The only reason the 85 Civic does so well is it weighs nothing. That was the magic. And of course [00:39:00] the aerodynamic.

And I’m not, I’m not trying to pick on Honda or anything. I’m just saying I, I like ’em, you know, I’m a Mustang guy. I told you that early on. I do like the Mach e get used to it ’cause that’s where it’s going.

Crew Chief Eric: I like the fact that you didn’t call it by its full name. And I, I hope that’s for the same reasons the rest of us don’t call it that way.

The Mustang Mach. Yeah.

Don Weberg: Yeah. A lot of people. Yeah. You know, it’s funny, I get that all the time. It’s not a Mustang, it’s not a Mustang. I, I think it is. I, I really do. It doesn’t look like a Mustang, but it’s what’s gonna save the brand. If you look at the, not that I want to take this down that road, but if you look at what sales have been doing with Mustangs, slowly, very slowly, they have been going down.

They still have a great young demographic buying those cars, and that’s what you need. But for the most part, you’re still looking at a $45,000 car. Not many young guys can afford a 45, or young people can afford a $45,000 car. And when they look at 45,000, they think, would I want a Mustang or do I just wanna slip over to the BMW dealer [00:40:00] and see what they’ve got?

You know, there’s a lot of really nice cars in that market. I, I think with Ford doing what they’re doing is very smart. They’ve given the car five doors, they’ve made it very versatile. It is actually a pretty quick car. It does handle very nicely. It is a smart little car. I, I think it’s where we need to go.

I really do. Uh, I like Tesla. I didn’t like them when they first came out. I, I thought, oh, you gotta be kidding. It’s a vacuum cleaner with a leather seat. You know, today it’s a different story. I’ve written in enough of them. I’ve driven a couple of ’em, and I think, ho ho, wait, wait, what have I been missing here?

You know, you can always say, okay, zero to 60, and what does the plaid do? I think it’s like 2.2 seconds or something. It’s psychotic. How quick that stupid car is, when’s it gonna be to a point to where you’re at, your destination before you left? I mean, there’s a physics thing going on here. Scotty’s gotta figure that out

Crew Chief Eric: still, you know, he’s working on it.

Don Weberg: It’s not gonna work. But, you know, I like ’em. I, I really do. I, I and I, and I think, I’m not sure, but I think these are the kind of cars that are going to keep your dusenberg and your classic [00:41:00] Mustangs and your classic whatever’s kind of on the road. But I do think it’s gonna make gas 12 $15 a gallon because there’s just not as many people needing that fuel.

As there used to be. So the prices are gonna go up, you know, we gotta be prepared for that as car people. Uh, but you know, my thought is if you’re a car guy, you’re a car guy, and this car just happens to be battery operated or it uses both the engine and the battery, you know, but when you’ve got Ferrari and Corvette and Lamborghini looking, you straight down the eye saying, we’re gonna do a hybrid, you know, mind blowing.

And Mustang is right up there in the front doing it already. It, it’s where we’re going. And I, I think it’s a way to engage with younger people, not that they’re any cheaper. These, these hybrids, these Mustang Tesla, forget about, those are very expensive cars. The automobile, when it first started was a very expensive car.

It took years to figure out how to make it cheaper. And uh, you know, a couple of guys like Henry Ford who figured out, you know, if I use the crates that the engines came in, I can use the [00:42:00] floorboard. You know, he was ingenious. That way. He would use different pieces to make the car cheaper, cheaper, cheaper.

Next thing you know, we’re all on the road. We’re all enjoying it, but. Way back then, that technology was very, very expensive. It was reserved for the wealthy few, and that’s what we’re watching right now. We’re watching the Teslas and we’re watching, here goes Ford again. They’re making it less expensive.

You got a $50,000 car that can do almost everything a regular Tesla will do, not a plaid. It’s where we’re going and I think we need to not resist it. I think we need to embrace it. You know, look at me. I, I was resisting going digital with the magazine until I was literally run off the road by the price.

I couldn’t afford it anymore. Now look at me now I’m embracing the digital ’cause I have to, and I’m starting to really enjoy it. I’m starting to love. You see what I’m saying? So there is that evolution. There is something going on there. The garage of the future. A lot of people talk about that. You know, that a lot of people wonder, are we gonna have chargers in our garage?

Or what’s the future? Behold, we don’t know. You know, we really, really [00:43:00] don’t know. Our gas stations still gonna be around, where are we going? I think the most innovative thing I I’ve seen came from Rolls Royce, and it was a long time ago. It was, uh, a plate. It was very interesting. I don’t know how many they built.

I know they built one and they showed it to a lot of their different customers around the world. So they flew this car all over the world to show people, I believe it was a full electric Rolls Royce. Now, the technology, the future Rolls Royce really knocked it outta the park. They had a plate. It’s literally a flat plate.

It lays on your garage floor. You pull the rolls right over the top of it. You turn it off, you walk away. Bam. That plate is now charging the card battery. When I first heard about this, I thought, this is crazy. How are they doing it? Well, do you have a little pad that you can put your cell phone on and it charges it?

It’s the same exact technology. It’s just a lot more powerful. It’s plugged right into the hard wire of the house. It’s right there. So all the Rolls-Royce customers, nobody wanted it. [00:44:00] Nobody was interested in it. So Rolls-Royce shelved it. They said, nah, we’re not gonna do this in the background. You watch all the high luxe makers, that’s what they’re working on.

They’re working on technology that is very similar to that Royce technology. You don’t have to think about, oh, I gotta plug in my car. No, you pull your car in, you walk away, you’re done. Your car is charging. That’s it. It doesn’t have to stay in the garage. What’s the big problem right now? You know, a lot of the car guys I talk to, I tell them I want a Tesla.

Well, you can’t even drive to Vegas from la. Well, no you can’t. But there’s Chargers along the way and superchargers. Yeah, but it takes so long to charge it. Yeah, it does. But you know, you have yourself a Coke and get some Cheetos and talk to some people and you’ll be fine. You know, I don’t really worry about, yeah, it takes me five minutes to fill up my car with gas versus.

An hour to charge up the Tesla. I don’t think about that because it’s gonna get faster. I mean, let me ask you this. In the golden days, how long did it take to fill up a car? Where were all the gas stations? Oh, you didn’t [00:45:00] have many of them. You had to go place to place to place. In fact, I remember a story.

One of the garage owners, his father was a young man in 1934 ish, somewhere in there, and he was a car guy, loved his cars, and a guy in the neighborhood, well a guy in the town bought a V 16 Cadillac and oh, he was just blown away by this thing. That engine was, you know, a football field long, and it was just incredible.

The engineering behind that car. The gentleman hired him to just take care of the car, you know, keep it clean, keep it polished, whatever. He was thrilled to be taking care of a big V 16 Cadillac. You know, the hilarity of that car was because there was no gas station in town, you had to drive 30 miles to the next gas station.

Hello. It’s a V 16 Cadillac. It’s not gonna get there and back on one tank and be able to go anywhere else. So the funny thing was they had a little model T pickup that they had barrels and they’d go 30 miles out and they’d fill these barrels up with gas for the Cadillac [00:46:00] to feed the ca. I mean, but you see what I’m getting at?

We have Teslas that can’t make it to Vegas yet. What about the technology, the cell technology? Can you charge a car from space? Can you use satellite technology? Are they working on that? We don’t know. I haven’t read anything about it. I mean, that was, that

Crew Chief Eric: was the original Nicola Tesla idea was to send electricity without wires, right?

Yeah. So we may, and he proved that it did work. There was a town in out in the southwest or something that he had set up, or Colorado or something like that. And it does work, but it’s never been replicated ever since. For reasons unknown, probably because we all glow in the dark or something afterwards, or who knows.

Don Weberg: But yeah, who knows? But why couldn’t you put that on municipalities? I’m gonna park my car right here on this street. I gotta pop into that store right over there. Okay? Now your quarter’s no longer a quarter. You gotta pay a dollar, but under your car is one of those plates and it’s charging your car. So that’s what you’re paying for.

You’re not paying for the space that right now we’re paying for what? What? Why do we [00:47:00] pay parking meters? I don’t wanna get into it, but now I see a value to it. You know, if I’ve got an electric car that needs a buzz, okay, I’ll pull over to the, you know, the local coffee shop and I’ll grab a cup of coffee while my car gets a little buzzed.

You know, no big deal. Why couldn’t we do that? That could be all over the place. I think the fear factor that I’ve got when it comes to the electric cars, and I don’t wanna make this all political, but we have a lot of government push telling us, Hey, by 2030 we’re all electric. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

The governor back in California, I think it was Governor Brown, said, we’re not gonna build any more power grids. We’re done. We’re not building power grids. And we, and, and, and you know, back then California’s population was still on an upswing. Now it’s on a downswing here nor there. If you’re gonna force everybody to have an electric car, you gotta back up the infrastructure.

Otherwise, we’re gonna be living in the dark ages. It doesn’t matter. I have an electric car. I can’t go anywhere because I can’t charge it. I can’t even watch who’s the boss on my TV because I have no electricity, because we’re in a full blackout state. That’s [00:48:00] my fear factor. It it’s the government thing, you know?

Let it take its course. We’re getting there. The manufacturers are getting there. I don’t think the governments need to push the button any harder than they already are. Yeah. I, I really don’t. Uh, and I get it, everybody worried about greenhouse gases and global warming, et cetera, and that’s fine. We do need to be concerned with that to a degree, but I don’t think we need to be forcing it down people’s throats.

Everybody go electric. Everybody, if it’s trendy, it’s gonna bite you in the butt. But if it’s doing it gradually over time, that’s when you’re gonna have success in the market. And because everything has a chance to come together and support all the different inner workings of it, you have a chance to put the plates in the ground.

But before you put the plates in the ground, let’s build a couple more grids, you know, to make sure there’s plenty of power being generated. And let’s not get into how those grids operate. You know? ’cause that’ll just confuse the issue. But, so the future of garages, I think it’s gonna come unless there’s something.

Out there that will make money and prevent us from doing it. I [00:49:00] think we’re going to have technology like that plate. I think we’re gonna be able to come home, charge a car right there. You know, Disney, ge, way back in the fifties and sixties, they had the House of the Future and basically it was an electric stove.

Yeah, I mean that was what it boiled down to. The house was fully electrified and the, if you’ve been to the CES show, the Consumer Electronics Show, oh my God. Now they call them smart houses. I gotta tell you, this thing has a PhD from Harvard. It’s so smart, you know, it knows when to turn on the lights, turn off the lights.

I, I don’t remember who it was, but they had this beautiful display of a house at Las Vegas in the CES show. This thing knew when the grid was getting weak, so it would reduce itself and it would move over to solar or wind. It would find the power source it needed. To keep going. Okay. Why can’t a car find the source?

It needs to keep going. If we’ve got these plates in the ground, why do I have to park? I’m [00:50:00] driving along over the ground, those plates could be there, puling my car, just keeping me going. It becomes like

Crew Chief Eric: a slot car at that point. Right,

Don Weberg: exactly. It’s just constantly puling your car and you’ve got it in the future.

You know, will we have these plates in our garages? Yeah. I think it’s very possible that we, that we will Honestly, though, I, I think the garage is one of the most classically protected situations you can have. What can you do to it? What’s it for? Parking your car in there. Let’s say we get into a situation that a lot of people have been talking about.

Nah, we don’t need cars. We’re gonna have automated driving. You know, we’re gonna have cars that come and get you when you need a car. Think of Uber without the driver. They called it Johnny Cab in total recall. Exactly, exactly right. Thank you for writing Johnny Cab. That’s exactly right. You’ve got a Johnny Cab situation, a society running on Johnny Cab.

Do we need the garage anymore? I mean, I guess Johnny Cab needs to be serviced too. That’s up to the company to have their little garage and service all the Johnny Cabs, [00:51:00] not you and me. We won’t need it anymore because we have the village bicycle to get around. So, yeah. What is the future? I I, I think it’s classically protected for a while.

You know, the signage, et cetera. I don’t think that’s gonna go away. I don’t think it’s gonna slip, but I think the dynamics are gonna shift. Have you ever seen a guy’s garage with a Tesla sign? I haven’t, but I want one. Why? It’s a car sign. Why wouldn’t I want it? We have Shell Oil, we have Chevron, we have the mobile Pegasus hanging on our wall.

Now, who are gonna be providing the electricities for those cars later on? Are we gonna have their signs on our wall? Are they gonna be sharing space with Chevron shell, et cetera? I’m surprised all the big oil companies are still okay. They haven’t done anything. You know, here we are forcing electrified cars down people’s throats.

The gas companies are okay with it. I haven’t seen one retort from a gas company. I don’t know why. It’s kind of shocking to me because you gotta think these are the same people who, oh wait, no, they didn’t do it. I can’t say that, but you [00:52:00] know, we had the red line in Los Angeles way back in the day. One day there, everybody’s got transportation.

One day gone. They were just gone. Why was it? Well, everybody ran out and blamed the oil companies, which, yeah, okay. Maybe that was part of it. The real scuttlebutt though, was not the oil companies, it was the rubber companies, because you’re not burning up your tires the way you should. We gotta sell tires.

And if you’re running around on that red line, you’re not gonna burn up your tires as, as fast as we need you to burn up those tires. So we’re just gonna make sure that goes away. And there it goes. Yeah, you gotta plate in your garage. How long is that gonna last? Because we don’t want you to cause a brown out.

You know, I, I don’t know whether the future’s gonna go and I’m, I’m sorry if I’m taking this to kind of a negative. It is very Johnny Cab. It is very total recall. It is very, we don’t know what the future actually holds. So Hollywood makes movies about it to, Ooh, look at that. I guess we have to just wait and see, right?

I think so. Yeah. I, I mean, I’m sorry to sound so vague about it, but. You know the, like I say, the most sophisticated thing I’ve [00:53:00] seen so far is that plate from Rolls Royce. I, I think that was absolutely fantastic what they did.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s put a positive spin on this though, Don. What can people do now to affect car culture and keep it alive and vibrant?

Don Weberg: That’s a really

Crew Chief Eric: broad

Don Weberg: question. You know, there’s a lot of things that you can do and I think we’re doing it, we just don’t even know we’re doing it. You know, the car culture, like we were talking way early in the conversation about the garage tour. We’ve got the Lamborghini guys talking with the Honda guys who are talking with the Mustang guys, who are, you know, they’re all interacting, you know, money has no object.

We don’t, you know, yeah, we’re all impressed by the big Ferrari sitting outside, but the guy with the Ferrari is equally impressed with the Honda. For whatever reason, and right there, okay, that’s economics. But you’ve got a guy with a Honda who maybe feels a little bit better, not that he should feel bad, but maybe feels a little better about himself, his car, et cetera, because a big Ferrari guy just said, wow, that’s [00:54:00] a really impressive car.

You see what I’m saying? It happens with the younger people too. I mean, I, I won’t drop any names here, but when I first got started buying cars gravitated to a certain brand and I, I really, I still like those cars. Can’t stand the people behind them. I just can’t stand them. I don’t want anything to do with those people.

I have a car right now in my driveway that most of the people I’ve met, they’re dogs, can’t stand ’em. Flip side, I’ve met a lot of gems. In both those communities too. That’s what keeps me going of those gems. My point is, I think had I not been a died in the wool car guy, that first experience with those first cars would’ve burned me out real quick.

I would’ve went running for the hills and started collecting stamps or something. Wow, car guys suck. You know, I, who wants to be around that all the time? Bring the young people in and I, and I’m not saying that older people are excluding them, but sometimes. Especially when you’re younger, you get into a situation where you wanna ask a question, but you don’t even know [00:55:00] what to ask.

So the best thing to do, I think, is start engaging. Just start talking, just start babbling about the car and they’ll start to pick up on things. And they’ll ask you about that. They’ll wonder about that. They’ll wanna know something. And I think that’s really, really important because, you know why? Why do I love Audi so much?

Oh, ’cause my uncle introduced me to them. You know, so I, I really have a thing for Audi, you know, when it comes to how do we keep it going, let the young people engage and try to help them. I have a little fear factor of, you know, we talked about the prices going up on this end and the other, are they gonna be able to keep it going?

You know, are they gonna be able to afford these things? Are is the price, you know, is there gonna be a market correction where everything suddenly becomes a lot more affordable? Honestly, I’m okay with that. I think most normal people would be, I think it’s the guys who are buying to invest that are gonna be, you know, a little bit not happy about that idea.

But I think if you want to keep it going, you do have to have a market correction.

Crew Chief Eric: So Don, we talked about the future of garages and the future of Petrolhead [00:56:00] in general, but what about the future of Garage Style Magazine? What do you envision for the next five, 10 years out?

Don Weberg: We are pretty traditional around here, which is why we kind of slid sideways back a year ago.

But yeah, we are gonna be going digital. A lot of magazines have gone that way because unless you’ve got a lot of money behind you, print is really, really very difficult to keep on the road. If that’s not enough, the distribution system is really, really difficult. How has it changed it? Honestly, not much.

I mean, if you just look at the mechanics of it, Hey, we’re gonna put together a magazine. Okay, no problem. You. Lay it out, find the stories, write the stories, print it, distribute it. The classic way of doing it still works. It’s still there. You’ve just gotta have the money to back it up. That’s where it’s starting to slide sideways, essentially.

It’s getting to a point to where anyone who can lay anything out can have their own magazine. It really takes something special to create something, because you don’t need paper, you don’t need a distributor, you don’t need a bookstore. You [00:57:00] just need to know how to operate in the realm of the digital plex and you’ll be fine.

It’s created a good and a bad, in my opinion. You’ve got people like me who have been magazine people since day one. We know how to put a magazine together. The people around me know how to put a magazine together. I hate calling myself a professional. That is what we are. We can do this. We know which side of the magazine should have the even number.

Which one should have the odd number. I mean, that’s one way you can always tell who really put the magazine together. Was it a pro or was it just a hobbyist trying to put his word out there? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. There will be a difference. Where we’re making our bread and butter now, believe it or not, is putting together other people’s magazines.

When we suspended our print operations, we started leaning very, very heavily on our digital newsletter, which honestly, when we first started it, I thought it was a joke. I really did. I, I thought this is flash in the pants. We have a magazine. We have a beautiful magazine that goes to concourses all over the world.

We, [00:58:00] we don’t need this digital thing. The digital thing came about because an advertiser twisted my arm. He said, get a digital thing going, or, I’m not gonna advertise with you anymore. Okay, so we’ll get a digital thing going. And he funded it. So it worked. Once it got going, I realized something very interesting.

It was a lot of fun to put together. It was a lot more fun than putting together the magazine. It was a lot more lenient. It was a lot more dynamic. Yeah, dynamic. And it was fast. My God, you put that thing out there and boom, within two seconds you’ve got people writing it back, asking about whatever article or whatever ad, or complaining about their subscription, or complaining about, you know, whatever.

But at least now you have a face-to-face with that subscriber and that’s something the magazine can’t do. It can’t. You got your letter to the editor, but not many people want to sit down and, you know, write a letter to the editor, but to hit reply. Ooh, now it’s on. Now we can talk and we have, and it’s been great.

Even, even guys who’ve come at me with, you [00:59:00] know, legitimate anger issues of their subscription. Okay, we get through that. Then I want to ask them the murderously, perfect question, what’s in your garage? And then they realize, oh, oh, you know, the next thing you know, this guy’s my best friend. Again, there’s that comradery that you and I were talking about so long ago.

Yeah. This guy came at me gangbusters. He was really mad about something. Okay, we got through that. Now let’s talk about happy stuff. That’s what we started doing. That is one way where I have learned, okay, this, this is why print is, I hate to say taking a back seat. But it is definitely taking a back seat.

Not necessarily a bad thing, because when we started telling people we were going to go digital, there was a lot of disappointment. I was disappointed. But if we were in 1985, we’d be dead. We would be dead. We would have no options at all. We would be done. There would be no garage style magazine. But because we are in 2022, 2021, 2020, [01:00:00] whatever.

Oh no, no, no. We had the digital option much cheaper, much faster, as you say, much more dynamic. It, it was just, there’s a way to do this. So the magazine becomes the luxury. And that’s what we’re doing now. We’re gonna put out a digital magazine plus our newsletter, and at the end of the year, we’re gonna be offering what’s called the yearbook.

And in the yearbook it will be printed and in the yearbook we’ll have every article, every feature, every column from the magazine, and it will also have all of the newsletters that we produce for one year. Everyone that I’ve spoken to has been so excited about this new format. That is the goal right now is just put together the digital format, start working our way, not back to print, but to be able to offer that print component.

To compliment the new way we’re doing business On top of that, you mentioned it earlier in the show and yeah, we are kinda living that way. Robin Leach on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, and everyone loves to [01:01:00] hear about the garages. I grew up with that guy. Yeah, that guy. He is in my head all the time.

I feel like a crazy man because of that guy. I always wanted that show. And then of course, later on, MTV had cribs doing the same thing basically, except for they were just showing the house of some popular personality. The end game for Garage style has always been a television show. It had always been a television component.

Like I said earlier on, I had that hard copy internship back when I was in high school. I worked at Universal Studios up on the park side. You know, they have the theme park up there. I worked there when my shift was over. I would just accidentally meander down to the studio and find anybody in a studio working on something that I could work with.

You know, how can I help you? Happy to do what I wanna learn in this industry? I, I always loved television, always, always loved television, always loved magazines. So now, because of the dynamic of. The internet, the dynamic of technology, digital, et cetera. We can do this, we can take the little cell [01:02:00] phone here, we can make a TV show.

We can even edit it right there on the cell phone. I gotta learn how, but we can make it right there on the cell phone. You know, it’s fascinating. So this new magazine that we’re doing is gonna shift because yes, it will still be the classically styled garage style magazine, but we are hoping to bring in some video production, some interviews with owners, A little bit of video of, you know, hey, let’s take a look at Bob’s garage over here.

And you know, here he is with his dusenberg. Bob, tell us about the dusenberg and then I get to wear your shoes for a while and interview. Live. Very cool.

Crew Chief Eric: So that also opens you up to a couple other interesting things. Number one, for those of us that are learning about garage style for the first time, going to the new website, to the digital version of the magazine, hopefully there’s an archive where we can go back and revisit some more the classic articles, maybe some of the more famous garages that you guys have reviewed over the years.

So that’ll be cool to have that retrospective approach. But I think it also opens you up to [01:03:00] a plethora of new writers and people that might be interested in joining the team because there’s like yourself, they, there’s plenty of people out there that are freelance bloggers that might be reviewing stuff that can contribute to this.

And so if you wanted to get engaged with Garage style at that level, what are those opportunities like?

Don Weberg: Let’s just hit the nail right on the head and remind everybody We have no money. So if you, I mean, I’m sorry, I hate to say it like that, but you know, you’ve got a day job, I’ve got a day job, and. Like I said before, now what’s supporting garage style are our clients who were producing magazines for, et cetera, but I love to have the help, the passion.

Not a lot of those guys come and go. Some of ’em have stayed and it’s worked out really, really well. So now. Honestly, I know I need help learning how to do the editing and do the shooting, and do this, that, and the other. I’ve got a gentleman here in Texas that I knew him years, years ago. He was on the cover of the magazine.

As it turns out, he is selling his, uh, I couldn’t believe it. I finally get to Texas. [01:04:00] I’m looking forward to meeting this guy. I’ve never met him in person before. I wanted to see who got a big Corvette collection. I wanted to see the Corvette collection calls me. And asked me if we could do a, a story on this great Corvette collection in Texas that’s coming to, to the Glendale Arizona sale next month.

I thought, you’ve gotta be kidding me. He’s selling it. He said, yeah, you know the guy? Oh yeah, I know the guy. I mean, he was on the cover of a magazine instantly on the email with this guy. I gotta see this place before Mecu breaks it up. But my point is, and I always have long stories, I’m sorry about that.

It’s gotta be the Irish DNA, you know, I’ll be seeing him tomorrow and he is a television personality out here. I’m hoping maybe he can, even if he doesn’t help hands on, maybe he can just give me some pointers from afar of, you know, do this, do this, do this, and start filming. You know, that’s been the lesson that I’ve really been getting from a lot of people who have been doing this vlogging, et cetera, is don, just do it.

Just jump in the pool and swim. [01:05:00] If you start to drown, you’re not gonna die. You’re just gonna learn a different way of what not to do. How to tread

Crew Chief Eric: water. That’s what you’re gonna learn how to do. Yeah. Yeah.

Don Weberg: We wanna do some of what you’re doing, this kind of stuff where we’re interviewing people and don’t worry, I don’t wanna be competition.

Every once in a while we’d love to get somebody on the show who brings something different to it. And again, we couldn’t really do that if we were strictly in print. I mean, we could, we have, we used to do interviews all the time, but there’s, and you’ll know this better than anybody right now, there’s something different when you have somebody in front of you on a camera and or just talking over the phone into some microphone.

I don’t know how it’s done, but, so yes, there are opportunities for people. I just need them to understand, look, we suspended print operation because there was no money. And it just got to a point to where I was throwing my hands up and I was like, you know what? I get it. People want more and more for less and less.

Frankly, the distribution model is so screwed up that trying to put a magazine out there, [01:06:00] good luck. I mean, it’s just, you’re losing money left, right, and center. It got to a point I just wanted to stop and like I said earlier, the newsletters what kept me going. I realized we don’t need all that paper. We don’t need the headaches of distribution.

We don’t need the headaches of the big brick and mortar bookstore telling us, Hey, by the way, you’re gonna send us 5,000 copies of your magazine. Oh, and you’re gonna spend a dollar each so that we put ’em on the shelves and they don’t end up in the garbage. What? Literally that, that, that is not just one conversation.

I’ve had that conversation a couple of times with different distributors and you just think, this is the mafia. No offense to the mafia, you know, we all have our job to do. That’s what we’re dealing with and I’m not equipped to deal with that, so, eh, next. So anyway, enough of negativity, but, you know,

Crew Chief Eric: but that actually leads into a great question, which is the subscription model.

And I understand that the print subscription model is, is no longer a thing, but what does the subscription model for Garage Style magazine look like if somebody is interested in [01:07:00] signing up?

Don Weberg: Okay, we have a, a little, what’s it called? Email address and it’s nl, which is Newsletter nl. Garage style magazine.com.

If you go to the website right now, it looks like, oh, they’re out of business. Which, eh, we’re, we’re not out of business yet. We’re, we’re not dead yet. We’re not dead yet. You know, we’re just limping along. That’s all. It’s just a flesh wound, just a flesh wound. No big deal, you know? No big deal. But no, we’re, we’re not dead yet.

We’re still plugging along, but the website has a certain darkness to it. But if you just use that email, literally all we need is. You to write to us and say, hi, I want a subscription to the newsletter and the magazine. Use this email address and we’ll sign you up. There’s no fee. There’s no nothing. Once again, the miracles of digital.

We can drop our advertising rate to a much more palatable fee for our advertisers, and yet we will be able to support everything that we’re doing. Heaven forbid we make money at this thing, you know, but we might actually start doing it [01:08:00] because everything is so much cheaper. You know, I’ve always said, you’re gonna sell more Fords than Ferraris, and I’ve always tried to do that, but with the cost of paper, cost of distribution, cost, I mean cost, cost, cost, cost, cost.

I was never actually able to deliver. Anything but a Ferrari, even though I wanted to give people a Ford price, it just wasn’t gonna happen. Lower your paper quality. Yeah, that’s not gonna go over very well because we’ve already set that bar. You know, if you come out as Mercedes-Benz and you say, eh, we’re gonna start building Pintos, that’s not gonna work with your client base, but you might extend your sales.

There is a reason they have the C class and the E-Class. They’re cheaper. You can have a broader market than the S class and the CLS and all that stuff. There is some psychology to it, but if we’re going digital, just give people a chance to have their free magazine. Just give it to ’em. And then like I say, at the end of the year, we’re gonna be printing these yearbooks and that’s not gonna be free.

That’s obviously gonna cost money ’cause we gotta print. But those won’t be distributed. Those will [01:09:00] literally, I, I think I’m working with a new printer on this now. I think she’s doing print on demand, so it will be a situation where. If I understood her correctly, she wants us to open the door and say, okay, you have from this date to this date to get your orders in and your payments, we’re closing the door here and whatever we’ve got, that’s what we’re printing.

And that’ll be the end of it. And I think that’s how she wants to run it. But, uh, there you go.

Crew Chief Eric: So Don, I think this is actually really exciting. I know that changes can be scary and a little daunting, but like you said, once the wall is pushed over and you just, as we say in our world, send it, there’s no looking back.

And, and it’s true of all, of all things in life. So I think we’re really excited to see where the next five and 10 years for garage style magazine go, especially in the digital world. I think there’s a lot of things you can do with this and you can probably get even more creative and more dynamic than you were with the magazine ’cause you’re not held to the same deadlines and you’re not held to the same schedule.

So I think that’s awesome. So Don, [01:10:00] as we wrap things up here, any shout outs, promotions, any, any thank yous, anything else you’d like to share?

Don Weberg: Thanks to all the subscribers and all the people who have supported Garage Style Magazine this whole time. And then I thank you for having me on the show. I think the Automobilia, I think the car culture is alive and well and thriving.

I really do, uh, because of my daughter, I, you know, get exposed to a lot of younger people because of the magazine. I get exposed to a lot of younger people, and I gotta tell you, the, the, uh, the pulse is there. The people still love cars. I don’t know what that tells you if anything, but the younger generation is there.

We just have to stop telling them, oh, you don’t want that car. Look, in high school, junior high school, I had a friend. Her mom had a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, 77 Porsche nine 11 s. Not the most desirable car. In 1991, it was a 77 9 11 s. It was rust brown. It had a beautiful camel colored interior. I was in love with this car.

I thought it was incredible. So I [01:11:00] started talking to guys I knew who knew Porsche. Oh, you don’t want that car. You don’t want that car. It’s a 77 that, that’s like one of the worst genres you can get. No, no, no. You wanna get like a 70 to a 72, somewhere in there, maybe a 73 or just step up and get yourself an 83, you know, nine 11 SC or get an 85 Carrera.

Okay, guys, I can’t afford any of those cars. At the 77 because nobody wants them. I can afford that car. I was young. These guys were older. They knew more than me. So I didn’t buy my friend’s mother’s nine 11. I didn’t buy it, even though I could have, let’s fast forward to today. Have you priced a 77 9 11 s?

Good luck buddy. I’m not gonna be able to buy one of those cars. There’s no way. There’s just no way. So I, I think what I’m spewing about here is to us old farts to perpetuate the community. Don’t poo poo the car that the young guy comes to you and says, I’m thinking about buying the x, y, Z car. Bite your tongue if you know you don’t like that car.

’cause that guy in front of you likes that car [01:12:00] and he’s looking for your approval. ’cause you’re the old fart who’s been around. So you need to encourage him as to why. Yeah. That that’s a good car to get. So when I meet these kids who I want a, A Vega. Yeah. I know a lot about Vega. I really do. I know a lot of their pitfalls.

They’re actually really good cars. They just have problems that need to be corrected. Once they’re corrected, you are fine if you wanna put the money into correcting them. There’s just not a big community supporting Vega. Not yet. Not yet. But maybe these are the guys who are gonna bring it around. And I’m not just picking on Vega, I’m saying it could be anything, you know, perpetuating the community.

We need to support the younger guys who are looking at the oddball cars that maybe we don’t understand why they like them, but they do. Look, you go on Facebook and I belong to a lot of automotive communities on Facebook. I’m blown away. You know these guys in their twenties and 85, Buick Electra, Buick LeSabre, whatever that car was to you and me, it was dad’s car to get back and forth to work.

It was the most boring thing on four wheels. But you gotta admit, when you find [01:13:00] one today in mint condition, whoa, that’s pretty cool. It’s an 85 Buick. Who cares? But there it is, mint condition in all its goy and there’s nothing on the road like it. Nothing. That’s what makes it stand out, you know, to you and me.

We grew up with those cars. These younger guys didn’t, so to them they’re the classic cars, but there’s tons of younger guys on Facebook who like cars. Like, I can’t tell you how many Tauruses I’ve seen pop up. Dude, I found this Taurus. It’s only got 30,000 miles on it. I’m thinking the first time. That’s really cool.

Where did you find a Taurus with 30,000 miles on the second off. Is it the V six? Which V six is it? You know, on and on the question. Go. The kid bought this car, 5,000 bucks, 3000 bucks, whatever it was, and I’m thinking to myself. You could have really gotten a fun car for that kind of money, but you bought a Taurus.

What’s your story? Tell me why. What? What was it about the Taurus? You like, oh dude, these cars are timeless. You look at it, it looks like, remember the [01:14:00] Audis back in the day, this car looked like a poor man’s Audi. And I thought, yes, they did. They really did. And they saved Ford and they’ll always have my respect for that.

So you look like Ferris Bueller’s dad on a budget. You know What else about this car? Dude, you never see these things. I never see these cars. And when I do, they’re all beat up. They’re, what did he say? Toasted? They’re toasted. And I thought, okay, yeah, that, that, that makes sense. They’re all beat up. That makes sense.

You know what I have in my driveway? I have a 79 Caprice Classic Mint condition. Why I am that kid? It’s just the car is different. I grew up with that Caprice. He grew up as a boy. With that Taurus, it’s the same thing. It’s just a different set of wheels, and I think with the younger people, we need to encourage ’em to go out there and buy that Taurus.

Go out there and buy whatever it is that turns you on and go experience it. Have fun.

Crew Chief Eric: So on that note, since 2007, garage Style Magazine has been the definitive source for car collectors continually [01:15:00] delivering information about Automobilia Petroliana events and more. The quarterly publication is distributed through subscription newsstand and events and is now moving to full digital.

And you can learn more about the publication at www.garagestylemagazine.com or follow them on social at Garage Style Magazine. And with that, Don, I can’t thank you enough for coming on the show and letting us explore your corner of the vehicle enthusiast world with us and you know, getting to know Garage Tile Magazine.

We’re really looking forward to what the future holds for you guys and wish you the best of luck.

Don Weberg: Thank you. No, I’m glad to be on the show. It was a lot of fun. Thanks for having me.

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 [01:16:00] our text us at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at Crew chief@gtmotorsports.org.

We’d love to hear from you.

Highlights

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 Meet Don Weberg: Founder of Garage Style Magazine
00:01:16 The Origin of Garage Style Magazine
00:02:27 Exploring Different Types of Garages
00:03:56 The Brotherhood of Car Enthusiasts
00:06:26 Don’s Journey into Automotive Journalism
00:12:43 Memorable Cars and Writing Experiences
00:14:04 Inside Garage Style Magazine and The Impact of Garage Style Magazine
00:19:48 Monterey Garage Tours
00:21:25 Fabulous Garages and Hidden Gems
00:27:40 The Rise of Online Car Auctions
00:36:56 The Future of Garages and Automobilia
00:39:00 Future of Electric Vehicles, Charging Technology, and What that means for your Garage
00:55:54 Garage Style Magazine’s Digital Transition
01:10:33 Engaging the Younger Generation in Car Culture
01:14:51 Conclusion and Future Prospects

Bonus Content

Learn More

Since 2007, Garage Style Magazine has been the definitive source for car collectors, continually delivering information about Automobilia, Petroliana, Events, and more.

To learn more about the annual publication and its new website, be sure to follow them on social @garagestylemagazine or logon to www.garagestylemagazine.com – because after all, what doesn’t belong in your garage?

Don sees garages as deeply personal spaces—like childhood bedrooms, they reflect who we are. Some owners are shy, downplaying their setups. Others beam with pride, eager to show off every detail. But the real magic happens when enthusiasts connect, regardless of budget or brand loyalty.

During Car Week in Monterey, Don hosts garage tours that bring together Ferrari owners and Honda S2000 drivers, recent grads and moguls. “It’s not a competition,” Don says. “It’s a brotherhood.” The garage becomes a place where rivalries fade and camaraderie thrives.

What’s Inside Garage Style Magazine?

Think Architectural Digest for car lovers. Readers will find:

Profiles of unique garages and collections
Columns by legends like Matt Stone, Phil Berg, and Lance Lambert
Features on Automobilia, Petroliana, neon, tools, and luxury lifestyle items
Inspiration for transforming your own space

Garage Style isn’t about status – it’s about passion. Don recalls subscribers who felt validated by the magazine: “People made fun of me for loving my garage more than my house. Your magazine made it okay.”

Despite the digital shift, Don remains a print loyalist. He admires titles like Car and Driver, Road & Track, Robb Report, and Architectural Digest. Garage Style borrows design cues from these classics, offering readers a visually rich experience. “When Macworld stops printing,” Don jokes, “I’ll hang up my typewriter.”

Design, Details, and the Never-Done Garage

One subscriber spent years designing his dream garage, inspired by six issues of Garage Style. He obsessed over symmetry, choosing five garage doors to match three second-story windows—because odd numbers feel balanced, like branches on a tree. Don’s takeaway? “People see what they want to see. I just hope it inspires them.”

Among the most jaw-dropping garages Don has visited is the Hemi Hideout in Texas—a cathedral of Mopar muscle, neon, and barbecue. But his favorite? A secret James Bond-style garage in South Pasadena, owned by a 93-year-old former Ford designer. Suspended beneath a mid-century office building, it’s a concrete temple of foliage, glass, and elegance.

Garage Style Magazine isn’t just about cars – it’s about identity, creativity, and connection. Whether you’re a collector, a dreamer, or someone who just loves their space, Don Weberg’s vision reminds us: your garage tells your story. And it’s worth sharing.

The following content has been brought to you by Garage Style Magazine. Because after all, what doesn't belong in your garage?

The Answer Is Always Miata: A What Should I Buy? Deep Dive

Gran T

June 21, 2022

The Answer Is Always Miata: A What Should I Buy? Deep Dive

What happens when three grassroots motorsports podcasters walk into a virtual room to talk about the most beloved roadster of all time? You get a podcast within a podcast within a podcast – and a whole lot of Miata love.

Photo courtesy Bill Snow, Late to Grid podcast

In this special crossover episode of Break/Fix, we’re joined by Dave Peters of HPDEjunkie.com, Jim Tramontano of No Money Motorsports, and Bill Snow of the Late to Grid podcast. Together, they unpack the mystique of the Mazda MX-5 Miata, share their motorsports journeys, and debate whether the answer is always Miata – or if it’s time to move on.

Jim Tramontano’s story starts in a Mopar household, where Chargers and Challengers ruled the driveway. He even owned a Mustang before a friend convinced him to drive a Miata. “Within two or three miles,” Jim recalls, “I was like, alright, the Mustang is for sale.” That moment launched a career in autocross, track days, and eventually racing – all on a shoestring budget. His blog, No Money Motorsports, was born from the need to share tips on how to go fast without going broke.

Dave Peters, meanwhile, came from the world of Nissan 370Zs. “It was hard on the expendables,” he admits. Tires, brakes, and clutch issues made the Z an expensive track companion. After driving a friend’s Miata, Dave was hooked. “Once I had it on the track, I never thought about the 370Z again.” His site, HPDEjunkie.com, was built to help drivers find more track time – and yes, the Miata gets credit for its success.

Bill Snow’s journey is rooted in small car love. From a Triumph Spitfire to a Mini Cooper S, he’s always gravitated toward nimble machines. When a turbo-swapped Miata caught his eye, he jumped in. “Immediate smile,” he says. That purchase led to track days and the creation of Late to Grid, a podcast dedicated to helping grassroots racers avoid the mistakes he made – like showing up late to grid.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Is it Miata or MX-5? The panel agrees: it’s Miata. While Mazda may have used MX-5 internally, the NA generation wore the Miata badge proudly. As for what “Miata” means? Jim offers one theory: “I’ve always heard it means reward.” Whether that’s true or not, the driving experience certainly feels like one.

Spotlight

Late To Grid is a podcast about motorsports and getting on track. Bill Snow interviews the guys and gals who work hard all week to be weekend warriors. He also interviews professionals in the motorsports community that can help you and your racing. His audience includes members of SCCA and NASA and those that participate in Track Days, HPDE, and endurance racing. His goal is to share the stories and inspiration that will grow our sport. Search for their show on all your favorite Podcatchers. @latetogrid on social media.

Jim Tramontano created No Money Motorsports – A site with the primary goal to get folks on track, as much as possible, by spending as little money as possible. He started autocrossing in 2007, started track days by volunteering with NASA in 2012 and moved up the HPDE ranks in his Daily Driver Miata. He’s in his 5th year racing Spec Miata with NASA Northeast, and you can check out his work over at www.nomoneymotorsports.com

And last to grid, but certainly not least… a shoutout to Dave Peters and the folks over at HPDEjunkie.com for deciding that something needed to be done to promote High Performance Driving Events (HPDE). So, they created a website with the goal of turning HPDE into a house-hold name, and now HPDEjunkie.com is the most inclusive and most current listing of HPDE, Track Days and Open Track events for the United States and Canada! Check them out at hpdejunkie.com or follow them on social @hpdejunkie

Synopsis

In this episode of Break/Fix, the panel discusses the allure and features of the Mazda MX-5 Miata, often celebrated as a top choice for car enthusiasts. The episode features conversations with special guests Dave Peters from hpdejunkie.com, Jim Tramontano from No Money Motorsport, and Bill Snow from the Late to Grid podcast. They share their personal experiences, covering topics from the affordability and design inspiration of the Miata to track day tips and their favorite modifications. The guests also discuss the best and worst aspects of Miata ownership, various racing experiences, and the potential future of the Miata in the evolving automotive market. The episode concludes with lighthearted exchanges about favorite cars and bucket-list tracks.

How each of you came into “the world of miata”... and briefly give us your motorsports bio
Miata or MX-5 … which is it? What does “MIATA” even mean?
We hear all the time “Miata’s are slow” – fact or fiction? How do you make a Miata fast(er)? Tips/Tricks thoughts on going faster with a low hp/momentum vehicle.
Miata’s are CHEAP; that’s what we always hear at least, what’s the TOC (total cost of ownership) really like? And where to go for Miata advice and parts? What are some of the best “life hacks” for Miatas?
What’s the best/worst parts about owning a Miata?
In an alternative universe where there is NO MIATA, everything else being equal, what would you choose to race? If you had to start all over again, would you stick with the Miata you have?
Which generation is the best? Which one *should* people buy? Or why not? Thoughts on the ND1, ND2. What do we think about the Fiata? (124 Abarth). Rumors or whispers about the 5th gen Miata… Bueller, anyone?

Transcript

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Our panel of break fix Petrolhead are back for another rousing. What should I buy? Debate using unique shopping criteria. They’re challenged to find our first time collector, the best vehicle that will make their friends go. Where do you get that? Or what the hell is wrong with you at the next cars and coffee

for every four out of five, petrol heads surveyed when asked, what car should I buy? The answer is always Miata. Many folks would argue that the Mazda MX five known to many of us as the Miata is a great option for a number of reasons. It’s well-made efficient and is surprisingly affordable. Some would say the Miata is one of the most popular roasters of all time beating out all the British cars that inspired it, and it’s a formula that has worked for years with others trying to imitate, but never quite capturing the magic created by Miata.

Is that true? Is there more to the Miata mystique than meets the eye? What’s it really like to be a Miata owner?

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right, Brad, in our first ever double crossover episode, we aim to [00:01:00] answer those questions and more as we chat with returning guest and drive through news sponsor Dave Peters from hp d junkie.com, along with Jim Montano, founder of No Money Motorsport blog, as well as their friend Bill Snow, founder of the Late to Grid podcast.

Welcome to Break Fix, gentlemen. How about we get into it?

Crew Chief Brad: Thanks for having us. Hey, thanks, so, so this is like podcast inception. It’s a podcast within a podcast, within a podcast. Absolutely.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, I’m gonna start off with, you know, we talked about the answer is always Miata. I’m wearing this t-shirt for Blip Shift, which I love that says, the original answer is Lotus Ilan.

Many will say that Miata was born in California, built in Japan. We actually had somebody on the show not long ago that was on the original design team for the Miata, and that was a super interesting story and whatnot. But we talked with him about its British inspiration and he said, oh, well it’s really a combination of cars.

They stole from Alpha, they stole from Lotus, they stole from here. They stole [00:02:00] from there. So let’s talk about how each of you came into the world of Miata and briefly give your motor sports bio, you know, talk about what you do and things like that. So why don’t we start with Jim from No Money Motor Sports.

Jim Tramontano: All right. Hey, uh, so I’m one of those people that 15 years ago, you would’ve never guessed I’d be in a Miata. I, uh, grew up in a muscle car household. We had Mopars chargers and challengers, my house, and I had a muscle car. And then I got a Mustang, almost got kicked outta my family for it. I had it and, uh, started Motorsport with that.

I started autocross and then one of my buddies bought a Miata. And he is like, you just have to drive it, man. Like, just, just try it out, drive it. Got in the car, drove it, and within like two or three miles was like, all right, the Mustang is for sale. And that’s really how I got a Miata. Ended up buying that exact car from him.

’cause he found another one he wanted to upgrade into. That’s really how the, the Miata thing started.

Crew Chief Brad: What year? Mustang.

Jim Tramontano: I had two at first, so I got a 95. Started Autocrossing in that, but yeah, the last year of the 5.0 sold that for an oh [00:03:00] five, which is the first year of the retro body style.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. So I’m not surprised you got rid of those for the

Jim Tramontano: Oh, I don’t know. I, I miss ’em both though, so much. I don’t regret selling ’em one bit, but I miss them every day.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I’m there with some of my cars too.

Crew Chief Eric: 200 horsepower of five liters of Awesome. Yeah. Oh

Crew Chief Brad: 2, 2 15. Two 15.

Jim Tramontano: Oh, okay. Yeah. You must have the, the GT model.

One of the times right before I like decided to sell it, I was at a stoplight two lane road. No one sight except for right behind me was a minivan, and I just plastered, I took off from that light as hard as I could. Second gear and I’m halfway through second gear and I look in my mirror and the van is right on my bumper.

It’s like, oh, this isn’t gonna work. From there, just started track days where I had been autocrossing to that point, uh, and then basically jumped right into track days with the Miata. I started doing volunteering and working with nasa, doing a lot of days with them. Really just as time went on, [00:04:00] just then I started instructing.

Then I started time trial, then I started racing just kind of the way the cookie crumbled there. And through all that, I got into doing track days, like right outta college basically. So I had absolute mountain of student loans and a teaching job that paid a lot less than my student loans we’ll say. So I started this whole thing on an extreme budget.

The, with the Miata, I was living in apartments, I was working on it in the apartment parking lot and all these things. And with that I got a lot of. Kind of strategies and tips to really do it on the cheap and do it easily. That is where my whole No Money Motorsports thing came out. ’cause people kind of could see that I was making ends meet and making it happen, and I was getting the same questions kind of repeatedly.

Like, oh hey, how do you do this? How do you do that? How. So that’s where the idea for making a whole blog about it came out.

Crew Chief Eric: So as many of our guests may remember, Dave Peters was on our show during season one, and he told us about how he started life in a three 70 Z Nissan. But Dave, how did you end up in the Miata?

Again,

Dave Peters: mine was budget reasons as well. The, uh, three [00:05:00] 70 Z just, it was hard on the Expendables tires were maybe two weekends and they were big 19 inch three oh fives on the back. So full set was, I think it was about $1,500 and it was a staggered setup and. Brake pads went about as quick, it just wasn’t a great track.

Car had fuel starvation problems and overheating problems, and not of the engine, but like the clutch would overheat because the clutch line was next to the catalytic converter. And, but it really was more about money. You know, I did it a couple of times and realized a couple of times a year wasn’t gonna be enough and I couldn’t afford to buy three, four sets of tires a year for the Z and you know, of course you see 50 M Miatas at every van out of a hundred cars sometimes.

So I knew there had to be something good there. And a buddy of mine got into it and, and he kind of wanted to know what car to buy, and I was like, I, I think he wanna buy me auto. I mean, it just seems to make sense. And he did, and I still had the Z and he let me drive it [00:06:00] once and I was like. Yeah, at, at first it was just kind of a like, yeah, I, I can suck it up and do this and have this little horsepower thing.

Once I had it on the track and then the more I drove it on the track, the more I was just hooked on the way it felt driving it, and yeah, I never thought about the three 70 Z again. I probably, after the first time I tracked the me. Well, maybe not then. ’cause it broke down the first time I took it out. And I think I got three laps in a weekend.

But, um, that was my own dumb mistake, you know, that that happened. So yeah, it really just boiled down to instigation was financial once I got in it. I, I really don’t want anything else

Crew Chief Eric: you’ve told me before. The more time you spent behind the wheel, the Miata is what inspired you to build hpd junkie.com as well, because you were dying to go to more events and drive the car.

Dave Peters: I did start the website with the three 70 Z, but again, you know, I, I mean, I, I’m an honest guy and the whole reason for the website was to [00:07:00] get on the track more often and, you know, kind of help the budget. Yes and no. I, I did have the three 70 Z when I started out. I, I probably only had it for a year before I got the Miata.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, we’ll attribute the success of h hpv junkie.com, tier Miata, not the Nissan. How about that?

Dave Peters: That sounds fair. I can live with that.

Crew Chief Eric: And last but certainly not least, bill, tell us about late to Grid and your Motorsports past.

Bill Snow: Thanks very much for having me on it. It’s great to see Dave and Jim again.

Yeah, so Bill Snow, host of the Late to Grid podcast where, you know, the idea is to get people together to, to share stories and inspiration for. You know, grassroots motor sports and, um, share the stories that might, might inspire some folks. And my motor sports background started, um, gosh, probably in in middle school, I would get dragged to sports car races and IndyCar races with my dad.

And, and he was a spectator and really started to enjoy that. And I, at one point in high school, I thought to myself, well, shoot, I could probably be doing this. So my first car was a two 80 [00:08:00] ZX and I joined the SECA and I started auto crossing and just fell in love with it. But then after college and marriage and kids, you didn’t have fun cars anymore for a while.

And I got a 76 Triumph Spitfire just a tool around in. And, and I had a mini Cooper s that I got back into autocross a little bit, but I, there was a time when I was at a corporate meeting and we, and our name tags, we had to write a little line under our name. Something interesting about us. And I, I still remember what I wrote.

I love small cars, so I always enjoyed, you know, the mgs and the Spitfires, things like that. The Mini Cooper of course, being a small car. So, fast forward to, uh, just a couple years ago, one of my employees has a, an amata. Of course, he’s turbo swapping it, and it’s a blue car with a red hard top. And of course it’s got these 2 25 sticking out.

He is doing all this other stuff and he runs in these circles. I said, listen, I’m getting the itch. If any of your friends are selling them, Miata let me know about it. Not necessarily saying I could pull the trigger, but, so he comes to me a couple days later, he says, Hey, my buddy just got a type R and he just bought this [00:09:00] Miata from the south.

He’s got mad dog roll bar for it. He’s got oline coil overs, stainless steel lines. He wants to sell it. I said, well, all right. So I drove it and man. Immediate smile. All those parts were still in the box. So I negotiated to buy the car and I said, you know what? Let’s work on a deal to buy all the parts too.

After having it on track a couple times, I’m hooked.

Crew Chief Eric: So what inspired the podcast?

Bill Snow: So the name is, so like 20 16, 17, and 18, we did, uh, some endurance racing. I got the racing for free if I stored, transported and wrenched on the car. I mean, there, there were days I was loading the car up on the day we were leaving for the track and finishing like simple things like oil changes on the car.

So inevitably we were getting to the track at the last minute, getting through tech last minute, getting to grid, realizing something’s wrong. Inevitably, I was always late to grid. It was my fault. So I kind of thought if, you know the podcast, we could kind of maybe help people not get late to grid. So what are some tips and tricks?

And uh, you know, we had an episode where, uh, Gabe Gutierrez, who races a [00:10:00] Mustang in, uh, NASA events, he’s all about checklists. So he shared all about that, and that’s how he’s never late to grid. Gabe is such a great guy. Yeah. And I love

Dave Peters: his wife too. Ann Anna. I

Bill Snow: just, I

Dave Peters: I had to say something.

Bill Snow: No, that’s great.

Yeah. So it’s sharing stories like that to help people realize, okay. You know, part of it is I can do this, I can get on track. There aren’t a whole lot of obstacles. It’s somewhat easy to do, but the other thing is. What are the tips and tricks that people can share with us to make sure that we can get safely on track, not late to grid, and still have a great time at the track.

Crew Chief Eric: We need to test your guys Miata subject matter expertise before we really dive deep into this subject, so we have a question that needs to be answered. Inquiring minds want to know,

Crew Chief Brad: is it Miata or MX five? And what does Miata even mean?

Dave Peters: I always say Miata, but mine I think was technically still called a Miata.

I can’t remember, but, uh, someone told me it was something middle age, something, something, but I can’t remember. Maybe the guy that was on the design team can [00:11:00] has told you and you can fill us in.

Bill Snow: I’ve always heard it means reward.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, you’re being rewarded for driving Miata by the driving experience. I could see that.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I, I could

Crew Chief Brad: see that you’re not rewarded by the horsepower though, but that’s a whole nother story.

Dave Peters: No, definitely not.

Crew Chief Eric: I think it had some, it

Crew Chief Brad: has something, one of those names that sounded cool.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: I think the NA Miata actually had a Miata badge on it. It wasn’t MX five. It was, it actually was a Miata the Tic-Tac,

Crew Chief Eric: but I believe it was always known internally to Mazda as the MX five, and then it got badged as a Miata, wherever that came from.

We’ll leave that up to our listeners to write in and let us know where this little bit of trivia comes from. You know, as we were just joking, we hear all the time that Miatas are slow. So is this fact or fiction? And if it is fact, how do we make a Miata faster? Well, let’s talk about some tips and tricks on thoughts on going faster in a low horsepower momentum vehicle.

Jim Tramontano: Look, they’re slow. They’re always slow, and that’s why they’re good. Uh, once [00:12:00] they become fast is the problem. But the trick is to not ever slow down. Home track to me is New Jersey Motorsports Park Lightning. I always tell people you hit the brakes twice on that entire track, and like one of those is kind of a lighter breaking anyway.

Uh, so really the biggest trick for Miata to to go fast is not to add a turbo. It’s not to add power. It’s just don’t slow down.

Crew Chief Eric: Isn’t that the same theory as when you’re driving a go-kart?

Jim Tramontano: Yeah, basically. Oh, I have a go-kart, which is much faster than my Miata though. So

Crew Chief Eric: that’s what I tell people all the time when we’re carting.

Just don’t use the brakes. What, what? Yeah. So with that being said, thoughts, tips, tricks, things that people can do to take a stock Miata and make it better.

Bill Snow: Number one. Seat time. That’s the only way any driver’s gonna get faster. I don’t care if you’re doing turbos, you got nitrous, you got rockets, you need seat time.

That’s that’s number one. Number two is tires. So once you get some seat time and you get a feel for what your current tires feel like, you put new tires, grip your tires, stickier tires on [00:13:00] there, you’re gonna get a little faster. Third brakes. If you can go a little deeper, carry that momentum a little bit further, just touch ’em and have ’em grab quickly my opinion, brakes.

Then you can look at steering suspension stuff. If those four things aren’t putting a huge smile on your face around the track, then maybe you start bolting some stuff on. But those four things I think will make you faster and let you have a lot more fun around the track.

Jim Tramontano: I thought you were gonna say maybe find a new hobby if, if the films aren’t working

Crew Chief Eric: other sports becking, right?

Yeah. But that you actually bring up a really good point, bill. When you get to that part of the equation and you’re in a Miata and you wanna go faster and you start bolting things on, is it really worth bolting them on? Or do you do like Jim said, and kind of just walk away and maybe buy a different car?

Bill Snow: You know, I got some advice. Uh, when I had the Mini Cooper, I wanted to do some Boltons because the track where I was going, man, I’m really struggling with this one turn. And man, if I could have the supercharger sort of gimme a little bit more power more quickly, I can get off that turn faster and have a little bit more.

He said, you’re thinking about this all wrong. You have to get more seat time, you have to drive more, [00:14:00] you’ll get faster. You don’t need bolt on parts. So what did I do? I ordered all the parts in both of ’em up and uh, it wasn’t until years later I realized, you know what? He was right. It is about seat time.

If you’re not getting faster, not having fun with the basics, especially with a car like a Miata, then maybe this isn’t for you.

Dave Peters: There’s always the, uh, lotus philosophy, add lightness,

Crew Chief Brad: simplifying, add lightness. Um, and,

Dave Peters: and I, uh, I’m victim of adding power, but I didn’t do it at the beginning. And it’s not, it’s not boost, it’s just more air through.

It’s not a huge game. But Eric, you were still faster than me. You had a little more horsepower

Crew Chief Eric: and my car was how much heavier than yours. I’m just saying. I don’t know. But

Dave Peters: you did, but you did have slicks on.

Crew Chief Eric: Alright. They

Dave Peters: used slicks though. Used slicks.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s true. I wanna say, I wanna call

Dave Peters: it even I think you had, I think you had a little more power.

You, you were gaining like, I don’t know, six to 10 feet a lap on me.

Crew Chief Eric: It was fun though.

Jim Tramontano: That was a good, that was a good run at Carolina.

Dave Peters: It [00:15:00] was a fun run.

Jim Tramontano: One thing also that I, I found for really making the me outta more fun, if you’re struggling with the power, is go racing with one. Or even if you’re not going racing, find somebody to really do a session with.

I personally got to a point where I was starting to burn out a little bit. I was like, I was looking at Mustangs again. I’m like, I want something with more power. And then I got fresh tires and my two of my friends started showing up with the same car and just us driving together was like the total refresh that I needed.

Like, this is so much fun, you know, who cares? We’re point by Corvettes in the straightaways. We are door to door in the corners and it’s a blast.

Crew Chief Eric: You just reinforced a misery Loves company, right?

Jim Tramontano: Oh, absolutely, absolutely.

Crew Chief Eric: And, and I’ve heard that and, and it’s true. I’ve run some Miatas myself. We had an SSM here at GTM for many years and it’s one of those things that it’s not that fun when you’re the only one at a de and you’ve got bruises on your left arm because you’re given a point by constantly, especially a place like DIR and Glen and things like that.

But when it’s you and 40 of your best friends that all make [00:16:00] 105 wheel horsepower, it’s a whole different ball game, right? It’s, it’s to Bill’s point, they’re microcar and it’s like NASCAR on a small scale, right? You’re all there together, bump drafting. And since you’ve raced Jim, that brings up a good point.

We’ll talk about ev everybody’s experience on track. With the Miata, but I’ve heard it said before that a lot of the Miata races are nose to tail waiting for somebody to screw up. And if you do stick your nose out at the wrong time, you get sent to the back of the pack because there’s no way to get back in.

Jim Tramontano: Yeah. Uh, that, that’s really it. I mean the, especially on bigger tracks, if you watch some of the videos from Daytona where NASA chance was last year, that actually even more so at Daytona when the global MX five cup cars were there. So they’ve got a little bit more power, but they still drive just like ours.

The last lap on one of those races was three wide three, and it wasn’t three cars. It was three lanes wide. No, not that one actually. But that was wild too. That one. That

Dave Peters: was same way.

Jim Tramontano: Yeah. Well, no, but this was three lanes wide. The leading car went [00:17:00] from first place to God. I think he finished seventh in one corner.

He just got freight trained by two other lanes, and it was just like, oh, oops. It’s an extra level of chess that you have to have beyond driving,

Dave Peters: I’m sorry. I mis mistook it for the Seing race because it was pretty much the same ending last corner. I think whoever was in third came out of the corner in first and ended up crossing the line in third.

Jim Tramontano: Yeah. Oh, that

Dave Peters: was a great, it was milliseconds between the three cars. It was amazing.

Crew Chief Eric: In spec racing, there’s a lot of still one sixes out there, a mixture of one eights. You don’t see too many NC or nd third and fourth gen Miatas every once in a while, an NC with a penalty and things like that. Why is everybody still sticking with the older cars?

Are they really the best and especially for the racing, or is the spec classes just designed around the NA and the nbs?

Jim Tramontano: Well, spec Miata is only NANB. Actually, you can’t run the NCS or nds in our class. [00:18:00] There’s a lot of noise, I’ll say coming up now about SMX, which is the NC cars. There’s a traveling race that’s gonna be happening this year.

It was supposed to happen about two years ago, but you know, COVID. So we’ll really see this summer how those cars take off. And if they do, to me it’s not the same car, it doesn’t have the same magic as ours. It’s very similar, but there’s not nearly as many. So they won’t ever be as cheap parts won’t be as plentiful.

I hope the racing will be just as good. ’cause our cars are getting older and older by the minute it’s, yeah, they have their own, their own playgrounds. ‘

Crew Chief Eric: cause there’s other spec series out there, spec E 36, spec E 46, uh, spec, Boxter Spec 9 44. You know, things like that. So there’s other spec races for people that don’t want a Miata that are still interested in doing that kind of racing.

But those classes are some of the fastest, most grueling racing out there. To Dave’s point, let’s talk about some of your experiences with Miatas on track. And maybe if they’re not, eh, okay, you know, they’re all right. But maybe some of your biggest oops moments, maybe those learning moments, [00:19:00] something that the Miata taught you as a driver.

Something you still carry with you today.

Bill Snow: You know, the first oops moment came at a track day I had with the Miata. I pointed by a C eight ducked in right behind him. So this track date was supposed to be filtered for people that had previous track experience. So if you had previous track experience, you could bring anything you wanted, you wanted to, except for race car let, you guys came out with c eights.

They just bought him. Point him by, I duck him behind him because now we’re at the end of a straightaway and he slams on the brakes, the nimbleness of the Miata right out of the way. I have it on GoPro. I, I’m hesitant to, to post it ’cause I don’t wanna stir anything up with, with the ca driver. Um, but I thought, oh my gosh.

Just, you know, the horsepower difference between the two cars. The handling of the Miata was just great though. And then I realized, you know what, we’re gonna back off a little bit. We’ll throw a lap away, put some distance the next time around. But those ca eight guys gotta talk into at lunch. So we didn’t have any afternoon.

Well, yeah, I guess one other quick thing that the Miata has taught me about, it’s just, it’s trying to find the limits a little bit. And, you know, getting [00:20:00] a feel for that. And it’s, what I found about the Miata is you can, you get such a great seat feel and you can start to feel when things are gonna start to break loose or, or give away just a little bit and you can dial it back and try it a little bit further.

That’s true with a lot of cars, but I feel with the Miata, for whatever reason, it just, maybe it fits me a little bit better. You just get a good feel for yourself in the track.

Crew Chief Eric: Do you find that it translates to other cars? Or do you feel that you have to relearn if you take another car on track or to a motor sport event?

Bill Snow: Uh, if you’re moving to a front wheel drive, you know, there’s a little bit more adaption to that, but other rear wheels, for me it feels similar. We used to race an E 30. I feel like the handling is, I won’t say similar, but the feedback seems similar to me. Between the two.

Crew Chief Eric: We call that fun wheel drive, by the way, it is a totally different driving style than you guys are.

I I like that fun wheel

Jim Tramontano: drive.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes.

Jim Tramontano: That’s not the one I heard. There’s another one that I heard. You

Crew Chief Eric: must be referring to the nine 11 drivers that they, you wheel drives going backwards. Yeah. Yeah. Those guys,

Dave Peters: I mean, I can say that I, I definitely think it made me a better [00:21:00] driver than I, if I’d have kept driving the three 70 z and, and kind of to what Bill’s saying is, I think what it is that makes it magical is the balance.

Front to back. It does. It gathers up super easy. You know, you start feeling the the ass end come around and then a little flick of the wheel and it comes right back under you. I can’t really speak for driving other stuff except the ZI. Honestly, I think I’ve just driven another Miata on the track, couple other Miatas on the track.

I’ve never driven anything else, so

Jim Tramontano: never lift really is a big one. As you progress to get faster and faster into Miata, you know, it’s easy to drive a Miata decently because of the low speed, but if you really wanna go fast, you need to be on the limit all the time. So,

Dave Peters: full send. Full

Jim Tramontano: send. Yeah, full send all the time.

I mean, I’ve got some clips I keep on putting up clips of, mostly turn one at NJ Motorsports Park, just sideways. Hold the gas car and like, oh, you’re good. You know, just steer through it and keep your foot planted. And that’s translated pretty well to other cars. I actually, I got to drive at E 30 at Limerock last year, which [00:22:00] is really exciting to not have a dry session until the race started at a track like Limerock, if you’re familiar.

But I looped it. My first wet practice session, but you know, you have to find the limit. So you have to cross it to find it. Things translate, but those cars like to move around on the tail a lot quicker than mine does.

Crew Chief Eric: I feel like all the paddock jokes suddenly come out when you say that, like what’s it like to drive a car with torque, you know, compared to your,

Jim Tramontano: I was afraid.

I was like, this car feels like it’s got so much power and you know. Maybe I had 30 more horsepower than my Miata, but also 300 more pounds. But eh, it was fun.

Crew Chief Eric: Bill sort of alluded to something that I want to touch on that comes up at every driver’s meeting, especially as a coach. You hear it all the time, students complaining this and that.

What are your pet peeves as a Miata driver on track? What really gets you hot and boiled? Corvette guys, the ca brake check

Dave Peters: won. You know it, it seems to happen to me every time I’m at VIR you chase ’em from turn [00:23:00] one to Oaktree and they should point you by and they don’t. And then you kind of catch ’em going down rollercoaster onto the front straight.

They probably shouldn’t point you there, but you know, you’re right back on ’em and turn one. And I can remember once probably doing six laps behind the same Corvette. I was so frustrated I didn’t go pull in for extra space. I just pulled in and stayed in.

Bill Snow: The pet peeve is the uh, faster car that that rides you.

You know, you give ’em the point by they pass you and then you’re right on their bumper and the turns, I think we talked about this earlier or something like that. You chase ’em through a couple turns, they’re way ahead and you catch ’em in a couple of turns. Yeah, just ’cause they have five times more horsepower doesn’t mean, uh, they’re necessarily all that faster on the, the track.

I think

Dave Peters: it boils down to egos honestly. Um, they don’t wanna let the 120 to whatever horsepower Miata get by their 500 horsepower, whatever, actually, and I shouldn’t have singled out Corvette guys. ’cause it’s not just Corvette guys. It was just easy to say after.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh no, no. It’s the Mustang guys and the Porsche guys and the, uh, Viper guys.

And you can, [00:24:00] anybody, anybody with power than me? Pretty, pretty

Jim Tramontano: much. So, and I’ll, I’ll preface this by saying I’ve never actually done it, but I have very much tried in advanced de groups to push cars outta corners. You know, they drive off before I can actually push their bumper. But I’ve tried, I’ve gotten close.

There’s been two, there’s a nine 11 where if there was air between our bumpers, I’d be shocked. He, he got away from it. That is,

Dave Peters: that is the good side of it, is freaking out the guys with the a hundred to $200,000 car by being on their ass. That usually will get you the point by two. Yeah.

Jim Tramontano: Uh, if it doesn’t, the, the thing that I learned that helps is the next corner.

Instead of being in their mirror, following them, be in their mirror sideways. Uh, and then usually you’ll get a very fair point by it because,

Crew Chief Eric: or a black or a black flag, one or the other. I mean, you know, yeah, it depends.

Crew Chief Brad: Just pass ’em in the dirt

Crew Chief Eric: hunch stook style and you know, to your, to your point, I feel your guys’ pain.

I run a low horsepower car as [00:25:00] well and you know, it’s a lot heavier than Dave’s, that’s for sure. But yeah, you’re there, you’re glued to somebody, you’re like, oh my god. And you know, being an instructor, I, you know, I tell my groups, especially if I’m a group leader, I’m like, Hey guys, these Miata guys, they didn’t transport themselves.

Here they are on you. And their foot is to the floor, like get out of the way. You know what I mean? Be respectful of it and whatnot. And a lot of people don’t respect the momentum cars and how much work it takes to drive one, because we don’t have the horsepower. We don’t have 5, 6, 7, 800 horsepower on demand, like some of these Camaros and Corvettes and, and Vipers and whatnot.

So it is a struggle. The struggle is real, but I always like to remind people to be respectful. And you know what else? Tuck behind the Miata because they are hauling ass and you might learn something. That’s the other thing I try to remind people, follow their line, see what they’re doing, see how you can carry more speed because that low horsepower momentum car is gonna demonstrate that very, very quickly.

Jim Tramontano: I’ve actually gotten a lot of. I’ve given point buys the [00:26:00] fast cars coming up on straights and they wave it off and they’ll follow me for two or three laps and then they’ll present and go the next straightaway. And it’s, it’s pretty cool that they’re trying that. The one thing that I have noticed, if you are in a Miata and you’re tired of not getting point buys, make your car look like a race car, like sticker it up.

’cause since I’ve been in the spec Miata, people let me right by. I mean, maybe it’s because my comfort level for space between cars has gotten a lot shorter, but, so I’m, I’m closer than I used to be, but I don’t really, I haven’t gotten hold that held up much lately. How many stickers do you have? Oh, I can’t count.

There’s a lot. Let me, there. Better be a lot of HPD junkie stickers. Well, I mean, if you got how, how much horsepower do you

Crew Chief Eric: Well that, that’s my point. If he’s got like 20 stickers, that’s an extra a hundred horsepower. You’re Oh yeah. Immediately faster. Oh, of course. Yeah. Well, they’re required

Jim Tramontano: alone.

Crew Chief Brad: There’s quite a few.

So Dave brought up the a hundred thousand dollars, the $200,000 cars. We know that the Miatas, at least maybe in previous markets, not the COVID post COVID market, that they were cheap. At least that’s what we hear all the time. So what’s the true [00:27:00] total cost of ownership really, like for HPD and for earth collaboration?

Um,

Dave Peters: I, I mean that’s, it really depends on what you wanna do with it. I think you can keep it really cheap and throw some coil overs and some little wider wheel and tire and a roll bar and some racing seats and roll with it. But you can be like me. Go down the rabbit hole and just do everything you possibly can to it, which a lot of it we know.

And that was part of the hobby for me too, was I didn’t really wrench a whole lot on other cars working on the miana. I felt really comfortable. So I just kept doing more and more and, you know, I liked fiddling with little fabrication things and so it, it really depends. And, you know, as far as cost, I, I paid I think 2,500 for mine, but you know what, you could, I would think the same car now would be six grand and I’ve probably put 10 to 12,000 in it.

But again, a lot of it was, you know, not necessary just ’cause I wanted to And

Crew Chief Eric: it wasn’t all in one shot either. It was over the course of [00:28:00] years. No, no.

Dave Peters: It was o over, yeah, over probably five years. And, you know, it, it could be anything from hood vents to a different shifter to things that absolutely aren’t necessary.

They just make it a little nicer or

Crew Chief Brad: cooler or

Dave Peters: whatever you wanna call it.

Crew Chief Brad: If we all look back over time and, and start calculating how much money we put into our cars over the years. Don’t start crying

Crew Chief Eric: that, hey, that’s their boat. We don’t do that here. Yeah, no, but only if you wanna be depressed.

Dave Peters: Even still, you know, 12 grand invested into a track car that is fun as hell is still nothing.

Right. Exactly. You know, comparatively, you know, you guys can relate ’cause you’re in lesser expensive cars, but you go to a chin event and every car there is a hundred thousand and up. Yeah. So,

Crew Chief Brad: you know, you do, you’re, you’re nowhere near that and you, you have just as much fun if not more fun than they do.

Dave Peters: Exactly. And, and there’s definitely the fun of running one down and kind of laughing, thinking what you’ve spent

Crew Chief Eric: versus them. I’ve seen Dave’s car in person. It’s very nice. So good job. Well,

Jim Tramontano: [00:29:00] thank you. Thank you. One thing that was wild was my consumable budget for, I think it was the two years before I started racing.

So I was instructing and with my club they had a special where you could do time trial for just $50. It was like a little, like a bump up for the instructor group. There was very few people that would run in my specific class and time trial, but there was enough to get. Max’s contingency and hawk contingency.

So for two years I didn’t spend any money on tires or brakes. Nice. Um, brake pads are completely covered. Uh, and I was only going through a set a year anyway. Tires were, so that was 30 bucks, right? Yeah. Five the better. And then the tires was, were given to me too. So I would run ’em for a year and then just replace ’em with contingency tires and sell off the old ones.

And it, it worked out, uh, pretty well.

Bill Snow: So I bought mine a little bit over two years ago for the car. All the, uh, the stuff that he had new in box and then a set of, uh, wheels and, uh, re 70 ones. I was still [00:30:00] just under 10 grand. And the only thing I’ve had to do in the last two years is we pulled the motor over the off season here just to reseal every gasket.

The rear main was leaking a little bit, the front crank a little bit, I mean, so seals and a couple bearings and a new pulley. And I did some upgraded voter bounce and upgraded Kevlar timing belt. So I’m probably right where David is probably 12 grand total.

Crew Chief Eric: The Miatas, they all come in different colors and flavors like Skittles, right?

So, but there’s like a base setup. A lot of people say I run the SSM package. Whatever that means, means something to you guys, but I, I don’t know, I dunno what it means, but I guess the question is like, how similar or dissimilar are your guys three miatas, which are, you know, all NA and B series cars.

What’s the setup like? What kind of parts would you recommend other people buy and where are you getting ’em from? Like what’s, where’s the best place to source this stuff?

Jim Tramontano: So mine is a spec Miata. I have to run what I’m told to run. I don’t have a choice in it, which I’m fine with the current setup. About three years ago, we [00:31:00] switched to Penske Shocks.

And when I say that everyone I see their eyes open. They’re like, it’s a spec class. They’re so expensive. They’re actually not, they’re $200 each. For the shock. The total shock to buy ’em the first time with the amounts and everything is like 1200. And then the full suspension package, I wanna say, including the shocks is like 2,500 or so.

And it, it is absolutely not the best possible suspension for Miatas. There’s better options out there, but the cost is really low. I mean, that’s what some people are paying for shocks on BMWs. So the cost for the suspension package is low. And the good thing about the Spec Miata package, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of them running.

So if you’re at a track day and you’re like, Hey, my car is handling like crap. If you can go talk to a spec Miata guy and say, what, you know, what setup do you have? What’s your alignment? What’s this and that. I mean, you know, it’s not gonna be the same if you’re on street tires versus Toyos or Hoosiers, but you’ll be able to have that kind of baseline of knowledge.

That’s really helpful. If someone asked me what to buy right now, what I would say is [00:32:00] try and find an old spec Miata suspension. Most of us took ours off. We had the Bill Steins where the old style, we, most of us replaced it with the Penskes. And you can get the bill Steins for so cheap, you still have to pay for this, the amounts and the springs and all that.

But really to get a very, very competent track suspension for very, very little money, there’s, you can’t beat it.

Bill Snow: Yeah. I think the best advice is what Jim said. You talk to other owners, you walk the paddock at a track day and hey, what do you run? And you look, you look like you’re handling pretty well or what advice do you have here?

Jump forums can be good and bad. When I’ve got asked some advice, I’ve mentioned one of my employees has a Miata, so you know, he’s been good to say, Hey, run this, run that. A bunch of the parts we just bought. We went to Fab nine and X five for a lot of that. But I’ve heard good things about flying Miata as well.

You know, being track.

Dave Peters: I think it’s definitely a whole different ball game than what Jim’s doing. Bill kind of said it at the beginning, start out with tires. I kind of think brakes are probably the first thing. Tires, but they’re kind of right there together too, is gonna make the, the biggest difference.

Again, [00:33:00] it’s such a different market between racing and track day. It’s, you can kind of do what you want or what you can afford or what you are able to do yourself. And as far as parts, man, I’m kind of all over the place. I mean, I, I buy some stuff from Rock Auto, I buy a lot of stuff from a spec meato guy.

I can’t remember exactly where he is. Somewhere in the central part of the country. It’s,

Bill Snow: it advanced, advanced

Dave Peters: auto Sports. Yeah. I mean, you know, the way I look at it with him is he might only sell one wheel hub type, you know, brand or one break master cylinder brand. But I feel like he’s probably figured out which one’s the best and his prices are amazingly good.

I, I, I got a, um, clutch, the hydraulic part rebuild kit, and I think the master cylinder, a stainless steel line and slave cylinder altogether was less than a hundred dollars. So, you know, he’s definitely been a go-to for me, I bought some stuff from Flying Miata. To me, they’re a little more of a street car site, not fully, but to me that’s the [00:34:00] feel I get that they cater a little more to that agree.

Crew Chief Eric: So what’s your setup like, Dave? What suspension are you running on your Miata?

Dave Peters: You know, I, I have a coil over suspension. It’s nothing crazy. It’s a, I would call it an inexpensive, it’s a Vmax is, is what I have. And I, they have several different levels and I have the Vmax Extreme Track Pack and, and actually got those from Fly Miata.

And at the time, and I think you still can, if you buy Coilovers and their Sway bars at the same time, you get a considerable discount. They’re probably in the 12 to $1,300 range at this point. With the sway bar. I wanna say I paid nine something, but that’s been five years ago. And you know, honestly I’d like to be able to speak on, you know, is there a huge difference between a a thousand dollars coil over and a.

I think some, you know, Olins, I think can be almost three grand bill. I think you got a lucky score behind that car with a set of olins did. But, you know, honestly, I’d really like to, to drive a car [00:35:00] with them to see is there $2,000 worth of difference in, in these shocks, or, or am I, am I a good enough driver to feel the difference in $2,000 worth of shocks?

I don’t think, I don’t think I am.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a very good point, and I think there’s a, there’s a fallacy a lot around some of these parts. I tell people all the time when they ask my opinion, you know, let’s say with Volkswagen stuff, I’m like, start with this and work your way up. Never build the car past your ability to drive it, because that’ll get you into trouble.

So yes, there is some, why spend the money three times. But I’m also telling you, don’t waste your money on these 12 things. I’ve already wasted my money on those. Yeah. Here’s 11 of them suck and there’s one of them that’s. Good. Go start with this one. Right? Go from there. So it is a progression and a lot of people just want to go to finished product and then the car is undrivable.

And it kind of leads me into another question about the different kinds of types of Miatas. I’ve seen ’em all right. From the track cars to the ssms to the stance bros with like negative 12 degrees of [00:36:00] camber and bags. And then you’ve got the square Miatas. For a lot of people that don’t know what that is, tune into our autocross episode where we talk to a mi autocrosser where he’s running like 2 55 square on an nb and it’s like, how is that even a thing?

They’re all, oh my, we had

Jim Tramontano: 90 fives.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean it’s insane, right? They’ll get steam rollers and they stick out eight inches from the body, but they’re all set up very different. But it also seems like the community’s very tight and there’s certain things to get and not get. My question coming out of this very long ramble is can you build a Miata that does everything?

Is there a combination that works for the track for CROs for the street? So you can have one car and not three. I know you end up with three Miatas over time, but

Jim Tramontano: I have a, I’m sure you could answer they, yes, every Miata can do all of these things. When I started doing this, I had a bone stock Miata. All it had was a front sway bar.

’cause it was initially by the previous owner built for estock autocross. That was it, front sway [00:37:00] bar. And I tracked that car for two years and daily drove tracked with the occasional autocross for two years and it was perfect. It was amazing. I mean, I was scraping my mirrors. It was leaning so hard in the corners, but that was good.

I learned how to drive in that car. Short answer, yes, they can leave it stock.

Crew Chief Eric: So what are some of the best life hacks for Miatas? Things that you’ve learned? Make waste to cut corners and save money and, and bring down the total cost of ownership.

Jim Tramontano: One thing that I do, that I get a lot of hard looks for is the biggest weak point on our cars is the front hubs.

The more grip you have, the more likely they’re to fail. It’s not an if, it’s a, when I’m looking right now at my shelf, in the garage, I have six pre-packed hubs. ’cause I bring at least three of the track with me. Sounds familiar. My hack for that is buy the $25 hubs. On the GMB hubs. They’re junk, but they’re all junk and they’re all gonna fail, so you might as well buy ’em and repack ’em with good grease.

And then in the meantime, once you have those, keep your eyes out [00:38:00] for cheap deals on OEM hubs that are old off desert cars, off part out cars. If they’re still good, if they don’t have movement in ’em yet, you can still take ’em apart and repack ’em. That’s my one hack ’cause that’s worked out well. Uh, I have a.

A pile of hubs. That hasn’t been an issue in quite a while for me. Now, the other street hack was actually kind of fun. I, you know, I wish I had a picture that I could hold up to the screen here, but Miatas get very hot and a lot of us take the air conditioning out or the air conditioning is junk or it’s, doesn’t work anymore.

I took a, a gutter downspout, the little 90 degree turn from a gutter pipe. And attached it right after my sail window. ’cause even when the windows open, no air gets in this car and I had it attached there, so it would take air from right behind the mirror and throw it right at me in the driver’s seat. I swear it saved my life on hot days and I’m talking street track, whatever.

It’s, it was a, it was great. All for $4.

Dave Peters: It made me think of, I love when I can buy something [00:39:00] from my car at Home Depot or Lowe’s.

Bill Snow: I don’t know. I get such a charge out of it. One hack is something Jim brought up earlier. You know, there, there’s such a huge racing community and such a huge car culture around me is there’s always gonna be a good deal on something used.

Or a part out car. And no matter where you live, you know, you’re in the Facebook groups, there’s constant, Hey, I’m looking for this, and 10 people chime in with, Hey, I, I have one. Or just part out. Yeah. Being able to, you know, get stuff from the spec racing community or from the car community.

Crew Chief Eric: And you bring up a really good point, bill.

Where are some of the best online communities or forums for miana owners if people are looking to get in for the first time? Obviously if you’re in the know, you’re in the know, but where, what’s some great resources for folks?

Bill Snow: So, I’m in Ohio and there’s a couple good Facebook groups, um, Miata Owners of Ohio.

To me, the Facebook groups are a little bit better than the forums these days. It’s just, it’s, it’s more real time. It sometimes I think it’s easier to search wherever you are. Do a couple of searches for some Facebook groups. That, uh, are Miata focused and geography focused. I don’t know if I’d [00:40:00] call

Dave Peters: it

Bill Snow: a

Dave Peters: hack, but there’s a myth about brake rotors that you need slotted or drilled or whatever.

Don’t spend bunch of money on your brake rotors for a Miata Rock Auto, $80 for all four shipped to your door. Um, that’s all you need. That’s it. It kills me when I hear someone say, yeah, I’m gonna go get the big break package, and I’m like. Please don’t, please don’t do it.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, your, your stock breaks become the big brake package when you take 500 pounds out of the car.

Absolutely. If anything,

Dave Peters: upgrade to the, uh, I have the sport brakes on mine, which are a little bit more break than what Jim probably has on his car, but I mean, they’re more than enough.

Crew Chief Brad: But what is this? I, I thought Miata owners didn’t have brakes. They, they never use them putting money into them. We use them very briefly.

That’s in front of us. We have to use It’s an

Crew Chief Eric: brake. Yeah.

Dave Peters: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, what good or breaks? All they do is slow you down after exactly [00:41:00] whatever. You know, as Miata owners, longtime Miata owners, now in some cases, what’s the best and worst parts? Outside of the driving experience it, it can be either or. So what are the best or worst parts about owning a Miata now that you know?

Oh,

Dave Peters: honestly, think of a bad, anything bad. I mean, I mean, I’m sure there is the best is just, it’s so fun to drive. It’s cheap. Everything’s cheap for and plentiful and. I guess the downside is they are getting more expensive. If you wanna get into a Miata, price has definitely gone nuts.

Jim Tramontano: My call for the best part is I wouldn’t be able to afford doing this if I didn’t have a Miata.

I don’t know if there’s any car that had, I can get a consumable budget this low and a parts budget this low. The worst part is that coming out of every tight corner, I can’t just drop my foot and go completely sideways and be a hero. Like, I, I really want that on like a de day if I, you know, going for a ride or if there’s, you know, look around, there’s nobody on track and you want to have fun.

I do wish I had a car that could do that, but the trade off to [00:42:00] me is still not worth it, not happening.

Bill Snow: The best part, always fun to drive, always puts a smile on your face no matter what. And there’s always the people that wanna talk to you about your car. You’ll be. Pumping gas. Oh, I remember I had a Miata or you know, so and so had a Miata.

Is that your girlfriend’s Miata? You know, all those sort of things. It is, did you just come,

Crew Chief Eric: did you just come from the Haircuttery? Yeah. You know, all the jokes,

Bill Snow: but the, uh, the worst part is, it kind of goes in line with what Jim just said. Yeah, you’ll be on the freeway and, and I’m not advocating for street racing or saying this would be street racing.

You are on the freeway and you know, a charger challenger or an STI rolls up next to you and you’re like, man, I, I wanna play a little bit. And you can’t hang with them if they drive you,

Crew Chief Brad: I wanna do some MythBusters. Um, but it’s probably directed more at Jim. So in a lot of these racing series, there is a conspiracy theory that in order to be competitive and to win all the front guys are, they’re, they’re, they’re spending a lot more money than the people at the back of the pack.

Is it the same [00:43:00] for the SM and SSM guys? Is that part of the game? You’re Mr. No money Motor sports. Are you competitive racing and are the front runners putting in more money than the back back markers?

Crew Chief Eric: Bradley are, are you, are you referring to this mythical 1.7 liter Miata that doesn’t exist anywhere?

Jim Tramontano: One point not. I would like to invoke my

Crew Chief Brad: Fifth

Jim Tramontano: Amendment rates. That is the best question. That is not just a good question. That is the best question. That’s kind of been my own personal journey. This is my fifth season racing now. I’ve always been doing it very cheaply, but each year I kind of ramp it up a little bit more, or prep or what I’m doing.

Last season we average 19 cars a. And I ended the season in, was it either fourth or maybe fifth for points? I didn’t win any races yet, you know, well I had I think a couple thirds this year and a lot in the top five, top six, uh, which kind of stinks was a lot of six is because that’s right out of to bucks.

[00:44:00] But, uh, I was able to stay right up there in the front of the pack on the engine that came in my car when I bought it six years ago. One set of sticker tires per season doing alignments. Basically myself, my friend David t and Z Auto did my alignment like two years ago, and that’s the last shop alignment I had.

If you spend more money and more prep on these cars, you will be able to go faster, but. Having the spec series, the spec roles, and the prep, you get a lot less advantage spending more money in spec miana than you would if you’re spending money in an open class like a, like an ST class or an unlimited class.

So it still makes a difference, but not nearly as much as anywhere else. We are at Watkins Glen in like three weeks for our first race of the season, and I just bought a new engine, new used engine. So ask me this question again at the end of the month, now that I’m making power, that should be right up with the top boys and girls.

We’ll see how I can hold up. We’ll see if that extra 10 horsepower is worth the money.

Crew Chief Eric: What’s the displacement of that motor? Did

Jim Tramontano: you say It’s uh, I [00:45:00] believe it’s 1.9 liters now. Oh. Oh,

Crew Chief Eric: okay.

Jim Tramontano: It is actually an overboard, you know, 1.81 and I have to take a, a 15 pound weight penalty, which is good ’cause I already did that with COVID and how I learned how to bake bread.

So I’ve been

Crew Chief Brad: preparing for this. Congratulations on being like right in there with the, with the top guys. That’s, it’s pretty admirable. Thanks. Five years of racing. That’s, that’s really good. It’s an alternate universe. The Miata, the MX five does not exist. What do you drive? Everything else being equal.

What is your track weapon? Your race weapon?

Crew Chief Eric: Ooh, that’s a really good question, Brad.

Bill Snow: I’d probably go E 30, E 36. I’ve only tracked an E 36, but we raced an E 30. It just, I really, really enjoyed it. Plus, although the E 30 pricing’s going through the roof like everything else and parts, but you know, E 36 or even E 46, they’re everywhere.

Parts are available everywhere. They’re somewhat reliable. So that’s what I would go with.

Crew Chief Eric: I like how you emphasize somewhat. That’s good.

Bill Snow: Yes, they’re reliable. [00:46:00]

Dave Peters: Yeah. I’ll tell you what really makes me curious for some reason, is the B-R-Z-F-R-S Toyota 86 i, I had driven one on the street. My dad had one for a little while and it was a nice driving car, but that was prior to me ever driving on the track.

So I don’t feel like I really drove it. I’m very curious about those cars. So that might be my choice.

Jim Tramontano: I have a two part answer here. So for racing it would be 30, got to race the Specky 30. It was a blast. I didn’t rush this sell by Miata after doing it. But they’re a lot of fun in my opinion. They’re more fun to drive, they’re slightly less fun to race, if that makes sense.

Just ’cause the handling characteristics I’ve known at all. Yeah, right.

Dave Peters: But if for a,

Jim Tramontano: for tracking the 86 cars all the way. The B-R-Z-F-R-S, the 86, I mean, that to me is about as close as you’re gonna get to a modern Miata. I know they still make Miatas their formula’s a little bit better, in my opinion. I mean, to not have to worry about a roll bar that you can’t even really easily put in a new car, a new Miata, [00:47:00] the glass transmissions that they put in the new Miatas.

Right now I’m leaning towards the 86 cars, plus there’s so many that they’re selling. That might be our next big spec class.

Crew Chief Eric: Do I get a vote? Brad? Can I throw one in?

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, you cannot say E 36. You’ve down that road before. It’s not gonna

Crew Chief Eric: be a BMW, that’s for sure. I’m gonna, I’m gonna stick to my roots and I would say no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I would say 9 44 for God, all previous reasons stated 50 to 50 weight distribution, the whole nine yards. And they’re quicker than E 30 technically. So I, I think I would go with the 9 44. See,

Jim Tramontano: we’ve, I could see that being an option every time that I’ve seen one on track. I mean, there was a two year spread where every time one showed up for our race group, I was like, when’s the red flag gonna happen?

And that’s how we feel about it was a terrible joke because it was like, oh, there’s, there, he, uh, he’s out of the car, but it’s on fire. Oh, there it is. It’s parked over here. It’s just like, ah, man. [00:48:00]

Crew Chief Eric: To dovetail off of what Brad said and bring it back into reality a little bit. If you had to start all over again, would you stick with the Miata you have or would you do something different?

Dave Peters: I wanna pop up

Bill Snow: headlights.

Dave Peters: I definitely would not do anything different, you know, obviously didn’t know then what I know now, but I think I made the right choice.

Jim Tramontano: I would do the same exact thing, street me out for a while, then suck me out when I can.

Crew Chief Eric: Two of you having nbs and one of you having n na, I have to ask the question, are those the best generations?

The original two? Do you have any love for the NC and the nd? If not, why not? Let’s talk about the newer ones as well. We don’t, nobody seems to really focus on them. I’d like to

Dave Peters: drive. I’d like to drive both. I, I’ve ridden in an ND on the track and it’s, it, you know, it seemed pretty cool, but driving in riding’s two different things.

And I don’t even think I’ve been in an NC on the street, but I’d be very, very curious to drive both.

Bill Snow: I do like the NA and NB styling. I know the NC isn’t too much different. Some people [00:49:00] say, I just don’t necessarily like the lines of the NC or nd not say anything negative about ’em. But the one thing is, um, I’m a fan of simplicity and the more complicated a car gets.

The more expensive it is to repair, the more things that can break simple, to me is better.

Jim Tramontano: Bill kind of nailed my, uh, why I like the NA MDs so much. They’re so simple. They’re reliable. They’re so, the NCS had some early engine issues. The nds are having transmission issues. They’re still great, fantastic cars and maybe it’s just me sticking with what I know.

I would love to get in one. I’m not ruling them out for the future as our cars get older. We might have to start moving up sometime soon, if nothing else, just to keep up with the, the general speed of track days. ’cause they both have a good amount more power. They’re great cars. I, I would love to track ’em and street ’em, but I’m definitely not selling mine anytime soon.

Crew Chief Eric: I hear you on that. I got, I’ve gotten the opportunity to run a couple prepared NCS on track and I really like them. I would choose them honestly, a because they’re, look, they’re a little bit more comfortable, they’re bigger, [00:50:00] but the swap potential, if you’ve got that mentality is huge. You could put a 2, 2, 3, 2 5.

There’s a lot of power options for the NC NC turbos they have over Europe, you know, make it 300 plus horsepower. I, I just like that chassis and having driven the older ones as well. When I got in the NC it was a little less twitchy. Because it’s a bigger car. Which actually leads me into my question to you guys about maybe your gut reaction to the ND because it went smaller again, right?

The NC is the largest Miata by far. Mm-hmm. But then they went backwards and they said, let’s go back to the original size. So when that car debuted and you guys got to put eyes on it, what did you think? And what do you still think about it today? Really lot. I liked it.

Dave Peters: I mean, I like the, I like the way it looks.

I mean, not stock right from the showroom. I think the wheels look a little funky and a little small on ’em. But I like the lines. And you know, like Jim was saying, I’ve thought about the NC and ND option as the future [00:51:00] of what happens when you can’t find anymore NAS or N Bs, or God forbid IB mine up, would I go that route?

So, yeah, I’m curious about ’em,

Jim Tramontano: Barry. The only hard stop I have for really the ND I think over the NC is the roll bar is so tough to put in those cars right now the only solution I, and I could be wrong here, but I believe the only solutions are like over $2,000 for a like one specific company that makes a roll bar you can go on track with and it’s not ready for that compromise yet.

Um, what

Crew Chief Eric: about the rc, what about the RC edition?

Jim Tramontano: You have to have a roll bar in those too. Yeah, it looks like it’s a regular target car, but the back of the car actually lifts up to put the target underneath. So it’s, there’s no fixed roof portion. I’ve heard just recently heard that some clubs do let you on track with that.

I wouldn’t feel comfortable really wheeling a car like that without some sort of protection in it. Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: because to your point, some clubs allow the NC two, the one with the convertible hard top to be run just with the factory hoops. Yeah. Instead of a roll bar. So that’s kind of interesting ’cause the [00:52:00] NC one and NC two soft top to hard top, all that kind of thing.

Dave Peters: A friend of mine just bought a, um. Nd, what do they call ’em? Rf. Yep. And he bought it specifically to track it. And evidently when you put a roll bar in one of those, the top never goes down again. You have to actually, you know, disconnect it. It is what it is. It’s track cost. Yeah. Why

Crew Chief Eric: spend the extra money for the fixed roof when you look so good

Dave Peters: though?

He did have, I think there was something that the chassis better, or it handles better or there was a reason, and honestly, oh, I know what it was. If he bought a soft top, he wanted to put a hard top on it. And the hard tops for them are like. Insanely expensive. He kind of did the math and figured out that, well, I might as well just buy an RF and go that route.

Bill Snow: Yeah. I was glad to see that it came back to the closer to the original size. You know, if you look at the mini Coopers lately, you know, if you took, you know, an R 50, R 53 when they came back in early two thousands and looked to at where they are today, they’ve gotten [00:53:00] fatter,

Crew Chief Eric: the maxi, that’s what we call ’em around here.

Bill Snow: Um, see, I haven’t, I haven’t been up close to one. I haven’t been in one, so I can’t, I can’t speak to that. But, um, I was glad to see that it kind of returned back to the original idea of, hey, it’s supposed to be a, a small, nimble. Car.

Crew Chief Eric: So that leads into a another variant of the Miata. I, I often call it the Fiat, and that’s the Fiat 1 24 Barth, which is very similar in some ways to the NC Miata, although it shares the ND chassis, it’s actually physically larger.

It’s more comfortable to sit in and things like that. So what do you guys think about the 1 24 spider?

Dave Peters: It’s ugly

Crew Chief Eric: blasphemer,

Dave Peters: you know, it’s, to me, it’s almost like they tried to copy an nb, definitely lines that look like an nb, but then especially the back.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Peters: But then there’s some lines that just look like they’re slightly out of place.

To me, it just. I don’t like it, but I think that it’s just very [00:54:00] minute things that they did that make me not

Crew Chief Eric: like it. So let me ask you this, if they re-badged it, changed the sheet metal and brought it back as an Alpha Rome male, hint, hint, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Would that change your opinion of the fiat?

Dave Peters: No, definitely. I mean, it, it really, it’s a, it’s an aesthetics thing. I’m, I mean, I just don’t like the way it looks. And, and then it’s got what, a 1.4 turbo in it. One’s gotta be faster or drive better than the other. But I, I really don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: So I’ve read in the tests and even they did a review on the grand tour.

Richard Hammond drove one and basically, because the fiat weighs more than the nd but it makes more power. They’re basically equal. But the difference is the tunability of the fiat is huge because there’s people like Euro compulsion that make turbo kits for ’em and things like that. You throw ’em on, suddenly you have 300 horsepower.

You have a rocket ship, right? Mm-hmm. So I think the flexibility of the Abarth motor is great. If you want to go back to what we were talking about earlier in the episode where it’s like, I want that need for speed. I want to fulfill and satisfy [00:55:00] that, but I don’t want something that isn’t a Miata, right?

Bill Snow: To me when I was, I was looking at some of the pictures again before the call. You know, it kind of looks almost video gamish. I don’t know why. And a lot of the renderings I saw, I read an old article from 2016 Road and Track or MotorTrend or something that did a comparison. And just like you said, Eric, they came out about even, I have not seen one on the road though.

Have you guys, anyone seen? Oh, they’re all over

Crew Chief Eric: the place here. Yeah. Yeah.

Bill Snow: Not here in Cleveland.

Jim Tramontano: I, I fell into that love with it, or I guess out and in the first time I saw one in person, I was at New York Auto Show and I was not a fan. But then when I started to see ’em, I, I like it. It kind of has that old Fiat Roadster look, which is like a little bit awkward.

But it works. It definitely has that look. Personally, I am not a fan of turbo cars though. I mean, I know I’m gonna have to change my opinion ’cause everything is turning into turbos. I’d rather have the normally aspirated Miatas and then I know the ND two Miata. I think they bumped it. What, like 40 horsepower.

Maybe not four. They there was a huge bump for the [00:56:00] second generation of the nds. I like them and used car market. I’m not gonna say no to one, but I’d still rather stick with the Miata version.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a pizan thing. We get it. You know the whole, yeah.

Jim Tramontano: So you didn’t see the guy off camera holding a cannoli saying, you better say you like the fiat.

Yeah, right. As a Chrysler person too. A Mopar guy. I have to like the fiat, you know? Right, exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: Amen to that. Amen to that. I’ve got a lot of

Jim Tramontano: texts. Why are you racing mes when you could race that? I can’t though, but you’re close

Crew Chief Eric: and the price on those things is, has gone nuts to, oh has to Brad’s point earlier, used car market going through the roof and things like that and, and you know, when you start looking at what a used six speed fiat would cost, you can buy a rag out Alpha four C and have a mid engine fighter jet more power and all that kinda stuff.

So it’s kind of this weird balance when we start talking about again, what should I buy? How do I spend my money in today’s market when a used car from five years ago is 30 grand? You’re like, well, do I buy. [00:57:00] You know, I’ll Mach E for 40 and it’s a brand new EV and get all excited about that. Or do I buy an SSM for that price?

’cause a lot of ssms, you know, especially you want a front runner, they’re expensive, right? So there’s a lot of different things to consider when you get into that. That being said, since you guys are in the community, any rumors. About a fifth Gen Miata coming out. I mean, the nds getting a little long into tooth as well.

It’s been around now five, six years.

Bill Snow: I haven’t heard anything. There was talking of an ng, wasn’t there? Yeah, it’s rotary powered.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s never gonna happen.

Jim Tramontano: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. If you know me, you know my opinion on Rotaries and I’ve, I’ve hurt some feelings, but I’ve been very Right. I’m,

Crew Chief Eric: I always say if the Germans thought it was a good idea, they wouldn’t have given up on it.

Right. Just, just let’s take the nine 11 as an example.

Jim Tramontano: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Well,

Jim Tramontano: what I’ve heard is that everyone that blew up, they just were driving it wrong. And it’s simple tricks that you’d have, oh [00:58:00] wait, they just blew up. It’s a two stroke. Yeah, a hundred percent.

Crew Chief Eric: So I’m really curious to see what the future of the Miata is like.

I mean, we’re talking about now, it came out in 19 89, 9, although it was as model year. Yeah. As we talked to one of the folks that was on the design team for the Miata. They were developing it years earlier. Right. And we joked on another episode. It’s one of those cars that was designed in the eighties, came out in the nineties, and now has lasted forever.

We’re talking a 30 year run, and so it’s, we’ll be curious to see what the next decade looks like, especially as we move to EVs. Do you think there’ll be an electric Miata, or is the Miata maybe on its way out?

Jim Tramontano: It’ll definitely be an electric version of some sort. I’m excited for it. I’m about 10 years before I can really get behind electric stuff.

Maybe five years. But I’m excited for that too. That’ll be fun. You just want the e torque. Yeah. Well, the only thing is I also wanna be able to do a 35 minute session at the Glen. Through, but, we’ll, we’ll see.

Crew Chief Eric: That actually brings up a, a great question. Best Giata swap you’ve ever seen, [00:59:00] or one that you lust after?

There’s always that guy that’s got the, well, I dunno that that’s on you, right?

Dave Peters: It’s subjective. Yeah. I mean, the best Miata swap I saw was an NC that had a two five in it. And, you know. I think like most track day Miata guys, you go through the like, oh, I’m gonna put a turbo on it. And then No, I’ve decided I’m gonna supercharge it.

No, I’m gonna do a, a ecotech swap. No, I’m gonna do, and you know, I kind of went through all that and went back to, I’m not doing any of that. ’cause every time I see one, they’re broken.

Jim Tramontano: I wanna try a k swap me out. I wanna drive one because my daily driver is KI love to

Dave Peters: drive one too, but you know, to do a K swap, it’s just insanely expensive.

It’s too much money.

Crew Chief Brad: We have somebody in the club that’s got one

Jim Tramontano: Ah, perfect. Send it my way. Yeah. My daily is at oh seven Civic. I, I have that K every day and I love that engine. I just, every time a minute I hit B Tech. I’m like, I wish the Miata had this.

Crew Chief Eric: So, no, no LS or coyotes or [01:00:00] five oh, it lost too much.

Too much for the chassis. It’s way too much. Why a Corvette? But you see guys doing it all the time, right? Fire breathing, dragon V eight. Miatas. Right.

Bill Snow: Do a lot. They’re always part the panic. Yeah. Jim, cover your ears. I have a collection of, of Rx sevens, which will end up, it’s still a pile and, uh, but, but I’m gonna end up with extra rotaries.

I always thought, man, love the stick of rotary in there. Why not? I’ve seen

Dave Peters: a miana with a rotary and I’m trying to remember when and where it was. I mean, it it, it’s closed on the side of the road. No, no, it was actually, it was a robing and it did break down.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna argue with Bill.

It’s cool. Yeah. But it’s sort of like other people’s kids like, yeah, I’ll play with you for a while as long as I get to give you back. You know what I mean? Like that’s me and Rotary. I’m all good, man.

Bill Snow: That sounds like one of my projects then. Yep. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: I do think though, the coolest I’ve ever seen, and I’m sure you guys remember this one, it was out of Southern California where [01:01:00] they put the Hellcat engine in the Miata.

Dude, that thing, I’ve seen that. Awesome.

Jim Tramontano: Let’s see. That car went into a ditch shortly after it was built, and I haven’t heard anything since.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, there’s no more videos about the Hellcat Miata, but it was cool for all of eight seconds. Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Wow. We have somebody in the market for a Miata. They’re six, four and 300 pounds.

What Miata do you recommend

Dave Peters: you did?

Crew Chief Brad: You

Dave Peters: pulled

Crew Chief Brad: this

Dave Peters: on me the first time around

Jim Tramontano: four. Alright. I got on it an NA or an NB because you can drop the floor, there’s a ready made kit, you drop the floor two and a half inches and you just get an aluminum seat on the floor back. Planet Miata claims they built one for a six foot eight driver.

Crew Chief Eric: Were his feet coming out the popups or what? Right.

Jim Tramontano: Well, it really, it depends. 6, 6, 4 might fit depending on how your torso size,

Crew Chief Brad: the 34 engine zine. I do not fit in a, in an na [01:02:00] in stock trim.

Jim Tramontano: If you come to one of our events, I want you to try and sit. Oh yeah. Not stock. There’s a car too you might fit into.

There you go, Brad. You could wear, could wear

Crew Chief Brad: it. Find one event.

Jim Tramontano: You can,

Crew Chief Eric: you

Jim Tramontano: can wear that Miana.

Crew Chief Brad: The latest accessory,

Jim Tramontano: my friend has one, he, he built, he’s got a drop floor of the seats on the floor all the way back and he built a eight or nine inch steering wheel extension. ’cause it was the only way he could get his knee.

The arch in his knee is to fit. He’s very comfortable in the car

Crew Chief Eric: drive with T-Rex arms, like, yeah. Oh yeah. So that said, Brad, I think we should do maybe some lightning round pit stop questions. What do you think? Sure. Let’s go for it. I’m gonna, I’m gonna start with my favorite, so I’m gonna ask. Bill sexiest car of all time.

Bill Snow: Uh, late sixties GT 40

Crew Chief Eric: oh

Bill Snow: oh. Dave,

Dave Peters: you, you got me on. This is a s Are you testing me? Uh, it was Ja The answer is not Miata in this case. No, no is not. It was, it was Jaguar XK, E, hard

Jim Tramontano: top.

Crew Chief Eric: Nice.

Jim Tramontano: A type B Jag. Yeah, [01:03:00] Jim, I’ve got, so it depends on my definition of sexy that day. Honestly. I always go back to my 1969 and a half Super bee in the green.

The bright green metallic. Woo. One of these days. Mopar, man. So

Crew Chief Eric: see that leads into the other, the other pit stop question of favorite, a classic on this show, which is what we call the million dollar man question or the million dollar garage question. So since you started with the Super Bee, you have a three bay garage, what do you put in the other two bays?

Jim Tramontano: Oh, that’s easy. Two spec Miatas. Because if I have that kind of cash in the beginning. There’s no way I’ll make it through a weekend without crashing one of the spec Miatas, when you have a second one in the garage, you will win a lot of races knowing you have a second one in the garage.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s called No fear.

Jim Tramontano: Yeah. Oh yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Dave, what do you put in the other two bays in your garage?

Dave Peters: I really want a. Spec spider, you know, uh, that’s a five 50 spider copy. I just love that car. And, and it’s attainable. Not at the moment, [01:04:00] but I think at some point I could afford one. And then, um, I don’t know, I probably want a late seventies, early eighties Porsche nine 30 or 9 35, something like that when I was a kid.

That was the car to me.

Bill Snow: You guys reminded me. I totally forgot about the Alpha four C. I think it’s a, it’s a fun car to see on the street. It sounds awesome. And, and I’m not one of these guys that’s gotta have a million dollar car. So throw one of those 50, 60 grand in the garage and then again, not looking at crazy expensive, but something I would love to have is a GT three 50 R.

Crew Chief Eric: Which year though, like our late sixties.

Bill Snow: Oh gosh. Um, no newer, sorry. Yeah, good point. And the third bay full of tires.

Crew Chief Eric: Right? I was gonna say, well he’s got ’em suspended over the cars, you know, he’s got a loft up there. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: exactly. Tires and fuel tanks. Yep. Ugliest car in the world other than the fiat.

I was gonna say, I already told you.

Dave Peters: No, that I don’t feel that madly about it. [01:05:00] Matador. Oh, Matador. I haven’t had, I haven’t had anybody pull

Crew Chief Eric: that one.

Dave Peters: That’s a good, that was the ugliest car ever. The wheels were like a foot in from the fenders. Um, and it just had no style whatsoever.

Crew Chief Eric: Had that long, got kind all of those two-one trying to, it wanted to be a Buick Riviera, but it didn’t know how.

Right,

Dave Peters: right. But it was an a MC.

Crew Chief Eric: Terrible.

Dave Peters: Yeah. One of my neighbors is a kid had one and yeah, I just remember that being, so that’s, that’s, that’s, uh,

Crew Chief Eric: that’s 10 points to Dave for the pull,

Bill Snow: I, I can’t remember the model number, but it’s a Hyundai. It’s got a weird front nose. It’s got a weird rear end. I think you’re thinking of the one where they were like trying to copy

Dave Peters: a Mercedes Jag look.

Yes. Yeah. I don’t know the number of it either, but yeah, those are really ugly. That’s what comes to mind for me.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, it’s like the Genesis G 80 or something like that. The big one. No, it wasn’t a [01:06:00] genesis.

Dave Peters: It was like nineties. Oh, that far back. The size of a cord. I thought, I thought you were gonna say

Crew Chief Eric: like the veloc, the funky one with the, the weird slope back and the, well, that’s pretty funky exhaust in the middle too.

You know, all that stuff.

Jim Tramontano: Not that one. The wish.com. Jaguar sonata, the wish.com. Jaguar.

Dave Peters: Yeah, right, exactly. It looked like, it looked like, you know, you’ve seen some of those Chinese knockoff cars. Yeah, they try. That’s kind of what it looks like, a knockoff jag. Especially when Jag went to those smaller Ford bottom and they went to those smaller jags, but they tried to keep the same headlight look.

That’s what that Hyundai looked like. I know. I know exactly the one you’re talking about, bill. Yeah, it’s a Hyundai Sonata. Is it a Sonata? Maybe it was the first years

Bill Snow: of those, yeah, early 2000. I just did a quick web search of Ugly Hyundai Endi and that’s what you had to go through. 50

Crew Chief Eric: pages. The one he was talking about.

That’s awesome. That must be a popular Google search. [01:07:00] It’s still loaded. Hold on. It’s still loaded.

Crew Chief Brad: You got that A OL working.

Jim Tramontano: So did Jim give us his answer or did he go, I did that. Oh, I’ve got so many good answers for this. But I’m gonna stick, if I wanna go modern, just give myself some criteria. The new WRX.

What are they doing? They’re not bringing STI I copy of the Honda.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Jim Tramontano: Each generation of that car has just gotten uglier and uglier since what? Like the Oh, sixes. The last year they

Crew Chief Eric: look good and it just, but doesn’t everybody say that about every Subaru that’s come out with, with the bugeye came out, they were like, oh, the one previous was better.

And then the one came after the bugeye. The bugeye was so great. This new one’s awful. Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: But the 2.5 Rs was a nice looking car. It it, yeah. But that was 30 years ago.

Crew Chief Eric: No.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it was. I do have a two part question. Dave might be exempt ’cause he’s already probably answered it, but any car on any racetrack.

Do I

Jim Tramontano: have a reset button [01:08:00] in my life? Sure. Like if I do an F1 car at Monza or Spa, we’ll say like, as long as I can reset when I crash at 195 miles an hour, I, yeah, this is, this is

Crew Chief Brad: Forza

Jim Tramontano: and you

Crew Chief Brad: can

Jim Tramontano: hit

Crew Chief Brad: the rewind button.

Jim Tramontano: There’s

Crew Chief Brad: my answer.

Dave Peters: Yeah, that’s what, that’s what mine was on the previous Formula One car F1 car in Mon in, uh,

Crew Chief Brad: in Monaco or Monza.

Yeah.

Dave Peters: I don’t remember which track I said, but F1 car,

Bill Snow: uh, I bought one of the Mazda DPI cars at, uh, road America. Ooh, nice. That’s Good. Road America. A nice track. Yeah, that’s a good one. Yeah, that would be mine.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a great segue into our final Miata question, which is if you could drive your Miata on any track that isn’t one of these ones you already mentioned, what’s your like bucket list track to take your Miata to and go run it?

VIR Patriot course.

Bill Snow: I’d probably, I’ve never been to Watkins Glen. Yeah, you have to go.

Crew Chief Eric: So you got mid Ohio in your backyard. I’m jealous.

Bill Snow: And I’m 35 [01:09:00] minutes from Nelson Ledges too, so that’s great.

Crew Chief Eric: You only break in one turn at that track.

Bill Snow: Yeah, yeah.

Dave Peters: Thunder Hill really has gotten like interesting to me and I really didn’t pay much attention to it till maybe last year and, and part of it was seeing how many events are held there and I was like, there’s got to be something great about this and watched a couple videos. So I’d like to, I’d like to do a full like cross country tour at some point and hit a bunch of ’em, but that would definitely be on the list.

Jim Tramontano: I’m probably gonna have to say Road Atlanta. We have a little sim league that we, and we do a lot of road Atlanta and that just seems like a really fun track. It is scary. We’ve done it. It’s awesome. It’s awesome. Yeah. Don’t put hair on

Crew Chief Eric: your chest, that’s for sure. Oh yeah. Call, call.

Dave Peters: Scary.

Crew Chief Eric: You mature quickly as a driver at Road Atlanta that, that’s a hundred percent, but I would say I would drive any of y’all’s Miatas at Brands Hatch.

That’s my vote right there. I need something low horsepower. So Miata would be perfect for a track like that, but on that bombshell. Guys, [01:10:00] I can’t thank you enough for coming on here and sharing some of your Miata expertise with our audience, with our listeners. So if you’re out there and you’re looking for more information about Miatas, I think you just put Miata into the Google and tons of things will come up.

But if you want more than that, you can tune into Late to Grid, which is a podcast about motorsports and getting on track. Bill Snow, our guest interviews, guys and gals who work hard all week to be weekend warriors. He also interviews professionals in the Motorsports community that can help you and your racing.

His audience includes members of SECA and nasa, which is the National Auto Sports Association, and those that participate in track days, HPDE and Endurance Racing Bill’s Goal is to share the stories and inspiration that will continue to help grow our sport. You can search for their show on all your favorite pod catchers or on social media at.

Late to Grid.

Crew Chief Brad: Jim Montano created No Money Motor Sports a site with the primary goal to get [01:11:00] folks on track as much as possible by spending as little money as possible, which is near and dear to my heart. He started auto crossing in 2007, started track days by volunteering with NASA in 2012, and moved up to HPD ranks in his daily driver Miata.

He’s in his fifth year racing spec Meto with NASA Northeast and you can check out his work over@www.no money motorsports.com.

Crew Chief Eric: And last to Grid, but certainly not least a shout out to Dave Peters and the folks over@hpdjunkie.com for deciding that something needed to be done to promote high performance driving events H HPEs across the country.

So he created a website with a goal of turning HPDE into a household name. And now HPD junkie.com is the most inclusive and most current listing of HPDE track days and open track events for the United States and Canada. You can check out H HPD junkie@hpdjunkie.com or follow them on all your favorite social media platforms at HBD [01:12:00] Junkie.

And you can chat with Dave Peters also over on Garage Riot. So we wanna thank Bill, Jim and Dave for joining us tonight on our episode. What should I buy? The answer is always Miana and wish you guys all the best in the 22 and 23 season. And by the way guys, what should we buy Miana seat time.

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

We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted to [01:13:00] 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.

Highlights

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 Introduction and Panel Setup: The Miata Mystique!
02:00 Jim’s Journey
04:44 Dave’s Miata Experience
07:20 Bill’s Motorsport Background
10:38 Miata vs. MX-5: What’s in a Name?
11:50 Making Miatas Faster: Tips and Tricks
15:01 Racing Stories and Pet Peeves
26:51 Cost of Ownership and Modifications
30:18 Best Miata Setups and Life Hacks
39:05 Finding Deals and the Best Online Communities for Miata Owners
39:59 Best and Worst Parts of Owning a Miata
42:44 Racing on a Budget: MythBusters Edition
45:24 Alternative Track Cars: Beyond the Miata
48:24 Comparing Miata Generations
58:03 The Future of Miata: Electric and Beyond
58:56 Dream Track Experiences and Car Swaps
01:09:59 Final Thoughts and Where to Find More Information

Learn More

What else should you buy? Check out other What Should I Buy? Podcast episodes for more car buying “advice” 😉 And remember: the debate never ends – it just shifts gears.

Let’s settle this: Miatas are slow. And that’s exactly why they’re great. “The trick is to not ever slow down,” Jim says. Momentum is everything. The panel agrees that seat time, tires, brakes, and suspension upgrades are the keys to going faster – not horsepower. “If those four things don’t put a smile on your face,” Bill adds, “maybe this isn’t for you.”

Jim Tramontano's NA Miata NASA SE Lightning Group
Dave Peters HPDEjunkie.com NB Miata
Jim Tramontano's NA Miata NASA SE Lightning Group
Bill Snow's #55 NB Miata
Bill Snow's #55 NB Miata
Dave Peters HPDEjunkie.com NB Miata
Jim Tramontano Spec Miata Racing at Watkins Glen (NASA/SCCA)

Spec Racing, Seat Feel, and the Joy of Being Outgunned

Spec Miata racing is a chess match at 100 mph. “It’s nose to tail, waiting for someone to screw up,” Jim explains. With older NA and NB models dominating the class, newer NC and ND Miatas are still finding their place. But the magic lies in the balance and feedback. “You start feeling the ass end come around,” Dave says, “and a little flick of the wheel brings it right back.”

Bill adds that the Miata’s seat feel helps drivers find the limit – and sometimes cross it. “You get such a great feel for yourself and the track,” he says. That confidence translates to other cars, especially rear-wheel drive platforms like the E30.

Every Miata driver has a story about being stuck behind a Corvette. “I remember doing six laps behind the same guy,” Dave groans. The panel agrees: faster cars with slower drivers are a menace. “Just because they have five times more horsepower doesn’t mean they’re faster,” Jim says. The solution? Make your Miata look like a race car. Stickers help.

Full Send, Always

Whether you’re chasing Corvettes or door-to-door with your Miata buddies, the joy of driving comes from pushing limits and sharing the experience. “Full send all the time,” Jim says. And if you’re tired of being ignored on track, just get sideways in their mirror. That usually earns a point-by – or a black flag.

So, is the answer always Miata? For this crew, it’s a resounding yes. Not because it’s the fastest, but because it teaches you how to drive, how to wrench, and how to build a community. And that, dear reader, is the real reward.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

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From Miatas to Motorsports PR: The Dean Case Journey

Gran T

June 14, 2022

From Miatas to Motorsports PR: The Dean Case Journey

What do the Mazda Miata, Ford’s TransAm program, and the Art of Racing in the Rain have in common? Dean Case. If you’ve ever wondered how someone goes from engineering iconic cars to shaping motorsports narratives behind the scenes, Dean’s story is a masterclass in reinvention, passion, and staying true to your roots.

Dean Case’s automotive journey began at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where he earned a mechanical engineering degree. His first job offer came from Mazda R&D in Irvine, California – a serendipitous start that placed him in the studio just as the Miata was taking shape. “I wasn’t there at the birth,” Dean admits, “but I was there during the development.”

As a studio engineer, Dean played the role of “physics police,” ensuring that design dreams could meet real-world constraints. From the Miata to the MX-6, MPV, and the third-gen RX-7, Dean helped translate artistic vision into engineering reality. He worked alongside legends like Bob Hall (whom he calls the true father of the Miata), Norman Garrett, and the brilliant designer Wu-Huan Chin.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

In 1993, Dean joined Ford’s electric vehicle department, working on the Ranger EV – one of eight electric vehicles launched in 1998 under California’s zero-emission mandate. But his heart was always in racing. By 1997, he’d transitioned to Ford Motorsports, managing the TransAm program and supporting teams like Roush Racing and AutoCon.

Dean’s time at Ford coincided with Tommy Kendall’s legendary 11-race win streak and encounters with racing icons like Paul Newman. “You could talk to Paul about racing,” Dean recalls, “but never about movies. He’d just walk away.”

Spotlight

Synopsis

This episode of Break/Fix features an in-depth conversation with Dean Case, the Public Relations Manager for SRO Motorsports America. The show opens with a history of Case’s automotive career, including his work on the original Mazda Miata and other notable Mazda projects. Case discusses his transition from engineering at Mazda to public relations at Nissan, where he managed product launches such as the return of the Z and the first Nissan 360 global event. He also touches on his time at Ford, covering electric vehicle projects and working with the Ford Motorsport effort in the SCCA TransAm Championship. Moving forward, Case explains his current role at SRO Motorsports America, aiming to enhance accessibility and interest in GT and touring car races. The episode covers a wide range of topics, from historic collaborations with notable figures in motorsports and media to contributions to distracted driving awareness campaigns and animal welfare. It also delves into the impact of Formula SAE on young engineers’ careers and Case’s passion for car-themed music.

The answer is always Miata – let’s talk about your work on the Miata team #zoom-zoom
You were at the height of TransAm at Ford; tell us some of those stories?
Famous Friends: Lyn St. James, Tommy Kendall, Sylvia Wilkinson, Paul Newman, Jay Leno, Garth Stein, Tim Considine and others.
Your time with Nissan and NISMO.
Your work with Formula SAE – why is SAE so important?
We had Greg Gill on the show talking about SRO > How are you connected? and how did you end up at SRO? What are your plans for the program? The Brand?
What other super cool things don’t we know about Dean Case?

Transcript

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

Crew Chief Eric: The following episode is brought to you by SRO Motorsports America and their partners at AWS CrowdStrike, Fantech Pelli, and the Skip Barber Racing School. Be sure to follow all the racing action by visiting www.sromotorsports.com.

Or take a shortcut to GT America US and be sure to follow them on social at GT America, on Twitter and Instagram at SRO GT America on Facebook and catch live coverage of the races on their YouTube channel at GT World. [00:01:00] After graduating Cal Poly San Luis Obisbo with a mechanical engineering degree, our guest joined Mazda Research and Development in Irvine, California.

And while at Mazda, he worked on the original Miata. Second generation MX six, first Gen MPV, and the third Gen RX seven. While he loved the people and the work at Mazda, he wanted to try something new, working at a larger car company. That opportunity came in 1993 when he joined Ford as a layout engineer in the electric vehicle department, and in 1997, he was able to transfer to the Ford Motorsport effort in the SCCA TransAm Championship.

While the Ford experience was professionally rewarding, he wished to return home to Southern California a little later, acting as the EV q and a technical expert on a Nissan Media event in 2000, a life-changing event that would lead him from engineering to communications. He became the Nissan [00:02:00] product PR manager from 2001 through 2006, where he worked on every Nissan brand product launch, including the return of the Z, the launch of Nismo, and the first Nissan 360 global event.

Fast forwarding to two Today, our break fix guest is one of those legendary behind the scenes people in motor sports. Mr. Dean case. Public relations manager for SRO Motorsports America, where he works to promote the premier GT and touring car series in the United States. And he’s here to share some of his most fascinating paddock stories with us as if this intro wasn’t enough, right?

So please join us in welcoming Dean Case to break fix. Thank you. Thank you. Glad to be here. So Dean, let’s jump into it. In that intro, it stands alone. Let’s talk about Mazda. You know, we joke all the time. The answer is always Miata, but let’s talk about your work on the Miata team.

Dean Case: Well, actually it was pretty funny ’cause I, it was the only automotive offer I had when I graduated, and actually it was [00:03:00] months later.

I didn’t get the offer right when I graduated from school and I had one non-automotive offer and I was about to take it. My dad said, why would you do that? You work all this time again into automotive, you know, we can. Put you up for a while till you find something. And then I got the opportunity to interview with, uh Mazda, October of 86.

I had just graduated, I guess it was August. I didn’t finish up in June like I was supposed to. I had one more quarter to finish at Cal Poly. I was a little bit behind. It was a layout engineer. I didn’t even really know what a studio engineer did. They offered me the job and I took it. And so I show up the first day and once you sign all the paperwork, then I go back, they take me back into the studio and there was a full size clay model.

Of a two seat road story that was still about two and a half years away from a launch. That was the Miata. You know, I wasn’t there really at the birth. I was there during the development of it. It was still an incredible opportunity to be right place, right time.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re talking the late eighties at this point.

You said The debut of the Miata was a couple years later That came to our shores in 1990. What were they having you [00:04:00] do on the, on the Miata at that point?

Dean Case: Mazda RD and Irvine is a relatively small group. There was a manager, a senior engineer, and myself, just three of us in the engineering group. And then we had the design studio, and then there was a various testing function.

So what would happen? An early layout, you know, a concept that came out of. California suite would be sentencing the mothership in Japan for development. It would come back to us in various times. So we would be involved in some of the early drives. So I got to go on some of the early drives with the Miata, you know, so it was kind of the tail end of it, but I was there for the launch when we were at Chicago Auto Show in February of 89.

There.

Crew Chief Eric: Is it really true that the Miata was modeled after the Lotus Ilan? Is that where it’s got its inspiration from? Well,

Dean Case: some of it not entirely. I mean, they had to Triumph Spitfire and they had other British cars, and even a couple, I think we had an Alpha one time, Mazda went out and bought a number of cars, including a, an Ellan.

The Ellan was at a higher price point, so a lot of it was looking at the cars that were available to everybody. And conventional wisdom at the time is there was no market for a small two [00:05:00] seat sports car. And the reality was there was no market for a unreliable two seat sports car like most of the British cars were.

The reality is most of the triumphs and things they fail on the US shores ’cause they weren’t particularly reliable or comfortable. The Miata was kind of trying to improve on that. Y Yeah. You could say spiritually, a little bit of a lawn, but there was a lot of other cars that they were targeting. They wanted to make sure the price point was affordable.

Keep in mind, that car launched, I think it was $13,900. That was a screaming deal for what it was.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s some names that surround Lamata folks like Jeffrey Barnes and Bob Hall. Did you get to work with them as well on that project? Did that come later at Mazda? No.

Dean Case: Well, actually, Jeremy, I think at that time, worked for Toyota.

He came in later. Jeremy joined, I’m not sure what year he joined Mazda, but Bob Hall was there. I mean the original nucleus of the mean auto. A lot of people claim to be the father of the Miata. I would say Bob Hall is the father of the Miata. There was a lot of other people involved, Mark Jordan, Wang Chin, Mr.

Hii, but ultimately it was an [00:06:00] American concept. The original three people who really led the pitch to Japan was Bob Hall. Mark Jordan and Norman Garrett. Norman Garrett, who was the engineer who hired me. You know, a lot of other people were actively involved. Amazing talent in that studio, Wuhan Chin, who really led the design of the final generation.

RX seven was one of the most amazingly talented people I’ve ever had the privilege to work with

Crew Chief Eric: during this whole time, working on the MX six, working on the minivan, and then the RX seven, an iconic vehicle. We still talk about the third gen RX seven today as a timeless design by Mazda. You look at it and you go.

What year is that car? I don’t know. Yeah. What were the different pieces? What were you working on? Or were you already in your head kind of thinking about the marketing side? Or were you still just bogged down in, in the mechanics of vehicles? Well, a lot of what we

Dean Case: did was, we joke that a studio engineer is more like the physics police.

You know, the designers would come up with this incredible shape as like, well, you know, we really like to have someone who’s over five foot five be able to fit in the car. You know, and, and so a lot of it was making sure that we could fit a [00:07:00] 95th percentile American male into it, fifth percentile. Asian female and making sure that things like headlights are in legal positions.

A lot of what we did was, you know, on our standpoint was to support the creative efforts of the students. Interesting. We had to make sure that when we sent the proposal to Japan, they didn’t laugh at and say, yeah, we can’t build that,

Crew Chief Eric: and we’re gonna talk about more about your history as we go along, but there’s a big gap and then there’s a return to Mazda way later in your career.

Yeah. So let’s kind of jump forward and then jump back a little bit. Try staying in the topic of Mazda in general, and so. When you came back to Mazda on the second go round, now you’re in a position of communications, you’re in the media department, public relations, et cetera. So I gotta ask you, it’s a pretty loaded question.

Zoom. Zoom, was that your, was that your doing was, is that you Dean?

Dean Case: No, that was a, a previous agency donor I think. Did that, that, I think that was, who came up with that? It was a great. Slogan and I mean there’s a lot of uh, Mazda fans out there who still embrace that over [00:08:00] some of the more current ones, but anytime you change agencies, they have to burn everything.

Ultimately, the fact I was able to go back was don’t burn bridges, you know, leave on good terms anywhere you go. And I have to thank Michael Jordan from Automobile Magazine. He’s the one connected me with Jeremy Barnes in the end of 2005. ’cause I was working at Nissan at the time and Nissan was relocating from Los Angeles to Nashville, Tennessee.

And that didn’t work for me from a family standpoint. I wasn’t bashful. I told everyone I knew I’m looking to find something else to stay in California. And Michael used to bust Jeremy’s chops about, you’re doing all this racing but you have no PR support. And Jeremy’s response to him was, well, I’m never gonna get headcount approver.

It’s gonna have to be contract. The only motor sports PR people I’ve met, I don’t like. Michael said, I know the exact guy you need to hire. He knows your products ’cause he used to engineer ’em. He knows the media ’cause he is been doing PR for Nissan and Best for you. He is about to be unemployed. So when Nissan leaves, so I sat down with Jeremy at the 2006 LA Auto Show over coffee.[00:09:00]

Got to know each other and he says, what’s your timeframe? I go, well, I’m working on this formula, SAE project right now, so I’m not even available until uh, June. He goes, perfect, because it’ll take me at least that long to find budget. And he ended up calling me in August and said, I’ve got budget. And actually I think I did the first.

Three races on a handshake agreement. ’cause I trusted Jeremy and then ended up 11 one year contracts.

Crew Chief Eric: So you mentioned to me behind the scenes that you worked on the Mazda Road to Indie project. So do you wanna talk about that a little bit and what that was all about?

Dean Case: Mazda at that time, you know, they were getting into more and more series.

You know, they had the MX five. Such a strange time on both sports cars and open wheel because when Mazda started out, you know, when I joined him in 2006, we still had Champ Car and IRL. What happened was there was already the Star Mazda Championship with the rotary powered cars. The origin you can trace back to the original Russell Mazda car in 1984.

Gary Rodriguez was running that series very successfully, and Mazda signed on with Skip Barber. Also, Mazda had the [00:10:00] engine for the Atlantic Championship, the beautiful brand new Swift car, which could have been a Ford, it could have been a Mazda, ended up being a Mazda. So now all of a sudden there was three open wheel series, so you had.

Skip Barber, which would feed into Star Mazda, which would feed into Atlantics, which would feed into Champ Car. Then 2008, champ Car imploded, you know, it got sucked into IRL. We lost the Atlantic Championship, which was a shame ’cause the Atlantic cars were just incredible on multiple levels and current cars were great and the history of, uh, Atlantics was great, but that disappeared and then all of a sudden it became Skip Barber, the F 2000, the Star Mazda, the Indie Lights.

The lights was never a Mazda engine, but just kind of worked out to where it kind of morphed into this thing we had with Champ Car to the Mazda Road to Indy in conjunction with Cooper Tires was a key player in that as well. There was so much going on and lucky that it survived through the recession.

You know, that time period.

Crew Chief Eric: So we’ll talk more about your transition from engineer to PR as [00:11:00] we go along in the conversation. But one thing I wanna ask while we’re still talking about Mazda, how did you find yourself when you came back in 2006? Did you find yourself still kind of wanting to be in the shop, looking at the designs, working on the cars or at, at this point because you had changed careers, you came at it with a whole different set of eyes.

And I bring it up because a lot of people go through these metamorphoses in their life where they do career changes and things like that. But in your case. You were still in the automotive world and you went from one end to the other, so I just wanted to expand upon that experience for you as you walked back through the gates of Mazda with a different role.

Dean Case: Well, I still knew some of the r and d folks. Some of those were still there. Actually, one of my best friends from Mazda r and d just retired a few weeks ago. Kelvin Heri. He was the director of r and d, and he and I worked together in the late eighties. You have to be honest with yourself about what you’re good at and what your strengths are, and I used to get this really strange compliment early in my career.

My writing was excellent. Pause for an engineer. It’s kind of like being told you’re the healthiest person in the [00:12:00] intensive care ward. You’re not really sure if it’s compliment. But I realized my real niche was explaining technical topics to non-technical people, and most engineers hate doing that. And so that was a niche that I could kind of explore.

You know, we did a lot with Mazda and it’s like, yeah, I, I like to think I was a competent engineer, but I was not a brilliant engineer. My first engineering boss at Mazda Zero mahi. He had over a hundred patents to his name. I was never at that level, and I could admit that, you know, I’m honest about it. I like to think that, you know, I was competent, but I wasn’t the rockstar engineer like some of those are, and most of the ones in motorsports, you know, you gotta really be good, otherwise you just don’t last.

So I like to help tell those stories of the technology and things. But Ford did what Nissan did, what Mazda did, and now what SRO does.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s talk about Ford. You wanted to go on to bigger and better things. So obviously at some point during this. Entire journey. Ford and Mazda were partnered up, or Ford bought Mazda, if I remember correctly.

So was that a natural progression to go from [00:13:00] Mazda to Ford?

Dean Case: No, actually it was pretty funny. Ford had historically owned about 25% of Mazda dating back to the seventies. And there was a lot of, you know, if you bought a Ford Courier pickup, it was actually a Mazda. And then much later years, you know, you buy a Mazda B series and that’s actually a Ford Ranger produced in Edison, New Jersey.

When Mazda ran into some economic problems in the early nineties, Ford increased their ownership to 33% and basically put their management in place. But when I left, I basically gave up all my seniority at Mazda and started at ground zero at four. There was no. There was no opportunity to to make a transfer and keep any of my seniority or anything, but it was a good move.

But it was really wild to do electric vehicles in the nineties. The F-150 lightning’s amazing, but it’s not Ford’s first electric pickup truck. There was a 1998 Ranger Electric. I worked on it. This was all back because California Air Sources Board had a A mandate they were pushing for 2% zero emission vehicles by 1998.

And this is a great trivia question [00:14:00] for people who like EVs, can you name all of the EVs that came out in 1998? There was eight of ’em that came out and virtually no one can ever guess that.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, other than the gm EV one, right. I can’t think of too many others that are in the popular media at least.

Right?

Dean Case: Well, most all of ’em were fleet only. They were never sold to consumers. But Toyota had the RAV4, ev. Nissan had the Ultra ev. I drove one of those for eight years. Chrysler had a Pacific and Minivan Electric, so there was a bunch of these out there, but they were all test fleets. Only virtually all of ’em were brought back and then crushed.

If you saw the movie, who Killed the electric car, they talk about the EV one. You know, were all, those were destroyed. It basically happened with most all the other ones, and it was all beta software that the technology just wasn’t there. One of the really great things I loved about Ford was they had a lot of career development process.

You know, I encourage students to consider employment at a Ford, at GM or something right outta school because there’s just so much training opportunity and mentorship available. Ford, [00:15:00] uh, you get your annual performance review, but you’d also get your semi-annual, I guess it was little bit of a review. It was more of a coaching session.

The joke is what they want you to say is, well, I’d like to be a design release engineer, get my MBA and move into product planning. And they got a path for that. It’s easy. But if you say, I wanna be transferred to Ford Australia or transferred to Ford Motorsports, they look at you like those are not normal goals.

And I finally got a boss who said. Let me ask, and he called up the head of Ford Racing and asked, how does someone move into your department? He says, well, all of our junior program managers are on loan for other departments. So if you’re willing to continue paying a salary out of your budget, we’d be happy to have ’em for a year.

So when I worked on Trans Am I was being paid by the electric vehicle group.

Crew Chief Eric: What was that transition like? You go from EVs to race cars. What did they have you working on at Ford Motorsport?

Dean Case: A lot of it was making sure that we didn’t, didn’t have bad things happening to us, BOP wise, you know, good old balance

Crew Chief Eric: of power,

Dean Case: balance of performance.

Yeah. Or blaming other people. But you know, actually it [00:16:00] was 25 years ago, just a few weeks back, St. Petersburg, Florida, the season opener for the TransAm series of. It was kind of funny, the, the strangest job title, I was the TransAm program Manager at Ford Motor Company. People say, wait, I thought TransAm was a Pontiac.

Yes, it is. General Motors licensed the name from the SECA. So I had that strange job title there, but a lot of it was just making sure that our teams had what they needed. Help facilitate some of the uh, pre-race testing. We tested Dearborn Proving Grounds. That was a special one ’cause we got the test with Newman Haas and Paul Newman was there at the same test.

So some good things there, but a lot of it was just making sure that we were staying equal and trying to support a couple of the private tier Mustang teams. Mike Lewis and Auto Con. And we had the deck stack that year. You know, we had. Tommy Kendall and Danny Banks prepared Roush Mustangs, and that was the magic year where Tommy won 11 straight races.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s kind of funny because that period in TransAm, imsa, A LMS, let’s call it what it is, it was a weird, turbulent time. I [00:17:00] call it the dark ages of touring car and GT racing because there were so many programs, so many series going on at the same time. And then eventually they would, let’s use a racing term homologate and get together.

Right, and And it became. IMSA and then SRO. Now today as a separate for GT three and GT four, there’s a lot of names that we’re still lurking around. You know, folks that like, you know Willie t Ribs and Lynn St. James. Yeah. And you mentioned Tommy Kendall and Paul Newman. And you know, Tom Cruise ran with Paul Newman and things like that.

And so there’s a lot of celebrity during that time that you came across. And what was that

Dean Case: like? The few times I met Paul Newman during the 97 season. The one thing I’ve been warned ahead of time with Paul, you can talk to him about racing. If you ask anything about entertainment, he will just walk away from you and never speak to you.

Don’t ask for an autograph, but if you wanna ask him about how the team’s going, you know, a race, fine. He’ll talk to you like anybody. You know, he was legendary for when he clubbed race. He would drink beer with the coursework on Sunday, uh, after the races. I mean, really, genuinely. [00:18:00] Nice guy. Very serious about racing.

When he was there at the racetrack. That’s all you want. Do not talk to me about movies. Do not talk to me about tv. So that was pretty cool. Lynn St. James got to know a little bit while I was at Ford. We formed a group, a club, Ford Motor Sports Enthusiast. You know, it was actually, it was kind of funny ’cause we were frustrated as Ford employers.

We weren’t really getting Ford news of race results. So we actually ended up getting in trouble by posting race results that we were told we weren’t authorized to post on the electronic bulletin board. So we formed a club so we could have an electronic bulletin board. Legit, we ended up inviting a number of people to speak.

Uh, Lynn St. James being one of ’em, we made her an honorary Ford Motor Sport enthusiast member, and we had the legendary, John Fitch is a speaker and some other folks like that never met Willie T during that time. He had really finished his Trans Am era. By that time, I mean, Tommy’s only rule challengers that year were Dorsey, Schrader, Brian, cmo, Paul Gen, Greg Pickett, that generation.

Crew Chief Eric: So we’re name dropping all over the place. But you have some other famous [00:19:00] friends that you’ve influenced and, and partnered with. I’ll, I’ll drop a couple names here. Looking at your bio. Sylvia Wilkinson. Got Jay Leno. Gar Stein.

Dean Case: Tim Kine, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tim Kine. Gar Stein’s a good Mazda, right? John Dunan, who was the director of Mazda Motorsports at the time, back in 2008, he was flying to La Mo, so he picked up Starbucks.

At that time you used, you could actually buy books at Starbucks. Remember that, and they would like to feature Seattle based authors. Many times John picked up those book, the Art of Racing in the Rain, just ’cause of the title. It was like, okay, you know, I need something to read on an eight hour flight to Paris.

Bought it immediately. Emailed all of us, Jim Jordan, Steve Sanders, and I. It was like, you gotta go out and buy this book. It’s amazing. And so we, we all did. It was great. The racing was very accurate. It wasn’t a racing story, but racing was the backdrop. Patrick Dempsey was racing with us at the time. A couple things happened.

One, we reached out. Jim Jordan sent a note to, uh, Garth on his website, posted a little comment, like, love the book. You either did amazing research or you must. [00:20:00] He responded like 30 minutes later. Oh yeah. I used to club race a spec Miata. Everything I learned about racing, I know I learned from a spec Miata and it just so happened we were gonna be racing at Portland six weeks later with MX five Cup.

We had a guest car at the time, so we called him up and said, would you like to race a pro race? With us. And then we added, uh, Sam Moses, who wrote Fast Guys. Rich Guys and Idiots back in, I’m not sure the nineties when he wrote that book. So we had fact versus fiction and we had the, uh, motorsports journalist against the fiction writer, and they both thought they were gonna come in and do great.

And they had a, I think, a pretty spirited battle for 21st and the 24 car field. Depth of talent in MX five Cup is astounding. But we got the book, the Patrick Dempsey. Dempsey bought the movie rights and it took Patrick then 10 years to get the movie produced. You know, we’re pretty proud of the fact that we helped make that happen, but it was a collective effort.

John Doon and Jim Jordan, myself and others. So that was pretty cool. Uh, Sylvia Wilkinson is just one of my favorite authors. I mean, when. I grew up reading car books, you know, as a kid. And [00:21:00] you know, you start with the little ones, the juvenile books when you’re 10 or 12 years old. And the first serious one I read was the stainless steel carrot by Sylvia Wilkinson and Sylvia turns out she was a genre of rider, young southern woman novelist who happened to really like racing.

And her publisher said, you should do a racing story. She said, well, I don’t wanna do a conventional one. Maybe I can do a fly on the wall with a young up and coming driver. And do it in the style of a novel. And she did the stainless steel carrot, just a fabulous book. It was out of print for many, many years.

It, it followed John Morton in the BRE Dotsons. I got to know John and Sylvia when I was at Nissan. It was after Sylvia a little bit. It’s like for the 40th anniversary of the, um, championship. Why don’t we redo the book? And Sylvia’s like, no, I’m not interested. I, I’ve worked on a new novel, Sylvia’s written like 20.

Eight books at least. She didn’t wanna revisit the past. After I got to know her and John A. Little bit better, I, I figured out how to exploit her weakness, which her weakness was animals. And I said, what if we did this as a fundraiser for some animal groups? I’ll do the [00:22:00] PR for you for free. Let’s put it back in the print.

But you need to write a new chapter. Where are they now? Because if you found this book on eBay, it’d been like 150 or 200 bucks to find a copy of the original book. And so we put it back in print at $46, which was John’s car number, and we ended up raising a lot of money for animals. But Sylvia’s a brilliant, brilliant writer.

She’s just re-releasing one of her other books. I think it’ll come out next month or sometime in the summer. Dirt Tracks to Glory. So if you like stock car racing, she wrote a really fabulous. A book on that, the early days of stock car racing, and she added some new stuff on this reissue as well, Tim Consign.

He just, sadly that one came to mind ’cause Tim passed away this past week. Tim was a child actor. He played on my three sons and then was very interested in sports cars and became. One of the foremost historians on sports car racing, he did a book on all the Americans who raced in Grand Prix racing that book’s long since out of print, and very expensive two or three years ago, he finished a multi-volume set on every American who ever [00:23:00] raced at lama.

It’s a real, I mean, substantial award. I mean, it was one of those that. He didn’t do it to make money. Books like that are a niche, but it was just his passion project.

Crew Chief Eric: And what about good old Jay Leno

Dean Case: Society of Automotive Historians used to have an annual literature fair in the pre eBay days. This was a big deal.

If you liked car books and magazines and models and other stuff, Pasadena City College would host this swap meet once a year. It was so big. Dealers would drive cross country. To sell books there and Jay would show up and just a regular customer and buy books and I’d sometimes clear out my uh, some of the things outta my collection.

Got to know Jay that way. When we launched the three 50 Z, there’s a funny story. A guy called me that was trying to get one of the Z press kits. We did kind of an over the top press kitt for the launch of the three 50. I was trying to make sure they weren’t just ending upon eBay. It’s like, no, these are very expensive to produce.

I want them in the hands of media. This guy called me and just. He goes, what if I told you I work for Jay Leno as a sound engineer, and I’ll get one to Jay. Done. So I sent him two press kits. [00:24:00] Jay called me and we ended up talking. We put him into a three 50 Z for a week before the car launched. His guys told me it was one of the few times he’d ever seen Jay drive the same car five days in a row.

Jay, pretty much every day would drive something different. It’d be a Bugatti or just, you know, all those strange cars that Jay has. But we ended up being able to take Mr. Caama up there. Mr. Caama was the guy who founded Dotson in America in the 1950s. An exceptionally amazing person. He would come over for the Z Convention in the early two thousands, and I got to travel with him.

The timing just, it was magic timing worked out where we were able to take Mr. K up to a taping. The Tonight Show when we picked up the Z after Jay had driven at a week, and it got a private tour of Jay’s collection. Now, Jay’s collection is astounding and he was definitely a hands-on guy. I mean, he has guys who work on his cars, but you look at his hands, definitely gets his hands dirty and knows how the cars work, you know?

If his Bugatti breaks down the road, odds are, Jay can probably fix it.

Crew Chief Eric: Before we move on, I have a couple questions about your time at [00:25:00] Nissan. So we’ve covered Mazda, we’ve covered Ford, you’ve mentioned Nissan a few times and, and the Z program and things like that. So when you came in the door at Nissan as the new PR guy, one of the things you probably had to do was go back over old ads, ideas, things like that.

What can be used, what can’t, you know, where have they gone? Yeah, what have they said? All that kind of thing. So I gotta ask you a pointed question because we’re reviewed. This little gem in the Nissan marketing world. A few drive-through episodes back, and that’s the 300 ZX Turbo, Ridley Scott Super Bowl commercial.

It was all controversy and it was subsequently pulled right after it aired. What are your thoughts on that and, and let’s answer the big question, why

Dean Case: lawyers? Why is anything pulled like that? We ended up when we did the three 50 Z. Launch. We had four discs in the press kit. ’cause I had started out in 2001.

We were still doing eight by 10 glossies and 35 millimeter slides. It was right at the beginning of [00:26:00] shifting over to digital. And so when we launched the Z, we had the full CD of press images and press releases. But then we did a DVD that had I think about 26. Minute history reel. That was really good that Shiat had produced for the retirement of the Z.

When the 300 ZX ceased production, they did a retirement party, I think the last one ever went into, uh, the Peterson, and they did this big party in this video. So we put that video on. The DVD technically, I don’t know if we had permission, but it was one of those things that if you don’t ask, no one can say no.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, Ridley Scott didn’t come knocking. Right. So it’s all good. No, no. And you know,

Dean Case: it, it is funny that some of these things that we’ve got, these old images, what’s really a challenge for a lot of car companies is preserving their history because. You got records retention, you’ve got what were the rights to it?

What was fascinating, some of the photography that Nissan did in the sixties was just astounding. Two of my favorite shots, one at the Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach, which is where the original Cannonball run [00:27:00] ended, but just the shot of this Nissan sedan there in a woman standing next to it, the Portofino Inn.

Well, that place still exists. A bunch of other places don’t exist. But there’s also one, a picture of, uh, a Dotson Roadster parked by the LAX theme building. Just some really cool stuff. So it’s a moment in history, not just of the car, but of the location in Southern California. Back then it didn’t seem to be, there was advertising photographer pr, photography, there was just photography, you know, but you look back through some of these old files, it’s like, okay, I can’t find any record of who shot it over 50 years old.

Odds are the person who shot it probably isn’t alive. You know, Nissan bought the rights at that time and there’s no records. So we kind of assume, you know, hopefully I don’t get anybody in trouble by talking about it here. But you know, it’s kinda like, you know, there’s no one who can claim it’s theirs.

And that’s kind of how we looked at some of the stuff. Actually, here’s a funny one, you know, thinking about, ’cause Newman, Paul Newman used to race Nissans. Nissan Legals, you know, they were really good. I mean, I had no problems with ’em, but they were very [00:28:00] cautious on things. All claims had to be backed up with that.

If you said it was X horsepower, you better have documentation that backed it up. You’re not gonna inflate anything. We did a press release about all the SECA runoff champions and Dotson and Nissan product. There were like 75 of ’em, and legal asked, do you have permission from all 75 people to list their names in the press release?

And I was like, no. You know, some of this. I go, I know some of these people aren’t alive. I went to my boss and said, look, this is history, but you know, the legal thing was like, you should be cautious and you don’t put someone’s name in a press release unless you have permission. I was like, well, this is racing.

If we don’t put it, they’re gonna be insulted. And at one point they said, well, you can list everyone except Paul Newman. I go, well no, Paul’s gonna be pissed if we do that. If you notice, I didn’t list him as Paul Newman. I listed him as PL Newman. ’cause that’s how he raced. And as long as we list him as PL Newman, I go, I will stake my reputation on this.

We will not get in trouble if we omit him. We’re probably gonna get a nasty note. Another one that they airbrushed out a BRE logo [00:29:00] on a two 40 Z in an ad, and I never saw it for approval or anything. Pete Brock called me. He was very annoyed, you know, steamed would be better word, and it was some junior person.

It’s like, okay, there’s a Goodyear sticker on here. We got permission from Goodyear to do this, and we got permit, but we don’t know what BRE is because it was someone who was too young to know. And then remove the logo. It’s like, oh, you shot the credibility of that photo down. You know, everybody who knows what they’re looking at knows it’s missing.

So,

Crew Chief Eric: exactly. For the folks that are maybe young enough to not remember when the three 50 Z launched, it’s been 18 years since that car hit our shores, right? 2003 or three 50 Z came out. Obviously it was. A little bit earlier overseas, things like that. But this was also the time when Renault had ushered itself onto the scene.

Right. At Nissan. A lot of people don’t realize that Renault is behind the scenes at Nissan and they share a lot of their technology. Mm-hmm. And then the folks that do know, say the VQ engine, which is a Renault V six. Save the Z. Right. Even though it had, it hadn’t even launched yet. It’s [00:30:00] like it was the crown jewel of that car and it, and it’s kind of funny when we look back over 20 years of evolution from the three 70 and now the 400, and we’re gonna talk about that in a second too.

Dean Case: I’ll have to double check. I I will correct it. I don’t think the engine in the three 50. Had anything to do with Renat. I think that was a pure Nissan engine. You know, Renat obviously stepped in and brought a lot of cost containment and they did a lot of things to help steer the ship in the right direction in the late nineties, early two thousands over in Japan.

But I. Pretty certain that is a pure Nissan engine.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, what I wanted to highlight was something interesting that I remember about that time period at Nissan, which was when they had announced they wanted to do the heritage cars where you could send an old two 40 or two 60. Yeah. Back to Nissan. Yeah.

Four FP. Yeah. And get it completely factory rebuilt. Now we look at. Companies like Singer that are doing that to nine elevens and you know, other companies and I’m like, how were you involved in that? And correct my history if [00:31:00] I’m wrong, but was that a flop or was that a success for Nissan?

Dean Case: I think from a publicity standpoint, a success financially a flop.

That was right before I joined. So what happened when they ended the 300 zx, they still wanted to keep some Z alive. So they came up with this idea of. You could buy a brand new factory rebuilt, two 40 Z Nissans going out and buying up old two Fortys, trying to just find ones that were all straight, no rust, and they would rebuild them.

I think there was a little bit of a flaw. The joke on this was, you know, they asked someone, you know, would you pay $30,000 for a perfectly restored two 40 Z? Is that a good price? Oh yeah. You with a warranty, you know, one year warranty. That’s great. But they didn’t buy it because the joke was most of the guys who were restoring Zs, let’s be honest, it’s usually guys, their wife doesn’t know how much money they’re dumping into the car.

And so he goes, I can spread this restoration over five years. My wife doesn’t know how much is in it. If I spend $30,000 for an old Z, she’s gonna divorce me. There just wasn’t the take. It did a lot to show Nissan’s [00:32:00] commitment to heritage. The director of Nissan PR these days is a good friend Dan Pass, who he and I have zigzagged.

He was at Campbell and company managing Motorsports for Ford when I was at Ford and then he was at Nissan and he is back at Nissan. And so there’s guys like Dan and a lot of others who really care about the heritage. So the nice thing is, you know, I think Nissan does a lot to preserve it. That one just didn’t turn out to be economically viable because the parts didn’t exist.

So they had to go back and recreate tooling for things like weather stripping. And you know, there’s a lot of the boring parts that you still need to do. If you’re gonna make it really proper.

Crew Chief Eric: Rene was good for Nissan. Nissan’s. Good for Rene. There’s been a lot of change, a lot of progress, a lot of awesome things.

Even in the racing programs and whatnot. I mean, we’ve seen oddball things like the front wheel drive, Ellen B Car at LeMans. Yeah. You know, a few years back. All sorts of craziness. But that’s the part about racing that we love is those ridiculous, you know, six wheeled. Formula Cars and Chaparrals and all these kinds of things.

Right? Here we are 20 some years later, the [00:33:00] resurgence of the Z and all that and the three 70 was a great evolution, but I wanna get your take, let’s call it the 400 Z, right? The new one that’s about to come out. Although it, it feels like it keeps getting delayed a little bit and I’m really excited to go drive one, but I wanna get your thoughts on it.

Dean Case: Well, I’ve seen it. I was able to go visit one when, um, friend of mine, Mike Dtz, was uh, doing some photography. So I got permission from the Nissan folks to go. Take a look at it and it looks great. So I haven’t driven it. I think from an aesthetic standpoint, they did a great job. So it really looks good.

Crew Chief Eric: It looks good in pictures.

Some cars photograph really well. Don’t look right in picture and vice versa. Yeah. So how does it look in person? Is it as good as we think it is?

Dean Case: I think so. I think so. I, I think it’s a very good looking car. I, I would consider buying one, so

Crew Chief Eric: I’m right there with you on that. Yeah.

Dean Case: And I think that, you know, the Z has such an awesome owner base loyalty.

I mean, having gone to some of the Z conventions, I think it’ll do quite well. I think there’s people that realize you don’t need 800 horsepower to have a good time in a car. It’s more fun to [00:34:00] drive a, a slow car fast than a fast car, slow. It’s more than adequately power, I believe, as all of ’em have been, the three 50.

Three 70.

Crew Chief Eric: I also heard there was a bit of tug of war politically introducing the new 400 with a manual transmission. It’s one of the few cars being released in the 20 22, 23 sales year with the six speed manual.

Dean Case: Well, I don’t have any, uh, firsthand knowledge of how Nissan came to that decision, but I believe.

Here again, they want it to be viewed as a real sports car. And you know, we joke that one of the best ways to weed out the non enthusiasts is make ’em drive manual transmission to get, you know, more power to ’em for making sure that, you know, the take rate on manual transmission is keeps getting lower and lower and depending on where you live, I mean, Los Angeles traffic, you know, if you’re stuck.

Using it as a commuter car on the 4 0 5. A manual transmission is no fun there. If you can get out up to Santa Barbara County or you know, drive up to Ojai or something, yeah, it’s spectacular. But I understand why the take right keeps getting lower [00:35:00] and lower. It’s ab, but true, but you know, more power to Nissan for keeping a manual transmission in the new z.

Crew Chief Eric: So let’s transition a little bit. One of the other things that people don’t know about Dean, or maybe they do if they know you outside of the motor sports and automotive PR world, is that you are big into Formula. SAE. I know you go around talking to different universities and schools and things like that, and so I wanna give you an opportunity to explain to our listeners what formula SEE is all about, why it’s so important and so on.

Dean Case: SAE has really been pivotal to my career. I mean, when I went to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, the first I showed up, and here again, I never even visited the campus before showing up there for freshman year, and there was no online research to do. All I knew the SAE was, was SAE is the letters on the top of the oil can SAE 20, W 50, or you buy SAE grade eight bolts.

So I kind of knew they, they were something, but I didn’t really know what it was. Until I got to school and discovered SAE Society of Automotive Engineers. [00:36:00] It’s the professional association that automotive engineers belong to. You know, a lawyer belongs to the Bar Association, a doctor of the American Medical Association.

Automotive engineers, if they’re good, belong to SAE. They do a lot of things. A lot of it’s standards developed on the, like the oil can, you don’t have to worry if the mobile 10 W 50 is the same as. The, uh, Texaco or the Arco or whatever, viscosity is measured in the same standard. So SAE kinda works out the kinks on things that are neutral.

Like now with electric vehicles, the charging structure, you don’t have to worry whether you can plug your volt into the same place, a fee at 500 E it’s a standard charging plug,

Crew Chief Eric: except if you’re on a Tesla. But that’s, yeah,

Dean Case: I know. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t wanna talk about Tesla, but yeah, they don’t play nice with others.

With Formula SA and SA bought. SA developed these student design competitions and really they’re to showcase talented students in front of people can hire them. And they started out in the seventies. The first one was actually sa, Baja, and Briggs and Stratton Wood donating eight horsepower lawnmower range.

Students were making basically dune buggies outta ’em, and then [00:37:00] some students in Texas. In the late seventies said, well, we’d rather race on pavement. And that’s how formulas SA started. Competition grew. When I was a student, we did Baja ’cause we couldn’t get the critical mass to do a formula car. And there was only, I think, 15 schools in the country building cars at that time.

Now there’s at least 250 in the US and another three or 400 internationally, and these competitions have gone global. If you don’t have formulas, SA or Baja SA on your resume. You almost cannot get an interview with a race team. You, you look at Honda performance development for the career thing. For an entry-level engineer, they expect to see Formula sa or SA Baja on your resume.

If not, you’re four years behind. And so it’s amazing what this has done to showcase talent in front of people can hire them. So if you have any, uh, listeners who have anyone in the K through 12 world at home, you want to have an amazing career in automotive, please consider picking a college as a formal SA or a sa Baja team.

And even if you’re not an engineer. The best teams now also recruit business majors and graphic design majors. You know, let the engineer [00:38:00] design the suspension, don’t let ’em pick the graphics for the car and get some business majors to help do the business proposal. So it has launched hundreds and hundreds of careers, and now we have students who go straight from formula, SAE.

They’re working for Formula One teams, IndyCar teams, nascar, as well as obviously the major automakers, whether it’s BMW, Toyota, Ford, Honda, they all recruit from these events.

Crew Chief Eric: And the events themselves are akin to an autocross, if I remember correctly.

Dean Case: They’re basically a three day event. And the first day is the static events where they do the design presentation.

’cause ultimately we wanna say, how did you engineer the car? Tell us about the engineering of the vehicle. And they have to do a business presentation. ’cause it’s not just. Can you build a one-off prototype? You’re supposed to build a prototype of something that could be put into low volume production because that’s what’s more important to industry.

And then we have this, also the safety checks. We make sure that the brakes work and all this before we put ’em on the track. The second day is the preliminary events, which is an autocross acceleration runs skid pad. And [00:39:00] then the third day is the endurance event. And the endurance event for formulas run like a solo event.

We will have multiple cars on track with designated passing zones. ’cause you know, with experimental student vehicles that have a pretty surprisingly high powered weight ratio, and these cars will weigh under 400 pounds. Be putting out, uh, close to a hundred horsepower. So power to white ratio is really strong.

Uh, on the Baja one, it’s kind of more exciting. I think they’ll put all the cars on like a motocross track at once for four hours. Then you really see what breaks on the car and can the students, uh, repair it in time. But it, it is been an exceptionally, uh, good thing, the launch career. So I’ve been doing a lot of my work.

I go and speak at universities and I talk to ’em about, you’ve killed your GPA by working on this project. So now let me help you figure out how you get a job out of it so you don’t end up graduating unemployed.

Crew Chief Eric: A few weeks back we talked to your current boss, Greg Gi. About the history of SRO and SRO America and and plans for the program, but obviously you guys have a longstanding connection.

He mentioned he’s known you for a couple [00:40:00] decades now, and I wanna know how you ended up at SRO, but also talk about what your plans are for SRO America and the program, the brand, where things going.

Dean Case: Greg and I first met when he was a magazine publisher and we were launching nmo, I believe. And I met Greg ’cause he was, had a magazine called Tuner Performance Reports.

They were a very serious magazine that they didn’t just say, these chrome bits will make your car look good. It’s like, no. We put it on the dyno and decide whether it actually increase the power or put it on a skid pad and see if it improved the handling of the car. So I got to know Greg as a publisher, and here again, if you get into the world of motor sports or automotive, you find that you see a lot of the same people.

And so I would. Reconnect with Greg every couple years. He was the publisher of Racer for a short while, which was just literally down the street from Mazda r and d. And so when we were having our, uh, media events at Mazda Motorsports, we’d have Greg down there. So he and I have run into each other many, many times over the years.

Jim Jordan was my compadre at Mazda. He’s working on the touring car side of [00:41:00] SRO, and so a lot of it was just. They wanted a little bit of help and asked if I was available, and part of it was just, I’d been out of motorsports for a couple years, but it’s like, I like Greg, I like Jim, I like some of the people in the paddock, but I actually out now have a new learning curve myself.

Uh, getting up to speed and, you know, SROA lot of it’s just as a sport, we always have this challenge. Sponsors kind of come and go, names change, and hey, whatever happens that Speed World Challenge, well, speed TV doesn’t exist. It became Pelli World Challenge. And then, you know, SRO stepped in. The series that existed for 30 years, but we have to kind of educate it.

But the reality now, we have to look at this from the standpoint of what the internet and TV has done to our sport. Now, TV has helped grow the sport, but also a lot of times people say, well, why do I only go to the event when I can watch it on tv? The internet has kind of blown away a lot of the print publications that used to cover it.

As a kid, I used to subscribe to Autoweek and Autosport, and you couldn’t wait to read the Pete Lyons F1 report. It’d be like 12 pages long because even [00:42:00] though it was like six weeks later, that was the first you knew what happened at that race. Now you’re watching it live or you got it online and read it.

So a lot of that’s disappeared. So. A lot of what I plan working on is a lot of the feature stories, the interesting people in the paddock and the cars that I don’t expect a journalist to come out to an SRO weekend and write a race report. You know, these were the four races I saw on this day and here’s who won.

No, that’s just not gonna happen. Everyone wanted to know that, watched it on the, the YouTube stream, but they might wanna know. Wow, that’s a really interesting car. I wanna know more about that. What I’m gonna focus on is trying to go after a lot of target audiences, including SAE groups. I mean, I wanna try to work with some of the SAE students, come out to the racetrack, bring your formula car, help promote some ticket sales for us, and you know, we’ll have a lot of people in the paddock coming by, offer you words of encouragement.

Looking at some of the more of automotive press. ’cause one thing I learned back when I was doing the Mazda stuff, 2006 and [00:43:00] 2007, is if you wanna stereotype a little bit. If you walked into Road America, you got a bunch of hardcore motorsport journalists there at the time who may or may not even knew what we were selling in the dealership.

You go to the New York Auto Show, you got some of the smartest business riders in the business. You guys still race that, uh, RX seven GTU car in imsa. It’s like, well, you know, they don’t follow it. So trying to educate the motoring press on what we race and why we race and the motor sports press on the cars that these things are based off of and why it’s important to race.

That’s a lot of emphasis here. ’cause the nice thing about the SRO paddock, it’s wide open. So you know when you buy a general admission ticket, you can go in and look at the cars. There’s no restrictions on that. We had some amazing tracks. This year. I’m really looking forward. I got two new tracks I’ve never been to, which is rare.

The new one at Ozarks, which if you look at the photos, looks like a spectacular facility, serious elevation change, and then the Nashville Grand Prix. So I’ll get to reconnect with my old Nissan buddies when I’m in Nashville.

Crew Chief Eric: One of the things that we didn’t ask Greg [00:44:00] about on the episode we did with him, and because I saved it for this particular episode, because it’s more your area of expertise, which is.

What’s the vibe like at an SRO event? Some of us are used to going to NASCAR events, or IndyCar or Formula One or even, you know, INSA events. What’s it like when you go to an SRO event? What’s the expectation? As a spectator,

Dean Case: you are not gonna be locked into a grandstand like a most nascar, you know, it’s a different animal.

I don’t want to dis NASCAR, IndyCar or anybody else. We’re our own product. But the nice thing is, I think the key word is accessibility. If you’re at a natural terrain racetrack, I mean, road America is just a beautiful racetrack to see anything run. Anybody who lives within four hours of Road America should add that onto their bucket list to go.

If they haven’t been vi R’s a gorgeous track, Watkins Glen. It’s one of those things you can say, since it won’t be a hundred thousand people there. You can drive around a little bit, walk around, you know, watch from a couple different terms. You can enjoy different aspects of spectating. And the nice thing is if you go into the paddock [00:45:00] area and ask questions about the car, most of the crew guys love to talk about.

So I would say accessibility. There’s certain other forms of the sport that has a perception of his accessibility. But it is really true in sports, car racing in general, and SRO in particular.

Crew Chief Eric: So if you’re accustomed to an INSA race, like let’s say going to Petite LeMans or the sale mm-hmm. Up at, at Watkins Glen, is there the same sort of, let’s call it circus, that you would come to expect at an INSA race where you’ve got the booths and the vendors and the schwa and all that kind of stuff as well?

Dean Case: Not nearly as much. Honestly. It’s a different business model, you know. You know, we hope to grow the spectators. We are looking at how do we get some targeted people in there. You know, a lot of it is getting more car corrals, get a Ferrari car corral, we’ve got Ferrari racing, get all Lamborghini car corral.

’cause a lot of that that we can do at a much more affordable rate for folks than like an IMSA race at Petite Lama is a fabulous event, you know, and it is crowded and so it draws that, you know, we have a different product, predominantly sprint [00:46:00] races except for the, you know, the indie, where we get the intercontinental GT and they’re coming over.

I would just tell people, look at the calendar, look at the map, and come and experience it. I think you’ll have a really great time. And also with the touring cars, there’s that aspect of it. The SRO, TC America Powered by Skip Barber Racing School. There’s no less expensive way to get. Into professional racing.

And if you were to go take a Skip Barber class, no racing’s cheap there. There’s gonna be expenses. And you know, key is you don’t ever quimp on your safety equipment. You know, I think Bell used to have that slogan decades ago. If you have a $10 head, buy a $10 helmet, uh, stay in a cheap motel, but buy the best safety equipment you can.

But if you could do something like with Skip Barber. You could run some of their school races and then graduate and you could run a full-blown TC America weekend on a pro weekend, which is pretty cool. So that’s something also that is, uh, unique to SRO

Crew Chief Eric: and that’s something else that people may not realize.

It lays out similarly to other [00:47:00] multi-class racing. Programs. It’s a full day schedule. There’s racing going on all day. So even though it’s sprint racing, it’s different classes. Yeah. And the track is busy all day long, so there’s something for everybody to watch.

Dean Case: Yeah. Most of our race weekends, we will have four different classes, three different GT CL races, and a 200 car race.

And each one’s a double header, so there’s gonna be four races on Saturday. Four races on a Sunday, on a typical weekend.

Crew Chief Eric: So let me ask you this other question, which we talked about with Greg, and that was in the guise of balance of power and this and that. But you, with your background in EVs, I wanna get your take on the evolution and how SRO America is gonna maybe in the future, adopt EVs into the GT Racing series.

What do you think about that?

Dean Case: I honestly don’t. I think they are looking very seriously at it. I’m so new to the organization, I don’t know. What SRO brings to the table is looking at this not just from a US perspective, but a global perspective. And one of the things is, it is nice is if you buy whatever [00:48:00] Porsche, Toyota, supra, whatever, you know you’re gonna run in GT three or GT four.

You know that if you’re racing with SRO, that same car will not have to be modified if you sell it abroad. One of the other markets. You’ve helped ensure the value of the car. So SROs, adamantly looking at electrification, what makes sense, but they’re looking at it from a big global perspective. I honestly don’t know where we stand right now.

I, you know, my first race week was at St. Pete and we only had the, uh, GT America class. So I’m getting ready for Sonoma and, uh, I’ll know a lot more if I come back future visit, but I know that SRO is looking at it. Everyone’s looking at electrification. It does lend itself quite well to sprint races. You know, the reality is you still can’t put as much energy density into a battery as you can, a gallon of gasoline.

Going back to the nineties, my Ford experience, we had a ranger that had a 50 mile range and the battery weighed almost two. Thousand pounds. ’cause battery technology back then was really, really bad. And compared to all you would need would be 20 pounds of [00:49:00] gasoline go that same range. Batteries are still not on the level of energy density as gasoline.

So, you know, we gotta figure out where we don’t look stupid. I mean, I was not a fan of Formula E when they were switching cars halfway through the. What message are we telling people? You need two cars to do the job of one. What was interesting in Formula E, I went to the two races at Long Beach and it was bringing out new fan people who probably would not have gone to the regular IndyCar race at Long Beach.

And if you look at things like Formula D. That’s expanding the footprint of motor sports. I don’t know, uh, what’s gonna happen, but, you know, it’s nice to see a lot of growth in other areas. You know, formula D has brought new fans and younger, more diverse fan base into the sport. So hopefully some of them will come to some SRO races.

You know, formula E is, you know, you could bring young kids not worry about their ears getting blasted out at a Formula E event.

Crew Chief Eric: So normally we would ask people, you know, about the evolution and you know, what would be missing for promoters sport if EVs came. But I think I wanna ask you a different question, which is.

With your background in EVs, if you [00:50:00] could pick one EV today to run against, you know, the classics, the Ferraris, the Corvettes, and the Porsches, let’s say all things being equal, balance, power is all taken care of. What brand would you like to see come to the checkered flag as an ev?

Dean Case: Right now I have to look at Porsche.

I live right by the Porsche Experience Center here in LA and it’s like, it’s interesting how many of the classes they’re teaching in the electrics there. So I mean, they’re really putting an emphasis. On the performance of Porsche electric vehicles. So that’s pretty impressive. So I could easily see that.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a good choice. That’s a solid choice. I mean, and, and Porsche has a long pedigree in, in racing, so it only makes sense that they continue to carry that torch. Right. As we kind of wrap up here, Dean, I wanna ask you what other super cool things maybe in the automotive sphere do we not know about?

Case,

Dean Case: uh, my obsession with weird car songs. Is that what you’re getting at there?

Crew Chief Eric: I, I’m, so, let’s go.

Dean Case: I, um, I used to make these mix tapes for my friends at Mazda back in the eighties, and the first year is like, [00:51:00] okay, you put all the obvious ones, little deuce coop, shut down, 4 0 9, all that. Then I just started getting more and more obscure and finding just really wild things.

And people were asking you, you should sell these. I go, no, I’m already in the gray area, giving ’em away to friends, you know, a mixtape, I can’t sell them. That would be a copyright violation. And then in, um, 97 when I was at Ford, I had a friend who’s a musician, Christie Callen, whose band was Wednesday week, and I knew she knew the folks over at Rhino.

And I asked Christie, I go, do you know the folks at Rhino? And she goes, yeah, I know the VP of, uh, a and r. I go, can I get an introduction to him? And so I, uh, called and said, I’m Dean Case at Ford. ’cause I was hoping to do a Mustang CD to celebrate the championship. And so I left a message for, uh, the VP of a and r at Rhino Records.

And like an hour later, this guy James Austin calls me, Gary Stewart said to call you right away. You had a good idea. It’s like, okay. And um. I told him what I was thinking of. I sent him some of these tapes I’d made before. He goes, these are great. We should do this. Turned out we Ford. We didn’t [00:52:00] have the budget to do that for the championship celebration when it launched, you bought a, this was a 99 Mustang.

It was right after I left. There was a 35th anniversary, three CD box set that came with the car. It was the epitome of don’t let music be done by committee. They took out all the car songs and just made it like a 60 seventies, eighties greatest hits package. But James said, you’re gonna hate what Ford did, but we’re gonna do this as a Rhino thing.

So they went ahead and produced a uh, four CD box that I was the associate producer on called Hot Rod Hits and Cruising Classics. It came out in 99. We got nominated for a Grammy for Best box set. That’s awesome. 87 car songs. But so I like to find the really obscure ones. Like, did you know there was a car song about gremlin?

In my gremlin.

Crew Chief Eric: No, I didn’t.

Dean Case: My my bloody Hugo.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s gotta be a good one.

Dean Case: Yeah. I kill for a green Miata by the gutter sluts.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s awesome. So I

Dean Case: got a whole bunch of these.

Crew Chief Eric: I remember at the DC auto show years ago [00:53:00] when Scion, you know, the division of Toyota that they were rebranding for the young kids was coming on the scene.

They used to do this. Thing called the Scion Mix and they were giving out CDs at all the auto shows like Baltimore and DC and things like that. And so I’m wondering if again, you know, by proxy Dean, you have influenced the automotive world yet again to create I’ve a, these mix tapes.

Dean Case: I’ve got a bunch of those.

I do too. I have a small

Crew Chief Eric: collection of ’em as well.

Dean Case: Well actually I think I did have an influence. A friend of mine at General Motors asked me to make a mix tape ’cause he wanted to show GM management about car songs and the fact that, you know, there’s so many car songs about General Motors. Particularly Cadillac and Chevrolet, but I found ones for Pontiac and Buick and Oldsmobile and everything else.

So I did this mix tape for gm and a couple years later they did an ad that I think may have been indirectly inspired by what I had sent them. The funny one is they also, GM did a um, poster that says they don’t write songs about Volvo. With a Corvette. It was like, bullshit. I’ve got four Volvo songs.

Crew Chief Eric: You [00:54:00] know what, Dean, it would’ve been awesome if you had been on an earlier episode of Break Fix called Cruising at the Speed of Sound.

I think we could have used your opinion when we’re reviewed all of these car adjacent songs and whatnot. So maybe next time, maybe we’ll have to do a reprisal of that and bring you back on as a subject matter expert.

Dean Case: Oh, that’d be good. I, uh, here’s one, have you listened to Mark LERs? The car was the one.

Crew Chief Eric: I guess it’s on my list on Spotify now. I’m gonna have to ask. You gotta

Dean Case: listen to that. And what was amazing is the backstory. I listened to the song and I was like, wow. And so I read the liner notes and that’s why I love still buying CDs because you don’t get liner notes with streaming. He was inspired by Mark.

Donahue’s book The Unfair Advantage. Ooh, that’s a good one. Yeah, that’s a deep cut.

Crew Chief Eric: All these fun things that we get into in what we call the car adjacent world. And so, you know, speaking of that, Dean, I wanna give you the opportunity now. Any shout outs, promotions, anything else you’d like to share that we didn’t cover?

Dean Case: Probably some of the best stuff I ever did from a PR standpoint was we were promoting shelter animal adoptions on race cars. And we did a [00:55:00] lot of work with SPCA from Monterey County, which. Anyone knows, uh, Laguna Seka Raceway directly across the street. Driveway to driveway is the SPCA for Monterey County.

So we would do just shameless promotions. We would have bf Good Kitty or per Ellie and stuff, and we’d name animals after the drivers and stuff. So Jay Ato and Robert Davis at Mazda were very supportive of this and we managed to donate quite a bit of money to the shelter and do some fun there. We even did one when we had the Playboy MX five cup.

We had bunnies helping bunnies, so we were promoting bunny adoptions with Playboy playmates. That was fun. And then another one I would, uh, give a shout out to another project we did was, uh, distracted Driver Awareness Project Eloi. If you got. Anybody in your audience who’s in high school or college have any graphic arts thing?

Project yellow light.org. I’ll send you the links on this. They could win a scholarship if they could produce a 25 second video or radio. PSA on distracted driver awareness. So we were working with some of our young drivers to get them to promote the teenager doesn’t wanna [00:56:00] hear me now. I’m 59, I guess now.

Tell ’em to put the phone down, but they’ll listen to someone who’s an aspiring race driver. And it also gives the race driver an opportunity to do some good in the community. If you’re racing in Formula 2000 or something, you can call up the local TV station in wherever, Albuquerque or El Paso or whoever you might be from, and say, I’m in the next Joseph New Garden.

Sadly, they’re gonna probably say who and then say, why do I care? But if you say, I’m a teenage race driver and I’m saving. Lives on the highway. Really, how you doing that? So it gives a, a, a launch point to talk about what they’re doing. They have the credentials to talk about that safety. So that’s just something that, uh, has been kind of a passion project.

And I worked on that with, uh, Julie Garner from Project Yellow Light, and we’re hoping to reactivate that with, uh,

Crew Chief Eric: SRO this year. So folks, Dean has remarked that the only topics he’s somewhat qualified to talk about are cars, motor sports, animal welfare, and his strange obsession with music related to cars.

So if you’re into that, you can follow him on social at. You can find me on

Dean Case: Facebook [00:57:00] or LinkedIn

Crew Chief Eric: and be sure to check out all the changes coming to our favorite touring car series, SRO America, sponsored by AWS, and CrowdStrike coming very, very soon. And thanks in part. To Dean’s hard work now that he’s on board at SRO.

So congrats on the new gig and best of luck in this 22 and 23 season and we look forward to some more epic stories. Thank you. Cool. I think that’s it then. Okay. Thank you.

The following episode is brought to you by SRO Motorsports America and their partners at AWS CrowdStrike, Fantech Pelli, and the Skip Barber Racing School. Be sure to follow all the racing action by visiting www.sromotorsports.com or take a shortcut to GT America us and be sure to follow them on social at GT America, on Twitter and Instagram at SRO GT America on Facebook.

Catch [00:58:00] live coverage of the races on their YouTube channel at GT World.

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 grantor Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at crew chief@gtmotorsports.org.

We’d love to hear from you.

For as little as $2 and 50 cents a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other [00:59:00] volunteers fed on their strict diet of fig Newton’s, gummy bears, and monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports. And remember, without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be possible.

Highlights

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 Dean Case’s Early Career at Mazda
01:26 Transition to Ford and Electric Vehicles
07:33 Return to Mazda and PR Career
09:22 Mazda Road to Indy and Racing Involvement
18:58 Famous Collaborations and Influences
24:56 Nissan PR and Marketing Insights
29:04 Pete Brock’s Call and the BRE Logo Incident
29:27 The Launch of the 350Z and Renault’s Influence
30:32 Nissan’s Heritage Car Program
32:57 The Resurgence of the Z: 400Z Insights
35:07 Formula SAE: Launching Careers in Automotive Engineering
39:50 Joining SRO America: Plans and Perspectives
44:06 The Vibe at SRO Events
50:38 Dean’s Obsession with Car Songs
54:53 Promoting Animal Welfare and Distracted Driving Awareness
56:44 Conclusion and Farewell

Bonus Content

A guided tour of the Long Beach GP with Dean.

Learn More

Dean Case – Auto.biography

Dean Case progressed from race fan as a kid, to automotive engineer as an adult, before devoting the past 15+ years of his professional career to automotive communications with an emphasis on motorsports and engineering PR.

After graduating from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a Mechanical Engineering degree, he joined Mazda R&D in Irvine, California. While at Mazda he worked on the original Miata, second-generation MX-6, first-gen MPV, and third-gen RX-7.

During his early professional days, Dean was the editor of the SAE SoCal newsletter where he honed his writing skills as an unpaid volunteer. He developed his speaking skills by visiting many of the local engineering schools to talk about careers in the auto industry.

While Dean loved the people and work at Mazda, he wanted to try working at the main engineering office of a larger car company. That opportunity came in 1993 when he joined Ford as a layout engineer in the electric vehicle department. In 1997, while at Ford he was able to transfer to the Ford Motorsport effort in the SCCA Trans-Am Championship. 1997 was the year that Tommy Kendall shattered the records, winning 11-straight races. Ford swept all 13 races and the manufacturers championship, and then departed the series.

While the Ford experience was professionally rewarding, Dean wished to return home to Southern California. That move came in 1998 when he joined Nissan as a Product Investigation Engineer where he fell back into the EV world, being one of the lead American engineers on the Nissan Altra EV, and Nissan Hypermini EV test programs.

Dean was acting as the EV Q&A technical expert on a Nissan media event in 2000, which would lead to his career change from engineering to communications. Dean became the Nissan Product PR Manager in 2001 and retained that position until 2006. During this time Dean worked on every Nissan brand product launch, including the return of the Z, the launch of NISMO, and the first Nissan 360 global event. Dean was also given responsibility for motorsports, corporate heritage, environmental topics, and product recalls, an eclectic grab bag of expertise.

In 2006, Nissan relocated their U.S. headquarters to Nashville, Tennessee and Dean began a freelance career based in Southern California.

His first client in 2006 was SAE International, managing the inaugural Formula SAE West student engineering competition. It was the perfect match for his skills in both engineering and event management.

Dean was then reunited with Mazda. Dean became the Communications Officer for Mazda Motorsports (aka MAZDASPEED) in 2006 and spent the next 11 years on the road promoting the Zoom-Zoom nation from the SCCA Runoffs to Le Mans. With minimal overlap between the car review worlds and motorsports Dean worked to educate the car review journalists on what, where, and why Mazda races. He also made sure the motorsports press knew what Mazda had in the showroom. He especially enjoyed working with the younger drivers in helping them develop their business and PR plans.

His primary client today is SRO Motorsports America, where he works to promote the premier GT and Touring Car series in the U.S.

Dean has also worked with Motivo Engineering since 2012 where he has been able to use his engineering background to explain the amazingly complex projects that Motivo has been solving.

If Dean has a special skill it is in bringing together people and organizations that would not appear to have anything to do with one another for mutual benefit. His favorite program has been in the promotion of shelter animal adoptions on Mazda race cars. What began, as a one-off with MUTTS Comics and the Humane Society of the United States in 2007 has become a strong partnership with the SPCA for Monterey County, located directly across the street from Mazda Raceway.

In 2012, Dean connected the dots between Mazda Motorsports and Project Yellow Light. The program showcases young Mazda racers as spokespersons for distracted driver awareness.

If you bought a copy of the recently reissued Stainless Steel Carrot, you can thank Dean as he nudged author Sylvia Wilkinson for a decade. He succeeded by pitching it as a fundraiser for animal welfare organizations.

Dean has remarked that the only topics he’s somewhat qualified to talk about are cars, motorsports, animal welfare, and his strange obsession with music related to cars. Dean has gathered up well in excess of 1,400 car songs, ranging from the usual – think “Little Deuce Coupe”, to the bizarre – think “My Bloody Yugo” or “I’d Kill for a Green Miata”. What started out as mix-tapes for friends resulted in a Grammy-nominated four CD box set by Rhino Records in 1999, where Dean earned an Associate Producer credit.

Dean has been an active volunteer with SAE, MPG, AARWBA, Friends of Torrance Animals, the Motorsports Hall of Fame, PAWS/LA and Food Forward over the years. He is happily married, living walking distance to the beach in a Redondo Beach condo covered in cat fur.

Dean has remarked that the only topics he’s somewhat qualified to talk about are cars, motorsports, animal welfare, and his strange obsession with music related to cars. But if you’re into that… you can follow him on LinkedIn. And be sure to check out all the changes coming to our favorite Touring Car series SRO America, sponsored by AWS & Crowdstrike, coming very soon and thanks in part to Dean’s hard work!

Dean’s pivot to public relations came unexpectedly. Acting as a technical expert at a Nissan media event in 2000 opened the door to a new career. From 2001 to 2006, he managed product PR at Nissan, overseeing launches like the return of the Z, the birth of NISMO, and the first Nissan 360 global event.

Photo courtesy Gran Touring Motoring, photo by Paul Wilamoski

When Nissan relocated to Tennessee, Dean chose to stay in California. Thanks to a well-timed coffee with Jeremy Barnes at the LA Auto Show, he returned to Mazda – this time in a PR role. “Don’t burn bridges,” Dean advises. “Leave on good terms, and good things happen.”

He also helped shape the Mazda Road to Indy, a ladder system for aspiring open-wheel racers. From Skip Barber to Star Mazda to Atlantics, the program evolved through industry upheaval and economic downturns. “We lost the Atlantic Championship,” Dean laments, “but the depth of talent in MX-5 Cup was astounding.”

The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and Beyond!

Before Dean returned to Mazda in a public relations role, he spent time mentoring the next generation of automotive engineers through the Formula SAE program – a collegiate design competition that challenges students to conceive, build, and race small formula-style cars.

More than just a technical exercise, Formula SAE is a proving ground for innovation, teamwork, and real-world problem solving. For Dean, it was a chance to give back, bridging his engineering roots with his growing passion for storytelling and motorsports advocacy. His involvement not only shaped young careers but also reaffirmed his own belief in the power of education and community within the automotive world. Learn more!

Project Yellow Light is a scholarship competition that empowers students to combat distracted driving through creative public service announcements. Dean Case has been a vocal advocate for the program, helping amplify its reach within the motorsports community. Learn more.

Founded to honor Hunter Garner, a young man who tragically lost his life in a car crash, Project Yellow Light challenges high school and college students to produce compelling PSAs that discourage texting while driving. The initiative blends media literacy, social impact, and youth engagement – values that resonate deeply with Dean’s mission to make motorsports not only thrilling but also socially responsible. Through his work with SRO Motorsports America and his broader communications efforts, Dean has helped connect racing’s visibility with real-world safety advocacy, proving that storytelling can save lives.

Dean’s passion for storytelling led him to collaborate with authors like Sylvia Wilkinson and Garth Stein. He helped reissue Wilkinson’s classic “The Stainless Steel Carrot” as a fundraiser for animal charities and played a role in bringing “The Art of Racing in the Rain” to the big screen. “Patrick Dempsey bought the rights,” Dean says, “but it took 10 years to make the movie.”

Dean always claims he “wears many hats” – literally! Photo courtesy Dean Case

Now the PR Manager for SRO Motorsports America, Dean promotes GT and touring car racing across the U.S. His journey – from clay models to press kits, from EVs to TransAm – proves that careers aren’t always linear. But with passion, humility, and a knack for storytelling, they can be legendary.

The following content has been brought to you by SRO Motorsports America and their partners at AWS, Crowdstrike, Fanatec, Pirelli, and the Skip Barber Racing School.

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