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Waxing Poetic: The Zymöl Story with Chuck Bennett

May 3, 2022

Sometimes it’s not the car you need – it’s the car that needs you. That mantra has fueled Chuck Bennett’s four-decade journey from a curious BMW club member to the founder of Zymöl, a company that redefined automotive care with natural ingredients, scientific rigor, and a whole lot of heart.

In this episode of Break/Fix, Chuck shares the origin story of Zymöl, a tale that begins in Bischofsheim, Germany, where carriage restorers used rancid animal fats to achieve mirror-like finishes. Inspired but repulsed, Chuck returned to the U.S. determined to create a plant-based alternative. What started as a personal quest soon became a garage-born revolution – complete with canning jars, coffee urns, and a wife who finally said, “Either stop or sell it.”

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

After placing a modest black-and-white ad in The Star magazine, Chuck was summoned by the local postmaster – not for a reprimand, but to collect six overflowing mailbags of orders. That first ad netted $40,000 in sales and launched Zymöl into the stratosphere.

Spotlight

Notes

This Break/Fix podcast episode features Chuck Bennett, founder and CEO of Zymol, a company renowned for its high-quality car care products. Chuck shares the story of his accidental foray into the car care industry, inspired by his trip to Germany to explore his ancestry. He meticulously developed a natural wax alternative free of animal fats, resulting in the creation of Zymol’s signature car wax. The discussion covers the evolution of Zymol, the importance of properly caring for a car’s paint, innovative products like the graphene wax, and the compatibility of Zymol products with various surfaces including musical instruments and horses. Chuck emphasizes the need for attention to detail in car care, proper washing techniques, and the significant impact of following directions when using their products.

History of Zymöl (over 40 years in this industry); Where did the name come from? Are you a chemist/chemical engineer?
What types of Products does Zymöl offer?
Zymöl in Motorsports
Car Care – 101: “The wash is as important as the wax”
Special techniques & Zymöl events.

Transcript

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

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

Crew Chief Eric: Sometimes it’s not the car you need. It’s the car that needs you. That’s the motto that has fueled 40 years of love and passion in the world of automobiles, aircraft, boats, horses, and even musical instruments. Using natural ingredients, oils, and waxes, Zymol products enhance any finish without harsh chemicals or abrasives.

And with us tonight to tell the Zymol story, educate us on proper car care, and recount some great stories [00:01:00] is the founder and CEO of Zymol. Chuck Bennett and co hosting with me tonight from the drive through is Tanya. So I want to welcome both Tanya and Chuck to the show and let’s get into it.

Executive Producer Tania: Great.

Crew Chief Eric: So I got to say, I have been preaching about Zymol for many, many years.

I got exposed to it because we were trying products a long time ago. On a car that was very difficult to wax, you know, an unclear coded red Volkswagen Audi product, trying all sorts of different things. And I kind of fell in love with the whole Zymol series of products. This is already 20 years ago, and I’ve been using it ever since.

So I’m really excited to do this episode with you, Chuck. So let’s start off and talk about how you got into waxes and 40 years in this industry. How did you get started?

Chuck Bennett: It’s interesting how I got started and how the company started back in the late 70s. I had gone to Germany. And the idea was, I had seen [00:02:00] a movie that was on television, like a miniseries called Roots, and it really impressed me.

It impressed me with finding your ancestry, getting in touch with where you came from. My great grandmother, who was, by the way, disowned from her family for marrying outside of her station, she married a Dane. And her actual name was, Her last name was Rothschild. She was one of the Rothschild babies.

Where she grew up was a place called Bischofsheim, Germany. So I decided to go to Bischofsheim and sort of get the feeling for where my great grandmother came from. That’s about as far back as I could touch with our family. In Bishop time, it’s, it’s on the Tal River. It’s a wonderful, beautiful place.

They’re known for a few things. One of the things they’re known for is wine. They’ve got great wines. They’re known for great food. They’re also known for restoring horse-drawn carriages. Okay? The original like Landau kind of carriage in Germany at that time, they kept up the approach and the technique of restoring a [00:03:00] carriage with the materials that were used originally on that carriage.

As an example, wood was sanded to an almost perfection, and then it was covered with clay. That clay was sanded. Then they used an enamel paint on these beautiful horse drawn carriages. The black carriages looked like light came in near it and bent around corners. To get into the carriage like they were metal.

They were incredible. I noticed when they were done restoring these carriages when they were done rubbing them out and doing what they were doing that they applied this God awful product on the side of the carriage. I will tell you right now that if I went to a football stadium and I had a container of it and I opened it up, I’d probably clear out half of the stadium odor.

The odor was just the worst you possibly could imagine. Well, what it was was animal fats that had become rancid. There was lards, there was suet. It was the worst thing you [00:04:00] could possibly smell. But the results were phenomenal. At that point I had had a Nivea container. I always liked to do a little moisturizing.

I hate to say it, but I do still trying to look good at almost 75 years old. What I did was I dumped out my Nivea and I got some of their product and I put it in the container. It reminded me a lot of that Lederkrantz cheese. Okay, mixed up with that fish that that goes bad in Norway that they want to put, uh, they have a plan to camp that fish fish.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Yeah.

Chuck Bennett: Yeah. Now, the scariest part was coming back to the United States and I’m saying to myself, What happens if, you know, like a dog gets a whiff of this container because stuff was coming through the container and I’ve got to open this container up and then explain to somebody that it’s not Nivea.

It stinks this bad and they want me to put it on my skin. So I was lucky. I went through customs. It was no problem. I got back here to the States and being a [00:05:00] vegetarian, by the way, I am a vegetarian. I’ve been one since I was 24 years old. This is all for myself. I was not interested in making a company.

This is for myself. Being a vegetarian, I can’t make a product for myself that contains these animal fats. I decided to look at different kinds of plant fats that had fatty esters that were pretty close to what these animal fats were. Very hard to find. I was able to find an interesting plant fat that had an LDL count, which is one of the highest that I’ve ever seen, which is carnauba.

Carnauba is a super LDL. Low density lipoprotein in its natural form, carnauba wax is harder than a concrete block. Wow. And we can get into that later on, we can explain all that stuff. So I had a friend of mine who was working at the time for a pharmaceutical company in New Haven, Connecticut. And she introduced me to an engineer and I sat down and I explained what I was trying to do and he [00:06:00] said, okay, let’s see what kind of oils and plant fats can combine and maybe we can break down this car now, Bob.

And he decided that the best thing he could break the car now but down with was citric terpene. Tanya, you’re familiar with terpenes?

Executive Producer Tania: Uh, it’s been a while.

Chuck Bennett: It’s been a while. Citric terpene, it’s the pressings from the skins of things like oranges and lemons and limes and tangerines. And they press the oil out, and then what they do is they go ahead and they distill the oils.

So you’ve literally got an all natural solvent, which will help you dissolve, which will help you create an emulsion using the carnauba and your plant oils in this citric terpene. So we created a, if you will, a wax, in essence, a wax. And I tried it out and it was terrible, didn’t work. It was like, I went ahead and rubbed Vaseline all over my car.

I said, Oh, Jesus, what am I going to do? I went back to Mr. [00:07:00] Patel and I said, we’re going to do, we have a problem. He said, maybe it’s because there’s no biological activity. There’s nothing that’s making this want to become a wax again. You’ve got a pomade. You don’t have a wax. We need some bioactivity in there.

He said, do you know, there is an animal. That converts plant oils to a wax, and really what he meant was an insect. What we were able to find was the reagent through a company in Chicago called Signal, even though it was, it was synthetic because we didn’t want to kill bees that bees use to convert plant oils to waxes.

So we applied the reagent to our mix. Still at this point, no interest in starting a company. This was for me. Let me tell you about my car and the reason why I wanted to do this. I had a 1977 BMW 530i in Topaz, gorgeous color. And I was using the commoditable [00:08:00] products that are on the market. When I waxed that car and I looked at my applicator cloth and I said, wait a minute, that’s the same color as my car.

That can’t be good. If I’m trying to wax my car, why am I all of a sudden noticing the color of my paint on my applicator clothes? And it’s simple. It’s because the kinds of braces and the kinds of solvents that were being used, we’re doing a very nice job and dissolving my paint surface. So I said, okay, I’ve got to make myself something that’s not going to do that.

So I made the product in my kitchen. Oh. The interesting part of this is, is that I belong to the BMW car club of America. A few of the members of the BMW car club, when I would go to a monthly meeting, had seen how nice my car looked and they made comment about it. And I said, well, I’ve got this sort of wax that I’ve made.

And of course, everybody said, Can I have some? And I started giving these products away. Well, I was giving a lot of those products away [00:09:00] and I was using canning jars to put the products in. About a year and a half after I was doing this, it got to a point where my wife looked at me and said, we need to talk.

I just want you to know that last month you gave close to 1, 500 of our money away making these products. I said, how is that possible? You bought these raw materials. You bought two 50 cup coffee urns as you’re making the products in. You’ve been buying all these canning jars. This has to stop. She says, either you stop doing it or you sell it.

So in Connecticut, there was a wonderful restaurant called the, uh, Silver Inn. And it was located in Wallingford, Connecticut. That’s where we had BMW Car Club meeting. And I had talked to Mark Luckman. At that point, he was the director of the BMW Car Club. He was coming in to say hello. He granted me 15 minutes up in front of everybody.

I got up and said, everyone, you know who I am? And [00:10:00] applause. Yes, yes, yes. You know who you are? You got this great stuff. And I said, well, I can’t give it away anymore. Cause it was like somebody who had gone out and keyed every one of their BMWs got to see their faces. So I said, uh, well, I don’t know what to do.

I just can’t give you these products anymore. And somebody in the back, in fact, I remember his name, Rick Oviatt raises his hand and he says, uh, why don’t you sell us the product? And I’m thinking about

Executive Producer Tania: money,

Chuck Bennett: sending the products. Okay. Well, I could do that, but I have to figure out what it’s going to cost.

So I go back and I’m trying to figure out what it’s going to cost me to sell this product. The scary part, the scary part was that it was probably going to cost me per container around 12 to 13 to make up a container of that product. And this is a

Crew Chief Eric: 1980s dollars, right? So this is

Chuck Bennett: 1980s dollars. Yeah. And I said, okay, I could sell it, but I need to make a profit because I’m going to take some of that money and [00:11:00] plug that back into the business so I can buy more materials.

What am I going to do to figure out what I should write says that. And at that point I had talked to my brother and my brother says, look, he said, it’s costing a 12 to 13 bucks to make it. Are you including your labor in there? He said, no, what labor? He’s well, somebody has got to be making it. I said, yeah.

He says, Look, why don’t you price it at 19? Okay. He says, Yeah. He says to me, he says, everybody’s got a 20 bill in their wallet, especially car guys. They’re going to want to buy it. I said, okay. So I contact Mark Luckman for the BMW car club. And I said, Mark, I would like to advertise my product. In the roundel magazine, they said, okay, so I came up with an ad and the ad was the container of our products and the title of the ad was, this is the first car wax and you should not gloss over.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s good. I like that.

Chuck Bennett: I have to tell you, I had a friend of mine [00:12:00] helped me create the ad. When I talked to the people at the BMW car club. The money they wanted for me to do an ad in there was like insanity. I said, Oh Jesus, what am I going to do? So my brother said, why don’t you contact the Mercedes Benz club and see what they charge for advertising in the star magazine?

I said, okay. So I contacted the star magazine and they said, yeah, well, let’s place. The ad is going to be 800. If we do it in color. And if you do it in black and white, it’s 350. I said, well, I’ll do it in black and white. So it was a great ad that had a little coupon thing at the bottom where someone could cut that out and do a coupon and add an address.

I had to get a post office box. So I went down to Brantford, Connecticut and got post office box, seven 20 little post office box. So the ad ran, nothing. I don’t hear anything. I’m not getting any letters coming in, nothing. I go to the post [00:13:00] office box, like every other day, I hear crickets and there’s moths that have come flying out of it.

I said, okay, this was one of those ventures on my part that I’m going to stick to what I was doing. And by the way, what I was doing at that point, for a living, is that I was a computer hardware engineer that was working for a whole bunch of different companies, helping those companies move. Computer engineering into robotics.

That was my job. Wife still couldn’t figure out what the hell am I doing playing with this stuff. So I get a phone call at my office. At that point, I was working for Wang labs. I don’t know if anybody knows who Wang labs was up in low mass.

Crew Chief Eric: I worked for a derivative of Wang. So I I’m with you. In

Chuck Bennett: fact, my office was down the hall.

From Fred Wang, who is Dr. Wang’s son, right? I get a phone call. The phone call is from the postmaster in Brantford. And he says to me, I’m going to try and do the voice. He [00:14:00] says, Mr. Bennett. I says, yeah? He says, I need to see you in my office tomorrow. Jesus. Yes, sir. Can you tell me what’s wrong? He says, no, I’ll talk to you when you get here.

I called the wife and I said, listen, I don’t know what I, you know, maybe there’s some, some laws that I’ve broken by advertising products in a magazine, or maybe we need to have a federal license to do this stuff. Or maybe the federal trade commission doesn’t like the fact that everybody else is wax on the market.

It’s like 2 a container. And here I am at 19, obviously something’s wrong. So I get up that morning, I had a cup of coffee and it was like shaking all over the place, get in the car and I drive down there and walk in, there’s like a window, right, knock on the little shelf on the, on the window, and it opens up and I said, I’m here to see, I don’t remember what the postmaster’s name is, but I’m here to see him.

He says, hang on. So I said, okay, next thing I know, the window opens up and there’s bags, [00:15:00] mailbags being thrown at me through the window. There’s about six mailbags. Whoa. And the postmaster pieces his head out and he says, It really aggravates me when people get a small post office box and they know they’re going to get this kind of reception coming in the door from doing some marketing or advertising.

He said, you need a bigger post office box. Mr. Bennett. I said, what is all this? He said, it’s a response to whatever you’ve done. So here I am. I’m down there. It’s in the morning. I’m trying to carry out these bags and get them into the car. It wouldn’t all fit in the trunk. They got some in the back seat. I drive home.

The wife at that point was working. I call her up. I said, you need to come home. We got a situation. It’s okay. She comes home. We open up the bags and it was orders. There were orders after orders after orders. There were people that were sending not only checks, but they were sending cash. Wow. And little notes to say, like, [00:16:00] here’s a 20 bill.

Keep the dollar for the future. Thank you. And this is crazy. Our first ad netted about 40, 000 in sales. So I sat back at that point and I said, wow, let me see computers that make me crazy, right? Spending my life, trying to figure out what operating system failure is going to, is going to determine what my life is like over the next.

30, 60 days, or maybe doing this. I decided at that point to get ahold of a couple of really great people, some engineers that were in the packaging business, you know, I decided I was going to go ahead and rent a garage and I’d move. Manufacturing from my kitchen into a garage, and I did. We started manufacturing product.

I designed a container, which is design all wax container. That’s patented. By the way, it’s a patented container. Oh, and there’s there’s all [00:17:00] kinds of things. Strange things about that container. We’ll tell you about it as well. The company has grown from this I’m working in my kitchen to a worldwide company.

I mean, if we sell in just about every single country on the planet, except for ones we can’t sell to, I wish I could like Cuba, there’s a few Asian countries I’d like to sell to. One of which is a got this little guy who’s got a funny haircut. It’s got lots of nice cars. I’d like to sell everywhere. I’d like to be.

I have people take care of their cars, love their cars. And you’re right. It’s sometimes it’s not the car that you need. In most cases, it’s the car that needs you. And there are lots of people who have got wonderful cars. There’s people that have got 1970s, you know, seventies Pintos in the garage that they’re massaging, that they love.

Why would anybody own? Why? Because they love the car. There’s all kinds of. Wonderful automobiles in the hands of wonderful [00:18:00] people that need to keep the dream alive. That’s our goal. Helping people keep the dream alive. We’ve done some pretty incredible things. We’ve branched out and created some other products.

One of the hottest products that we’ve got. Is our HD cleanse. I don’t know if you’ve ever used bleach g cleanse. I, I

Crew Chief Eric: ha I own it. I, I have an assortment of zy products. Yeah. And HD cleanse.

Chuck Bennett: HD cleanse is like an exfoliate for paint. And the interesting thing about HD cleanses, it removes hairline scratches in paint.

And the more you use it, the more hairline scratches are going to be relieved from the paint without abrading the paint. You’re not using a polishing agent that can strip clear coat or strip paint off a car. And especially today, when the average paint on a car today is anywhere between four to six mils, that’s all there is.

So you’ve got to be very careful what you use on, on a car today. The older cars have got 20, 30 mils paint. You can scrub like crazy with those cars. But you still have to [00:19:00] be gentle with paint. Waxing a car, treating the finish of a car, is very much like either baking, or it’s like making love, or it’s any of those things.

You’ve got to be gentle. You’ve got to have a little finesse. You’ve got to work, you’ve got to be mentally in tune with the automobile and you’ve got to care about it because you’re responsible for it. So HD cleanse became a instant hit with people that wanted to resurrect their paint and get their paint to a point where they could apply a wax to it.

Because for years, people had believed that all they had to do was wash the car. And wax it. That doesn’t work.

Crew Chief Eric: I will get into that in a little bit, but Chuck, I got to pause you here because wow, I think this is the most epic origin story we’ve ever had on break fix. So I want people to kind of digest everything you’ve said, but there’s some important fallout here.

Number one, I made a really interesting connection. Finally, I understand why Zymol has been the number one recommended wax for BMW and the BMW [00:20:00] club. I never realized that until now, but also I think a question falls out of this. Where did the name come from?

Chuck Bennett: Oh, well, I was sitting there and trying to come up with a name.

You know, there’s all kinds of things that were in my head, regal wax, and just stupid, stupid things. I like names that sort of name what the product is to sort of tell you what it does. Now, the waxes we make are enzymatic emollients. They’re zymes. They have a reagent in them. It’s like beer. It’s like sourdough bread.

There’s, there’s a live culture inside those containers. You know, that culture gets added after we blend everything and we’ve got the temperature to drop in those containers. And that’s when we add the culture to it. So enzymatic emollients. So I’m looking at this word, two words, actually. I said enzymatic emollient.

There’s a sign there and it’s oil. We’ve got plant oils. What’s the German word for oil? O with an umlau, L. O E L is a German word for oil. [00:21:00] Seim, oil. Put the two of them together. Seimel. That created Seimel. And I’ve got the original press type lettering. You know what press type lettering was? Back in the 70s and in the 80s there were these letters you could buy sheets and you’d put the sheet down on a piece of paper and you’d rub it and it would transfer the letter onto the sheet you’re working with.

I have the original press type lettering of the logo, Zymol. And the only thing that’s changed since then was the original logo was just the word, and now the logo is the word with double rules. Two rules above, two rules below. That’s the Zymol logo. That’s where the name came from. It is an explanation of what the product is, an enzymatic emollient.

Crew Chief Eric: Coming out of the computer and computer hardware world, now you’re a chemist, chemical engineer. What do you consider yourself after 40 years of doing this?

Chuck Bennett: A frustrated entrepreneurial scientist who has absolutely made every possible mistake Right. All I can tell you is, [00:22:00] is that if my mistakes were cow manure, you’d have no place to walk I made every possible mistake you could make.

There was mistakes in packaging, mistakes in blending, mistakes in raw materials that we bought. It was really crazy. And one of the things that I was able to do is to solicit help from the vendors that supplied Me raw materials, people that supplied me, coconut oil, people that supplied me, Carnauba people that supplied me things like banana oil.

A lot of these companies have got biochemists that work for them. And you can get a lot of help from these companies because they have those people working there. And of course, the more help they give you, the more that they can get their product embedded inside yours. Carnauba as an example. Carnival comes from a palm tree called the Copernicus Seraphira.

That palm tree grows in three places in the world, actually four now. It grows [00:23:00] in Brazil. Brazilians are well known for their carnival. It grows in Egypt. It grows in Africa, but it grows in South Africa. And it grows in Brooksville, Florida.

Crew Chief Eric: You were equatorial until that point.

Chuck Bennett: Yeah. We have our own Carnauba orchard.

Is that

Crew Chief Eric: specifically for Xymo? You have your own?

Chuck Bennett: We have our own Carnauba plants. We treat them differently than everybody else. Let’s go back to Carnauba from the world. Brazilian Carnauba is used in almost everything. It’s used in candies, cosmetics. It’s used everywhere. If you’re, have you ever eaten an M& M?

If you’ve eaten a Tic Tac? They contain car now. You get back, you can look at the package and it says it right up. That’s what gives it

Crew Chief Eric: the glossy quote unquote candy coating, right? Well, it’s,

Chuck Bennett: it’s, it’s, it’s the binder that binds the sugar together. Remember that when you mix low density lipoproteins or even high density lipoproteins with sugar, you get some monstrous triglycerides.

Executive Producer Tania: You’ve got too much in your body. It’s a bad thing.

Chuck Bennett: If you’ve [00:24:00] got too much, if you’re trying, if your triglyceride level is too high. There’s a good chance your cholesterol level is going to be totally out of whack. They use that. In Egypt, they use the carnauba there to wax thread. Okay. They wax thread in Egypt because when they’re making wonderful cotton sheets and all those things, they need to wax the thread so it doesn’t get burned out while it’s in the loom.

It has to flow smoothly through the loom. So they wax the threading with the car now in South Africa, they use the car now, but for jewelry molds, it melts in about 180 degrees and it’s very solid. Once it becomes because it gets back down to to ambient room temperature. And in our car now, but here in Florida, we actually Treat the plants like maple trees and we sapped them.

We don’t just, they don’t take, we don’t take the car now, but from the fronds. Now the rest of the world takes the car now, but from the fronts, they send person up to the tree and they take the fronds off and they drop them down. [00:25:00] Somebody down below chops them all up. Puts them in a 55 gallon tank of warm ether, and what happens is all the fats come to the top, they pour the fats off onto a mold, which is sitting on the ground, and the dirt, they pour the fats off onto that, it hardens up, they take the bricks and they shift them up.

There’s a few companies that you can get Carnauba from. The leading Carnauba purveyor in the United States is a company called Koster Kunin. And Koster Kunin is located in two different locations, uh, well three. There’s, they’ve got one in Holland. They’ve got one in St. Louis, New York, and they’ve got one in Connecticut.

They have the ability to process carnauba. And I’ve been in a plant where they process carnauba. They have to use a steam turbine to do it. And they drop these bricks into this one and a half ton bladed system that spins at about 26, 000 rpm. In an explosion proof room. And what happens is it chops the carnauba up.

And the carnauba becomes a powder. And it floats inside the [00:26:00] vessel. And they suck the powder off. While the dirt and sand and everything else and insects fall to the bottom. Wow. That’s how they process carnauba. There’s different types of carnauba. There’s brown carnauba, which is from the oldest of the fronds.

There’s yellow carnauba, and then there’s different grades of yellow carnauba, and there’s white carnauba. And white carnauba is most expensive because it comes from the upper fronds. Carnauba back in the 80s was going for around 15 a pound. Today it’s in the neighborhood of about 150 a pound. It’s pretty expensive material, and it’s very hard to get that, because if you’re getting Brazilian carnauba, it’s coming in by boat.

We all know what the supply chain crisis looks like. It’s pretty crazy trying to get raw materials. It’s one of the biggest challenges that my team has is getting raw materials. So we use Carnauba in almost everything we make. It is the wax of choice. And we’ve gone from using micro fine Carnauba [00:27:00] to today’s marketplace where we use nano fine.

Car, ba. And on top of that we use car, ba, sap, and car Ba. SAP is one of the materials that’s in, uh, as an example, a product that we make called Field Glaze. Field Glaze is used every day. It’s used at the Aston Martin factory. Every single day. They shoot the cars with field glaze. as they’re moving them from one section of the factory to the next, just to prevent scratches from happening and abrasions to the paint.

Also, our spray glaze is using liquid Carnauba. We’ve gone through different suppliers of Carnauba, but we’re sticking with the guys that we know. Make the best of the products that are out there. Raw materials that are out there. As the company progressed, we got tapped on the shoulder by lots of people who wanted us to help them in their endeavors to win at different events all over the world.

Crew Chief Eric: So Chuck, you know, you alluded to a bunch of things as you were describing, you know, the origin of the company and talking about natural [00:28:00] products. You know, we talked about carnauba wax and things like that. So I’ve noticed, and I appreciate, and I kind of show off to other folks, Hey, check out smell. You got to smell this, right?

Especially the cleaner wax. You smell that coconut, you smell the banana, the wheel wax has mints in it. Like it’s very prominent, the natural ingredients that are in Zymo. You don’t find that in pretty much anything else. But I’ve also come to realize in talking to you outside of the show that Zymo offers products, not just for cars.

So do you want to elaborate on that and how you got into developing products for not just cars?

Chuck Bennett: First, let’s talk, we’ll go back and talk about the aromas. You know, we’ve gotten complaints about the aromas.

Crew Chief Eric: What?

Chuck Bennett: Yeah. One of the most pungent smells is banana tosafirols. They are very, very strong. We use the oil from something called a burrow banana.

Yeah. The burro banana is a three sided banana. It’s a short, fat banana. If I were to open one up in my factory, just open a banana up in my factory, in fact, we had [00:29:00] a young lady who was allergic to bananas that worked for us. And we had to let her go home and spend the day at home when we were making products.

that contained banana oil. This stuff is just mind blowing how strong it is. But we’ve gotten actually complaints from people that said, I hate that smell. I mean, there are a lot of people that don’t like the smell of coconut. They don’t like the smell of bananas. We use spearmint oil. in our wheel cleaner.

Yep. They don’t like the smell of spear metal. We’ve had that happen. Let’s go and talk about one of the things that I think is, is really fun is musical instruments, which turned out to be a bit of a disaster. My son, who’s a very, very good bass player, calls me up one day and says, dad, you’ve got to go on.

I think it was either the Gretsch or Rickenbacker website. He says, there’s a bunch of guys on that site that are talking about using your cleaner wax on their guitars and their basses, he says, and they’re all excited about it. I said, not good. What do you mean? Not good. I said, the wax matrix in [00:30:00] our cleaner wax is too heavy.

If you have an acoustic instrument and you’re putting that wax on an acoustic instrument, you’re insulating the tonality of the wood. You are taking that wood and you’re dampening it by putting wax out. He said, well, some of these are solid bodies. I said, well, the solid bodies. That is not my, not my worry.

I said, your hollow bodies and your semi hollow bodies. That’s my worry. I log into that website. It’s a, like a factory website. Tell people who I am. Got a whole bunch of responses from people. I said, wow, you’re, you’re, you’re really, do you play? Yeah, I play, I play bass, all that stuff. And I said, well, why are you, why did you get on board?

What prompted you to get on board? I was very, very upfront. I said, because I want you to stop using my cleaner wax on your instruments. Boom, that tight. Why? I explained. And of course I got like Rick Troviat. Why don’t you sell us the product? I got one guy who sent me up, uh, sent a message to me that said, why don’t you create some products for musical [00:31:00] instruments?

I said, wow, that’s a whole different animal. That’s a different kind of wax matrix. I contacted my son. I said, would you be willing to let me send you some products and you can test it on your collection? He says, not a problem. Dad is I’ve got some instruments here. I didn’t have a question. This big up at the time.

I said, we’ll test it out. So over the course of about 18 months. We created product, tested it, threw it away, just finally got ourselves to a point where we’re able to create some very interesting products. We decided to do a show that’s called the NAMM show, N A M M. The NAMM show happens in Anaheim, California during January, and then in July it happens in Nashville.

The one in Nashville is called the Guitar Show. The one in Anaheim is the big major NAMM show and the NAMM stands for National Association of Music Merchants. It’s a misnomer because it’s international.

Crew Chief Eric: So sort of like SEMA for the car guys, right?

Chuck Bennett: Right. So I’m at the NAMM show and I’m displaying some of our products, talking to people about them.

We had a [00:32:00] booth, we had 50 inch screens. We did s going to do it. We’re gonn felt somebody tapping me I turn around and it was Martin guitar company. An he says, I just want to t Forever. He says, and I love your product. He says, what is this? I explained the situation that we’ve gotten involved in creating products for musical instruments.

What I can tell you now is there isn’t a single guitar that leaves the Martin factory that doesn’t have Zymol all over it. Wow. They use our products on their fretboard. They use our products on their pickups. body of the guitar. Even some of our products are used to polish the finish on the guitar. I’ve got to tell you about the motorcycle world.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, right. Two wheeled friends. Yeah.

Chuck Bennett: Got two wheeled friends. Remember I mentioned Bob Sinclair? He

Crew Chief Eric: did. And actually I was going to lead into that because we got to talk about motorsport at some time.

Chuck Bennett: Okay. Bob Sinclair was the avid motorsport [00:33:00] king, if you will. He was a crazy, crazy guy. I’ve spent hours with Bob Sinclair and Mario Andretti and all these guys, all these race car drivers.

We’ve been out to Baja Cantina out in California, 2 a. m. in the morning, drinking Negro Modellas and getting totally toasted. Great, great times, right? After a pebble event that Bob was out there, which happens in August, then we go back home and the fall sets in and the winter sets in. And Bob lived in Connecticut as well.

Bob was the, the CEO for Saab, Saab Cars. You know, mid November, Bob calls me up and he says, Bennett, we’re going to Milwaukee. I said, when do you want to go? He says, tomorrow. It’s snowing to beat the band out in Milwaukee. I said, it’s colder than Connecticut. They’ve got dogs frozen to fire hydrants out there.

I don’t want to go to Milwaukee. He said, we’re going to Milwaukee. I said, okay, I said, what are we going, what are we going to do in Milwaukee? He said, we’re going out to see a friend of mine, Willie G. Davis. He said, we’re going out to see Clyde Fessler. You’re going out to see the guys that [00:34:00] run Harley Davidson.

I said, okay, you still have that wax, he says to me, that rebels gasoline, right? I says, yeah, I gave you some, Bob. He says, yeah, I used it. It’s incredible. They were going out to show it to him. He said, make sure you bring some. I’ve already taken care of the flight. He says, you got to meet me, he says, at the Hartford airport.

Gonna meet you there, he says, at about nine o’clock in the morning. He called me at eight o’clock at night. Now I’ve got to go back down to the shop. I’ve got to get some product, get a whole kit together. Sure enough, we get on a plane, go out to Milwaukee and we meet everybody. I meet Willie G and I meet Clive Fessler.

The guy said, you’ve got to wax your refills gasoline, right? I said, yeah. He says, we’re going to test it. We go out on a loading dock and I’m freezing my butt off and they bring out a brand new black, full dresser. And he says, wax that tank. I better do it quick. I said, there’s a temperature out here. He said, No, it’s, it’s, it’s okay.

He says, it’s okay. He said, Nick, it’s about 26 degrees. We’re good. The paint was fresh. I take the wax and I rubbed it in between my hands to [00:35:00] get the carnauba soft enough. And I rubbed this wax all over the tank. He says, what are you going to do now? I said, well, I’m going to wait a few minutes and I’m going to buff it.

Okay. So I waited a few minutes. It was a little tough, but I was able to buff it. The tank looked beautiful. He says, okay, we’re going to get it to test. So the guy comes out with a bucket of gasoline and a rag, rag in the bucket. Willie G takes the rag, drapes it over the tank. Gasoline’s like pouring out of this rag out of the ground, out of the floating duck.

He said, let’s go to lunch. I’m standing there and I could feel the blood draining out of my head. Let’s go to lunch. We’re going to leave this rag, soaked in gasoline on the tank. Let’s go to lunch. We go to lunch. Now I didn’t eat a damn thing. We go back, William G. takes the rag off, it’s still damp, and the tank is cloudy.

He says, well, he says, that looks like a problem. I knew exactly what had happened. The carnauba in the wax is hygroscopic. It loves moisture. As the gasoline evaporated, the moisture in the air was getting to the carnauba. So I said, leave it [00:36:00] alone. What do you mean? Don’t touch it. So he stood there and watched it

Executive Producer Tania: and

Chuck Bennett: all of the cloudiness went away.

It was bright and beautiful and deep black. Willie G looks at me and says, so wow. He said, I want 10, 000 kits delivered. He says to us within the next 90 days. So Bob and I get back on the airplane. I said, Bob, I haven’t got any way of making 10, 000. He says, that was what Willie G said. You turn it over to Clive Fessler.

Clive Fessler gets all the engineering people. All the art design people, the label people involved. He says, you’re not going to have to ship them anything. He says for a year, he says, don’t worry. So Harley Davidson with sold our Zymol talent was the name of the product. T A L O N. Of course we couldn’t sell it.

We weren’t allowed to sell it. And just recently we’ve gotten a release from that exclusive. That we can now sell the talent product. So it’s a wax that repels gas.

Crew Chief Eric: So this actually leads into another great story, but [00:37:00] I want to preface this with something really, really important. Oftentimes, as I try to instill in people, Hey, you should try out Xymo, you should do this.

I always get the, it’s so difficult to work with this and that. And I have to explain people, first of all, You should really read the directions and number two, you basically brought up a good point, which was it needs to react with the environment, with the ambient temperature has to be the right temperature to work with.

It needs a lot of oxygen. It reacts to that. And that curing process is super important to the wax itself, especially the cleaner wax and the carbon and some of the other ones, and we’ll probably expand upon that more when we talk about car care stuff, but I think it’s, it’s funny the way you describe this and it’s all based upon the way you built it.

Yeah. In our other talks that it’s not just oxygen that reacts with the wax. There’s another one of these specialty products that you came up with, which is very different and it relates a hundred percent to the motorsport world. So do we want to, do we want to talk about,

Chuck Bennett: we’re talking about fast.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right.

Do you want to explain what fast means [00:38:00] first before people get like, what are we talking about?

Chuck Bennett: Friction augmenting surface technology. Bob Sinclair again had contacted me and said, listen, I’ve got some friends of mine. One of them is named Bob Snodgrass, and he runs this race team called Brumos Racing.

He’s never

Crew Chief Eric: heard of him.

Chuck Bennett: I hadn’t heard of him. And he said, listen, he said, they really need something to help them go faster. I said, what are they driving? He said, you serious? I said, yeah, what are they driving? They drive Porsches. They drive Porsches. Okay. So he said, what can you do to reduce the coefficiency of drag on the cars?

Well, you know, we use different reagents. The reagent that we use really reacts with oxygen. There are different kinds of materials that react to carbon dioxide and react to water. He said, okay, he said, well, why don’t you come up with a product? He says, we’re going out to this place called Delmar up in California.

And he always did this to me. He would talk to me on a Thursday and say, we’re leaving tomorrow on a [00:39:00] Friday. I said, no, what do we go? That’s not, no, nevermind, Bob. What time do I have to be at the airport tomorrow? He says, well, we’re going to head out to California tomorrow. He says, probably fly out somewhere 30, 10 o’clock.

So we fly out to California, go to the Del Mar race. And that’s where I meet Hans Stuck and Hurley Haywood. Two of my heroes. We go out there and Hans Stuck, you know, he’s, he’s like Lurch. Do you ever meet Hans Stuck? Not in person,

Executive Producer Tania: no.

Chuck Bennett: The guy’s like 6’10 He’s like, how he can fit into that portion was beyond me.

In fact, he’s had them modify the portion. We’re able to take the seat and move the seat back far enough that he could get his legs stretched out. At that point, he says, my leg is in comfortable position to have the gas pedal all the way to the floor. So I said to Hans, I says, Hans, what about the break?

He says, what’s that? Awesome. Nevermind Hans. I got, I got the picture. We took this product. Now we’re there. We had gotten some containers of CO2. [00:40:00] We put the wax on the cars and we shot the cars with CO2. We shot them to a point where we ended up with ice forming on the outside of the cars. That alone psyched up everybody or psyched out everybody that was standing around the competition wanting to know what we were working on.

In fact, one of the officials came over and said, you know, what are you guys doing? Just preparing the surface for racing. As I told Hans, I said, Hans, we’ve waxed parts of the car that we should wax. And there are parts of the car that you need to have drag. You need some downforce in certain areas. We’ve got it nailed down.

I said, but be careful because the car is not going to feel like it’s going through the wind anymore. You’re not going to get the resistance that the car Normally feels that day that we were out there was time trials and stuff. Hans takes his car out times. There’s about four laps and he comes back. He jumps out of the car.

God’s honest truth runs over to me, grabs me and picks me up like I’m a sack of potatoes. And he’s hugging me. [00:41:00] And he says, This is fabulous. He says, This is just fabulous. I said, Okay, Hans. I said, I guess you’ll like it. He says, Oh, he’s, I’m never going to just drive a car again without your product on the car.

So Bruno’s team used our product. Then at that point, Bob Snodgrass knew one of the people from the America’s cup. And we sent our guys to put fast America’s cup racer. We’ve got the pictures of it when it was at Rockefeller center. It was on display at Rockefeller center in New York. So we put our wax on that.

We have different boat race teams that have used it. Do you ever hear of Sutphin Marine? Sutphin Marine, they’re power boat racers. They don’t know if they still race at all, but they wouldn’t drop their boat in the water without Simon Fass being on the

Executive Producer Tania: boat.

Chuck Bennett: The interesting part of it is, is that the wax, when it gets near water, it’ll cause a bubbling effect in the water.

So you’ve got less drag on the water. Really interesting stuff. We got caught putting this product on The America’s team boat, and they told [00:42:00] us that we had to remove it. So I built a wash and the wash contained more fast. Just watched it right. And added more fast to it. Now I get a call from BMW and they said, we need you to come to Rhode Island.

It was the petite Lamont. So we need to have you apply fast because he had heard about it to our cars. Me and a good friend of mine. Marty Sals, he’s a great guy. He’s a terrible lawyer and a wonderful motorhead. We go out, coat the cars, you know, wearing our jumpsuits. We’ve got tanks on our back. We shoot the cars.

I kept telling the guy from BMW, I need to talk to your drivers. I need to talk to them. And I finally got a chance to talk to them. And you know, the funny thing about race drivers is that some of them will listen and some of them don’t talk to me. You’re an engineering lowlife. Please don’t talk to me.

So I went ahead and I said, guys, these cars are not going to react the way [00:43:00] you have had them react before. The coefficiency of drag is severely reduced. That kind of feeling you’ve got when you are up against the air. And you’re in a turn is not going to be the same. It didn’t listen. They didn’t make it to the third turn.

Both of them went into the wall. We had other people try this technology.

Crew Chief Eric: Do you guys still make fast?

Chuck Bennett: We still make fast. In fact, one of the things that we did, we took fast and we packaged it small and gave it to the U S ski team to try it out on their skis. I’ve been wondering about skis this whole time.

All right. Here’s the best part of this. One of the people of the U S ski team decided to wax one ski with our fast technology product. That sounds like a terrible idea. Went down a Hill and immediately corkscrew it into a tree. I don’t think I should probably sell this stuff. We did. We haven’t sold it because what happened was.

The report came back, somehow, one of [00:44:00] our attorneys, Paul Belling is his name, uh, he’s now living in Germany. He’s got a great life there. I loved doing his voice. He said, uh, Chuck, now you can’t sell this stuff. He said, you’re going to kill people. I said, if people are brave enough to put wooden boards on their feet and go down a mountain full of ice, I mean, how am I, how is what I’m doing going to kill them?

Come on, you can’t do it. Liability, liability. You should never listen to lawyers. I probably should have taken this stuff out and sold it. And then we may do it again anyway. We may, we may bring out that ski wax anyway. It’s awesome. We’ve supplied the U. S. Olympic luge team with some of our fast technology years and years ago.

And of course, our logo has appeared on all these, our logos appeared on the Brumos race cars. The logos were on the, uh, Seffen Marine. Then, my wife is an avid horse lover, and we woke up one morning and she said, you know, we make [00:45:00] all these great products. Why don’t we make something for the horses?

Crew Chief Eric: So you’re talking saddle waxes and other things?

Oh,

Chuck Bennett: we already had those products. We already had leather cleaners, leather conditioners. She was more interested in hoof care. She was interested in shampoos. She was interested in conditioners, coat conditioners, mane and tail detanglers, those kinds of things. So I said, yeah, we could look at that. I said, what’s the main goal here?

She says we need to stop flies from getting at them. We had moved to Florida in 2009. There’s a big difference between the fly community in Florida and the fly community up in Connecticut. Down here, the flies got their own council. They park themselves on horses here. I mean, it’s crazy. And then, of course, you’ve got cows everywhere.

Cows breed flies. It’s incredible. We found out very quickly that we couldn’t actually make any products that would repel flies. You [00:46:00] know, there are some products that will. We’ve got a natural extract from chrysanthemums in our soap, or horses. If you take the extract from a chrysanthemum and you go ahead and process it by squeezing out the essence of, uh, in the chrysanthemums, And then go ahead and distill that you end up with something called pyrethrins when the majority of pyrethrins are garnered from chrysanthemums and the flowers of chrysanthemums.

And what they’re for is that they cause insects to stop breathing. It’s a very interesting material. It causes the insect to literally suffocate, but we don’t have pyrethrins, but we do have extract of chrysanthemum in our shampoo and in our conditioner. So we created some products and they’re very, very popular.

The horse care people love our products. And what’s interesting about that marketplace is that, you know, when somebody waxes their car, you know, the car doesn’t decide that [00:47:00] after it’s done getting waxed, it wants to roll over on its back in the nearest mud puddle. Which is what it’s supposed to go. And we’ve tried our products on different horses and different parts of the world.

In fact, we brought some product with us to London. We brought some products that they, they tried it on some of the, the Bobby’s police horses. And then we brought it over to Ireland to, um, uh, Ben and breakfast there called Puddin Hill. And they had a great stable. And we tried some of our products on. on their horses.

And then everybody was very, very pleased. We’re doing very well with our, with our horse care products. Our horse care products are called equine skies.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, interesting.

Chuck Bennett: Yeah. It’s, uh, in fact, we’ve just been notified by Amazon. They’d like us to put a store up on Amazon of our horse care products. We’re trying to keep up with all the different dirty and need to be shiny surfaces on the planet.

I’ll never be able to go after all,

Crew Chief Eric: which is actually a great segue into talking about some car care. And I know you’ve got some interesting techniques, which we’ll, we’ll get [00:48:00] into, but I want to start with a quote you gave me when we were talking before the show, which is the wash is as important as the wax.

Let’s start with that idea and build from there. Why is the is important as the wax. And what’s The best or proper way to really wash a car when you’re prepping it for, you know, a car show or even just for yourself or, or you know, just getting it ready, getting it shined up.

Chuck Bennett: We were sponsor of the two thousands.

It’s either 13 or 15 Ferrari national events here in the United States. We were the sponsors. I’m always, we have an event that we’ve always done at different events like Porsche Parade at the BM bmw, October Fest. Anytime we’ve gone to a car club. We’ve done an event, StarFest. There’s an event that we’ve always done, which I know Tonya would love.

It’s called Suds and Sugar. And what it is, is that we have a demonstration, and hopefully they’ve got their kids with them. We teach people how to wash their car properly. And we have a company come in and make [00:49:00] ice cream sundaes for everybody.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m digging this. Yeah, so everyone’s

Chuck Bennett: sitting there with these ice cream sundaes.

Big. I mean, big ice cream sundaes, right? They’re watching what’s going on. And the reason why I like the whole idea of the ice cream sundae is that I want to kick everybody’s endorphins through the roof. Don’t put in that elbow

Crew Chief Eric: grease, right?

Chuck Bennett: Yeah. I want them to, I want them to see, to be, you know, right there with us when we’re working on the car.

The first thing that people should realize when they wash a car is it has to be a top down effect. You always start from the top of the car and work down. And you need to be able to wash your car with a good sponge, not the kind of sponge that, like a sea sponge, which traps dead sea animals and shells in it, which will put all kinds of interesting patterns on your car, that within, um, A few thousand years when they find that body panel, they’ll try and figure out what you were trying to write, right?

Okay, so you want to have a closed cell sponge that holds a lot of water and a lot of suds. [00:50:00] You need a good car wash product that doesn’t try and shine the car. at the same time. Products that are out there to try and shine a car at the same time. Generally have anywhere between a 20, 000 centistoke to a 50, 000 centistoke silicone blended into the soap.

You don’t need to have, be putting that on your car. That’s not what we’re trying to do here. We’re trying to Wash the car. You need to have a five gallon bucket. That bucket needs to be filled with lukewarm water, lots of good soap in there, a good soap. If you can’t buy a good car wash soap, then what you need to do is you need to get some ivory soap in the bar form.

You need to take that ivory soap in the bar form, I need to find a way to grind it all up and use some of that soap with a couple of tablespoons of salad oil in the wash water.

Crew Chief Eric: Interesting. So cheese grater and some olive oil here. We’re making olive oil. Ivory just

Executive Producer Tania: came out recently, a liquid form of ivory soap.

Chuck Bennett: I know we’ve got it, but [00:51:00] it’s not the original ivory. The original ivory soap is tallow based. Tallow is animal fats. That’s why the ivory bar would float 99, 100 percent pure. That’s why the ivory bar would float in water is that it was pure tallow. And they got it to become a soap by using lye in the mix with the tallow, the liquid ivory.

In fact, I’ve got some here in the house. I happen to like it a lot. I shower with it. But it’s not the original towel. So you shave it, you take your salad oil and you drop some salad oil in the wash water. It may be advisable, no matter what you’re using for a car wash, to take a tablespoon of salad oil and put it in your wash water.

Crew Chief Eric: Would you recommend that even for the Zymo Auto Wash? I would.

Chuck Bennett: I would. And the reason why? Is it breaks up into millions of tiny beadlets that adhere to the silt on the car and help you slide it off the car instead of you dragging it off the car.

Crew Chief Eric: So I’ve heard the same thing from detailers saying that if [00:52:00] you use the old tide.

Powdered detergent. It does the same thing. It’s supposed to lift and shift the dirt, but it’s a bit of a clarifier. It strips the paint.

Chuck Bennett: No. Tide should be used as a silicone cracker to get silicone or sealant, paint sealants off the car. In fact, I went ahead and answered it to the young fellow today who wanted to know how to get the sealant.

He had gotten one of these ceramic sealants, which really aren’t ceramic. I had it done to his car. And now he’s got, you know, what he calls cobwebbing all over the car. I told him, I said, you need to First things first, you need to get that sealant off the car. You go to your laundromat, buy a couple boxes of Tide soap from the laundromat.

The small boxes, you take the two boxes, mix them in a five gallon pail of water and wash the car with Tide. Tide is extremely strong. And it has a lot of phosphates, so it’ll crack silicone, you’ll get it off the car. But let’s go back to using a regular car wash. Try and get a good car wash. We make a good car wash.

There are lots of companies that make good car washes.

Crew Chief Eric: Love the smell of it, by the way. It’s fantastic.

Chuck Bennett: It has [00:53:00] coconut oil, it has banana oil in it. We’ve gone ahead. and try to to create a product that’s pleasing to use and that doesn’t dry out your hands to a point where you feel like you’ve got to moisturize your hands for the next three weeks.

There’s a lot of car washes that’ll do that. It’s the pH of our car wash is somewhere around A six and a half, considering that your water in most towns, most cities is anywhere near an eight is made on the scale of the PHQ is a little bit on the alkaline side, you’re going to balance that out and hopefully get you close to a seven.

Alright, so now we’ve got the salad on there. Next thing you should do is that you need to wash the car with both hands, one hand empty, one hand with the sponge, you take your soap water, you squeeze it off onto the top of the car, or a fender, if you move to that part, or a hood, and you use your bare hand and you run your bare hand over the car first.

Touch the car with the [00:54:00] sponge. Use your bare hand. But you want to find if things stuck to the paint. That bug protein is a wonderful glue for taking a small stone and gluing it to the top of your car or a fender on your car. And there you go, giving archaeologists a time again, trying to figure out what the hell you wrote on your car.

2000 years ago. Because you’ve scraped this stone again all over your car. So hand first, hand first. Once you are satisfied, there’s nothing stuck to the paint. Also gives you an opportunity to be one with your car. To understand whether or not you’ve picked up some stone damage or whatever. And you do that, then you use your sponge.

Let’s say that I did half the roof of the car. I rinsed the entire car. I don’t just rinse the roof. I don’t rinse the half of the roof. I rinse the entire car. Now I do the second half of the roof. I rinse the entire car again. Then I move down, and I move down to the hood. Do half the hood. And I rinse the entire car.

You keep rinsing the entire car. Every time you [00:55:00] wash something on the car, rinse the entire car. Remember that this hand, if you’re left or right handed, is the hands, the magic hand. That’s the hand that’s going to tell you what’s stuck to that paint surface, or where you’ve got some damage, or where you have to be careful, or what needs some special attention.

It’s a simple way to wash a car. It always top down. And when you get to the belt line, that’s the beginning of the rocker panels, you get to the belt line. At that point, you change your water. You change your sponge. And you go to a new water, new sponge, and a little more carwash mixed in. It’s got to be just a tad stronger.

What you’re really trying to get off that paint surface, and you’ve got to think about this for a moment, is not just road silt and bug proteins and acid rain deposits and all that. The biggest culprit that kills paint surface on the cars is the catalytic converter of the car in front of you. American cars are very interesting.

They [00:56:00] use sulfur based cats and the operating time it takes for that cat to get up to full operating temperature is five, zero minutes, 50 minutes. The average commute for most people is 30. So while you’re sitting behind that Suburban and you’re on the 405 or wherever you are, whatever highway you’re on, and you’re trying to get to work, that catalytic converter in that Suburban is spinning hydrochloric acid at a pH of about two all over your car.

Nice. You’ve got to get that stuff off of there because when it dries, it’s not active anymore. The moment that it gets moist again, The moment you get some dew, the moment it obtains any form of moisture, it becomes an active acid again. So washing your car is probably the single, the most important thing you can do.

And believe it or not, it’s the place where most cars get damaged by their owners, because they don’t know how to wash a car.

Executive Producer Tania: So I’m hearing you’re not a [00:57:00] fan of car washes.

Chuck Bennett: Well, I got in a lot of trouble. I got in a lot of trouble. I’ve been interviewed a lot on about different magazines. I’ve been on air with different radio shows.

I could ask that question. Chuck, what do you think of automated car washes? I said, well, there’s a lot of automated car washes that use different kinds of soaps, different kinds of cleaners. One that really, that really stands out in my mind is the car wash that doesn’t use any soap. It’s 100 percent environmentally correct.

And of course, the announcer went, wow, that’s great, Chuck. Tell us all about it. I said, well, what happens is, is that it takes all the dirt from the car in front of you or the 10 cars in front of you. It runs it through a filtration process and it takes out the dirt in certain micron size and then air blasts it with water at your car to clean your car.

So literally what they’re doing is they’re sandblasting your car. And this guy was on air and he said, no shit. I said, yeah, I’m telling you that’s what they do. [00:58:00] And automated car washes. There’s ones with brushes, there’s touchless, there’s all of this. You’ll find that, that a lot of people stop going to an automated car wash when they realize that it didn’t do a good job, the ones that really do clean the car are using different kinds of detergents.

that will strip the wax right off of a car. Now, let’s talk about the offense that a lot of guys and gals make at home when they wash their car. They go and they grab that stuff on the kitchen sink.

Executive Producer Tania: One safe for ducks.

Chuck Bennett: One safe for ducks.

Executive Producer Tania: The blue, the blue stuff. Yeah.

Chuck Bennett: The blue stuff. There’s, what is it?

There’s joy. There’s

Executive Producer Tania: uh, gone.

Chuck Bennett: Ajax. Yeah. All right. It’s interesting about Zymol Wax. Zymol Wax is made from fats and oils. Carnalba is a low density lipoprotein. It is a fat. It’s a solid fat, but it’s a fat. Coconut oil, banana oil, orange oil, any of these oils. These [00:59:00] are fats and oils. Now, that stuff that’s sitting on your sink, what is it designed to remove from your dishes?

Crew Chief Eric: Grease, fats, and

Chuck Bennett: oil. So, wait a minute, if I take this stuff out to my car, if I’ve just spent all that money on Zymo, and I wax the car, and I want to wash it, and I go grab that Dawn, yeah, I’m not going to hurt any ducks, I’m going to grab the Dawn, and I’m going to go out there, and I’m going to put that Dawn on my car, and I’m going to wash it, and then I’m going to call Zymo and say, I got a problem that it doesn’t beat up anymore.

You know what our people have been trying to do? What did you wash your car with? First question out of our customer service. What did you wash your car with? That is the

Crew Chief Eric: first question you asked me. I had a problem as well. And you’re like, what did you wash your car with? I’m like, uh,

Chuck Bennett: yeah, I mean, it’s very interesting.

People sort of get disassociated with what the right thing to do is. And that’s, I don’t know why that happens, but You know, maybe it’s just that they’re expecting miracles to happen all at one [01:00:00] time very quickly. First of all, the W in wax means work.

That’s what that W means. Okay. You’ve got to be ready to go and work on your car. We have customers, many, many customers that will call up and place an order on a Monday. And they want us to get the product to them before the weekend, because they’re going to go spend time commuting with their car.

They’re going to go into their garage, put on some music, they’re going to break open a bottle of Pinot Noir. They’re going to work on their car for four hours. They’re going to be with their automobile. It’s not a problem loving your car. We’ve got this stigma that somehow socially has been pushed around.

Gee, uh, uh, do you like your car? Yeah, I like this car. Do you love your car? Uh, I don’t know. People are nervous about saying, yeah, I love that car. You know, I absolutely love it. I’ve got a car that I love. I’ve got a, a 1990 500 [01:01:00] SL panoramic. It’s got a glass roof. I bought it off of a friend of mine. We bought the car brand new and his wife didn’t want it.

And, uh, the car sat in his garage for shit, almost 10 years. And I said, I’ll take it. We’ve slowly, but surely had to replace a whole lot of goodies on this car. But I love that. And that car loves me. I know it. And cars have personalities and some of them have quirks. Some of them, hell I’ve got a 1984 Mercedes Benz, one 90 E 2.

3 16. Oh, my wife can’t start that car. Won’t start for her. I walk out there, I talk to her, I rubber fend her. I sit down, I tell her how beautiful she is and how I’ve missed her

Crew Chief Eric: all this while the fuel pump is priming. But yeah, go ahead.

Chuck Bennett: Yeah. And I turned the key and I can hear the cold start valve clicking away and I turned the key and fired her up.

There we go. Going back to what we talked about, washing the car. It’s the simplest and the most important protection you can [01:02:00] give your car is to wash it correctly. The next thing is, is cleaning the paint. People tend to put all kinds of things on their cars, waxes. They never clean the paint. They never get the paint ready for wax.

You know, like when we brought out cleaner wax, there were a lot of people that said, you guys are out of your mind. You’re going to make a wax that has no petrochemicals, that doesn’t have any petrol solvents at all. No, we are going to make a cleaner wax that’s water based. At all. You can’t make a water based, what are you, out of your mind?

Well, we’re not out of our mind. We can make a water based cleaner wax. In fact, we’ve just recently reformulated our cleaner wax to add SiO2 to it. SiO2 is one of those magic, it’s not a word, it’s a, it’s a, a naming convention for, A product which is actually fused silica and the fused silica has been ground to nano size.

Well, I will say this, I’m going to get a lot of people that are going to react to this. All of those so called ceramic coatings for cars [01:03:00] are Yes, they’re not real, but they’re just not real product. And they claimed me to have the SIO two in the product. And that was, that’s what makes them ceramic. SIO two is a polishing agent.

There’s no way to make it stick to a car. You couldn’t make ceramics stick to a car. If you’ve ever been to a ceramic studio and you’ve seen when they’ve taken ceramic and they then put it into a, you know, a 9, 000 degree kiln, there’s no way to do that with a paint surface. There’s no chemicals you can make that will make SiO2 stick to a paint surface.

What you can do is you can take 60, 000 or 300, 000 centistokes silicone. Which, by the way, is a hydraulic fluid for, uh, silicone hydraulic fluid. And you can take that and put it on a paint surface and give a detailer a high speed wool pad buffer and have them burnish that stuff into your paint surface.

Not cool. Because at that point, that silicone heats up enough, it [01:04:00] causes that silicone to permeate your clear coat. And you can end up with little cloudy sort of marks that you think are water spots that you never get out. It’s now it’s silicone sitting in between your clear coat and your color coat.

There are a lot of people that swear up and down by these ceramic coatings. We’ve never produced a ceramic coating. We won’t produce a ceramic coating because they’re just not real. What we have done though, is we now have SiO2 and HD cleanse, fabulous polishing agent, and by the way, the particles are nano sized and it does an incredible job.

It’s scary when you think about what companies do to create product. We call it SSDC. Same ship, different container. SSDC. There’s a tremendous number of companies out there that are doing that. They haven’t changed the formulary of their products since the 60s. Back when cars were getting waxed, cars were painted.

They didn’t have enamel paints. Cars back in the [01:05:00] 30s and 40s and in the 50s. They used lacquer paints, and they painted the cars with 26, 30, 35, 40 mils of paint. So what people would do is that they would get some kerosene in a rag, and you’d wipe the car down with kerosene in a rag. It would take off a little bit of the paint.

The car would look great for about three or four days. One of the first guys that came out with a commercial wax was Ben Hirsch and Ben Hirsch started this little company up in Illinois called Turtle Wax. We are good friends with the people at Turtle Wax. We know them. At one point, Turtle Wax was a distributor for our products.

They would distribute our products to the stores like AutoZone and Pep Boys and all of those guys. We didn’t have any way of distributing those because we didn’t have an EDI computer system, didn’t have sales people. That was a whole foreign market to us. They’re probably one of the sharpest companies around.

They don’t subscribe to SSDC, but there’s a whole lot of ’em out there that do. We’ve, for years have tried to get people to understand when they’re working on their [01:06:00] cars, there’s no magic. It’s good product, safe product, product that’s safe for you and your kids to use. We’ve never had anyone call us up and say, geez, you know.

I think the smell of your product or your fumes have made me sick or any of that kind of stuff. We’ve never had any of that, but primarily, uh, what we love to do is build product, build great products. That’s what we like to do, and hear from customers that they love us and that’s what else could we hope for.

Right. That’s awesome.

Crew Chief Eric: One of the things you had said to me was, so when you’re done waxing your car, can you see the wax? And that’s actually a really important and yet loaded statement. I know the answer, but I’m wondering if our listeners know.

Chuck Bennett: We’ve done a lot of events. We’ve gotten up and I’ve gotten up and I’ve shown people what Carnauba bricks look like.

Try to tell people that you can’t buy a product that says it’s 100 percent Carnauba because you wouldn’t be able to do anything with it except maybe use it as a weapon. I mean, yeah, I don’t know. The brick. 100 percent carnauba is solid as a rock. [01:07:00] I had a question come up, and I remember this question. It was at a Miata Club event, and the people that belong to the Miata Club really love their cars.

You talk about naming their cars. It’s, it’s incredible. I had this one customer say to me, how do I know when I’m supposed to wax my car? I said, well, let’s talk about this for a moment. When you’re done waxing your car, Can you see the wax on the car? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Really? You can see the wax? No, no, I guess I can see the shine.

Okay, so you can see the results of you waxing the car. How do you know when the wax is? Well, the car looks like it needs to be waxed. So you need to realize when a car looks like it’s begging to be waxed. You’re not seeing the loss of car wax. You’re seeing new paint damage. You need to keep that in mind when your car is begging to be waxed, it’s doing it for a reason.

It’s because the paint is being damaged. I have to tell you, the crowd went silent when I said that. It was like all the lights split and they all understood what we’re talking about.

Crew Chief Eric: It goes back to that magic hand you were talking about. [01:08:00]

Chuck Bennett: We like very much to have people contact us and say, what’s the proper methodology?

What’s the proper products I should use, which products should I use in a row? We try to help people understand that. And we get a lot of phone calls from customers that say, geez, you know, I bought X, Y, Z product and I put that on the car and then I put your product over it and it doesn’t seem to work.

Yeah, I would think that would happen. That’s like running into your kitchen, making up pancake batter and putting turkey gravy in the pan. And trying to make pancakes on top of turkey gravy. It’s not gonna happen. We try and tell people that, you know, the Zymol products really are engineered to work with each other.

There’s a system there. And if you follow the directions, and that’s something that I want to circle back and talk to you about. You mentioned about Directions. Tanya, it is your chance to try man. Tell him real men don’t need directions.

You know, it’s like, you [01:09:00] know, why, why Ikea doesn’t have written directions and they’ve got pictures on all their stuff.

Executive Producer Tania: Cause it saves them a lot of time and cost in those manuals.

Chuck Bennett: And it doesn’t give them any phone calls. What do you mean? Well, as an example, on the back of our waxes, it says, please refrigerate after opening.

Yep. We’ve had customers and we at least one or two a week will call up and say, back of my container says to refrigerate after open. Does that mean I should stick it in the refrigerator?

Well, yeah, that’s an indication that we want you to put it into your refrigerator. We’ve had customers do some of the darndest things. We had a guy wax the seats of his, white seats of his Cadillac Convertible with our Zymol carbon. He figured that if it works on the paint, it’s got to work on my seats.

We try to give people directions that are fairly simple. A lot of people still don’t follow the directions. We’ve had [01:10:00] people make Zymol tests on YouTube and not follow the directions.

Crew Chief Eric: So that’s a really important point that you bring up because I have baked off Xymo products with friends of mine’s that do detailing.

It’s like you said, you know, bust out the beer or the Pinot Noir. It’s a whole day affair. And they’re sitting there like, look how cool I am. I can do this. I got my buffer and I’m done in 20 minutes and I’m sitting there and I’m putting things on, wait things for dry guys. I’m going to go get a sandwich.

I’ll be back. They’re like, what are you doing? And then when it comes down to it, we actually get back to what we were talking about before, which is the feel. The finish. You can’t see. Yeah, the car, their car looks shiny. So does mine, but you rub your hand across it and the Zymol feels like butter and their stuff just kind of feels like whatever, but I follow the directions.

I’ve been using this stuff for a long time. You have to put the time and effort into your point, love into the process to get out of it. What you, what you want, but please continue.

Chuck Bennett: That’s right. And Zymol products, by the way, are designed to be used by [01:11:00] People call up and say, jeez, you know, the Christmas or my birthday or whatever.

And I got a new buffer. Can I use Xymo with a buffer? Our customer service people ask the magic question. Are you a technician that does this for a living? Is it when the answer is no. And we tell them, well, keep all the packaging, take that wonderful gift back to the store that they bought it from and pick out something else.

I will not stand behind anybody using a buffer unless they do it for a living. And by the way, you can show me where you’ve got some great restoration results. You’ve done some great things using that buffer. I’m interested. I was at a place one time where a guy came up to me and said, Well, what do you think of my car?

Just out of detail. He was proud. It was all scalloped. I don’t know what to tell the man.

Crew Chief Eric: Get your eyes checked lately. I mean, I, I will say this. I have used a buffer with Zymo once and I have regretted it. I know better, but I was really struggling with this one car in [01:12:00] particular and this hood. And I’m like, It didn’t matter what kind of elbow grease I put into it.

I didn’t seem to have just enough oomph. I don’t know what it was. I used a buffer and I realized as I was doing it, at which point it was the point of no return. I was like, I’m heating this up too much and it’s reacting to me doing this. And I had to start all over again. And I was like, now I’ve done this three times and I’m aggravated.

I don’t know, again, it’s one of those things, you know, RTFM, as we say in my world, read the freaking manual. So it’s super important to follow those directions, but I

Chuck Bennett: got to use that. I got, that is great. Read the freaking manual. Oh my God.

Crew Chief Eric: But yeah, so granted it takes me six times longer than anybody else to get the job done, but.

At the end of the day, when you compare car for car for car, even similar cars, you know, coming from the same factory, it’s like, man, that Zymolt feels really, really different. And it’s very buttery. It’s very smooth. The scent is addicting. [01:13:00] Like we’ve been talking about, you have to put in the time and the effort to get out the results that you really want.

There is no quick solution when it comes to detailing these cars at a high level.

Chuck Bennett: No, there isn’t a quick solution. The difference between going to a five star restaurant or going to McDonald’s.

Crew Chief Eric: Absolutely.

Chuck Bennett: You can get it done. Brick of McDonald’s, but it’s not going to be the same.

Crew Chief Eric: I want to touch on something before we kind of wrap up this entire thought.

You had some special techniques for detailing your car that I thought were kind of interesting. And I’m just going to lob this one up for you. Let’s start with black textured trim. What’s your hot take on dealing with things like that?

Chuck Bennett: One of the problems that happens with black textured trim, if you use a product that contains any kind of polishing agent, um, Even if you use a product like our cleaner wax that has a polishing agent, the SiO2, the SiO2 will stick to black trim.

People say to us, how do I get that black again? How do I make that look good again? There’s lots of ways to do it. One way to do it, which I don’t recommend, is to use brake [01:14:00] fluid. on that black trim, which I know a lot of people have done. And the moment you get brake fluid on a paint surface, it dissolves it.

You don’t want to do that. My favorite is either Jif or Skippy crunch peanut butter. You need to go buy a medium toothbrush and take a little bit of that peanut butter and put it in a And like a, a rambutan they call them, and you warm it up in your microwave oven a little bit, and you go out there and you spread the peanut butter over the trim, and you rub it with that toothbrush.

What that peanut butter does, the peanut oil gets underneath whatever is sitting on that black trim, it’s not supposed to be there, and starts to lift it, and the crunchy peanuts themselves act as the abrasive. And they break down before the plastic does, and you just wash it off. And it does a wonderful job at cleaning up the black trim peanut butter.

That’s

Crew Chief Eric: awesome. Listen,

Chuck Bennett: we’ve had one of the other secrets to Zymol is you can ice the surface. Let’s say that you have a car that you really want to get an [01:15:00] extremely deep finish on. We did this with a Ferrari Dino and it was in yellow Ferrari Dino around California. It was Bill Weiner’s car. He was showing it at Pebble, and his guys did a pretty decent job of preparing the paint.

They didn’t have it to my satisfaction. So what we used was Zymol Concord Wax. Put it on with your bare hands, spread it out, and before we buffed it, we took bags of ice that were rolled in towels. We placed them on the surface of the car, let it sit there for about 10 minutes, pulled them off, took some more Concord, rubbed it on the current, Concord that was there.

And then we iced it again. Then we went ahead and applied one more coat of Concord. Let it sit, took on microwipes and very slowly worked the wax into the surface. We stretched out Carnauba on the surface. When the Carnauba got cold and started to warm up again, it absorbed the moisture from the towel.

When we got done with the car, it looked like someone had shot the car [01:16:00] with about 20 coats of clear, great service, great finish.

Crew Chief Eric: And that’s actually one of the questions I get a lot when, you know, showing off Xymo products as well. How do you know when it’s ready? And I say all the time, if you can run your finger across the wax as it’s curing and it doesn’t leave a streak, then it’s ready.

And at that point, it comes off as a powder. It’s actually super easy to remove because it’s fully bonded at that point. And you could just wipe it down, almost like you were just, you know, kind of just. Wiping the car off like you’re investing. Exactly. It’s super easy. But if you have to work or put in a ton of elbow into that Zymol, you haven’t waited long enough.

Chuck Bennett: People use too much of it. That’s the other thing. If I had investors in my business, I would not make them very happy because an eight ounce container of our wax. Will last a motorsport enthusiast, like five years, you’re going to get at least 20, maybe even 24 full waxings out of that eight ounce container.

A little bit goes a long way with Simon.

Crew Chief Eric: That was the Braille cream [01:17:00] model too, right? Yeah. A little dab will do.

Chuck Bennett: A little dab will do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That is, that’s very interesting. Wow.

Crew Chief Eric: So let’s just quickly talk about some new products. That are coming out or have just come out on the market. I know you clued me in because we’re talking about ceramics and SiO2, but there’s actually something cutting edge that Xymo is putting out there.

So do you want to expand on the graphene wax?

Chuck Bennett: Yeah, we’ve got a couple of different products that we’ve played with. We’ve been looking at the kinds of material that would provide someone who loves their car, a finish on their car. That was. Almost permanent. We’re the first company to come out with a graphene based product.

We didn’t invent graphene. Graphene was found by a couple of engineers back around 19, I think it was 1991 at Manchester University in England. They were actually able to separate graphene from graphene oxide, which is what’s in a pencil. Graphene is a [01:18:00] two dimensional material. It’s missing its third and fourth atoms.

The military has been Looking and working with graphene, they have made some new tiles for spaceship re entry. They’ve actually made a t shirt that’s bulletproof. It’s a hundred times stronger than carbon steel and it’s as flexible as water. And this is what makes graphene so really interesting. We contacted a couple of different companies that have got real graphene.

We did some testing. We bought the equipment. We bought a shearing homogenator. We ordered the graphene and the graphene had to come in in glass containers. You can’t come in packed in anything else except glass. Otherwise it’ll permeate the material you’re sitting on. We decided to look at producing what’s known as a graphene colloid.

Colloids are one step beyond an emulsion. We produce these graphene colloids, and we then took oils in particular. We took Lotus leaf extract oil, and we [01:19:00] took Carnauba resin, which is from our, our liquid Carnauba, and we homogenize those together with graphene. There’s some interesting things when you put it on a car and we’ve had lots of problems trying to convey what our graphene product does to a customer, because it’s hard for them to understand it.

When you put it on the paint surface of a car, it finds its third and fourth atom. If you clean the car surface and there’s no wax on it, it will find its third and fourth atom. And at that point, it becomes part of your car. It’s no longer a coating. It’s no longer a wax. It’s not a sealant that we’ve put on the car.

It now becomes part of your paint. It becomes part of the metal on your car. It becomes part of the metalized plastic on your

Executive Producer Tania: car.

Chuck Bennett: The questions we’ve been asked about our graphene product is, How long does it last? It lasts as long as the paint does on your car. If you wanted to shine the car up even more a little bit, you could use our spray detailer over it.

But if you want to take your paint and you want to take all the surfaces of your [01:20:00] car and you want to harden those surfaces, graphene is the way to do it. And we brought our product out immediately, three or four companies popped up and said, well, we’ve got graphene, we’ve got graphing, they’ve got graphing oxide using number two pencil lead in their product and they’re calling it graphing.

We’ve done some interesting cars. We’ve got a blue three 56 that we use the graphing product on that is staggering. Absolutely staggering. The same owner has a anthracite 9 11 target that we used it on. We’ve used a graphene product on our Ford F 350 Super Duty 99 Dualty that we used to haul around our horse trailer.

The truck looks brand new, literally looks

Executive Producer Tania: brand

Chuck Bennett: new. We’ve got a bunch of people across the country that have used our graphene product. There’s a fella that runs a magazine. It’s called garage style magazine. Have you ever seen it? Don out there runs it. Donna’s moved from California to Texas now, and he’s got an old Mustang that he decided to clean up real well and try a graphene product on, and he’s still [01:21:00] talking to himself, understand how this stuff works, the finish you get.

on the graphene is pretty scary. Look, that happens to the surface, especially if you’ve done the right paint prep, you’ve really cleaned up the bank. And by the way, we’ve got an odd name for the graphing product. It’s our atomic graphing shield. Okay. It sounds

Crew Chief Eric: futuristic.

Chuck Bennett: Well, it’s not so much future.

We’ve gotten some complaints about the name. Some people have said, Atomic graphene shield. I mean, did you guys watch back to the future a few times? It’s

Crew Chief Eric: very German. If you think about it, it describes what it does. I mean, that’s how like a lot of German vocabulary is, right? It’s just a description.

Chuck Bennett: Atomic, atomic graphene shield. It is, it is an atomic product. It’s graphene. And it does shield the car. There you go. So that’s a product that’s new. We’ve got two new products that we’re working on with Martin guitar. And we have one more product in our factory. We’ve got a bunch of [01:22:00] panels from this company that’s in Santa Clara, California that builds EVs.

We’re going to be letting this product out on Amazon on an exclusive basis. We’ve got a product that is for electric vehicles. It’s a positive ion product. The mix is positive ion. And the reason why we chose to go positive ion is because the bodies of true electric cars, not so much hybrids, but true EVs are forced negative charge.

They have a negative charge on the body of the car that is a forced negative charge. It’s not just grounding. It’s a forced negative charge. It’s an old british car and it’s as an example. That’s a Lucas car.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a story for another day.

Chuck Bennett: That’s the story of another day. Lucas, Lucas light switch on, off and flicker.

The interesting thing about our product for electric cars, if you were to take a look at any of the electric cars, whether it’s a new new Audi’s, Mercedes. No, the teslas, [01:23:00] the batteries that run the motors are not the same batteries that run the rest of the car. They don’t use those batteries to run the rest of the car.

The voltage is too high. The amperage is too high. If you were able to actually touch the connectors on the battery that runs that car. You’re going to die. No question about it. That’s serious stuff. There’s another separate battery in there that’s designed to negatively charge the body. That’s so in case there’s any leak of any current from any of the batteries that run the car, it’s going to ground out.

We noticed that our standard waxes didn’t do very well on EVs, so we decided to come up with a new product. I think it’s on our website now. The product is called ION. It comes with a container that has a bag in it, and the product is sitting in the bag in the container, and you pump the container up, which pressurizes the outside of the bag, which lets you spray it, and it’s a metered spray, and it comes out in a mist.

And there’s some videos on YouTube of our product ION that you should be able to find interesting. So, [01:24:00] in January, we’re going to let that product go to Amazon and let Amazon sell it exclusively.

Crew Chief Eric: So Chuck, looking back over the incredible history of Zymol, 40 plus years now, and the love and passion that you’ve put into developing these products that take care of cars for all sorts of applications, but also for airplanes, boats, horses, musical instruments, and such down the line.

I mean, it’s absolutely fascinating. And for the folks out there that are maybe still non believers, it’s time to give Zymol a try, put it up against the products that you have And remember to read the directions first and, and, and see how it stacks up and see how you like it, keep up with the developments that they’ve got going.

All these new products are fascinating. I mean, they’re at the front end of some really, really cool things. So if you want to learn more about Zymol, be sure to check out www. Zymol. com for more information or follow them on Instagram and Facebook. At Zymol underscore official. [01:25:00] So Chuck, I can’t thank you enough for coming on break, fix, sharing these stories, telling us about the history of Zymol and, you know, sharing your passion with all of our listeners.

This has been absolutely fantastic.

Chuck Bennett: I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was, it’s lots of fun. And I’m happy to talk to anyone who contacts the company and says, Hey, I’m going to talk to that Bennett character because I’ve got a problem with my car. And, uh, we want to hear about the problems. We want to, we want to solve problems.

That’s what we’re here for. That’s what the company was built on. Was built on solving what kind of problems people had with their, with their finishes on their cars.

Executive Producer Tania: Your passion and authenticity has been refreshing to see. So it’s been a delight listening to all your stories. Thank you, Chuck. Thank you.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right, listeners. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our Patreon for a follow on pit stop, mini sowed. So check that out on www. patreon. com forward slash GT [01:26:00] motor sports, and get access to all sorts of behind the scenes content from this episode. And more,

Crew Chief Brad: if you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out on www.

gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on Instagram at grandtorymotorsports. 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 crewchief at 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, [01:27:00] editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of fig Newtons, gummy bears, and monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com forward slash 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 The Zymol Story Begins
01:51 Chuck Bennett’s Journey to Germany
05:14 Discovering the Secret of Carnauba Wax
08:30 The Birth of Zymol Products
28:22 Expanding Beyond Car Care
32:49 Zymol in the Motorsport World
42:09 BMW’s Call to Rhode Island
43:23 Ski Team’s Fast Technology Mishap
44:52 Horse Care Innovations
47:57 Car Wash Techniques
01:02:32 The Truth About Ceramic Coatings
01:17:22 Graphene Wax and New Products
01:24:05 Conclusion and Future Directions

Bonus Content

There’s more to this story…

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

Check out www.zymol.com for more information as well as follow them on IG/FB @zymolofficial – and don’t forget to check out the newly reformulated “Zymöl Cleaner Wax”

Zymöl’s waxes aren’t just waxes – they’re enzymatic emollients, alive with culture and crafted from exotic plant oils like burro banana, coconut, and carnauba. Chuck’s commitment to natural chemistry led to innovations like HD Cleanse (a paint exfoliant) and Field Glaze (used daily at Aston Martin’s factory).

He even built a carnauba orchard in Florida, treating the trees like maple sap producers rather than harvesting fronds soaked in ether. The result? Nano-fine carnauba that’s safe, effective, and deeply respectful of the finish it protects.

Beyond Cars: Guitars, Horses, and Harley-Davidsons

Zymöl’s reach extends far beyond the autosphere. Martin Guitar uses Zymöl on every instrument that leaves its factory. Harley-Davidson once ordered 10,000 kits of Zymöl Talon, a wax that repels gasoline. And the equestrian world embraced Zymöl’s Equine Skies line, featuring chrysanthemum-based shampoos that naturally deter flies.

Zymöl’s FAST (Friction Augmenting Surface Technology) was born from a challenge: help Brumos Racing go faster. By applying wax that reacts with oxygen and CO₂, Chuck reduced drag so dramatically that Hans Stuck lifted him off the ground in celebration. The technology later made its way to America’s Cup boats, powerboats, and even the U.S. Olympic luge team.

Because the Wash Is as Important as the Wax

Chuck’s detailing philosophy is part science, part ritual. Wash top-down. Use your bare hand to feel for debris. Rinse the entire car after each section. And never – ever – use dish soap. Zymöl waxes are made from fats and oils, and dish soap is designed to strip them away.

For textured black trim? Chuck swears by warm crunchy peanut butter and a toothbrush. For deep finishes? Ice the surface between coats. And always — always — read the directions.

The Future: Graphene and EVs

Zymöl’s latest innovation is the Atomic Graphene Shield, a colloid that bonds with the car’s surface at the atomic level. It’s not a coating – it becomes part of the paint, metal, and plastic. For EVs, Zymöl developed ION, a positively charged spray designed to work with the forced negative charge of electric car bodies.

Final Thoughts from Chuck

Zymöl was built to solve problems – not just polish cars. Chuck’s passion, authenticity, and relentless curiosity have made Zymöl a beloved brand across industries. Whether you’re waxing a Ferrari Dino, a Ford Super Duty, or a fretboard, Zymöl invites you to slow down, connect, and care deeply.

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

B/F: The Drive Thru #21

Drive Thru News

Tania M

April 26, 2022

In this episode of the Gran Touring Motorsports podcast, ‘The Drive Thru News’, hosts discuss a variety of automotive and motorsports-related topics with a humorous twist. The episode, titled ‘Drive Thru #21,’ covers the hosts’ banter on a range of subjects including April Fools’ pranks, pickup trucks, autonomous vehicles, and the latest in motorsports news such as Formula 1 and IndyCar updates. They also delve into car-related stories like a Michigan man’s school bus chase, a Florida man’s high-speed dare, and a Tesla Model Y comparison. The episode offers insights into upcoming car show events, track days, and charity drives, blends in history segments on vintage cars, and throws in a movie review of ‘Fast Nine,’ concluding with various shoutouts and a call for guest hosts for future episodes.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Showcase: Pick-em-up Trucks!

U.S. Now Requiring New-Vehicle Fleet to Average 49 MPG by 2026

Under NHTSA's new CAFE standards, total fuel costs are expected to fall, but new-car prices are expected to rise by about $1100 per vehicle. ... [READ MORE]

2023 Ford F-150 Rattler Debuts as Entry-Level Off-Road Variant

Ford adds yet another package to the F-150 lineup, with the 2023 Rattler adding off-road equipment to the base XL trim level. ... [READ MORE]

2023 Chevy Silverado Police Truck Is Good for On- And Off-Road Pursuit

Chevy's first pursuit-rated pickup truck has huge 16.0-inch front rotors, a locking rear diff, and an available 2.0-inch suspension lift. ... [READ MORE]

Elon Musk Promises Tesla Cybertruck in 2023 at Giga Texas Plant Opening Party

Cybertruck to begin production 2023 at Giga Factory - WAIT!?! - SIDE MIRRORS? ... [READ MORE]

**All photos and articles are dynamically aggregated from the source; click on the image or link to be taken to the original article. GTM makes no claims to this material and is not responsible for any claims made by the original authors, publishers or their sponsoring organizations. All rights to original content remain with authors/publishers.

Automotive, EV & Car-Adjacent News

For a list of all the articles and events referenced on this episode check out the show notes below.

Domestics

GM, Honda are teaming up to build a $30,000 electric car
This Is the 2024 Corvette Nomad: A conversation with General Motors leadership -- APRIL FOOLS: Looks like we should be careful what we wish for.
If you wanted to order a 2022 Ford Mustang Mach-E online in the US, you’re now out of luck

Drag Racing the world’s fastest pickups

EVs & Concepts

Hertz to buy up to 65,000 electric cars from Polestar -- Swedish electric car maker Polestar is selling up to 65,000 electric vehicles to Hertz over the next five years, the companies announced Monday.
DeLorean, Reborn as the EVolve, Reveals Its Rear End -- The new DeLorean will debut in August and share the basic spirit of its '80s kin, but none of its mechanical bits.
Lightyear partners with MyWheels to supply over 5,000 SEV models to car sharing platform

Formula One

Audi and Porsche hold fire on final F1 decision -- Audi and Porsche want to wait until after Formula 1’s 2026 engine regulations are announced before committing to entering the sport, the German car makers have indicated.

Japanese & JDM

2023 Toyota GR Corolla, Explained by Its Chief Engineer: 'Americans Demand Power' -- Naoyuki Sakamoto gives C/D the details on everything from engine design to chassis welds on the new hot hatch—and laughs out loud at the idea this car's AWD and a RAV4's have anything in common.

Why Hundreds of Mazdas Tuned to 94.9 Broke Simultaneously

Lost & Found

A Single New Dodge Dart Was Sold in Q1, Six Years After Being Discontinued -- The new car squeeze is real.
Six Racing-Inspired ‘80s and ‘90s Cars at the New York Auto Show -- Radwood brought a collection of old-school, motorsports-inspired machines to the New York auto show, to remind us of the days before touchscreens.

Lower Saxony

Mercedes-Benz Drove An Electric Car Over 620 Miles Without Stopping To Charge -- The ultra-efficient Vision EQXX made it 626 miles and still had 87 miles left in the battery
Mercedes-Benz officially unveils details of upcoming EQS SUV, arriving in US late 2022
BMW unveils i7 electric car with over 300 miles of range and a less polarizing design

Lowered Expectations

What if??? Delorean Group-B
GM Patents Autonomous Tech to Train New Drivers Sans Instructor -- Instead of a human driving instructor, a computer evaluates and trains novice drivers using various methods.
Self-driving car pulled over in San Francisco, confounding police. 'Ain't nobody in it.'

Motorsports

IndyCar, IMSA Detroit GP to again offer free entry on Friday -- Comerica Bank will again sponsor Free Prix Day on Friday, June 3, at the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix presented by Lear.

Stellantis

Ferrari 296GTS Is an 819-HP Hybrid V-6 Droptop -- Ferrari has unveiled a convertible version of its 296, which first debuted last year with its 120-degree turbocharged V-6 hybrid setup.
Stellantis Goes Six in a Row with a Twin-Turbo Inline-Six Engine -- The 3.0-liter inline-6, called Hurricane, is set to debut this year and will offer two flavors of varying power for Jeep, Dodge, Ram, and other brands.

Tesla

Air Rider: Tesla-Powered 1950 Jaguar Mark V -- Not quite a rat rod, but not quite clean, either. Matt’s electric Jag is one of a kind!
Instagram PSA: Tesla's look like Voldemort
Elon Musk releases more details on Tesla’s upcoming robotaxi electric car: ‘will cost less per mile than bus ticket’

VAG & Porsche

Audi Urbansphere Is the Luxury Minivan We Didn’t Know We Needed -- An Audi van wasn't on our 2022 bingo card, but this 396-hp electric concept appears to be catered to the Chinese market.

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. The drive-through is GTMs monthly news episode, and is sponsored in part by organizations like h hpde junkie.com, garage riot, american muscle.com, hooked on driving and many others.

If you’re interested in becoming a sponsor of the drive-through, look no further than www.gt motorsports.org. Under about and then advertising and sponsorship. Thank you again to everyone that supports Grantor Motorsports, our podcast Break Fix and all the other services we provide. Welcome to drive through episode number 21.

This is our monthly recap where we’ve put together a menu of PT Cruisers, HHR Dodge Darts, bags of mulch and autonomous driving level 12. Now let’s pull up the window number one for some April Fools. What up April? Fool? Can you believe it? April? [00:01:00] We’re, we’re already into April. We’re already almost out of April.

That’s true. This is airing on the last Tuesday of the month, like it always does, but you know what’s coming up next? It’s not an April Fool’s joke. It’s one of the things that Tanya despises most in the world, her favorite vehicles. We’re gonna kick off our showcase of the Drivethrough this month, talking about pickup trucks.

Pick.

I don’t despise them. It’s a very strong accusation. She just would never own one cuz she doesn’t understand the point. She might understand the point as we get through this conversation though, cause we’re gonna talk about some really cool stuff. I just don’t have a need to drive to work. Need gas guzzling pickup truck.

You don’t need to haul 1500 pounds of mulch everywhere you go. All right. Hold on a second. Not usually, no. I’m gonna say something. I was at our [00:02:00] local Lowe’s this weekend, and I kid you not, I did not go there for mulch, but the line to get in, you would’ve thought they were given away free hamburgers and frosties.

At Lowe’s, there was 45 pickup trucks waiting to have mulch bags forklifted into their beds. I was like, what in the heck is going on? Absolutely insane. But I get it. If you need to buy a pallet of mulch, What are you gonna move it with? Oh my God, those people need to talk to the people at my Lowe’s, because half of the parking lot is taken up by pallets of mulch, right?

It is a bit of a maze. Do not park over by the garden center at all that that is for sure. Now, I mean, I could probably get half a pallet in my Jeep. It would take me some time to move the bags around. Can’t just drop it in there. But I would also probably take my landscape trailer and drop a pallet on that.

So I don’t, I don’t know. How much property do these people have? Do they need a pallet? Mulch, couple bags and I’m [00:03:00] good. Why aren’t you just having someone come dump a load of mulch, which tends to usually be cheaper than buying overpriced bags? That’s the question of questions of all questions. And I think I’m gonna start a mulching business cuz obviously there’s revenue to be generated there.

But I will say this, they didn’t get my dollars buying mulch because I haven’t bought mulch in like 20 years because I replaced all my mulch with gravel. Because you know what? It doesn’t biodegrade. It lasts forever and it always looks the same. It’s freaking amazing. Top tip gravel. I feel like we need a mulch economist to come on the show and kind of tell us, you know, how the mulch business is going.

Which podcast crossover is that with? Is that like Better Homes and Gardens between Two Ferns? Where? Where’d the Lilly Flume or something? Yeah. Perfect. What was the one from Letter Kenny? It’s Crack an Egg. Yeah. Cracks Crack an egg there. There you go. Uh, so why don’t we crack Jimmy Crack corns? Nobody cared.

So why don’t we crack an [00:04:00] egg over the new Rattler? Is it new? I thought it looked like an F-150. Yeah. You mean the F-150? FX four? I’m looking at it. It looks like a bargain basement worker truck. I don’t get this thing. I think that’s the point. It’s supposed to be a more in entry level truck with some of the higher level features that a lot of people overspend for off-road equipment to the XL trim.

Yes, like 18 inch wheels aluminum, which are terrible for off-road. You don’t want anything aluminum. You’re gonna destroy them. There are eight versions of the Ford f150. This is a little bit of badge engineering is what you’re saying? It’s exactly what it is. Yes. Do you remember the original lightning where it had that kind of grill that looked, you could paint it any color you wanted because it really didn’t go with the rest of the body?

Like this reminds me of that. Like if you went two-tone on like that style of F-150 back then, it’s reminiscent of that era with this plastic grill and everything’s got going on. [00:05:00] I mean, looks wise, it looks like, as Tanya indicated, it looks like an F-150. It, I mean, it does come with some cool things. It comes with, uh, an electronic locking, rear differential hill descent control, shock absorbers and tuned for off-road, which, what does that mean?

Where the hell that mean? Maybe they’re a little bit softer than the standard. They’re also skid plates protecting the fuel tank transfer case and front differential and the Rattler is fitted with all terrain tires and you get a Rattler badge on the fenders and a Rattler graphic with a snake skinned look on the side of the bed.

I mean, so, so this reminds me of the Audi A four s sport line or the Mercedes a m g sport line or the Lexus I S F. Sport line. That’s not actually the ISF sport in anyway and G or, yeah, it’s, it’s exactly as Eric said, badge engineering. I love the one comment though at the bottom from this guy [00:06:00] whose handle is basically P farina and he says, I’m waiting for the side winder package, which gives you four wheel steering on a base truck and the constrictor, which has smaller cup holders props to you.

PanIN, Farina, I’m, I’m with you a hundred percent. This is awesome. But yeah, a bunch of badge engineering. And to be honest, it’s not that off roadie either. It’s just some plastic, it doesn’t have like those Subaru style rubber made fenders or anything like that. It’s got black wheels, a black grill and like rubber bumpers.

I’m like, okay, whatever. Well, it does have altering tires, so it’s more off-road capable because you can’t just run down the tire rack and buy yourself a set of altering tires probably for cheaper than they put on this truck fair or anything like that. But, but you can get it with the FX four option.

What? What’s the delivery charge on that? Well actually it says a thousand dollars. So why wouldn’t you? I mean base price is what, 39 grand I [00:07:00] think it says for this thing, which for a pickup truck, by today’s standards, we all like grasp at our hearts going, oh my God, that’s pretty cheap. It is pretty cheap.

Respective to today’s current prices, you know? Yeah. And usually with pickup trucks, they throw about, $5,000 on average and incentives at you. So yeah, you could probably get this truck out the door for 37, 38, something like that. Well, let’s talk about another pickup that is surrounded by body cladding and plastic.

That’ll probably be the bullseye for a heat seeking Tesla in the near future. Maybe a heat seeking cyber truck. Ooh, well, how about the new 2023 Chevy Silverado police truck with off-road pursuit mode. Wouldn’t these just be park rangers? I don’t know that right. My local, that’s exactly what I was thinking.

My, my local Frederick County sheriff is gonna be hightailing it down in the woods after some pot growers. I mean, didn’t we already do this on Walker, Texas [00:08:00] Ranger? Didn’t he drive a Silverado? I mean, what is this fall guy with his blazer? I mean, come on you to your point, painted that, you know, puke green, that the, you know, Maryland state preserve, guys drive around into the park Police, this isn’t anything new for gm.

They put some, you know, cherries and berries on top. Big deal. I think the park rangers, they’re all still driving square bodies. They’re the only people in the world, aren’t they, though, that are driving? Every time you see a, a square body, it’s green. A hundred percent. It’s a park ranger. Well, you know, this thing has the same motor as those square bodies.

It’s the same old 5.3 liter V8 they’ve been making for like a hundred years. They bumped it up to 355 horsepower. Ooh, strapped to a 10 speed automatic, I hate to say 3 55 horse out of 5.3 liters is pretty pathetic when you think about like what a 2.0 turbo can do. Granted, this truck weighs like, you know, 7,500 pounds.

Why would they put 20 inch wheels on a police vehicle? I, right. I [00:09:00] guarantee you, your local law enforcement agency isn’t gonna want to spend $2,500 for tires. Look, it’s got 16 inch front rotors, a rear locker, and a two inch lift kit. All right, come on now. That’s worth, it’s at least 25 grand. Destination charges.

It. This is the, the Chevrolet puff at her. I don’t know it, it’s cool. Okay, let’s look at it this way. If this is a police interceptor granted for off-road, they don’t need the speed package, I ju I don’t see this doing highway pursuit though. That’s for sure not. With Tesla’s doing zero to 60 in sub three seconds, Fords had the f150, one of the various.

F150 versions as a police, whatever you wanna call it, pursuit or responder or whatever, down south. I mean, in Texas, a lot of the constables, um, you’d see them in murdered out black pickup trucks, which you weren’t quite sure from the front if it was the SUV or the pickup truck till you kind of saw down the side.

But, [00:10:00] so wait, you had constables in Texas or did they have the big tall like Bobby hats and the Billy clubs like Keystone, GOPs? Like did you call them the constabulary? Call them the Poppo.

We need to call Constable Walker. Speaking of which, did Walker have a first name? Can somebody answer that for us? Like that was his first name and last name. And his last name. It’s like Wilson. Wilson from Home Improvement. Right? He’s just Walker Cordell. Oh, was it Cordell Damn Was Cor. His name was Cordell Walker.

All right then the Mystery Salt Constable Cordell Walker, the real question is, what did he drive? Probably a Ford. I thought it was a Chevy. No. Did he drive a ram? Yes, he drove a Dodge. He’s a Mopar man. Oh, apparently a 1995 Dodge Ram 1500. Oh yeah. But you know what? If Chuck Nora’s roundhouse kicked [00:11:00] that Dodge Ram, it probably turned into our next pickup truck.

Good one. Yes, indeed. He would roundhouse kick it into a cyber truck. Oh. Oh my God. This picture with Elon Musk and the cowboy hat, who the, what the hell is going on this? Was this the cyber rodeo? What to mean? So, because it’s Texas and rodeo’s a big deal every year he’s got the gigafactory that’s just opened.

And to commemorate the launch of the Gigafactory in Giga, Texas, he held cyber rodeo. And it was a whole spectacle of sight and sounds and this, that and the other. And they rolled out a allegedly hand-built prototype of this cyber truck, which, which prototype number is this? Because I thought we already saw like the prototype where he busted the glass that was unbreakable.

But [00:12:00] anyway, I guess some people that were there took some scrutinized photos and video and whatnot and some of it’s been released and people have just been like railing on them for the same old stuff. Fit and finish. There’s like zoomed in pictures you can find where the door panels are completely misaligned.

You can totally tell body panels are different colors of gray or whatever, paint. It is, it’s different colors of stainless steel, it’s different colors of stainless steel. Whatever the hell this thing is made of. I don’t even remember cause I don’t care, you know? Well, in defense it’s a prototype, so it’s not a finished product.

Let’s criticize it when it’s finished and people are like, they hand-built it, they couldn’t take two extra seconds for the, like, masking tape to align the doors correctly. Like people are going on about, like, it’s held on with like packing tape and stuff like that. Typical things. Tesla needs to hire that guy who built the Lamborghini in his basement.

Right. That guy had better fit and finish. Right. And he used Home Depot parts. He’s already in, he’s a master [00:13:00] right there. Again, it was a fanfare event. Uh, I don’t know how many thousands of people you could go buy tickets to see this. Yes, they unveiled, you know, this prototype. I thought one of the most interesting things was the side mirror that is now seen.

Wait, wait, what? What, what did you, did you just blaspheme? I just blasphemed. There is a side mirror. Liar on the car. No way. Clearly they’re not winning. Probably that national highway transportation battle to not have any mirrors. There’s also a photo of the most gigantic windshield wiper plate like ever.

So the lasers are still in, uh, in design development, I guess I will say, to fit the design of the cyber truck being from Starfox 64 or whatever the, exactly where it’s from. I noticed that the, the side mirrors are reminiscent of the old Volkswagen flag mirrors like you would [00:14:00] find on like a Jetta or a Rocco.

I was like, what the hell are these? So these mirrors supposedly are designed to be removable that way in the, in the future when he wins the battle that you do not need side mirrors because you have cameras that relay that information to your dashboard. The owner can thusly, remove, said obtrusive. He doesn’t understand the market.

It needs to be like all Dodge Ram owners that leave their mirrors permanently extended and don’t own a trailer and never will. That’s the feature that the cyber truck needs to have. Make those suckers even bigger. Or the people that go to the car wash and have their mirrors folded in for like three hours as they’re traveling down the road.

I’ve done that before on my Jeep, cuz I have the retractable mirrors and then I’ll back out of a parking spot. Cause you, you’re like tight in the city kind of deal. And I’m like, why the hell can’t I see anything? And I’m like, oh shit. I’m staring at myself like that’s enough to scare [00:15:00] anybody that, that’s a hundred percent true.

That’s why I don’t have any mirrors in my house. You know what I mean? Nobody wants to see this thing. Well the bigger news, Brad, is for your a hundred dollars deposit is it is allegedly coming. Cyber truck at some point at some time. Happy. Happy. Joy. Joy. And you know what you get for that, Brad? Oh, 11 foot.

Wouldn’t your wife ran some side mirrors? And I can haul all the mulch I want. Can you, do I take it to home?

No, no tire rotation. Just 12 bags of mulch in the truck. Dude, I can take my lawnmower and the truck to no depot for service. They’ll rotate the tires, change the oil for me. Oh, there’s no oil in the cyber truck. That’s right. So when you own one of those, do you get to put stickers? You know, like we put stickers on the race car, you know the ev, everyone’s worth five horsepower.

So on the cyber truck, do you put like Cub Cadet and John Deere sticker and Toro on the side? Craftsman. Yeah. So that said, there are some changes coming to the market. We hear it all the time. You know, there’s introductions of new [00:16:00] petrol engines coming out, which we’re gonna talk about here in a little bit.

But there’s also. Regulatory changes coming thanks to the evolution. And there is now talk about a new mandate by 2026 for 49 miles to the gallon. So I’m kind of wondering how that’s gonna affect a lot of these trucks, especially the light duty vehicles that we’re seeing pop up like the, the Rattler and the Maverick and some of these other trucks that are out there.

I mean, it’s inevitable, right? I mean, they’ve always been talking about increasing every couple years trying to creep up the mpg, which is interesting how you’re doing that by making the cars heavier with bigger motors. But we’re gonna also be more fuel efficient. I mean, I know there’s lots of things with, you know, computers, electronics around the fuel injection and all that.

And the newer automatic transmissions are, are more efficient. Or give you more efficiency and whatnot, but is that really enough to make up for our nine point 10 million liter V [00:17:00] thousand v6? But isn’t this all offset by for every 707 horsepower Dodge Demon? They offset it with a 2016 Dodge Dart that averages 50 miles per gallon.

Is that how they’re doing the math? It isn’t it the, the, it’s for the entire fleet. It’s an average of 49. So if you’ve got a car that does 10, you better have a car that does like 70 to offset it. And do electric cars play into this as well? I, I didn’t see, I don’t think it should because it, it shouldn’t, I mean, I hope it doesn’t.

Yeah, empg versus MPG is like apples and chainsaws. It doesn’t compute, it never will. It’s just range factor, right? How far can you go per, what is it? 33.6 kilowatts, which equals one gallon of fuel. So that’s the only comparison you can make. We talked about that in my boring math lecture a couple months ago.

So go back and visit that again. But to your point, if that’s the fuzzy math that they’re doing, they better have some three cylinder [00:18:00] diesels on the other end of this equation, getting 80 miles to the gallon. Cuz otherwise it’s not gonna work. Or Corolla. Gr Yaris is three cylinder turbos. You know that?

Yeah. So it’s, it’s for the entire vehicle fleet that it’s the average. So if, if, if Ford’s making a 500 horsepower Mustang, they’ve got a 95 horsepower Ford focus somewhere out there, that which. Offsets it, which to their point then they say, sticker on any individual vehicle would probably be more in the thirties range, but we’ve been targeting 30 miles to the gallon for 30 years.

Now. How can we not achieve this? Why is this such a big deal? Well, cause we keep making the cars heavier and the motor’s bigger. Yeah. And, and for the, the four years that Trump was in office, I believe he halted this too. He kind of scaled some of that back. It goes back to my point about efficiency, right?

Everybody loves to beat me back when I say this, but. 355 horsepower out of 5.3 liters is pathetic. I’m gonna say it again. It’s pathetic. [00:19:00] Out of 5.3 liters, if you gave it to the Germans, they’d be making 900 horsepower because that’s how they think. We have these lazy engines, they’re big and they’re gas guzzlers because they don’t make any power.

Everybody go, ah, 400 horsepowers, nothing. It’s a joke. But in their defense, they’re also not as tightly wound. They’re not as high strung, so they’re more reliable. You theoretically should be able to get more miles out of them. I mean, yes, W can get 500 horsepower out of, uh, A much smaller motor, but then that motor’s blowing up, you know, for various reasons, whatever.

So they, they’re a little stressed. I will give you that. I will give, but there’s gotta be a compromise out there. Is it a supercharger? Is it a turbocharger? Is it a smaller motor? You know, what is the right answer answer’s diesel. I just wanna remind people the answer’s diesel, but you know, whatever that means.

Well that’s what Ford, that’s what Ford’s been doing the last couple years when they brought out the turbo [00:20:00] sixes and everything. I mean, they took the diesel formula applied to, but that turbo six is pathetic. I mean, let’s be real, 365 horsepower or whatever, and 400 plus pound feet of torque and then you slap a tune on it and you’ve got a hundred more horsepower and 150 more torque.

It’s not pathetic, but it’s, it still sounds like a Pontiac from the eighties and it can’t get out of its own way. Do you want the sound or do you want the fuel efficiency and the power and the durability? I mean, put the car enthusiast to the side. Alright, I’m gonna take a page of the Italian playbook for a minute and we’re gonna talk Ferrari for just a second.

They’ve been making high strung, high horsepower, small V8 s forever strap, a turbo to a three liter v8. I’ve got the sound, I’ve got the power, I’ve got everything I need, and they can be built reliable. Part of the problem with reliability whoa, is that we’re building them out of garbage. I’m gonna stop you right there.

Build reliable. How many 150, 200,000 mile Ferraris are out there with those motors? [00:21:00] Show show point. Show me one. Just show me one. And how many million mile Toyota tundras are there out there with these 4.6 liter, 5.7 liter motors. So they, they last forever because they’re not doing anything. They’re lazy.

Yes, exactly. I get you. Which, you know, I, I’m okay with a lazy motor that doesn’t do anything that I can have. Basically the next generation drive after me. But again, going back to my point about the power numbers, 400 horse out of 5.7 liters like your tundra. What’s the torque number? If the torque isn’t double?

That torque, by the way, is what you feel, right? It’s how far you push the wall after you crash into it. That’s the more important number. The horsepower numbers are irrelevant. That’s why I look at it. I go, these torque numbers suck. You’re not gonna make the torque out of a gas motor that you would out of a diesel.

I’ve been saying for years now, we should be going diesel electric hybrid, run that diesel at a constant ILE to provide power to the EV and just go to town. [00:22:00] Where do we get that technology from? We get it from trains. I’ve been saying it forever, but we don’t wanna go there. But then you kill the baby seals.

With your noxious gases and dense stuff. Well, I, I, yeah, I guess you’re right. I don’t know what to say. Granted, I can’t go to Lowe’s and pick up mulch with my original Ford Ranger from, you know, 1978. You know, it’s just not possible right now because the Ford Ranger from 1978 doesn’t run anymore. Very true.

But you know what does run are these next three trucks that we’re gonna talk about and a special guest truck in that list. Did you all take a look at this video? Yes. Jason Camisa now with Haggerty due to shootout between the Dodge Tyrannosaurus racks are the TRX against the current Ford Raptor. Twin Turbo six cylinder Eco-Boost and the Rivian.

I’m disappointed that the T-Rex doesn’t have smaller front wheels, right? It should. It should. It should. [00:23:00] Small wheels, you put the wheels from the demon on the front that way, you know, has the little tiny, the skinnies. Yeah. I was not surprised by the turnout of this video, but that I was shocked by the end of the video.

So, Tanya, do you wanna fill us in on what happened here with your favorite pickup truck that you admittedly said on a previous drive to episode you could consider at least test driving?

I very much enjoy the styling of the Rivian. The Chev Rivian. Is that what we’re calling now, Ian? Why? Why do you say that? Isn’t it a GM product or is it not a GM product? What is that? I think G GM dumped a bunch of money into Rivian, but they’re still a separate entity. But they, they just stole their design for the Silverado.

GM was represented in their shootout by proxy on behalf of Rivian. So let’s continue with how this went down. Ford has a 12% stake in Rivian. I don’t think GM has any stake in [00:24:00] Rivian. Oh, okay. That makes sense. Before we get into this, can I just say why, who is spending 80 plus 90 plus thousand dollars for a pickup truck?

That was shocking to see the price tag of the Rivian. I didn’t really realize it was clocking in that high. I’m talking, I’m talking about all three. All three of ’em are 80 plus. Yeah, I mean, the Ford F-150 Electric’s gonna be like a hundred grand or whatever, right? Who? I mean, cyber truck’s gonna be ridiculously expensive.

They all are. How are, how can people afford this stuff? We’re only gonna be able to afford what we have today. That’s what it’s gonna boil down to. I, I can’t afford a hundred thousand dollars pickup truck. It’s not gonna happen. I mean, they’re already a hundred thousand dollars now after incentives and discounts and dealer surcharges and destination fees.

I mean, I, I don’t get it. Maybe that’s why there’s the 10 year loans. I mean, for me, the math doesn’t work out for others. If you can explain it to me, please, by all means, you know, let me know. But when you’re in the a hundred thousand dollars range, there’s a lot of cars to pick from and 80 grand [00:25:00] on a used nine 11 GT three and drive a $20,000 Nissan Sentra and probably still have money left over.

Not for any maintenance on the Porsche, but the point is at a hundred grand, that’s, that’s a lot. Like I said the other day regarding a different car, if I’m spending a hundred or over a hundred grand, it’s going to be red and rhyme with Ferrari or BA or or Babo Babo. I, I’m at the end of the video. Was that a stock GMC Cyclone?

It was a stock GMC Cyclone. You like that? My ma man. My man, yes. And that was the designer creator of the GMC Cyclone driving it, riding in it on the trailer. So spoiler alert, they do this shootout between the three trucks and at the end they rerun the shootout with the rivian towing the cyclone. And I thought that was freaking fantastic.

Which I would’ve wished they had done all three of them towing something. Yes. That would’ve been awesome too. I was very impressed with the Rivian [00:26:00] capabilities. I mean, the Rivian smoked the, uh, what? The T Rx. Oh yeah. And the other one, the, the Raptor was just like nowhere sound, it still beat the raptor while it was towing?

Yes. I mean, not by a ton, but it was by a hood length, which is a lot. No, which is why I would be interested to see like the ram towing. What is that comparison like? How much stress was it to the batteries to tow versus would the Rivian have won that or would the Ram still have come out ahead? Is anybody really surprised that an all electric beats a gas motor and drag race though?

No. This is just like the Tesla shootout. No, it’s not really that different. No. What I am surprised by is that a 30 year old GMC Cyclone, is my math correct, a 30 year old GMC Stock Cyclone waxed, a Ford F-150 Raptor by almost a second. Now granted there’s like a 4,000 pound weight difference between the two, but the power output of that old, you know, [00:27:00] GM Turbo six, it’s not super fantastic By today’s Sanders, the cyclone didn’t ask to be lighter.

It was made lighter. Yeah. You know, maybe a Ford made the F-150 Veloc giant, jumbo Raptor or whatever the hell lighter, you know, or all cars in general were made lighter. They’d be a little faster. Well, we can’t because they have to have 1900 airbags. The real race. Was them not towing another vehicle? It’s how many pallets of mulch could they pull in a quarter mile and see who was the fastest?

I mean, that’s, that’s what we’re doing here, right? We’re we’re hauling mulch. There would be a top gear special, three pickup trucks. Go into Home Depot loading up the max they can with mulch getting to wherever destination, who can get there the fastest, and how much gas did they burn doing it, you know, well obviously the Rivian Knot, how many stops did it make on the way?

But I will say, we talked about the T Rx on a previous episode about the laps that it [00:28:00] did at the Berg ring and, you know, cooking the brakes. And that was comical. And I, I very much enjoyed that. I would’ve liked to seen them complete the lap at Willow Springs and see what the handling was like between the trucks, not just the straight line speed, because maybe the Raptor has an advantage being a little lighter than the T Rx and a little bit more down low grunt coming out of the pocket instead of having to wait for the supercharger, stuff like that.

See how far the Rivian would’ve gone, you know, do a nice 10 minute session. I mean, I’m not asking these cars to do a full half hour like we do on track, but that would’ve been a cool shootout as well. Not just straight line speed. I know we always focus on that quarter mile time. You know, the road isn’t always straight.

That test is irrelevant to me. Even, I mean, even the handling test, if they actually did a couple laps at whatever track they were at, I mean, all that stuff is irrelevant for a pickup truck. I wanna know how much it tows, how fuel efficient it is. While towing because my truck, I stopped for fuel every 225 miles towing a car.

Ask me. I know. [00:29:00] Yeah. Ask me how I know. So I will say this, the rivian definitely earned some brownie points with me. As I was watching that, I said to myself, you know, I could see replacing my diesel Jeep with that, but not at that price point. That’s a lot of coin to swallow, to basically have something that tows similarly to what I already have.

Now, to your point, I can get 400 plus miles out of my Jeep when I’m towing the race car. So I don’t have to stop as often. You know, what is that longevity of the ev tow truck look like? You know, when you’re pulling a race car or you know, happening to get a pallet of mulch at your local lows yet to be determined, right?

But those are the real tests. That’s the stuff that I think consumers are really waiting for that we’ll never get. Have you seen the newest from Audi, the newest s line badged thing that isn’t an s that Brad was talking about? No, they’re, um, possibly bringing to production something called the urban sphere.

The what, what, what? It is what looks to [00:30:00] be a minivan, which would be a first for Audi. It’s a 396 horsepower electric concept. Minivan. The good news is it’s not going to be in the United States. Wa wa I don’t know how I feel about it. On the one hand, I’m like, that’s good because these things are, it’s kind of weird looking, on the other hand, whatever.

I mean, I don’t know why Audi needs a minivan, which is also something I struggle with. Like, let Volkswagen have minivans. But that’s a personal Yes. The, the, the, the politics and the dynamics here make no sense. And then what happens is, so Volkswagen has the ID buzz and now Audi has whatever this Q seven is, cuz that’s the first glance.

That’s what I thought when I saw it. Then Porsche goes, well, we need a minivan. Gosh, no. It shall be turbo.

It’ll be cold. It’ll be the ring in seven and a half minutes. Oh my gosh. You know who’s buying minivans? Nobody. When I take my kid to school every single [00:31:00] morning, I see zero minivans. I see a crap ton of SUVs of various shapes and sizes I have not seen in the last three, four months. I have not seen one minivan in that parking lot.

Well, apparently there’s not minivan drivers in the United States, but this is going to be marketed for China. That makes perfect sense. Which on the one hand I’ll say this is smart for Audi to come up with a minivan because when I look at this also it reminds me of something else. A shoe. Hi robot. No, something.

The Chinese copied off another Volkswagen Audi product. Aren’t the Chinese just gonna copy? This is gonna be an udi. Exactly. They have the punk cat Aura or the Aura Punk cat or the Aura Ballet cat. Where they copy the The Bele. So I’m like, I feel like we’re cutting to the chase here. Like don’t try to like make our Q seven into a minivan.

We’ll just give you the minivan. Here it is. I don’t like it. I don’t get it. No. Thank you. [00:32:00] Yeah. And, and to your point, I think they should finally separate the portfolio and say, look, Porsche’s gonna build the sports cars. Let’s get rid of this Panamera. That’s an A eight. I hate to break it to you folks.

It’s an A eight L underneath, you know, all that garbage, cayenne, whatever. Volkswagen builds the vans and the trucks and whatever, and Audi builds the luxury sports sedans, and Porsche builds the sports cars. End of story. Like I, I get that they’re doing the reusable recyclable platform and everybody can have their cake and eat it too.

But we already saw this with STIs where they finally separated the lines and said, Ram is making trucks. There’s no Dodge pickups anymore. Dodge is doing this, and Chrysler’s doing that, and Fiat’s doing this other thing. And it just doesn’t make sense to have all this proliferation just because somebody wants to badge on the front of the hood.

Isn’t that what got GM in trouble with? Yes. The Buick. The Buick and the Oldsmobile and the Cadillac and the Chevrolet in the Metro. Yes, and all that. They were all the exact same [00:33:00] vehicles. They were competing against themselves. Right. But they didn’t want to talk. They didn’t talk to each other and Exactly.

They were competing with themselves and then they just, Ford was running away with it with the F-150, because who the hell wants a GMC or a Silverado or whatever? Who knows the differences between them? There aren’t any, by the way, I’m, I’m waiting for the Ford and Aconda. Right. So it’s all, or Python or whatever the next one is.

It’s all good. The Ford Cobra. Oh, there is a Ford. Oh, wait, wait, wait. Yeah, that does exist, but you know what doesn’t exist? And has been teased for many, many years. Is the coming, the shadowing, the grand pedigree of racing. Audi and Porsche are in talks and coming and debuting their Formula One team. I dunno if it’s so much a team or they wanna provide engines.

Well, Volkswagen was supposed to provide the motors, so who is it now? But it probably gives more prestige to come from Audi Porsche. It’s the same BS they did with the 180 Turbo. Oh, I know, I know. When they, when, when VW created the 180 T, then Audi suddenly said, well, we invented it. Like, get outta here.

It’s all the same motor, it’s all [00:34:00] the same stuff. That Block has been around for 40 years. Get outta here. You know, Porsche was in port one back in the day, you know, they were an indie car as well. I wanna see them come back because I’m tired of Mercedes and Ferrari. I wanna see some, some mixes in there. I wanna see them come back and do actually launch a factory team.

Correct. Agree. Agree with I want to sell their crap to somebody else. Correct. And you can see them actually use it, because then this ends up like Formula Atlantics or Formula Mazdas. It’s like, cool, all p you know, or like the Indy cars all powered by this motor and everybody’s got a different chassis. I don’t know.

I, I don’t like that. But yes, to your point, I’d love to see a factory, Porsche team back in Formula One, you know, kicking ass and taking names, but, you know, whatever. Who knows? Stop teasing me. It’s been 30 years of teasing me. I’m, I’m done with it. So our friends in the lower Saxony, oh, the rest of the lower Saxony, if you will.

We’ll start with Mercedes. Just a couple nuggets here to share. So some headline news. You know, Mercedes-Benz drives an electric car over [00:35:00] 620 miles without stopping to charge and still had 87 miles of range left. Boring. Didn’t Jeremy Clarkson, didn’t Jeremy Clarkson do this in like a diesel jack? Yeah.

But didn’t he drive around with it in neutral and the engine off most of the time? I mean, whatever, whatever you mean. He got hooked to a tow truck and it towed him. Mm-hmm. What part of the way? No, so they’ve got their eq, XX lineup, whatever. So they got this, it, it’s basically a concept car. Um, it’s called the Mission xx.

I think it’s the most a, like, it’s got the lowest drag coefficient of anything. So it beats out the Teslas and, and, and everyone else right now. So that’s attributing to its efficiency. Not to mention that apparently it’s probably something like the size of a Miata, cuz it’s like a two door Roadster size.

So it, it’s small, it’s lightweight, it’s super aerodynamic. Who knows what they’re doing with their battery technology, but they’re [00:36:00] alleging that they got over 600 miles, which is pretty huge. It looks like the McLaren speed tail. The long tail. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Obviously Mercedes has a lot of technical background and and technical expertise given all the things they do in Formula One and blah, blah, blah.

So, you know, if they’re stretching their legs here, I mean, I think that’s pretty cool from a mechanic scientific side of things. So I like it. And then I don’t like, there’s so many weird angles on this thing. There’s so many things that I appreciate. I see where they drew inspiration from. You know, even going back to the days of the silvers arrows and stuff like that.

To your point about it being small, being two door, you know, this and that. All of those things are huge negatives because, you know why? It’s not designed by somebody who drew three boxes and two big wheels like they were in kindergarten, because that’s all we buy nowadays, like we talked about in the first segment.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No one, like two people buy this. Yeah. Nobody’s gonna buy this. This is to unusable. It’s impractical. Granted, it’s a [00:37:00] study in science and engineering, but it’s not applicable. It’s not practical. So make me a Ford Raptor that can have a coefficient or drag of 0.17 called cyber truck. I’ve never seen a brick aerodynamic ever.

Even when you shave its corners. But you know who’s gonna buy this thing if it actually does come out and they do sell it or whatever. The same people that bought the, uh, the BMW I eight, those are who, who are gonna buy that I or the people that didn’t buy the I eight because they’re Mercedes fans and there was nothing available for them at the time.

Right? Ha. Hashtag brand loyalty. Make this more ammg. S lse. Yeah. Go windows. Keep it two cedar. I could see that from Give it to bra. My money can just get 500 miles. Of of M P G E if that’s what it takes, you know, from the front it is reminiscent of the old sl. Like that is true with that shape, with that roof.

I could see [00:38:00] gold wing doors being adapted to this pretty easily and it would be kind of sick. The wheels are ugly and it, it takes away from the car. And I’m not a fan of the backend to Brad’s point. It’s like the, the McLaren long tail or speed tail. But yes, this has potential, they could do something with this, you know, what would really make it sell a 600 horsepower giant V8 in the front that would smash.

I mean if, if they’ve gone, you know, extreme, like what can I do? And what they can do is, you know, almost 700 miles or whatever. That’s pretty cool cuz then if they’ve done something different with their battery technology or any other technology that’s inside it, they can translate that to something else.

Right. And maybe now it’s not 700 miles to the gallon, but it’s four 50 consistent or 500 and people can swallow that, right? Yeah, yeah. The range anxiety goes flat. 70, 70 degree ambient temperature, sunny days with a, you know, the earth is flat surface not in 40 degrees or hashtag [00:39:00] ultimate driving machine.

That’s something else. Um, hashtag no side mirrors. If you’re looking for a more traditional Mercedes, you don’t like that. Mission xx. Their e Q s lineup is expanding and they will be bringing. If you’ve been something even less attractive to market, I’d rather have that mission xx. But hey, this thing looks good from a three quarter roof angle only, that is underneath the crusher.

That is the actual picture I’m looking at. You know, what they’re doing is they’re, they’re beating Audi to the punch with the issue with the, uh, the main, yeah. This way is just like the Audi. Yeah. Yeah, this is their, their s u v in their e q s lineup, which they hinted at, but is actually finally happening and supposed to release, I believe, next year.

So, you know, sorry, it’s gonna be releasing later this year. So if you’re waiting for a Mercedes s u v, your weight’s not much longer. 207 inches. This takes a yacht, you might as well put a sail on it. Good [00:40:00] lord. It’s huge. Maybe I should consider it then. Oh yeah. But you can’t see out that back window. I think I got more glass in my TT than this thing does.

Good Lord. Moving on. True. Now, speaking of the ultimate driving machine, which you just mentioned, BMW’s unveiling its electric I seven with 300 miles of range. Who cares about any of that? What do you think about what it looks like? Uh, because we know what all the I BMWs have looked like in the past. All right.

All right. It’s a really weird looking stretched. So, nine, five.

You know, it’s funny you say that at first, I, I was thinking one of the, you know, kind of Korean off-market, you know, genesises that we are not gonna get here, or what are those? Like limousines. But then I thought about it more and because I’ve said many times, the new BMWs look like owls and I, I can make Star Trek references to like Kardashians and stuff.

This one in particular reminds me if you [00:41:00] remember that flashback episode of Picard on Star Trek where they tell the story of how, you know he got punctured in the heart by the kins and that guy comes over and says, human play Dom John. That’s what this thing looks like, dude. It’s straight up Nokin. It’s terrible.

I don’t remember that part from Star Wars. When was that? When did that happen? Star Wars. So Star Trek. This is the way, this is the way. Wait, wait. Battlestar Galactica. What? That sea pillar looks just like the, the SOB 95. The most recent. It’s terrible. Five’s terrible. This is terrible. The wheels are terrible.

It’s terrible. It’s ugly. This double like stacked headlights thing is weird. They did that reminds me of the Jeep Cherokee from like, what was it, 2014 ish where it had the triple, triple headlights because they did the light and they’re like, oh, this isn’t gonna pass tech. So they had to redo the lights, but we left 12 feet of grill in the front.

You know, I thought they were getting smaller. They were supposed to be, but apparently not. On all the models. Not on this in the back. Did [00:42:00] you look the back? Oh. Oh, that’s a Bengal. That’s a Bengal backend. That is just terrible. Riddle me. This Batman. It’s an ev, right? Yeah. Well, well rhetorically nod. Yes.

Yeah. Why is the hood 12 feet long? What engine are we putting there? Why is there a grill? Ray, I don’t understand any of this design. I mean, granted, I don’t want it to look like a porous, like every other EV prototype out there, but I, I just don’t get this. That’s exactly what actually it, it looks like a manatee.

Oh, oh God. B m w please. This is like the early two thousands all over again. Well, you know what’s not like the early two thousands is this rather striking new Ferrari that has debuted, they’re calling it the 2 96 g t s. It is supposed to be still in the three series family. The three series being the 3 0 8, 3 28, you know, and then obviously they became the four 80 eights and all that kind of stuff.

Now they’re going back to the old 200 numbers where [00:43:00] it all started from with the Dino 2 46. I saw the pictures of the coop last month and I wasn’t a hundred percent sold, but when I saw the spider, I really, really like it. I think it looks much better as a convertible or as brother as a targa than it does as a coop.

I mean, it’s a Ferrari. It’s gorgeous. It’s blue too. Can you believe that? Yeah. I don’t know. I like it. The front end does remind me of an inata though. It does a little bit. It does a little bit. I will give you that. I will give you that. Is it smiling at me? Let me see. Does it smile? Maybe it’s the blue color that’s, that’s throwing me.

Well, the other ones, the coop was in like a burgundy, which is also a, not a weird color for a Ferrari, but not normal. Like we’re all used to the ketchup and mustard. But you know, they’re coming out with some new colors, so I gotta give ’em props for that. But I also gotta give ’em props for these power numbers, right?

So this is a v6. Turbo hybrid. It is 120 degree v6, and if you don’t know why that’s important, just go Google it and you’ll understand [00:44:00] the sound is gonna be freaking awesome. But the power numbers are staggering. They’re quoting 819 horsepower from this hybrid. I mean, that’s absolutely bonkers. The rear haunts actually look very similar to the Dino design.

They definitely took some of the Dino designs they did and put it into the rear of the car. It also looks a lot like the Bugatti Divo. I will say it took some, it looks like it has some inspiration from that, especially in Blue. That’s where my mind immediately went because Blue I usually associate with Bugatti almost right away.

So it kind of has that feel to it as well. So you asked about the power numbers. I mean, they’re obviously very impressive. This, I guess is what you get when they spend billions of dollars in testing in f1, you know, and you know, technology testing and all that research and development and then it trickles down into the road cars.

Yep. This is exactly what you get and we need more of this. Absolutely. And you know what else is fun? I don’t know if anybody paid attention or not to some of the packages that [00:45:00] the vehicle comes in, but just like the old days, like the early eighties, this is coming in A G T B package. It’s coming in A G T S package and then there’s actually an Aceto ano package as well, which is a commemorative edition.

Fiorano is also one of the factory guys, but also was the test track is named after him as well. And so the GTB historically has been the lighter version in a 3 0 8 s. It was the Carbureted version and the GTS has got fuel injection then so on down the line. But it is gonna weigh. 150 to 200 pounds less.

But that doesn’t really change the overall cost when this thing clocks in at nearly 325 grand. A little bit outta my price range, especially when the rivian is already outta my price range. But it’s gonna be something fun to look at at the next Amelia Island concourse when somebody brings one out. Can I move my a hundred dollars deposit from the cyber truck to one of these?

Think I can. I can do that. Exchange You, you might get this before you get the cyber truck, that’s for sure. Even if you’re saving your [00:46:00] pennies. I think so. See, which bank do I wanna rob? That said, Ferrari’s doing all this development. They’re bringing back the 120 degree v6, twin, turbo, hybrid, all that kind of stuff.

But on the other side of lanis, now they’re talking about. Inline six cylinders. Why not inline 126 cylinders? Why aren’t they going bigger? Why are they going smaller? Well, like the Packard with the inline eights, right? They were like a mile long. So quick question, are these actually STIs motors or did they contract with BMW as well?

I’m wondering that myself. Three. Three liter Line Six Twin Turbo. I mean that’s got B M W written all over it. It does, and if you read the article, the author basically mentions in there that a lot of these specs and dimensions are very similar to the BMW in line six. So I’m wondering what’s going on here.

The other thing that doesn’t make sense to me is to Tanya’s point, why would you wanna put a longer engine in a vehicle than the compact pen aar, which has been around forever. So why don’t we [00:47:00] work on the pen AAR and make it a more efficient engine? It’s a 90 degree v6. I mean, I don’t get it. Why not? I think we go the opposite route.

We add two cylinders to the Panesar and a supercharger, and we just go full bore. Just. I believe that’s called, you make 250 horsepower. Yes. The, the Dodge Dart. S r t, Damian. Damian. Well, this one’s, this one’s being called the hurricane. Uh, let’s just, hopefully this doesn’t turn out like the movie Twister.

That’s all I’m thinking. Well, good for STIs. They’re saying that they’re gonna put this in Jeeps, Dodges, and Rams and other brands. I mean, isn’t that all they have now anyway? I mean, what else? How do they, do they make the hurricane more efficient with the tornado?

The Velociraptor? No, the two of the old tornado like thing that you could install on your car for $75 mail-in order, 25% more fuel efficient. I think the guys at Mighty Car Mods have already [00:48:00] myth busted that one. It doesn’t work for a minute there. I thought you were gonna talk about the O Appeal todo, which is just a bad pronunciation of the word tornado.

So, you know, whatever. I’m sorry, we, we don’t talk about Oldsmobile on this channel. There’s a whole nother podcast for that. Yeah, there’s, there’s an Oldsmobile, the Owner’s club that you can talk to all three of them. Yes. So that being said, it’s probably time that we slip into the dms of domestic news brought to us by American muscle.com, our number one source for OEM and performance replacement parts for your Chevy, Mopar or Ford product.

So what do we got this month in domestic news? I hope you’re not looking to buy a Ford Mustang Mach e I’m sorry, I said that wrong. A Ford Mach E in the United States because they’re all sold out. Is that because chips? I think it might be partially both. There’s been such high demand from consumers, but at the same time, the shortages and this, that and the [00:49:00] other are making the, they can’t keep up with that demand.

So I think they’ve just said we’re done for 2022. Wait for 2023. There was like a hot second that I saw these everywhere and then I realized, I actually saw like the new key, the same one, the Kia or the Hyundai that has the same rear lights. So I don’t think I’ve actually seen a mach on the road. I’ve seen all these other Kia copies that from a distance.

You think it’s a Mach e cuz they’re very similar in the back. So, Are they really selling? Like is there somebody out there that has one? I’ve seen a couple. I’ve, I, yeah. I’ve seen in several machs, but not to go off on a tangent. You mentioned the Hyundai. The Hyundai. I’ve seen the IO Ionic five or whatever.

The Ionic five. Mm-hmm. I swear I, every other car I see on the road is an Ionic five. You’ve actually seen one in person now. What did you think? I’ve seen, I’ve seen several I’ve, they were all over the roads around here. Wow, there’s nothing else. All those m cu, all those Mach customers traded in their machs for, well, what were you driving when you encountered it?[00:50:00]

Truck. Your truck or various vehicles? The truck or my wife’s car. The car. What did you think of it? Because I drive what should be a comparably sized car, and I thought it was huge when I came up on it, on the, compared to on the highway or something. It is huge. Like I thought in photo it was gonna be much smaller.

Like, I mean, it’s not like, you know, an u v or anything like that, but it’s just like slightly bigger. It’s like a Corolla, like a Corolla hatchback is appropriately, its size and this thing is bigger or taller at least than like a Corolla hatchback. It, it reminded me of a many countrymen or a cheap renegade in size.

That’s actually not that big, bigger than it looked in pictures and my expectation of what I thought it was going to be based on photos was not that. So like I had that moment of like confusion. I will say they’re very cool looking in person though. I like them. I don’t hate them. I think they look pretty nice.

You, you can’t buy a [00:51:00] 2022 Machi. Sorry. That’s a shame. You know, I still want once you can by a 23 Brilliant. Pre-order one today. Brilliant. It’ll be released in 2024. Yes. It’ll still come out before this cyber truck. So you were talking about, let’s say STIs might be copying or borrowing or contracting with B M W to get engines.

We know that Toyota has partnered with B M W now in the past, also talked in the past about GM partnering with Honda and there’s some additional news on that as well. GM and Honda are teaming up to build a $30,000 electric car. Oh, an electric car for the masses, which was promised to us by a different.

Vie manufacturer, of course. Is this $30,000 after the tax credit or before? It’s $30,000 as early as 2027. So by that time it’ll be like $60,000 and there will be no tax credit at that point. Yeah. Present value of money, I mean, we’ve heard this [00:52:00] before. I, I mean, I feel like this is, this new $30,000 EV is in syndication.

You know, it’s, it’s a rerun, but like we talked about last month, these cars are clocking in on average in the middle to high forties. That’s what it is. That’s the entry price if you’re gonna buy an ev, not even just EVs like new cars in general. Yeah, I mean, I think we, we found out last month or one of the previous months that they were like averaging in the mid thirties.

That’s average for a brand new vehicle. We’d pick up on something I just happened to see in this article that mentions Honda launching an electric s u v called the Prologue. Ooh. Like not the prelude, the prologue, but why would we make it an s u v with that name? Like, that’s actually kind of a cool name.

They could have made like an electric prelude or something called it The prologue. Oh know, it’s, this is some of our club members Prelude. Some of our Prelude Club members are salivating the, the sound of this news. No, no. You salivate over [00:53:00] Integra. No, you salivate. Salivate over the prelude. Oh, wait, that’s one one.

Club member. Prelude. Prelude. I think one of our club members is the only person keeping preludes on the road. Yes. Has two of ’em. He is doing a great job. It’s amazing. It’s making one. He’s got three actually. Oh, he’s got damns. That’s a monopoly. Do not Peco. Do not Pesco do not collect $200. Well, Brad, since you are our resident subject matter expert when it comes to all things Corvette, what have you got for us this month?

I have a 2024 Corvette Nomad. S U v. That’s right folks. You asked for it. It’s coming. Wait, did you say Chevy Nomad? I mean, I know you love the Chevy Nomad. Yes. Chevrolet Corvette Nomad. Wait, say that one more time. Chevrolet. Corvette Nomad. So is this like the Raptor? Razorback Rattlesnake, velociraptor? What are we talking about here?

Is this a [00:54:00] special package I’m hearing in 0 6, 0 7? Maybe zero nine. You know something special? Sure. From the photo, from the spy photo. I thought it was a Chevy Cobalt is that HHR is back. I thought it was a Honda Civic hatchback. What the hell is this? Is this for real? It’s, it’s April Fools is what? It’s Oh, you, I got you.

I got you. I was gonna say, dude, I’m having a heart attack if Corvette’s making ans u v, I know Ferrari’s going that way, but Corvette really we’ll just wait for it. The real joke will be on all of us in a couple years when they do unveil the Chevrolet Cor Corvette. Cve u. Can we call that one the Corvet?

Didn’t they already make a Corvette? S u v They called it the Trailblazer Ss No, the s s R was the Corvette. Oh, no, wait. That was a pickup truck. It was a pickup truck. It was a Corvette pickup truck, which goes in line with our showcase pickup trucks. But it, but it wasn’t a Corvette pickup truck. I mean, it had, it had a smaller motor.

It wasn’t until [00:55:00] later that they brought it out with the larger motor. But you’re right, the, it had 5.3 liter. The SS Trailblazer was basically a vet vet truck body. Yeah, I mean, it had, it shared nothing with the vet, not even the motor, because the motor came from the GTO without any changes. So it’s an LS two.

I mean, granted, I owned one of those fantastic truck track truck a hundred percent developed by a lot of the Corvette guys and was designed to be run on the track. That thing was awesome, but I don’t see the SS trailblazer returning and this Chevy Corvette nomad thing. Better not happen. Meanwhile, as I throw up in the back of my throat a little bit, we switch over to some JDM news.

And you guys remember Mark Shank? He filled in for Brad a while ago. He’s also been on our nineties. What should I buy? Episode? And he is actually gonna be on some subsequent episodes here later this year. Spoiler alert, he sent us a little gem about a neat little life hack for anybody that owns a Mazda built between the years [00:56:00] 2014 and 2019.

It sounds like from the video, I think it’s not so much a life hack as anti theft device thousand percent. It does speak to cybersecurity a little bit in the sense that the more computers we add to cars, the more vulnerable they become. And when computers are vulnerable, they’re exploitable. And this particular exploit, without getting too nerdy, basically folks in the Seattle area tuned into their local radio station on the FM HD channel of 94.9, and it basically bricked their infotainment MFIs and just about.

Everything not related to the engine in those particular Mazdas on that wonderful Sunday afternoon as they were listening to N P R. But what also transpired is that because those cars are technically out of warranty, there are no claims that can be made other than maybe a class action lawsuit against Mazda, and you’re [00:57:00] out about 1500 bucks to replace that infotainment system in your Mazda.

So stay away from channel 94.9 as it will freak out the system and go from there. And by the way, this is not the first time that there have been, let’s say, subpar programming or bugs in the system where. These digital channels have caused the computers and the cars to go crazy things like percent signs, which are often used in c language to, you know, replace strings and numbers and things like that in the, in the variable sequences.

Uh, yeah, that’ll cause the computers to freak out and whatnot. So I thought this was, this was interesting. This definitely talked to the nerd side of me. So if you’re interested in diving into a little bit more on that, it is in our show notes. You can check it out. There is a radio tower or some sort of telecommunications tower that I encounter on a particular stretch of my commute, which freaks my car radio out on an [00:58:00] almost 20 year old car.

It’s bizarre. It does it. And yes, I have a cassette player. Yes. I use a car cassette adapter and it freaks out the car cassette adapter in this like half mile stretch static, and then another radio channel that wasn’t The radio channel that I’m tuned to starts playing through overlapping with whatever music I am playing from like my phone.

It’s bizarre. There’s like this dead zone space. Is there a voice that saying, help me, help me? No, no, no, no, no. It’s, it’s Georgio SLOs comes on and he’s like ancient astronaut theorists. It’s aliens. You can tell me what’s going on. I’d love to not know the nerdy details. Oh lord. But let’s nerd out about.

Tanya’s favorite car on the planet right now. The GR Corolla. Oh yeah. So we got new information on the Corolla. We have confirmed some things from [00:59:00] last month’s drive-through about this particular vehicle. What did we learn? It’s gonna be a three cylinder, basically the same motor from the Yaris. Power numbers are understated.

Yeah, lies. Lies. Toyota’s been lying to us, but in a good way. And for insurance purposes. Yeah, Eric likes to say it’s fake power. I don’t know how it’s fake. P someone who owns three turbo cars says it’s fake power, but you know it’s a hundred percent fake power, dude. I’m telling you it’s not. There’s no replacement for displacement.

But that being said, my hairdryers work really well. But Toyota has been fibbing a little bit to be on the safe side and probably coincide with insurance regulations. That three cylinder turbo that comes in the, both the G R R S and the Corolla is reported 30 to 40 horsepower less than what it actually makes in Dino testing.

How about that? So that means that little three cylinder turbo is putting out close to 300 horsepower. That’s. [01:00:00] Awesome. Woohoo. What do you say, Tanya? It’s time to upgrade. Oh man. It’ll be interesting when the article comes out that reveals the price point. Let’s make some guesses, I think. I think we should take a guess.

45. I’m gonna start at 45. That’s my new answer for everything. 45 0 0 1. Alex Bob, $1. Bob. $1. Need to check a stat first so you’re gonna look up how much the Yas costs. No. I wanted to know how much a Toyota Carroll hatchback costs cuz in terms of size. That is more accurate. Um, wait, are we talking interestingly, the curl hatchback is gonna weigh almost 200 pounds less than the GR version.

Wasn’t the GR coming with all wheel drive with theist stuff? Yes it is. Yes it does. It’s also coming with like carbon fiber roof and other stuff too. It’s also reinforced. It’s got more welds and Yeah, that’s true. To offset the 400 pounds they put in it. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s not too bad. So the Toyota [01:01:00] Coroll hatchback, the 2022 Ms.

MSRP is at 20,009 15. What about the XR edition? I think which is the top of the line Corolla right now. My guess is a new loaded Corolla is about 30. They don’t list that as a new, but, um, used, they’re 26, 28, so there’s a possibility this new GR Corolla could come in sub $40,000 probably, I’d say maybe 32 to 35.

Mm-hmm. Well, I, I’m guessing closer to 40, it’s gonna beat the Gulf R. I think that they’re gonna make a point to beat the golf R and the Civic type R and then you got the dealer markup, so it’s gonna be a $40,000 car that you pay $150,000 for.

Well, speaking of dealer markups, I also have some new exciting news on another car that, well, at least I know I’m salivating over. Do you wanna take a guess of which one that is? The uh, is it bringing the Dodge Dart back? Uh, no. [01:02:00] The Aztec definitely not. Nope. I’m talking about the Z, the proto or what I like to call the 400 Z.

So I got some new news. I’ve been calling around some dealerships trying to figure out what the heck is going on with this car. I have been salivating over it for quite a long time and the deciding factor, as Brad says, is I gotta put my ass in the seat and figure out if it’s really worth it at the end of the day.

So after calling around a bunch of places, I did get some new information from some high volume dealers and they’re saying that the 400 Z has been delayed and it should be available for us to go look at sometime in late July, early August at best, and that’s when we’re gonna start test driving. That said, I also asked some other questions and I wanted to know, you know, truth or lies is what the prices are coming in at.

And they’re saying, Nissan has told the dealerships the base price on the new 400 Z is $45,000. All optioned out, which I don’t know what kind of [01:03:00] options a, a pure sports car would have. They’re talking mid fifties and I’m like, damn, that’s really reasonable. It’s still a lot of money, but really reasonable for what you’re getting.

Is it when you could get a GR Corolla? Rear wheel drive. That’s all I’m gonna say. The purists are gonna go with that. Depends on what you’re looking for. Three cylinders, a fury, twin turbo. Six cylinder. 400 horsepower. Was that horrible commercial with the uh, oh gosh. That horrible, weird, mad Max commercial, wasn’t it for like a, some Nissan back in the day?

Yeah, it was the other, the Nissan 300 sec or 300 zx, what was it? Something The turbos? Yeah. The, the, the uh, Ridley Scott. Yeah. Yeah, that’d go. That was so turbos kick. Spin. Yes, and the turbos kick. Terrible. That said, I think this car is gonna be awesome. I’m hoping it’s smaller than a three 70 Z. It kind of sits, I’m [01:04:00] hoping it’s a little longer than the three 50 was sleek low, like a two 40, things like that.

I really do want to see it in person. I asked about colors. I was told it’s going to be introduced in the following colors. Black, silver, metallic red teal, and that canary yellow that you’ve seen. You know, in all the press releases, I’m hoping for the signed Eugene Levy edition and then followed by some, maybe some dots and colors.

I asked if some of those classic seventies dots and colors were coming and the one of the dealerships said there’s rumor that metallic gray, burgundy and orange, which was a two 40 Z color, will also be available, not day one, kind of second run of cars, but no mention of browns, Brad. So I, I am very sorry to tell you that you cannot get a metallic brown Z at the moment.

In addition to that, Nissan dealers are taking deposits on 400 Zs, but they are not taking pre-orders. There are no guarantees right now. You cannot lock in a 400 Z if you want to. So probably [01:05:00] because they’re still unsure when the proto or the 400 Z is gonna get here. But I am stoked to go drive one. And I was visiting with our resident Z-Man not long ago, and I literally said, Hey, and I got three words out.

He goes, when are we gonna go drive it? He didn’t care about any of the details. He’s like, when are we gonna go drive it? So I think there’s a bunch of us here at GTM that are excited about this car and can’t wait for it to hit the dealership lots. Where are the horsepower numbers on? 400. 400. That’s all right.

My GR Corolla is gonna have like three 50 when it’s all said and done.

Is that from Boltons from Advanced Auto or what? What? No, that’s just, you know, it’ll say it’s like two 70 on the sticker, but really it’ll be three 50. Well, I will say in direct competition to this, I did confirm what Brad said last month, which is that the Supra is coming with Emmanuel, but only with a four cylinder turbo.

And that’s enough [01:06:00] about that. That is enough about that. Because who wants a Supra with a four cylinder? It’s like, who cares? The same people that bought the super before the na, oh God. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, nobody aspires to own a rental car. Is that true anymore? I mean, the Passats gone.

Are they still, I don’t know. There’s a lot of people that bought in palaces and can you still freaking get those at the running? Alright, hold on a second. You know, it says you bring that turd up yet again. Have I noticed a trend? Cuz every time we mention Impalas, I see them for like the next week.

Everyone that I see has tinted windows all the way around, including the windshield. And I wondered to myself, What the hell is going on with these impalas with tinted windshields. And then I realized the owners are so embarrassed that they exactly own an Impala. They have to tint the front windows too.

Exactly. That makes perfect sense. Everyone I see has [01:07:00] blacked out steel wheels. All the hubcaps have fallen off. Even the brand new ones like the 2020s or whatever the, whatever the year the last one came out, that would’ve came from the factory with eighteens. Nope. They all opted for the 16 inch steelies times are changing.

So maybe we will start wishing to, if only I could own that rental car. If you’re into the electric scene, which actually this is a great way to maybe go test drive some electric cars if you’re electric curious. We’ve already heard that Hertz is, has a purchase agreement with them, but they are expanding their EV lineup and they are going to be taking orders of pole stars.

So if you’re curious about that little electric car, uh, they’re taking 65,000 over the next five years, I guess, you know, because a lot of the Tesla, Tesla ones are showing up at like the California hertz at, at the different airports. I don’t know how will widespread this will become across the United States, but [01:08:00] check out your local Hertz if you’re interested in test driving.

A an ev wait was, was I supposed to be excited about that? Hey, this, this is the best we have right now. When was the last time anybody rented a car? Well, before, I guess Eric’s renting a car next week. I mean, I’m Ubering. Oh, see who? Who rents cars these days? Other than like 70 year old grandparents? Well, me before we couldn’t go anywhere.

And what did she get? Impalas and Malibu. So you know, Hey, whatever. Uh, actually I have gotten a fricking Malibu before, God, I can’t remember what my last Roma car was. Did you have that Jeep Renegade? I had a Jeep Renegade once in Hawaii. That was really cool. Especially going up into some of the high mountains.

It was kind of helpful for some of the different terrains. The Volkswagen, whatever the heck it is. Tiguan, the newer one a couple years ago, I can’t remember cuz there was one right before Pandemic locked us all in. But see you, you also rent cars internationally? Yes, I did. Yes. So, so that’s, that’s that’s different.

Yeah. [01:09:00] Domestic and international. Yeah. Cause you rented that Poeo, what was it, a 4,002 or whatever it was? Yeah. Mm-hmm. You wrote an article about that? Yeah. It’s pretty cool. Mm-hmm. At any rate, what I would love and I would go run it tomorrow if it was awkward. It hurts. Oh my God. It’s a new DeLorean. Oh my God.

Oh my god. Oxygen, I’m dying. I see. I’ve seen those left rear quarter panel. I’m having a heart attack. Exactly. So we are going to just get. Little snips and tidbits of this thing until August when apparently it’s going to be more largely revealed at some Concord Elegance, um, in Long Pebble Beach. Excuse me.

But they’ve, they’ve leaked a shot of just the left rear quarter panel of the back. I mean, I am sweating. I am palpitating goodnight nurse. I am sweating. You don’t get to see much, but I wanna see more. God, God damn. I [01:10:00] mean, what you do see is incredible. It’s the sexiest rear end I’ve seen in a long time.

It does remind me of the Z though, and I’m, I’m hooked. So I’m telling you, this card is a close second. The problem is, like we said, it’s gonna be 175 grand, but I tell you what, if it wasn’t, if it was even 90 grand, let’s say like the Rivian, I might even half consider it and go, you know what? Screw it. I’m gonna sell everything.

And I’m gonna have an electric DeLorean because if it looks as good as this left rear quarter panel and taillight would propose the rest of the vehicle looks like, I mean, it is gonna be a stunner. What I don’t want it to be is that. I looked across the room and I saw the flowing hair and then they turned around and it’s fucking garel.

And you’re like, you know, I don’t, I just, I don’t wanna get, I don’t wanna get my hopes up too much that it’s horrendous. I mean, considering the design house that’s backing this, yes, I should [01:11:00] keep my expectations low, but I shouldn’t have to. I shouldn’t have to. Has Giro ever disappointed us? I don’t think so.

I don’t think so either. And you know what, it’s funny, we mentioned him quite a bit on this show and his laundry dis is really long. And I tend to spout out, you know, the Rocco and the Mark one golf and then lunch at Delta and things like that. But there’s other cars on that list. Things like the BMW M one, which looks awful lot like the DeLorean, the Maserati Spider, and there’s some other vehicles.

I mean, his list of cars are just epically iconic and I cannot see him putting out a turd. This car is going to be just the revelation of all time. Like I, I think we’re gonna look at the new DeLorean and go, it’s right up there with. The the third Gen RX seven and the Mark four Supra and the Audi R eight.

It’s gonna be one of these designs that 30 years from now are gonna go. Do you remember when the new DeLorean came out? It’s gonna be freaking ballistic. [01:12:00] I read this other article that along the lines of DeLorean the, that at first I thought was an April Fool’s joke, but it didn’t come out on April Fools.

And since this is the April Fools episode, I’ll go with it. What if DeLorean made a group B rally car? And I’m like, okay, well you’ve, you’ve got my attention. You start talking about rally. I’m into a group B era especially, and I’m also thinking to myself, okay, would that really work? So let me answer that question first.

For any of the people out there thinking, yeah, that would, that’s never gonna happen. Most of us forget that the DeLorean is a rear mountain engine, very similar to a nine 11. We would all think it’s a mid engine, like a Lotus Esprit, and it’s not. How does that work for Rally? It would work for Rally because if you look at the Alpine reno, like the uh, the A one 10 and things like that rear mounted engine, just like a nine 11.

So, okay, it’s a possibility, it’s probable, we’ll go from there. But as I started to read the article, I was just like, the bottom paragraph itself just didn’t float with me. This whole thing about [01:13:00] John DeLorean sourcing turbos from Legend Industries and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and all this kind of stuff, and.

Spoiler alert. We have an episode coming soon where we actually spoke to a DeLorean aficionado, a DeLorean owner, and he clued us in on a lot of things and did some myth busting and whatnot. In the article, it says, you know, by 1984, the company collapsed in a year, and the DeLorean that were produced and sold in 1982 and 1983 were just leftovers that were never finished on the assembly line from the original 1981 run.

So there’s no way in hell that they were talking turbos and all this other kind of stuff for the DeLorean when they couldn’t even get this car right to begin with. Right? It went through so many iterations within a single year. There’s, according to, you know, this expert, there were tons of changes in that, you know, 12 to 18 months that there’s no way, so, awesome Pike Dream.

I like the idea of a DeLorean rally car, but [01:14:00] at that time period, Would it have competed against the giants from Poeo and from Audi and Lancia? No way. The rear wheel drive rally cars were out, so it would’ve been a backmarker even if it made quadruple horsepower. Everybody else was making rant over. I enjoyed seeing it in, in a little bit of livery.

I did too much to whoever this, this person who took it upon themselves to, you know, graphically change, do some Photoshop artwork. But nonetheless, it was kind of cool to see it with the extra headlights, rally lights and everything. But the real question is, what does the new one look like as a rally car?

We’ll have to wait till later this year for those you wait on baited breath, the edge of your seat ease you. Now how about this To wrap up random new EVs and other concepts, we haven’t been giving any attention to this little Netherland startup. Wait, are these the guys that created the, the house that broke down, that they had the trailer, they had the [01:15:00] wings, like a bat and all that stuff that we talked about?

You know, that’s a really good question. I wanna say no, but who knows. At any rate, we have got our EVs battery powered, this, that and the other, and we talked about hydrogen and other forms of motive other than gasoline and diesel. We haven’t talked so much about solar.

Yeah, right. So you laughed. But this startup company designing what they call the Lightyear solar electric vehicle, so s e v, the, I guess the, the, it’s called the Lightyear one. The company is Lightyear. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So we got Volkswagen with the ID bus and then we got the Lightyear. We got the Lightyear with the one it’s called the one the buzz light year.

Get outta here. The company is Lightyear. They’re promising a range of 450 miles on a single charge from their ultra efficient year one. [01:16:00] It only takes 30 years to check. No. No. Apparently it doesn’t. I don’t know that it’s necessarily ultra fast, but apparently it does. I think, I thought I saw, if you go to their website, into their technology page, which is a lot of interesting things that they’re doing, but I believe it recharges.

70 kilometers a day just from its solar panels. Is it the size of a greyhound? I mean, it’s uh, it looks huge. I mean, to be effective with solar panels, like who is it? Fisker That was toying with the solar roof. Tesla’s tees. The solar roof. Yeah. Every single college engineering department plays around with solar technology.

With solar and it never seems to work out. There’s a festival around it. Yeah. Well, they’ve got the Dutch on it, so do not worry. They will solve this problem I have. It’ll be made of balsa wood and have fake names from Nordic Myth. I’m sure. I have no doubt. Oh wait, [01:17:00] that’s, that’s idea. Nevermind. They have 53 square feet of solar panel on the roof.

I mean, the whole back thing is like, I don’t know, the latest in solar technology, blah, blah, blah. All the double curved arrays and yada yada, yada. And they’ve got like independently controlled motors on each of the wheels. You know what looks just like this? That Mercedes we talked about about 10 minutes ago.

Yes, yes. Weren’t the Dutch the ones that were experimenting with solar roads and solar sidewalks and things like that as well? I don’t, they’re all about that. Solar. I don’t remember. They might have been because there’s also like, I think there’s some other countries that were doing the roads that recharge.

Yeah. When you drive on them and stuff. I don’t know. It’s cool. At any rate, at least from a technology, engineering, science, et cetera, et cetera, it’s pretty interesting. It’s kind of exciting to see that what you can do, so whether or not this actually takes flight are, are the solar, are the [01:18:00] solar panels from Solar City?

What to infinity? I’m very, and see engineering scientifically very fascinating. Would love to, you know, see one, understand more. Practically speaking, I’d be worried. How much does it cost? If somebody, like you’re at your kids’ baseball game and someone LOBs a home, run over the parking lot right onto the roof of your S U V.

There are two places this will never be sold. North Eastern Russia and Alaska, where it is like dark six months out of the year. So not gonna happen. There’s no places will not be sold. I’m sure the Netherlands target market right now is, is anywhere in Russia? Shouldn’t they be doing wind power? Isn’t that their thing?

Like windmills that like stick to that. We’re gonna see cars with propellers on the back of, well, I guess with that it’s time to move on to Brad’s favorite section, lost and Found. [01:19:00] What have you found that should stay lost? We talk about it and we joke about it all the time. The Dodge Dart. Well folks, someone actually bought a brand new Dodge Dart in first quarter of this year.

Are you serious? Yes. Come on. How many more of these are sitting around? I think it’s like a game these days. Dealers are just sitting on ’em waiting to like pop, so they get a little article out there. This car was discontinued in 2016, as we’ve said many times before, month after month after month. First of all, what is crazier that a dealer had one to sell or that someone actually walked into the dealership and said, I wanna buy a Dodge Dart?

Is it not? I know it hasn’t been made for six years. Is it that competitively priced? I don’t know. What was the deal markup on it? Let’s see. I mean, it had to have been well priced to make someone go, I’ll yes, I’ll [01:20:00] buy that car instead of this brand new one over here. It had a stick shift. That’s why it sat on the lot cuz nobody knows how to drive a manual anymore.

Let’s be real. That’s the real answer. Some brave soul is grinding second gear as we speak in their brand new leftover 2016 Dodge Dart. Why does it Hertz pick all these up? Because they don’t make an electric dart because nobody wants to be that miserable Impala or dart. So should these dealerships and manufacturers continue to sell 2016 Dodge Darts, or should they manufacture or buy them back from the dealer, repurpose the semiconductors and chips to newer vehicles that they could sell for more.

At this point, from an accounting perspective, they’ve had to write the loss down on that unsold inventory for six years. I mean, they might as well just give the damn thing away at this point because they’ve lost everything on it. I wonder how many of these cars are actually still [01:21:00] floating around on dealer lots.

I want, we need to start calling Dodge dealerships and finding out if they just call Brad, that’s your mission for next month. Call all the Dodge dealerships in the DMV and go, do you have a Dodge Dart for sale? And see how many of ’em say yes. I only need to call one dealership and say, can you do a nationwide search on brand new dodged arts?

No. You gotta write down the reactions. You gotta tell us how many people hang up on you, how many people laugh at you, ask you if you’re crazy, and then ask them. If they say yes, ask them if it, it comes in a manual. You know how I need to call? I need to call Chuck LeDuc. Oh, we’ll leave that where it is.

That was a fun trip to the dealership. But speaking of things that are sitting around, I really enjoyed this article from the New York Auto Show where six racing and inspired vehicles from the eighties and nineties were put on display. I love seeing stuff like this. I thought the mix was pretty cool, especially because some of the vehicles that were in this [01:22:00] lineup were definitely not sold in the United States.

I’m digging the Ciro and BX four tc. As French cars go, and I’m not the biggest Citron fan, as we all know. I really like the bx. I think it’s cool. It looks like the backend of a Audi sport Quattro and the front end of, what was it, the Chrysler Conquistador or whatever, where the hell that car was? The Con Conquest.

The Conquest tsi. Yeah. Yes, which was the Mitsubishi ion. Yes, you’re right. It’s a drunk Frenchman. Looked at it. You are cuatro and said, yes, but we are French. We can do better. This is what we got. But it’s not fantastic, but it is rather awesome in how weird it is. What do you think, Tanya? You love square cars like this.

It’s quirky. The headlights are what throw me. I do not like that. The headlights are not even with the corner lights. That’s a cient thing. You have to get over that. [01:23:00] Oh, it just, it throws me. Cause I’m like, and then the hood doesn’t line with the end of the fender and I’m like, those lines are killing me.

But if I look down the side of the car, I love the flared out fenders on the front in the back. It looks like something out of trauma. If this car wasn’t all white, let’s say the grills were like a smoked or a, like a satin black. A set of like mesh b b s wheels from like time appropriate with a nice thick lip on them.

Maybe all yellow french headlights in the front, you know, some other accents. This thing would be sick. We wouldn’t even be talking about like what it looks like. I think the problem is it’s, it’s very much refrigerator white and that draws you into the other aspects of it. The front end does look like it’s made of Legos, but that’s very, very citro.

The, the, the, the fender flares are made from recycled matrix printers. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Like this is built out of a fax machine. But you know what, if you gave me one of these, I would [01:24:00] drive the shit out of it. Like I. I, I like this car a lot. I think it’s cool. Yeah, I think it’s cool. The other car that I really liked on this list, I mean there’s other cars on this.

Oh, the Ford RS 200, I mean the Ford RS 200. I hate to say it’s commonplace. The other car that’s on this list for me is also French, and a lot of people probably don’t know about mvs and the Venturis. The Venturi are freaking awesome. They were the French answer to like the Pantera and the Lotus Esprit.

These things look like the Ferrari F 40 evolution. The GT P cars from the Fr, I mean, they’re just fantastic. I would love to drive one of these. I’d love to just touch one of these. I think they’re gorgeous. It’s a noble, before Noble was correct, in my opinion, outside of Bugattis, which are French, This is the sexiest French car, in my opinion.

Like hands down, like this is the sports car of sports cars and it goes like unrecognized a lot of [01:25:00] times in the history of automobiles. Like the venturis are really cool. They had different models and they had the 300, they had the Atlantic. This one is a bit r as the 400 trophy edition with the big, you know, center lug wheels and, and all that.

I, ah, it’s just freaking awesome. Now there is one car on this list. Did you guys notice I actually drove one of these. Yes. And I wrote an article about it. And that was the Ult R five Turbo. Turbo Dose two. That’s right. This thing is a little pocket rocket. Wasn’t that article also titled Don’t Drive Your Heroes?

Uh, that is very true. I enjoyed it and hated it all in the same three hour span that I spent with it. I love these cars. I love the idea of these cars. They’re quirky as all get out super awkward, but they’re just full of life and personality and they have period appropriate turbo lag as I’ve said many times.

But the thing that’s impressive about what was a shit box that they turned into a, a [01:26:00] hot hatch race car is from 1.4 liters. It’s like just this screaming little dragon and it just lights up the world and you feel like you can just attack every corner on every B road. It was a joy to drive and a misery at the same time because of just how awkward it is.

And I don’t know. I still love it, but I still hate it. I’m happy for the experience. Shout out to Alan for letting me drive his and giving me the keys for several hours to really spend some time with one of my heroes. Uh, as disappointing as that was. That said, we would be remiss if we didn’t talk about Tesla.

You have some Tesla things to talk about. I do. And if you remember our Patreon special, a couple drive-throughs back. I ranted about city traffic and whatnot and you know, I got the opportunity to revisit the city yet again, and I started to notice. A lot of Model Ys. [01:27:00] I don’t see them that often. And you know what?

I started to look at them and look at them cuz they were everywhere. Just, I was in Northern Virginia and I’m like, wow, I’m in the land of the Teslas, especially the Model Ys for a half second. I was like, you know, they’re not bad looking. They’re really not bad looking. That, that I could, I could learn to live with this amphibious, you know, duck bill, front end platypus thing.

Because from the back it looks better than the three, it’s not as aggressive as the S Right. I saw a couple S’s on the road in all black. They looked at the Batmobile until my wife sent me this link from Instagram that. I posted in our show notes and when you see it, you can’t unsee it. And that’s because why?

Because it looks like he who shall not be named are we talking about Lord Voldemort’s. And when you see that Instagrammer and when you see that wonderful service announcement, you can never unsee it again. And you realize, yes, all Teslas look like Lord Voldemort. And that pretty much sealed it for me.

[01:28:00] It’s never gonna happen if, if nothing else. That little Instagram quick, uh, video is worth her, her her fi her the final moments of that video are amazing. A reenactment. It’s fantastic. Yeah. So we talked about the cyber rodeo earlier, besides, you know, the cyber truck, this, that, and the other. There was another unveiling about another little project going on with Tesla and Elon Musk.

So we’ve, and at first I thought this was like, I was like, oh, it’s more hyperloop stuff. Did we decide not to put a, a model three through the loop, but more traditional looking little train car? No, no. Sort of similar, but no. This will go on the roads and it is being called the Robo taxi, and I think it is very much what that name implies.

It’s an autonomous. Taxi Johnny Cab. Yes. If you Google Johnny Cab and go to images for people who are not [01:29:00] familiar with Total Recall starring Schwarzenegger, this thing does look like a Johnny Cab. Oh my God. All my nightmares are coming to be realized. This is horrendous. No, I get it. It has a place in cities like New York and LA and Chicago, et cetera.

I can see it working. I mean, autonomous buses, you know, it makes sense. The Johnny Cab thing aside, which I didn’t go to initially, I don’t hate it. And it’s funny cuz the rendering shows, uh, lax terminal too on it. That that’s what it’s servicing, which, yeah, that makes total sense. Can we replace, if you’re from the Virginia area, can we replace those nasty, weird bus things at Dulles Airport with like this, those things are awesome.

They are leftover props from Empire Strikes Back. They’re the at a s from the Planet Auth. They’re amazing. They’re a staple at Dulles. They’ve been there forever. Gosh. Yes, they have. And apparently they still run. So kudos to that engineering marvel. I, I like to see stuff like this. Cause I think [01:30:00] bustling cities, it makes sense to go electric for vehicles that are just shooting back and forth all day long or sitting there idling.

We don’t need to be polluting the environment for that. And you’re never going too far away with cabs necessarily. If you’re inner city, you’re at airports or things like that where it makes sense. You can go back and charge you. You, you shouldn’t have range anxiety. You know what else makes a lot of sense, especially if you’re in the city.

Uh, trains, light rail, subway, monorail, which is fine if you have new cities, but if you have an established city that doesn’t have the space, the real estate for that, that’s the problem. That becomes really expensive. Or you’re demolishing in infrastructure that’s already there. Well, what’s more, what’s more expensive?

A dollar per mile on the Johnny Cab or getting on the light rail, which you could go less than a dollar per mile, which that’s still pretty expensive. If you, which, if you consider the price of fair on the DC Metro, like that’s a loaded statement. Like less than a dollar per [01:31:00] whatever the hell he said will cost less per mile than a bus ticket.

Okay, bus ticket. I don’t honestly know how much a bus ticket costs. Not to offend anybody that rides a bus, you know, just, no, I just, I have not, other than like Megabus those big buses and I can’t remember how much that ticket cost. I haven’t had the o opportunity in the United States to really ride buses, have done it in other countries, and they’re not that expensive.

They’re like pennies. I don’t know what this, less than a cost per dollar is cuz he pushes this in other countries. He’s gonna be, need to be far less than a dollar per mile to compete. My expectations are thoroughly lowered, lowered expectations. Well, since we’re still talking about Tesla, this next one was pretty cool, but it goes into that atrocity category.

If you will, you take a 1950 Jag bar mark five and you power it by a Tesla. And I’m like, okay, well we’ve done EV swaps before, not a big deal. But the more I [01:32:00] look at this, did they graft the body onto a Tesla? Not just swap out the drive, train and retrofit into this JAG because it’s got the Tesla wheels, it’s low to the ground, it’s different suspension, all this kinda stuff.

So I’m proud of the tenacity that it takes to do a project like this. You know, the, the fortitude and the then the money. But I don’t know if I would’ve ruined a classic Jag like that. I think he made the Jag better. You’re probably right. He made run. He right. You right. Made it Jags that run Tesla powered.

No, but so sticking with our EVs here. So obviously there’s a lot of different companies out there that are piloting autonomous vehicles and doing a lot of beta testing, blah, blah, blah, blah. So there’s one particular company out in California, in the San Francisco area whose self-driving car was pulled over by the Poppo.

It, it didn’t hit him first. It didn’t hit him first. No. Did not hit anything much to the police officer. Surprised when [01:33:00] he got out of his vehicle and went to go to the driver’s side door. He realized that there was nobody inside the car. And there’s somebody like standing on the street corner, he’s like videotaping this whole thing.

So then you know, you kind of see him looking in or whatever, and then he like goes to walk back to his cruiser. As he walks back to his cruiser, the autonomous vehicle takes off, takes off, crosses the intersection and then actually pulls over, puts its hazard lights on and pulls over and stops and then does not take off again.

And the police, like you see like speed up behind and pull over again. Him and the accompanying officer get out and they’re all like circling the vehicle. There might have been a number on the car. So they called the company that was running this autonomous vehicle. The autonomous vehicle did not get a citation.

I think that’s pretty funny to see a like what did the autonom, what did the programming say? Cuz the light was red and there was a car in front of it. The light turned green, the car in front took off, the [01:34:00] autonomous car waited. The police officer approached. I’m wondering like if it realized there was a pedestrian there and wouldn’t take off, cuz it looked like the brake lights were like flashing a little bit like it was pumping brakes.

And then when it registered the police car or the police officer backed away. It was like, oh, I can go now. Cause the lights crashed. So then I don’t know long it would’ve pulled over again. You know, this occurred to me, you know, we were talking earlier about the, the hack for the Mazdas and the software and things like that.

If you guys remember in the middle of the night, one of the road conditions is you can have the traffic lights flashing where they’ll flash yellow or red and things like that. And you’re supposed to treat that either as a yield or as like a stop sign and then keep going cause it’s the middle of the night and there’s barely any traffic there.

I’m wondering if in the rules of the programming of these autonomous vehicles, that particular red flashing is in the sub-routine and it thinks it might be in the middle of the night and it’s does like a stop sign thing. And then when all is clear, it takes off. And this might be what’s tripping. [01:35:00] The police cars might be tripping this sub-routine in the logic system.

Right? And they need to differentiate to look for different colors. Well, this did happen at night, but there we go. I don’t know why it happened. There wasn’t really much explanation, but that’s kind of pretty funny. Does anybody have control of the vehicle from afar, like a drone to where they can take control of the vehicle if they need to at a certain point?

Isn’t that what the OnStar button’s for? I would assume. Assume somebody in the vehicle to push it. I would probably assume that they must have an over the airway of taking control. Control vehicle. Yeah. Stopping it. Opening the doors. Cause the doors are locked. Cause the key tried to like open the door and it wouldn’t, we’ve got those type of autonomous vehicles that are, you know, obviously it’s, it’s tech for when we all get level 537 autonomous full self-driving capability in our Teslas and we can read books and play games and roll the seat back and sleep.

And then there’s a lot of companies that are also doing it to, like Domino’s wants to deliver your pizza with its little mini autonomous [01:36:00] pod thing. Right. Didn’t Amazon try that with the drone? Sure. Delivering your packages. But how do you feel about GM is patenting autonomous tech to train new drivers?

Without a human instructor, it couldn’t be any worse than what’s on the road today.

Let’s answer this with another question. How successful have you ever been doing computer-based training on your own? Right? So if you can’t figure out how to use Microsoft Word by yourself, you ain’t gonna figure out how to drive. Just cuz you play Microsoft Flight Simulator doesn’t mean you can go fly a plane just cuz you played.

Mario Card doesn’t qualify you to drive a car. This I, this scares me. Like, I’m sorry. This is just like all the things we’ve talked about in high performance driving where they want to take the coaches out of [01:37:00] the car and do high performance education remotely. It’s impossible. Why? Why, why though? Like, and I don’t think it makes sense, but I could get almost the rationale in that scenario where it’s like, okay, you’re minimizing when the oh shit moment happens in something very catastrophic.

Bodily injury, you’re minimizing it by having one less person in the seat. But what is the data around how many people are getting into huge accidents or dying from their in-car student driving instruction? I, I wanna know how the risk reward system works in this autonomous driving instructor. Do you earn Mario coins, like as you go along?

Like how do you know if you’re doing a good job? Like how do you get feedback from this? I mean, we talk about those systems for high performance driving, like the Garmin where it’s supposed to coach you without a coach. Like I was, like, I was just alluding to, I, I don’t see this working with a 15 and a half year old, you know, with their learner’s permit.

What happens when that 15 and a half year old is like some [01:38:00] super hacker and like, brings his laptop in there, hooks into like, oh geez, your system disables it and then it goes for a joyride for 10 hours. Uh, you know, I don’t know. Uh, well, they, they don’t wanna drive, so it doesn’t matter anyway. Right. But, but that’s a, that’s a subject.

We won’t go there. It would probably be easier to teach people via TikTok versus autonomous. You’re right. That’s true. Don’t even get me started on that. More effective. Well, they’re definitely not learning how to drive from movies like the Fast and the Furious. Really. I thought that was a really good source of accurate driving information.

You know, I told you guys I was eventually gonna watch drives to Survive. Guess what? You didn’t April Fools. Yeah, I didn’t. What I did watch is fast nine. I finally got around to watching it and you know, we had debated for a while doing an, an entire episode surrounding this movie, but I’m gonna save you all 45 minutes of your life.

You’re never gonna get back because it’s not even worth showcasing the [01:39:00] movie as an episode. I don’t know if you that bad. I don’t know if you two have seen it, but I’m gonna put it this way. I haven’t seen a Fast and Furious movie this bad since the fourth one where it was all CGI i’d and they’re flying out of that mountain in Mexico and all the cars are like airborne.

It was ridiculous. Even my wife was like, this is the stupidest movie I have seen in probably 10 years. And that encapsulates a lot of the older Fast and the Furious movies at this point. It’s just so ridiculous. It doesn’t even try to take itself seriously. It, it completely jumped the shark, cool cars, all that kind of stuff.

The story is exactly like you see all the memes, family, family, family. Every two seconds it’s family, my family. And you’re like, oh my God, stop. The soul crushing part is they explain away Tokyo Drift using Kurt Russell, who is quote unquote Mr. Nobody, and saying that he somehow faked Han’s death. It was all like this thing, it’s, it’s such bs.

And then they bring back [01:40:00] Caleb Temple Buck from American Gothic, you know the The star. Ooh, the star of Tokyo. Ooh, really? And he’s like the redneck rocket scientist in this movie. Like Brad love this because he builds this rocket powered Fiero, which then they launch in into space where Tyrese and Ludacris are like in this Firo and they’re using it as a missile to take out a satellite.

And I mean, the whole thing is just absolutely. It is beyond belief, like how ridiculous it is. Did they have to pay Elon Musk royalties for the idea of launching a car in the space? Question they must have. It was the same color as the Tesla that they launched into space. Did the fear come in that color?

Yeah. Oh yeah. It’s like a reddish burgundy color. Yeah, absolutely it did. I feel like I only ever saw him white from the blood of brown people it hit. So I’ll say this. It’s so bad you have to watch it. It’s just horrendous. Ous at atrocious. [01:41:00] I saw it opening that we, whatever weekend it was first released, uh, for home.

I will say I am anxiously waiting for fast 10 reality sets in and people will argue with me about this, but the best in the franchise. Was five and six. They are one movie split into two pieces. They tell a complete story. It was very much Oceans 11, you know, fast nine. They’re super spies and it’s like, next up, you know, GI Joe and Cobra are gonna show up.

I, I I, this was, it’s like 18. I thought this was it. I thought the franchise is done. Oh. Oh, you’re funny. Oh yeah. Really funny. Get at is this, is this like how uh, everybody retires and he comes back two, two days later. Yeah. This, this is like the role Tom Brady retired two days later. He is back channel. You heard one’s 34th retirement tour.

You heard there’s an animated series, like Fast and Furious Super Spy thing on one. Yeah. That’s been on Netflix channel. Sorry, Netflix for like years. Oh my God. Yes. Yeah, it’s called Initial D. Right. Which that kind of stuff makes sense as a cartoon. Yeah. [01:42:00] You can suspend all of my realities when they’re cartoon characters.

Yeah, no, a hundred percent. Like everything makes sense. Well, when they do all this live action, which isn’t how the Fast and the Furious franchise. Started, it’s just gradually became more and more ridiculous with each passing movie. But a lot of these movies where as we digress here, they’re taking things that were never human.

And then, yeah, making ’em live action. Just make no sense when you put actual human beings, leave ’em as cartoons. The best part of that movie was Helen Muren. Yes. She was awesome. I agree with that. She was amazing. We really liked that part. Jess, uh, absolutely enjoyed that part. Going back to what I said before, five and six when they were doing that whole Italian job thing, you know, trying to go in that direction.

I thought that was awesome. So it’s five was the one in Brazil, right? Yeah, that was by far my favorite. That I actually really like Tokyo Drift too. This new one. It’s just the love child of Fast and Furious four and Hobbs and Shaw, where Hobbs and Shaw was over the top [01:43:00] too. It’s just weird. And I will say they needed to stop with the whole Brian and, and pay and homage.

And then at the, as you know, spoiler alert, at the end of Fast nine, he shows up in the gtr, but you never see him get out of the car. I was like, guys, just stop. Just stop. It’s done. We know. Okay. Fa. Family, family, family. Oh my God, it’s so terrible. What are they all like 197 now? Uh, it’s, it’s pretty pathetic.

That said, I’ll watch the new Kingsman movie. Like they’ll all merge, it’ll become one universe. That’ll be Fast. 10. It’ll be Marvel, mass Universe. Oh, the, the, the Fast and Furious multiverse. It’ll be like the Matrix movie where you’re not sure if it’s John Wick or The Matrix, like what the hell’s going on with Keanu.

Same thing with Vin Diesel. It’d just be Riddick. I mentioned earlier, you know, we had that Patreon special double episode from the other drive through where I ranted about city traffic. And you know, we talked about some of the unbelievable things that you see on the road this time. [01:44:00] As I was spotting Model Y going down 66 in Virginia, I noticed something else that absolutely left me gobsmacked and I must have done 10 double takes because I could not believe what I was seeing.

I don’t know if this vehicle had autonomous driving level 12 or otherwise, but what I witnessed is incredible. You might think might be an April Fool’s joke, but it is not. I kid you not, I bullshit. You not. I looked over and I saw a man. With Barba SA all over his face. Barbasol, by the way, is a brand of shaving cream and he was straight razor at 65 miles an hour going down 66.

And I was like, you got to be shitting me. Like I have so many questions. I’m sure you guys do too, and I am unable to answer any of them. Can you imagine straight razing going down the highway, the neck area. It’s a little bit of a delicate, [01:45:00] delicate area that I would be a little cautious. Yeah, that’s a, that’s a future Darwin Award winner.

Well, yeah, there’s a, don’t understand all this, uh, blood everywhere, you know, and where do you wash the blade? Where’s your basin of hot water and your after shave and you’re rolled up hot towel. You know all these things and things that you might need as you’re shaving. Like where, where are you flicking the shaving cream?

Cuz once you’ve done a, a pass, you’re, you’re shaving, you’re flicking it onto the.

The after the after shave and the towel and all that’s built into the, uh, the airbag. So when he, it comes out and it cleans him up, oh crap, you know, just skip the straight razor and use theta airbag a hundred percent. In all seriousness, after a while I felt really awkward cuz I kept looking at this guy and I kept trying to match his [01:46:00] speed and I’m like, this is unreal.

At one point I did drop back to make sure that his license plate wasn’t from Florida, because if it was. I think I could have believed it a little bit more. Oh my gosh. Only in Virginia. There’s all kinds everywhere, unfortunately, or fortunately. But speaking of Florida, man, we’re actually gonna start with Michigan, man.

Oh no, this one’s all right. The Michigan man’s arrested after stolen school bus Chase, and, and immediately you’re going like, really? There was a chase involving a school bus. Were there kids in the bus? No, this happened at 8:20 PM at night. Bus was in, you know, a lot behind a locked fence, which he busted through with the bus.

How did he get to the bus first? Those are details, you know, he probably climbed the fence. I don’t know. He took a bus to the bus. He took a bus to the bus. He was just walking down the [01:47:00] road, having to see a school bus, you know, Hey, I think I might wanna go first. Spin. The best part of this is wheels on the bus go.

I was waiting for somebody to do it. The best part is to quote, police said they tried to stop the bus, but it quickly took off. What kind of bus was this? It was that drag bus. Have you seen that thing where it stands up on its ass and shoots flames? It’s the drag bus. It’s a Tesla bus. It must have been because how, how you had trouble keeping up with this.

I don’t even, okay. Yeah. Unfortunately, he did like crash into somebody. Um, luckily they only had some minor injuries from that, but only, only in Michigan. The one in the laws he broke was a malicious destruction of property greater than $999, but less than 20. That was for that fence. At today’s prices, [01:48:00] that’s, uh, their, their prices.

I they, what, what the hell did they pull him over for? They couldn’t have gotten him for speeding because I’ve never been, they pulled him over for stealing a bus. Well, how did they know it was stolen? I mean, I’ve never seen a bus. Cause it’s nine o’clock at night and the bus was jacked because there was a chain lick fence dragging underneath the bus.

But let’s go south to our Floridian friends. So don’t do this kind of stuff. People, oh my gosh, what dumb people? Florida man drove 112 miles an hour on shoulder. To impress girlfriend. Isn’t that legal Now? I thought they changed the laws on that. The real question is, what was he driving? 112 miles an hour.

Not a bus. Sad. Florida. It’s Florida. Brevard County. My guess is a Pontiac Sunfire can Can a Pontiac Sunfire hit 112 miles an hour downhill with the [01:49:00] wind. Not even with a Tesla, Florida flat. There’s no Florida flat, and the cop had to accelerate to 125 miles an hour to catch him. Actually, it was probably a Chevy Lumina.

Ooh, ooh, Aluma. That’s that’s a pull that haven’t seen one of those forever. This was on Interstate 95 also. This is a big highway road. Please don’t do this. People looking at the driver, it was definitely a Crown Vic. Now that could get 212 miles an hour. It’s gotta be like a 2005 Dodge Charger. You know, something like that that nobody the other, the other great thing is he told the cops that he was showing off to his girlfriend, who apparently was allegedly following in a separate vehicle.

So was she also doing 112 miles an hour down the shoulder to follow him? So allegedly in a separate vehicle. And she’s allegedly a real person. That’s true. The alleged girlfriend, it’s a sweater on the back of a chair. [01:50:00] He was talking about Siri and his cell phone there. It is a light month for Florida.

They’re just coming out of winter in Florida. That’s true. That true. Yeah. They’re hibernation. That’s true. And I think that’s the case for Dill Pickle here. What?

Yes, he is affectionately known by the cops. The deputies nicknamed him Dill Pickle. It’s like Chuck Duck. So if you haven’t watched, duck is a real person. He sold me that. So if you haven’t seen the short little video from the Marion County Sheriff’s Office dash cam of this, you should probably check it out because Dill Pickle led these

dill pickle led these guys on a chase through some really narrow forest wood area. It’s called rally. Do [01:51:00] you notice what I noticed, what he’s driving, because he’s quote, rallying these narrow roads. You can’t see the pickup truck. He’s driving, but the pickup truck has a full tow bed on the back. Like he’s towing.

No, he’s, he’s towing a trailer. He’s towing a trailer, evading the police, chasing through the woods. My guess is it’s an F two 50 diesel from like the nineties, and it’s definitely a landscape trailer. I mean, he wins, he wins the day on that. I mean, props to try and to do a, a chase through the woods with a truck and trailer.

Oh man. He saw the, he saw the video with the Rivian Drag Race and he said, hold my beer

Dill Pickle. Unfortunately, dill Pickle crashed into a tree and was apprehended by those deputies. I think we have the tagline for this episode now. Pickle Rick. Well, folks, [01:52:00] I guess it’s time we go behind the pit wall for Motor Sports News. What’s hot this month in the world of Motorsport there? Brad F1 started not too long ago, and Mercedes is middle of the pack.

Ferrari is leading. Woo. It’s about time. Yep. Yep. Red Bull had yet another car failure. Yep. Yep. Red Bull is proving to be as reliable. What radio station? What radio station were they tuned to? 94 9. NPR Sweaty Balls. I believe there’s a race this weekend, but I think there’s a race every weekend. It’s, uh, Emilio.

Yeah, they’re in, uh, they’re in Italy. Are they in Molo? No. Otdr, Enzo, Dino Rio SpaghettiO is the Emilio Oman. They’re, they’re in mlo whatever, former home of the San Marino Grand. Anyway, there’s Dope Pickle Weekend. Uh, there’s a F F1 race. This weekend we got Bill pickled, Dick Trickle and Coltran. Think[01:53:00]

so other than that, it’s been pretty light in Motor Sports News. There was an announcement this year that at the upcoming joint IndyCar IMSA weekend at Detroit, because you know, when they close down the streets, they wanna run as many races as they possibly can. So they’re offering free entry on Friday, June of the third for the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix.

So if you’re interested in getting in on that, check the show notes for this episode and it’ll take you to where you can learn more about how you can get those free tickets for Friday, June the third at the IndyCar and IMSA Detroit Grand Prix. For the upcoming local news and events, brought to us by collector car guide.net, the ultimate reference for car enthusiasts.

We have the 34th annual Apple Blossom Festival and car Show coming up on May 1st at the Frederick County Fairgrounds in Maryland. The 13th annual Vaga Bonds car and truck show in East Petersburg Park in Pennsylvania. On May 7th, May [01:54:00] 14th, the Audi Club Potomac Chesapeake chapter is holding their annual spring fun run starting in Mitchellville, Maryland.

Lots of back road driving, uh, ending up with a nice scenic lunch. Spring Mills ffa. Car, truck and Tractor Show will be held on May 21st in Martinsville, West Virginia. There will be a Street Survivors Memorial Day show on May 29th at the Glen Burnie, Maryland Elks Lodge, and tons more events like this and all their details are available over@collectorcarguide.net.

It’s time for the hbd junkie.com Trackside report. So what’s coming up in May in our general area. Well, I got some news the other day from New Jersey Motorsports Park that they are starting up again. Their outdoor carting league at the Tempest, which is their carting track on campus alongside of Lightning and Thunderbolts.

Those did kick off in March and they run about every five weeks on Wednesday evenings with a couple week break in between. And they’re running those leagues throughout the season. And you can learn [01:55:00] more at njp.com/rental-cart-league if you want to get in on that. And so we are looking forward to actually running the Tempest later this year at our Summer Bash.

Annual celebration along with the folks over at Emra. So if you’re interested in learning more about that, our details for our Summer Bash eight is gonna be up on our website soon, so look forward to that. I also got a recent press release from the Audi Club, especially the Northeast region. They were a little late to the game, releasing their schedule for this year, and they finally published it.

And they have a bunch of events coming up starting in May. They’re gonna be at Limerock a whole bunch of this year. They’re also gonna be at Palmer in July. They’re gonna be at the I S A series event, which is where they run the G T L M and gt uh, ECAR. None. The prototypes usually show up at Limerock because it’s so short.

They’ll be there onsite, you know, Audi corrals and all that kind of stuff. On Friday, July the 16th, they’ve got some [01:56:00] other summer drives. They’ll be at Watkins Glen in August. They’re doing another event at Thunderbolt in New Jersey, also in October. And they also added. Pit race to their schedule in June, and then last but not least a sudden add-on adding an advanced only solo day, Saturday, August the 27th at Limerock Park.

So lots of stuff going on in the Northeast region, especially with the Audi Club. I mean, this is probably the biggest track schedule they’ve had in quite a long time. So if you’re looking to hook up with a new group, try something new and go to some of these iconic tracks like Limerock, like Palmer Pit Race, Watkins Glen, et cetera, check out the Audi Club.

So you go to audi club.org and then jump from there into all the different schedules in all the different regions around the country. On top of that, there’s been yet another addition to the hooked on driving Northeast Calendar for 2022. They’ve added yet another Watkins Glen date. They will be at Watkins Glen from April 29th through May [01:57:00] one.

Yes, that’s right. Another three days at Watkins Glen here in late April, early May. And as we mentioned last month, as a reminder, they have added another V I R full course date for July the 22nd through 24th, and that is also another three day weekend to the H O D calendar. So good to see that more track dates are opening up.

So keep an eye out for that. And if you wanna learn more about all of the available track days around the country, be sure to check out h hpd junkie.com. In case you missed out. Check out the other podcast episodes that aired in April. We are excited to announce our working relationship with s Rro Motorsports GT America series, powered by a w s and CrowdStrike.

We got to interview president of SRO America, Greg Gill, and talk about the future of GT three, GT four and touring car racing, along with some healthy debate over balance of performance and much more. We talked with veteran S E C A, autocrossers, Tom Hill and Todd Lilly about their [01:58:00] experiences racing two very different cars, a turbo Miata, and a modified 66 G T O.

And we tried to figure out who makes the hotdog and who tells the lies in a full length pit stop, Minnesota available on our Patreon. We got the history and details on the amusement park of Motorsports, better known to many of us as Hyper Fest when we chatted with Hyper Fest founder Chris Coto from the National Autosport Association.

Thank you to everyone that came on the show this month and we look forward to more SRO sponsored Break Fixx episodes later this season. And don’t forget if you’re tuning in for the first time, you’ve got only 112 episodes to catch up on. So we have some new Patreons for the month of April. Big shout outs to our new Patreon supporters, Bob and Jen wreath from the great state of Texas for becoming G T M supporters through Patreon.

We salute you. And by the way, your medium size schwag is on its way. And remember, for everything that we talked about on this episode and more, be sure to check out the follow-on [01:59:00] article and the show notes available@gtmotorsport.org. And a couple other shout outs, we have some anniversaries. Todd Lilly, as we referenced earlier from the autocross episode, uh, that he was this year’s GTM or award recipient and celebrating one year with gtm, along with Graham Clemson and his low cost Super seven.

We look forward to seeing them both Trackside this year. That’s great and a special thanks to guest hosts. No one. That’s right, Brad. But if you are interested in subbing in for Brad or Tanya on a subsequent drive-through episode, you’re more than welcome to throw your name in the hat. Let us know. We’d love to have you on the panel to come and debate the month’s news and give us your comic input or comic relief or whatever it might be.

And they’re always a good time. They’re always a lot of fun. And we appreciate past guest hosts that we’ve had on the drive-through, and we look forward to seeing them again later this year. So if you’re interested in that, be sure to reach out to us at crew chief@gtmotorsports.org. Any other shout outs we got there, Brad?

[02:00:00] Um, that you know Tanya. Thanks. Oh, geez. Not her again. And to all the members who support G T m, without you, none of this would be possible. Now we’re gonna gear up for the second half of the episode, right? What the F are you talking about? Hashtag April Fools. I so hate April Fools. The older I get, the more I despise it because I look online and I see, oh my god, that’s kind of weird, but it could be kind of cool.

Yeah, yeah. Look at this. And why the hell is that person doing that? And it’s like, check the date, check the date, check the date. Loser. Like, I mean, next thing you know you’re sending a thousand bucks to a Nigerian prince. You know that’s how it all starts. Or a hundred dollars to Elon Musk. That’s your bad decision.

You gotta look at that. And that’s a wrap.

Well, here we are in the drive through line. Me and her cars in front of us, cars in back of us all. Just waiting to order. [02:01:00] There’s some idiot in a Volvo with this bright son behind me. Ilene out the window and scream, Hey, watch. A trying to do blind me the wife.

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. 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 [02:02:00] 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.

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HyperFest at 20: How a Wild Idea Became America’s Ultimate Automotive Festival

Gran T

April 19, 2022

HyperFest at 20: How a Wild Idea Became America’s Ultimate Automotive Festival

What started as a risky experiment to get tuner kids onto racetracks has evolved into one of the most eclectic, immersive, and beloved automotive lifestyle events in the country. HyperFest, now celebrating over two decades of tire smoke, off-road dust, and musical mayhem, is more than just a motorsports gathering – it’s a rolling tribute to car culture in all its forms.

Chris Cobetto, founder of HyperFest and regional director for NASA Mid-Atlantic, didn’t set out to create a mega-event. He was just trying to fill seats at his NASA track days. Back in 2001, NASA was a West Coast phenomenon, and Chris was pioneering its East Coast expansion. But the tuner crowd—240SXs, Civics, and the like – weren’t showing up. So he asked: “What if we made the track day feel more like a party?”

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

A chance conversation with Mike DeFord from Carlisle Events sparked the idea: combine a car show with track time, drifting, and music. Throw in a VHS tape of Japanese drifting (yes, VHS), and HyperFest was born – equal parts grassroots hustle and gearhead dreamscape.

The inaugural event at Summit Point Raceway drew just 800 attendees – far short of the 10,000 hoped for. But the smiles were real, and the vibe was electric. Drifting made its East Coast debut, with a young Vaughn Gittin Jr. winning the first US Drift Nationals. Bikini contests (later swapped for Daisy Dukes), live bands, and a chaotic mix of motorsports disciplines set the tone for what would become a rolling circus of automotive fun.

Spotlight

Notes

This episode of Break/Fix podcast features Chris Cobetto, founder of HyperFest, and Matt Rocholl, social media and marketing director for HyperFest. They discuss the inception and evolution of HyperFest, a premier automotive lifestyle event now in its 20th year, initiated as part of the National Autosport Association’s (NASA) growth on the East Coast. The discussion covers the event’s multi-faceted activities including road racing, drifting, off-roading, rallying, and unique contests like the Power Wheels downhill race. They reflect on operational lessons, challenges faced, and the festival’s impact on the automotive community. Looking forward, they anticipate the continuous growth and potential expansion of HyperFest, emphasizing the importance of family and community in motorsport culture.

Hyperfest celebrated its 20th anniversary this season, but let’s talk about how it all got started? Why? How?
What is Hyperfest all about? Is it a festival? What kinds of “events” go on during the course of the weekend. Let’s talk about a few?
- Drifting (ridealongs, bash, games, demonstrations)
- Tire Rack Ultimate Track Car Challenge
- Time Attack / Time Trials
- Koni Power Wheels Attack by Red Line Oil
- Hagerty Car Show presented by SpeedTrendSociety
- National Auto Sport Association Road Racing
- Off-Road Experience presented by Chaos Fab Shop (obstacle courses, trail runs, ridealongs)
- X-Force Exhaust Burnout Contest & Sound Off
- Hawk Performance HyperDrives (where you can drive your own car on track with an instructor)
- Motul Rally Experience featuring Exedy Rally Rides, RallySprint, and RallyCross
- Kaizen Autosport Racecar Ridealongs
- Club HyperFest
- Helicopter Rides
- HPDE: High Performance Driving Event
- Off-Road Rides
- Models
- Karting
- Vendor Midway
- Kid Zone
- PRS Air Guitar and Shred Contests
- Spectator Games
- Camping (tent, car, trackside, family, RV)
Where was Hyperfest held this year? How can you run so many events in one place?
For someone that has never been to a Hyperfest event before, what should they expect? What does it cost?
Where will Hyperfest be next year? What does the next couple of years look like? What does the next 20 years look like?

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: Hey everybody, crew Chief Eric here. I wanted to give you a heads up before we head into this episode that we did have some technical issues with the audio. We’ve done our best to make corrections so that it’s easier to listen to. But unfortunately, you know, there’s always challenges with internet connection, the different systems that people are using, the audio quality itself.

So please by all means, sit back and enjoy this episode. The content in it is amazing, but our apologies for the quality right up front with activities taking place on [00:01:00] asphalt, dirt, mud, grass, and even in the air. From camping with your friends and family, riding with world-class professional drifters, or enjoying music from a variety of artists.

Hyper Fest is the destination for those who want to be immersed in one of the premier automotive lifestyle events and offers numerous activities to enjoy both on and off the track over the course of an entire weekend. With us tonight on Break Fixx to talk about the 20 year evolution of Hyper Fest is founder Chris Coto, who you might also recognize as a lead from the National Autosport Association, also known as nasa.

And joining us in the conversation tonight along with Chris is Matt Rockel, social media and marketing director for Hyper Fest. So welcome to Break Fix, Chris and Matt. Hey, how are you doing, man? Good to be here. Just celebrated its 20th anniversary here at the end of the 2021 season. But before we get into that, why don’t we talk about [00:02:00] how it all got started.

Why, where did the idea come from and where was the very first hyper fest?

Chris Cobetto: I was scared is really what it came down to. I had started the NASA Mid-Atlantic region. It was actually called NASA Virginia at the time. At that time, the National Autosport Association pretty much existed just in Northern California and Southern California.

When we started the East Coast, we were the only region. There are now 13 regions. We technically made NASA national and for what it cost to run a track out, I was really just trying to figure out a way to get a lot of the tuner guys on the track. At the time I had, I had another job. I was, I was working in the medical industry when we started nasa.

In my travels, I would find these guys, you know, in the Hondas and in the, the two 40 sxs and that sort of thing, and. They revealed his road racing types of cars. I would talk to ’em and say, Hey, you know, you guys know that you can take your car to the racetrack and put that thing on a real racetrack, right?

And they’d be like, really? At the time I was, I’d be in Northern Virginia. And some points about hour, hour, 20 minutes from. Depending how you are, they had no idea that [00:03:00] you go and take your own car in the track, and certainly one of those guys to come out and put butts in seats basically on the track. It got me thinking about how I could do a car show or something along with the regular NAS event.

Oddly enough, I get a phone call outta the blue from a guy named Mike De Ford who was working with Carlisle at the time, and Carlisle car shows in Pennsylvania. He was a NASA guy. From California to Carle, Pennsylvania to take over the Al Sport Compact Show at the time. Made it a pretty big success.

Called me. ’cause he was just trying to get people to, uh, he had some extra slots for vendors and like nasa and said, Hey, you’re the local guy. I wanna come up. So I went up there and I displayed and, you know, talked to people and he and I just became friends and, I don’t know, one night, probably after a glass of vino and a and played a pasta, we were talking about, Hey, wouldn’t it be cool to do a Carlisle type of event, like the car show and everything else, but do it at a red course and introduced.

More people. And really that’s how the idea of Hyper Fest got born. And the main idea really was just, Hey, let’s do a car show. And then he sent me [00:04:00] a video and he said, do some drifting. I’m like, what the heck is drifting? And he sent me a videotape. This is 2001. So he sent me a video tape. I couldn’t understand a word because all the Japanese, but it was smoky and it was cool.

I said, we have to have this set hyper fist, and that sort of started the whole circus. Let’s do everything that we would think would be cool as kind of dorky car guys and put it all in one spot. That’s really how it started. But you know, like I said, I was scared and the reason I was scared is because I have a lot of money that I had to pay the tracks if I didn’t get participating in NASA events.

I was just trying to fill the top of the funnel with new people and get them involved, what we were doing and, and I loved the sport. I mean, I loved road racing. Yeah. It took me a long time to find club racing. You know, I always wanted to race, but my exposure was always MSA stuff, and that was just very expensive.

And I didn’t realize there was this whole club level type of thing out there till a good friend of mine took me and his dad was racing at Summit Point, and I went, oh my gosh. It opened my eyes and realized that it’s actually [00:05:00] within most people’s grasp is to go take a car on track. As Matt will tell you, when I get ahold of something that I like, I’m hard to get to be quiet about it.

Shut up. The high is really sort of an extension of my own voice.

Crew Chief Eric: Here we are at Circa 2001 Summit Point Raceway High Fest is born at about the same time as the E 46 was debuted, right? So we’re gonna put it in perspective for our petrolhead of a certain age. But what did the first hyper fest look like?

How many cars showed up? How did it go? Did you feel that you had succeeded in achieving what you wanted and And you went to Hyper Fest too, or was it Yes. Yeah, we could have done better. Let’s try again.

Chris Cobetto: I think if I would’ve had no expectations, it would’ve probably been a wonderful thing. But you know, our expectation really was to have 10,000 people out there, and I think the first year we had 800.

And so I went into it really with the expectation that. We would have the crowds like we do now, you know, back then. So that was a little disappointing. However, in terms of proof of concept, and honestly the smiles that got generated by [00:06:00] everybody that was out there, it was enough to say, Hey, let’s try this again.

And actually we did two of them. The first year we did one at Summit Point, we did the other one on the R down at Charlotte. One was in, I think, July, which was very hot. The other one was September at Charlotte, which is also hot. And, um, you know, it just sort of went from there. I don’t, I don’t know that I would say that it was exactly how I’d en envisioned it, because to a certain extent, you know, you’re trying to find content that is going to appeal to car guys and still be able to manage that in a new event for the most part.

Yeah, I mean, we got the first one done, so from an operational side, it was great. We had the bands there, we had. Bikini contest has turned into the Daisy Dukes contest later on, which we don’t do that anymore at at BIR. You know, we had the drifting that took place. If you gotta to Summit Point and you run the main track through the carousel, basically down five the whole way through nine, you talk to any of the Drifters, it’s one of the best tracks that they can run on.

It’s great for spectators too. Y Vaughn Gitten [00:07:00] Jr. Was the winner of the very first US Drift nationals, which had this genesis that I professed. We claim and, and believe this is correct, that we were the very first pro drifting ev in the country. And they were terrible. All of ’em were there. Yeah. I mean, they were entertaining, but from a completely different, Vaughn was actually the least terrible out of them all.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s generally how you

Chris Cobetto: win, right?

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right. That’s right. It’s the least worst.

Chris Cobetto: The

Crew Chief Eric: least worst.

Chris Cobetto: Uh, he obviously has gotten much better. He’s just a great guys. And then we had think the next year, the year after that we had Forsberg win it and uh, we’ve had a lot of guys come through that are out pro kind of stuff.

But anyway, to the original concept, yeah, it was exactly what we had sort of thought about and it was nothing like what we had sort of thought about. It was definitely in the end, I saw a lot of guys like me or just goofy car guys, petrol heads, gearhead, and they had never seen anything like it. And when you see that on somebody’s face that you feel a brotherhood with, you know you want to keep doing it.

Crew Chief Eric: So like any [00:08:00] project right at the beginning, everybody’s bright-eyed and bushy tailed and excited to get things off the ground. And then there’s a bunch of lessons learned. The more you do it, obviously you did it twice in the first. Season and then I profess, let’s say, I guess three and then four, and then so on, on the line.

If you count them in in sequential order, right? What did you learn in those first couple of years? How did you get to year five, right? Because that’s always a big milestone for a lot of projects. And then you get to like the seven year itch. Like, do we continue? What do we do? How do we change? We can’t keep repeating the same thing and over, over again.

And once you cross that hurdle. The next 13. It’s like, how did you get there? Right? So walk us through the evolution process of Hyper Fest.

Chris Cobetto: We just really wanted to put a good show on, you know, I mean we did a tour in 2003, uh, in which we did Pittsburgh, Charlotte, summit Point and Cal Speedway. And then the following year we.

Let’s see. We did Charlotte Summit Point and Sonoma. We only did three that year. You know what I learned really from that was that the market wasn’t ready for the event. We were too far ahead, really, [00:09:00] of the market. That sound bad to say that I don’t, I don’t mean it to sound like I’m some master sooth there.

Reality is the vision we had was not yet understood. It was way too subtle for the market at the time, which was, you know, a bunch of clear taillights and bad, really large exhausts. On Honda Civics, the higher performance side of kind of what this event represented was just loss on the aftermarket. You know, you get to seem, uh, it seemed like 90% of the, and this is not right, but it seemed like 90% of the, the people that were just filet were like the clear taillights and stickers and things like that.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s okay, Chris. 27% of all statistics are made up anyway, so it’s all good. What we learned really was,

Chris Cobetto: I think on the operational side, what people liked, what got people. Interested. Certainly I learned a lot about marketing to that group of individuals, but I would say really the biggest thing was sort of the operational side and what pieces and how to place them.

I learned that there are a lot of people who [00:10:00] will say they’ll do something but don’t. I’ve learned that when you find somebody who really, you know, knows what they’re doing and does a good job for you, that you do whatever you possibly can. Make sure that they stick around. It’s just critical because this thing is such a detailed monster.

You have got to have some really excellent people in each one of the categories. Yeah. Don’t, and learning how to manage my own expectations.

Crew Chief Eric: Absolutely. I mean, a, a lot of what you’re talking about is like managing any large business or, you know, group of people. I mean, there’s all that, you know, HR. Side of things, but also don’t take this the wrong way.

It sounds like a logistical nightmare because there’s so many events going on within the larger umbrella of high professor. We’ll dig into that a little bit more as we go on. Let me ask you this two goals here, because the original goal was bring, as we call them, the stance bros, right? And tutor crowd into the de world to help foster nasa.

So A, was that successful? B. What was the biggest flop in maybe those first five years where you’re like, man, we [00:11:00] should have never done that?

Chris Cobetto: There are two NASA national champions that got their start Hyperdrive Hyper Fest. A typical Dasa HPD is a two day event. At the time it was about $250 a weekend.

It’s now doubled that inflation, but. We were trying to get people on the track. I’m like, man, if I can get somebody on the track, I gotcha. And so that particular car that you see behind me, the license plate says Track dealer. I just need to get ’em on the track. So we did these things called Hyperdrive, which is a 20 minute session on a track.

With an As instructor, you start to go through all the classroom. So after to go through all the tech, it basically, it becomes a taste test. That was the way that I wanted to introduce them to the road racing side. And sure enough, you know, we have two national champions. A lot of people podium actually at NASA Nationals, their first event ever was a hyper driver.

We have a guy in Honda Challenge right now. He was in the car show and he had spent oodles of money on the show car, said, Hey, I’m gonna go do this cyber drive thing. I went home from Hyper Fest, started ripping the car apart and turning it into a race car. So I would say I would consider that a success.

I mean, I think [00:12:00] that, you know, to introduce people to NASA and keep sort of filling the top of the funnel with enthusiasts. I think that that was a very good. In terms of something, being a, a flop, really, I don’t know that we’ve had anything that’s really major as a flop because you know, we’ve just always been just so methodical about the things that we added and every time we added it, being sure that there was some sort of demand for it, and then also coming up with the logistics to make sure that it happened correctly.

I’ll tell you a funny story regards to music. We have an excellent partner who’s been with us forever. Paul Reed Smith Guitars. They’re based outta Stevensville, Maryland, and they provide. Guitars for a lot of people. I mean, know for Santana and for Navarro, and you know, mayor, the list goes on. They had a relationship with Theory of a Deadman.

It was a bro deal, basically. It’s been long enough now. I’ll tell you what it was. It was $10,000 that, you know, we were gonna pay those guys to play. Had a great stage, all the rest of that kind of stuff. And it was in July. It was in July, and it’s tend to be thunderstorms in the Mid-Atlantic area. [00:13:00] Well, there were a lot of storm that were coming through and we’re getting phone calls from the airplane ’cause the air of a dead man was still in an airplane doing loops around BWI.

If I could call anything of fail, they couldn’t get out there in time for us to hit the sound curfew that Summit Point had with their neighbor. So I had to stroke a check for $10,000 for fear of a dead man in play.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh man.

Chris Cobetto: I guess maybe that was a flop.

Crew Chief Eric: If it’s you win some, you lose some, right? They’re all lessons learned.

The program continues to evolve as a result of it, right? You take other precautions, you change measures, et cetera. But as I look over the 20 year history of Hyper Fest, I wonder though if it gave way to programs like Grid Life, which started in 2013. I wonder if they found their inspiration through Hyper Fest.

Of course they did.

Chris Cobetto: Chris is a good guy. You’re great to show up there. I think they’re very fortunate in the fact that they had their idea at the time the market was ready to accept it, because that was about the time we started seeing interest, you know, in Hyper [00:14:00] Fest from the marketplace that was out there, and that when I say that, I’m talking about the manufacturer’s sponsorship and things like that.

People that you would typically see it seem, and now it’s gangbusters. I mean, this type of lifestyle event is really the way to go because it’s multifaceted. It used to be, if you go back in the sixties, seventies, eighties, really into the nineties, you know, the race itself was the show. You know, with the advent.

Of internet and phones and and everything else that’s gonna take your attention away. You really have to come up with something that’s going to be multifaceted in order to keep people going. But I know that there was an event called GT Live, like Grand T Live. Those guys were outta California and I knew the guys that ran that.

They came out to Cal Speedway when we were out there, Cal Speedway, and they saw that and they decided to put a, a Los Angeles spin on it and do some traveling. They didn’t end up lasting. I don’t exactly know why they folded. That was one that was definitely a copycat. There’s some others that have sort of come around, takes a lot of work.

I don’t think people realize exactly the dedication that goes into putting one of these things on. So it sounds like a real sexy idea until [00:15:00] you deal with a logistical monster that it really is.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, we’ve been talking a lot about the origin and the history of Hyper Fest, but for those that are tuning in and listening to the story for the first time, we haven’t gotten around to explaining what Hyper Fest really is.

Let’s talk about that. Is it a festival? Is it a track event? What kinds of events go on during the course of the weekend and let’s expand upon some of those.

Chris Cobetto: Oh man. I mean that’s the greatest thing about Hyper Fest is all of this stuff is going on and most difficult thing about Iker Fest is all this stuff that’s going.

The idea is that really, I’ve had Jeeps, I’ve had go-karts, I’ve had four wheelers, side Byside, race cars, motorcycles, everything that is on wheels. My kids bought power Wheels when, you know, when they were young. They play with power wheels. And so I’m a card dork, you know? And so we just, I’m like, all right, well we have some space over there.

How can we fill that up? There’s some space over over there, so how can we fill that up? And so the idea is that if you’re a petrolhead, you may have your particular [00:16:00] discipline. You may like road racing, or you may love drifting, or you may be an off-road guy, whatever it happens to be. You can appreciate all the other things.

Even though your main goal, you may be a road racer, I’m still kind of looking over there going, that’s pretty cool. 30 fives on that Jeep. Or Hey, you know, that’s, how do you get the angle on that drift cart? Whatever it happens to be. There’s a natural tendency to sort of blend, you know, and fold into, into all the different types of disciplines.

But anyway, it’s centered around road racing, so really it’s centered around road racing and drifting for the most part. And we started this at Summit. VIR has got a phenomenal off-road set of trails, a couple off-road optical courses. And so if you want here side by side or you have your four by four truck, Jeep, whatever it happens to be, and you wanna come out and you wanna play in the dirt, you can do that.

NASA sanctions rally as a, as a showcase for everything NASA does. Rallies part of those things. And you know what? There’s a rally course. There’s a rally course at Summit Point. There’s a rally course at BIR.

Crew Chief Eric: I gotta ask for everybody that’s listening. That’s been to BIR, [00:17:00] myself included. I’ve been there like a hundred times.

Where is all this offroad stuff at the I Rx? I’ve never seen it.

Chris Cobetto: Well, it’s hidden and that’s one of the challenge honestly, that we’ve run into. When you come in, before you make the left to go down the hill, go across the bridge. If you just keep going straight and go over to the where the go-kart track is, if you know where that is.

Yep. If you’re standing in the go-kart track parking lot and the go-kart track is actually behind you. Directly to your left is the rally course straight ahead. It’s actually a, um, geet shooting range, but we turn that into a rally slash off-road course, and if you kind of go up on top of the hill and it’s back in the woods, there’s a really, really good optical course.

The trails are the whole way along the Dan River. And so basically the, if you’re going down the front, straight of the main track of the full chorus, BIR, over onto the left hand side is the river. Between the trees and the river, there’s a trail, and so that trail goes the whole way, wraps around. Turn 17 goes the whole way down the back street [00:18:00] and all through the hills and everything back there.

It’s an amazing facility that’s 1300 acres. We do our best to try to use up every inch of it.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m having one of those eighties NBC moments. Now it’s like do like the more you know, right. Like I would’ve never known that. Now that I know I’m gonna be looking for it though. Hey, don’t feel bad,

Chris Cobetto: man. I didn’t know it was there either.

For the longest time. That’s really cool.

Crew Chief Eric: But you know, and jokingly, we played around with Za messing around with the infield of VIR and created a rally cross track. Yeah. That’s as close as we ever got, uh, to doing that. And now I’m like, next time I go down to VIRI gotta check this out. This is pretty cool.

It’s.

Matt Rocholl: The greatest thing about Hyper Fest is you can walk around, you can see something for 15 seconds and decide you wanna go see something else. There’s never nothing going. So like with every other event, there’s typically only one thing to do and that’s, you could have multiple stages and you have different acts, but that’s the only variation of experience that it with Hyper Fest, it’s so.

[00:19:00] So broad and all encompassing that you can see three, four things at a time. Chris has said this a lot in conversations that I’ve had with the average road course driver was like 40 to 60. One of the main reasons that I was brought in first place was to try to bridge that gap and really make them realize that it’s not as.

Much out of reach as you make the fact that there is so much going on with my generation and below, everything is soin. Even to show someone a post is difficult challenge, having so much to do and look at is great as you can get those people to pay attention, if that makes sense. I mean, that’s just something that I’ve noticed that’s very unique, the powerful asset for us to have so many things going on for the whole team.

It can be very stressful when you see it all come together and you’re just either. Riding your pit bike around or your golf cart or whatever it is, which is the fact that you’re not only immersed in motor sports, but most of the people that are riding [00:20:00] around are riding around and that’s not something you see at any other festival.

You try to drive a moped through the middle of a crowd at a electric daisy carnival or some kind of music festival, you know, you probably get tack. It’s welcome. It’s like, bring your toys and literally have as much fun as you want. You know, as long as you’re being safe. And that’s another thing, it’s like constantly seeing like negative publicity about festivals and injury.

Stuff like that. And here we are with one of the highest potentials for injury, but we don’t have, because it’s like Chris has done an amazing job curating some very positive vibe. You see it most in the NASA pad. Whenever I’m around nasa, Mid-Atlantic. It feels like your family, you know, as cliche as that might sound like Chris doesn’t market.

It just does it. He makes you feel polluted. I think that’s why at the core of it so strong.

Chris Cobetto: I’m the last of six kids. I love Thanksgiving and Christmas because it was bonkers. You know, we had tons of people, you know, it’s [00:21:00] just even more fun when you have 15,000 people out there.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, I’m not trying to date you, Chris, but it feels like Woodstock for car guys, right?

I mean, it’s kind of like one of those deals

Chris Cobetto: we actually thought about using that as, as a tagline. Oddly enough, I don’t know if you know the history of BIR, but basically it started in 1956, I think, or 57. It got shut down in 1974 by the farmer that they had the land in. Then they reopened again in 2000, whatever.

They’re getting the permits and stuff from the county. They were talking about the use of the facility for things that were other than basically road racing stuff. They said, no Woodstocks. We figured Automotive Park could probably a better tagline.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s, it’s a close second, that’s for sure. It would be kind of cool to use that tagline if you did historics though, right?

Some cars from the period. It’d be kind of neat. A themed hyper fest. I guess I’m full of ideas of here all week. Try the veal. On this list, if you go on the website, hyper fest.com, tons of events on there from drifting to the track events, time trials, you’ve got the car shows, road [00:22:00] race offered experiences.

You talk about you got the exhaust burnout, all this kind of stuff, and then there’s one that sticks out. We’ve actually talked about this event on several of our drive through news episodes because they are just so common gold every time they surfaced, which is the. Coordinate Power wheels attack by Redline oil.

Let’s unpack. Going down a racetrack in a power wheels. I want talk about the wrinkles. I wanna talk about the limpets. I want to know all about where this came from ’cause it’s awesome.

Chris Cobetto: I’ll give you the history. Chief Operating Officer of VIR, Dave’s Kerrigan Smith. He was just an awesome, awesome guy. Lot of fun.

Brian Egger, who is sort of a compadre in this, who is a, he’s actually a Formula D judge. We’re doing a. We’re thinking about, Hey, let’s take these Barbie cars, call ’em Barbie cars, Barbie Jeeps, and let’s do one of these crazy things down on the backside down through the woods. And we looked at the hill that was there.

Let’s. Would be awesome, but we’re probably gonna hurt somebody. So we sort of tabled the [00:23:00] idea. Well, it never really left Kegan’s mind. And one day he’s out there with his 6-year-old daughter and had talked about doing it on the rollercoaster, which is from turn 14 down through 17. His daughter who has a ton of guns, man, I, I wanna do that, I wanna do that.

And so Kegan apparently convinced his wife, this would be just fine. Got her at the top of the rollercoaster in the pickup truck behind her, with his wife in the passenger seat, and she started going down. He is following her in the pickup truck, and he started 20 miles an hour, 25 miles an hour, 30 miles an hour, 35 miles an hour as Carrigan puts five miles.

His daughter, she got started getting the depth wall in the steering, and my wife’s going, wh what? I can’t believe you let her do this. To her credit, she bailed out, driver’s ready to hit the grass, and it was, it was all done. That’s where we got the idea. You know, I’d love to say that I came up with it. I just propped.

Kerrigan was the genesis of it. The first year we did it, I think we had about 20, like 28 people that participated in it. The rules are simple. You got a power wheels car, [00:24:00] can’t modify the wheels, so you can’t put rubber anything on the wheel through the plastic wheels. You have to pull the motor, pull the battery out, the red deck, soapbox derby, you know, I mean, you have free wheel down this.

We’ve had Andy Laley, pro road racer came in second. He was in a firetruck. James Clay has run the thing. He’s been our show twice now. Just wanted to point that out. James is great. Like, oh, that’s so much fun. The cameras went down. He is like, woo. Those things are a handful.

Matt Rocholl: Noah said, uh, fielding shredder ran it this year.

Chris Cobetto: That’s right. Fielding shredder ran it. But I mean, the main thing is, is that it’s a goof. I mean, you win a hundred bucks, we don’t wanna make it worth cheating or spending a lot of money on, although I’m apparently certain it might be a little something that’s not exactly stock on some of these vehicles.

So border

Crew Chief Eric: balancing, maybe just to get a other stick.

Chris Cobetto: That’s right. It’s, it’s about fun. You know, this year we decided to introduce some elements from Mario Kart, and we built some jumps that have the, the lit arrows on them. You’ll see that some of the videos that, that are coming out and people dress up, what it’s turning into is it, do you ever see the, uh, I think it’s the [00:25:00] Fluen Toin Fluen to Flu talks from Red Bulls, right?

Yeah, the, exactly the. It’s a lot like that, you know, in that people are showing up and dressing as Batman and they’re running their Batman power wheels. You know, we have somebody dressed up as Luke Skywalker. They had the, a speeder car, had one guy dressed up as, oh, what’s her name from Frozen beard and everything, and like a frilly dressed in a frozen sleigh.

That’s a power wheels thing.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s great. So what, so what you’re saying is miniature lemons race is what it really is. Kind of Anybody Mel upside down yet?

Chris Cobetto: I haven’t seen that yet, but. If somebody watches this video, I’m sure it’s coming next year.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s a lot going on, you know, between the vendors and cart racing.

Obviously VIR has available. You’ve got kid zones, you’ve got contests, you’ve got concerts. I mean, that sounds like a lot of stuff going on. In what, two and a half days? Does anybody actually sleep at Hydrox? Not there

Chris Cobetto: near the patriot circuit. Depends on who you ask. That’s exactly right. There are people who do get a chance to sleep, and there’s some [00:26:00] people that basically between the gallery and patriot circuit, that’s where the stump championships happen.

It’s not official types of DJing happens, but it’s thumping pretty good up there. I might maybe once or twice have visited that group on a Saturday night. I do enjoy. I do enjoy me some stump. Do you have any idea what, do you know

Crew Chief Eric: what stump is? I can only imagine. Now please enlighten me.

Chris Cobetto: This is a Gabe.

So basically what it is, is you get a huge stump and literally a wooden stump. Oh, and this is

Crew Chief Eric: not what I was thinking. Okay?

Chris Cobetto: Oh no. This is the Gabe. You know, you stand around, everybody gets a nail. You tap your nail in a circle right around the ridge of the ridge of the stu. You tap your, your nail in, and you have to have it in there enough that it’ll stand up and then you get a hammer.

Everybody has a hammer. Everybody stands in a circle. Everybody has a goal, is. Hammer everybody else’s nail in. So you’re the one that has your nails still sticking out, even if it’s just a little bit. So the rules are if you take the hammer and you flip it up in front [00:27:00] of you and you grab it, you get one hit.

Now, the thing is, is that once you grab the hammer, you can’t adjust it. So however you grab it, that’s how you have to hit it. Let’s see. If you throw it under one leg, you lift a leg, you throw it up under one leg and grab it, that’s two hits. Okay? Again, you can’t adjust it. If you adjust the hammer, you lose.

You gotta pass it along. If you toss it behind your back and you catch it like this, you get three hits only in the way that you caught it. It just kind of goes around the circle and you try to nail everybody else’s nail. And if you’re the last one standing, you win. And I gotta tell you, Brian Edgar from us Drift, and the guy who runs with stuff, and also Formula Judge, he is just like stupid good at this,

Crew Chief Eric: again, hidden talents of people, right?

But then again, I don’t know. How to even react to this, but my mind is still processing what you just explained. I, I guess that leads me to, I gotta come to the next Hyper Fest. Come check this out, because it’s one of those believable, when you see it type of moments, talking about expectations for somebody who’s going to Hyper Fest for the [00:28:00] first time.

Obviously hyper profess moved around a lot over the years. It was at Summit Point. Quite a bit. Now it’s at VIR, it’s found a new hall. So if I’m going to BIR for hyper for the first time, what should I expect? Like how does it work? Am I presented a schedule? Like if I’m going to the INSA race of VIR, I mean, how do you figure out what to do and where to go and, and where does it cost and.

What are some of the rules for all these different events, especially the events where people can bring their cars?

Chris Cobetto: Depends upon what you’re doing, right? You know, if you’re doing a hyperdrive, it’s basically nasa, HPDE rules is really what it comes down to. You need to have a helmet. We do have some loaners for the Hyperdrive people.

If you’re HPDE during the entire weekend, you’ll bring your own helmet with. What I would say is that, you know, you take a look at the schedule and take a look at the map ’cause it’s a really big facility and really take a look at what you wanna see, take a look at what time those things take place. We do our best to try to not put things on top of each other.

Sometimes they over they, they will overlap just because that’s, there’s so much going on. We do our best really to, to buy them. My suggestion would be if I were [00:29:00] coming, if you don’t have a golf cart or some sort of a paddock vehicle. You plan on renting one there, or you plan on bringing something along with you, because once you’re parked, that’s pretty much it.

There is so much going on that if you like to camp, there’s a lot of space. It’s a beautiful facility. It’s just gorgeous. So I would say if you can get on. And find a camping. People really like the track side camping. That gets sold out very quickly, but they really like that a lot. Really pick what it is that you want them to do because in terms of the cost, we try to keep it as reasonable as we possibly can, but there’s a lot going on.

We are less than some of the other events out there. Do that on purpose, because I really do want to have people to come and have fun, and once they come through the gate, that’s a limited number of drifting ridealongs. It’s a limited number of rally ridealongs, offroad, that sort of thing. You know, we charge for those things.

So you have a ticket to get in. I mean, literally if you get on right now, it’s what? $60? I think 60 bucks is an early bird. We have a limited number of those. Those are gonna run out here pretty soon. 25 left. There are 25 left of those. [00:30:00] Okay. $75 will be the next ticket. That’ll be the main ticket. Price.

Once you get to the event, it’ll go to 90. So it behooves people to try to get their tickets early. Camping’s pretty inexpensive to camp for the the weekend and car camping. 60 bucks. If you’re there for three days, you buy it. Right now you have three days of fun. Plus you’re camping for $120. That’s less expensive than just about any other type of festival like this that I know.

Plus, you can

Matt Rocholl: divide your camping spot up.

Chris Cobetto: Right.

Crew Chief Eric: What does that, let’s say, general admission ticket get you access to, you mentioned that the ride-alongs are a separate cost and there’s a limited number of those. Camping is a separate cost, that’s an add-on. What else does that general admission get you access to?

Just kind of roaming around and seeing the other events. If you wanna be in like, let’s say the power wheels of that, do you have to pay for that separately? Obviously the de has its own cost, so what is included in general admission and what is a rider?

Chris Cobetto: So in general, admission, you know, you obviously get to spectate with everything.

If you wanna participate in games like the blind [00:31:00] driver, golf cart, Alan, we basically have a golf cart out there. The driver has a blindfold on the passenger, is the one that is telling him where to go. Two carts that compete against each other through. Of course, whoever makes it back to the start finish line, first wins that doesn’t cost anything and can win some, some significant prizes there.

PRS, if you like to play guitar and you play guitar, we have a shred contest, which you can win a seven to $800 ball. Reach guitar if you think you to know how to perform, but really don’t play guitar. There’s the PRS Air guitar contest and so you can jump in there and if you’re really, really good at an air guitar contest, you get the prize of it real.

PRS Guitar, Paul Reid Smith guitar, you can participate in, uh, the Power Wheels downhill simulators. And, and that doesn’t cost you anything. It doesn’t cost you anything for the burnout contest. Doesn’t cost you anything for the, the sound off. And all these things have prizes associated with them. Either, either chake kind of stuff or cash or gift cards, you know, that, that sort of thing.

The kid zone doesn’t cost anything. You go in there, we have bouncy houses and things get a huge soccer ball that they moved around. And then there are a [00:32:00] lot of the vendors have. Activation as part of their marketing packages where you know, you might be able to get a ride with Bon getting JR because you love Monster.

You might be able to get a ride with that MLZ, that sort of thing. And all that stuff is free. There’s really a lot of stuff to do and see with your entry.

Crew Chief Eric: For the folks that want to come down to do the HBDE part, obviously there’s also gonna be coaches. And if they’re running a standard HPB weekend, maybe a club race mixed in there in a time trial, as is the NASA formula.

Do those folks get to enjoy and experience other parts of hyper profess? Is there enough time? Is it more of a limited or not maybe as many run session de as we’d expect? I mean, how does that time get divvied up? Or is it just everything’s so busy? Everybody’s hyperfocused on their different parts of hyper fast.

Chris Cobetto: think if you come out and you run the racing and the HPDE side, you’re probably both focused on what you are doing on track. But the reality is that we don’t shorten any sessions and we don’t skimp on any sessions. For the HP, it is a regular NASA week and that [00:33:00] we just overlay this circus on top of those individuals that are participating in the HPDs, the racing.

They’ll have time to get out and see some things. We tend to wait. The entertainment stuff on Saturday toward the afternoon and into the evening. So, you know, we’ll finish track operations at five 30 to six 30. You know, we have a lot of racers that they take their racing suit off. You know, they put their Batman suit on, grab their Power Wheels car, and they can make the power wheels thing.

And then they’ve got somebody meet ’em up at the burnout contest with their car and they go out there and do the burnout contest. So there is time, and we do that on purpose because we want the people that are our regular NASA people or anybody that’s doing the HPDs to still be able to enjoy the festival portion of this.

Crew Chief Eric: Obviously if you’re participating in the different motor sports disciplines that are going on, they’re gonna follow the rules and regulations of the different disciplines within nasa. So if it’s rallied, it’ll follow that in HPDE club racing, et cetera. So all the standard tech, everything that goes on with those events that you’re used [00:34:00] to doing on a regular weekend still apply in the case of hyper fast.

Okay. And that’s the easy part. Getting everybody organized in tech for the power wheels downhill. That’s a challenge. One question that always comes to mind when you’re talking about Des or any motor sport events in general, does track insurance cover hyper fest? You’re talking about if you’re a de person, is it considered because it’s a festival and part of something larger?

Is track insurance still available for an event like High Fest?

Chris Cobetto: Oh, sure. Oh yeah. I mean, if you go to Haggerty. Haggerty will write it because like I said, it’s, it’s a regular NASA event and we tend to separate out the NASA paddock. Not so much that we’re trying to be exclusive, it’s just that we have 525 registered drivers that are participating just in the regular NASA stuff.

The time trial, ultimate Track car challenge, you know, that we put on for grassroots motor sports, the racing and the the HPD stuff. If you take a look at the number of drivers that we actually have participating, whether it’s drifting or off-road, [00:35:00] rally, whatever it is, you start to creep into the 900 participants.

You start adding in riders and everything else, it goes well beyond a thousand for somebody who is actually physically doing something in a car or in, you know, something on wheel.

Crew Chief Eric: So what’s attendance like in the last couple of years at Hyper Fund? What are the numbers looking like in terms of people being there?

Chris Cobetto: 2019, we were just about 11,000. For 2020 we didn’t have it. And for 2021, you know, it’s interesting, we were just about the same as numbers. Slightly lower by like I know 80 people or something like that for 2021. And I think this particular year, if you take a look at the way the ticket sales were, you know, we opened up ticket sales.

I wanna say that it was in May. We broke the internet. I mean, that’s how many people were trying to get on to buy the things. I think we were expecting 200 to 250 people to hit the site at one time. We were having 1200, 1500 people hitting the site at one time. We, we weren’t prepared honestly for that. We are now, our tickets were 300% higher than same [00:36:00] time prior to in 2019.

And then the Delta variant started creeping into things and you could actually watch as the scare and concern, you know, with the Delta variant happened. You could actually see the ticket sales sort of start to drop. And we did. We had people that were like, Hey, you know, we love this event. We had people that saw some of the videos that we put out day of.

We got messages going, ah, that should have come from our perspective, given COVID and all the goofy stuff that happened, it was still a good year. We certainly expect that to grow pretty substantially from me.

Crew Chief Eric: So are tickets available through hyper fest.com or do you get ’em through Motorsport Reg, where we, you know, sign up for all our other Motorsport events in this area?

How does that process work?

Chris Cobetto: We don’t use Motorsport Ridge as ticketing. We actually talked to them about doing the ticketing, but again, it goes back to all the stuff that’s going on. Motorsport Ridge does, I think a great job for regular events, but it’s something like this. They just couldn’t handle it.

They couldn’t handle the ticketing and, and all the different nuances are there with Piper Fist. So we’re using a customized [00:37:00] system, but either way, that’s the backend side of it. Yes, if you wanna get tickets, you go to Hyper Fest, do hit the Get tickets button, and you get tickets. Go from there.

Crew Chief Eric: I noticed as I was looking through that there’s a bit of a kind of bundle package, the grassroots experience package.

Do we wanna expand upon that a little bit? Tell people what it’s all about. Is that a all in one? All you can eat sort of a deal

Chris Cobetto: in a way. We haven’t confirmed what those s are going to be like this year. It wasn’t an all you can eat type of a thing. It’s very difficult to do an all you can eat type of thing because if you do, that gets pretty costly pretty quickly.

Yeah, I don’t know. I still have to actually, the conversation with GRM in terms of what packages that we’re considering, likely what’ll happen is it’ll get in some third parking, camping and some access sort of VIP type of access to places.

Crew Chief Eric: What we were just talking about is a great segue into the future of hyper fast.

So big question. Is hyper profess gonna be a DIR next year, or is it moving? Are there gonna be multiple ones beyond 22? [00:38:00] What do the next couple of years look like? And let’s put our thinking caps on. Let’s talk about the future, the distant future. What’s the next 20 years of hyper profess look like?

Chris Cobetto: Good Lord.

I’m still alive. If one just about killed me this past year, we’re going back to VIR. It’s a wonderful facility. Every time we do one of these things, I wonder if they’re gonna want us back, but, uh, but VIR is phenomenal, you know, you know, one of the owners there, you know, Connie Ome is just, she’s awesome.

You know, she gets it. She loves everything from the emphasis stuff to the crazy lawnmower racing, you know, and, and power wheels down. She loves it all. As a matter of fact, I was riding around in a golf cart with her a couple years ago and we’re sitting there and she brought it up. We’re trying to figure out where we’re gonna put a, a demolition derby, her idea.

Just a second. Yeah, no, we’ll be back there in May and there’s no plans to move at any place. You know, number one, that facility is gorgeous. Number two, as a multi-use facility, there really is not another facility out there where we could duplicate this. Completely on the same facility. Are we thinking about some other [00:39:00] venues?

Yeah. Summit Point actually still is a good place maybe, but that would be an augmentation. It wouldn’t be a substation, you know? It would be an augmentation to the thing. There’s a pretty well known circle track where the raid course. Conversation with today. There’s another track actually that’s on the East Coast.

The facilities are, are pretty good. So if we expanded, you know, we thought about going to California, you know, we’re, we’re open to just about any place. And the cool thing about Hyper Fest is that we can expand it to pretty much any road course across the country. I don’t necessarily have to run the road racing of the HPDE side of it.

I have NASA regions all over the place, so I can call Northern California and say, Hey, we wanna run a hyper fest in Sonoma. Jerry Kunz wind’s the guy who started all of NASA a million years ago and he still runs the Northern California chapter, and he’d be like, yeah, man, let’s figure out how to do it.

His answer, just like mine, it’s always yes, unless the logistics say no or make you say no. Yeah. Where we go in the next couple of years, you know, we’d like to maybe expand it out to one or two more events. I think that [00:40:00] we’re probably gonna keep it somewhat close to home on the East Coast, just because that’s where our assets are, but we’ve done it in California before.

Know what it takes to put one on out there. So we may do that too, as a matter of trying to find the facility. It’s in a good enough spot geographically that is willing to work with us. Preferably, uh, an independently owned track. ’cause some of the ones that are owned by the corporations tend to be little more strict guidelines with what you’re allowed to do.

Crew Chief Eric: So it dawned on me the one event I didn’t see on the list, and I’m wondering if maybe this is in the future and I could see it happening at VIR. Have you guys thought about bringing in the Auto Cross? Guys?

Chris Cobetto: We talked about it a lot actually. There really isn’t a spot. It’s very difficult to do it if the skid padd was extended and there was some talk about may make the skid pad a little bigger, but that’s still a pretty small pass for.

A typical autocross. There was actually an autocross. They ran up in the south paddock and that was run by, and it was, it was an employee, I can’t remember exactly who it was at BIR, but they wanted to do it. I’m like, yeah, sure man, whatever go have at it. [00:41:00] And that lot was just so small it, it really wasn’t that much fun.

And I love autocross and I wish there was a big enough spot out there to make one That’s. One of the challenges that we have, even if we did what do on the Skid pad, is where do you stage the cars? Because there just is no space right there. Can’t put ’em on the main road if you put ’em in the grass and it’s wet.

I mean, it’s just, it’s a logistical problem, not a content. Wish we had it kind of a problem.

Matt Rocholl: The way that I would answer the Where do you see hyper? What would be our focus rather, A lot of attention has already started to go into it. We’d like to see more so of developing it from just a festival or once a year into a household lifestyle brain.

A lot of that happens when we do more events, so we definitely see some kind traveling circuit. Sort like they would still carry the core of Hyper Fest, but where I could see it going is that each one would vary in its own way, depending on location, bring [00:42:00] in different cultural styles. Stylistic element that might retain better to that area of the country.

Something to add. We had our first international attendee, somebody flew from England. Come to Hyper Fest

Chris Cobetto: International baby.

Matt Rocholl: Yeah, we’re getting the, we’re getting the word out. Um, I think a lot of hyper fest marketing for years was done solely by word of mouth stuff. We’re moving into the digital age, getting word out there, and that’s something that.

I would love to see grow year after year and it seems to be working. Our demographic is shifting a little bit. We’re seeing a lot more younger crowd start to get interested in anticipating. That’s great to see as we know that the future of the festival is secure

Crew Chief Eric: actually. All very good points. And leads me to a question I generally reserve for our fit teams.

Which is, how do you see that, what we call the [00:43:00] E revolution or the evolution? Impacting future of Hyper Fest and or how is your team embracing the change in the automotive landscape as more and more EVs are coming on the scene?

Chris Cobetto: Well, I mean, aside from wanting him to drop a Prius from a helicopter at some point, it’s just.

I like ev stuff, right? I love new technology. I sometimes don’t really appreciate the optimism of EV vehicles being a panacea. However, I think that, you know, Elon Musk did a great job of, of making ’em sexy and fast. And the styling can be, obviously, you know, beauty is a the beholder, but a plaid is a fast, fast vehicle and you cannot deny that.

So if you’re a performance guy. I like anything fast. I mean, I just like fast stuff. You know, when you drive one of those things, you can’t help it to be impressed. They come with some limitations with regards to track time and, and racing. A lot of the tracks are slow to embrace it because if you don’t have chargers, you do a 20 minute session and a pla that a [00:44:00] 25 minute session and pla.

You’re done. You have to charge the thing up, which takes a while. You have to have the chargers that are, that are available. The only track that I know of, you know, I haven’t traveled to them all, certainly, but the ones that we’re associated with is Summit Point. I think they have three or four chargers at Summit Point.

That’s it. As it continues to grow, you’re gonna see more and more of these cars. But really the limiting factor is going to be how do they get charged. Our schedule is such that we’ve got enough time in between races, time in between HPD sessions. Somebody could plug in. And you know, on a supercharger and getting enough juice to continue, you know, throughout the day.

From an EV perspective, and when I say ev, I don’t mean an electric vehicle, I’m talking about emergency services perspective. You know, there are some logistical things you have to make sure that the fire guys are aware of and most of the tracks. Knowing that whether it’s a hybrid car, high performance, hybrid cars that have the electric side of it, register full electric, they already know the safety crews from the tracks already really know how to handle that stuff.

It’s four wheels and a motor man. I mean, you know, four patches, rubber on the track. You know, we’re all efficiency [00:45:00] experts, right? We’re trying to get around the track in the fastest amount possible. It doesn’t matter to me what power plant is. Help it to love the rip of normally aspirated Ferrari V eight or V 12 an A line six from BMW an S 52 or an S 54 Uncorked is just beautiful.

That’s the only thing I could, that that just bugs me, man. About the sound, I mean, the electric things don’t make any sound. They’re a performance, but I’m old school man. That power is, is I want something loud, I want something to rip. But either way, we’re all brothers in speed, as far as I’m concerned.

Whatever weapon you bring to the table is what you think that you can wield. Best way, and let’s go have fun on some wheels.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, guys, this has been a lot of fun learning about the circus that is hyper fast. So, you know, I use that term lovingly because it really does feel like maybe the American version of Goodwood, the festivals of speed and the revival kind of combined into one event in that flare that we [00:46:00] have here stateside.

So. To Chris’s point, we are all brothers and sisters in speed and in motorsport, and this is a great way to pay homage to that, get us all together a few times a year and celebrate our petrol inspired and petrol fueled enthusiasm at a festival like this. With that being said, presented by Grassroots Motor Sports Hyper Fest is the largest automotive event on the East Coast, touted as the automotive amusement park and 2021 marked the 20th anniversary of Hyper Fest and we’re looking forward to Hyper Fest 2022 and we bet you are too.

So for more details on Hyper Fest, visit www.hyperfest.com and follow them on Facebook at Hyper Fest One. Or on Instagram at Hyper. So congratulations to Chris and his team on 20 successful years of Hyper Fest and many, many more to come.[00:47:00]

That’s right, listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our Patreon. Follow on pitstop Mini, so check that out on www.patreon.com/gt motorsports and get access to all sorts of behind the scenes content from this episode and more.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out on www.gt motorsports.org.

You can also find us on Instagram at Grand Tour Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at Crew chief@gtmotorsports.org. We’d love to hear from you.

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.

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 Technical Issues Disclaimer
00:52 HyperFest Overview
01:25 Meet the Guests: Chris Cobetto and Matt Rocholl
01:57 The Birth of HyperFest; Early Challenges and Successes
05:24 First HyperFest Event
08:05 Lessons Learned and Evolution
13:34 HyperFest’s Influence and Market Readiness
15:02 What is HyperFest?
16:38 Off-Road Adventures at VIR
21:50 Unique Events at HyperFest
24:15 Introduction to HyperFest 24:45 Fun and Games at HyperFest
27:51 Logistics and Planning for Attendees
29:49 Ticketing and Costs
30:54 Activities and Events
37:46 Future of HyperFest
43:13 Embracing the EV Revolution
45:41 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Learn More

Presented by Grassroots Motorsports … Hyperfest is the largest automotive event on the East Coast touted as “the automotive amusement park” and 2021 marked the 20th anniversary of HyperFEST. We’re looking forward to Hyperfest 2022, and we bet you are to, so for more details on Hyperfest visit https://www.hyper-fest.com/ and follow them on facebook @hyperfest1 and instagram @hyperfest

Bonus Content

There’s more to this story…

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

HyperFest’s early years were a whirlwind of experimentation. Chris and his team took the show on the road, hitting tracks from Pittsburgh to Sonoma. But the market wasn’t quite ready. The tuner scene was still dominated by clear taillights and oversized exhausts, and the deeper performance ethos of HyperFest flew under the radar.

Still, the team learned what worked: hyperdrives (20-minute taste tests of track driving), curated content, and the importance of reliable partners. Operational excellence became key, and the event slowly grew into a logistical monster—one that required serious planning and a dedicated crew.

Success Stories and Stumbles

HyperFest’s original mission – to funnel tuner enthusiasts into NASA’s HPDE program—has paid off. Multiple NASA national champions got their start at HyperFest. One Honda Challenge racer even began his journey in the car show before converting his ride into a race car.

As for flops? Chris recalls paying $10,000 for Theory of a Deadman to perform – only for the band to be grounded by thunderstorms and sound curfews. Ouch.

A Festival Like No Other

So what is HyperFest, really? It’s a motorsports Woodstock. A rolling celebration of everything on wheels. From road racing and drifting to off-road trails, rally courses, and even power wheels downhill races, it’s a choose-your-own-adventure weekend for petrolheads.

At VIR, the off-road trails snake along the Dan River, hidden from view but rich with terrain. There’s karting, concerts, contests, and a thumping nightlife around the Patriot Circuit. It’s a place where you can ride your pit bike through a crowd and be cheered, not tackled.

The Power Wheels Downhill: Pure Gold

One of HyperFest’s most viral events is the Redline Oil Power Wheels Downhill Attack. Born from a dare involving a 6-year-old and a rollercoaster section of VIR, it’s now a staple of the weekend. The rules? Strip the motor and battery, keep the plastic wheels, and let gravity do the rest. Costumes encouraged. Past participants include pro racers like Andy Lally, James Clay, and Fielding Shredder.

Culture, Community, and Controlled Chaos

HyperFest isn’t just about cars – it’s about connection. Chris describes it as a giant family reunion, where 15,000 people share the same passion. Matt Rocholl, HyperFest’s social media director, sees it as a bridge between generations, helping younger enthusiasts realize that motorsports aren’t out of reach.

With its blend of high-octane action and laid-back camaraderie, HyperFest has become a blueprint for modern automotive festivals. It’s inspired events like GridLife and outlasted others like GT Live. And it’s done so by staying true to its roots: fun, inclusion, and a relentless love for all things that roll.

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

SRO Motorsports: Shaping the Future of GT Racing in America

Gran T

April 5, 2022

SRO Motorsports: Shaping the Future of GT Racing in America

What do you get when you blend decades of motorsports evolution, a global vision, and a passion for growing the racing community? You get SRO Motorsports America – a driving force behind GT racing’s resurgence in the United States. In a recent episode of the Break/Fix Podcast, Greg Gill, President and CEO of SRO America, joined the show to unpack the history, philosophy, and future of the organization.

Photo courtesy SRO America; Dean Case PR.

SRO America didn’t start as SRO. It evolved from a patchwork of series like the Playboy Endurance Series, Speed World Challenge, and Passport Endurance. The World Challenge name has endured, becoming synonymous with accessible, competitive GT racing in North America.

Gill explains that the series was born out of necessity during a transitional period in American motorsports. As Trans-Am faded and IMSA entered its “dark ages,” World Challenge offered a new home for touring and GT cars – especially those outside the traditional Ferrari-Porsche mold. Acura, Audi, and others found a place to shine.

(ABOVE) SRO RACE/AMERICA – “Follow Your Dreams” w/ Robb Holland.

Gill’s journey to SRO is as eclectic as the series itself. Raised in Southern California, he was immersed in car culture from a young age. After stints in publishing and marketing, he found his way to motorsports through Racer Magazine and NASA (National Auto Sport Association). His hands-on experience and business acumen made him the perfect fit to lead SRO America.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

The turning point came in 2015 when Stefan Ratel, a French motorsports visionary and co-architect of the GT3 regulations, invested in the series. By 2018, he became the majority shareholder. Ratel’s philosophy? Don’t re-slice the pie, grow it. That mindset has helped SRO expand globally while keeping its roots in grassroots racing. Gill emphasizes that SRO isn’t trying to compete with IMSA. Instead, it complements it. “We’re like the little brother, the nephew, the cousin,” he says. “We want to grow the pie bigger for everybody.”

Spotlight

Notes

This Break/Fix Podcast episode delves into the history and evolution of SRO Motorsports Group, particularly its American division, with guest Greg Gill, President and CEO of SRO America. The episode explores the origins and rebranding of the series, its partnership with the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA), and the impact of influential figures like Stefan Ratel. Discussion includes the variety of racing programs under the SRO umbrella, such as GPX, Curb Stone, and the integration of esports. Also covered are the comparisons with IMSA, commitments to inclusivity and support for veterans, and the future outlook of SRO in adapting to changes in motorsports like alternative fuels and increased diversity. Key races and ways to watch SRO events are highlighted, emphasizing the grassroots spirit and community focus that SRO aims to maintain.

Discuss the history of SRO – So many name changes: formerly Pirelli World Challenge, formerly Speed World Challenge, and others… what is SRO?
SRO is broken into multi racing programs, let’s expand on that and talk about what each one is about, types of cars, is it all “road racing”
We had SRO series driver Robb Holland (from Rotek Racing) on the show a while back, who are some other Drivers that people might recognize running in the series?
How does someone watch an SRO race?
What is the future of the SRO program? What are some of your short-term ’22/23 plans, and what does the next 5+ years look like?

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.

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] With more than 25 years of experience at the forefront of a continuously evolving industry.

SRO Motorsports Group is the established international leader in GT racing, best known for the development and. Implementation of the GT three and GT four regulations. SRO promotes and organizes championships that embrace professional and amateur competitors. It’s a portfolio of highly regarded series, including the Continental GT World Challenge, powered by AWS with categories in Europe, American Asia SRO continues to play a key role in shaping the future of international GT racing, and with us to explore the history and evolution of SRO Motorsports.

In the United States is President and CEO of SRO America, Greg Gill. So welcome to Break Fix, Greg.

Greg Gill: Great to be here. Thanks.

Crew Chief Eric: So let’s talk about the who, the what, the where, the why of SRO and why don’t we start off with what does SRO stand for

Greg Gill: DE and RATTEL [00:02:00] organization? Not standing room only.

Crew Chief Eric: Darn. I like the second one.

Greg Gill: Yeah, so it’s really great. The US organization’s actually slightly older than our namesake organization. We celebrate our 30th year this year for the SRO and this season as we go into 2022. Actually marks our 33rd season. So, uh, we’re excited about that. And there’s a little bit of explanation that has to come to mind, doesn’t it?

Yeah. So was it always called SRO? No, it wasn’t. We got started and I think people have always heard of different things. Well, was it the Playboy Endurance series? Was it the Speed World Challenge? Was it the Passport Endurance series? What, you know, what, where is it So the World Challenge that people know and love in North America?

Has been an always evolving series. That did start right at now 32 years ago, and when it did, it was a focus on really your original idea of sports car racing, but a real emphasis on grand touring and looking at cars for the first time. Acura’s, et [00:03:00] cetera, are getting out on the track. And that had not been something people were seeing.

They were normally used to a Ferrari, Porsche type of mentality in that era, and suddenly they saw a blend. What’s really fun, and you see in, in everything that you guys do in the Motor Sports Club where. You mentioned about being about all things automotive. In a lot of ways, that’s what drove us as well.

You know, it’s way overused by racers, for racers and every series uses it in one form or another. I worked on a series that used it in the tour GAR space and the Tuner Market and so, you know, we get it. We understand that, but the reality was is that what is World Challenge today in the US was reformed by a group of racers that saw the SCCA Sports Car Club of America was looking at going.

You know, it’s money losing speed’s, pulling out. We’re not really getting the money we wanna do, you know, I think we wanna do something different. And a group of our racers got together and said, let’s form World Challenge, or in this case WC Vision and create a new marketing group still working with the SCCA and put on these races.

And that, I, [00:04:00] I kind of think of us having various decade breaks. And that was a, a real change for our company about 2008. They looked at all forms of it and at that point we were running maybe. 20 cars when we run at Sonoma in April, we’ll be having probably 120, 130 cars. So, you know, a lot of growth over that period of time.

And because of that. Really the global leader in GT racing, A man named Stefan Rotel, who went to San Diego State as his name would sound. He is from France and very much a world resident. He’s lived all over the world, but always talks about how much he loved San Diego and, and the car culture of of America, and really regretted as much as he briefly worked for Bernie Eckel Stone for seven years and put on a lot of different races around the world, he always felt like, gosh, I’m missing something in North America.

He is, as you noted. Uh, the introduction, uh, a partner in the development with the FIA of GT three, uh, and is considered in a lot of ways the, the godfather grandfather of GT three racing in Europe and in the world. And in a lot of ways people often say that Stefan [00:05:00] Rotel saved GT racing. And I think there’s a lot of truth to that and it really become.

Really small. So about 2015 an opportunity came up for Stefan to invest and then eventually take over and become the majority shareholder in 2018. And what was World Challenge? Four of those same racers are still there today and part of the ownership group, but we’re majority owned by Stefan Ell, that’s then’s the name Stephan Rael organization.

Crew Chief Eric: So if I remember my motor sports history correctly, and, and please correct me if I’m wrong, this would’ve. Been born in that kind of gray period after SECA ProAm TransAm started to disappear in my formative years watching drivers like Lynn St. James and Hurley Haywood and Willie t Ridge Oh, and Houck running the ITU at GTO cars and things like that.

Watkins Glen and Summit Point were on the schedule in those times, but you’re like, what happened in the, the mid to late nineties? And there was still touring, car racing, but I think a lot of us maybe turned our [00:06:00] attention to BTCC and even, you know, the Swedes and the Australian Supercars and all that.

And it’s like, well, what happened to gt racing in America? And so this was almost born, let’s say, out of necessity to to Exactly. She, yeah. And,

Greg Gill: and it became natural. I joined the company in 2012. And at that point we had done, I came in in October. In August, we had done a demo of the Audi R eight, uh, at Sonoma, and it was already home.

This might be better than our own built GT cars. And of course, that sounded a little bit like blasphemy at that point because the culture still was, Hey. I’ll build all of this and then we will get the series to home alligator and then we’ll do it. And it wasn’t really practical and, and many people were already thinking, well, what about this GT three stuff that’s going on in Europe?

So we were the first to adopt it. SSA came along and adopted it about three years later and went full bore into it as well. And I think it’s been good for the whole industry. And when you look today about how many GT three cards there are, you can see it as a really successful global platform.

Crew Chief Eric: And at that time, that would’ve been [00:07:00] also when a LMS was very popular here in the United States.

Correct.

Greg Gill: And it, well, A LMS was having the challenge of working against, and I know one of the things I always get asked in these interviews is, what’s the difference between you and the other guys? And I’m sure you’ll come to that when you want ask it, but, oh, we can have, we can talk

Crew Chief Eric: about it now. Let’s go.

Greg Gill: But, uh, A-A-L-M-S was awesome, Dr. Pan’s point of doing it for the fans as opposed to what we talked about by racers for racers. Was really awesome. And on the same token, you could not argue with the corporate strength, just presence that the NASCAR organization could bring to Grand Dam. And yet they really fell into something that was just a constant battle and a constant argument about who was bigger, who was better, and I don’t think the sport really benefited.

Stephen Rotel has an saying that I absolutely love. I think all of us can take it to heart for business. That is, he likes to say, I don’t wanna res slice the pie. I want to grow it. I love that. I love working for someone like that. It’s a great attitude to have and a great way to work. If you’re always thinking about how are you gonna grow the business?

You know, stealing market share from another [00:08:00] person, okay, we can do that. Is it really growing? Is it making to your goal as you talk about for your site and what you guys do? Of getting more people were, you know, understanding about mobility, transportation, motorsport, the excitement of all of this. You know, that’s much better than let’s fight and take something off of so and so

Crew Chief Eric: not realizing what things had become.

I’ll be honest, I reengaged this story along with a LMS, but at the same time, that Speed channel became really popular. You know, my dad kind of grabbed me and said, Hey, check this out. Audi’s back with, you know, GTI running the S fours and the S sixes, and then I was suddenly hooked again because again, this was the weird dark ages of imsa.

It wasn’t Can-Am anymore. It wasn’t this, it wasn’t that. Nobody really knew what was going on. There was all these little pockets of touring, car racing going on, and you needed. Special access to watch them or you know, cable feeds from overseas, all this kind of stuff. So now I like the fact that we’ve kind of homologated all this to use a racing term and that we have a platform we can jump to.

Hopefully this name sticks. And that’s part of the reason why we’re talking about [00:09:00] this, is to reintroduce people to the many name changes that we’re SRO from Speed World Challenge to Pelli, world Challenge, et cetera. But the World Challenge part, as you said, sticks.

Greg Gill: Yes. And now used globally as well.

Crew Chief Eric: But I also think we wanna take a step into history and talk about.

Greg Gill, the Petrolhead. So how do you get involved with SRO? What’s the story there?

Greg Gill: Well, it was part of a work release program with the judge and the parole officer and, and just, uh, it really, you know, they, they were trying to find things that would keep me off the streets and out of trouble. Probably more true than I want to admit, but truthfully.

Growing up in Southern California, 1960s and 1970s, everything was about two things, really, surfing cars. You couldn’t grow up in that culture without a love for the outdoors and a love for everything. Automotive, my stepfather was a huge sports car fan. He really wasn’t too thrilled with our displacement passion that we had as a family.

The sixties and seventies, but he also got us interested in sports cars and would talk about racing jaguars and restoring [00:10:00] jags and doing different things that we had in projects. We were dragging home and I was dragging home all sorts of falling apart race cars that never really made it back to the track.

But you know, I had a dream like every teenager does. So. Amen. Um, that was fun, but a lot of it was enthusiast driven. What came out of that while working in the family business of architecture and construction management, a friend of mine was. A big enthusiast, publisher, and a real second tier publishing company.

It wasn’t hot rod, it wasn’t CarCraft, it wasn’t names that you knew, but they were names that were really nichey, street Rodder and Trucking and VW Trends and you know, these magazines later. Sport Compact Car, this enthusiast base. I ended up just, you know, I would say luckily, grace of God. Showed up and got an opportunity in it, and there I was in automotive.

At every aspect of automotive, you were dealing with restoration, you were dealing with hot rods, you were going to Bonneville, you were still talking about major events like Long Beach Grand Prix. And I did that for almost 20 years, and it was absolutely wonderful to [00:11:00] just always be, even though I worked on some kind of highbrow magazines during the same and got bought by a company that published things like 17 and Modern Bride and Power and Motor Yacht and Automobile Magazine.

So you could, but at the end of the day. I worked with hardcore hands-on enthusiasts. Dean Case can always tell you about D Sport and the great guys there. I got to work with them. There were a lot of that type of really put, you know, another part on to make the vehicle go faster, to make the vehicle look better.

So the transition from what we might say in the British world, bits of kit and go fast Bits. Was really probably the biggest thing for me. I loved media, I loved communication, and I knew the brand name World Challenge until I got over to working with Racer Magazine, which in the printed motor sports world is pretty much everybody’s holy grail at North America of the highest quality, greatest standards of journalism.

And, you know, just a dream job. And I got that opportunity in 2010. Out of that though, I realized that my hands-on [00:12:00] experience, I’d always been the business guy, and I was suddenly signing checks for people who had Jackie Stewart on their phone dial and, oh, if you wanna talk to Bernie Stone, this is how you do it.

I’m thinking, no way, I’m not, this is not right. And I literally resigned. Loved the position, loved the magazine, but I went to the folks at National Autosport Association and said, you said you wanted a vice president of marketing. I think I’m your guy. And God bless ’em for about 11 months. They let me do that.

I got to go hands on and start at HPD, start learning how to drive a car, get the experience on track. Still, definitely not a racer, nor will I ever act like one, but at least I could say I started to understand the terminology and actually had been behind the wheel. Driven at speed. Understood the things that I’d been selling and part of for so long, but didn’t have that hands-on experience.

And so during that time period, I got recruited by World Challenge, I think because they were looking for that same identification area. We were doing it with nasa, we were changing things up. We created Speed News, came out [00:13:00] with connecting with the both the readers and the participants. And that’s very much where World Challenge wanted to go.

And that’s. Opportunity. That’s how I got there. So that’s that long, painful

Crew Chief Eric: story. We talked about the when and the how, but let’s talk about the what. SRO, as I understand it, is broken into multiple racing programs. So let’s expand upon that idea. Let’s talk about each one. Types of cars, is it all just road racing in

Greg Gill: North America?

We are. We run our tour car series, our GT four series, and our GT series. Globally though, in the SRO umbrella, as you know, we’re in Australia, we’re in Africa, we’re in Asia, obviously started in Europe. Because of that, we have really a good relationship with growing and doing new things, whether it’s the Motorsport games, which will go on again in Marse.

Second annual, and that’s on behalf of the FIA. We’ll produce that for them. So that’s exciting. And that is just like, it sounds like the Olympics, but this time now with first time we did it, I think it was 12 or 14 categories, now we’ll have 23 categories. So [00:14:00] really excited. And again, that speaks to that whole importance of transportation and how things are changing.

So we’re excited about that. We also do something called GTX, which is a, again, spend from our grand tour heritage. And if you know, as you look back, automotively, the whole concept of the grand tour was. Could we take a vehicle a hundred miles without breaking down in the X of GTX is talking about your high-end Rolls Royce, Porsche, Mercedes, et cetera, that are creating these full electric powered vehicles.

Can we take ’em from Paris to Berlin? What does that look like? And, and take care of it. We do something called the Ven Dome Rally. Uh, we’ll be having another one in Italy, all thematically done. Did one as a salute to the eighties. The next one will be the Dolce Vita sixties. All done in Italy. Really, really cool.

So we do some things that are, speak to that enjoyment of the automotive experience. We also have something called Curb Stone. That’s our version of Edge Attic Chin, David Murray, insert your track day company here. It is the most expensive track [00:15:00] day series, but on the same token, it’s the absolute best.

And because of that, we have something called the GT one Sports Club where you’re running the Lamborghinis, ani, et cetera, and people are just having a great experience. It’s not really racing, it’s still on track. And they’re getting that experience typically right after one of our race weekends. So they can tell their friends, they were at spa, they were at Al Silverstone, but they were not, or God willing at Indy, but I’m the same token.

They weren’t there driving an A world challenge, eight hour racing.

Crew Chief Eric: And SRO has also expanded into eSports. Am I correct?

Greg Gill: Yes. That’s something we’re super excited about. I came to our board in 2017 after seeing Ericson at the CES show demonstrating 5G. I’m a bit of an early adopter and I, I just got so excited.

I walked into the boardroom, actually it was a board meeting that served Americas, and so you can kind of get the context of it. I said. Gentlemen, this is the future. We’re gonna be on track here and down in the media center. Guys will be racing against us in real time. They didn’t throw me out of the room, but I wasn’t exactly warmly received.

I don’t think they really thought [00:16:00] that was possible. Fast forward now to the Fantech being one of our signature sponsor and GT real challenge power by AWS. When you look at it, what Fantech has done, we now have a fantech arena. We require our GT world challenge, European competitors to nominate one of their regular drivers, not a ringer from someone who’s Billy in their bedroom, or Susie, who’s been playing for, you know, eight years.

But no, these are people who are, or their day job is racing a, you know, a, a car on track and they’re required to qualify and run. At SPA as an example, the team that got pulled, they were within one 10th of a second in the game as they were on track. That’s how close we are now with eSports. We do a global eSports championship.

We have rounds in Europe, rounds in Asia rounds here in North America. And again, thanks to Fantech, also thanks to Honda HPD, able to do some really cool things with that. And when the pandemic hit like a lot of others. We were already mindful of this, I think in either two weeks time or three weeks time, God bless Robbie Ola, our Vice President of marketing, he [00:17:00] put together a great program and our partners were interested in it ’cause we have a great relationship with AWS and CrowdStrike and we’re able to get right out and go into virtual racing.

And again, not too much patting ourselves in the back. I know the rest of the Motors sports professional world did the same thing. I think we were kind of first to market ’cause we were already passionate about doing it. But we have our own game set of cor do com ceiling. That’s a very cool game. All branded up running GT cars and now the new BMW is in it and I’m happy to say with one of our racers Livery, Samantha Tan, so that’s pretty cool.

Crew Chief Eric: What about SRO and imsa? How do they compare and contrast, you know, the GT cars and IMSA versus the touring GT cars? SRO, how does that work?

Greg Gill: Especially now starting in 2022? We’re on the same platforms, not on LMDH. Obviously, when you come down to their GTD Pro and GTD, they are GT three cards. Same thing we’re running in GT World Challenge.

That can be both confusing and a blessing because on one hand, people, but wait a minute, but on the other hand, it really is apples and oranges. If you think about it, NASCAR and imsa. Is a [00:18:00] amazing part of American culture and history. They own racetracks. They have a focus on that because of their own personal pleasures and pride.

They also have some of the amazing races at Daytona, Sebring, Atlanta. These are all endurance races. We, on the other hand, are a focused customer racing and pro racing series using the same cars, but focused on sprint racing. Their attitude might be a little bit of, you can do all these here and you might get to La Monk.

Our attitude is you can get to LA Mall through our Asian LA Mall series or you can get to the 24 hours of spa through our series. You know, I always tell people we’re like the little brother, the nephew, the cousin, you know, whatever you wanna say. I never wanna put us in a competition. Light. Back to that example we talked about.

We want to grow the pipe bigger. The more people enter I ssa, that can be good for us. The more people who enter our series, that’s good for ams a and it’s good for the whole industry. At the end of the day, we wanna grow that pie bigger for everybody.

Crew Chief Eric: I always thought the bigger difference was the fact that the World Challenge Series allowed for the inclusion of fun wheel drive.

I mean, [00:19:00] front wheel drive vehicles, as well as all-wheel drive vehicles with penalty, unlike the rear wheel drive and mid engine biased, you know, series. No, and,

Greg Gill: and we, and we have an outright ban of the Confederate flag, but that’s really true though. You’re right. 10, 15 years ago, and especially when we were running all-wheel drive, Volvos and some other things that didn’t run an imsa, you could say that, but now with when they’re running TCR, we don’t, they’re in that, that world definitely with their Michelin pilot serious challenge.

So there’s a lot of similarities. I think a little bit more of a, as much as we’ve got world-class racers that people recognize the names of sports car racing globally, that race with us. We also really look for the opportunity. Again, part of that growing the business for everybody, bringing new people in.

And that’s the great thing about TCA TC and, and now TCX people can come in and you’re not looking at a 1 million, 3 million, $5 million budget to go racing. People are coming in and the low to mid six figures or less, and they’re having a successful fund. Pro racing experience, that is a difference there.

[00:20:00] That there’s probably a lower barrier to entry in the SRO than there is, and that’s across the board, operating costs, et cetera. And again, that’s by design. But also I’m not carrying the overhead of, you know, running racetracks and doing all the other things that IMSA does in their leadership role that NASCAR has.

I think it’s very important for all of us in North American motor sports to remember the weight that these local racetracks carry on their shoulders, whether they’re. Part of the Penske organization. In the case of Indy, the independent operators who, who race around the country for IndyCar and other places, or the small mom and pop tracks, if we don’t support these people, they’re a part of an economy and they give us a place to enjoy our hobby and our passions.

So it’s important to do that. Again, God bless the folks in Daytona for, and they have the courage and building things and like what they just did at the Coliseum. That was amazing.

Crew Chief Eric: So I don’t know if our listeners were paying close attention or not, but if you go back about a minute or so, Greg just dropped a bunch of SRO classes on you, T-C-A-T-C-X, et cetera.

Now you might be scratching your head going, [00:21:00] well, what happened? TCR. Wait, I thought, does that belong to SRO? Is that so? Can we clarify this a little bit?

Greg Gill: Certainly. The WSC owns the TCR name and they’ve started a lot and done a tremendous amount that they’ve done in that space over the years and just, uh, again, have worked with the SRO and others.

They gave us the opportunity to license and work as a sub license to imsa. So we did run TCR cars for a period of time. But because we were running in a sprint format and, and very much we had to run under a certain BOP and we always hear that term balance of performance. It really made it hard to be competitive for our customers.

Whereas in the same token, TCR in the Michelin pilot series had more room because they had an allowance of changing things. ’cause they had to be competitive with the GS cars, in this case GT four cars that were running. So there, there was a little bit more flexibility. So it really. As much as we love TCR and still do, it just wasn’t practical for us to keep it because it couldn’t be competitive in our fields.

It was really a difficult decision. So did away with [00:22:00] TCR, uh, passed on, renewing a license on it. We brought out something called TCX, which is a pretty cool category that’s growing. I think we’ll have 10 cars in it this year and continued to grow. Right now it’s predominantly driven by BMW, but there’s some, uh.

New cars coming and Honda, Hyundai, Nissan and others Subaru, uh, et cetera, are all part of our TC field.

Crew Chief Eric: You mentioned something really, really important here. BOP Balance of Power. It comes up all the time. You see it in the headlines, especially after the last Rolex where Team Corvette was nerfed by the BOP.

And if you’re not in the motorsport world or you’re just learning about this, what does that mean? What does that mean

Greg Gill: exactly? All these

Crew Chief Eric: terms.

Greg Gill: Remember, it does mean blame other people. Just to understand. Just Yeah. Just to be clear what that stands for. It could be balance of performance and like driver rankings.

It’s something in the SRO that we started first, and like driver rankings. There may be times that we scratch our heads and say, what were we thinking? But it is the best way to take. A wide variety of cars when you have to balance a Bentley against a Carrera, you know, how does [00:23:00] that work and what you know, what are the good ways to do it?

And the same thing when you look at back to our friends at Hemsa and you’re trying to balance Lamborghinis, BMWs, and Corvettes with GM’s normal way of doing business and how aggressive and competitive they are. Ferrari, the same way, none of ’em wanna. Right. The series then has to find that balance of performance where they evaluate everything and we’re talking from not just how fast did you go into that corner, but you know, what was your breaking pressure?

Where are you at? What was your exit speed? How much fuel were you carrying? What’s the flow rate of the fuel that you were getting on your refueling? It goes on and on, and then you’re always gonna deal with interpretations of it, and different engineers are gonna argue. No, no, no. You’re interpreting that data completely different than I think you should in interpret that data.

But at the end of the day, if you look at balance of performance, and again, back to the SRO and the leadership on it, we brought it out so that people could not just have all spec series racing. ’cause that’s where it was heading. You were gonna have one dominant brand that was gonna do well [00:24:00] and no one wanted to compete against them.

Now, when you have a balance of performance, you have the opportunity. Sometimes it works out great. But if you look at it, when I first started hearing the word BOP. In 2012, you know, 10 years ago it was stated, this is a true story. If you can get 10 cars within two seconds of each other, you are doing really good on your BOP.

Oh my goodness. Here we are now with sometimes 20 and 30 cars within a 10th of each other. As much as any one team on any one weekend is gonna tell you that BOP is a terrible thing. You have to look at those overarching stats and say. If I can take again, we’ll the say a minimum number of 15 world class drivers and get them within tenths of a second of each other in different platforms.

VOP works and is here to stay.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And there’s different arguments to that idea, and I think we all understand it and appreciate it. You know, back in the eighties. Audi got slapped with the unfair advantage, which was kind of the genesis of BOP. Yes, because they were running all wheel drive and all these kind of things.

So what did they [00:25:00] do? Sandbags in the trunk. Just keep adding weight to the car, reduce the power to weight ratio. You know, they were only making 600 horsepower with a single turbo against a big massive V eight. I mean, you know, whatever. But that’s a history lesson we learned from that. But I do also appreciate the simplicity in that because Audi and VAG kind of turned around and said.

Why don’t you guys build a better car? Stop, you know, punishing us for having cutting edge technology. And by the way, we are making less horsepower than you We’re on a production chassis, not a tube frame. We’re on all these things. Build a better car. The argument goes both ways. If you went back to simple, to power to weight ratio as a balance of power.

If you’re behind by five seconds, build a better car. But I get it, some of it’s politics, some of it. You know, whatever. Yeah.

Greg Gill: And Eric, I think the other thing you have to, to look at too is the fact that we have one thing, again coming from the era that I came up in and you know, when million dollar payouts, and I always like to talk about the fact that people woke up from the tobacco hangover and just this [00:26:00] amazing amount of money and the merchants of death were throwing at Motorsport.

And so those were grand times and it was great for people. When that went away, you couldn’t just say, Hey, I need a bigger engine. I need to figure out how to more creatively cheat. Well, I’m sorry, creative interpretation of the rules. People don’t cheat. Then manufacturers had to go to customer racing, and so you know, that happened.

But on the same token. What it did, and you really touched on it when it was Audi, Porsche, and others that led the way saying, okay, great, we’re gonna do this. Now here’s the problem with that, though. It’s an arms race. Now we’re in GT one again, you mentioned history lessons. Now we’re talking about, oh, look how great this is.

But pretty soon you have got one dominant manufacturer. When they’re charging people for building their program and they want someone to buy their car something, oh, well, we’re not site manufacturers always do this. The history for the last 30 years has shown this and you, we mentioned British Terrain Car.

You can look at the same thing as Supercars and Ossie V eight. You allow the manufacturers come in, they get excited, they wanna win, they’re there, they wanna dominate, and they [00:27:00] build more and more and more expensive vehicles, whether they’re a straight manufacturer like General Motors in the Cadillac program or Corvette program.

Then you say, well, let’s go customer racing, wanna have more people buying it? And then you talk to ’em and say, well, how much is your engine? Well, that’s $5 million. Now that’s not really gonna work. But that’s the same thing we see in the evolutions of GT three, which is why we brought out GT two, which is why we have GT four, which is why we continue to believe in turn car.

Because if we go the normal way of that arms race approach. Every year, the EVO and the GT three will be even more precise, only able to be driven on that 10 10th edge by the absolute most professional person in Motorsport. Then that’s gonna take the driver who is funding those programs. The term we use obviously is gentleman driver.

He or she. Is out there and, and they’re paying for the program, but they may not be able to drive that car at that level. What happens then? They say, you know what, I think I wanna go sailing instead, I think I’m gonna go horse racing. Instead, they put their money in something else. We don’t want that. We want ’em enjoying motor sports for a long, long [00:28:00] time.

Crew Chief Eric: And you know, this actually segues into my next question, which comes from basically a very simple question, which is, what is the definition of a touring car? And I have to lead into this, right? We, we can very simply say, well, what kind of. Vehicle brands run in this series? Are they factory teams? Are they private tier, but more important to that is kind of this ethos behind what is touring card?

Because the definition of vehicles, right? We kind of slice it like music. It’s all these genres, right? You have the hypercar, the supercar, the luxury car, and the grand tour and the sport compact and all these kind of things. But when you go to the dealership, you don’t walk up to the salesperson and say, I’d like to buy.

Tory car. What is a Tory car?

Greg Gill: Yeah, but it’s a two-door sport coop. But that doesn’t really put that way, and it’s very hard for people to relate to it. And then you have the same thing. The series looks at it and says, well, wait a minute. Keo wants to run, but the car only has four doors. Oh, okay. We’re gonna make allowances so it gets really confusing fast.

Or in the case of our. Okay. It’s always gonna be front wheel drive. Well, except [00:29:00] for these cars. ’cause they’re okay. ’cause they’re rear wheel drive so they’re running. So the, the definition gets very hard. So what we do is really kind of keep to a power to wait ratio in our De Terrain car class. So we start at 200 in TCA and we are gonna say you’re gonna be 150.

We’ve gone as low as a hundred with TCV. That was kind of exciting, but not practical. There are TCV cars still out racing today, but uh, it wasn’t really good for us. So we have TCA, which one’s in that? Power to weight? 200 horsepower. Then you go up to our TC cars and you’re in 300. And then you’re at TCX, where you’re 400 being throttled back.

It works out really well for us to have kind of a horsepower and a power to weight ratio that we deal with. And you, and you touched on earlier about those, you know, make a better mousetrap, you know, build a better car. You didn’t really touch on rewards weight. And I came in as we were killing rewards weight.

What a negative term. Hey, you won. Now you’re gonna have to carry some ballast, you know? Right. Exactly. Work harder. Or in the cases of like when we had Hyundai running in TCR, they’re like, do you know how heavy 90 kilos is? And what we’re having to do to compensate for that, you know, on a, on a [00:30:00] Hyundai. And yeah, they did great.

They did very good. But my goodness,

Crew Chief Eric: what kinds of brands do run in the SRO America Series?

Greg Gill: So we’re really proud that we have 20 different brands and you literally start, you know, and, and you can, you can read through and. Say Aston and Audi and BMW and you know, you just keep going through the alphabet and you’ll find the cars that are appropriate there.

I no longer try to count them off like Pokemon because I inevitably miss people and then feel really bad after an interview. You know, like we have BMW, um, we have many, it’s a constant additions all the time as we bring new people in, as we homologate new cars. I would say every year there are one or two marks that are being added to the series.

I think I’ve been as high as 24. Different marks running in the series in a year, and as low as I believe, as 17. So it can vary just on what people’s programs and like I say, there are the standards, BMW, Porsche, Ferrari that we’re used to, but, and again, you look at Aston Martin, then you start talking about, well, what about a [00:31:00] jeanetta?

Uh, what do you do about a KGM crossbow? And, you know, there’s all these other, other brands that have become GT four Homologated or in some other category. They’re homologated and running with us, the Julia and TCR, the Alpha Romeo, you know, interesting to see the, the different cars that can run.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m still upset with the 1 47 GTA rear wheel drive hatchback that Alpha Romeo brought over, teased us that they were gonna sell and never did.

I’m still really mad about that. Yeah. But that, that’s a whole discussion for another day. But there’s

Greg Gill: a lot of cool cars in Europe that I wish we had. Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: lots of French cars in touring car racing too. Oh my

Greg Gill: goodness. Yeah. I would love to get some CI drones over here, but, uh, Cleo Sport would

Crew Chief Eric: be the first one on my list, but that’s okay.

Oh, boy.

Greg Gill: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: If our audience recalls, not long ago we had an SRO series driver on break fix by the name of Rob Holland for broTECH racing, and so he came on and shared his. He talked about SRO, which got us clued in in doing a little bit of investigative work ourselves to say what’s SRO, [00:32:00] and obviously we covered that earlier.

Are there other drivers, are there other names in the SRO, especially in the GT America series that people might recognize or not know that these drivers are running in the program? You know,

Greg Gill: it’s, we can’t ever release before we hit the entry list or release. You know the drivers that are well-known racing around the globe.

John Halen, Robbie Foley, Ron Ell, bill Berland, you know, again, you know, awesome. Uh, driver Corey Lewis. People know that name. That’s a name that again they see in both paddocks I mentioned earlier, no longer racing the series when Al Rent managing for the series. Jack Baldwin, one of those Trans am great scholars of Vac Camel GT days.

Two names that I love being part of the series are Aaron Vogel. And Michael Cooper. Michael is somebody who came up through our tour car, went through GG four, went through GG three races around the world, raced with the Cadillac program. Michael was just down racing in Daytona. So that, you know, those, those are some of the names of that.

And then again, I’ll say Rob Holland is somebody who knew that world challenge in those, [00:33:00] in the quote early days or in the glory days. And then came back in after racing at BTC and doing the different things in Europe and adac and all the different areas came back in, said, Hey, I wanna change things up.

Let’s make some differences in motorsports. I am so grateful to be running with Rob and working with him on just making the paddock a more inclusive space, creating more opportunities for people, and it’s just an honor to work with him and some other great people too. Samantha Tan, who I mentioned earlier, Samantha is really no stranger to coming up through our touring car ranks through G two four.

Now in GT three and there’s a good example of somebody where in their family they’ve said the goal is LA Mall. I imagine we’ll see them a couple more years in GT World Challenge, and then you’re gonna find them over in GTD and GTD Pro as their goal is to get to LA Mall. Now maybe they’ll go through Asian LA Mall series and and go in that way, or maybe they’ll go through the 24 hours of spa and head out that way.

In Europe, who knows what their path will be. But we have people who have been racing with us like GMG and James d have been with us for. Over 20 years and racing it and then mixing it up against the [00:34:00] Johnny O’Connell’s and Jan Halen’s and others, you know, for those 20 years. Uh, so it’s been really a great com in combination of people.

Tony v Lander was one of our regular styles. Tony’s now been out for a year, but you know, again, names that people would say like Jordan Pepper and Elli, and these different. Global sports car stars evolving racers with us.

Crew Chief Eric: You actually mentioned something really important, which was the progression from SRO to a series like lamonts, the WEC.

How does your aspiring ProAm driver, somebody in SCCA or NASA make their way into SRO? What does that progression look like? What are the qualifications? How does somebody get involved if they’re at that level and maybe to your point, looking to mix things up and do something different, grow out of spec Miata.

Into SRM.

Greg Gill: You know, again, you look at the people in the momentum space and there are some of the best racers out there. You watch a spec me auto field and you know, and either NASA or SCCA, it is hard, tight, some of the best of the best, absolute grinding, [00:35:00] fast racing, and I love watching it and I love the people who participate, the detail they put in.

Along the way, people sometimes get a bug, and I think it’s the transition when people are looking, at the end of the day, they just wanna be able to tell their country club friends that they raised a Porsche. Okay? So they go to PCA, they do that for a period of time. They maybe go on the Cup series and they may be very, very happy there.

But along the way they start hearing about, oh, well I heard the Ferrari did this, I heard the Lamborghini did that. And they start thinking, what can I beat them? You know, you talk to people about the, you know, putting ’em in a GT four Supra. We’ll tell ’em, look. This is an awesome vehicle and it’s really that very small evolution.

When you look at all of the great enthusiast groups out there and and racing groups out there, there are literally hundreds of cars on any given weekend that could be running and many of ’em qualify to run in our series or an IMSA in terms of there are GT four, there are GT three car there, they’re in the TC classes.

The difference is a lot to do with how good are you and how hard do you want to push? If you want to be a pro racer at the very entry level with us at [00:36:00] TCA. Or in GT World challenge, you’re gonna have to have a ton of time to do it and you’re gonna have to really push hard for it. Could Chris go better race with this comfortably?

Yes. Chris is a good shoe and he could do a great job and I can guarantee you he would do very, very well. Chris has run and and run long things before. But it also might be the case where Chris would go, man, that is just too much. That is really too much of a commitment. It takes too much time and training.

Is Chris qualified? Absolutely. But on the same token, he may just not have the mindset and temperament for it to do that. A great example was said by George Robinson, which is Gar Robinson’s father, who, uh, just did so well in LMP three down in Daytona. Obviously his co-driver was Jack Baldwin years ago.

He said to Jack, do you understand why I race Jack? Do you know why people like me who have private jets and live in that type of lifestyle, why we race? And Jack said, well, you know, ’cause it’s competitive because the prize money. He’s like, no, no, Jack. Not that at all, because we want to and we can’t. And if you take away either of those interests, then it [00:37:00] becomes less likely.

At the end of the day, you’ve gotta allow that people who want to and can, and some absolutely want to, but they can’t time, money. Other reasons they can’t. Or at the end of the day, they’re just looking at and go, you know, I’d like to do that, but I don’t know if I, you know, one thing that we all acknowledge that entry level.

NASA, HPDE, it’s expensive to go racing. It still costs you some money and time, even if you’re just taking your bone stock streetcar out and HPDE is still gonna cost you in fuel. You’re gonna still put some tape on the car, you’re gonna have to get some lessons. And if you get hooked, like most everybody does, it’s you know, the beginning of a very expensive drug habit and we realize that.

So I think you have to look at, there’s an economic driver to all of this too, and that’s why we push so hard to keep the touring car. You know, we can very nicely say gateway drug so that people can look at it and go, okay, I got that. I got these skills. And I wanna be on television. And there’s some other aspects of it that in pro racing that become a big deal is it’s a bit of a fraternity of like-minded [00:38:00] individuals.

People are there, they’re part of something special. And when they go to St. Petersburg to race with IndyCar, when they’re out in Sonoma, yeah, they’re at wine country, but they wanna be able to tell their friends. If they’re old school, they’ll say they’re at Sears point, they’re gonna wanna be able to talk about it.

You mentioned about Watkins Glen. We know the F1 history there. We know James Hunt at Watkins Glen. Why wouldn’t you want to be there? You know, I’m so happy to be from my first time racing at Sebring. I had attended Sebring, but I’d never been part of the promotional group putting together a race at Sebring.

You’re at Sebring, for Pete’s sake. This is this historical place you’re looking at the track service. I mean, it’s a nightmare, but you’re thinking about. Races you’ve seen, think of all that water stacking up years ago. You know, you’re, and there’s this amazing experience. You are there. You earn the right to be there.

And that’s the, I think, kind of the excitement in that

Crew Chief Eric: transition. You name drop some tracks, the Glen Sonoma, Infineon, Sears Point, whatever you wanna call it, depending on your era. What tracks does the SRO America series run at? Obviously it’s nationwide, but what are some of the, the [00:39:00] keystone events that you’re at?

Greg Gill: You’re looking at roughly for our classes of racing, there’s probably about 22 to 25 tracks in North America. We’re very excited to have our, our season finish at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. There’s something very magical about that place and kick the year off this year, um, outside of some special IndyCar appearances in St.

Petersburg, in Nashville, where we run as a support series with just one of our racing groups There. Our other ones are what we call standalone weekends. So we’re at Sonoma, then we’re at Ozark International Raceway, which is just the coolest place. We’ve been following along with those guys since they were literally blueprints in December of 2017 and, and a dream and an intention.

We’ll be back racing there five years later. Very excited about racing there. It’s gonna be, it’s a very technical track and, and really a cool deal. So from Ozark International, we head to VIR Virginia International Raceway. You and I were just talking about that from VIR. We go up to Watkins Glen. From Watkins Glen, I unfortunately jump on a plane outta JFK and go to the 24 hours of spa.

Well, somebody has to do it, so a [00:40:00] group of us are gonna have to suffer and do that. But then afterwards we’ll be back to Nashville with the, uh, IndyCar race and doing the street race there. Followed up by Road America, just one of the most iconic, beautiful places to race at. We go from Road America to Sebring, and as I mentioned, we’ll finish the season there at Indianapolis in October.

Crew Chief Eric: Those are some great tracks. I mean, these are names that people should recognize and should be excited to watch races at. Which brings up my next question. How does one go about watching an SRO race? There’s so many different providers now. I mean, I think we’re all overwhelmed. We begged for years. A la carte television and cable service, and now everybody’s got a platform.

Everybody’s got an app. So how does one go about tuning in if they can’t be there live to an SRO race?

Greg Gill: Well, if you have a dial up modem, you go to a OL. Um, you know, I started with a company and we were doing streaming, and it really looked like that. It was just. You know, it was difficult, but here we were, a speed world challenge and everybody knew where we were and it was so cool, but speed [00:41:00] went away and so we were struggling.

We did NBC sports. We were really happy to go to CBS sports. It’s been a great relationship. So that’s our quote unquote broadcast partner. So we love being on CBS sports. All of our races in highlights packages. A few live on CBS sports and our global races are as well, or on CBS sports. So for folks we can say politely that are over 70 and watching TV that they watch on a wall.

They can go to CBS sports and it’s in almost every cable package. I think it’s like 90 million households or some crazy number. I don’t know who really does it, but nowadays I think we’re all more inclined to do same way that I watch any other racing around the world. You know, we run through our global YouTube channel GT World, which is a great way to watch and we love that and especially helps for people at all hours and times.

We keep all of our races there, so that works. We also are on Twitch, we’re also on Facebook. We’re on MAP TV afterwards too, so we have a week after the race. You can find us at CVS sports. The day of the race on our live [00:42:00] stream. You can find us on our website, you can find us on YouTube,

Crew Chief Eric: and I want to give a quick shout out to the folks over at Motorsport tv because I catch a lot of the overseas SRO races on that platform, and a lot of people forget about that.

It’s awesome. You can watch European Touring Car and Asian Tour, all that stuff on Motorsport tv. So if you haven’t checked that out, it’s actually free to get into and then you know it goes from there. You know how it is free to play, right?

Greg Gill: Yeah. The first hit’s always free. I,

Crew Chief Eric: you said it, not me, Greg. You know, we talked about what this year looks like.

We talked about where to find the program. Obviously, you can buy tickets online and show up at VIR or the Glen and come check it out in person, which is always the best way to experience a race. But let’s talk about the future. I mean, none of us have a crystal ball, but you mentioned some things that you wanna do short term for the 22 and 23 season, some changes that are coming.

Not only that, what does the next five years look like and what’s your tenure outlook look like for SRO and SRO America specifically?

Greg Gill: It’s interesting you asked that question ’cause [00:43:00] I’m gonna a presentation to our board tomorrow about that very program and where are we gonna be three to five years and 10 years out, and what does that look like?

And we know. And especially all of us as petrol heads, there’s a fear of that. What does that mean? What does alternative fuel mean? Or Ross Braun said some really intelligent things about over a billion vehicles that are fossil fuel powered on the earth right now. You know, that’s probably not gonna go away overnight.

As much as we see these radical changes in some amazing things happening with All fuel and, and all fuel racing vehicles, autonomous racing vehicles, the Electrify expos will have five of those. Running around the country next year. They did three this year. The founder and promoter of that event is a good friend of mine.

I enjoyed going out to his event at Circuit Americas and seeing people who are looking at all electric future. And what does that look like? Uh, we’re gonna be mindful of that. We’re very active on it in Europe. We’ll bring it over to the states as we see that go on. And I think that engagement in the automotive experience and the transportation experience.

It’s gotta be more and more inclusive. There’s [00:44:00] an an expression that hit me at an AWS event called Reinvent. They sat down and talked about diversity, inclusion, what did that look like? And those are really, uh, interesting buzzwords. But the lady who headed up the panel, she had a very good comment. She said, uh, after a couple years ago, we had a reckoning in this country.

Rather than looking at it was for this reason, it was for this reason, it was, there was a reckoning. A lot of us faced it. And that was something for me as a chairman of the League of Old Fat White Guys that I could look at. You know, when I started in the SEMA show in 1983, I was probably one of the youngest people there.

Now I’m like the average age and. That’s old. So you know, we all want more people in. But when we look at it in that time period of almost 40 years of going to the SEMA show, does the SEMA show and our automotive world, does it reflect what our neighborhoods look like? Does it reflect the communities look like Not, doesn’t really.

Before we all want to hold hands and sing kumbaya. Why I love motorsports. It’s like anything [00:45:00] competitive. You don’t get there based on who your daddy was. It, it helps if Daddy’s rich, you know? That’s great. Mama’s got a big checkbook, that’s awesome. But at the end of the day, you get there by your talent.

You get there by what you work and the passion on it. And I think America as an experience has been a melting pot. And an opportunity for all of us to work together to get something done. I had mentioned to my board a year ago when we were starting some of these programs that said, Hey, look in Motorsport, all of us got a hand.

In my case it was, oh, please don’t do that again. But you know, I mean it was still a hand, it was someone doing something that was absolutely unsolicited going, I’m gonna save you from either getting run over by a car right now or driving off the track. Let me help you. That’s how this works. So we wanna give people who maybe wouldn’t have that first opportunity, an opportunity to be involved in Motorsport.

And to see it. And so we’re working with Rob Holland, working with Samantha Tan, working with Sally Ulti. These would be people I know will be on your show in days and months to come. They’re just great individuals that are speaking out for the communities. They serve that passion. And I think one of the things that we [00:46:00] wanna, with our GTX series in Europe, but particularly here in the States, ’cause we view a lot of times that SRO America.

It’s kind of an incubator. We were a rebel thing away from the mothership in around 1776 or so. So you know, we still have that spirit. Our Ossie division is even more so that way that they don’t do it like they do it in Asia and Europe. It’s Australia, and same way here in the States. But we think that sometimes that we take best practices from Europe or we also bubble up things go, Hey, you know, we’ve had some really good luck with this.

Look. Look what we’re seeing here. And again, that’s what Motorsport does. It bubbles up, it brings new things in. Like everybody talks about disc brakes, seat belts, all these other things that. You know, came to be because of, you know, realizing the importance of a motorsport so that, you know, that’s gonna continue.

And, and again, it’s a fun time to see it. So that’s what you’re gonna see with SRO. That’s the five year plan without telling it.

Crew Chief Eric: You know what, Greg, we’re gonna follow up this conversation on our pit stop mini. So where we talk a little bit more about the balance of power when it comes to EVs and other things like that.

Oh. So let, let’s let, let’s hold that thought. [00:47:00] Safety and safe and many other things. Let’s put a pin in that. But I wanna give you the opportunity here as we close out the episode and we kind of wrap up our thoughts for any shoutouts promotions or anything else you’d like to share that we didn’t cover in the episode Thus far,

Greg Gill: veterans support is very, very important to us and we have Veterans race with us and it’s something that we support operation motor boats, both individually and corporately and, and so if there’s things that are in that area, particularly if there’s veterans groups.

That’s either you just know, even a small group, Hey, could you help these guys out? Can you do something for ’em? Don’t hesitate. As far as I’m concerned, they have cart blanc for anything they need with us. They’ll be my guess and and so anything that we can do to help that, we’d like to do that. It’s a team, it’s a team.

I’m incredibly uncomfortable being the figurehead for this team. I was given this opportunity by our board of directors. It was an amazing opportunity. You don’t turn down an opportunity like this. I get to go to work every day doing something that people dream of doing, and yes. Is it hard? Is it difficult?

On some days, yes, but on the same [00:48:00] token, it’s because I have a great team. The shout out goes to the super staff that I have from Susan Stacy. Robbie, Brian, Dean, Natasha Ray. I mean, I can go on and on of all the great people I get to work with, Jack, Jim, et cetera. But then, you know, you always have to go back to, as we talk about a figurehead, Stefan Mattel, a guy had the courage to follow his dreams and put something together.

I get to play with her because that man had the courage. And when we looked at the pandemic and a lot of people were saying, well, should we shut down for a year? And Stefan and I had that conversation. He says, Greg, I’ve never stopped. I’ve never bankrupted a business. We’ve taken people’s money. What do we do?

I said, Hey Stefan, I think we race. Let’s find a way to race. And he did. I love that spirit of competition. Again, it comes back to it. So I give the shout out to my team. I give the shout out to our teams of sponsors. Certainly Pelli, we wouldn’t roll without them. But on the same token, you can look at AWS.

CrowdStrike, VP Fuels will be a new announcement, a new partner returning to us down through the list of just great companies, [00:49:00] Fantech that we mentioned. These are all visionaries. These are all people who are committed to motorsports and they’re committed to the success of the drivers that are participating in it.

So it’s something that I’m just, again, incredibly blessed. Very thankful. Can’t believe you gave me over an hour to talk with you guys today. It was a great honor. Appreciate it. I hope we’ll have a chance to follow up and talk more again.

Crew Chief Eric: Absolutely, Greg. And you know, I wanna thank you because what’s really important here, and I hope people have grasped from this particular episode, is that your passion for Motorsport has come through in the stories that you’ve told and the way we’ve been talking about SRO.

But more importantly, it’s organizations like yours, like SRO America, that reinvigorate. The motor sports base, every one of us can tune into the next NASCAR race or the next Formula One race and go, yeah, it’s great. It’s highly polished. It’s a great product, but it’s just that it’s a product. It’s lost.

Mm-hmm. That grassroots, mm-hmm. That we have all either are still in or have come from. And I think SRO brings that back. And so I think this is a great. For people to return to their roots. [00:50:00] Look for that touring, car racing. Look for that door-to-door competition, even though there’s some balance of power in there.

But it’s still, it’s fun. It’s family. It’s all of the things that we miss about racing, and I wanna congratulate all of you. For perpetuating that, for keeping that going and, and continuing to bring that enthusiasm to the table. So best of luck this season, and I’m sure we’ll hear from you more. But as we close out the 2022 SRO America season, we’ll see more than a hundred.

Races under their banner. You can follow all of the racing action by visiting www.sromotorsports.comortakingaquicklittleshortcutovertowww.gt america.us To hone in on SRO America specifically. And remember, just like Greg said, be sure to follow them on social media at GT America on Twitter, at SRO GT America on Instagram at GT one World.

On Facebook and they’re awesome [00:51:00] YouTube channel where you can watch all the races live. And remember, all of this information will be posted alongside this episode in our follow along article on gt motorsports.org. So if you wanna learn more about SRO America, go ahead and hop over there and check all that out.

So again, Greg, I cannot thank you enough for coming on the show. This has been an absolute pleasure.

Greg Gill: Thank you.

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 [00:52:00] 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 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 [00:53:00] 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 SRO Motorsports America Overview
01:23 History and Evolution of SRO; Interview with Greg Gill
02:06 Origins and Growth of SRO
02:42 World Challenge Series
04:20 Stefan Rotel’s Influence
09:14 Greg Gill’s Journey
13:13 SRO’s Global Racing Programs
15:29 eSports and Technological Innovations
17:31 Comparison with IMSA
22:22 Balance of Performance (BOP)
28:00 Defining a Touring Car
30:02 Brands in the SRO America Series
31:42 Notable Drivers in the SRO America Series
34:25 Pathways to SRO Racing
38:53 SRO America Race Tracks
40:24 How to Watch SRO Races
42:41 Future of SRO America
47:03 Shoutouts and Closing Remarks

Bonus Content

There’s more to this story…

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

2022 SRO GT America Series Schedule

The 2022 season will see more than 100 races run under the SRO Motorsports Group banner and you can follow all the racing action by visiting www.sro-motorsports.com or taking a shortcut to https://www.gtamerica.us/ and be sure to follow them on social media @gt_america on twitter and IG @srogtamerica on FB @gtworld on YT.

Round 1 & 2 – Sonoma Raceway – April 15-17
Round 3 & 4 – Ozarks International Raceway – May 20-22
Round 5 & 6 – VIRginia International Raceway – June 17-19
Round 7 & 8 – Watkins Glen – July 22-24
Round 9 & 10 – Road America – August 19-21
Round 11 & 12 – Sebring – September 23-25
Finale – Indianapolis Motor Speedway – October 7-9

While IMSA focuses on endurance classics like Daytona and Sebring, SRO America specializes in sprint racing. The cars may be the same – GT3 and GT4 platforms – but the format and accessibility differ. SRO offers a lower barrier to entry, making pro racing attainable for more drivers and teams. SRO America fields multiple series:

Touring Car (TC, TCA, TCX): Entry-level racing with front-wheel, rear-wheel, and all-wheel drive platforms.
GT4 America: A proving ground for manufacturers and privateers alike.
GT World Challenge America: The premier GT3 sprint series in the U.S.

One of the most misunderstood aspects of GT racing is Balance of Performance (BoP). It’s not about punishing innovation – it’s about leveling the playing field. Gill notes that BoP allows 20–30 cars to qualify within tenths of a second, making for thrilling, competitive racing.

Globally, SRO operates in Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa. It also produces the FIA Motorsport Games and hosts luxury events like the Vendôme Rally and GT1 Sports Club.

eSports and the Future of Racing

SRO was ahead of the curve in embracing sim racing. With partners like Fanatec and AWS, they’ve built a competitive eSports ecosystem that mirrors real-world racing. Drivers from GT World Challenge Europe are now required to compete in virtual races, and the lap times are nearly identical to their on-track performances.

Did you know that Assetto Corsa Competizione (ACC) is the official GT Racing simulator officially sponsored by SRO Motorsports?

Assetto Corsa Competizione is the new official GT World Challenge videogame.
Thanks to the extraordinary quality of simulation, the game will allow you to experience the real atmosphere of the FIA GT3 homologated championship, competing against official drivers, teams, cars and circuits, reproduced in-game with the highest level of accuracy ever achieved. Sprint, Endurance and Spa 24 Hours races will come to life with an incredible level of realism, in both single and multiplayer modes.

Assetto Corsa Competizione is born from KUNOS Simulazioni‘s long-term experience, and it takes full advantage of Unreal Engine 4 to ensure photorealistic weather conditions and graphics, night races, motion capture animations, reaching a new standard in terms of driving realism and immersion, thanks to its further improved tyre and aerodynamic models.

Designed to innovate, Assetto Corsa Competizione will set to promote eSports, bringing players at the heart of the GT World Challenge and putting them behind the wheel of Ferraris, Lamborghinis, McLarens and many other prestigious GT racing cars, all reproduced with outstanding level of detail.

Whether you’re a seasoned racer or a curious newcomer, SRO Motorsports America offers a gateway into the world of GT racing. It’s a place where passion meets professionalism, and where the goal isn’t just to win – but to grow the sport for everyone. Want to follow the action? Head to www.sromotorsports.com or catch live coverage on YouTube at GT World.

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.

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

Gran T

March 22, 2022

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

In the ever-evolving world of car culture, finding trustworthy resources can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. That’s exactly why Rob Parr created the Collector Car Guide (CCG) – a one-stop reference for automotive enthusiasts across the Mid-Atlantic region. In a recent episode of the Break/Fix podcast, Rob joined host Eric to share the origin story of CCG and how it’s become a vital tool for hobbyists, racers, and restorers alike.

Rob’s publishing roots trace back to 2002 with the Maryland Pet Gazette, a printed directory for pet lovers that became a go-to resource for reliable services. But as the pet industry consolidated and digital platforms took over, Rob pivoted online and began exploring his lifelong passion for cars. With a background in mobile detailing, autocross, and car shows, he saw a gap in the automotive world – especially for local enthusiasts seeking vetted vendors and events.

The lightbulb moment came during a Friday night cruise at a VFW in Westminster, Maryland. Rob overheard two hobbyists struggling to find parts and events. That conversation sparked the idea for CCG: a vetted, regional guide for car lovers, modeled after his successful pet publication.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Spotlight

Notes

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

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

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rob Parr: Well, thank you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crew Chief Eric: gen generating pipeline? Yeah.

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

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

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

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

I wouldn’t go.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a fair statement.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crew Chief Eric: It’s

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

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

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

Crew Chief Eric: exactly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, absolutely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Something special that they’re looking at, but

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We’d love to hear from you.

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

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

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

Learn More

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

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

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

Bonus Content

CCG is more than just a printed magazine – it’s a multi-platform resource that includes:

An annual print guide packed with articles, vendor listings, and club directories
A dynamic website with interactive features, updated listings, and expanded categories
A digital newsletter that keeps subscribers informed about events, legislation, and industry news

The print edition is designed to be a glovebox companion – something you can flip through, file away, and reference when you need parts, services, or inspiration. The website, meanwhile, offers real-time updates, maps, contact info, and even YouTube links for featured vendors.

One of CCG’s standout features is its commitment to vetting every vendor before inclusion. Rob personally researches businesses, checks reviews, and consults trusted sources to ensure quality. “I wouldn’t send someone anywhere I wouldn’t go myself,” he says.

The guide highlights small businesses and local experts – fabricators, machine shops, restoration specialists – who often fly under the radar. Shops like Auto Fab, Battery Warehouse, and Breaker Racing are just a few examples of the high-caliber talent featured in CCG.

Photo courtesy CollectorCarGuide.net; photo by Rob Parr

Clubs, Community, and Motorsport

Beyond vendors, CCG emphasizes the value of joining car clubs. Whether it’s the Cadillac Club or PCA, these organizations offer camaraderie, resources, and perks like exclusive corrals at major races. Rob and Eric agree: “It’s not just the cars—it’s the people.”

CCG also aims to expand its motorsport coverage, with plans to include racing guides, discipline breakdowns (autocross, HPDE, rallycross), and educational content for newcomers.

CCG’s newsletter doesn’t just promote events – it also tackles legislative issues affecting car enthusiasts. Recent coverage includes proposed emissions-related taxes in Maryland and the importance of supporting organizations like SEMA and SCCA. Staying informed helps protect the rights and interests of the collector car community.

How to Get Involved

Want to be part of the CCG network? Rob welcomes contributors, advertisers, and collaborators – but every listing goes through a vetting process. Reputation matters, and CCG is built on trust. Whether you’re a vendor, club organizer, or motorsport advocate, there’s room to grow together.

Collector Car Guide is more than a directory – it’s a bridge between generations, disciplines, and passions. It’s a reminder that car culture thrives when we connect, share, and support each other. And thanks to Rob Parr’s vision, the Mid-Atlantic region has a resource that’s as reliable as it is inspiring. Ready to explore? Visit www.collectorcarguide.com and start your journey.

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

Designed to Get Dirty: How McRey Motocross Is Rewriting the Rules of Women’s Gear—and the Culture Around It

Daniel S

March 15, 2022

Designed to Get Dirty: How McRey Motocross Is Rewriting the Rules of Women’s Gear—and the Culture Around It

In the world of motocross, where grit meets gear and adrenaline fuels identity, two sisters from Northern California are kicking up more than just dust. Paige and Kelly McReynolds didn’t just launch a brand—they launched a movement. One that’s equal parts sass and soul, stitched together with leopard print, sparkly gold, and a whole lot of purpose. Welcome to McRey Motocross: women’s gear designed to get dirty – and look damn good doing it.

Photo courtesy Kelly & Paige McReynolds, MCREY Motocross

Like many great origin stories, McRey began with frustration. After a crash left Paige’s jersey shredded, she discovered the replacement was discontinued—and worse, matching pants were now a must-buy. Cue the whiteboard session. Within an hour, the sisters had a name, a slogan, and their first sketch. McRey Motocross was born.

Raised in a family that rotated sports with the seasons—wakeboarding in summer, snowboarding in winter—the sisters were no strangers to adventure. But dirt biking was different. It was theirs. And when they realized they could ride solo, wrench solo, and dream solo, they knew it was time to build something bigger.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Neither Paige nor Kelly studied fashion. But they did study life. Paige, a communications major with a knack for storytelling, built the McRey website from scratch. Kelly, a psychology major and former counselor, brings empathy and insight to every design decision. Together, they’re the yin and yang of McRey—sassy and independent meets gentle and loving.

Their gear reflects that balance. Jerseys with side snaps for easy layering over protective gear. Pants with high waists and stretch panels that accommodate real bodies—not just idealized ones. And designs that feel familiar, like something already in your closet, but built to ride.

Spotlight

Notes

Deeper dive into the MCREY MotoCross story; by checking out the site, it sounds like there’s some great stories, epic crashes, outfit changes and more.
Did either of you compete/race in MotoX? What’s that like?
They say that necessity breeds invention, but in this case necessity begets a business… Let’s talk more about how MCREY Motocross got started, and what products you offer.
Do you have a background in fashion?
If a young girl walked up to you today and asked, Why do you race? What would you say?
How should racing change to be more inviting to more people, esp. Women?

Transcript

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

Crew Chief Eric: Our guests tonight are the epitome of yin and yang. One being sassy and independent, while the other gentle and loving. From an early age, they were encouraged to try anything and everything. And there was only one thing these sisters had in common, and that was their love for adventure.

Fascinated with off roading from an early age, receiving their first dirt bikes around the age of 10, they quickly realized, like any sport, it requires proper gear and safety equipment. But the problem is, there were hardly any options for young ladies. During the pandemic, [00:01:00] sisters Paige and Kelly McReynolds jokingly talked about what their dream company would look like.

Women’s motocross apparel that they actually wanted to wear, instead of whatever they could scrounge up in the men’s section. They sat down at the whiteboard and within an hour had a name, slogan, and their first design sketches. They knew they had something special and they wanted to share their story.

Their designs and their passion for adventure with other women and girls around the world. So join me on this adventure with my co host Mountain Man Dan and our guest Paige and Kelly McReynolds to share their story and tell us all about McRey Motocross. So welcome to Break Fix, Kelly and Paige.

Paige McReynolds: Woo.

Thanks for having us. Wow. What a wonderful intro.

Crew Chief Eric: Thanks. So why don’t we dive deeper into this McRae motocross story? When you check out the website, it sounds like there’s some awesome and epic stories, crashes, outfit changes, all sorts of stuff. How did it all start?

Paige McReynolds: with a [00:02:00] crash. I crashed and ripped my gear, my jersey specifically.

So I just wanted to replace my jersey and realized that because it was a couple years old, they no longer sold it online. Like I couldn’t find it anywhere. And so I’m like, okay, well now I’m not only just buying a new jersey, I have to buy a new pair of pants. At least for me, I want my stuff to match. And I feel like that’s a cross.

That’s like a cross. I feel like most riders like. You match your gear. And so it just started this conversation between us where I was super frustrated that I had to buy a whole new kit, just because I had a huge rip in my sleeve. We started talking about what our dream Jersey would look like. If I could create any Jersey, what would it be?

Animal print for me, it’s very natural choice. And so we started sketching that up. And literally, like you said, within I think an hour, we had a name, a slogan, and our first Jersey sketch. And we were like, dude, this, I feel like we should do this. It was kind of a, we’re like, I think we’re kind of, and all of a sudden we had like a logo and shirts.

I was like, Oh, we’re doing it. Cause we lived together at the time and we’re up in Northern California and our entire living room [00:03:00] was just sketches. Like there was all our pencils, paper colored pencils everywhere. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Do you guys have a background in fashion? Nope.

Paige McReynolds: Not like an actual degree or certification.

And if you look at like our pictures from like Fifth grade, you would definitely notice we have no style, but we were always involved in like, creative projects growing up. We both took art classes. We would make bags and shirts out of like old clothing. Oh, that’s right. I totally forgot that. Yeah. And like, as you get older, you know, in high school, we would keep up with trends.

So we like, we like style and whatnot, but we do not have a degree or anything in fashion background. Yeah. So we started riding, learned how to ride when we were younger. And then I think for both of us, at different times, we took time off. Mostly when we were, I think, a little bit older in high school and then went to college.

We both went to Sonoma State, so we weren’t home. There wasn’t something that we did by ourselves. And it wasn’t until we both moved back to the area that we really started getting back into it. Made [00:04:00] friends that ride that were our own age. We got our, you know, had our own bikes that we could take with us.

And all of a sudden we realized. We could do all of this by ourselves. Like, why do we have to be with our dad to do it? Why do we have to be with family or friends? We can ride all on our own. We can take our bikes out by ourselves. And to add to it too, we were like on and off with dirt biking just because our family does so many other sports.

Like, each season has its… sport we do. So summers was for wakeboarding and then winters was for skiing and snowboarding, and we always had other stuff going on. And I feel like for racing, you really have to, I mean, it’s a full on sport. Like I played soccer, she played softball. Like we know what it means to dedicate.

And I just don’t know if we’ll ever have like the full time and energy to be like full on racers, but we definitely. Want to race in the future. And that’s also kind of why it took so long to get to this point, but it’s kind of perfect timing, like our age and now just feeling so dedicated to the sport that we want to create a business around it.

So growing

Crew Chief Eric: up sounds like a family affair, but going out there, riding and whatnot, were there other girls that rode with you? Did you ride with other guys? Just you [00:05:00] guys like out with the fam by yourself. So,

Paige McReynolds: yeah, it was normally our dad and his friends and then his friends sons. And that’s how we. Became friends with a lot of our, some of our best friends now was through that.

For the most part, we were always the only two girls. There were a couple of rides where some family friends, like a couple, maybe older women would go riding with us. Up until like a year ago, we haven’t really had any friends our age that ride that are female. Yeah. That just became very normal for us.

Like we didn’t even really think about, I mean, it sucked. It was a bummer. Like, man forced us to get really close, you know? Yeah. You know, it’s like we just, were always riding with the dudes and that’s just how it was. And there wasn’t really any other option for, or we didn’t see any other option. Um, yeah.

And we’re very family oriented, so, I mean, of course we had like friends growing up, but our family does a lot too much. Yeah. Together. Like we had ditch out on plans with friends ’cause their dad’s like, we’re gonna man with the next week. And we’d be like, all right, bye. So I feel like it felt really normal.

Now it’s like, we’re like, Oh my God, there’s all these other people that ride at our age. [00:06:00] Cause we were used to riding with just our family. It’s rare to meet as many people that do as many hobbies as we do and work beyond spoiled with how much that our parents have encouraged us to do and gotten us involved in.

So I think we are just like, this is. You know, it’s our parents and us that do all this stuff together, but it’s awesome to now expand that and through our company, we have found so many other people that like to do what we do.

Mountain Man Dan: So you guys mentioned that you guys were up in the Northern California area.

I’ve only ever ridden out in California. One time that was down a little bit South of the Fresno area is the terrain up in Northern California. Similar to that, or is it more mountainous or

Paige McReynolds: more mountainy, like a lot more Redwood mountain rock, little more single track. I would say a lot more single track.

That’s probably why we stay away from it. I don’t do well on single track. It’s too much pressure to keep your tire in a, such a small, we need space. I need space to make a mistake because if I, like, if I veer off, I need to be able to course correct and come back. We’re still like, you see that rock and you’re like, don’t look at the rock.

You’re going to hit the rock. And I’m like, all I’m doing is looking at the rock [00:07:00] and I’ll send you off trail. And I’m like, I was that should definitely have to master

Mountain Man Dan: the art of balance when you’re doing trails like that.

Crew Chief Eric: And we ran into you guys at the mint 400, which is the complete opposite of single track, right?

I mean, it’s as wide as it can be. The motorcycles have their own thing. I mean, I can’t believe how long they were out there. I mean, absolutely all day. Do you guys see yourself maybe one day doing something like the mint 400, something big?

Paige McReynolds: Hey, I don’t know what’s my niche. Not what I thought you were going to say.

I don’t know if my niche could handle that much. We have some genetics in our family that has given bad niche to Paige. But I really think Why not? Why not? Like you said, we really want to try writing, I think, getting involved. in this. It makes us just want to try new things. We don’t want to say no to anything if we haven’t tried it.

And we are pretty decent writers, I feel like. Not amazing, but like we’re definitely willing. I think we surprise people. We’re obviously a little. We’re eccentric and we’re a lot. And I feel like people don’t expect us to be on two fifties, which is, we get that a lot, especially at events like the [00:08:00] mint 400 and whatnot.

And then people go riding with us and they’re like, I’m not going to lie. You’re a lot better than I

Crew Chief Eric: thought you were going to be. So why don’t we crank up the way back machine a little bit and talk about Paige and Kelly, the young ladies, right before McRae motocross and talk about your experience in dirt bike racing and what seems like hair scramble and some other things. You got into it, honestly, right?

Sounds like from your parents and from your dad. So what was that like getting on a bike at 10 years old and then going into racing?

Paige McReynolds: We’ve never raced. Actually. We were going to start racing this year and then we didn’t register for the Biltwell 100 in time. Stay tuned. We are going to race eventually.

But for us, I think I was in middle school and you’re in elementary school. And we came home from school. One day the garage was open. There was a one 50 and a one 10 sitting in the. Garage and we pull up and dad’s just like, girls, you can tell that we impersonate our dad a lot. Girls, you’re going to learn how to ride dirt bike.

And we’re like, I don’t even know what this is, but sure. And then a couple hours later, this [00:09:00] semi truck pulls up in front of our house and this crate gets dropped off. It’s a go kart with a roll cage. And dad’s like, we’re going to. Build it. And by we, he meant him, but we became like a full off road family in a matter of like three days.

And I was like, I don’t know what this is.

Mountain Man Dan: Two quick questions. One, the brand of the bikes that were in the garage when you came home that day. And do you still show loyalty to that brand? Or do you not show any brand loyalty for the type of bike you ride?

Paige McReynolds: We have show brand loyalty. So the one 50 was a Honda and we are both Honda gals through and through.

We’ve only had Hondas. was a Suzuki.

Crew Chief Eric: Tell us maybe like one of your most epic stories or one of those adventures that you look back on and go, that was absolutely amazing.

Paige McReynolds: Well, cause when you said epic, like the first thing that came to mind is when I crashed into two trees. Yeah. That’s what I thought.

Okay. But that’s not epic. Like, Ooh, that was slick. I went riding with my friends in Gorman, which is I mean, it’s Southern California. I’m trying to [00:10:00] think of like how to describe where it is. There’s some open trail, but there is a lot more single track or like not all technical or single track, but definitely like smaller trails on the side of a mountain.

Yeah. I don’t know what it was. I think I was just, I didn’t know. I didn’t know. A little nervous. I think there was a 90 degree hairpin turn that I didn’t know was there and I’d hit it. And then, you know, they say like when in doubt, throttle out. Well, I throttled out and I throttled out off the side of the trail and landed in a tree, like went down the hill, landed in a tree.

And I like was stuck in the tree to the point where like my feet were on the pegs and I was still sitting upright. Like my bike was sitting upright by itself in the tree. One of my best friends comes over and he’s like, damn it, McReynolds. And I was like, when in doubt, throttle out. He’s like, now we got to go get everyone to pull your bike up.

We have toe straps on our bikes. For these reasons, because we do this a lot. So our dad just put those on there, pulled my bike up, got it out, kept riding. And then probably like 30 minutes later on a different turn on the same trail, I did it again. And this time, like all my plastics bent [00:11:00] back. My front plate fell off.

We had to disconnect like all the wires and everything. My leg had a bruise, like literally the size from my hip to my knee on it. Cause it was in between the tree. And dad’s like, this is why I don’t let you guys go by yourselves.

Crew Chief Eric: Never off road alone. They say,

Paige McReynolds: yeah, it was like pretty epic when we wrote in the, I was gonna say when we wrote in the snow, that was like a really cool day that was in Cal city.

And we were riding up in the snow and it was just like. a really cool we don’t get to do a ride in the snow a lot so it’s just different beautiful and really cool and our family was with us so until we fell and there was just snow like stuffed in my helmet and my chest protector someone came like whipping around the corner and so we all like hit our base but it’s snowy.

So we all like slid and then everyone got up and it was just like snow stuck in your goggles. You’re like, well, that was fun day. That was fun day. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Oftentimes in the four wheeled world, we talk about, you know, these legendary tracks and court places like Laguna Seca, Lamans, [00:12:00] and, you know, Rhode, Atlanta, whatever the people that have on their bucket list that they want to go drive their vehicles at.

So I wonder for you guys. Is there a trail that you’ve heard of or a place that you want to go? Maybe like off roading in Alaska or something like that. Is there some sort of epic journey that you guys have on your bucket list that you want to do on your bikes?

Paige McReynolds: I have a couple locally for a trail. One of them is called bean Canyon.

And the only reason I want to do it is because. All of our friends do it and talk about how hard it is and they’re like, you’re not ready to go. And I’m like, try me, try me. I’m like, come on, take me out there. I want to try and do it. I know it’s hard. I like, I know I’m not going to do it well, but the fact that everyone tells me how hard it is and they’re like, Oh, maybe you’re not ready.

Makes me want to do it even more. Yeah. I feel like bean canning for us. Cause for that reason, also we got to do the Sierra safari. Cause our dad does it. And it’s this ride up in mammoth lakes and it’s three days. Right. And it’s like, It’s pretty extensive. My dad’s like, you can’t before he’s like, you guys can’t do it.

Like it’s two, it’s three days, 120 miles a day. It’s too much. It’s too much. It’s [00:13:00] rocky. We always mess with them. We’re like one year, we’re going to show up without telling you. And we’re going to be like surprised. So I feel like we have to do that. We’ve just been talking about it for so long. I feel like those are actual.

Well, you know what? I don’t want to say that. I think everything’s tangible, but those, I, I, I think I can see in the much closer future, but I think one thing that would be really awesome is riding, just riding on a super cross track. Like I don’t want to ride with, I don’t mean anyone else on the track with me.

Like I’m not trying to race anyone. Liability reasons. No one else is going to be allowed on the track. For their safety, no one else could be allowed on the track. I think it would be really awesome just to have the opportunity to like ride my bike around the track.

Kelly McReynolds: Yeah.

Paige McReynolds: Just any of the supercross tracks.

I don’t care which one. And I think at Loretta Lynn’s as well. I think that would be really cool just to say I rode my bike around the track at Loretta Lynn’s. Yeah.

Mountain Man Dan: We generally don’t get too many two wheel enthusiasts on the show and we’re aiming to correct that by getting more individuals. Such as yourselves on.

So a lot of times we often ask questions like, what’s your thought on the [00:14:00] sexiest car of all time, ugliest car of all time. But in your guys case for motorcycles, what is your favorite bike, sexiest bike, worst bike you’ve ever ridden? Things like that.

Paige McReynolds: I mean, have you seen our bikes? I was going to say, I feel like if we say anything other than our own bikes, then we’re out of, we got to go.

We’re done. We to

like, I think our bikes. are cool just because we have McRae graphics on them and they match other than our numbers, but like we have our butterfly on it and the McRae logo and use our colors. But then we also have our individual seats. So my seat is leopard print and Kelly’s is sparkly gold. We call it the Dolly Parton seat.

So I, yeah, I mean, you know, I look at our bikes and I’m like, she looks good. That’s my baby. So there’s,

Crew Chief Eric: there’s no like three bay bucket list. Like you want a Ducati and a triumph and you know, whatever in your garage, you know, in your collection of motorcycles, nothing like that.

Paige McReynolds: We did recently go to a street motorcycle event and [00:15:00] we kind of were thinking like maybe a pair of Harleys would be really cool collection.

I was looking at this like 1973 street Honda. I was like. That’s a pretty sweet, but it’s on Craigslist. I got her saved. So, you know, I feel like we got to come back to that one. We’ll check back in with you. I mean, cause dirt bikes, we got to stick with Honda through and through the rest of our lives, Honda, but street bikes will come back because our family’s like not big on our mom works in insurance.

So for her street bike, she’s like, nope, liability, but maybe now that we’re older, you know, and we’re just. met that community of women that ride street bikes. And it was just very cool. And we’ve rode our dirt bikes just like on the street in the neighborhood. I’m like, man, I could just like, I can see myself do this.

Yeah. So it’s something we might be entertaining. I thought we’re entertaining soon.

Crew Chief Eric: So we should probably go back to talking about what this episode is about, which is McRae motocross. I gotta say, I love the whole slogan. It’s what got my attention, which is the design to get dirty. I just love that. And [00:16:00] the quote on the website really kind of sets the stage.

Shopping for women’s MoTex gear can be frustrating and disappointing. The prints are undesirable. The fit is terrible. We hear you. We are you. You know, they say necessity breeds invention. necessity begets a business. So let’s talk more about the products you offer, how they’re designed, how they’re different, you know, and those kinds of things.

What are, what are you putting out there?

Paige McReynolds: You know, really focusing on, we have street apparel. That’s what’s currently available on our website. I think our street apparel is awesome, but that’s definitely like, that was not the focus of this business. Our main focus is women’s motocross kits. So the jerseys and pants that you wear when you ride for us, like the Jersey specifically.

So, We made a lot of technical enhancements to the jerseys that we feel like make them better suited for a female rider. So designs alone are just like nothing we’ve ever seen before in the motocross or off road industry. You know, tailoring the sides so that it fits a woman’s natural curves a little bit more.

Shortening the hem so that they don’t go down to our [00:17:00] knees and like bunch up when we try to tuck them into our pants. And then we came up with a snap design. So on the front of the jersey, there’s. Four snaps on each side of the front and you open them up so you can pull them over your gear without it getting stuck on anything on any of your protectors.

And then you just snap them closed. And then for the pants, same idea. Like we made a lot of technical enhancements. We basically just, we took what we had and we’re like, Hey, what do we like about this and what do we not like about this? And we asked a lot of our friends, a lot of the women writers we’ve met over the past couple of years.

And we’re like, what is your ideal pair of pants? And so higher waisted, more stretch panels, like women’s pants. I think. Sometimes our friends and other companies think like it’s for women. It needs to be skin tight. And it’s like, I don’t want to wear skin tight clothing while I’m riding. That’s not comfortable.

And so that’s what we’re focused on. That’s what sets us apart. I mean, again, I think our apparel is cool, but at the day, like it’s. It’s a pair. It’s a pair.

Crew Chief Eric: You have a huge challenge in front of you because let’s face it. Men’s sizes and cuts are pretty standard. Large, extra [00:18:00] large, 2XL. Then you got your 36, 38, whatever size you are and you’re in seam.

And it’s pretty basic, right? But women come in, I hate to say, all shapes and sizes. So you guys have to have like just a mountain of challenges ahead of you to say, Yeah. What works, what doesn’t, and to your point, stretch panels, isn’t that to make a size sort of work for people? So how have you overcome that?

Paige McReynolds: Yeah, you know, on one hand, we, we want to be as inclusive as possible for everyone in the community. And I think another big thing for us is there might be women who aren’t. in the community yet, but they don’t feel like that there’s a place for them. And so we want to create, we want to open that door for other women to see the industry and to see us and our company and be like, okay, I can do this too.

Like I can go buy a bike. I can learn how to work on it. I can do all this stuff by myself. And so all that being said, we want to be extremely inclusive, but there is only so much we can do. within our budget and our first run. And so for the first run of pants specifically, cause I think we will run into more hurdles with the pants than the jerseys.

We did what we felt was standard [00:19:00] sizing. So small through extra large based on our sizes. And we feel like we’re pretty like standard in terms of we’re not at one extreme or the other. And so we kind of use that. starting point. And, you know, we just ask for patience from everyone else that it will take some time and a little bit of extra cashflow to, to get those additional sizes.

And we have a lot of ideas about, okay, these are going to be our super durable waterproof pants. And then we’re going to have a pair of extremely comfortable. Soft canvas pants that are tailored maybe more to the ladies who like to sit around the campfire as much as they like to like put around on their bikes.

And so we have ideas where you’re going to create products that fit everyone and everyone’s not only just fit physically, but style and needs. We just need a little bit of time to build that inventory. We just have to take it one day at a time, honestly, like we do have a lot of ideas and not just for this.

but for other sports to include women. And so starting with one pair of gray pants, and then we want to hear critiques. We want to hear what other [00:20:00] women have to say like, Hey, this didn’t fit my body. And this is why great. We want to hear it. So then when we bring out new pants, we want to one day be able to provide it.

So I can fit as many body types as possible. And like Paige said, too, with the street wear and also what other things we’ll be bringing out, we’re hoping to include women who. are like diehard riders and want to get out there and get into racing, but also other like women that do want to just chill at the campfire and maybe like ride in a razor or something.

Like we want everyone to feel welcome in this community.

Crew Chief Eric: And you’re a hundred percent right. Because the challenges exist also in the four wheel community, where if you look at women’s driving suits, the Nomex suits and things like that, it’s all just super boxy. And I hate to say I’m flattering. You’re starting to see.

Some color palette changes, but in terms of cut and finish, it’s just the same old kind of banana suit that we all zip on like onesies or whatever. It’s terrible. I mean, the guys ones aren’t any better, right? They’re not form fitting or really tailored in any way either. They’re just boxes. Basically

Paige McReynolds: careless guys just care.

They don’t care. We

Crew Chief Eric: just, we [00:21:00] want cool patches all over our stuff. Like it’s, you know, stroke stroke race, like Burt Reynolds, you know what I mean?

Paige McReynolds: And my existence. And we’ve gotten this question because, you know, I think for so long, there’s only been a handful of companies in the off road industry that people can name off the top of their head and they all look the same, no offense to any of them, but they do, they all look the same.

And so when we started coming out with our stuff, we’ve shown a couple snippets of our jerseys and our pants, and some of our friends have seen it and people are very quick to tell us like. You don’t have your name on it. You don’t have your logo on it. What about your sponsors? Well, what, when you race, what are you going to do?

And I’m like, hold on, excuse. That is literally what we’re trying not to do. Like, I don’t care. I don’t, my ego doesn’t need 15 logos up my arms to make me feel better about myself riding. Like we put a very simple butterfly logo on our chest and that is the only logo that will be on our jerseys to your point, like, I feel like guys like get really stoked on that.

Like all the logo, all the brands that they’re wearing and they’re like. Look who I’m wearing. Look at this. And like for women, I’m like, I just want to look cute. I don’t [00:22:00] care. The sport is really intimidating again into like this huge piece of machinery. You’re sitting on it and now you’re trying to go over rocks and sand and technical terrain.

I mean, it’s already intimidating enough. Slap on a bunch of like big company logos and stuff. It can look scary. So I think we are trying to bridge that gap where it’s like, if that maybe is a little overwhelming, then we’re the brand for you where it’s really just like. We’ve got good looking stuff that’s durable.

And it’s not so overwhelming in pattern. It’s like very just, we call it our free baby, free moto baby, because we love free people styles, which is a clothing brand and it’s a lot of like organic, like florals and neon and stuff, but it’s very different than what’s in the moto world. And so we’re introducing that.

So it’s helps women be like. That’s really cute. I actually would just like to wear that. It kind of looks like a long sleeve I have. That’s kind of the point. It’s like this comfortability, this familiarity with something that’s already in their closet, but just in a different way that can attract them to the sport.

Makes it a little less eerie.

Crew Chief Eric: So let’s also talk just for a moment about safety, right? Because that’s always a concern in every mode of sport. [00:23:00] People that we talk to all the time, and we’ve had some other safety gear providers on, you know, obviously in the four wheeled community. So one of the things that comes up, the durability of the clothing, like you said, waterproofing is something that’s important.

to you guys in the motocross world, but also fireproofing. So how much of this gear is Nomex rated? How do you get it certified? Things like that. And I also wonder, are you also faced with the challenge of making your apparel work with the safety gear that exists, like the padding and like you talked about the chest plates and things like that.

So how does all that work together with the McRae line of apparel?

Paige McReynolds: I would just like to say that we are not certified. We are not selling any form of. Protective gear. We do not claim that our jerseys or pants will protect you from any sort of harm bodily play anything. Like we’re not like our gear does not do that.

We’re just guaranteeing you look good. It says it on the tag, but

Mountain Man Dan: I’ve had plenty of name brand apparel, and I will say that it is not hold up the heat and fire and stuff because I had plenty I’m getting melted and [00:24:00] stuff. So I’ll just throw that out there for you. So

Paige McReynolds: I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah. You know, we’ve done our research and especially I think for the pants.

To try to find the best materials possible that we think will work. And so we’re not using a leather, but sometimes there’s a leather patch or a dilemma or something on the side of your leg. That’s the leg. That’s especially the one that sits next to all your pipes and your motor and whatnot. We took all the fabric samples and hung them on, you know, the hangers that have the little clips on them.

And I turned my bike on and I ran my bike. For like 20 minutes. And I hung the hanger next to that with all the fabric samples and just let them sit a centimeter from the hot pipe for about 15, 20 minutes. And we’d like pulled everything up and some of them had started belting. So we were like, that one’s out.

Some of them held up really well. And we’re like, okay, that one, that’s a good option. So we have done our research in terms of. Trying to use the best material, because obviously we want to use stuff that holds up. We don’t want it to rip in the first wear. We don’t want it to start melting, you know, just because your leg is sitting next [00:25:00] to the pipe.

And so all that being said, we’re doing our best. I know I’m sure as we grow and as we are in the industry more and talk to more people and start to see different types of materials, like. I’m sure our pants will evolve and change. I hope they do. It’d be cool if like our only pair of pants just like crushes it.

And we’re like, great, that’s awesome. But we will always continue to evolve. We wouldn’t be doing our jobs right if we weren’t, but we do come across some, I don’t necessarily know if they’re like problems, but we do have to keep in mind like what already exists. So do these pants, like the bottom of our pants, are they stretchy enough to accommodate?

existing knee pads, but without being too tight. Like if someone wanted to wear padded shorts under their pants, like do our pants allow for that kind of movement in that room? And same with our jerseys for anyone who wears like the different sizes of protective gear. Like those are all things that we have to take into account.

And we went through several samples, like having to change materials and make adjustments for this reason. So we’ve been through materials and we’ve now come to this last one, especially with our pants that we’re like, This is durable. This is [00:26:00] what people need. This is what we want to wear. We’ve had to go through it though.

We’ve had to make some changes and especially after doing research, realizing some materials won’t work and these ones are better. And then actually using materials from different sports on our pins. We’re like, this is actually going to work way better, particularly from a woman’s body to like certain stretch panels.

We’ve put in that work ourselves to make sure that it’s going to fit. Over our protective gear and also hold up while riding and whatnot during certain weather. And I think what’s cool, our manufacturer has never made motocross pants, either motocross gear, which we were a little nervous about at first, but I think it actually works in our favor because we don’t know what we don’t know and they don’t know what they don’t know.

So we don’t have anyone telling us. Well, this is how everyone else does it. This is how it’s always been done. Like we don’t have anyone telling us that what we’re doing is wrong, which again, on one, like we, we welcome feedback if something is visibly wrong with our product, like we would obviously want to know, but we have out of the box ideas and what we’re doing is out of the box and to have.

A manufacturer say, Oh, you want something durable and strong and breathable. Here are [00:27:00] your fabric options. And it’s not based on what anyone else in the industry is doing. It’s just based purely on what we’re looking for in our materials. On the

Crew Chief Eric: need. Yeah, absolutely. The sky’s the limit here, right? You’re starting with the outerwear and like you’re talking about the pants and the jerseys.

And like that, but I could obviously see this going into undergarments. I could see it going into gloves, maybe shoes, even maybe let’s, let’s dream big helmets, right? Goggles got to be coordinated all the way through. That’s really cool. But to your point, you have to crawl before you walk, before you run.

Mountain Man Dan: A lot of times when we have companies on to highlight their business and such, we ask them what’s in the name and to give us information regarding that, or for you guys with something that’s really significant is your logo, the butterfly.

So what is the importance and meaning behind the butterfly?

Paige McReynolds: To make a long story short. Well, I don’t know. Do you want the long story or make a

Crew Chief Eric: short story long? Let’s go for

Paige McReynolds: it. Yeah. When we first partnered with a graphic designer and a brand developer, when we had this idea, we specifically said, we don’t want anything girly.

We don’t want butterfly polka dots flower. [00:28:00] I don’t know what else we said, like stars, like just nothing girly. Because at the time in our mind, we didn’t want to be so obviously different that it would deter people from supporting our brands. We wanted our brand to kind of just. Fit in with the rest hindsight.

We were very wrong. We don’t want that at all, but not doing that at all. So, you know, if we felt like the women’s options that do exist in the market, currently it is a very specific look, it’s a very specific vibe and we just don’t necessarily resonate with that. And so we wanted to try to stay away from that.

Well, fast forward, he came back to us with the logo that we’re both wearing on our shirts. And we were like, and it has little handlebars on the side and we’re like, we really like it. But it’s not our logo. And he’s like, okay, what do you want? And so we sent a couple more sketches and we did it separately.

And he came back to us and he’s like, both of the sketches that you send me have butterflies in them. And we’re like, Hmm, interesting that you didn’t want,

Crew Chief Eric: you didn’t want butterflies, but now you want butterflies. Yeah, we didn’t know we

Paige McReynolds: wanted them apparently. And I like, we’re a headache. We know we’re, [00:29:00] we’re a lot, but like, I mean, and so he came back to us with.

Our logo, the butterfly, it’s ombre, the orange and yellow. And we just immediately looked at each other. We were like, that’s it. And for a lot of reasons, butterflies have a meaning in our family, special meaning. I have two of them tattooed on my side. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that sooner, but I’m like, I, I have two butterflies tattooed on my side.

Like that’s how much they mean to us. Our mom loves butterflies. So I feel like that has had an influence as well, like our interest in them, just being their beauty. And I don’t know, there’s something really pleasant when a butterfly’s around and now it. So it kind of started that we’re like, wow, it’s really cool.

It’s got like this family thing behind it, but now it’s cultivated into this new meaning for us that we have undergone so much transformation over our lives. You know, truly, you know, starting as a caterpillar, if you saw pictures of us from like middle elementary school, you’d be like, Oh yeah, caterpillar, you guys.

Rough years. Um, there is this form of transformation that comes with a butterfly and especially starting this business together. Our relationship has [00:30:00] transformed so much and we’re kind of spreading our wings and finding our way and really embracing our own authenticity. But then what we bring to the table together, definitely.

And we. couldn’t do it because of that yin and yang style we have. That’s really what makes this business what it is. Like, I don’t think it would have the same success if it was only one of us. It’s just been interesting how that’s now, like, it’s turned into this thing where it’s really about transformation and how we hope, too, that people see the butterfly and they’re like, You know what?

I can make that change today and be the woman I want to be or be the girl I want to be. And I can like start that change now. We’re hoping that this butterfly can be a representation of being bold, being courageous, getting on that dirt bike, going fishing with the boys, getting your girls to go out fishing with them.

You know, like I, we really hope that when you look at our butterfly and everything that it embodies. That’s what you feel.

Mountain Man Dan: I’ll say I can definitely have a strong appreciation for you guys trying to get women into the sports because for years, being a father of a little girl, when she was first born, my aspiration was for her to become the first [00:31:00] professional motocross rider, but I don’t think it’s going to happen, but she still likes to go out and ride.

Paige McReynolds: We’ll sponsor her. If she does, we will sponsor her. Absolutely.

Mountain Man Dan: I’ve seen, like you were mentioning earlier with road bikes and stuff. I’ve noticed in probably the past, a much larger presence with women coming out riding because I ride street bikes as well. I love seeing more women involved in it because if there’s more women involved in it, and like Eric was mentioning earlier, we’re trying to spread the enthusiasm across all spectrum of motorsports.

And one of the key areas is the youth and women, in my opinion, to get them more involved. So what you guys are doing, I applaud it because I really see the need

Crew Chief Eric: And I think there’s a quote on the website, if you don’t mind me stealing yet another one, because it leads me into my next point that kind of summarizes this whole thought.

And it reads the butterfly symbolizes everything women are and who we hope to become bold. Beautiful, elegant, unique, and transformational that really resonated with me. And I think it’s very true. And it, but it also speaks to your [00:32:00] guys creativity and the writing on the website. I think this is something that goes unappreciated about the McRae motocross website, because there’s a lot of these like golden nuggets in the blogs and on just simple things like the about us page, you know, where you’re giving people these titles, like, you know, VP of treat distribution and all this fun stuff and it, it’s super engaging and it makes me want to read.

More and stay on the site and do all these kinds of things. So, you know, you guys are very multi talented. You’re very clever. And I think it speaks across the board in terms of the brand and what you guys are doing and thinking outside of the box. So I really got to applaud you guys for that.

Paige McReynolds: Actually, Paige is responsible for the website.

1000%. I mean, too, you’re asking like, Oh, do you guys have a background in fashion? Nope. And we’re not racers. We don’t have a background in these things. Paige was anything that we’re doing. And I honestly think that gives us a leg up in a lot of ways. She was a communication major. So you can see from our website, Paige writes beautifully when she would write all my speeches for stuff.

She really [00:33:00] knows how to grab someone’s attention in that sense. And so that’s her background. She also has worked in like corporate America with different companies and whatnot. And then I was a psych back.

I was in psychology and I was working as a counselor for several different populations. And so those things combined kind of give us a different edge that we’re not just two girls on dirt bikes. Sure. You know, we know how to ride a dirt bike and we can ride a wakeboard, like we can do all of these things and be a face that woman can look at and be like, okay, they can do it.

I can do it. But at the same time. That’s awesome. I think part of our blog too, is that we’re a lot more than that. We’re a lot more than two athletes. We think deeply about life and about the world around us and supporting our community and uplifting other women. And I think that comes from having that background in the majors that we had in the way we were raised.

Her introverted self couldn’t handle anymore. She was like, and I’m done and close. Um, well, I think to add onto that, there has been a lot of push for supporting women, businesses and women empowerment over the past [00:34:00] couple of years. And. So what’s really important for us is we don’t want to just be another trend.

Like I think we started the company at the perfect time. Like we really nailed it with timing in terms of what’s happening in history, but we don’t want to just talk about it. We don’t want to just tell women to be authentic, live yourself, transform into your highest power, like stuff like the cliche stuff that you hear all the time, because while we do want that, we realized that in order to actually inspire and empower women to do those things, we have to do those things.

We have to be those things as well. Through that, you know, we’ve learned starting this company, like we just try to be as honest and open as possible, like pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone on our blogs and on our YouTube video and on social media. Like we just try to be as authentically ourselves as possible, so to hopefully inspire other women.

Oh, okay. Like I can be kind of weird and quirky and still be funny and like I can put on social media and no one’s gonna judge me. And if they do, who cares? Yeah. I just think that’s a big thing for us is. If we’re going to not just talk about it, but be about it and hopefully [00:35:00] embody the things that we blog about and do

Crew Chief Eric: those.

And I think the bigger difference is when you look at your guy’s website versus a lot of other ones that are out there, you can tell it’s the same level of professionalism you’d expect from any website today, but there’s a sense of realness there. And there’s a sense of you guys coming through. that you realize very quickly, this was not written by some guy in a cubicle who cranks out 50 of these a day.

And it’s just regurgitating the same stuff. It’s like, this is legit. This is for real. And it speaks to both of you guys. And so again, I found it to be a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to whatever the next blog post is that comes out. I also want to turn this around because you hit on my next. Really important point, you know, talking about doing it rather than saying it, being that beacon, being that role model, being the hero for young ladies.

And so I wonder if a young girl walked up to you today and said, why do you race? Why do you do this? What would you say?

Paige McReynolds: We’ve had a couple of instances where young girls have come up to our booth and it’s. It has [00:36:00] made us cry. Um, I mean, the guy like Terry talking about it now, it has made us cry because they’re so excited about seeing something so cool and beautiful, like a butterfly, but then it’s also for women, like just how excited little girls get.

It just like, that’s why we started this. And we talked about, you know, when our stuff is in stores. We picture a young girl walking in with her family and like in traditional American fashion, like the family walks in, they’re looking to buy stuff for their son. And the little girl sees the big butterfly logo.

And she’s like, there’s stuff for me too. I can ride. I can do this sport. That’s a huge part of why we do what we do. And I think selfishly we do it because it makes me feel confident and powerful. Like when I’m taking my bike out by myself or, you know, I’m throwing this 300 piece of machine around, like, I feel really good about myself.

And I’m like, I know I can do anything. I can conquer anything. Selflessly, why we started this is to help others feel the same way. Is to help young women and young girls, or of all ages, to be totally honest. Like, [00:37:00] I think it’s never too late to start something new or to make a change or do something different in your life.

And it’s just to make them feel like they also have a place and that it’s not too late. Only thing I had to add to that was Everything you said, of course, and then I think something we reflect on is, I’ll be having not such a great day and I’ll just be like, God, I don’t feel beautiful. I don’t feel like I’m enough.

And why would this person be interested in me? I don’t even know if these people like me. I’ll be having these negative thoughts and I’ll check in with myself for a second. I’m like, hold on a second. Like I can kick butt on a dirt bike. I can get it on a trailer by myself. I can tie that thing up and get out there.

And I can jump on a wakeboard and I can do all these things. Like there’s something about like getting involved in these sports that we think is like so important to just find your thing that you like, because there is something so empowering about it. And then I like check them because I’m like, I’m just kidding.

I’m a bad ass lady. I feel like worthy again. And I, it’s, there is something very cool about that. And we’re hoping as we’ve done that with each other, we check it. Sometimes she’ll be having a bad day and I’m like, listen, you’re a [00:38:00] bad ass lady. You’re the whole package. We do it for each other all the time.

I’m like, this brand is our life. Like that’s why, you know, you’re seeing it on our website that it doesn’t sound like someone else wrote it. It’s cause it’s not, and this brand is really us sharing our lives and how we live and what we think with everyone else. Cause I think it’s so important to share.

Crew Chief Eric: To borrow a phrase, you guys are sending it. So like the full extent, right? So I love it. I love it.

Mountain Man Dan: To add to that, you mentioned you have a psychology background. The past two years with the whole COVID and all that has been very stressful for everybody. And I see it extremely stressful for females. Like you were mentioning, you think about the fact you out there on a bike and slinging around, like it’s nothing hitting them, jumps, hitting them, pervs.

And it brings that emotions. For me. I’ve always thought that, you know, it’s a great spirit lifter and I think it’s just really good in that aspect.

Paige McReynolds: Yeah. And you can’t think about anything else when you’re on dirt bike, you are focusing on what you’re doing. So there is that little bit of a perspective check.

Like you might be having a bad day. There might be a [00:39:00] lot on your mind. You jump on a dirt bike, ride around, you come back, you’re like, I don’t even. Like, my problems are kind of flown away with the dust behind me, you know, there’s just nothing else you have to think about but the trail. There’s something very therapeutic about that.

That’s what

Mountain Man Dan: clears your mind.

Paige McReynolds: Yeah. Do you have a bad day when you’re out in the desert, like camping with your friends in the desert? Well, like a crash. But I feel like even that, like even that, it’s like you might have a bad crash or something happens, but it’s kind of, it’s pretty impossible to have a bad day when you’re out with a bunch of your friends.

Sitting by a campfire, everyone’s having a good time, like laughing, telling stories, playing cornhole, like the entire community around it, the entire vibe. And now we’re in a place like most of our friends are in this community and it’s like, that’s all like I could just normal.

Mountain Man Dan: Yeah. It’s normal.

Paige McReynolds: Yeah. And

Mountain Man Dan: even with, even with the days that you have bad crashes or stuff, when you’re back at the campfire and everybody’s.

You know, safe. Nobody was injured. That’s when it turns into laughing time. Erica mentioned I’ve had my share rising from our guys and events. So it increases the mood. It makes all I’m

Crew Chief Eric: going to say is we [00:40:00] have video to prove it and I’m going to leave it where it is.

Paige McReynolds: Hey, you know what? Ain’t nothing a little Captain Morgan can’t fix, right?

You come back from the campfire. And as

Crew Chief Eric: we’ve said, probably a million times, if we said it once, the worst day at the track is still better than any day anywhere else. So it’s all good. Right? So, so going back to their thought, I want to get your guys opinion on something. A lot of people often confuse.

Motorsports with being like super geeky and really nerdy. Like you need to be an engineer. You need to be in STEM or hard sciences to really get involved. And you guys are ingenious. You’re resourceful and work on your own bikes. Is it really as hard as people make it out to be?

Paige McReynolds: Yes and no. Like we do the bare minimum on our bikes, but we have a vice president of bike operations, AKA our dad to do those things.

Like if you asked me to take my bike apart. And dad’s not an engineer. Let me just say that right now. He can work on a bike, but he is not an engineer. He’s a redneck engineer. Yeah.

Mountain Man Dan: The best kind.

Paige McReynolds: Exactly. [00:41:00] And I would honestly love to get to learn more about working on my bike as we’re growing in this company.

That’s something that I realized I want to. Not necessarily like be better at, but just take more time and put more effort into learning more of the intricacies and the ins and outs of my bike. Cause I feel like prior to this company, it’s just been like oil chain, air filter, okay, get on ride. But I think really understanding the carb and the gas and how everything works together, that makes a huge difference in the relationship that I have with my bike.

We’re very lucky. We’re very fortunate that we have a dad who does know how to do that stuff and does work on it. But you don’t have to know someone like that to own a bike. There are shops that will do all of that for you. Like you can just take your bike to them and be like, I don’t know what happened.

And I like, I think it’s important to know. I think it’s important to know the basics and basic maintenance, but I also, that’s part of the approachability and people get really scared of the sport because it does seem really daunting and expensive and you have to have all this knowledge. And I would argue that.

You don’t like in, in anything that you do, there’s always someone you can [00:42:00] pay to do it for you. And so I think it’s kind of whatever you put in is what you’re going to get out. And of course, like there is a level of engineering though, to working on your bike. I don’t want to take, I bet you don’t have to be an engineer to work on your bike.

But I think if you really want to get involved with the mechanics of a bike, then absolutely. And there are people, there’s tons of YouTube videos. I mean, you can call yourself an engineer, but you’ll definitely be doing engineer like things. But I think if that’s something you don’t want to get involved in, that shouldn’t be a reason to not get involved.

Mountain Man Dan: Every place I’ve ever been at riding here in the U S and even overseas. If you break down on a trail or something, other riders will stop and they’ll be willing to help. So it’s not like your average commuter going down the highway. Breakdown alongside the road and people just keep driving by for hours, people stop and help and it’s

Kelly McReynolds: a

Mountain Man Dan: great thing because that whole community is much more willing to help others than the average citizen, I would say.

Paige McReynolds: Oh yeah. The amount of times that like we’ve been on a, we’ll be on a group ride or trail ride and I’ll fall in the back or something. And the rest of the group just keeps going. [00:43:00] Cause they don’t know that you fell and I’m laying there. I’m like, Oh, okay. And I like. I just need, you know, it’s like the bike’s laying on top of me.

Gas is pouring everywhere. I’m like, I just need a second. Like I can’t reach my kill switch. I just need a moment, but people will come up and be like, are you good? Can we help you? I’m like, keep going. My group will turn around eventually, but you know, people always stop. Most of the time people have tools.

Yeah. Someone will help you. It’s interesting. You mentioned that about the community, cause we’ve really felt that as well. And there’s been some people that have asked us, Oh, you know, being two women in this male dominated sport, have you experienced sexism? And honestly. Minimally, maybe a moment or two, but honestly, we feel so much support from the men in this community.

They’re like, we want like our wives, our girlfriends, our daughters. We want them out there. We love what you’re doing. So it kind of goes with that. Like, it’s a very supportive community in that sense too, that people want more people. It’s more fun to ride and camp when there’s more, so they don’t want it to be intimidating.

They, they want you to win. I think that’s really cool about the community as well.

Mountain Man Dan: I’m going to let you in on a little secret about that. [00:44:00] The secret is those of us that have. Females on our lives, if we get them involved in it as well,

Paige McReynolds: you get to go more,

Mountain Man Dan: yes, that, and they’re more willing to let us spend more money on it.

Paige McReynolds: there you go. That’s what we’re trying to find men. That’ll let us do the same thing. Yeah. I’m like trying to find me a man who will let me spend money on a dirt bike. I’m like, I want different plastic, change it up, different tires. I feel that

Crew Chief Eric: we hit on a lot of important topics. And there’s one thing that I want to address, you know, the changes that are needed in the motorsport world, whether it be in motocross, whether it be in vehicles and road racing and things like that.

And obviously you guys are making a big change in the way we look at motorsport and motocross. But if there was something that you could change about motorsports, as you know, it to make it more inviting for women, what would that be? What do we need to do to make it so that we can get more women engaged?

Paige McReynolds: I think definitely seeing like more women faces in the sport. I mean, we love seeing the guys race and they’re awesome and they work their butts off to get to that point. It is mainly male faces. And I [00:45:00] think it would be great if we did start seeing a lot more female vendors, promoting female writers and brands at events.

I think that’s definitely a start and hopefully we can contribute to that. If I saw more women writing when I was younger, I’d be like, Oh, this is. I feel like a lot of times you think this is like a sport for women. I mean, and cause if you’re only seeing men, you’re kind of like, I don’t know. I’m not seeing other chicks do this.

I don’t think that would be for me, but if you’re seeing a lot more representation, I think it’s definitely easier to be like, well, I mean. Like this group of ladies are doing it. So why can’t I do it? And I think there’s definitely a lot more of that happening right now and also coming. So we’re answering the question.

Yeah. I mean, seriously, because in order, that’s what we’re trying to do in order to get more women involved. You want to see gear that was actually created for women, not just an afterthought. I will fight anyone on this existing women’s gear. It looks like an afterthought. It looks like it was created by men.

Four women at the end of the meeting, they were all tired. They wanted to go home and they’re [00:46:00] like, slap some pink and stars on it and call it a day. And I am, to me, that doesn’t scream this sport is for you. Like, it’s just like, Hey, if you decide to come with your husband, with your boyfriend, you can wear something, but it’s like, ultimately there’s no room for you.

And so. I think doing exactly what we’re doing, creating more gear, having more conversations, women tend to be a little bit more apprehensive than men. Like I think men are more likely to just buy a bike because they’ve always wanted to, you know, like I feel like I could see a guy is more likely to be like, I’ve never written, but I want to, I’m going to buy a bike on Craigslist and I’m going to give it a go.

Whereas for a woman, like. The chances of that happening are a little bit slimmer. And we’ve talked about one of our goals would be to create a summer camp for youth where girls can come and learn to ride. And maybe they’re not riding every day, but that’s part of the experience. And maybe doing something like that for women of other ages as well, where it’s the not scary experience.

There’s trainers, people to show you what to do. There’s no [00:47:00] judgment and you can learn at your own pace until you’re comfortable to go out on your own.

Mountain Man Dan: It baffles me. The fact that we haven’t seen more of a female presence in motor sports, because unlike your normal physical sports, like basketball and football and baseball, motor sports.

It doesn’t come down to the physical abilities as much to where the machine does a lot of the work. And I’ve been telling my daughter since she was younger that especially in something like motocross, women are very fortunate because your guys center of balance is lower than a male’s. So it actually makes you guys a better rider in many ways.

And the fact that we haven’t tried as a society to push more women to be on bikes out there, I’m just dumbfounded by the fact that we haven’t done that.

Paige McReynolds: Well, and I think something that we’ve realized over, you know, going back to like, we haven’t experienced a lot of sexism, we’ve actually had a lot of support from men, but I think we had to overcome our own barriers that we created, you know, a little bit of an imposter syndrome that because we haven’t raced, people throw names at us all the time.

And I’m like, I’m going to be honest. I don’t know who you’re talking about or because we [00:48:00] can’t take our bike apart and put it back together. Like. I think people are very quick to judge your existence in the industry based on those things. Who do you know? Can you take your bike apart? What have you won?

What have you raced? And so we had to realize it doesn’t make us any less. Like it doesn’t make us bad riders because those things. So we’re just going to be honest. And we’re going to say like, we don’t know, but, uh, we’ll Google it later. That sounds cool. Like, and I. So I think that’s the, the first piece of it that it is intimidating.

And I don’t know if I would have gotten into it had it not been for our dad, like putting us on a bike and being like, go for it now. I can’t imagine my life without it. Like I love dirt biking motocross, like more than a lot of things in my life. And, but I think the other thing too, is. Which has been kind of sad and hopefully we can change it is that while we haven’t experienced a lot of outcasting from the men in the industry, I think the women in the industry, there, it is a little bit more of a, there’s a lot more competition.

Yeah. And I, no disrespect, I think for the women that have made it in the [00:49:00] industry and are successful, like they had to work very hard to get to where they are and they had to overcome a lot of obstacles. And I don’t want to take that away from them, but I just feel like now we’re in this place where it’s like.

Why can’t we coexist? Why can’t we be successful and you be successful? Why does it have to be one or the other? The men clearly have it figured out where there’s 10 major companies that exist and they all sell gear fine and they do their thing. And so, but we realize in that in moto industry, it is a man’s world.

And so when a woman makes it, it feels like a huge accomplishment. And so when another woman comes in, it can feel very threatening to that success. We don’t want to like throw shade at any other woman. We absolutely could. See where it’s coming from, but we’re hoping that we can show them that we’re here to support them just as much as we’re doing our own thing.

And if other women want to start making kits, we want more options. Like that’s totally fine. We don’t have to be the only ones to do it. Every company is going to be so different. We obviously come from a very personal, like family oriented type of style in this, and we don’t know a whole lot about what Paige is saying when it comes to like taking your bike apart and the people, but because we’re doing something.

We [00:50:00] think it is actually bigger than that because we don’t want to just stay in motocross, even though we love that. We do want to get into other sports. We want to open up the extreme sports world for women. That is our main priority. That’s where my thought ended.

Crew Chief Eric: And that actually leads into another question, maybe a combination of questions here.

So pants and jerseys and things like that. Are there any new products that you want to talk about that are coming online, you know, while this episode is airing any shout outs, promotions, anything you’d like to share?

Paige McReynolds: Our jerseys, we are pretty confident that they will be launching by mid April at the latest.

We’re ready to go. Our jerseys are in production and the second that we get them in hand, we are launching them because this has been a very long time coming and we’ve just, with the pandemic and everything else, we’ve experienced a lot of roadblocks. So we’re, let me tell you, we threw ourselves into the fire and We’re learning how to fire dance and it’s been really fun.

Hey, shout out to my business partner, my sister for being really awesome. Our parents for allowing us to live a very [00:51:00] unconventional life. Paige was born first and they’re like, okay, a daughter. Like we’ll try again. My dad’s like, we’ll probably get a son the second time. Then I came out and they’re like, two daughters.

My dad’s like, he’s like, I’m treating them both like sons. I don’t care. And like, I guess I ended up benefiting us in the end. There was really nothing. Our parents told us we couldn’t do. Sports wise, obviously there were a lot of things. There were some other, there’s some other things that we just can’t.

But when it came to trying new things in sports, the world was our oyster. They encouraged it. And I, so shout out to Keith and Gail and our parents for, and for letting us happen, letting us use the house as a warehouse. Letting us live headquarters, but no, all jokes aside. I mean, thank you to both of you.

This has been such a wonderful conversation and we do have a promo for your audience. So through the end of March, March 31st, through the last day of March, use code McFix. So M C F I X. for 15 percent off your order online.

Mountain Man Dan: My daughter’s going to love that. Cause when Eric brought this podcast to me and mentioned it, I looked your guys website up and was going through it.

And of course I brought my daughter in to the office. I’m like, Hey, check this [00:52:00] stuff out. What do you think of it? And she fell in love with a lot of your guys apparel. And she was like, I want one of their hoodies.

Paige McReynolds: And we should have some more. We’re working on hopefully some more youth stuff. Once we get our adult kits out, our next focus is going to be youth kits, because that’s a really the main focus for us.

Selfishly, obviously, we want our own kits to come out first so we can wear them, but then second to that, we really want to make youth kits. And so yeah, if your daughters have any recommendations for styles that they’d like to see, I mean, because I’m not seven, unfortunately, so I just don’t know what’s Cool anymore.

I envision, you know, something with unicorn, like something might have to be more of my style. Yeah. Kelly’s probably going to design her. Yeah. I like flowers and unicorns and things. And I think as for like future, if women came up to us and we’re like, can you please make apparel gear for can any four wheel other stuff that we don’t know enough about?

I think we just have to wait until we do have a big enough company where we have employees and we can hire people that specialize. In that sports, I feel like that’s so important. If we were just to make [00:53:00] apparel or gear for things that we don’t do, I feel like we wouldn’t be doing those women justice, anything to help women get involved in extreme sports we want to do, but we would probably have to wait until we would have the bandwidth and the money to hire people on that are part of that sport and can give like an actual personal touch to those things.

So that’s really important to us and real insight on what women want for those sports.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, folks, especially our lady listeners. out there as you’re tuning into this episode of break fix. I think it’s time for y’all to update your closet with the hottest new items in motocross gear. If that’s the case, then look no further than McRae motocross company.

You can learn more about them at www dot. mcraymx. com that’s m c r e y m x. com and be sure to follow them on social at mcray underscore mx on instagram mcray motocross company on facebook at mcray underscore mx on tiktok and they have a youtube channel Don’t forget to keep up with all their very clever blogs and be [00:54:00] sure to check out our follow on article on gt motorsports.

org for more details about this episode, Paige and Kelly. I cannot thank you guys enough for coming on the show. This has been an absolute treat. You guys are a. Bundle of energy and inspiration. And I really wish you guys the best of success as you launch your new line and everything. We look forward to seeing what comes next.

Paige McReynolds: Awesome. Thank you for having us. We’re stoked to be here. Sorry. We talked your ear off. By we, I mean you. And by we, I mean me.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right, listeners. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our Patreon for a follow on pit stop, mini sowed. So check that out on www. patreon. com forward slash GT motor sports and get access to all sorts of behind the scenes content from this episode. And more.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out on [00:55:00] www.

gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on Instagram at grandtorymotorsports. 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 crewchief at 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. 50 a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of Fig Newtons, Gummy Bears, and Monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. [00:56:00] com forward slash 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 Introduction to Break/Fix Podcast
00:27 Meet Paige and Kelly McReynolds
00:58 The Birth of McRey Motocross
01:45 Challenges in Women’s Motocross Gear
03:39 Riding Adventures and Experiences
07:18 Future Goals and Aspirations
15:46 Designing McRey Motocross Apparel
22:54 Safety and Material Testing
26:17 Innovative Motocross Gear Design
27:29 The Story Behind the Butterfly Logo
30:48 Empowering Women in Motorsports
33:52 The Importance of Authenticity
38:24 Community and Support in Motocross
50:18 Future Plans and Promotions
53:20 Conclusion and Farewell

Bonus Content

There’s more to this story…

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

Learn More

Designed to get Dirty!

Is it time to update your closet with the hottest new MX gear? Then look no further than MCREY MotoCross Co, learn more at www.mcreymx.com and be sure to follow them on social. Use the PROMO CODE below to get 15% your entire purchase at MCREY MX now through April 1, 2022.

Ironically, the butterfly logo almost didn’t happen. “We told our designer: no butterflies, no flowers, nothing girly,” they laughed. But when both sisters independently sketched butterflies into their concepts, the truth emerged – they didn’t know they wanted it until they saw it.

The butterfly now symbolizes everything McRey stands for: transformation, authenticity, and boldness. It’s a nod to their mom, who loves butterflies, and to their own journey—from awkward caterpillars to confident creators. “We hope people see the butterfly and think, ‘I can make that change today. I can be the woman I want to be.’”

Gear That Work – and Speaks

McRey isn’t just about looking good. It’s about gear that holds up. The sisters tested fabric samples against hot bike pipes, rejected anything that melted, and sourced materials from other sports to find the perfect fit. Their manufacturer had never made motocross gear before—and that was intentional. “We didn’t want anyone telling us, ‘This is how it’s always been done.’”

They’re not selling protective gear (yet), but they’re building apparel that works with it—stretchy enough for pads, breathable enough for heat, and durable enough for real-world riding. And they’re dreaming big: gloves, underlayers, helmets, goggles. But for now, it’s one pair of pants at a time.

McRey’s website isn’t just a storefront – it’s a storybook. From playful titles like “VP of Treat Distribution” to heartfelt blog posts, Paige’s writing brings the brand to life. “We’re not just two girls on dirt bikes,” Kelly said. “We think deeply about life, community, and uplifting other women.”

They don’t want to be a trend. They want to be a transformation. And they’re walking the walk – sharing their quirks, their fears, and their triumphs on social media and in their blog. “If we’re going to talk about authenticity, we have to live it,” they said.

McRey Motocross — Photo courtesy Kelly & Paige McReynolds, MCREY Motocross

Inspiring the Next Generation

The emotional core of McRey? The little girls who walk up to their booth and light up at the sight of a butterfly. “It’s made us cry,” they admitted. “That’s why we started this.” They imagine a future where a young girl walks into a store with her family, sees the butterfly, and knows – this is for her. This is her invitation to ride, to explore, to transform.

Beyond the gear and the brand, McRey is a lifeline. “There are days I don’t feel beautiful or enough,” Kelly shared. “But then I remember—I can tie down a bike, hit a jump, land a wakeboard. I’m a badass lady.”

Motorsports, they say, are therapeutic. When you’re on a bike, there’s no room for doubt—just focus, flow, and freedom. “My problems fly away with the dust behind me,” Paige said. “It’s impossible to have a bad day when you’re out with friends, riding, laughing, sitting around a campfire.”

Despite being in a male-dominated sport, Paige and Kelly say they’ve felt overwhelming support. “Maybe a moment or two of sexism,” they admitted. “But mostly? Encouragement, respect, and camaraderie.”

The real challenge, they say, is overcoming imposter syndrome – and building bridges with other women in the industry. “We don’t want to compete. We want to coexist,” they said. “There’s room for all of us.”

What’s Next for McRey?

McRey’s first jerseys are set to launch by mid-April. After pandemic delays and production hurdles, the sisters are ready to fire dance through the finish line. And they’re not stopping at motocross. Their goal? To open up the entire extreme sports world to women – with gear, community, and confidence.

They’re also planning youth kits next, and eventually gear for four-wheel sports – once they can hire specialists who live and breathe those disciplines. “We want to do it right,” they said. “With real insight and real representation.”

Guest Co-Host: Daniel Stauffer

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

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1...424344...63 Page 43 of 63

Rinse first?	Y
Color	White Foam
State Change	Brown
Scrubbing?	Very Little
Scent	Bleach
Gloves	Y
Time	30 seconds
Price	$7.99 / 32 oz
Cleaning Power (1-10)	9

Rinse first?	Y
Color	Clear
State Change	Liquid > Gel
Scrubbing?	Very Little
Scent	Mint
Gloves	N
Time	"Time to Lift tough soils"
Price	$24-$28 / 24oz
Cleaning Power (1-10)	6

Rinse first?	Y
Color	Clear-ish
State Change	Dark Purple
Scrubbing?	No
Scent	Fruity & Funky
Gloves	N
Time	30-60 seconds
Price	$11.97
Cleaning Power (1-10)	8

Rinse first?	N
Color	Blue
State Change	White
Scrubbing?	100%
Scent	Peaches
Gloves	N
Time	Infinite
Price	$25 / 56 oz
Cleaning Power (1-10)	5

Rinse first?	Y
Color	Clear
State Change	Purple
Scrubbing?	Y
Scent	Perm Solution
Gloves	N
Time	3-5 minutes; 2 coats
Price	$21.99 / 35 oz
Cleaning Power (1-10)	7

<img class="tdb-logo-img" src="https://www.gtmotorsports.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/CROPPED-1.png" alt="Logo" title="" width="2597" height="573" data-eio="l" />GTMSpreading Motorsports Enthusiasm - since 2014

<img class="tdb-logo-img" src="https://www.gtmotorsports.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/CROPPED-1.png" alt="Logo" title="" width="2597" height="573" data-eio="l" />GTMSpreading Motorsports Enthusiasm - since 2014

<img class="tdb-logo-img" src="https://www.gtmotorsports.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/CROPPED-1.png" alt="Logo" title="" width="2597" height="573" data-eio="l" />GTMSpreading Motorsports Enthusiasm - since 2014

Let’s set the stage

The Incumbent: ArmorAll Extreme Wheel Care

The Hopeful: Chemical Guys Diablo Wheel Cleaner

Complete Surprise: Jenolite Rust Remover

The Underdog: Jay Leno’s Garage Wheel Cleaner

The Unexpected Guest: GYEON’S Q2M IRON

Honorable Mention: Dawn Heavy Duty Degreaser

Facts & Figures

The Final Four

The New Podium

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Spotlight

Notes

Transcript

Highlights

Bonus Content

There’s more to this story…

Learn More

Check out www.zymol.com for more information as well as follow them on IG/FB @zymolofficial – and don’t forget to check out the newly reformulated “Zymöl Cleaner Wax”

Beyond Cars: Guitars, Horses, and Harley-Davidsons

Because the Wash Is as Important as the Wax

The Future: Graphene and EVs

Final Thoughts from Chuck

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Showcase: Pick-em-up Trucks!

Automotive, EV & Car-Adjacent News

Domestics

Drag Racing the world’s fastest pickups

EVs & Concepts

Formula One

Japanese & JDM

Why Hundreds of Mazdas Tuned to 94.9 Broke Simultaneously

Lost & Found

Lower Saxony

Lowered Expectations

Motorsports

Stellantis

Tesla

VAG & Porsche

TRANSCRIPT

Would you like fries with that?

There's more to this story!

Other episodes that aired this month…

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Spotlight

Notes

Transcript

Highlights

Learn More

Bonus Content

There’s more to this story…

Success Stories and Stumbles

A Festival Like No Other

The Power Wheels Downhill: Pure Gold

Culture, Community, and Controlled Chaos

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Notes

Transcript

Highlights

Bonus Content

There’s more to this story…

Learn More

Want to learn more about Autocross?

Look no further than GTM’s comprehensive guide to learning AutoCross. If you’re interested in an even deeper dive, check out more information at NMSA.

Getting Started: What You Need

1966 Pontiac GTO drifting autocross gooduys 3/2015, trying to make my sister pee her pants

Data, Development, and Donuts

Community, Camaraderie, and Cone Carnage

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Spotlight

Notes

Transcript

Highlights

GTMSpreading Motorsports Enthusiasm - since 2014

GTMSpreading Motorsports Enthusiasm - since 2014

GTMSpreading Motorsports Enthusiasm - since 2014