News – Page 49 of 59 – Gran Touring Motorsports

From PDX to HPDE: How WDCR SCCA Built a Community-Driven Track Experience

September 1, 2020

At Gran Touring Motorsports, we’ve always believed that motorsports should be accessible, educational, and above all – fun. That’s why we sat down with leaders from the Washington DC Region (WDCR) of the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) to explore the evolution of their High Performance Driver Education (HPDE) program. What started as a grassroots initiative has grown into one of the most respected track experiences in the country.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Back in 2006/07, WDCR SCCA launched what was then called PDX (Performance Driving Experience). Influenced by programs from BMW and Audi Clubs, and spearheaded by GTM members Ron Shurie and Matthew Yip, the goal was simple: create a flexible, welcoming track program for enthusiasts of all skill levels. Over time, the name evolved to HPDE, and today, the official SCCA term is “Track Events” – but locally, HPDE still resonates.

WDCR was one of the first SCCA regions to run standalone HPDE events, setting the tone for others like St. Louis and New Jersey to follow. The program’s success lies in its adaptability, community focus, and a commitment to continuous improvement.

Notes

What Makes WDCR HPDE Unique?

We asked Chief Instructor Joe Obenberger, Assistant Chief Instructor Baron Mills, and former HPDE Chairman Travis Dixon what sets their program apart. Here’s what they had to say:

Community First: From novice classrooms to advanced run groups, WDCR fosters a sense of belonging. Everyone—from instructors to students—is a volunteer, creating a supportive and inclusive environment.
Flexible Format: Whether you’re driving at 60% or chasing lap times, there’s room for every kind of enthusiast. The program supports a wide range of goals, from skill-building to social connection.
Instructor Excellence: WDCR leverages talent from across SCCA, including record-holding drivers and seasoned coaches. Many instructors also teach with other organizations, bringing best practices back to WDCR.
Track Time Value: Students get serious seat time—up to 130 minutes per day for advanced drivers. That’s about $6 per minute, compared to $17 per minute at an autocross event.
Continuous Evolution: The team makes major updates annually and tweaks the format after every event based on participant feedback.

Transcript

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Grand Touring Motorsports started as a social group of car enthusiasts, but we’ve expanded into all sorts of motorsports disciplines, and we want to share our stories with you. Years of racing, wrenching, and motorsports experience brings together a top notch collection of knowledge and information through our podcast, Brake Fix.

What’s going on everyone, and welcome to another installment of Brake Fix. I’m your host, Brad, aka The Triple Six. With me, as always, is our co host, Eric. Tonight,

Crew Chief Eric: we have a panel of folks from the Washington DC region of the Sports Car Club of America here to educate us on their new and improved high performance driver’s education program, also known as HPDE.

With us tonight are Chief Instructor Joe Obenberger, Assistant Chief Instructor Barron Mills, and former HPDE Chairman Travis Dixon. Welcome to the show, gentlemen. Thank you. Hi Eric. Hi Eric.

Crew Chief Brad: Our goal tonight is to continue the conversation we’ve been having with our listeners over several BrakeFix episodes where we introduce the idea of high [00:01:00] performance driving to folks that are new to motorsports.

Folks who are curious about what they can do with the sports car they have sitting in their garage, or maybe aren’t aware that organizations like SCCA offer a service like HPDE.

Crew Chief Eric: In our preparation for this episode, we found a little bit of history on your guys program. Originally, it was known as PDX or performance driving experience.

It is now known as the SCCA HPDE and has been around for quite some time. From what we found, it started in the 2006 to 2007 season. And we can attribute some of that to two members of GTM who were influential in getting that program off the ground. Racer, Ron Sherry and Matthew Yip. Thanks And from what we’ve gathered, the original format was influenced by their experiences.

From other organizations like BMW, Audi club, and others. It also turns out that WDCR was actually the first region in SCCA to have an HPDE program. But like every new endeavor, SCCA HPDE wasn’t without its [00:02:00] challenges, but it has become a very successful and reputable service.

Crew Chief Brad: But, but let’s fast forward.

Let’s focus on what’s new and what’s changed. How has SCCA grown the program and evolved it over the last 13 years? What’s the future of SCCA HPDE look like and why should you come out to their next event to check it out? Well, Joe, Barron, and Travis are here to answer all those questions and more.

Crew Chief Eric: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about

Travis Dixon: SCCA HPDE?

I think a little of the back story. back into that history of it is that the program was started by people from a bunch of different other programs. So even with, you know, Matt and Ron were involved, some other folks like from the autocross committee, Jim Howard, who’s no longer in the area with us, you know, those are the folks that they were on the board at the time had been part of solo committee, a bunch of different areas that said, Hey, we want to get into this, into this new area here and a new market really, you know, we saw other clubs doing it and We were always pretty shameless about trying to, you know, beg, borrow and steal the [00:03:00] best parts we could find.

And that’s why it was helpful for folks like Matthew and others to go out and, you know, run with other clubs, instructed and help put on events and such to come back and say, Hey, this is what we saw worked here. It doesn’t work. And we sort of tried to cherry pick the best elements from that and put them together.

At the same time, the collective mindset was a lot of around. Don’t make this into another SCCA program, you know, it was purposely done to not be as as serious business as uh, As some of the other competition programs were when we started we didn’t have time trials running It was just pdx, which was the worst program name ever You know, naming after an airport, never a good sign.

And even today, it’s actually, HPD really isn’t the name now. It’s actually track events is the official name, you know, SCCA still has intellectual property stuff. So they have to have some name that they can stamp a trademark on or whatever. But for our purposes, as, as a, as a regional club, we’ve called HPD because that’s what people know.

Understand and Eric, I’m sure you, you as well as anyone understand that we’re [00:04:00] not the only game in town. And you sort of got to fit in, you can differentiate, but same time, you’ve got to make it clear to people what it is you do. And if you say that, they go, Oh, okay. I know that my buddy talks about that at work.

So that’s what it is.

Baron Mills: To be clear. We should, we should have said this up front, I guess, but, uh, there’s actually two HPD programs within. W. D. C. R. S. T. C. A. Travis, correct me if I’m wrong, but until last year, our H. P. D. E. program was the only full time program independently running program. Nationwide for SCCA.

Travis Dixon: No, there were plenty of others. Uh, yeah. And even in the development of the program, St. Louis region was another one that was sort of an early, early developer of it. And we’ve actually, you know, shared rule sets and then when them and them was such, so we’re probably running the biggest standalone

Baron Mills: events or some other event or something, but

Travis Dixon: it varies.

The, the, the, the original PDX program was designed to be flexible. It was designed to have a very minimal rule set to allow the regions to [00:05:00] use it as they saw fit for that. They could, they could use it as, as a fill in for a race. We were probably one of the first clubs, regions I should say, doing standalone HBD events though in SCCA.

Most of them were using it either as just as a, as a, as a fill in, you know, in between race groups or, you know, Some of them we’re using as a worker perk. It was, it was, Hey, we’re doing a PDX and the entries are all the flaggers who are out there. We gave it to them as a freebie to say thanks kind of thing.

So again, you know, flexibility in the room that you can get away with that

Baron Mills: underneath the region, the SCCA W uh, Washington DC region. There are now two HPD programs and the other one started middle or late last year at Dominion. They have their own program chair. They have their own chief instructor.

We’re Involved with that. We’re helping them bring that up. They’ve got a good start there. I think they’re doing pretty good Let me clear that there are actually two. Uh, we’re very very closely related

Travis Dixon: Yeah, the core group of us that they put on the events at summit point. We’ve actually done I [00:06:00] think Two events at Dominion, the DC region board has been very interested from the inception of Dominion and having a presence there and trying to participate and work with them on that.

And we actually did a couple HPD, you know, events there for a lot of us that are based, you know, north of the beltway. We basically said that, look, you know, we can, we want to keep doing things well, quality over quantity. So the region actually reached out and conscripted a few folks who were interested and from down that.

Part of the world to help duplicate the program that we have at some point, and implement similar things down there, both HPD and the time trials program, actually.

Crew Chief Eric: And I know that your sister org in New Jersey is also doing events at NJMP as well. Not probably not as many as you guys, but they do a few a year now.

Travis Dixon: Um, I, I don’t know. I can’t remember which region is doing that. I know we’ve had several years ago and over the years we’ve had folks from other regions like, like Southern New Jersey come down and spend time with us and, and, and basically see how we do it. And same pattern as us, beg, borrow and steal the things you like and that work [00:07:00] and then, uh, take them home and, and put them to use in, in your, your environment.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean as much as I try to stay agnostic, but yes, you’re right There’s multiple groups out there to look into I guess which begs the question, you know What gets a new driver out of their garage to come out and burn some gas on a track with SCCA? SCCA

Joe Obernberger: is A little bit more unique with the other clubs is this whole community that we seem to have, especially in our classrooms, the novice classroom, the intermediate classroom.

There’s this sense of community that we’re bringing people together and that when they attend the classrooms, when they attend the events, they’re a part of this, this greater community. It is a volunteer organization. Everyone who attends Barron’s does this all the time. We’re all volunteers. And I think that builds a welcoming, environment for students to come to.

Baron Mills: I think kind of the generic comment on HPDE is for me, it’s an adrenaline rush, right? It’s just a lot of fun. And, and one of the neat things about it is you can, [00:08:00] once you come out and just after the first event or two, you There’s so many different areas that can interest different people. Some people love buying speed and working on their car.

Some people like just improving their driving skills. Other people like the community, other people come out and drive at 60 percent all the time and never really advance and they’re happy there and we fully support that kind of driver. Once you kind of get your foot in the door and come out for an event, there’s so many different ways to enjoy the hobby.

Other than just coming out and trying to drive at the limit of the car and the limit of yourself. That’s really, really a fun part, a fun aspect of the hobby.

Crew Chief Eric: So I’d say one thing you missed on the list there is being able to come out and drive full tilt without getting a speeding ticket. I mean, that’s a beautiful thing.

There’s that. Travis brought this up

Joe Obernberger: on time trials. That’s something unique to SCCA. And I think students come out to our events and they see time trials taking place. [00:09:00] I mean, it’s right below, you know, racing. It’s right, right there. And I think they see that. And a lot of them are like, that’s what I want to do.

That’s, that’s for me. You know, as Barron was saying, you got the student that is happy driving 50%, you know, they give it to a hundred and that’s as fast as they want to go. And no more. When I first started doing this, I would see guys at VIR coming in in their Mayottas. Sleeping in their Miatas and then you got the guy coming in the giant RV, you know With like the pit crew and three Ferraris and the whole breadth folks that attend the events

Travis Dixon: As far as what gets people out word of mouth is the biggest thing We see that with other clubs and i’m not saying in any any way to detract from it at all Uh, of the different clubs have different fields for, for how it is.

And it’s groups of people, even, even within the instructors and such, you know, we, we’ve never tried to go in and tell people they shouldn’t run with somebody else. That’s not, not the way we work. We say, this is how we do it. And if you want to come play with us, cool, have fun. You know, we understand if you guys want to go hang with your [00:10:00] buddies and the other club that’s running somewhere else that weekend, that’s cool too.

You know, you’re not going to compete against having a good time with friends at all, ever, no matter what the product

Crew Chief Eric: is. And I’ve heard that before. It’s a sport of convenience. Sometimes, right? I want to go to mid Ohio. So whoever signed up the weekend I’m available at mid Ohio, that’s where I’m going to go, right?

Or that’s who I’m going to go party with. What’s your elevator pitch? To say, Hey, come out and try WDCR HPDE compared

Baron Mills: to other orgs.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Baron Mills: I kind of in a nutshell, when people ask me that I have, I’ve got a couple examples, but one, one of them is it is an HPDE program, but yet it’s part of SCCA. So we get the leverage, a lot of that.

talent down into HPD. We have guys, drivers and instructors and classroom instructors that hold track records at SCCA that are very well spoken that share that wealth of experience to people that are there the first day.

Travis Dixon: When you’re looking at differentiators as well, you know, from an event [00:11:00] perspective, one of the things I like to point out is, is that back to the whole being a club perspective thing, is that we’re not out here.

To pay anybody’s mortgage. Nobody is looking for a paycheck from what we do.

Baron Mills: The other thing I think that we bring is a lot of the leadership team, the committee, and a lot of the instructors instruct for various organizations. So we, we get to see what others are doing right and wrong. And we bring that back and try to integrate it into the program.

So right now I think we’re kind of at this perfect balance where we have the Talent and expertise of the whole national SEC organization available to us if we need it, but over the last couple of years and probably even longer than that, we’ve been pretty flexible. We really, really, really try to listen to our customers and we make a major change once a year and we look at little minor tweaks literally after every event.

So we’re always listening to the customer.

Joe Obernberger: I will add that I think again, it’s, it’s this community that I [00:12:00] think we have that. That a lot of the people that come to an SCCA event. Come to the following SCCA events to have that same sense of community. I mean, back when I first started doing this, I didn’t care who was coming to the events.

I was going by myself and I would hang out by myself and drive and have a blast. But once you build up your, your kind of core set of people, you know, especially if you find someone that you’re close to, you know, a speed wise and you can follow them around the course and you, you kind of start building this, You know, your own little group that you play with all the time.

And now, for me, I mean, to go to an event where I don’t know anyone is kind of a foreign concept. But, as far as our instructors go, I mean, I’ll even say during the instructor meeting, you know, if your student asks about events, tell them about track days. Tell them about NASA events, hooked on driving, chin events, and what you think of those events.

How much track time the students get per dollar. That was what was important to me back in the day is, you know, I’m [00:13:00] forking out, you know, 350 bucks. How much time do I get on track? That was a big, you know, deciding factor for me.

Crew Chief Eric: So how much time on average does a student get at an SCCA event for their dollar?

Joe Obernberger: So it’s different per run group. So our novice students get four 25 minute sessions. Intermediate gets some additional time. I think they get 120 minutes total per day and advanced gets like 130 minutes per day. So it’s a significant amount of track time and I think that was one of the changes that as Barron pointed out that we made early on, you know, we A lot of the instructors instructed with all these other organizations, and we looked at how much track dime per dollar do they get with each of these clubs.

Crew Chief Eric: You made a very good point, and a lot of people see racing at the track as equivalent to, let’s say, golfing or skeet shooting or flying planes or boats. And in reality, it’s not that expensive, and since you were talking about numbers, and It’s 6 per [00:14:00] minute based on the numbers you gave me for, for a novice student and versus an Ottercross.

And I know it’s huge in SCCA, but it comes out to 17 a minute at an Ottercross. So value for money, track is worth it.

Travis Dixon: And I always like to point out when people compare the two that if you come out to a track event, we have toilets of flush.

Crew Chief Eric: We’ve got that going for us. And you’re not obligated to work either.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Once in a while you

Baron Mills: get the drag racer that shows up and he gets three laps in and it’s more track time than he’s got in the last three. Three race events. And he’s, you know, very, very happy about it. Oh, absolutely.

Travis Dixon: That was a challenge when we started time trials actually was we sort of tried to cross market and involve the hill climb community, you know, some of those folks like, like, I think Blue Ridge region runs on Jefferson a lot.

Do they have a lot like, like a more moral day or labor day event every year? I think I can’t remember which of what it is or whatever, but there’s a lot of cars out there. They’re [00:15:00] really neat race cars. You know, they’re, these are open wheel cars and some really neat stuff, but they’re designed to run.

Like an autocross car that they’ll go out and do three laps and that’s it. They have to come in at that point in time. They’re not designed to do that, which led to some interesting evolution and changes over time with our time trials. Bram, we started out doing that, doing like three lap time trials with, you know, one car at a time kind of thing before evolving to the current format.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. I mean, and not to diverge too far off, cause I am a trialer. I’ve trialed with you guys and Emrah and some other groups and I’m a nine, nine lap maximum. Three warm, three hot, three cold. That’s it. And I come in, whether, I don’t use the whole session because I figure if I can’t do it in nine laps, I shouldn’t be out there.

But, uh, that’s, that’s aside the point. A lot of buzz in the last couple of years around an SCCA construct known as Track Night in America. And what I’m wondering is, is this a gateway? So I’ve never been to

Baron Mills: one, but we have had several students that have come from Track [00:16:00] Night in America that enjoyed, right?

That, that loved to be able to get to a track, you know, spend a couple hours there. It’s, it’s inexpensive way to get onto a track. They enjoyed it. And when they came to an HPDE, they understood, they very clearly understood the difference, you know, capital E for us, right? The education part, very much more interested in being very clear in the education part.

For the HPD portion

Travis Dixon: track night. America actually started as a push forward from the autocross side into other faster things on track and such. So it was a little different mentality. The track night part came from from their their concept of coming in and doing track events middle of the week in the afternoon.

Bug out of work at lunchtime, head to the track, and spend the afternoon. And they actually had a, you know, more autocross type setup. I don’t know if they still do or not, but where you, you could work and run within the same day, flag a, flag a session, run a session kind of thing. By [00:17:00] doing midweek, they were able to keep track.

Cost pretty low. They got some really great deals with tracks and it was a good taste for people that didn’t want to commit three, four, 500 bucks to a weekend at the racetrack to do it. They wanted more of that taste of, of, of go out and spend, you know, a hundred or 200 bucks program differences is that they have almost, uh, I don’t think they’ve ever done in car instruction.

Their model has always been to do track side instruction. They have driver coaches, which are looking and observing. That behavior and making adjustments in between sessions more than anything. And whereas we were taking it more to it, to a direct feedback model with having people in the right seat and offering that, that direct feedback and, and, and coaching that goes beyond what you can see from, from standing on a corner, watching a cargo.

Yeah. We call that the

Crew Chief Eric: send it system.

Travis Dixon: Nothing wrong with it. I mean, you know, it’s, it’s different ways to get the job done and, and, and everybody’s going to find a, find an event that works for them, you know, between what they can, what they [00:18:00] want to spend, what kind of feedback they want and what they’re willing to tolerate from, from an event organizer, you know, as far as structure and, and time on track and, and everything else.

Joe Obernberger: I’ll echo Baron a little bit. I’ve never been to a track night in America and here I’ve been saying all along. We, we go to all these different events and we take the best of all of them, and, and none of us here have been to a, to a Trackman America event. I think that’s primarily because of the, the lack of instruction.

For me, looking back, you know, my first track day, the things that you learn, you know, keeping your eyes up, taking in the whole scene, being smooth on the controls. is very hard to teach without someone in the right seat. A concern of mine, I guess, is that you get folks that are going through track nine America, they’re just dropping the seat, going on track and driving.

They might be developing habits that that are hard to unlearn when you really want to start going fast, learning the right line. Learning the techniques, I think, would be an issue, but again, never [00:19:00] been.

Baron Mills: It’s a cheap way to get a couple hours on track, right? PDE is more of a money and time commitment.

There’s no doubt about that. I think it’s more than pays for itself in the type and quality of instruction that you get at an HPD.

Crew Chief Eric: But let’s set expectations here, right? Because I’m still playing the part of our listener who’s sitting on the couch kind of going, Eh, well, okay. It seems cheap compared to autocross compared to drag racing.

If I look at it at, at dollars per minute, right. Or dollars per lap, but there’s still a fear factor here, right. And there’s still maybe, do I have the right car question? So let’s try to answer some of those. Let’s, let’s talk about safety a little bit, but let’s also, let’s set expectations and say, what is it you really need to come out to have a good time at a DE the simplest approach, right.

Baron Mills: Is, you know, we have, we have people showing up. And literally in station wagons right in modern like a BMW station wagon that is fully stock been looked over real [00:20:00] well mechanically and that’s it look the first time you’re on track you’re not pushing the car you’re pushing yourself. And that’s, that’s really, really key.

The thing that you really have to worry about at the track is the person driving the car, not the car, especially the first three or four events. So you can go off from there, right? You can get it all kinds of detail of what you really need to do to the car. We have a tech sheet that, that you check off.

It gives you a list of things to review. They’ll look at the car.

Travis Dixon: The lowest barrier to entry. Where we would draw the line was you need to at least bring your own helmet. You know, we, we, we sort of tried to try to put something in of, you know, at least get them committed at that level. And, you know, honestly, we, we’ve always had it in there that, you know, you can go to OG racing and rent a helmet.

If that’s where it’s at, that’s where you want to be. We actually have a set of loaner helmets we use for giving rides and such in non COVID 19, uh, seasons. Love to take somebody who hasn’t been on a track before and put them in a car with an instructor and let them go and see what the track is like. So I have some really good videos somewhere.

We stuck a brand new [00:21:00] person in the right seat of a factory five Cobra and I stuck a GoPro in front of him looking back at him. And you know, you can just see the Fun and terror in their eyes all at the same time. It’s glorious

Baron Mills: That’s a really good point, right? I mean if somebody has a question about whether or not they should come out and pay the money Come out and visit us right just come out and hang out for a half a day or drop by The people there are very very friendly.

You can walk up to Anybody and ask a question and you’ll get help. And we’re very, very inclusive relative to visitors and new people. So it’s a really, it’s really good environment for that

Joe Obernberger: as far as the cars themselves go. I mean, I would say pre 1990 ish. Yeah. If your car is pre 1990, you know, there, there’s going to be some things that you’ll want to do.

But Modern cars today are, are so rock solid. You know, we’ve taken a rental Ford Fiesta, put five guys in it and just beat the hell out of it on the track. And [00:22:00] It’s fine. You know, yeah, the brakes are a little bit hot, but it, you know, they, they don’t break. They don’t overheat. They, you know, modern cars are really, really good.

I mean, and Barron mentioned, you know, the track day prep tech sheet, check your pads, check your brake fluid, you know, tires, coolant, oil, transmission, differential fluid, lug nuts, you know, wheel studs, uh, you know, wheel bearings, that sort of thing, you know, check those things over. But we also have a tech crew on site, you know, to help out with those sorts of things.

Travis Dixon: We’ve tried to make sure that the rules are written in a way that that’s inclusive, wherever, wherever reasonable. For, for obvious reasons, you know, we can’t put your average, you know, wallowing SUV out there. It just doesn’t make sense. But we took pains in creating the, the rule set to allow for those, the, the sport truck and sport SUV kind of thing.

You know, we’ve had Ford Lightnings out there on You know, a 30 series tire looks like the whole thing is lowered and it goes out there and starts passing Porsches and such. It’s, it’s, [00:23:00] it’s hilarious. You know, I, we, we literally just had a conversation with a guy came out at our previous event, flagged for us, had a blast, wants to come out and run again.

He’s building an S10 extreme, you know, with a cage and everything lowered. And I’ve seen those autocross before. And I know that they’re actually reasonable. You know, that’s a little crazy, even the grand scheme of things. But from, from that, yeah, that’s. As long as he builds it, builds it safe and the thing can, can stop and, and, and not, uh, be a danger to itself and others from that standpoint.

Yeah. Let’s let, let’s see it out there.

Crew Chief Eric: I, I like the fact that you say that it didn’t need to turn, it just needs to be able to stop . Well turn eventually, but , so. Okay. I mean, that kind of leads into a question that’s probably on everybody’s mind and I think the answer probably goes without saying, but we’re gonna say it anyway.

Is it safe?

Joe Obernberger: Here’s the thing, you’ll hear folks at HPD events say driving on track is safer than driving on the street. I don’t believe that’s true, just me personally. However, [00:24:00] I mean, the speeds are higher, but you do have, you have an instructor with you in the car. You are driving the car. Things happen, of course.

As far as in SCCA goes, I mean, we have pretty good track record as far as Any, anything happening during our events and pretty rare. We have any sort of actual metal bending at an event, extremely, extremely rare that we have any metal bending events in our novice run group where we have instructors in the car.

Usually that’s. Ends up being some mechanical issue that has happened where a car goes off track and usually it goes off track and that’s it. Nothing gets bent.

Travis Dixon: Compare doing 140, 150 multiple times in a 20 minute session on the beltway. It, yeah, it’s safer to do it on the track. I guarantee that. No doubt about it.

You know, risk increases with speed. You know, it’s just. Uh, part of the game, you know, and I wouldn’t tell anybody to put their car out there that they can’t risk, you know, if that’s [00:25:00] your daily driver, I don’t want to see it, not be able to get to work on Monday morning, you know, I would feel bad about that.

I’m not going to try and short code and tell anybody that nothing can happen because things can happen through yourself and others actions or inactions, things go pear shape. It’s, it’s a fact of life. What we try and provide is a safe way to explore the limits that you can’t do on public roads.

Baron Mills: I’m going to say, you know, look, it’s a high speed sport, right?

And it’s a, it’s, it’s got some adrenaline associated with it. It’s as dangerous as the driver wants to make it right. Limited in novice, at least limited by the instructor. So you can drive at a, at a very moderate, you know, high speed with a lot of margin and have a lot of fun out there, but it is a high speed sport, nothing like racing.

It’s not demolition Derby. Like Joe said, we have a, we have a really good safety record. And by safety, meaning. any sort of not not talking about harm to a human. We’re talking about simple things like bending metal. That’s actually very rare. It’s rare. It’s rare

Joe Obernberger: again with S. C. C. A. [00:26:00] There’s this, you know, when we have the novice classroom, all the students are there together.

We’re all talking. We all get to know each other a little bit so we can say, Oh, that’s barren in the gray BMW. That’s, you know, bill in the And you have this spectrum of cars, right? Everything from, you know, uh, VW Golfs to Miatas to Corvettes to McLarens, right? So you have this whole spread, but we’re in an environment that all those cars can play well together.

They all know, you know, we all know each other. And. You build up that sense of community so that when you’re on track together, you can trust each other. That guy in front of you in the McLaren with, you know, so and so as an instructor isn’t just going to bury the brakes on the straightaway for no reason when you’re flat on the floor behind him trying to catch him.

So I think that that community builds. Uh, a way to help mitigate some of the safety

Crew Chief Eric: to borrow a phrase from Ross Bentley, right? The E and HPDE stands for [00:27:00] education and we’re going to talk about that a little bit more as we progress here in the conversation But I just wanted to bring it up because it is a question that we’re asked more often than not as coaches How dangerous is it?

How safe is it? Is it this is it that as we said everything comes motorsport, but In the HPDE world, the risk is mitigated by the fact you have a coach in the right seat. A lot of other things are taken care of, speeds are lower, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So that’s good. But the next question that usually crops up, you know, we’ve got our, our gal or guy going, Oh man, this is really exciting.

I’ve mitigated the risk or I’ve accepted the risk. I still want to do this. I want to take my, you know, BMW 330 to the track and I want to go have fun. What happens if, you know, something were to go pear shaped, as Travis said, will my insurance company cover me? And if they don’t, where do we go from there?

Travis Dixon: Our answer to mitigating things going bad sometimes involves being perfectly willing to cut loose a risk. If somebody is not able to bring a car that’s properly [00:28:00] prepared, a driver that’s properly prepared, a mental attitude that is in line The goals of the program and the rest of the people on the track.

We’ve always been more than happy to say, look, here’s your money back. I’m sorry. You didn’t have a good time. Want to find out how you can change things to fix it? Let us know. But as an organizer, I’ve always wanted to put the safety of, of my, my instructors first and foremost, my staff, and also the other participants up there, the 300 bucks from some guy who who’s out there and thinks he knows more than everybody else is not worth it.

You know, we can refund his money. And.

Crew Chief Eric: So

Travis Dixon: I’m

Crew Chief Eric: going to ask it this way, SCCA, the parent organization can’t recommend that a driver use track insurance. We talked about track insurance on a previous episode. So our listeners are probably familiar with that. And if you’re not, please go back and check out the things I wish I knew as a new episode where we dive into that a little bit deeper.

So I’m going to ask you guys, what’s your opinion on track insurance? Should students, especially folks that have never been to the track, look into it or purchase it in your personal [00:29:00] opinion?

Joe Obernberger: So I had a buddy, he had a GT3. 60, 000 car and he would always get track day insurance. I don’t, I don’t know how much it costs per again, but so he got the insurance and he had on Shenandoah, one of the suspension arms broke and car went into the wall.

He’s fine. Car was not very rare, by the way. Very rare. That’s true. That is very rare. Track insurance covered it completely. And so it works. It’s not a scam. Anyone’s worried about that.

Crew Chief Eric: And that’s in lieu of your standard insurance, which basically stops once you cross the threshold of the, of the campus itself, right?

Most people aren’t really aware of that. Although we did cover that in the previous episode. I just want to kind of point it out, reiterate that fact.

Travis Dixon: Yeah. And we’ve had, we’ve had, uh, fortunately a very, very small number, but, but a nonzero number of people that have had to exercise the, uh, the track insurance option.

And, and one of the things that, that we’re very careful of is that again, back to the whole, you know, yeah, it’s bureaucracy, but you know, we have a well defined incident [00:30:00] reporting procedure, again, tied to our event insurance, where if something more than a. bump into the tires happens. We’re going to take some notes and write up something and, and more importantly, be available to somebody if they have an oops, if they have an issue, we’ll spend time to talk with their carrier and explain to them what the event was and what it happens.

And by the way, we can provide a pretty significant amount of documentation to show that, that this was in fact a instructed educational event that they were participating in. As for, as for opinion, you know, as an organizer, even not for a couple of things there, I can’t afford to ball my car up and walk away.

I buy the event insurance.

Baron Mills: Travis said it well in an email exchange we had, and it’s, you know, whatever you bring to the track, you know, if something bad happens, that shouldn’t put you in any sort of severe financial bind. If the way you want to do that is to bring a 3, 000 Miata, That you can walk away from.

That’s great. If you’re bringing an expensive car and you’re extremely wealthy, that’s fine too, but another way to buy that ability [00:31:00] to just to walk away is to buy track and shirt.

Crew Chief Eric: The other thing, the reason we’re kind of harping on this issue here is there’s often a misconception that D E. Is racing and racing is D.

E. And I just wanted to make sure that we clarified that it’s not. And that’s why again, we’ll deep dive a little deeper into Barron’s domain. We’re talking about what is the expectation of what’s going to be learned in the classroom and things like that. But before we get into that, let’s let’s kind of dive in just a little bit into, uh, How someone goes about getting into an event, kind of crossing that gate saying, yeah, I’m going to do this.

So I know there’s some peculiarities with respect to how SCCA does their registration, things that people should be aware of, things that you guys can elaborate on.

Baron Mills: Just send me cash, cash is fine. Bitcoin, you know,

Travis Dixon: we’ve actually, uh, I think normalized things over the years. Um, like many clubs out there, we’re now using motorsport reg.

We have been for several years. And part of what we rely on there is, is that for those that aren’t aware, is that motorsport reg has [00:32:00] a back end that lets organizers share some information. So we look at, What other events somebody has done, notes that may have been left, some breadcrumbs from other clubs and organizations.

And we, and we use that to help, help guide somebody towards whether they’re in the right event to begin with, what run group they should be in, etc. There, there’s a lot of work that goes, that goes on behind the scenes between Joe. And Kim, our registrar, who, uh, Joe’s laughing at this because I think it’s understated things dimensely, but there’s an immense amount of back and forth to make sure that people get into the right run group and that they’re not stepping up unprepared, you know, we, we try and do whatever we can to help them succeed at and have a good time at

Crew Chief Eric: the event.

So one thing I will say, having used Motorsport Reg forever, and there’s very few organizations that really don’t unless they have a proprietary system. So it’s pretty common in our world to use that. The nice thing was that SCCA used the PDX moniker, so it made it very easy to just suss out the events because you’re just punching PDX and they’re the only ones that would [00:33:00] come up.

But now that you guys are using the HPD acronym, what’s the quickest way for somebody to find a WDCR event in Motorsport Reg? Go to our website and go from there, I would say. That’s fair. It’s

Travis Dixon: good to count calendars up there. The events are linked.

Baron Mills: And if you make it that far, if you go to Motorsports Reg, if you have any questions about any of this, there are emails on there.

Lynn Tolan, the program chair, and Joe’s name email is on there. And probably most importantly, Kim’s name is on there as a registrar. If anybody gets stuck in all this, just send an email and ask. Right. And we’ll answer that.

Travis Dixon: One of the things we see that’s worthwhile to mention is when people register is not being honest with themselves and others over what run group they should be in.

The common thing we’ll see is, Oh, now this is full, so I’m going to bump myself up. And we would start looking at their history and their, their driving resume, as we like to call it. We can go, Oh, you’ve done two autocrosses and some go karts. Maybe you shouldn’t be in [00:34:00] advance for this one, you know? So, but with that, that’s comes down to what, what was said earlier of.

Email us. Let us know. Say, hey, I wanted to get in, you know, I was out of town. You may not be able to talk your way into it, but we can at least do the, okay, we’re going to keep notes. If we find a spot, we’ll work on it. But we ask for driving resumes because some cases it’s, yeah, I’ve been driving forever, but not entering events like this.

It doesn’t show up in MSR, but here’s my, this, here’s my racing license. Here’s, here’s other stuff, you know, use your words, talk to us and tell us what it is. But being honest and being truthful and reasonable with what it is you’re, you’re trying to do is, is important. It’s no fun to show up and end up in, in a, in a run group that is frankly too fast for you to be in.

And you spend the day getting bumped down and having uncomfortable conversations with stewards and instructors and everybody else about maybe you should rethink your choice of hot.

Crew Chief Eric: Other sports backing, but there is the rare occurrence and all of us being coaches here, you know that you do get the one guy who his [00:35:00] whole resume is he played Gran Turismo and he’s actually quite good on track and you don’t know how that works.

So there is some natural talent out there, but we are not all Schumacher. We are not. Sorry, so we all got to start somewhere. We have all humble beginnings and it involves a coach in the right seat.

Joe Obernberger: And I will say, um, for those listening, if you’re thinking of signing up for anything, do both days. Don’t I, we do, you can sign up for just Saturday.

You can sign up for just Sunday. But you will get so much more out of it, out of your first track event if you do both a Saturday and Sunday. Um, you’ll have that Saturday night, I swear you’ll sleep amazingly well. And you’ll wake up, you’ll be back at the track ready to execute what you learned the prior day.

And, and the, the driver that you were Friday night compared to Sunday night. Will be so drastically different. You’ll be hooked. I mean, you’ll, you will be hooked, but

Travis Dixon: there’s a reason why our second day is not that much more than one day. [00:36:00] You know, it’s usually what about 100 bucks more to do to do two days in one.

And I think we put that in place because we saw the value in continuing over two days versus encouraging people to do one day or the other from a being able to bring them up to a much higher level than one day at a time. Would don’t wait. You know, we deal with a lot of people who do the Oh, I forgot to register or whatever.

We’re really permissive about dropping out. And we understand stuff happens. It helps us as organizers to know early who’s attending. We can sort out any issues we could ask you questions about. Do you really think you should be in time trials, even though you’ve only done one autocross or not, you know, if you register.

Three weeks in advance. We’ve been pushing it. I think this is one of the first we’ve done it of having basically all of our events open at once, which our registrar hates. It helped get it out of there and people can figure out their HPDE calendar early for that and know where they’re going to be and lock that in.

And again, especially with novice groups, I think all organizations have this of that’s the group that fills up first. So if you want a spot in there and to [00:37:00] get your feet wet in order to be able to move up to a group that doesn’t fill up in three days, register early. If something changes, we understand.

We’ll, we’ll deal with it.

Crew Chief Eric: See, it’s, it’s just like voting register early, register often.

Joe Obernberger: SCCA is pretty lax with giving refunds. So something happens with the car or you get sick the night before and you can’t make it. Will you just give me your money back? To Travis’s point, sign up early and, um, you know, uh, please, uh, plan on coming, uh, of course.

Um, but, you know, there’s, there’s always the option of going back if something comes up with the car or, you know, who knows what life throws at you. Um, especially now with, with COVID, you know, if you get a fever or something, please don’t come.

Crew Chief Eric: So we found our event, right. We found a DC event. We’re going through the SCCA website.

Takes us to Motorsport Reg, sign up and go. And at the bottom it says, you know, do you acknowledge download these, Subs. What’s that all about?

Baron Mills: To me, the subs [00:38:00] are simply, are very simple, right? They’re a document that has some unique characteristics or some details that aren’t easy to, to keep up, to date on the webpage or in Ms RMSR.

So they’re, they’re just another format for us to give all the detail that. The customer needs. There’s a SCCA history behind all that, and Travis probably knows all that, but that’s, that’s the big picture for the customer.

Travis Dixon: The HPD rulebook is pretty small and generic. Event supplementals have always been used to fill in the blanks that are for things that might be site specific.

I mean, you know, it includes everything from detailing into car eligibility, which, as you’re probably aware, can vary depending upon facility. If you go to other, other racetracks in other states, you may find peculiarities over, over, you know, Seatbelts or convertibles, all kinds of things like that, which sometimes are state mandated, racetrack mandated, you know, whatever.

So we detail that in there down to where can you find info on where to stay at a hotel [00:39:00] in the, if you’re coming from out of town. I mean, we try and try and use that as concise as possible. One stop shopping for how to get to the event and how to be successful at it. It’s a lot of information in one place, but it’s been whittled down over the years to hopefully just the stuff that is really going to be useful.

It’s, it’s, it’s It’s a lot of how to do

Crew Chief Eric: stuff, not don’t do this. Hope. And a shameless plug for the GTM website, it’s actually where we got our inspiration originally for our track travel guide. Having been in SCCA a long time and knowing the SUPs and what’s in there, we were like, you know, maybe we could soften this a little bit because they do read like a rule set and that’s what they’re designed to do.

To be modeled after, but it is valuable information. So I recommend if you are going to an SCC event, don’t just click next, next, next, and ignore them, read them because it is specific track information. They’re updated by the event. So if there’s, let’s say additional COVID information or participant information about wearing face coverings and how you’re going to handle class, all that stuff is going to be found in the subs.

And I tip my hat to the folks that write those for [00:40:00] every event, tailoring them to every event. every year.

Travis Dixon: And it seems like a lot of bureaucracy, but the fact that we have those subs and those subs get approved by a national organization who is the one issuing our event insurance helps lead to having events which are insurable by track time.

day insurance as well as we’ve never had a problem with anybody looking at our events. You know, the locked ins or Haggerty’s who offer track day insurance and they go, okay, that’s, that’s definitely an event that we can offer insurance on. It’s never, never been questioned for that. And part of that I think is because of having, you know, a strong basis in, in a well documented event structure includes that.

Crew Chief Eric: All right. So we’ve registered, we’ve done all these things, we’ve read the subs, we’re checking the list. There’s one last thing to do before we get to the event. Let’s talk about tech a little bit. So SCCA does tech a little differently than other organizations do. There are few out there that require you to go to legitimate or mark specific shops and get your car looked at by a specialist and things like that.

There’s other [00:41:00] organizations that don’t even bother. So what does SCCA do about tech and can you explain your tech process?

Baron Mills: Real simple, right? Don’t let it scare you. I remember the first couple of times I was scared to death of tech, right? And our, and our guys look at the checklist. Make sure your car is safe.

You know, it almost always comes down. If you’ve made a modification, that’s where things go wrong and brakes and tire, right? That’s the biggies. The good news is our tech guys always try to help you get through. They’re not there to fail you. They’re there to make you have a fun day. They’re very, very helpful.

I’ve seen those guys actually, sometimes when they have time, you know, helping people fix their car or getting an instructor to help them fix their car. That that’s the kind of things, that’s the kind of environment that, that these first timers are stepping into.

Joe Obernberger: I’ll add that as Travis mentioned, I think SCCA may be the only organization [00:42:00] that if you fail tech, We’ll give you your money back and send you on your way.

Almost every other group will happily take your money and say, sorry, you didn’t take your car and you can’t drive, but thanks for your 400 bucks.

Crew Chief Eric: If your wheel falls off after you pass tech. I mean, that’s a whole nother

Joe Obernberger: turn

Crew Chief Eric: away. If you’ve turned, turned a wheel. Yeah. You’re on your own at that point in time.

So,

Joe Obernberger: but yeah, I mean, as I mentioned it, you know, brakes and tires again, as you mentioned, also the modifications. If you’ve got a race seat and six point in driver’s seat and some like 20 year old passenger seat, the restraints have to be the same on both sides. So I think if you, if you’re really going to get serious about HPD events, you’re going to have to know some stuff.

You know, how do you, how do you check your pads? How do you check tire pressure? How do you check oil coolant? Differential fluid, trans fluid, all that stuff, you know, wheel torque and so forth.

Travis Dixon: Understanding that brake fluid is a wear item is a [00:43:00] big thing, you know, a big way to pass tech is to be able to go, is to be able to know when was the last time your brake fluid was changed, you know, was it recently, was it this year?

That’s one of the, one of the main things is, is, is fresh fluid will, will go a long way to helping have a, have a successful weekend.

Joe Obernberger: Yeah, quick story. Uh, so I had a student with a Lexus LFA, a V10, 9, 000 RPM, awesome car, 5, 000 miles. But it was a 2004, never had the brake fluid changed, but Hey, it’s only 5, 000 miles.

Why would you change the brake? So it’s nice to say the brakes traded car’s fine. Everyone’s fine. Nothing happened. We didn’t go off track even, but you know, push the pedal and it’s getting a little bit soft. Travis said it’s a wear item.

Crew Chief Eric: The marketing pamphlets these days say lifetime fluids, right?

Travis Dixon: Yeah, right.

That’s true. Whose, whose lifetime?

Crew Chief Eric: At the track, it’s in dog years, unfortunately. That being said, so we’ve gone through tech, we’ve done all these things. We’re there now at the track. So let’s focus on [00:44:00] the education part. Let’s really level set. And I know this is Baron’s sweet spot. Let’s talk about the classroom.

What? Are new drivers going to learn during their first track day or their first track weekend?

Baron Mills: It’s really pretty simple, right? So the track is a new environment, and you put anybody into a new environment and add speed. And it causes stress. The novice classrooms are all about managing that and instructing as much as possible the students so they can become more familiar and comfortable with the environment and manage that stress.

You know, the other half of that story is communications with the instructor, what it’s going to be like on track and how to manage that relationship with the but it really is all of the safety guidance of Communication how the track communicates with the driver and how other drivers communicate with you and passing [00:45:00] rules.

It’s just critical stuff is is one or two pages of things that if you get right, you’ll be absolutely fine.

Crew Chief Eric: So Baron, you said that the The track talks to you. Do you hear voices that the rest of us don’t?

Baron Mills: Yes, I do. Absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, one of the phrases we say, and we have communications from car to car, we have communications from, from driver to instructor, and we have communications from the track to the car.

And the way that happens on track is through flags. through visual communication from people that are stationary around the track, giving the drivers information and direction on what to do on the track. The classic was the checkered flag, white flag, the red flag, et cetera, that you see on TV.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s only one flag I remember.

It’s the blue flag. And if I remember correctly, Baron, it means there’s a race going on and you’re not in it.

Joe Obernberger: Exactly. For the novice classroom, I think the key things to take away that we [00:46:00] Try to drill into the novice students is, one, listen to your instructor. That’s probably the biggest takeaway from the novice classroom.

And that you, as the novice student, are responsible for driving the vehicle. That is your main goal during the day, is driving the vehicle. The instructor is responsible for what happens outside the vehicle. The cars around it, the flags, what corner’s coming up. But they can’t control the vehicle. That, that is the student’s job.

And then as Bear mentioned, the flags, what the flags mean. But even that, I mean, I, honestly, I don’t know how many novice classrooms I went through before I even knew what all the flags were. So, your instructor is going to help you with the flags. So, in the novice class, we’re going to tell you what the flags are.

Those are what a yellow flag is. But then, when you’re out on track, And you see a yellow flag, I guarantee your instructor is going to tell you what that yellow flag means. Um, and then of course the passing rules.

Travis Dixon: The instruction actually starts at the, at the all hands meeting first thing in the morning.

Of reminding people, we’re not getting the details of, of how [00:47:00] to go out and drive. But, you know, the little things that they may, people may not have internalized yet, or maybe site specific or whatever. Like if something happens, stay in the car with the belts on, you know, don’t get out and go out and try and fix it.

You know, we have emergency staff there who are well trained professionals. If your buddy’s car, you know, goes off and hits the wall, you’re not going to make it any better by stopping and trying to help. You know, we can get it, get an ambulance and a fire truck on any point that any of those tracks within about 90 seconds.

Um, not that

Joe Obernberger: that happens a lot,

Travis Dixon: not

Joe Obernberger: that

Travis Dixon: that happens a lot. So please do that. You know, if your car stops, you pull off, stay belted in. It’s the safest point for that. And that’s something that anybody, no matter how many track days they’ve done, doesn’t hurt to remind them of that in the morning, that that’s what they should do.

Baron Mills: We’re very much about, you know, A lot of, some people call it continuing education. We have three run groups, novice, intermediate and advanced, and we have instruction available for all of those. We, a lot of organizations [00:48:00] do not do classroom instruction for advanced, for example, and we do, it’s optional for advanced, our intermediate, uh, has instruction classroom instruction.

Also, we have the novice, you know, the instruction there happens in class and in the car with the instructor. And as you move up, you make more assumptions about what That customer can do. You assume that they know all the flags and all the basic safety operations in the intermediate run group, but you very quickly start teaching car control, car dynamics, how to improve drills.

And as you get to an advanced group, those discussions become even more advanced. I think sec is really, really good at that. And, and part of that is enabled by, you know, our, our, uh, our advanced room instructor is a current race car driver. I teach intermediate right now, but the person that helps me is a race car driver.

Active race car driver holds one of the lap records. So I think, I think we do a really, really good job there. That’s, that’s what we hear back from the, from the [00:49:00] customers anyway.

Joe Obernberger: So we, uh, We have three classroom instructors that all have, as Barron mentioned, that bring unique things to the table. So we have David Miller, our novice classroom baron, and Bill Smith is our advanced classroom instructor.

And one thing that we’ve been doing recently because of COVID is having some online classrooms. And that might be something that we keep. What has come out of that is that students can pay a little more attention at an online classroom, um, When there’s not the, the, you know, cars going by outside, you know, they’re like excited, like, all right, I’m going to go wide open throttle, third gear, 5, 000 RPM, that’s my goal.

Um, so with, without that involved, I think there’s, you know, learning the flags and things like that. May come a little bit easier, but you know, we’re all still playing the code game still to figure out what’s going on there.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, and I think we’re always fighting in my best Ricky Bobby impersonation. The I want to go fast mentality that people come to the track and immediately expect that [00:50:00] speed is the First thing that we talk about.

And so I think what you guys have hit on is good is that safety always comes first, safety is paramount and the speed comes later. That’s even as coaches were always instructed, you know, the, the flow of teaching is speed is always last. You always add it as the last thing in the cycle.

Joe Obernberger: Well, so I, when I, when I was a student, uh, my first track day, what I wanted to see is how fast can I go on straightaway?

That was my goal is and I better believe I was staring at that speedometer going on the straightaway not worried about anything else is going on just just like what is that needle going to read before my instructor tells me to break

Crew Chief Eric: that actually changed Joe.

Joe Obernberger: Fair enough. So

Crew Chief Eric: I think you guys have set a really good expectation for the students. It’s an environment to foster learning, right? And it’s a progression. You’re not going to learn everything in one day. It’s going to be multiple over multiple [00:51:00] sessions. You guys average probably one to one on, or maybe it’s N minus one number of sessions in classroom as you are on track every day.

So it’s, it’s repetitive, but that repetition is what cements it in there. And then the coach augments. What is being learned in the classroom

Baron Mills: to kind of back up and just summarize real quick, right? You come in as novice you have an instructor in the car. We give check rides to move to intermediate An instructor will give that checkride and move that person to intermediate, and then they are soloed in SCCA.

They still have the ability to, they still have a classroom, and they still have the ability to ask for an instructor. I still learn things when Joe gets in the car with me, how not to drive, you know, things like that. And then the next progression is, of course, advanced. We do the same thing. We do a checkride to go up to advanced.

Crew Chief Eric: Really, the next segment that we wanted to talk about, which is what are other things that SCCA HPDE offers and one of those being coaching. [00:52:00] So what are some next steps post I’ve done my track days, I’ve moved up through the system. Where should I go from here? Do I just go to another group or do I find another discipline?

Joe Obernberger: Well, I think one is the Instructor Clinic. Uh, haha. Bear and I actually have been working quite a bit on how we should run the Instructor Clinic changes that we can make to it. We’ve gone through Friday at the Track has a way of bringing their instructors on and we’re taking ideas from them, as Travis mentioned.

You know, we all go with lots of other clubs, see what their clinics look like, and try to bring the best of all worlds into what we do. It’s a volunteer organization, and we send slide decks around constantly to each other, and criticize each other, and try to make these programs better. That not only goes for the instructor clinic, but also novice, intermediate, and advanced classrooms.

The cool thing about the instructor clinic, we put the candidate in the right seat. So they are expected to instruct for at least, I think we do four sessions, and then we do classrooms between them, and we have a pretty [00:53:00] detailed document that Baron primarily put together. That we send out every event to all the instructors, what we expect, all the things that we do with driving evals after events where students evaluate their instructors.

And of course, instructors evaluate their students. That really has, I think, been extremely beneficial to the program in helping all the instructors become much better at listening, at setting goals, helping their students. Be faster. So that’s 11 area. And

Travis Dixon: so it might be. It might be a good, good, good thing to point out that one of the things that we’ve done for for a number of years now is an instructor clinic, and that’s where we’ve been able to more tightly integrate what happens in the right seat on track with what happens in the hard plastic seat in the classroom.

Overtaking and trying to make, make a unified program. Not just saying, Hey, you instruct, come on out and play with us. Go out and do whatever it is you do because you’re fast and that’s okay. We try and do train to trainer stuff and have done those typically on a free to the [00:54:00] instructor basis for a while as a, an expense to us, but worth it to build the program.

over being able to bring in, get people up, and teach in a way that is compatible and the way that we think should be done. It goes both ways for us, I think, is, is that those instructor clinics tend to be where we also get feedback from other, from instructors and do the, Hey, we do this this way here.

Maybe we should try this and we’ll go, Yeah, that’s a good idea. Let’s, let’s give it a shot.

Crew Chief Eric: And it’s also a recognized Program. It’s a recognized certificate. Let’s call it that where there’s reciprocity with other groups to say you’ve been through SCCA’s bootcamp. We’ll recognize you as an instructor.

It’s not always a rubber stamp. Sometimes it does take, you know, uh, Hey, call Joe and he’ll sign you off. And I know we’re talking a little bit more on the coaching side, but I’ve had the, the distinct privilege of being to the school many, many times. I come back now as a veteran instructor, but I came up through that system.

I got certified through SCCA and, and the, Teaching that I got through there is, in my opinion, second to none. So I know we’re kind of branching away from the student [00:55:00] here a little bit.

Baron Mills: Let me add one thing to that, that last discussion, you know, started talking about the instructor aspect of that. And Joe really championed a couple of years ago, uh, giving our, each of our instructors only one student.

That shows on the student side too. I have instructed for organizations where I’ve had three students, All in the same day, and you know, you make it work, but the student doesn’t get as much quality time as with, you know, the other extreme where that student has one instructor and that instructor’s job is to make that student happy for the whole weekend.

So it works both ways. The instructors are happy having one student and the students are happy having one, you know, knowing that their instructor is fully committed to them.

Crew Chief Eric: So a couple other things I have on my list as extracurricular activities could include flagging.

Travis Dixon: We’ve always done a work, something, get something arrangement.

We do try and use volunteer flaggers wherever possible. SCCA has always tried to avoid paying flaggers because you sort of get what you pay for [00:56:00] inversely a lot of times. Um, yeah. So the people out there volunteering to stand, take it very seriously and do it very well. Almost to the point of amusement at times, but the outcome is that we get people that are very attentive and very interested in that.

Trying to reduce the friction to attend our events though, we’ve opened up opportunities to say, Hey, come out and flag a day or two with us and you’ve earned yourself a free track day. You can’t really beat that. I mean, You know, a little sweat equity and, and get, get to see the track. Uh, and by the way, we feed, feed, feed you lunch and dinner usually, uh, in normal, in normal years, at least.

You get to wear that really, really stylish white. The, uh, yeah, exactly. So the, uh, the, the, the shirts came about as advertising, you know, we, we started out because the rule said you had to have long sleeve. Cotton t shirts or whatever you couldn’t wear nylon or short sleeves and such. And, and so we said, well, let’s print up some long sleeve cotton t shirts and hand them out and they turned into advertising, uh, there’s [00:57:00] something cool about walking around the grid at the Daytona, you know, Rolex 24 and seeing some random person with a PDX shirt on,

Crew Chief Eric: is there anything else you guys want to add to that as to things you can do after,

Joe Obernberger: of course, SCCA is a race organization, so there’s time trials to move toward and also competition.

Baron Mills: In our organization, once you’re signed off for advanced, you can run in TT. We do not, we, WDCR does not have a separate TT license. It’s, it’s, once you’re signed off for advanced, you’re in TT. Yeah, and then TT is, it’s the competitive part of this, right? The HPDE, you’ve moved past HPDE and moved into a competitive part of the SCCA ecosystem, so to speak.

And then

Travis Dixon: there’s, there’s actually a national component to that now, uh, there’s a team time trials nationals group that, that has started coming up with some consistent rule sets and running sort of a national series of events. And as that has come and matured, we’ve actually been adopting rule sets from them.

So there’s consistency and, and trying to [00:58:00] integrate, integrate with what they’re doing. And some of that’s partnership with, with things like grid life as well of, of national has done that. And, and we’re, we’re, we’re trying to. Trying to come up with a program and have a program that is unique, but not so unique that, that, that nobody wants to come and run it because it’s car prep or whatever is different again, back to the top of the order of people book events because of what fits their calendar.

A lot of times, you know, let’s, let’s do a good event that they can go. Yep. My car fits that let’s come and come, come and have fun with these guys because I have off that weekend.

Baron Mills: I just add again, it’s, it’s a completely volunteer organization. And as you move up and as you become more experienced or more familiar with it, basically.

Anything is available. If, you know, if you’re interested in doing tech, we’ll get, we’ll figure out a way to have you help the tech guys. If you’re interested in flagging, if you’re interested in registration, any of those areas, we’re, you know, we’re, we’re open for that discussion.

Travis Dixon: It’s taken a few years to get there, but the SCCA race programs are now starting to look at HPDE experience [00:59:00] as a precursor to going racing.

It’s been sort of a weird thing that for the longest time, SCCA didn’t have a progression from non competition to competition, you know, wheel to wheel competition. And that’s actually changing. And we do a lot of close work with our, with our region race school for things for a long time. And we probably still do once this world returns to normal of we try and schedule and usually offer a discount of if you do the, the early, HPD event before going to race school, you start to take a lot of money off the end of your bill.

And it’s, it’s really designed to get people on the track. Prior to that, there were people showing up for race school that had never been on a racetrack before. And we saw that as a, Hey, we can help fix this guy’s talk to us and we’ll work together and make it more fun for everybody.

Joe Obernberger: And the people are there.

So when you go to an HPD event and you want to do racing. Or do time trials, they’re all there to answer your questions that the people that do it. And I think Travis hit on a really good point. The volunteer part of the organization, [01:00:00] there is motivation. I mean, the people that are volunteering are doing it because they really are passionate about making a good program.

And the amount of time that Barron, David Miller, And crew put into the classroom content is huge, you know, if we had to pay them It’d be awful But so there’s really a big effort that the volunteer people have put into this program and I think it really shows

Crew Chief Eric: All right anything else guys before we wrap it up?

Joe Obernberger: Just say a little something about high performance driving events in general. I like driving I like to drive fast and I like cars. I like the people the technology You Pretty much everything involved with HPDE. So burning fuel, running through tires, burning through brakes. I like the physics involved with it.

One thing that I’ve noticed is we seem to get a lot of engineering minds at HPD events, and I think one of the reasons for that is because it is kind [01:01:00] of Science personified in some ways. I say this to Baron all the time. One half mv squared, you know, we’re calling us down the straightaway going 120. We got to convert all that energy, all that kinetic energy back into heat.

And I think that mindset really plays into who attends the events and it. The other thing I like about it is the whole engineering tradeoffs. You know, everything’s a tradeoff with, with this, you know, and not only with just with the cars in general, but in driving, driving the course, you know, you can take the shortest path through and go slow, but drive a shorter distance or, you know, drive longer path, but your speed is higher and you need to find that correct balance for every corner and every car.

I think one of the great things about SCCA is the paths they provide for moving forward. Now, obviously there’s a path to moving towards racing. For me personally, that’s not something I was really interested in. I was all about instruction. I wanted, you know, I got in the car with some guy, some poor fellow in the right seat.

And I was like, wow, [01:02:00] this guy’s job is the best. I want to do what he does. And SCCA provides a nice path forward.

Baron Mills: I just want to, I want to quickly bullet list or really just run through, you know, at speed, the things I believe that SCCA What differentiates SCCA from the other HPD programs? One on one instruction, right?

One instructor per student. It’s a volunteer organization. We believe that allows us to create very competitive pricing and time, amount of time per dollar. Some of the best classrooms that are available, and I’m not speaking even for myself, you know, the novice classroom and the advanced classroom. The fact that we’re part of a race organization, that knowledge of all those things, like.

Car dynamics and safety and driving the car and mindset. All those things we leverage heavily in, in the HPD program ability to cancel registration late. Some organizations you commit one week out and you may, you might get a 50 [01:03:00] percent refund. We’re at, uh, we’re most of our track days are at, uh, summit point.

They have three tracks. All three tracks are just fantastic. Right. Maine is just a really, really great track. But the other two tracks are fun too. We have track days at those two

Travis Dixon: again, on, on on the club perspective o of we we’re, we’re in an organization run that, that runs events by its members. So when somebody says, Hey, I, I think I can do a better job at something here, let, let me help.

We go, okay, come on in and help. We don’t get hurt. Don’t get feelings hurt by somebody, uh, who has a better idea. You know? So we, we. We take feedback, we truly listen to it and try and incorporate that. And, and that’s been the evolution of the program since day one of, of, of listen to it, to our customers, listen to our instructors, listen to people that have been there beforehand and know better and have seen things and, and are willing to

Crew Chief Eric: share.

And on that note, gentlemen, I cannot thank you enough for coming on the show tonight. It’s been super informative and I’m sure our listeners now have a better perception of what SCCA is all about and why they should come out and [01:04:00] try an event. There’s a lot of really good information on WDCR’s website.

I think you guys probably have the most thorough documentation when it comes to being prepared and how the driver should be prepared and the car should be prepared. There’s a lot of information there and check it out because they’ve done a really good job of being very thorough with the information.

Now for the listeners out there, you can find more details on everything we’ve talked about either GTM website and looking at the followup article that goes with this episode or by visiting www dot. Wdcr do org slash hpde or following Wdcr on Instagram at wdcr cca or looking up w dcr SCCA on Facebook.

I think that’s everything. More than enough . Very good. Again, I cannot thank you guys enough for coming on the show, and I appreciate, uh, everything, all the knowledge you passed on, and hopefully we’ll have you back again soon. Thanks, Eric.

Baron Mills: Thanks, Eric. Thanks, Eric.[01:05:00]

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 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 crewchief at gtmotorsports.

org. We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey, listeners, Crew Chief Eric here. Do you like what you’ve seen, heard, and read from GTM? Great. So do we, and we have a lot of fun doing it, but please remember, we’re fueled by volunteers and remain a no annual fee organization, but we still need help to keep the momentum going so that we can continue to record and Write, edit, and broadcast all of your favorite content.

So be sure to visit www. patreon. com forward slash gtmotorsports or visit our website and click in the top right corner on the support and donate to learn how you can [01:06:00] help.

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 Gran Touring Motorsports
00:22 Meet the Hosts and Guests
01:12 History of SCCA HPDE Program
02:07 Evolution and Current State of HPDE
03:56 Unique Aspects of SCCA HPDE
15:42 Track Night in America and HPDE Differences
23:49 Safety and Insurance Considerations
31:22 How to Get Started with SCCA HPDE
33:36 Honesty in Run Group Selection
35:16 Importance of Two-Day Events
36:17 Early Registration Benefits
37:58 Understanding Event Supplementals
40:45 SCCA Tech Inspection Process
43:59 Novice Classroom Insights
47:47 Progression Through Run Groups
52:11 Instructor Clinics and Coaching
55:43 Extracurricular Activities and Volunteering
56:53 Pathways Beyond HPDE
01:00:29 Final Thoughts and Wrap-Up

From Miatas to McLarens, the paddock is a melting pot. You’ll find folks sleeping in their cars and others rolling in with RVs and pit crews. What unites them is a love for driving and a respect for the community.

Track Night vs. HPDE: What’s the Difference?

SCCA’s Track Night in America offers a low-cost, midweek taste of track life—great for dipping your toes in. But HPDE is where the education happens. With in-car instruction and structured feedback, HPDE helps drivers build safe, effective habits from day one.

What Do You Need to Get Started?

Not much. A modern, well-maintained car and a helmet are enough to begin. WDCR provides tech sheets and on-site inspections to ensure safety. Loaner helmets are available, and visitors are always welcome to drop by and learn more.

Even unconventional builds – like sport trucks or lowered SUVs – can qualify if they meet safety standards. The emphasis is on driver development, not horsepower.

Is It Safe?

Statistically, yes. WDCR has an excellent safety record, especially in novice groups with instructors onboard. While motorsports always carry risk, HPDE minimizes it through coaching, structure, and community accountability.

Why Choose WDCR SCCA HPDE?

If you’re looking for a track experience that blends adrenaline with education, WDCR HPDE is hard to beat. It’s not just about driving fast – it’s about driving smart, building friendships, and growing as a motorsports enthusiast.

So whether you’re a curious newcomer or a seasoned Autocrosser ready to level up, come check out a WDCR HPDE event. You might just find your new favorite way to spend a weekend.

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

Latton Lads & the cursed MINI: A Motorsports Saga of Fire, Flood, and Brotherhood

Break/Fix Podcast

Gran T

August 25, 2020

Latton Lads & the cursed MINI: A Motorsports Saga of Fire, Flood, and Brotherhood

In the world of grassroots motorsports, few stories are as outrageous, heartfelt, and downright biblical as that of John and Steve Wade – better known to their racing family as the Latton Lads. From humble beginnings in Essex to flaming Minis at Watkins Glen, their journey is a masterclass in resilience, camaraderie, and the joy of chasing speed.

John’s motorsports origin story begins in England, with a misfiring 1956 Austin and a magneto that sent his brother Les flying across the driveway. “We were bloody broke,” John recalls. “So we had to learn to fix cars because we couldn’t afford to pay anyone else.”

Steve, meanwhile, got John hooked on racing by gifting him a Richard Petty driving experience for his 50th birthday. One lap was all it took. “That grin never washed off,” John said. “But my wallet got a lot lighter.”

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

The nickname “Latton Lads” harks back to their school in Harlow, Essex – Latton Bush – built atop a Roman settlement. The school’s symbol? A griffin. The legacy? A blend of mischief and mythology that perfectly suits the Wade brothers’ racing persona.

Spotlight

Meet brothers Steve Wade (MINI, left) & John Wade (Focus SVT, right)

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 Gran Touring Motorsports
00:22 Meet the Wade Brothers
00:51 Early Motorsports Adventures
04:08 The Origin of the Latin Lads
09:33 John’s Car Collection
22:36 Steve’s Journey with Minis
28:46 The Bear Incident
33:41 Racing at Watkins Glen
36:42 High-Speed Mini Adventures
37:01 The Talking Car
37:32 Power Steering Woes
38:27 Black Flags and Fire
38:49 Emergency Response
41:19 The Aftermath
44:28 Another Day at Shenny
51:19 Flooded Mini
56:09 The Bee Invasion
58:22 Planning the Next Mini
01:01:54 Advice for New Racers
01:11:27 Final Thoughts and Farewell

Transcript

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everyone, Crew Chief Eric here, and this week I get the pleasure to introduce you to two of our members. The plucky Brits, the Latin lads, but better known to most of us as brothers, John and Steve Wade. John hails from our Southern states region and Steve from the DMV. We’re really excited to have them on the show tonight and know you’ll really enjoy what comes next.

And with that, welcome to break fix. Gentlemen, so many stories, so many laughs, all revolving around the two of you. So let’s start off with how you got into motorsport and probably explain the whole Latin lads.

John Wade: I can tell you, I can [00:01:00] explain the motorsports bit. Really easily. And Steve will actually tell you the truth.

But the way it all started was because we were bloody broke. So we had to get into repairing cars because we couldn’t afford any sort of pay for it. So, a little story goes along with that. One of my very early experiences with Elder Brother, there’s actually three of us. Les. Yeah. . So Les bought an old Austin, 19 56, 57 Austin, while we lived in England.

Well, this car had a magneto and it was misfiring quite badly. So I’m little, I’m about, I know, 7, 8, 9 years old, something like that. And so Les is trying to figure out why this car is misfiring and what run He close under the bonnet and he, he said, me sit in the driver’s seat. Yeah. Now it’s got a key, like, like an ordinary American car.

So I’m sitting in the driver’s seat. And it’s also, by the way, an automatic, which is very important, because I did not actually run him over, which surprised me. So, I’m sitting in the driver’s seat. Les, all I can see is his buttocks sticking up from underneath the bonnet. And he’s like, Alright, John! [00:02:00] Yeah, I’m alright.

No, turn it over! Cha cha cha! Oh, sod it! Fiddle, fiddle, fiddle, couple of wrenches, some very foul words. Do it again. Chaka chaka chaka chaka chaka naffle. So what he has apparently done, at this point in time, is pulled a spark plug out. You remember this, didn’t you, Steve, eh? Oh yeah, oh yeah. It’s shocking, literally.

So, Les has pulled the spark plug out. Now you and I would ground the spark plug to the block. Well, it doesn’t really matter anyway, because it’s a magnet, isn’t it? So he says, crank it. So I turn the key and all I see is his head up over the hood and out he goes about ten foot on the other side of the car.

What he was doing was hanging onto the spark plug wire, the magneto turn, 20, 000 volt shock right up the elbow. Bang! It shot him about six, seven feet past the car. And he gets up and he goes, that’s alright, that’s working, mate. And that’s how I got started in motors as a littler. Is trying to figure out how to fix the things because [00:03:00] we were completely and utterly broke.

Now, the motorsports bit, brother Steve here, is actually completely to blame for an enormous expense in my life, and I’ll let him tell you how it came about.

Steve Wade: It what? Yep, that’s true. Yeah, I started in motorsports in the States at least in 2000 and something, just doing pro solo and all. That was when I was much younger and I had long hair and it was darker than it is now.

But anyway, John was turning 50 or something like that, I don’t know what age it was. I thought to myself, you know, this Motorsports stuff is quite fun. Uh, my wife and I bought him a Richard Petty race thing at Atlanta Motorsports Park which is his 50th birthday present. So we go down there, him, Carolyn and me and we go to Atlanta Motorsports Park and he’s never done any of this stuff before at least on a track, he’s done other stuff on a track.

So, you know, I get in the car and he gets in the car, he gets in the car, he goes around and around and comes out again, he gets out the car I get in the car, as I’m getting in the car he grabs me by the shoulder, yanks my head back And the top of his head fell [00:04:00] off with a smile that was so broad. I said, that’s it, it’s gonna cost you millions, mate.

You’re in, you’re done, the adrenaline’s going, you’re totally hooked. And that was the beginning of Latin Lads. And I’ll hand it back to John, tell you why we’re called Latin Lads. Oh,

John Wade: Latin Lads, yeah. And by the way, yeah, I still haven’t got rid of the case of permagrin. It doesn’t wash off, by the way. Yeah, but you have got to get rid of the money, that’s for sure.

Yeah, no problem. The wallet’s a lot lighter. I mean, I want to introduce you to my main sponsor, you know, Hip Pocket Racing. I’ve got a backup sponsor, Mr. Card. Those guys have been so good to me ever since I started. Oh, the Latin lads, yeah. So, Steve and I were born fairly close to each other in two neighbouring towns, but we grew up in the same little town called Harlow in Essex.

Well, Harlow has been there since Roman times. It’s a shit hole now, but it was alright back in them days. Uh, you know, we had the old centurions and the spears. We remember that, it’s no problem. One region [00:05:00] of the town itself was called Latinium or Latin. In the middle of what used to be a nice Roman settlement, they built our bloody school, didn’t they?

Well, it’s bad, because it was one of those 60s blocks, you know. All it was, was essentially a rectangular cube, plunked. With holes in it, and you wouldn’t sit down, somebody yapped for a day, and then you left. That was it. So, in this lovely Roman villa, they plunked our school. The school was called Latin Bush.

How about it, yeah? So, the Latin Lads is a bit of alliteration of that part of Roman and British history. So, it goes back, what, about 3, 000 years or so. So, the name’s great. The place is a dog bath. But, you know, the name’s alright. It’s Swiss, isn’t it? Because no sod knows. You know, they go, Oh, Latin Lads, what’s that all about?

Well, Lads in England. Is a, a bit of a, uh, a bit of a sly compliment. A lad is somebody’s a good boy, he’s a good boy, you know, goes for the eyeballs. But, he’s a bit of a miscreant, you know what I mean? He’s always out doing [00:06:00] that. Well, that fits us perfectly well. Now the griffin, mythical beast, ancient Greece I think.

The griffin was the school symbol. And to this day, it’s been, it’s since been turned into office blocks, which is a lot better use of it, because we didn’t get any education out of it. Yeah, yeah,

Steve Wade: not

John Wade: the Griffin, it was the building that turned into office blocks.

Steve Wade: The Griffin’s still there.

John Wade: No, the Griffin’s still there.

So, the class before mine, which was between Steve and I, made about, uh, oh, I would say a 12 foot tall cutout of a Griffin, and put it on the wall as their sort of graduation thing, yeah? It’s still there. That’s where the Griffin came from. And the 3 and 37, uh, Steve’s 37 comes from the, uh, Mini Cooper in the Monte Carlo Rally.

Four years ago now, yeah. The number 3, yeah, is extremely important. There’s no, no question about that one. We all know number three was, right? No, you don’t. Because it’s completely coincidental. So, like most people, after I got hooked, I went out and [00:07:00] jumped in a car, bought a full focus, never regretted anything more in my life.

Anyway, never mind. It all, it runs alright now. Well, it doesn’t run at all at the moment because it’s in about 8, 000 pieces parts, but that’s okay. So, I went and did autocross, yeah? So going on the solo like everybody you go under your first solar you’ve got no clue right? You’ve no idea. What’s going on This car’s all over the place.

This guy’s leaning and going brr rr psssss psssss And things are blllllllll squish you know, so you go to your course walk Sure, I thought I was gonna drive No! Go out and walk it. So you walk around, you’re supposed to memorize the thing. What a load of old cobblers. No way. Right? You go around. What do you see?

Cones! And you go around the corner. What do you see? Cones! More cones. You go down a little straight bit and they say, Oh, this is a Chicago box. Chicago? Not a bad band, but you’re back in the 70s, sonny. No, Chicago box is great. And what do you see in the Chicago box? [00:08:00] Cones! Fleeting more cones. And they said, don’t eat the cones.

Alright, I got it, yeah? Lovely. Memorize, of course, my foot. So they said, all right, go get your number. So I says, anyone do what now? He said, go over there to the trailer. Chat me in there. Cough up some dosh, some pictures of dead presidents. Give that to him, and he’ll give you a number. Ha, fine. So off I go.

You know, how much do I owe you? Believe it or not, it’s still the same today. 35. I said, alright, that’s not bad for a little, you know, it’s about a mile walk. So I’m done for the day, yeah, give him the 35 bucks, I’m off, back in my car, I’ll drive home. And he, he says, you need a number. I suppose, it’s just one on, on the car, like, you know, on the back.

Yeah, it’s got Alabama written on it. And he says, now I’ll give you one. So, he had a stencil cutting machine for cutting magnetic plate. He goes, turns around, comes back, guess what’s in his hand? A number three. That’s how that came about. Pure coincidence.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t [00:09:00] think anybody has a more thorough or complicated story about the selection of their racing number than you do.

That is by far the most interesting story about the number three.

John Wade: It’s all good, mate. Yeah. That’s how we came to be known as racing. Steve and I were sitting there, um, you know, drinking a fruit beverage based mostly actually on grains, but it’s, we didn’t know. I said, well, what are we going to call ourselves?

And that’s how it all came

Steve Wade: about. That was the only legal one we come up with. There was others you couldn’t really put

Crew Chief Eric: in public, you know, there’s lots of other names. John, when we visited you last year, we saw that you’re also a bit of a car collector and you do a lot of your own, your own work. Was that something that started before you got into motorsport, or did that start as a result of motorsport?

John Wade: Nah, it came about many, many years before that. So I told you the story of, you know, the first attempt at fixing a car and shooting my brother across the car park. So that was it. Well, that was inspiring, that was, because I could shoot [00:10:00] many people across the car park. I’m up for it, you know? No problems. So, as life progressed, we actually immigrated to the States.

And I’d just learned to drive in England, so I had a British driver’s license, came to the States. So now I’ve got to learn to drive in America, yeah? Great. So, eventually, my dad gave me one of his cars. Well, actually, he bought another one. I got this one. It was a 73 blue Chevrolet Impala, right? Everyone’s owned an Impala.

Steve called it the Batmobile. You know, it’s like everyone in here Hey, you

Steve Wade: lived in the damn thing!

John Wade: Oh, yeah, actually, yeah, that’s another story. Completely different subject. Yeah, that’s another story. I lived in it for a long time, but that was an ugly story. That was a good punch up, that one was. So, this car, being built in good Detroit steel, began to rust quite badly.

So, what did I do? Went and got a drill, a bit of metal. And one of the old acetylene torch things in the little cans. And I welded a bit of metal in it, sanded it down, and painted it completely the wrong color, by the way. So I’m like, Ah, that looks great, that darts not, it’s terrible, but it looked good, at least to me, yeah?

I thought that was [00:11:00] fun. I love some of that. So as life progressed, I got to where I wanted to buy an E type, which is, by far and away, the sexiest thing ever to be put on four wheels. Even Enzo says, That’s a nice motor, that. And when Enzo says, That’s a nice motor, you gotta listen to the man. You know, he’s had, he’s had his shot at nice motors.

Completely cocked it up, apparently. But nevermind. So I said, I’m gonna have an e type. To pay my way through college, I was working in a British car shop. Blokes would bring their cars in and I’d completely and utterly cock them up and give them back and take money. Magic, right? I was making a mint and every time I gave it back it was broke.

So they came back. It’s fantastic. It’s a self licking ice cream cone, Eric. It’s beautiful. I was digging this, you know. There was an e type parked in the shop and a bloke came down and this is a terrific story, absolutely true. He came down, his name was John and my boss’s name was Bear. John comes down and he’s got a 73 black e type V12, red connelly leather interior, red stripe tires, wire wheels, good business.

And as he drives in, you know, [00:12:00] I’m tripping over my tongue, my entrails are going around my kneecaps. I’m like, I love some of that. So he brings the thing in and he says, It’s rattling and knocking and it don’t run well. It’s an E Type. Big shock. So, Bear comes and gets me and says, Can you tune that car up?

I’ve got absolutely no idea what I’m doing. Uh, yeah, no problems. No problems. So, he says, Alright, go tune it up. He’s going to give it a valve adjustment. Have you ever tried to adjust V12 E Type? This, by the way, this is going to the car collection. I’m getting there, right? I start, yeah, I pull out the manual.

Bring out the, you know, little tall car. All professional like. I look down at this engine, which is about three quarters of a mile long and about 40 feet wide. It looks like a runway. I’m like, ooh, that’s tricky. And it’s got all these bulges on it, you know. And I’m like, what’s that then? And Bear says, well, that’s the valve covers.

Right, yeah, got it. I’ll have some of that, yank that off, and I’ll tweak the valves. Well, I yank those off, and what’s underneath them? Look in the book, of course, they’re camshafts. Because it’s dual [00:13:00] overhead cam. Not only is it dual overhead cam, there is no lash adjustment. You have to adjust the valves on an E type with shims.

So I go get a box of shims, and I fiddle fart around with this motor for two days, and it’s not bad. Then it’s the carburettor time. Little did I know what awaited me there. None of this SU cobblers, mate. None of this noo, Six twin Webers. Twelve bleeding carburetors. So, I had some experience with tuning silly little English cars with stupid carburetors that are mounted sideways.

So, I had a clue, despite the fact these were not English carburetors. I said, I’ll have a go at that. So, Bear comes out and he’s got this disc in his hand, about that big, with a little tube on it. If you’ve ever seen a Unisin, that’s what it was. And he gave it to me, I went, nice, eh? Right, sounds good. Now, what I want, inside, and we’ve got a link for a rubber tube.

About that long. Stick it in my ear. It’s not, it’s not a word of a lie. And there’s another mechanic that is watching me, like, this bloke’s completely lost his [00:14:00] marbles. Stick the tube in your ear, stick it in the throat of the carburetor, and adjust the carburetor. Then you hear the sissing sound. Shhh. Go to the next one, it goes, psst, adjust it again.

And keep going around, and around, and around, till they all kiss the same amount. Which means they’re taking in the same amount of air. Is

Crew Chief Eric: that why you’re hard of hearing in that ear?

John Wade: Yeah, so eventually we’ll adjust it, and I get this engine purring, yeah? This monstrous engine, and it’s going, Ssssh, tick, tick, tick.

Ssssh, tick, tick, tick. It’s actually driving me bonkers, I got it that, so we called up John, I said, John, You come down and get your mower. So he comes down and he comes down in a rather tasty little car, drives up and he gets out of his little car and he walks over and I said, John, it will tick about once every minute or so.

And he stands there and he says, that’s the best that car has ever run. I said, you know, take it because you’ve got about 20 minutes before it goes out of tune again. So better get on the road, you know, better drive it to the next gas station. Cause it’s got a gas tank about the size of a beer bottle. I look at the little [00:15:00] car he drove up in.

Remember this is 1982. Gas crisis, big engines are out of vogue, and it’s a little British car. And I look at this little British car, I don’t know what that is. And he looked at me and he said, do you? I said, yeah. I said, I’ve seen those before, we’ve seen them in England. I said, they’re pretty rare, aren’t they?

He said, and he kind of grinned, you know, he had this sly grin on his face. He owned an electronic shop. Yeah, they’re very rare. I said, yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in America. So. Walk around his car, it’s blue, and the other mechanic wants to come up and look in the, where the engine bay is, you know?

And he leans on the fender, and John says, don’t lean on the fender. He goes, oh, sorry, I didn’t want to put fingerprints on it. He says, you’re not gonna put fingerprints on it. You’re gonna bend it. Odd story. So I’m like, what’s all this about, you know? Some arrogant American worried about bending his car with the pressure of a hand.

You know, oh, don’t worry about the mosquito, we’ll just go for the windshield. He says, do you wanna have a go? He said, I’ll take you for a ride. I said, yeah, alright. So out we go, it’s a place called Hanover Street in [00:16:00] Fredericksburg, Virginia. So we go up Hanover Street, and we go down to the local shopping mall, when there was such a thing, before they were all torn down.

And we do the Mall 500, yeah? Go round and round the parking lot, waving at the girls and their little sports car, yeah? We get back to the top of Hanover Street, which slopes downhill, to Bear’s Shop. And he stopped. And he looked over at me and he said, You want to see how this thing goes? And I’m like, yeah, I mean, I’ve been in sports cars all my life.

Since I was a little kid. He mashed the gas in that car and I could not move. The thing burned rubber for an entire city block. And all I’m doing is screaming. I mean, little girls screaming. This car is accelerating. There’s clouds of smoke and there’s snot mouths and camel fur flying every which way. All I can do is grip on this little car.

And so I look at him like, What in the hell is that? So we come back to the shop. And he goes, he says, he says to me, he says, it goes all right, doesn’t it? I said, yeah, it goes all right there. I said, what is under the hood of this car? So he walks around and a little bonnet with two door handles on it. [00:17:00] Like from your shed, and he turns the two door handles from your shed and takes the bonnet off.

Oh, that’s pretty stylish. You know, don’t get a gust of wind, mate. Poof, off she goes. All I can see under that is carburettors. You know what kind of car it was? I thought it was called a Bristol. It wasn’t a Bristol, it was an AC. It was a Cobra 427 Semi Comp. 525 horsepower from the factory. In a car that weighed about 2, 000 pounds.

That was my first experience with rather natty cars. But I like his E Type best. I want to buy one. Well, my finances didn’t, and still don’t, run to buying an E Type. Plus the fact that they’re now a precious artifact and no longer a car. So I said, I know what I’ll do. I’ll build myself one. So I found a company in the Goodwood Motor Racing Circuit, in the old Shell building, which is since gone in the last few years.

But the Super Shell building, which is where they used to paddock the cars, the race cars. There’s a guy called John [00:18:00] Randall, and he was making a car called a Wildcat. The Wildcat’s an sort of E Type replica. It’s really E Type inspired. It’s about four inches longer and four inches wider, if you ordered it like I did, with the much wider fenders, because I’m going to put American wheels, tires, and running gear in the car.

So, when I got the car, it had no mounts. It had a chassis and a body and no mounts of any kind. Nothing. I made all the mounts myself. Built the car myself, it’s still sitting in the garage right now. Although I destroyed the gearbox in it two weeks ago. Completely melted. I melted third gear. You want to try doing that?

It’s tricky. No, don’t. It’s naughty. Completely melted the gear. Except for third. Third worked, right? Ah, yeah, I had a, yeah, it was melted. I had a box full of firsts, really. Uh, it wouldn’t come in, there was no neutrals, just a box full of firsts. Uh, so it’s out of the car at the moment, but that’s alright. Um, so when I finished it, drove it for years, and then a major problem started with the car.

It kept blowing a fuse, yeah? Well, I’d used an old Mustang wiring harness, and what was happening was the [00:19:00] wires were getting wrapped around the steering column, and shorting out, they’d blow the fuse. So I said, right, I’ve had enough of this. I’m going to put a new wiring harness in it. Fine. This is six years ago.

So I said, great, that’ll work. So I’ll buy one of these Ron Francis super duper wiring harnesses for it. Well, to effectively put the wiring harness in, you really will take the engine and gearbox out of the way. Okay. Well, one engine and gearbox is out of the way, we’ll have, we’ll have a different one. So, I added about 200 horsepower, fuel injection, limited slip rear axle, changed all the suspension because I wasn’t overly pleased with it, then I got, uh, Aldean shock absorbers, Fat Man front suspension, polished stainless steel A arms, had the body painted and had a new interior put in it.

So, other than that, I left it alone. It was exactly, exactly stock. So, in the meantime, when I was flying for the army, I decided from a very little kid when I was 10 years old, there’s a place called Bush Fair near Latin Bush, little shopping center in England, got a pub in it called The Painted Lady. You remember that, Steve?

Yeah. In the [00:20:00] parking lot of that pub was the most gorgeous automobile I had ever seen in my life. Flying fenders, long bonnet, little bitty tail, two seats, beautiful car. It was a Morgan. I thought, I’m thrilled. Then I saw on TV a documentary of how they made them. It’s like, I’ve got to have one of them. Got to have one of them.

Little did I know that it would cost the best part of a year’s salary and get three, take three years to buy one. So I said, well, that’s a bit of a problem. So I started looking for a used one. And as it turns out, I got a bonus for being a pilot in the army. So I said, I know what I’m going to do with that.

Yeah. Two years on the internet before I found the car I now own, which was a Morgan Plus 8 with a roller throttle and treated wood. Which is sitting in the garage right now, next to a 65 Mustang Fastback, which is a running driving car, it just, you wouldn’t want to be seen running and driving it. It may be running away from it, perhaps, but not in it.

So it’s purple at the moment, and that’s the next [00:21:00] restoration. Next to that is a 73 VW Super Beetle convertible, which is in an excellent state of rust. Really, what you’ve got here is a VW pile of metal oxide. It’s shaped like a VW, but it really isn’t there. It’s just a myth.

Crew Chief Eric: I believe they call that the, uh, Wolfsburg edition.

John Wade: Yeah, yeah, it might be the Rustberg edition in my case, but yeah, like that. It’s something like that. So next to that are two John Cooper Works Mini Coopers. One’s a Clubman, the other one’s a 17, uh, JCW, and I course, naturally, it’s fairly new, it’s only got 20, 000 miles on it. I could not let that rest, could I?

It’s only got 230 horsepower, I’ve got to have something more than that. So, a couple of calls to Mini Mania, and M7, and in comes, uh, about 1800 bucks worth of bits in boxes, and a little bitty box. That is the secret to that car, right? Because what it is, of course, is a tuna fish. Looks like a fish. Stick your tuna fish in, put your bits [00:22:00] on, go drive.

280 horsepower Mini Cooper S. That thing will flat scream. It is so much fun, and it embarrasses so many people. I absolutely adore that little car. It’s great. And the only reason I ever got into Minis was because of that twit next to me over there.

Crew Chief Eric: So I was actually going to ask, oh, you have a lot of experience turning wrenches.

You’ve also been in magazines for your, your miniatures and your collections and things of that nature. I’ve seen the work you do. It’s very, very good. We don’t have to go, we don’t have to go down that rabbit hole. It’s exceptional. So Steve, do you have the same wrench turning background that John does?

Or how did you get to where you are now with your cars?

Steve Wade: No, no, not at all. I’m just a cheap bastard who won’t let anybody else work on my cars. That is the sum total of it. There’s nothing else to it. Actually, what happened, I have nowhere near that mechanical background at all. It wasn’t until about, let’s see, 2002, when the new Mini came out in the States that I actually got into anything.

I bought a 2002 Mini, which I gave to my son in the [00:23:00] end. Then I bought the 2004 Mini, known as the MC40, and we’ll come on to some of those stories too. And, you know, as I said, I started in autocross and started to mess around with it, and you know, you get all kinds of ads about, well, try to do this, and try to do that to it, so I thought, well, I’ll give it a try.

But, you know, I couldn’t take it to the dealer because I couldn’t afford it. Didn’t want to anyway, didn’t want to mess with my car. So bought some tools, bought some bits, you know, put a pulley on it, put a cold intake on it, that kind of stuff. And it started going faster and faster. And then, you know, John and I went actually to, as I said, on his 50th birthday down to Atlanta.

And then it was it was like, let’s get these cars on the track and let’s do some serious stuff. And that was when I really started pulling wrenches and taking cars apart and reading books and then screwing it off and taking it apart and putting it back together again. And then as, as is, uh, The name of the show, break it, fix it, break it, fix it, right?

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. That’s it, so. You both have Mini Coopers. Is that just a [00:24:00] inherent patriotic British thing? Or did you have Minis, old school Minis, as we call them here, when you were younger?

John Wade: It’s not very patriotic because it’s German, aren’t they? Well,

Steve Wade: they

Crew Chief Eric: are.

Steve Wade: Well, the new ones are. The new ones are. Actually, I, um, When I first came to the States, you know, because I was English, of course, I was looking for stuff that would be, you know, a little bit of a home style kind of thing, and I actually saw a classic mini for sale in a place called Leesburg, Virginia.

I didn’t actually go get it at that particular point in time, but I thought, you know That would be fun to have an old MINI, because it’s very unusual, you know, it probably gets a lot of attention. So, I actually ended up buying a, uh, 1984 Classic MINI, which I’ve still got out in the garage. 25th anniversary edition, so it’s silver.

And that’s another car that I, I got to work on myself because nobody else can work on or very, very few folks. So, joined a club, you know, Mini, Capital Mini Register, actually was president of that for a while. Tooled around, you know, doing Christmas [00:25:00] shows, all kinds of stuff and exhibitions with that car.

That was before I got into the new Mini at all. And I say, I got a 2004, which was the MC40, and then we put that on the track. Of course, at that point, John had his focus. He was a fooled man at that particular point in time. And was, uh, running his focus all over the place, trying to keep up with his older brother.

Because at that point in time, not only did he not have a car that was as fast as mine, he didn’t have the talent either. I just want to make that clear, you can repeat that, you can put that on a loop, and just put that on the podcast, that there was a time When I had a faster car than him and could drive better than him.

Doesn’t occur anymore, but it did back then. It was fleeting, Jack.

Crew Chief Eric: Fleeting. I want to dive in just to the younger versions of yourselves. Not that you’re, not that you’re that old. Maybe no classic Mini in your portfolio, but was there the other British staple in there? Was there a Cortina or was there a Mondeo or anything like that?

Because the way it’s portrayed to us

John Wade: here

Crew Chief Eric: across the pond is that everybody owned. [00:26:00] A Cortina at some point in their life.

Steve Wade: Well, I it’s not a Cortina story But when I first got in industry in england, uh, it’s very common for part of the benefits in Companies in england, so you get a company car and the first company car I ever had was a 1.

6 full capri And then I got promoted and got a two liter that was special a two liter capri mate And that thing was awesome. I loved that car. So I made it I I was all the way to the top as far as I was concerned. I had a Really neat sports car, you know, it was a

Crew Chief Eric: Ford, but you know, it was what it was. So yeah.

If it’s any consolation, my dad had a Capri. I believe it was a 76 with a 2. 8 liter.

Steve Wade: He must’ve been way up in management. That’s all I can say. It must’ve been. Gave him a track car, mate.

Crew Chief Eric: He told me more than once he spent more time going backwards in that car than forwards because it was very tail happy.

John Wade: The absolute death trap.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, oh yeah. You guys probably saw the end, or quote unquote the end of the grand tour with [00:27:00] our favorite trio, you know, Clarkson, Hammond, and May. Were you guys saddened in the same way that they were with the exodus of the Mondeo or the Cortina? Did you see it go away?

John Wade: It’s like, it’s like saying you’re nostalgic about a pinto, for God’s sake.

No! Yeah, yeah, right. There are certain things Good riddance, that thing was a piece of crap. You know, measles, herpes, cortinas, capris, those things. No, you don’t want that hanging around, mate. I think you want to get that off the road. No,

Steve Wade: they’re

Crew Chief Eric: dangerous.

John Wade: Population control.

Crew Chief Eric: I have to ask, this one is going to be one of my favorite questions for an interview, but since you guys are from England If you could have a beer with any one of the three, Clarkson, Hammond, or May, who would it be?

Steve, you go first.

Steve Wade: Uh, May, I think. One, because he’s got so many other interests. Captain Sloane!

Crew Chief Eric: That’s why! Yeah.

Steve Wade: Well, you know, he likes trains and stuff like that. Builds big Legos and stuff. So he’s really cool. No, [00:28:00] but Captain And I’m about his same pace as well, so yeah, that’s right. I think James may be a lot of fun, he’s a, I think he’s a pretty neat, and not only that, you know, I don’t like people that aren’t too much taller than, so, can’t go with Hammond because I’m like six foot taller than he is, and Clarkson is just an arse, so, you know, he don’t count.

Your turn, John.

John Wade: Uh, it’s got to be the producer that took the blow from Clarkson, I think that’s a bloke I would pick. If anybody’s been to stick his nose in front of Clarkson, mate, you got that. He got him fired. Cool. That’s the bloke I’m on. Yeah. Uh, the hamster’s pretty cool. Why? Because he’s the only one who’s got the balls to stand up to Clarkson.

I love it. He may be short, but he’s wiry me all the time. He’s wiry.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s awesome. Oh man, I’ve got to contain myself. So let’s fast forward a bit. You guys have done some pro solo, you’ve done some autocross, obviously you guys have been competitive, all three brothers competitive, probably since day one. I know you guys are avid time trialers now and I’ve run with you guys [00:29:00] as well, but let’s fast forward to, I somehow got to be both of your instructors.

You did. Yeah.

John Wade: Yeah. And that’s the reason So it’s your bloody fault? Yeah. That’s the reason we’ve had no success since.

Steve Wade: Yeah, so I can’t drive, dammit. Ha ha ha ha ha

John Wade: ha ha ha ha ha ha. So it’s a sod all, not a trophy. Not a bleep. Yeah, I don’t know about that thing. No, actually All the time I thought it was, I had no talent.

And that’s not true. No, well, I mean you could say that, because even Eric couldn’t bring it out of us, could he? Oh, oh, ow. Oh, complete lack of talent. Nothing you do about that. You know, you can teach, you can train, you can mentor, but you can’t fix stupid, can you? That’s it.

Crew Chief Eric: So let’s, let’s talk about the Glen because that was one heck of a weekend for both of you guys.

And I know John, you got a really good story, which really sets up the curse of the mini conversation.

John Wade: Well,

Steve Wade: hold [00:30:00] on. Let me tell a story before we start because I’ll probably fall asleep when he tells that story again. So I’m going to tell you a story that preambles that one. So it’s about a bear and it’s a very important bear.

Does it involve a small blonde child in a bowl of porridge?

John Wade: Yeah, it’s, it’s a bit of a new story, isn’t it, this one, coming up.

Steve Wade: Yeah, that’s it, just steal the punchline, right up the top, just steal the punchline. No, it doesn’t. Anyway, so I’m doing solo cross up in Cumberland, Maryland, you know, and I have a house up there, so I took the mini out, and it wasn’t really that Uh, modified at that point in time.

So it’s just a regular mini. So I take the mini up there and I go up there on a Friday. We run Saturday, Sunday. So I leave the car outside the house and about two o’clock in the morning, I hear this noise outside, scraping noise, really weird noise. So I go down in house, look out the window and there is a bear on the back of my mini, ripping it to pieces.

In one paw, he has got, I think he’s trying to [00:31:00] mate with it. That does come into the story, but anyway. One day he’s got the rear windscreen wiper, because I figured, you know, getting windscreen wipers in the bare world is fairly difficult, so that’s why he took one of those. He rips off the bumper cover of the back, literally rips it off with his teeth.

I’m looking at him wrecking my car. I’m thinking, what the hell am I going to do? So there’s a broom in the house, and I thought, Oh no, I’ll go, you know, hit with a broom. But I’ve heard his stories about poking a bear that you’re not supposed to do. So I didn’t mean that was an idea. So I think to myself, I don’t know, I, I did what any red blooded Anglo-American would do.

I went and woke and woke my wife up. That’s what I did. So I go upstairs and I wake her up. Well, she’s from the mountain. It’s legitimate. It’s not that funny. So anyway, I got upstairs. So I wake her up, I said, there’s a bear eating my car. And she said, and I didn’t think it was funny at the time. She said, well, he’s probably hungry.

Now, if it wasn’t a true story, I would have said that was pretty funny, but I didn’t take it that way. So I said, is there a bear eating my car? I’m not kidding. [00:32:00] So she goes back downstairs with me, goes, looks out the window, and now the bear is not on the back of the car anymore, he’s standing on the side of it with his paws on the roof, shaking the car.

And he’s probably six foot at that point. And I go, what am I going to do? Yeah, he can’t shoot the thing. Well, mainly because he didn’t have a gun, so that didn’t, didn’t help much. But anyway, so She looks at me, she opens the door, sticks her head out and goes, Shoo! And the bear runs away. And, it’s like, wow.

That’s, that’s what you do with a bear. She said, you don’t come from the mountains. Went upstairs and went to bed.

John Wade: I mean, the bear, in the minute, it thought it was trying to get salt out of it. Where’s no bloody salt? Where are the holes in the top? Trying to put it on a windshield

Steve Wade: wiper. But let me tell you why it was trying to get in the car, see, because this is also my wife’s fault. So I, as far as I’m concerned, it was her job to get rid of the damn thing anyway.

So before I came up that day, she says to me, stop by the nursery and pick up some mulch. So I said, sure, you know, you can’t get too much mulch in a mini. So I [00:33:00] go down the, uh, nursery, open the back of the car, the guy throws three bags of mulch in. I get up there. Now let’s park the car. I’ve come to find out it is cocoa shell malt.

That is, it’s the husk of the cocoa bean, which is used to make chocolate. So my buddy Yogi was just trying to get himself some chocolate dessert at the back of my car. That’s all he wanted. That was why he broke into the bloody thing in the

Crew Chief Eric: first place. Fortunately, I think the bear is my spirit animal.

So therefore the connection continues with this cursed mini and wet head and everything else.

Steve Wade: Yeah, and that goes back, that was kind of the first prelude for, Oh my God, this car is definitely cursed. So anyway, fast forward some years later, We’ve gone to Atlanta, we’ve done a few bits and pieces, We’ve thrown some wrenches on it, And John and I

Crew Chief Eric: end up at Watkins Glen.

At the coaches meeting, I was told, Hey, you have two brothers in the mini, And I was thinking to myself, Great. I’ve got two 20 year [00:34:00] olds in a hot rodded, slammed Mini Cooper. What am I in for this weekend? And as I round the corner, and you guys were in a bay not even that far from me, I was, I was very surprised.

I was very taken aback. Two mature gentlemen like yourselves.

John Wade: Yeah, now what you’re trying to say is two fat, 50 ish foreigners. That’s exactly right. In a minute. With an engine the size of a wallet. One of the goals in all this, by the way, of us doing this racing thingy, is, yeah, there’s the thrill of the racing, but also the fact that we get to go on places that very few people get to go in the world, and places that we’d heard about in England, and you can pick up your bottle of beverage and tell stories that nobody believes.

It’s awesome. So we go to some of the most famous tracks in the world, and that’s part of what we do. We have what’s called a treat track every year, and we pick one track that’s world famous and go [00:35:00] there. We’ve been to Indy and Daytona and the little Talladega bit, Watkins Glen, all over the place. So the Glenn was in a special challenge

Crew Chief Eric: and we got to share in some of that enthusiasm with you last year because for a lot of us the cannonball run is very similar and so and coming to barber last year was part of that bucket list of going to a world famous track again Thank you for hosting us.

That was an incredible weekend, but yeah,

John Wade: it’s It’s bucket list and it buckets down. It’s Alabama, four o’clock in the evening.

Crew Chief Eric: That

Steve Wade: did bloody rain. It did rain that night. No good way to end it. So

John Wade: the glitch, you know, for us especially, because a lot of British drivers drove there in the Formula One, back in Formula One days, Formula Two, the Formula Three days.

People that we idolize, people like Graham Hill and Stirling Moss have driven that track. So there we are walking through the town and there are paving stones in the town with the names of our heroes. Who have eaten in the restaurants we go into and have driven on the track that we’re going to go drive on.

So this is like reverence to us, yeah? Reverence be damned. Let’s go [00:36:00] fast. So we get on this world famous fast track in a car that most cars on the track would outrun in second. But it’s alright, we’re going as fast as we can, yeah? So we get in the car and we’re trading stories. What about this corner? What about that one?

Can’t get up the S since Every time we get up the S since people are passing us left and right. Diabolical. Point bias left and right. cannot figure it out. So Steve and I said to each other, we need to get someone to show us how to do this. And that was you. And what we were doing was changing out a third coming into turn two to go up the S’s.

And you said, don’t do that. Leave it in fourth. Which, of course, Steve and I are both like, Kya! Cobblers. No way. Yes way. And, of course, we got up the hill much faster. And we started to develop quite a bit of speed. Got that little mini up to about 137 miles an hour on that back straight. Going into the bus stop.

Which, in a mini, is trucking right along. Little car was going pretty well. Fortunately, it’s got pretty decent brakes because I’d have killed myself five times if it didn’t. I’m going around, yeah. After you left us, and I’m on me [00:37:00] own. Having a lot of fun. Well, Steve and I are firm believers in the fact that cars talk to you.

Crew Chief Brad: They do.

John Wade: They do. Especially Dominic cars like this one. It’s like Damien, you know, this thing. And it was talking to us very, very gently by dropping its entrails onto the ground in the shed. So it’s dripping steadily. It’s a British car. Not only do we expect it, if it’s not dripping, it’s empty, yeah? So what happened?

Well, look underneath. What’s that, Steve? Steve looks like a dial, mate. I think that’s power steering fluid. Ah, no big deal. Like, these little cars, front wheel drive cars, when you’re hammering the steering around, have a tendency to boil the fluid. Pukes out all over the place. Nothing but a thing. Yeah, it’s back on the track.

No problems on the track We go sort of around a couple of laps come down boom on the main straight the pitch straight and then coming up turn two Steering gets a little bit stiff right before I’m starting to turn in. Like, ah, [00:38:00] no, power steering’s gone, yeah? All the fluid’s pissed out. No big deal. So I’m like, I’m gonna, I ain’t gonna stop.

I’m not going in the bloody pits. I’m gonna complete this lap, Sonny. I paid for this. And around I go. And it’s, it’s not that bad. It doesn’t weigh that much, right? So it’s like, ah, sod it. And the faster you go, the better it is anyway. So put your foot on the pedal. You’ll be alright. Well, by this time, there’s sort of concerned looks.

of people around the track. But that’s all right. So we go through the bus stop, down five, up through seven, and all of a sudden, I see black flags. I’m like, oh, no! I’m trying to get into the pits and get this thing fixed, will ya? Black flags, big black flags. So I’m sort of coasting to a halt. Black flag pointed.

Stop! Okay, red flag. Okay, so I pull over onto the grass, and I’m sitting there with a little car idling, you know, and behind me comes a GT Mustang, and he’s blowing his horn, and I’m [00:39:00] like, yeah, yeah, nice Mini, yeah, it goes well, doesn’t it? Lovely little car. I wonder what’s going on. Somebody’s obviously hit the wall in 8 or 9 up ahead of us.

So about that time I hear the sirens, and there’s the lights. And up comes the emergency vehicles to go up and rescue this prat who just bashed the wall. So as I’m looking, you know, you can’t turn very far. The emergency vehicles, there’s a fire engine, an ambulance, a rescue car, jaws alive. There’s like four helicopters flying.

So, screech! Next to me. What’s the matter, officer? The speedometer’s broke, you know, I was just guessing. And a cab gets out, and he comes running over to the car. And I’m sort of like, Oh, nice. Yeah. It’s a nice little mullet. Why don’t you go rescue the prattler himself up there? And he leans in the window and he goes, Get out!

I’m like, oh no, I wasn’t going that fast, officer. He goes, Get out! Now! What? So I’m starting to undo the belt, you know, the little buckle thing, you know, making sure I’m smelling good. And he [00:40:00] says, You’re on fire! I’m like, Eh! Boom! Out the door I jump. Sure enough, there’s smoke billowing out the back of the car.

So I’m like, Okay! And another guy runs out the fire engine, Comes round the front of the car, And he says, Where’s the hood latch? I have no clue! It’s Steve’s car! I don’t know where it is! It, um, it’s There in the car because I’ve suddenly figured out it’s probably on the wrong side, isn’t it? The hood latch is on the passenger side in this little mower.

So I’m slowly figuring this out whilst about that time Some little chap about that tall grabs me by the shoulders spins me around and pins me up against the ambulance I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa. What’s up? And he goes, okay The hood latch and he pins me back in and he goes how many fingers have I got? I’m hoping ten but There’s four in front of me.

And he says, How many there are? I said three. He goes, You alright? And I’m [00:41:00] like, Well, yeah. What’s the problem? By this time they figured out how to open the hood of the Mini and there are flames. Not much. Flames shooting out the engine. It’s bad because the fire should be inside the engine. You know, the outside flames now.

Not a good thing. So, he says, you gotta come with me. I’m like, okay. So he bundles me into the ambulance. So, car, yeah, car, not, not mine. Not my car, right there. Uh, you need to get that. So the guys come around and they gently pick up this little motor to put it on the back of the tow truck. Yeah, to get it up on the flatbed.

Because it’s so low and so little, it wouldn’t actually get over the ramp. So all these guys cluster around the front and they pick it up. And they march it up on the back of the flatbed, put it down. So I get in the ambulance, and they’re doing the So this guy comes up, he goes You, get off me! Is that you?

You alright? How are you? He’s giving me oxygen! Why am I getting oxygen? I’m perfectly alright! And so he’s, then he’s doing things with little [00:42:00] discs sticking over here and stuff and sticking his fingers up under my neck. He’s like, you alright mate? Yeah, I’m fine. He says, alright, I think you’re alright.

Yeah, I’ve been trying to tell you that for about the past ten minutes, never mind. But don’t worry about the freaking car that’s burning to the ground over there, you take care of me. So off we go back to the paddock. Into the paddock we go, and here’s Steve. Well apparently there’d been a radio call that my wife and Steve had heard while I’m out there.

Number 37 on fire. So we get the car, get it off the back of the flatbed, put it up on jack stands, and it’s melting. The bottom of the cars, all the wires are melting, it’s nasty. I’m thinking we’ll put it back on the track. Steve’s like, nah, probably not. About that time, up comes a corner marshal who goes over to Steve.

He says, is that your car? He says, yeah. He said, uh, we saw you out there. And he goes, no, it’s actually my brother. So he comes over to me, he says, were you driving that car? I said, yeah. He said, I’m the corner marshal from turn two. I remember I stopped at turn seven, which is, I don’t know, about 150 miles away.

And he says, when you went past me, flames were shooting [00:43:00] out from under the car, both sides and in the rear. No way! He’s like, yeah. He said, we tried to stop you all the way to turn seven and you just ignored everybody. I was racing, mate. I don’t want to stop, do I? As it turns out, it was probably a really, really smart thing to do.

Just by coincidence, because as the fluid drained out, caught fire, the wind, because I was going so fast, blew the flames out, the fluid puked on the ground, and then I got arrested and thrown into jail. Yeah, so not a bad day at Watkins Glen, all in all, you know, so that was about the third time that thing went home on a trailer.

Steve Wade: It’s very fortunate that you played. John didn’t get hurt or anything, and none of his clothes got hurt or anything. Especially his fire suit, which was actually sitting on the chair in the garage and not on his back. His fire suit was very safe. Not a

John Wade: mark on that fire suit, lovely.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s very good. Yeah.

John Wade: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: So Steve, that was the first fire and the second plague. We had the bear attack, our first Inferno, followed by the second [00:44:00] Inferno.

Steve Wade: Yeah. See, like I said, I’m a cheap sod. So what happens when I got it back home again, I decided that. You know, I can fix it, no big deal. So I’d, you know, put the car up, get underneath it, take the power steering out, because it’s electric anyway, take all the hoses out, everything, just take it all apart.

You know, throw all that crap away, buy a whole bunch of new stuff, put it back in again, put some more power steering fluid in it. Start it up. Works fine. No problem. It’s running peachy king. So I go, okay, fine. When’s the next event? Next event is at Shenny. So I drove it to Shenny. I didn’t tell it. Drove it to Shenny.

Everything was perfectly fine. We’re running on Shenny. And Eric, I do believe you were there that time too, weren’t you? You actually were, right? You! You! I’m telling you, yeah. He even looks like a bear now you come to look at it. Yeah, he’s a bear! Yeah, he’s a bear suit he was in that day. I tell you, anyway, so, we’re at, we’re at Chenny, right?

So I’m driving the Mini around Chenny. And I’m going, doing the same thing, you know, going as fast as I can through all the corners, slowing everybody else, but still [00:45:00] going as fast as I can go. And there’s somebody going, Toot toot! Beep beep beep beep! Around the tracks. Well, what the hell’s that supposed to mean?

I have no idea. So I’m coming down the straightaway, you know, doing that U turn, coming back in again, and all of a sudden, the, uh, steering gets really stiff. I went, I’ve heard this friggin story before. So I know what’s the matter with this. The power steering’s pissed out all over again. As you come over the hill at Shenandoah, through that U turn, you now can just go straight into the pit.

So I just went, okay, fine, you know, hand out the window, went straight, let it run down the hill, into the middle of the paddock, stop the car, and it Instantly fills with smoke. Instantly. I mean, it’s like, just like that. It fills with smoke. So I thought, well, I probably, I’d better get out. Don’t need any advice.

Not like my brother. Don’t need anybody coming up and talking to you. Just get the fuck out of the car. So I undo everything, jump out the car. And the problem was there was probably 50 people who now wanted to help me. with fire extinguishers, and there are fire extinguishers and shit everywhere. There’s smoke from the car.

There’s white [00:46:00] powder all over the place. I’m standing next to it. So I’m trying to tell people it’s all right. Don’t worry about it. It’s not a before I can fix it. It’s no big deal. And then someone opens, opens the hood and the chimney effect happens. And now somebody said to me, I don’t know. It was, have you turned it off?

And I said, of course I’ve turned it off. But, I didn’t know this at the time, I was lying. Because it was still on, which meant the fuel pump was on. So every time somebody went up with a fire extinguisher, they put a fire out, then the fuel would come back up again. And I did like four or five times, I went, let me take the key out.

So I took the key out, and uh, that was, that, that, that time. Even I couldn’t fix it. There was hardly anything left, any plastic left under that, that at all. Your

Crew Chief Eric: reenactment of Chernobyl was quite authentic.

John Wade: Oh, it was a

Crew Chief Eric: meltdown.

Steve Wade: It was,

Crew Chief Eric: yeah, there was crap everywhere. It was clouds of stuff all over the place.

So what you didn’t know, as we saw you coming in with the smoke coming out from underneath the car, I had yelled to the, to the crew, Steve’s on fire, grab your fire extinguisher, [00:47:00] and so we, as you stopped, we were running towards you, and I remember yelling at you in the car, You’re on fire! You’re on fire!

And you’re like, what? Like, get out! And at that point, we just unloaded the fire extinguishers all over the

John Wade: car. You said it wrong. What you should have said was, you’re on fire again.

By the way, you know, in the world of races, stuff like this happens, you know, cars blow up, bits come off, gearboxes drop out the bottom, that sort of thing. But in the world of civilians, this is not a common occurrence, yeah? So we had our niece Miranda there, Carolyn and I’s niece, actually Carolyn’s niece was there.

And she saw this whole event. By the way, I’m on the track behind him. And come around the corner to this great column of smoke coming out of the pit. Going, that’s not good. No, that’s my brother. It’s like, oh well, he’ll fix it. Nah, I got, I got another ten minutes on this session. I’m rocking baby. So, Miranda [00:48:00] apparently comes up to the car with Carolyn.

And she turns to Carolyn and says, Is it normal for flames to be coming out from underneath the car? She had no clue that

Crew Chief Eric: this was not a normal occurrence, even for us. After that, we loaded your car up on my trailer, and I took you home, began the process of finding a replacement.

Steve Wade: Yep, that’s exactly what happened, yep.

Because this time, even with all the wrenches and the cheap shit, so I’ve got some stuff I do, so we get it back to my house, I put it in the, uh, in the courtyard, and, you know, I get underneath it, and they’re All it was, was the block, and everything else was gone. All the plastic’s gone, everything’s gone, so I could see how it was, I was in Nope, even I can’t fix this one.

And by the way, the reason it did it, was because I changed out everything I said on the power steering fluid and all that kind of stuff. But the rack for the steering, which is right by the power steering pump, surprisingly enough, I didn’t change the seal. And apparently when you put seals under pressure after they’ve been on fire, they leak.

Ask me how I know.

John Wade: Now wait a minute. Wait, I’ve got to call cobblers on this. I know exactly what happened here. It [00:49:00] was sod all to do with seals, although it was a contributing factor. What happened? You know that little funny little curve called the carousel? The carousel’s got an ankle biter in it, doesn’t it?

It’s about 45

Crew Chief Eric: degrees, yeah.

John Wade: Yeah, so there’s a ridge. And if you put two wheels on the right side of that ridge And two wheels on the left side of the ridge, the middle of the car hits the ridge. What is there in a mini? Power steering cooler. Power steering

Steve Wade: pump.

John Wade: Bye bye now, bye, didn’t need you anyway. See ya.

Now little does he know, little did we know at that time, that many years later we would spend a hell of a lot of time, effort and money doing exactly what he did. tearing everything we can off the car, leave just the block and the metal, and go race. Yep, yep, do it again. It was the carbon

Steve Wade: effect. So, moving on to the next part of this pestilence story, was in fact, again, at Shandy, but this time on Main, right?

So, as we were saying there, the car was pretty much wrecked, so I ripped out of it what I could take, which was the, [00:50:00] um, seats and, you know, sway bars and crap like that, and went and bought another one. Well, actually, John got and found the one down in, Huntsville way. So we find this Mini, actually it was in Nashville, wasn’t it John?

Yeah, it was in Nashville. So we find this Mini, look just like the Mini that we set on fire twice and you know, had been broken into by a bear and all those kinds of things. Except it wasn’t an MC40, it wasn’t a commemorative edition. But anyway, so we buy that one, so I go down and get it. Drive it back, then we take all the crap out of it, or most of it.

Take the seats out, all that kind of good stuff. Get it ready for the track, so, no problem. Get back in it again. This time I checked the power steering pump. Actually, I left it alone, which was probably a good idea. It was apparently ruining a touchstone scrap. So anyway, so I, we, uh, take it to Shenny. As you know, Friday night we get there.

John’s there with his trailer and his Focus. He gets the Focus off. I park the Mini beside it. We’re up at the front end on Main, there, where the paddock is. And everything’s good. All good. No problem. We go back to the hotel, have a couple of beers, and, uh, apparently the heavens opened. [00:51:00] In fact, I think it was the second coming of the apocalypse that night, because it hammered down.

I mean, one storm. Yeah, that’s right. Yep, yep. There was all kinds of stuff. Noah was staying in the room next to mine in the hotel. He hadn’t got his boat ready at that time, but he was definitely there. Apparently it rained that night, and it rained where we were. So the next morning we go back to Maine and there’s a sign right by the cars that says subject to flooding.

Well no shit. At that point in time there must have been 400 million gallons of water all around all the car. My car, again, my car is up to the wheels in water. It’s full of water. The engine, the battery is dead as a dodo because it’s been underwater for about two hours. So I’m looking at it and Eric, I think it was you that came up and said.

Is that your car, Steve? And I said, yes, it is, because we didn’t know how to get ahold of you. And I’ll tell you a story. Every time I go somewhere in this [00:52:00] region at this point in time, someone comes up to me and says, is that your red Mini? And I go, yep. They go, well, we couldn’t get ahold of you. Well, why don’t you just throw the fucking thing out?

What difference does it make? You know,

Crew Chief Eric: nevermind. So there’s a little extra piece to that story, because I happened to drive to Summit Point, Maine that night to meet up with some other people that were there in the paddock. And I saw your car. park there. And as I drove around, it had just started to open up.

It was very difficult to see. And I’m in the, I’m in the station wagon, which is very low car and all that. I actually got beached in the middle of the paddock and it flooded out and it killed like everything. It locked up the serpentine belt and all this kind of stuff. So I’m sitting there and pouring down rain and mountain man, Dan, who.

As the listeners know has been on several other episodes at this point comes and basically yanks me out of the, out of this giant puddle that I trapped myself in. So we’re underneath of the, the canopies there and waiting for stop raining. And so I was trying, I was still trying to figure out why my car wasn’t running.

So soaking wet at this point, I’m underneath the car. We [00:53:00] basically ripped the shroud out from underneath cause it had jammed itself into the serpentine belt. keeping the car from wanting to start because it was locking up the peripherals. Got all that figured out, again, because we knew it was, the water was starting to rise, so I took the long way around as we were leaving, following in Dan’s wake, because he’s kind of breaking, breaking the flood with his truck.

I wasn’t the only one to say this, because the Crutchfields were there too, we actually saw your car lift, and the back end was floating, and the only thing keeping it in place was the motor. Because

John Wade: it wasn’t in the same parking spot we left it.

Crew Chief Eric: Correct. Because it’s floating when we left and all of us looked at each other.

We’re like, I don’t know how to get all the Steve. This is going to be ugly. But we also need to figure out how to get out of here.

John Wade: You don’t

Steve Wade: want to

John Wade: get

Steve Wade: older, Steve.

Crew Chief Eric: Don’t

Steve Wade: tell him whatever you did and nothing he can do. So that’s why Noah didn’t have his boat because he was using my bloody car. So yeah, next, next morning we get there

Crew Chief Eric: and it’s full of water and it’s shit everywhere.

Where the flasher still on because that [00:54:00] was the funniest part as the car was floating the hazard lights were just

Steve Wade: The battery was dead Yeah, there was dead fish all over the place because it all been electrocuted but the battery I said it was

Crew Chief Eric: so after the great So that that ruined your weekend. Let’s let’s say that

Steve Wade: Yeah.

Well, it’s not John’s, I should point out. John’s like, well, so do you. I’m taking the Focus out. That’s running fine. My Focus

John Wade: was in the trailer, completely dry.

Steve Wade: Yeah, that was lucky.

John Wade: Yeah, the flood, right. I mean, so why am I worried about his motor? I mean, I’ve got track time to get. That’s great.

Steve Wade: That’s what privately loves you for.

John Wade: Absolutely. I mean, I love So, as the time’s gone by, little tribute to that little car, time’s gone by, Steve is, um, distressed to some degree about this situation. So, he starts pulling things out of the car and he’s using all sorts of language I haven’t heard since I was a very small child. It’s Walter Gush.

He opens the doors, and Walter Gush is out of the car.

Steve Wade: Yeah, sorry. Yeah.

John Wade: His feet were wet. So, [00:55:00] I’m like, that’s a bit annoying. So, he’s pulling out stuff, and then he decides And he, by the way, he’s putting it in everybody’s way, but he’s just ripping stuff. He’s getting, pulling carpet out of carpet, soaking wet.

And he gets in, and I look at him, and I go, What do you want to do, Steve? You know, what are you going to do with a mower? He said, I don’t know. I said, put the key in it. He says, go on, I said, put the key in it. So, he puts the key in it. We charge the battery, he turns the key, and it starts! No! It shot three foot columns of water out of his head!

It looked like two bloody bushes, all the water got in it, and he drove it. God, that thing would not give up.

Crew Chief Eric: But that wasn’t the fucking plague either. There’s another one after that that involves Yeah,

John Wade: yeah, yeah, yeah, he ain’t done yet.

Steve Wade: Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: no,

Steve Wade: he ain’t done yet. So, uh, but this one’s kind of, kind of the cause.

I’ll bring the car home and, you know, soak him wet. And by the way, there is a, um, mark on the side of the car. HWM, high water mark. And it is about 15 and a half inches off the ground. It is, it, it, there was a lot of water.[00:56:00]

So anyway, so about a week later, I’m sitting in the house here, and my wife comes down, she goes, come upstairs, come upstairs, come upstairs, come and see. So you know, I said, okay, fine. So I go upstairs, go into the front of the house there, just above where the car is, and there is a swarm of bees that you cannot see through.

It is, you know, I don’t know, about 20 feet across, about 10 feet high. Just bees. Thousands and thousands of bees. I mean, that’s it. You know, the apocalypse. The world is coming to an end. We’re done. That’s all three now. I’ve had fire, flood, and now pestilence. And they went into, at the eaves of our house, the queen did, and they made a nest in our house.

That was the, uh, that’s all the trifecta of the, uh, pestilences. Okay, so that car is biblical. It’s absolutely

Crew Chief Eric: biblical. There’s no good ways about it. So after sacrificing a lamb over the hood of it, Or the bonnet, rather.

John Wade: Dripping blood on the roof, yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, has that seemed to calm the demonic powers of the mini, or is there something more to [00:57:00] this story?

Steve Wade: Yep, yep, let me, let me show you a picture because I think you’ll enjoy this, this particular picture. No, it’s not funny. Hold on a minute. Just bear with me. Talk amongst yourself for a little bit. And for the listeners,

Crew Chief Eric: and for the listeners, we’ll post this on the, uh, the show notes, so.

John Wade: Yeah, you see where those tires are?

Yeah? Steve, tell them what was where those tires are now.

Steve Wade: A jersey wall was there seconds before that because on Sunday at Dominion, I wrecked it. And you can’t quite see it there, but yeah, I hit that tire wall, hit the tire wall, tire wall hit the jersey wall, the jersey wall got Pushed about six foot down the hill and tipped over that I am afraid is pretty much the end of that poor car

John Wade: looking for another

Steve Wade: Really

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, I don’t think your next car should be a mini at all.

Steve Wade: I think you’re right I’m, i’m thinking something much more, uh, you know apocalyptic, you know, maybe a [00:58:00] firebird perhaps or something like that, you know a triumph Dodge beeman

Crew Chief Eric: Yes, you gotta

Crew Chief Brad: embrace, you embrace the demon.

Crew Chief Eric: Maybe it’s, maybe it’s the color, like you need to get away from the red. You know, something more subtle like black.

You know, that’s not a demonic color in any way. So, you know,

John Wade: just

Crew Chief Eric: gotta change the pace, right? But actually this is a good segment, planning your third generation of minis, right? Is it really at the top of the list or are you considering something different?

Steve Wade: Why I’m looking at minis is because I’ve got so many spare parts now.

I might as well just put it all back together again. I got seats, I got roll bars, I got superchargers, I’ve got gear boxes. I’ve got so many bits and pieces that if I don’t get another mini, that stuff’s all just useless. That’s why I’m going for minis first. That stuff will sell on

Crew Chief Brad: racing junk.

Steve Wade: Yeah, that may be what happens, I don’t know yet, but we’ll see.

That’s what he dropped on

John Wade: the

Steve Wade: thread,

John Wade: racing junk.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ll pose the [00:59:00] question this way, if If you didn’t have to worry about what it cost and you just wanted to buy a track car, start from scratch, get rid of the minis, gut reaction, what would it be?

Steve Wade: I think, you know, running maybe a Spec Miata or something like that would be a lot of fun. It’s easy to work on, it’s a blast, they’re little small cars, so, you know, that could be fun, I think.

Mate, he’s old! Ah, he’s a glutton. He’s a glutton for punishment. Exactly. Only if money’s no object, I don’t care if I bring it up, right? And apparently I don’t care if I bring it up anyway. You

John Wade: just buy a box of Miatas.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s what you do, right? I thought he was going to go, oh, I’m going to buy a 911 or something.

Just something totally off the wall, like money’s no object. So, let’s phrase it that way. If money was no object, top three cars in your three car garage, what would they be?

Steve Wade: E Type will be the first, without a doubt. That is the most beautiful car ever made. So, I’d definitely start with one of those. I think the McLaren MP2 is a hell of a car, too.

I think that would be fun. We [01:00:00] can park that next to it. Not too close, because we don’t want a mating or anything. So, that would be a good second car, I think. And then the third one, I don’t know. It’d have to be a classic of some kind. Some old, I don’t know. A full Capri would be kind of cool, wouldn’t it?

Maybe a Cortina. I thought you were gonna say a Hillman

John Wade: Imp. Oh yeah!

Steve Wade: Eric, Eric, the first car I ever personally owned, I told you the Capri was the least. The first car I ever owned was a Hillman Imp. God bless you. It got, it got 465 miles to the gallon. He’s taken it to the

John Wade: next level, doesn’t he? I mean, that’s where it’s gone.

Crew Chief Eric: This, this torch goes back many, many years, apparently. Yeah, oh yeah. So, John, if you had to add three bays to your existing garage, what would you put in there?

John Wade: I would. Uh, actually, there’s actually going to be several consistent drawers. So, and some of them already own, so it’s alright. So, any type, no doubt, right?

A Morgan Plus 8, already got one of those. The next one would be a four and a half [01:01:00] litre blown 1929 Bentley. from the Le Mans car. I mean, that is absolutely the epitome of a driver’s car. I mean, chain, drive, gears that you actually have to move, handbrake over there, you know, got timing on the steering wheel.

Yeah. What a mower and sound. Oh my God. There’s nothing that sounds like that mower. I think if you went, yeah, John, you got to come into like sort of nearly the 21st century. I think I’d have to tell you an Audi R8. Which is an absolutely fair. Yeah,

Steve Wade: yeah, that’s a good car.

John Wade: And then if I just had enough room a McLaren

Steve Wade: 720s.

Oh yeah, good, good choice, yeah. I want his, I want his cars next to the ones I chose. They’re good cars. You just borrow his or just? Nah, he’s selfish. He wouldn’t let me drive him. He’s terrible that way.

John Wade: I’m not lending him shit. I wouldn’t lend him a car. He’ll

Crew Chief Eric: come back burnt. So let me flip back for a second.

If now, with all of your guys experience, all these years wrench turning and competing and [01:02:00] the laughs and everything that goes along with it and the curses as well, what advice would you give somebody that’s just now starting out in this discipline? Don’t! Don’t do

John Wade: it! Now, first things first, mate. Go get yourself, from some source, a wheelbarrow load of money.

Where you need to start. The best way to make a small fortune in motorsports, as we all know. It’s the start of a big one.

Steve Wade: First thing I would do is say, go learn how to drive. Don’t even worry about your car. Just go learn how to drive. Just go to some schools. Start off, you know, figuring out what happens when you get a car going fast and you get momentum changes and all that kind of good stuff.

Because that will hold you throughout your racing career, whatever it turns out to be. The car will fly. You’ll get good cars. You’ll drive faster cars. You’ll do better and better. But if you don’t get the nut behind the wheel nice and tight, you’ll be forever chasing yourself.

John Wade: The thing you can chase fastest, the cheapest, that will make you go the [01:03:00] fastest is you.

I will tell you this bit of advice. Get a good crew chief and I’ll tell you why. No unsupervised racing ever. When I hit the wall at Barber, I was on my own. When Brother Steve hit the wall at Dominion, he’s on his own. Ever go out on your own. Never do that. Have adult supervision for our childish behavior.

Crew Chief Eric: That is sage advice, if there ever was one. So I a hundred percent agree when we are all together, you know, as a larger group, that’s part of, you know, we talked about that in episode two, where we come to each other’s rescue, it’s the premise of break fix. I mean, it’s not the, the whole theme of what we talk about here.

And obviously we don’t want to portray racing as a big crash fest. I mean, things happen, they’re mechanical. Failures to your point earlier, the race cars, and even the track prepared cars, because there are very different full on race cars versus track prepared cars. They’re under such extreme stresses that you would never encounter the engineering failures that we [01:04:00] encounter on the street.

So I don’t want to dissuade anybody from trying it. You know, we we’ve tried our best in the previous episode to talk about what it’s like your first time out and to advocate for people to try it with the cars. They have, I don’t want them to run away scared, but there’s life lessons to be learned here.

The harder you push, like in any sport, if you were a runner, a marathon runner, if you’re a football player, there’s always the risk of injury. There’s always the risk of something going wrong. The harder you push and the more you reach for that trophy or reach for that goal. So, you know, that’s, it’s very sage advice at the end of the day.

John Wade: Well, I’ll tell you, Eric, you know, it’s a lot different. Getting hit dead smack in the face by a 300 pound linebacker than it is letting your piece of metal hit the wall for you.

Crew Chief Eric: This is very true. I feel much more at ease, you know, hitting something than getting hit by something. I’ll put it that way.

John Wade: Yeah, don’t get in the motivation to lose weight. It don’t work.

Crew Chief Eric: Another valid point.

John Wade: For me personally. The goal of getting in the [01:05:00] car was improvement. Now, I don’t really yet know what that means. And I’m deadly serious there. There isn’t an end to that, right? Because success is a journey, not a destination. Every time, every lap, every track, you learn something. And you challenge yourself harder and harder and harder.

And you get more and more dissatisfied with yourself. And then when you hit that good lap, that one good one out of the 57 that sucked. Is well worth the effort it is in and of itself its own reward And especially if you’re not racing high dollar staffing, we don’t obviously you’re not that worried if you bend it I mean other than you know, if you get hurt, so that isn’t a worry on your mind You’re not worried about a bunch of snapper heads and grandmas going the other way while you’re trying to avoid a pothole Your same way same day with like minded people who are trying to improve and learn and compete against each other.

And that is, in and of itself, its own reward. The one thing that sharpens you the most is competition. It doesn’t matter what level that is, whether it’s solo, [01:06:00] TT, road race, it doesn’t really matter. You’re gonna get better because you want to. You have to have that desire to get better. And you run across people in this sport, in this little amateur game that we play, some of whom are really pretty damn good at this.

And you can learn from them and try and go get them and there’s no greater reward, ask me how I know, than finally catching up that one guy who’s been a pain in your side ever since you’ve been doing this and watching him stick his little finger out the window. Your heart rate goes up, you puff up with pride, you know, you can hear yourself screaming on the recording at the end of the day.

To me, there’s no illusion. that we’re ever going to be pro racing drivers or even particularly good ones, but we’re going to be the best we can and get the most fun out of little cars as we possibly can while we’ve got the time and money to do it. And so it builds its own reward and you get more and more competitive, faster, more and [01:07:00] more desire to go a little faster.

The trouble is, where do you draw the line? Because, how fast do you want to go? How much money you got? I got 10 miles an hour if you got 10, 000 and so on and so on. So you just eventually have to set the bar, and realize what your expectations are for yourself. What your expectations are for the particular vehicle that you’re driving and then try and maximize and optimize everything you can within the box you just built.

If you can do that, you can walk away proud of yourself if you were 15th or first because you maximized what tools you had in your hand at that time to include yourself. And that’s, I think, one of the greatest rewards of motorsports of all.

Crew Chief Eric: I cannot agree more. That is, that is very well put.

Steve Wade: Advice for people getting into this, and then we’ve already said it, I think.

Yeah, it’s great for the mechanical side of it, right? And there’s a lot of cerebral effort into what it takes to get a car to run fast, and how you handle it, [01:08:00] and the driving techniques, and all that kind of good stuff. So there’s a lot of physical skill to it, as well as you can drive. You know, if you like working on cars, it’s a lot of fun doing that kind of stuff.

Actually,

John Wade: about GTM and I mean, no criticism to the guys down here, but when I’ve raced up with you guys, it’s a couple of things. Don’t be afraid to ask for help, for advice, for a wrench, for a beer. It doesn’t matter. Interact with those people and build a support group. Build a group of people who go racing with you, even if they’re not always there.

You know, so you’ve always got that with you. Like I said, whether they’re physically there or not, you know, it might be you’re gonna call up, Do you know somebody who’s got a serpentine belt for a 0 4 Mini? All of a sudden there’s a support group and one arrives at your doorstep. Just a thousand things.

If you isolate yourself, and like a lot of the guys who do autocross, just go, race, go. And they isolate themselves, you miss two thirds of the experience of actually going there. I think, you know, it’s great going [01:09:00] out on the track, great going fast, great, you know, setting fire to things and smashing walls.

That’s all good. But the best thing, I think, that I get out of it is one, spending time with my brother because we live so far apart. That’s awesome. And then, the evenings. Are generally just great. You swap stories, you tell bullshit, you drink beer, you have fun, you unwind. With a group of like minded people.

Whether they like you or not, at least they’re gonna hang out with you, you know? Ha ha ha

Crew Chief Eric: ha! As, as Brad says, you know, Friends are the family you choose. And it’s a very poignant theme within our organization. And, you know, it’s We’ve been very fortunate to pick up members like yourselves. You guys are great.

I mean, I always look forward to talking to you and hanging out. I know this year has been really tough for everybody with, with the pandemic and everything that’s going on. Tracks didn’t reopen until recently. We’ve had to postpone a bunch of our events. The cannonball is really still up in the air. We just now released.

The information about summer bash, you know, things of that nature. And it’s just been [01:10:00] tough. And you know, this is a great way for us to get together, but it’s not the same to your point is everybody getting together at the event and doing what they’re doing. And what’s really funny is maybe if you have telepathic powers, unlike the demonic powers of the mini, it was my way to kind of put us in top gear and talk about your experiences with the club.

And I know you’re a lot newer than some of the other members that we’ve interviewed, but I think you did a good way of kind of driving into that.

John Wade: Well, you’ve got to remember, Steve is the COVID 19 of the race track. We spend months and months until the rally opens up, and he shuts it down immediately.

First time.

Steve Wade: Yeah, that’s right. But the camaraderie of the groups is really the big value. John said it himself, you know, he and I have spent more time together as brothers in the last 15 years racing than we’d ever done. For the previous 15 years, and that’s just two brothers, right? Then there’s you guys, you know, we’ve met you, met the rest of the GTM group, every track you go to, someone knows you, or you know them, and they come up and, you know, they help you, you help them, you [01:11:00] bullshit for a little while.

One time on Shanny, there was one of the guys running a mini there and he over tightened his lug nuts and stripped them and sent his wheel into the woods. So they, um, towed his mini off and John and I basically jacked it up, fixed it, bought him a new wheel on and

John Wade: he went running again. By the way, I think it’s a bad thing to give yourself a point by.

I’m just saying.

Crew Chief Eric: All right, on that, gentlemen, I cannot thank you enough for spending all this time with us. I’m sure the people on the other end listening to this are going to be laughing their heads off. It’s always a great time with the Latin lads, with both the Wade brothers, incredible stories, and I can’t wait to see what the next plague is with the next red mini in the

John Wade: series.

And Meteorite.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

John Wade: One comedy is one. Greatest racing driver of all time. Eric, go. Santa. Steve.

Steve Wade: Sterling Moss.

John Wade: Ken Miles, sonny. Hey. Oh, that’s

Steve Wade: a good

Crew Chief Eric: choice. Yeah. Yeah. But on that note, it’s [01:12:00] time to end. Thank you guys.

John Wade: Thanks a lot.

Crew Chief Eric: See ya, Eric. See you at the track. See ya. Thanks, Brad. Yeah, take care, Brad.

John Wade: Take care, Brad.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out at www. gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on Instagram at grandtouringmotorsports. 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 listeners, Crew Chief Eric here. Do you like what you’ve seen, heard and read from GTM? Great. So do we, and we have a lot of fun doing it, but please remember we’re fueled by volunteers and remain a no annual fee organization, but we still need help to keep the momentum going.

So that we can continue to record, write, edit, and broadcast all of your favorite content. So be sure to visit www. patreon. com forward slash gtmotorsports or [01:13:00] visit our website and click in the top right corner on the support and donate to learn how you can help.

Learn More

The MINI Curse Begins

Steve’s first racing MINI (seen below) was temperamental, and eventually mauled by a bear. “He ripped off the bumper cover and tried to mate with it,” Steve said. The culprit? Cocoa shell mulch in the trunk – chocolate-scented bait for Yogi. But this was just the start.

Watkins Glen: Fire and Flatbeds – At Watkins Glen, the MINI hit 137 mph before bursting into flames. John refused to pit. “I paid for this lap, Sonny!” Emergency crews flagged him down, pulled him from the car, and discovered flames shooting from the engine bay. His fire suit? Safely stored in the garage.
Shenandoah: Flood and Fury – After rebuilding the MINI, Steve brought it to Shenandoah – where it promptly flooded overnight. “The back end was floating,” Eric recalled. “The hazard lights were still blinking.” The next morning, the Mini started… and shot three-foot columns of water from the exhaust.
Pestilence and the Bee Swarm: A week later, a swarm of bees invaded Steve’s house. “Thousands of them,” he said. “That’s it. Fire, flood, and pestilence. The MINI is biblical.”
Dominion: The Final Blow – The MINI’s last stand came at Dominion Raceway, where Steve hit a tire wall so hard it moved a jersey barrier six feet. “That’s the end of that poor car,” he said. “I’m looking for another.”

There's more to this story!

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

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

Beyond the fireballs and flatbeds, the Wade brothers found something deeper: time together. “We’ve spent more time racing in the last 15 years than we did in the previous 15,” John said. “And the evenings – swapping stories, drinking beer, unwinding with like-minded people—that’s the best part.”

**As Eric put it, “Friends are the family you choose.” And in the GTM community, the Latton Lads are family.**

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

Chin Track Days: From Closed Gates to a National Movement

Gran T

August 20, 2020

Chin Track Days: From Closed Gates to a National Movement

On this episode of the Break/Fix podcast, we sat down with Mark Hicks, Chief Operating Officer and Director of Chin Track Days, to uncover the origin story of one of the most respected names in high-performance driver education (HPDE). What began as a spontaneous act of motorsports passion has grown into a coast-to-coast calendar of track events that welcomes thousands of drivers each year.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

The Chin Track Days story starts in 1999 at Sebring International Raceway. A group of eager drivers, including Dr. Weishen Chin, arrived for a scheduled track day—only to find the gates locked. The organizer had failed to pay the rental fees. Rather than turning around, Dr. Chin sprang into action. He passed a hat, raised the funds, and negotiated with the track to open the gates. In that moment, Chin Motorsports was born.

When asked for a name to put on the rental agreement, Dr. Chin simply said, “Chin Motorsports.” That impromptu decision became the foundation for a brand that would evolve over the next two decades.

Mark Hicks joined the Chin team in 2004, leaving behind a 20-year career in the restaurant and hospitality industry. His transition from restaurateur to motorsports director was sparked by a shared love for the Acura NSX—a car that connected him with Dr. Chin and ultimately led to his leadership role.

Together with his wife Maria, a skilled driver and instructor, and CFO Vincent Howard, Mark helped scale Chin Track Days from five events and 600 entries in 2004 to over 115 track days and 7,500+ driver entries in 2020, even amid COVID-related cancellations.

Spotlight

Notes

Who/When/Where is CHIN?
How do you learn more, and register for CHIN events?
What is the CHIN HPDE program like? What expectations should a new student have coming into the classroom for the first time? How many students on track? What’s the student:instructor ratio?
Coaching with CHIN, and how to become a coach.
Track-Day Prep and unique policies of a CHIN Track Event
Does CHIN recommend that a student get Track Insurance before coming to an event?

and much, much more!

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: Hey everyone, crew chief, Eric here. And on this episode, we are honored to have Mark Hicks, the chief operating officer and director of chin track days with us on the show in our continuing effort to spread motor sports enthusiasm. We want to explore the chin origin story. A history that goes back 21 years in the making.

Though many GTM members have been fortunate to participate and coach in several Chin events over the last five years, including places like Pit Race, Mid Ohio, Barber, Road Atlanta, Motorsports [00:01:00] Ranch, Indianapolis, and more, many might not know what Chin is all about. But we hope to remedy that in short order.

And with that, let’s welcome Mark to Break Fix.

Mark Hicks: Well, hello there, you guys. It’s definitely a pleasure for me to join you online, and I definitely appreciate the invitation. to, uh, be a part of your program and say hello to your audience. So, thanks for letting

Crew Chief Eric: me join in. Absolutely, Mark. So, let’s get into it.

How about we start off by you telling us about Chin, the who, the when, the where, and explain the brand name.

Mark Hicks: You know, great topic, of course, that has come up before, right? If you’ve been to Chin Track Days uh, events over the years, you’ve seen, uh, me often. And then Maria, who is also my better half, and with me, uh, one of the founders of Chin Track Days.

But, what is the deal with Chin? So, there’s a man named Chin, [00:02:00] and he’s my partner. And he is the original founder, the guy behind the very first ever, then, Chin Motorsports event, which, uh, took place at Sebring. In 1999, Dr. Chen, he was an enthusiast and a sports car owner and he, along with a number of other drivers who were signed up to participate in the same event, all arrived the day of the event, lined up at the gate, and guess what?

The gates never opened. And Dr. Chen went to the front of the line and talked to the track official and was like, hey, what’s up? We’re supposed to have a track event. And he said, yeah, those guys, they never paid their track rental fees. Unfortunately, this little cottage industry of track days has a number of stories like that of operators that had good intentions, perhaps, and intended to carry on a track event.

Well, it didn’t bear fruit. This was one of those days and Dr. Chen turned back to the track official and he said, well, what’s it going [00:03:00] to take to pay those fees and get these gates open? He quickly pulled the others there, and a hat was passed, a kitty was raised, the fee was paid, and the gates opened at Sebring on that day, and the first Chin Motorsports event took place.

Dr. Chin standing there, making these arrangements on the fly. I think if you rewind, uh, in time, if you’ve been a track enthusiast, uh, anybody out there for some time, you might recognize that 20 plus years ago, the setting of doing track events is somewhat different than it might be today. So the track was receptive to getting somebody to pay the track rental and opening the gates and letting them walk right in under those conditions, but of course they needed The name.

They said, okay, great. Entity renting the track. And he went, uh, well, uh, Chin Motorsports. That is the name that we [00:04:00] carried for a very long, long, long time and built. But come along in 2016, we began to have the awareness that kind of across the space that we were in. Chin Motorsports ended up being kind of ambiguous, okay?

That’s a tag that, you know, did we service cars? Are we a racing team? Are we a used car lot? What do we do? So we rebranded from Chin Motorsports to Chin Track Days, which of course gives a quite a bit more specific indication of what we’re doing, but that was the beginning of Chin Motorsports. And there’s one more principal, a man named Vincent Howard.

He is our CFO and the guy who, uh, Pays our bills, pays our staff, and manages all the, uh, financial activity. Vincent is the third principal of Chin Track Days. Our small startup gained momentum and do more [00:05:00] track events and have more drivers participate with us eventually. Reached a scale to where Dr. Chen, who has a large and, uh, successful medical practice in Orlando, it reached the point where he was running out of bandwidth to keep up with all the demands of Chen Motorsports.

And at the time, uh, I was in restaurants. That’s what I did before motorsports, thank goodness. I, uh, was able to leave a 20 year career in food and beverage and hotel and restaurant hospitality, which in Chen Asked me to take over Chen Motorsports and run the operations full time, manage all of our track events.

And that was all the way back in 2004. And I have been the director of and, and kind of at the top of the pyramid of Chen Motorsports ever since then. My wife Maria, pivotal role, a highly accomplished driver and instructor [00:06:00] and began to grow our calendar. Beyond the boundaries that just a team of two could manage to where we had the necessity for additional staff and that, of course, also led us to be able to actually expand our capacity, adding more events and all of that, beginning about 2014 15.

The past five plus years have been really expansive for chin track days. And today, 2020, what an, what an odd year, obviously, like everybody out there who was, uh, running track events or trying to go to track events, or even if you manage a racetrack, we all had a bunch of cancellations. In the spring, March, April, May, so we lost some events then, but the full calendar, uh, we began the year with 60 event dates on the 2020 schedule at 17 different venues, most of which are the greatest hits list of [00:07:00] road course racetracks in the eastern U.

S. We, we reach as far west as Circuit of the Americas in Austin. Anybody out there that’s, uh, paid attention to Chin, you probably Uh, are aware already. We’re not in California. We don’t do anything west of Texas, but in the eastern U. S., we’ve got almost every track that really has, uh, great meaning to enthusiasts.

You will find it on the Chin Track Day schedule. Sixty calendar dates this year, about a hundred and fifteen days on track. And by the time We finished 2020. Well, COVID cancellations included, we’ll see about 7, 500 driver entries in 2020. That’s where we are today. And from the very first event at Sebring, that was about 60 drivers.

And when I took over, Full time operations management in 2004, we [00:08:00] had five track events scheduled at three locations, and we had about 600 total driver entries in 2004, and this year that number will be, it would be about 9, 000. Without COVID cancellation loss, you know, so if you just try and compare apples to apples, that’s, uh, that’s where we’ve come over the last 20 years.

The short story is, there is a man named Chen, and he is my partner, and he’s still around, often seen with us at Sebring, he doesn’t travel as much as he once did. But since he’s Orlando based, he’s certainly very fond of going to our Sebring events, which are very frequent. Uh, we’re the number one provider of track events at Sebring.

We were just at Sebring last weekend. Our next Sebring date is only three weeks away. So it’s, uh, Sebring is kind of home track, the home field for Weishen Chen showing [00:09:00] up at Sebring pretty regularly. A big, uh, bucket full of background, but You know, there is a man named Chin, and I sure am glad, uh, that he had the initiative on, uh, that original day standing at the closed gate at Sebring

Crew Chief Eric: to get this track event done.

You’re a big personality at Chin, not just in the fact that you’re, you’re the director, but you’re at a lot of the events and most people see you, well, they hear you first over the microphone and over the PA, but then you have your signature fedora, right? Which is, it’s also part of your email signature, et cetera.

But I think just to get to know you, Mark, the car enthusiast, a little bit better. We’ve recently done some episodes where we ask people about this mythical garage. mythical island. You know, if they could have any three cars on that island, what would it be? So Mark, what would your three cars be? Oh, wow.

Well,

Mark Hicks: I appreciate that. By the way, Eric, the, uh, my wide brim hat quite [00:10:00] familiar. It’s in the trailer, right? It stays in the trailer prepared to go to the track. I would share it with your audience, but it’s not in my hands right now. I tell you what, I think the Mazda Miata is one of the all time, great sports cars.

It’s on my list. It’s just pound for pound what Mazda did to create accessibility. At the time the Miata got introduced, right? Uh, early 90s. Drive a quote sports car. You needed to have a bunch of money Mazda Pushed down that wall with the introduction of the miata and made owning a sports car Accessible to an everyday enthusiast, but it’s not just the price the balance of that car the proportions of that car How the cockpit works.

I love Miatas. But the other side of that is, uh, it’s actually also a little side note of the chin origin story. All of the chin principles, uh, mentioned Dr. Weishen Chin, [00:11:00] myself and my wife, and my third partner, Vincent Howard. Every one of us owns an NSX. And We have a vintage NSX, each of us, and collectively, we own a brand new NSX, an NC1, the supercar.

You also recall, uh, earlier in our conversation, I mentioned a previous life, I’ll say, in hotel and restaurant hospitality, food and beverage, was successful enough in that career that I bought an NSX, while I was a restaurant owner. That introduced me to Wei Shin Chin, because he was an NSX owner, pretty small community.

We did a track event together. At the time, I still owned restaurants. Today, I have the, the, the gratifying privilege to lead one of the largest track day operators in the U. S. And it’s because I bought an NSX. So an NSX makes my list, not the new one, because The vintage original NSX, [00:12:00] I can strip down, disassemble, and reassemble pretty much like a blindfold, like a well trained Marine with an AR.

That’s how I feel about the vintage original NSX. And then, you know, what did you say? Three? Three. You got two. What’s your third? I have a forever lifetime soft spot. For the special lines of, uh, a late sixties 67 or 68 Ferrari 3 6 5 Daytona spider with the roof down and Barron wire wheels with a three and a half liter V 12 and six Webers a nightmare to keep running.

But for me personally, right, everybody’s got their own subjective scale of what is one of the most beautiful cars ever for me.

Crew Chief Eric: Daytona spider. Is it by chance in black and are you living out of miami vice fantasy? I just want to It would be [00:13:00] red with camel seats, of course

Mark Hicks: Very

Crew Chief Eric: good, very good

Mark Hicks: so And and if I was alone in a desert island, and those are my three cars The ferrari would stay parked and I would drive the ns6 and the miata There you go.

The desert island has

Crew Chief Eric: an unlimited supply of fuel doesn’t it? 100 percent. Absolutely And coconuts apparently So there’s a lot to unpack there, Mark. So let me ask another question, and please don’t take offense. You may have not heard this phrase before with reference to Chin, but you guys are often referred to as the traveling circus.

It has a lot to do with your schedule and has a lot to do with how Chin moves around the country. So can you explain how that works? And what I’m alluding to here is that you guys are not a franchise. So it makes you very unique in the fact that Chin moves from location to location when you talk about 60 different venues in a year.

That’s a lot. So do you want to elaborate on that a little [00:14:00] bit?

Mark Hicks: Uh, you know, great question. I appreciate the perception that you have there to, to see what it is that we do in that way. Uh, we, we certainly We refer almost internally ourselves. We call it a bit of a circus as well. You know, there’s a couple of keys there.

First of all, I got a seriously highly committed, very capable staff, you know, that I can never give enough credit to. They are fantastic. Our event management team are all autonomous. They have the same kind of commitment. To superior track events and a heart in the whole hobby because they are in their core sports car enthusiasts themselves.

They didn’t just sign up to earn a paycheck by working for chin. They signed up because they love doing track events. And it turned out that they thought it was miraculous that they could also get paid to do that. So [00:15:00] the staff is what makes it possible. First thing, and then. I’ll tell you, one of our master keys, here in my glamorous setting, you see exposed to duct work, what have you, I’m in my man cave, the basement, at what we call Global Headquarters, which is eight miles from the driveway of Road Atlanta.

So, Road Atlanta features heavily in our schedule. I call Sebring our home turf, it was the original Chin Track Days event. And Sebring is on the Chin Calendar 14 times a year. That’s how much we love Sebring. But Road Atlanta is second only to Sebring where it wrote Atlanta nine times a year. When we do road Atlanta dates, nobody travels.

It’s hardly far enough away to warm up my twin turbo diesel under the hood of my Ford F 450. That’s how far it is to road Atlanta for me. I can literally, [00:16:00] when I’m here at home, I can hear the wonderful noise. From rhode atlanta. I am not a complaining neighbor. Let me assure you So that’s part of our secret there because a rhode atlanta date, which is when you when you suck it out of our calendar It’s 15 percent of all of our dates occur at Road Atlanta.

I think enthusiasts all know by now, if you go to the track on a regular basis, there’s a, there’s quite a few hard things that we all have to tackle to make a track event a success, whether we’re the provider or you’re the participating enthusiast, there’s a bunch of work that has to get done for you to get.

to and participate successfully in the track event. And one of the hardships that we all face is the travel. We’re all attracted and we find it compelling enough that, hell yes, we’ll drive four or five hundred miles, three, four states away to go to Whatever fantastic racetrack is on the menu for the weekend, but now you’ve [00:17:00] given up friday and monday You know, that’s a time away from work or family and the travel requires that commitment And it’s possible but i’ll deny it if you if any authorities ask me that Untagged track only vehicles have been driven from my shop On the street, that’s hypothetical.

It’s that we’re close enough that that could be done if you had to In the dark at dawn. That’s

Crew Chief Eric: possible. So with that being said, I mean, let’s take away. All right. 30 or 40 percent of the year being, you know, Sebring in Rhode Island. That’s still a lot of events. I mean, when it’s not a covert year, the chin track schedule is pretty much year round from the way I’ve looked at it, which is, which is amazing.

And, and, and to your point about traveling, um, You know, we’ve gone upwards of 850 miles to go to a chin event in the past, you know, traveling to Barber and other locations. So it’s not a hop, skip and a jump for those of us here in the D. C. area. But still, as we talk more about getting more familiar, the [00:18:00] guys that know how to get into a chin event, they know where to go and they know what to do and they know the process.

But explain to the newbie, you know, how do I find a chin event? Am I going to Motorsports Reg? Is my buddy signing up for me? How is that process done and what does it entail to get signed up for a chin event?

Mark Hicks: You know, appreciate you asking that, really. Because, uh, I’d love to try and give some clarity that Chin Track Days always, uh, has our own stand alone website.

Um, Motorsports Reg is a great product and a very useful tool for enthusiasts nationwide. And we post calendar listings on Motorsports Reg if you want to see. What is the date of the next, the next chin event? You can certainly find us listed there, but it will say, please visit our website, chin track days.

com for driver registration, sign up, et cetera. But, uh, chin motorsports. com as a website and a registration predated motorsports reg by a, by a solid five [00:19:00] years. And today we maintain our own and update regularly our standalone website, which has. Really, it’s a comprehensive internet destination for track enthusiasts.

Of course, you can find the full chin schedule and driver registration, etc. You know, to get into an upcoming chin event. But you’ll also find a comprehensive description. Uh, driver skill benchmarks, our run group format, uh, tons of pages on just great, uh, tips for any enthusiasts, how to prep your car, what to do to, you know, prepare to spend the weekend away from home to go to the track, uh, a guide for new enthusiasts, comprehensive guides to all the tracks that we visit, et cetera, all of that can be found on ChinTrackDays.

com and that is all original content. Where, uh, we collaborate either in house with our own team or talk to experts who are

Crew Chief Eric: part of the CHIN program. [00:20:00] And one of the things I don’t think people realize, and we joke about this when we’re trying to get people really engaged to come out for the first time, it’s always register early and register often.

And one of the things that is unique about CHIN’s registration process is you guys only open registration, I believe, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, it’s about two weeks before the event. Is actually set to go off and you got to get in line early because those tickets sell out quick. I mean, they are super popular events.

So I can’t reiterate enough register early and register often, but pay attention and set reminders because I’ve been on some of those events were within 20 minutes. It’s almost sold out. That’s fair to say. I will.

Mark Hicks: I will address that. The lead time is is longer, but we do that. Yeah. Very specifically on a predictable scheduled cycle, and that is once a week on Monday evenings 9 p.

m. Eastern, whatever is eight weeks downstream on the calendar will go [00:21:00] online. And so, for example, right now you can visit our website and see dates running through September and into October. It’s all online. You can register for October events, and we always limit Novice driver registration for the entry level drivers.

Of course, we do one on one student and instructor pairings. You want to limit the number of drivers there so you can hopefully ensure a very high quality driver experience, but you also rely on your instructor population, of course, to do the one to one student and instructor pairings. So we have to limit our novice enrollment.

We opened that VIR registration this past Monday night. With 15 available novice driver entries, at 9. 07, we were sold out. And today, now three days into registration, we have over 80 entries on the VIR date, which will have a cap of about [00:22:00] 110 entries. So it’s 65 plus percent already sold three days into registration.

And of course, if we continue on that pace, The October date at VIR, now eight weeks into the future, will be fully sold out by next week, seven weeks in advance. It’s very fortunate that there is that demand out there. I definitely give a hat to to the enthusiast population who were all very frustrated by the COVID closure in the spring months.

And since the tracks reopened and we got into the controlled mitigated space, you can’t say fully safe, you know, COVID. is out there, it’s a problem, but the track operators were able to be persuasive with the public health authorities and their local governments to the extent that they began to recognize, okay, we’re in an outdoor space, you can spread out across a 10 or 15 acre [00:23:00] paddock, we’re not doing group gatherings, and so, The COVID restrictions got lifted on the racetracks.

As long as we weren’t doing large scale spectator events, of course, that’s still not happening. But, you know, you can get 100, 150 sports car enthusiasts into a paddock and spread them out widely. And, you know, we’ve taken certain other steps. Gotta cover your face. Bottom line there is, we got into this set of conditions that enthusiasts felt like the risk was controlled in a reasonable way to the extent that they felt like they could go to the track and enjoy laps without being at risk of becoming ill with COVID.

And the enthusiasts came back strongly from end of May, June, July, our summer schedule. We’ve seen very solid support. And heading into fall, we’re just talking about the strong demand primarily for that VIR day. That’s one of our peak flagship events. But, you know, we’re also at Searing Watkins Glen. Uh, Road Atlanta, Circuit of [00:24:00] the Americas are all on our fall schedule as well, and enthusiasts have really embraced that, and I’m really optimistic and very grateful for the very strong response we continue to see.

But you’re right, for the most popular flagship dates, we will see registration. Demand that creates really rapid sellouts when we start taking entries on Monday nights at 9 p. m But I’d love to say that we can sell out each and every single event that doesn’t happen not by any means, you know We could say like a popular restaurant your flagship dates.

You’re filling up friday saturday nights every table occupied I want to wait to get a table. We’re still doing dinner monday through thursday. So certainly Want enthusiasts to uh, be optimistic That uh, you don’t always have to nail it at 9 p. m Monday night now you do if you’re a novice driver. I will admit if you’re new to the track hobby.[00:25:00]

I cannot overemphasize The necessity to be online night, nine p. m. Right wh to ensure that you can ge limited novice entries, m row seats for the rolling like

Crew Chief Eric: that. And it reminds of, you know, getting tha auction on ebay, like you top of your game or it wa But since we’re talking a

Chin’s HPD program. And I do want to differentiate and I’m not trying to call out any other, you know, competitors or any other people that are in the market space, but Chin is in the column of HPD only unless, you know, you guys have developed a racing program that we didn’t know about, unlike some other organizations that do DE to supplement their racing programs and things like that.

So you’re very fortunate to be very focused. on education, which is important to us here at GTM. So what we want to talk about is what expectations should a new student have [00:26:00] coming into the classroom at Chin for the first time, you’ve already mentioned how many students on track and the instructor ratio and things like that.

But let’s talk a little bit about the education program that you guys have put together and anything that’s unique about that. Thanks, Eric, for asking,

Mark Hicks: man, you have done your homework and I appreciate that. You are absolutely right. No, I don’t have. A super special secret hidden competition program. Uh, there is no club racing at chin and that enables us to say chin track days.

There is no competition. Think about that. But our emphasis for sure is the track day driver. We’ve recognized a long time ago that there are more hobby enthusiasts with high performance street cars. That want to make laps then there are race car drivers now We’ve got a place for race car drivers if you’ve ever been to a chin of it You have seen some fully prepared competition cars doing testing and practice But the the racers like that [00:27:00] because they don’t have to worry About you know serious tech scrutiny or running Untried stuff that may not be in rules compliance with their class that kind of thing.

They can do whatever they want At a chin event as long as their car is safe and the driver is following the chin format So we’ll see plenty of competition cars, but over and over and over Uh, there’s far more high performance street cars, and that’s where we see the heart of our market, for sure. Club racing has great merit, and I have nothing but kudos to those who are committed to competition.

Uh, it’s definitely a different path, uh, than what we’re doing, but we know that there are a lot of enthusiasts out there. Corvettes, Camaros, Mustangs, Porsches, Acuras, Ferraris, you name it, BMWs of course, and any other brand you can think of that can be associated with performance, they all end up showing up at Chin Track Day’s [00:28:00] events.

And there are more cars in this category in the hands of enthusiasts than there are race cars out there. It has very fortunately been validated by our own business model over all these many years that in fact the people who own these cars are interested in coming out and making laps and getting advanced driver coaching and we certainly have been putting an emphasis on the DE.

In, uh, HPDE for a very long time, we’ve got a staff of veteran instructors. It’s often said that an instructor will get qualified with Chin Track Days last. There are new instructors with Chin Track Days. That is, they’re new to Chin Track Days, but they are not new instructors. Instructors to be eligible to get on the Chin Track Days instructor team You must already have preexisting instructor [00:29:00] experience, so you won’t see any new brand new instructors in our program.

Crew Chief Eric: For all the aspiring coaches out there or the coaches that, you know, have put your time in the trenches and you’re looking forward to coaching with Chin after hearing this whole conversation, please note it is a little bit skull and bones where you’re expecting that secret invitation to be slid under your door because I don’t think you just walk up to Mark and say, Hey, I want to coach with Chin.

You have to be invited in. To the kind of inner coven there. And again, it’s on a track by track basis. And I’m not trying to poke fun, but that’s the experience that I went through where it was like, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock. Hey, we need you for NJMP. And then once you were in, you were in, and then you had to qualify for tracks independently, et cetera.

And again, it’s been a rewarding experience. So I just want to highlight that before you get a bum rush of people going, Hey, when can I coach for chin?

Mark Hicks: You know, that You know, that is awesome, Eric, but I’ll certainly add that we welcome instructor [00:30:00] applications from well seasoned instructors all the time and in fact On the home page of our website, you know, the the things that are prominent is the track schedule upcoming events, etc But scroll down the page drivers, you will see instructor criteria and instructor eligibility fortune track days and if you are A seasoned instructor and you have completed a known instructor school.

One of the, there’s a number of really well established structured instructor training programs. If you’ve been through one of those, um, a NASA, a PCA, a BMW club, but then of course, kind of the master key. Motorsports Safety Foundation MSF level 2 status. That is almost going to be automatic entry into Chin Track Day’s instructor status track specific.

You are correct, Eric, that we want a driver [00:31:00] to have Known experience on a lap before they show up to coach that lap, but we do recognize existing established instructor qualifications from other well known track day providers that have structured instructor training. But yes, it is also true that once you are accepted to instructor eligibility, which in track days, that driver is then eligible to instruct at any track where they have prior existing experience.

And so we welcome that. That’s right. I’m ready to instructed Barbara next time. We’re good. That is fantastic. Out of our entire, um, kind of the population of enthusiasts that follow Chin Track Days, and today if you join as a new member today in, uh, August of 2020, You’ll have a member number in the range of like 24, 000 and something.

So over the years, we’ve given instructor eligibility to over 2, [00:32:00] 400 different, highly experienced drivers across the country that, uh, support chin track days and always hats off. To the instructors who are at the heart of the track day hobby. Thank you very much. Whether you instruct for chin or not, if you are a qualified instructor and you regularly give your time to the track hobby to show up and share your experience with a less experienced driver, I thank you personally.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, thank you, Mark, for saying that. I appreciate that. Uh, having, having instructed now for, okay, I’ve lost track of the years, but, but thank you. And I’ll say that on behalf of everybody that’s listening as well. And all the folks in GTM that have coached for Chin and coach for other organizations. But let’s step back to the training for a second.

I think there’s a couple of things that are very unique to Chin that I want to, I want you to kind of unpack for the listeners. That being the way you guys do your orientation laps. I think the way you split up your novice and your solo novice, and in addition to that I think the flag test would be something interesting to [00:33:00] talk about.

I think our listeners would also be interested to hear about your tech process because that’s really important to a lot of the newbies as well.

Mark Hicks: Sure thing, thanks Eric. So, so basically if you are the novice driver, you’re an entry level driver, you love your high performance street car, and you want to learn how to drive it well because of course making laps is not a natural skill.

Many folks who own high performance cars aren’t fully acquainted with that, but there’s a great difference between being qualified to buy an expensive high performance car and being qualified to make laps in it. Everybody out there who’s an enthusiast has heard stories about brand new owners of brand new sports cars who left the dealer and never made it home, crashed the car.

Because they’re intoxicated with, you know, 0 to 60, 3 second times, and 160 mile an hour top speeds. And you just, you know, you want to get sideways every [00:34:00] time you turn right. And you end up all in big trouble. Instead, we want you to come to the track, get acquainted with one of our veteran instructors, and get some very intensive, committed coaching on high performance driving techniques, vehicle preparation, vehicle dynamics, car control, track safety, and generally the conditioning of the fantastic hand eye foot coordination that an accomplished driver must acquire.

And we’ve got the staff, we’ve put the emphasis on that for a driver. who is participating with Chintrac Days, if they’re new to the hobby, they’re not going to have an option to sign up as a solo driver. We require an entry level driver to work with an instructor. You don’t get the opportunity to just go start randomly making laps and let’s see how it goes.

That doesn’t work out. We look at it like [00:35:00] any kind of advanced skill set. that you’ve got to get qualified for. Maybe you want to go scuba diving. You’ve got to take classes. You work with an instructor diver and eventually you become a certified scuba diver. You get a C card. Diving is one of those hobbies.

Aviation. You can’t just go down and rent an aircraft at the local airport and go take off and land and do some sightseeing tours. You have to get lessons. And now while we’re all qualified to drive a car, Right? You’re carrying a driver’s license? Well, there you go. That says, I’m qualified to drive a car.

That doesn’t make a driver qualified to make laps. And that’s part of our education philosophy, to help folks understand that you don’t yet know what you don’t know about what it takes to make laps safely. And we want to introduce you to that, to where you get a breakthrough and you go, Oh, now I see what’s happening.

And now I want to work [00:36:00] with my instructor for longer and more because then you end up You spend less time having to learn the lap and more time going faster. The instructor is kind of a fast forward cheat to becoming a great driver. If y’all have been to the track on many occasions, you perhaps have heard someone say, you know, I really need to be solo.

I can get, if I get the instructor, you know, 200 plus pounds out of my right seat, I’m going to go faster. That is not A correct

Crew Chief Eric: assumption. It only applies on a Miata because they’re weight sensitive, but otherwise

Mark Hicks: that may be fair to say, but you certainly better know what to do with your Miata to get that right, to corner that car at 101 percent and use it from track edge to track edge and not leaving any unused pavement.

That’s how you run a Miata. I’m a big Miata fan. The chin track days. fleet includes [00:37:00] two

Crew Chief Eric: Miatas.

Mark Hicks: So

Crew Chief Eric: one of the great sports cars of all time, without a doubt. So going back to going back to something you said and from personal experience, I want to kind of shore up what you said there. So, I mean, I’ve had the pleasure of coaching for Chin at several different locations and I thought the process was really interesting and I I struggled with it kind of internally for a while because it is so disciplined in a way, but I came to appreciate it the more time I spent with Chin and the fact that there’s still a trust but verify within Chin that I found refreshing and important because no, we’re not just going to let you on track.

in the highest run group because you said so and you showed up with a car with a bunch of stickers on it. But the same was true of coaching. Had you not been to that track before, you couldn’t coach at that track until you got signed off. So there was still a vetting process even there, which I thought was really cool.

And again, I’ve been very fortunate to coach with Chin in the past, so it’s been a very rewarding experience overall.

Mark Hicks: Eric, that’s awesome. I, uh, [00:38:00] I so appreciate you, uh, taking a moment to make that comment there. And what, what that all goes back to is, if I can add to that, is our kind of safety culture. We have this really high commitment to mitigate risk.

Okay, your driver, whoever you are out there, novice up to 20 year veteran, you’ve made a choice to motorsports event. This is inherently risky. However, if you’ve got eyes wide open, And you’re paying careful attention to your environment. You can identify the risk. You can recognize them out here in front of you, and you can take deliberate steps to recognize and then mitigate.

The risk and that kind of goes hand in hand with this, uh, the trust, but verify as you point out, and if we can eliminate the variables of those potential risks that perhaps are subject to [00:39:00] our influence, whether it’s the chin staff or other well seasoned instructors who are part Of the event where we can recognize and mitigate risk.

We want to do all that we can to take those variables out of the equation so that the driver one is going to increase their focus so they don’t have to give attention. To these other things that might be occurring that create, shall we say, background noise. We want to reduce that from the driver load.

But then also, if you can identify and take steps to control the things that you actually can control, then you leave space in what’s happening. For the unexpected to occur and this of course Is something that it goes hand in hand with motorsports That you can’t control all the variables and that random and unexpected things will occur And so what we’re our deliberate intention now is [00:40:00] to try and create surplus bandwidth for the driver or instructor or advanced driver, especially whoever you are out there where you’re making laps and you think things are going right and you are well within the capability of your car and yourself as a driver, but something now random occurs.

A car ahead blows a tire, drops fluid, a squirrel runs out from the edge. You never know. And now, you’re equipped to address or respond to these unexpected conditions and hopefully end up with a safe outcome or at least no injury, right? Incidents do happen. We’ve all heard before, perhaps if you’ve been in the hobby for a while, that you’re probably at greater risk driving to the racetrack on the streets than you are actually making laps, you know, so that’s what we’re trying to [00:41:00] do with this disciplined, very conditioned and structured approach to how our run groups are organized, how our instructors provide coaching for entry level drivers, and what are the, uh, shall we say ladder steps For a driver to move from solo status to intermediate solo to advanced solo to instructor.

You know, that whole ladder where one skill set layers on the other to create this whole well rounded background for a seasoned, uh, experienced enthusiast who’s been in the track hobby for a while. That you reach a place. where making laps at nine tenths becomes kind of a conditioned muscle memory and you may have a moment.

You know, to, to pause and consider, you know, what’s that noise or what have you while you’re on the limit and you [00:42:00] recognize other things that are happening that are outside of your driver envelope because you’ve gotten very well conditioned. And that’s part of the risk management that we want to condition for drivers that participate with us because the driver that is comfortable and shall we say relaxed in their, in their driving environment.

is going to perform better than a driver who is under stress and uptight and has too much happening around them, but they can’t keep up with it all. That driver ends up making mistakes. And of course, mistakes at the track can lead to, you know, unexpected, unfortunate consequences. Absolutely. We’re going to unpack a little bit more of that here in a minute.

You’ve hit one of my favorite highlights, the warmup session. Every single Chin Track Days Doesn’t matter the location or the time, we will begin with a half hour period of standing yellow flag full course caution. And it has a [00:43:00] whole wide influence over many things at the track event. A warm up in general sounds like a good idea, right?

If you’re a very experienced driver, maybe you don’t need the track orientation, but you do need to shake down your car. Maybe you’ve recently serviced it. Maybe you need to get the brakes hot. Maybe you need to scrub the stickers off your tires. But if you are a brand new entry level driver, you get out on the track with your instructor in the right seat under yellow flag.

Now you don’t have to worry about managing traffic. There is no passing. And so the instructor can give their attention to the driver about track orientation, turn in apex, track out, here’s the break point, here’s the blind spot, look at that tree on the horizon, without the novice driver having to worry about what’s in their mirror or managed traffic at all.

It brings down the stress level. If you’re an experienced enthusiast, everybody who’s been to track events, you know [00:44:00] that when you arrive Saturday morning. And dawn, semi darkness, and there’s always a rush. Yeah, you gotta unload or prep the car, or get your gear, or see the event management to get checked in, go to the driver’s meeting.

All of this is, happens on deadlines. You’re actually under stress in the opening hour before you’ve ever gotten in your car to make laps. We want this opening warm up session to be a calming period where the driver can get out of that stressful environment of rushing around in the paddock under deadlines, and now they got nothing but their car, the windshield, and the track in front of them.

Don’t forget yellow flag, no passing, notice the corner stations. So the warm up session has a lot of benefit in calming the field in giving a new driver orientation to the lap and allowing an experienced driver to

Crew Chief Eric: shake their car down. And that’s done at full [00:45:00] speed with full gear and basically I’ve always heard it’s as fast as the car in front of you can go.

So if you’re stuck behind a Miata Yeah,

Mark Hicks: but hey, it could be a 10 year veteran in a Miata stuck behind a new guy in a 992 Porsche, right? But indeed, there’s not a speed limit. You can go as fast as the car in front of you, and if the If the guy in front of you is a very seasoned driver and he doesn’t have anybody holding him up, he might be going a hundred plus miles an hour in the warmup session.

And you know what? That’s okay. Can’t overtake anybody, but it is true that you do start full gear. I want to point out that there are some programs that run a warmup period to begin their track event. And they’ll say, Oh, off pace, low speed, no helmet required. Let’s rewind a moment. And I was talking about risk mitigation, identifying risk factors.

If a [00:46:00] novice driver is getting in the car for the first time to make laps, and they’re going to do a warm up period and they don’t have their helmet on, now I can understand there’s some potential benefit in what the instructor has to say and, and what have you, but that then means that the first time that driver makes laps while wearing a helmet, Which can be a little disorienting if you’re, if it’s not a familiar thing to you, the first time that driver may make laps while wearing a helmet will be under full speed conditions.

We want that driver to already have a comfort level with what are these conditions with my belt? So the harness or, you know, the helmet, or maybe I’ve got a head and neck restraint or Hans device or hybrid or other backpack, they need to get oriented and comfortable with. The whole cockpit environment under less than [00:47:00] full speed conditions so that they’re ready for it.

When they get to full speed status. And so yes, indeed, that is why the helmet is required in the warm up session, not to mention the obvious safety benefit. If I were to tell you, yes, we have seen incidents in the warm up session. Would you be surprised?

Crew Chief Eric: No, not

Mark Hicks: at all.

Crew Chief Eric: Probably

Mark Hicks: not. It’s a racetrack. And yes, uh, the reality is we have seen off track incidents occur in the warmup period.

So of course your helmet is going to be required. So let’s go back

Crew Chief Eric: to progression because you talked about that a little bit in terms of, you know, the expectations of the classroom and things like that. And one of the pieces that I found is unique to CHIM is the flag test and it’s part of your progression model.

So you want to talk about that. Well, great. I sure will.

Mark Hicks: And by the way, anybody who watches the Break It Fix It podcast, you want to cheat? 17turns. com It’s the Chin Track Days flag test. [00:48:00] That’s the number one seven turns dot com. And for those of you who aren’t completely in the know that’s how many turns there are at Sebring.

This is part of the whole platform of driver conditioning that we do in terms of education and it literally ties back to the warm up session that we were just talking about because of course at that time every corner station is displaying a yellow flag stationary full course caution. Which gives every driver the opportunity to identify notice the location of the corner stations if you’re visiting An unfamiliar lap for the first time you need to know where those corner stations are We put a lot of emphasis on the corner stations and the flags And in the chin format as a driver gains experience And confidence raises and they build pace.

They’re going faster. Maybe they’re now ready to qualify into a next higher run group. We will give you the flag [00:49:00] test and you can practice that at 17turns. com. And yes, they’re all there and this is something that we think should be second nature to every driver. It is universal in motorsport and we have seen.

Some fairly fast drivers, drivers that appear to have that natural gift of speed that they were very good at managing the geometry of the track, using the whole track, working their vehicle, they’re going fast, they want to get to a higher run group, we give them the flag test, and we have a handout for that, a hard copy paper, you can look at that, read this, and then we ask you to take the flag test, and they fail miserably!

They haven’t had any flag conditioning or training previously. They’ve just used their natural skill to make good laps. But that will tell us if they failed the flag test. They’re probably not noticing the corner station doesn’t just mean [00:50:00] you don’t need know the difference between the blue or black or, or red or yellow, but it also can indicate that that driver is not giving appropriate ample attention to the corner station eyes up eyes out of the car, not off the end of your hood.

Looking down track to the next corner station, drivers, a general tip, not just a chin track day standard, but for everybody out there, every lap you make, if you get your eyes up and down the track and see the next corner station, your laps are going to improve. Rather or not, the corner station is showing a flag.

There may be no hazard whatsoever, but if you got your eyes that far down the track, your lapping will get better. Get your eyes up, look at the corner stations, know your flags, and we’ll give you the flag test at the next Gen Track Day event you attend to qualify you into the next higher run group. And then [00:51:00] for our most advanced category, for a very experienced driver who wants to get to kind of the tip of the track day pyramid, the Gen Track Day’s red group, you’ll take the flag test and we will further give you A corner worker test, and that is the blank track map for the track that we’re visiting at that time.

And we’ll give you the track map and ask you to take a pen and please mark the location all the way around the lap of every corner station that is in use. And that is a test of track awareness and of course, flag management and corner stations. And it’s a, it’s a safety step. And that is part of the Chin culture and part of our run group ladder.

If you will, that keeps some pretty clean run groups and it keeps the drivers honest. You can show up in, uh, a new $300,000 exotic and tell us you [00:52:00] should be in the fastest run group. Y’all know the video, right?

Crew Chief Eric: And there’s plenty of ’em. And,

Mark Hicks: and we’ll go, um, you know, show me your track history. You got a nice car there, but tell me about all the laps that you’ve made.

’cause we don’t qualify cars, we qualify drivers. And, uh, so, uh, you can have a day one driver in a brand new Ferrari and a day one driver in a ten year old Miata. In Chin Track days, they will both be in the same run group because each driver has the same skill level. We’re not measuring wallet thickness.

Crew Chief Eric: So with that being said, I know one of the things that’s a dreaded part of the whole process. It’s for veterans and newbies alike getting through tech. And so I, we try to offset some nerves by explaining the process to people because I think people get overly anxious about what’s involved. So and every group does tech differently.

Some require like [00:53:00] mark organizations require you to go to specialists and there’s other groups that don’t tech at all. And there’s every gamut in between. So can you elaborate a little bit on what Chin’s tech is like? Sure.

Mark Hicks: Yeah, thanks Eric. So you’re absolutely right about that in terms of this is one of the stress steps That enthusiasts must face as they get started in their track event one of the things you must do really in the arrival hour as soon as you get to the track is Pass tech and for drivers that may be new to the hobby indeed they might find that to be a fairly burdensome and on its surface appear to be Quite a complex task and you know, Oh, will I fail tech for this chip in my windshield at chin track days?

Honestly, one of the risk mitigation steps that we take is to put the burden of having a safe car and completing tech on [00:54:00] the driver. And what we mean by that is chin track days doesn’t want The responsibility to put a lug wrench on your wheels and torque your lugs or raise your hood and check your battery cables or check any of your fluid levels.

You know what? That’s really not a good practice for someone else. To tamper, so to speak, you’re not tampering deliberately, but to do things with someone else’s car, in many cases, if you’re a track enthusiast, that track car is your prized possession. We’re not gonna tamper with that. We’re gonna give you a comprehensive list and say, here are the requirements, follow these guidelines, check these boxes.

If you are an enthusiast who can change your own brakes, Jack your car up, take the wheels off, remove the calipers, swap the pads, put it all back together, have no leftover pieces, and bleed. You are qualified to tech your own car. That is fully legit. In fact, [00:55:00] many enthusiasts may say this is a fundamental thing that a track enthusiast ought to have mastered.

Go through the list, check all the boxes, sign off on, at the bottom, it very deliberately says, I take full responsibility for the mechanical condition of my car, and even if you have gone to the high end professional shop with multi levels of ASE certifications that are very familiar with doing track inspection and all of that, and a mechanic has completed the tech and signed off on it, guess what?

You still have to take responsibility for it. And there is a line on our tech sheet at the bottom that says I am the owner, operator, driver, et cetera. And I take full responsibility for this, the condition of this car. And on the one hand, it might appear that Chen is just trying to shrug the responsibility of doing a safe, [00:56:00] clean tech.

That is absolutely not the case. We are emphasizing to the owner, operator, driver, the importance of taking care of that. It’s okay if you’re not a person who can change your own brakes and you do send it out for service, and you get someone else to inspect the car. That’s great as long as that is your comfort level and you have high confidence that that mechanical inspection has been thoroughly and appropriately addressed, you still are going to have to sign off on that.

And so we’re putting That burden and this responsibility on the driver to make sure that this has been done in advance Now that driver will face one of the chin tech leaders who will take the complete Tech inspection form validate that everything has been correctly completed signed off on meaning you accept full responsibility We’ll check the number.

We certainly are going to look at your seat belts, etc. We want to make sure [00:57:00] You know vintage car, you know with the good old fashioned 60 seat back and a lap belt Okay, that’s going to get a red flag right up front early on. Fortunately, we don’t see that often One of the chin tech leaders is certainly going to eyeball the car And review that page and then we’re going to give you that tech sticker and tell you to move along We want to make the tech process user friendly and very accessible for a prepared driver Whose car is in excellent condition a passing tech at chin track days takes about 90 seconds to two minutes and that’s it So we want to make that user friendly, but at the same time give emphasis That this is a very important step And i’ll tell you the number one thing and the 1a thing That we do have to correct drivers on at tech one is they got a kind of a collector car spends most of its time in the garage or man cave And they’re [00:58:00] showing up on tires that have plenty of tread life Because it’s they haven’t been used in six seven eight years.

They’re holding air just fine Nope, we’re gonna fail you if your tires are that old and the second thing 1a Is your helmet being out of date? Drivers don’t realize this, or, you know, often said, uh, you know, the motorsport manufacturers are just trying to make money by having that helmet standard, but you know what?

The Snell thing is all about the, the, the helmet ages sitting on your shelf. Drivers, the shell oxidizes, it becomes brittle, it loses its impact resilience. So the Snell certification is a real thing. And if you show up with an out of date helmet. We will rent you one of our current and up to spec helmets that are available at every Chin Track Days event, you know, so that’s our approach to tech, which is Fundamentally, [00:59:00] it’s to put the responsibility on the driver to have a well

Crew Chief Eric: prepared car.

All very good points, Mark. And we covered helmet aging and things like that on a previous episode titled Things I Wish I Knew as a Noob. And we talk about, you know, the 11 year run and why helmets Come out when they do and what the ratings mean and what, you know, SA versus them and all that kind of stuff.

So if anybody’s interested in diving into that a little bit more, check out that earlier episode where Brad and I covered that in more detail. But one thing I do want to mention in something you mentioned at the top of that part of the conversation is I always cringed at those events where somebody would walk up to the car with a torque wrench, which you didn’t know what it was set at.

And let’s just say. You know you own a Lotus Elise or you own a Subaru or a Honda where your torque spec is 75 pounds at best and I’m in a Volkswagen Audi Porsche where my torque spec is 100. Who’s got the over tightened lug and who has the under tightened one in this case, [01:00:00] right? So it never sat right with me.

Mark Hicks: Has that torque wrench even been calibrated? You know is it the 10 Harbor Freight Special or is it the 180 Snap

Crew Chief Eric: on? Right? Exactly. So again, I, I cringe at that and I’m like, yeah, you know, so I like the way you guys do it. It’s a little clinical, but that’s a good way to approach it and the whole sign off and the double check.

But you’re right. It’s not something to be worried about at the end of the day. If you’ve made preparations well in advance, not the morning of trying to get your way through tech, we’ve seen that happen too. There shouldn’t be any anxiety there. And once you’ve gone through it once. That usually subsides relatively quickly, but it does still factor into that whole conversation about risk mitigation and risk acceptance.

And I think there’s one more piece that we’ve talked about with multiple people on this show, and we want to get your opinion about it from your personal opinion and maybe from Chin’s Perspective is the topic of track insurance. Uh huh. How do you feel about track insurance? And [01:01:00] is chin one of the organizations that is starting to company registration with the ability for a driver to purchase track insurance as they register?

So if you want to unpack that or

Mark Hicks: Yeah, great topic, Eric, uh, which is Very multifaceted, honestly, there are layers of complexity and every driver out there has a little bit different scale for Kind of risk reward and What their level of comfort is with exposure track insurance? Has definitely been on the rise recently.

No question about it. Probably the last five six years It’s become more and more prevalent for drivers To opt in to buy track day coverage and drivers that may typically come with a fee in the range of 3, 4, 5 percent of your declared value. If you’re in a Miata from [01:02:00] the 90s in a car, That has a real street value of five six seven thousand bucks.

You may not need track day insurance It’s you know, probably irrelevant and then you look at the absolute abundance of high performance cars available today Honestly, I would look around and say we may be in the greatest automotive era Of our generation. I was born in the 60s. And of course we all look back fondly At muscle cars from the 60s and 70s and there’s a lot of conversation that goes back and forth about What’s the greatest era of cars?

Well, I’ll tell you what Never ever have was there a time before now where you could walk in? To a Chevy dealer with 65, 000 bucks, come away with a Camaro Z011LE, drive into Road Atlanta, and if you’re a competent driver, do a minute [01:03:00] 35 after doing nothing but filling the tank for 65, 000 bucks. Honest to God, wow!

In the 90s, you would have had to have a 200, 000 car to go a minute 35 in Road Atlanta. So now, this performance has become really accessible, and not 65, 000, well that’s not chump change. But compared to the performance that 65, 000 would get you 10 years ago, It’s an extraordinary leap that we have now taken.

So now, cars in this category, Mustang GT350, the new Camaros, the new Corvettes, are more expensive, but still, bang for the buck, is enormous. And now, you may be thinking, if I did, uh, you know, have an off, have an incident that resulted in collision damage, I tell you what, the Expense [01:04:00] to repair these cars now has escalated in lockstep with the available performance So performance is skyrocketed.

But now they’ve got all you know lane keeping assist And uh anti collision braking systems with radar in the bumpers this kind of thing You know what you tag the tire wall with what appears to be just cosmetic skim And you’ve damaged the bumper, but hey the car’s still drivable and you’ve driven you drive away into the pits A car generation ago, 10 plus years back, that would have been a 1, 000 or 2, 000 fix.

Now it’s a 9, 000 fix. Why? Because the bumper is radar equipped, and it’s got all these other G sensors, etc. So the cost to repair the vehicles now, for even what appears to be minor things, has escalated significantly. That might mean that getting track insurance is a good idea. The track hobby is Even at the entry level, it’s an [01:05:00] expensive undertaking.

Honestly, motorsport in general, it just, there’s not a cheap way to do it. But if you have that commitment and you’re paying five or six hundred dollars in track fees and you’ve, you’re bringing your 65 to 80 plus thousand dollar car, if it’s a late model, you know, plenty of us drive, you know, recycled cars that we have made track prepared for 20, 000 bucks, et cetera, but still you’ve taken time off work, you’ve committed expense to travel, you’re going to spend on, on hotels and dining and all the other consumables, tire, et cetera.

Gas, grapes, etc. You know what? You got a couple thousand bucks into the weekend, just like that is what it takes. Is it worthwhile now to spend another 350 to 450 bucks? To cover your car for on track damage. This is what enthusiasts have to consider Honestly, it wouldn’t be my place to tell enthusiasts Hey, [01:06:00] you should ignore track insurance forget it or hey, you must have track insurance go out there and get it You know with a high recommendation, but I certainly what I do want to do is educate enthusiasts on the pros and cons of having or not having Track insurance the con right out up front, of course is the expense It’s going to add three to four to five hundred dollars depending on the expense of your car It’s going to add that to your track weekend the pro Well, if you have the unfortunate occurrence to find yourself off the track Up against the wall in a cloud of dust Going now you’re going to be really glad you have track insurance.

Now, of course The statistical probability of this occurrence is low. If you found yourself in those conditions and you didn’t have insurance, you will say, man, I wish I got the track insurance. And if you have it, you’ll say, [01:07:00] boy, I’m glad I got the track insurance. That’s what will happen. But it is readily available and there are several great providers out there.

Chin Track Days definitely has a relationship with Locton. Motorsports, one of the leaders in providing track day insurance. There is a referral link on our website to Lockton Motorsports for track day insurance. It’s not part of our direct online registration because, well, just for insurance regulatory reasons, unless Chin Track Days is a licensed insurance seller, we can’t sell insurance directly.

I can just let you know that we have a relationship with Lockton Motorsports. And they give favorable rates for Chim Track Days events, by the way. Per event premium for some Chim Track Days events is lower from Lockton than perhaps if you were participating with a different club. So that’s not a guarantee, uh, and it [01:08:00] depends on what event venue you’re going to.

Some venues are higher risk than others. Road Atlanta, Watkins Glen, et cetera, have inherently higher risk than a place like, say, Koda, where it’s hard to, uh, hurt your car in some ways. But every enthusiast ought to give consideration to what is their exposure to risk, with the value of their car, one of the things that you can easily find on the internet.

Advice from other enthusiasts about track day insurance. They’ll say if you can’t afford to get out and walk away from your car Then you should insure it But that is something for every enthusiast to make a personal decision about it is not a requirement But do know If you are an enthusiast and you choose to track your high performance streetcar, your streetcar policy very likely does not provide coverage for damage that might occur in a track related incident.

Read your policy, drivers, [01:09:00] is the best advice you could get. It will say. We exclude racetracks where it won’t say that. And by the way, if it doesn’t It doesn’t have to say we insure you in a racetrack incident. It doesn’t have to say that. It only has to be silent about that. Fundamentally, we are non competition, right?

And that is a key thing because every insurance provider out there will certainly say, we exclude using your car if you go racing. You know, does the same thing apply if you’re doing autocross, for example? Because that’s a controlled environment. It’s not at a racetrack. They’re all gray areas, and I’ll be honest to you, internet viewers.

insurers very widely. Um, there is not a uniform model out there. And if you are committed to be in the hobby long term, using a car that is street tagged and that you drive on the street, you ought to spend some time giving attention to the language of your insurance

Crew Chief Eric: policy. One of one of our members says if I can’t put a boot in the door [01:10:00] of your car Then you’ve chosen the wrong car meaning

Mark Hicks: Well, I will say hey, we’re all enthusiasts I won’t go around putting my boot in anybody’s

Crew Chief Eric: car A couple things to wrap up here If there’s anything in particular you want to let people know about the remainder of the season by all means And if you want a shout out to any of this any of chin sponsors Because I know you guys have them.

Please do that as well. And i’ll have my closing comments before, you know, we wrap up.

Mark Hicks: Well, that’s just, that’s fantastic. Uh, thank you for opening the window to that. I definitely will thank our forever long time partner in driver safety and motor sports accessories is discovery parts discounts.

Discounts to Chin Drivers. Our brake partner is G Lock. Discounts to Chin Drivers. Uh, they offer brake pad and friction compounds in every range for almost any style of vehicle. [01:11:00] Uhlen’s Advanced Suspension Technology. Is our title branding partner for all of our road Atlanta and Watkins Glen dates Oolans also gives discounts to chin drivers.

Oolans became famous for providing Suspension for formula one cars that you know was like 20 000 bucks a corner But now you can get ulens that very same. Um level of engineering. It’s not the same stuff But the same thought and care goes into their products for track cars If you’re thinking about a suspension upgrade We would recommend ulens if you’re in florida and you own a porsche You should be considering track support from zotts racing zotts racing is the Home of Porsche Podiums in Florida.

They’re Orlando based, but they serve Porsche owners across the entire state with top tier service and in their facility at Zots Racing in Orlando. If you are near VIR, [01:12:00] Shin Track Days recommends trackside service and support from Quantum Speedworks. Quantum. is, uh, in the RacePlex right next to V. I. R.

and they provide service for track enthusiasts across the Southern Virginia and Northern North Carolina tier. They are awesome. We visit COTA in Texas often, and you’re from other parts of the country and you want to enjoy laps at COTA. Many drivers ask us where can they get a track prepared rental. We go to W2W, and that is Will to Win Racing, and they are based in Budda, which is just south of Austin, but they provide fully supported track car rentals, really for any Texas track event, but especially accessible for all.

CODA dates and also in Texas, our partners at Thin Speed Racing Wheels do custom billet forged aluminum wheels. If you want your wheels cut from a single billet block, they are quite [01:13:00] incredible. Many IMSA teams have adopted these because of zero failure. When they start banging wheels in competition. The other guys are breaking wheels and the fin speeds are finishing the pass.

Just a snapshot of some of the, uh, the big backers and supporters of Chin Track Days. I, honestly, we have more. I, I don’t want to keep tying y’all up there. But, uh, looking down the calendar, you know, we’re finishing our summer season. We call it the, uh, The weight loss series because we continue to do track events through the heart of the summer this weekend We are at michelin raceway road atlanta next weekend.

That’s the third week of august We’ll be at barber motorsports park and then in the last weekend of august summit point raceway And that is followed by watkins glenn On the first week of September and Labor Day, and then tumbling down the calendar, we’ll return to Barber and Road Atlanta again in September, followed by [01:14:00] Sebring.

Coda, VIR, and then many of these tracks cycle and pop up on our calendar month after month after month. So you can find Road Atlantic and Sebring Dates pretty much in every month from now until December and we’ll be out in Texas also at Eagles Canyon Raceway. Man, I don’t know what your audience is on that side Eric and Brad, but Eagles Canyon is one of our new favorite venues.

This place is spectacular. 2. 75 mile, 17 turn lap on the rolling hill country of the Texas ranch lands north of Dallas and Fort Worth. Uh, what a spectacular venue. Gotta recommend it. Uh, and we’ll be back at Eagles Canyon. In October, and those are just some highlights. There is a ton more from now till year end.

We have about 26 more track events on the calendar [01:15:00] over the next three months and of course, you know where to find it ChinTrackDays. com.

Crew Chief Eric: Unbelievable, Mark. It’s an incredible, incredible production that you guys put on and I can’t thank you enough for what you guys do and all the effort that gets put into it.

It’s a top notch service and again, we’ve had the pleasure of running with Chin for many, many years now and it’s been a rewarding experience every time. Now, with that being said, I can’t thank you enough for coming on the show. Educating our listeners, giving them an inside scoop into what Chin is like, what you’re all about, the values, the ideology, the education, everything that goes into making, you know, your events as successful as they are for all the listeners out there that have tuned into this episode.

If you want more details about Chin, you can visit Chin track days at www. chintrackdays. com or follow them on Instagram at Chin track days or call. 1 855 799 CHIN. You’ll probably get Mark on the phone, so be [01:16:00] prepared. And on that note, Mark, it’s, it’s been an absolute pleasure, and we look forward to seeing you again in another event soon.

You know, obviously our calendar has been all sorts of in turmoil, but, uh, you know, we’re going to see where things line up and see what the rest of the year looks like. Right. So, you know, maybe we’ll see you soon. If not, we’ll definitely see in 21 as we partner up with Chin yet again.

Mark Hicks: You guys are awesome, Eric.

I so appreciate what Grand Touring Motorsports has done for your, your small and growing community. Your commitment to the hobby as it is because indeed it is enthusiasts like you and the others in Grand Touring Motorsports and many, many tens of thousands magnified throughout the enthusiast community across the country who make our hobby what it is and it makes it possible for me to tell this story today.

I am very grateful to you and I thank you for the privilege to share that with you. [01:17:00]

Crew Chief Eric: All right. Well, thank you, Mark.

org. We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey, listeners, crew, chief Eric here. Do you like what you’ve seen, heard and read from GTM? Great. So do we, and we have a lot of fun doing it, but please remember, we’re fueled by volunteers and remain a no annual fee organization, but we still need help to keep them momentum going.

So that we can continue to record, write, edit, and broadcast all of your favorite content. So be sure to visit www. patreon. com forward slash gtmotorsports or visit our website and click in the top right corner on the support and donate to learn how [01:18:00] you can help.

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 Welcoming Mark Hicks
00:40 The Origin of Chin Track Days
02:01 The First Chin Motorsports Event
04:25 Rebranding to Chin Track Days
04:56 Growth and Expansion
06:30 Impact of COVID-19 on Events
09:19 Mark’s Favorite Cars
13:29 The Traveling Circus of Chin Track Days
18:05 How to Register for Chin Events
25:30 Chin’s HPDE Program
36:28 Mastering the Miata
37:10 The Chin Track Days Experience
38:04 Safety Culture and Risk Mitigation
42:43 The Importance of Warm-Up Sessions
47:33 Progression and Flag Tests
52:37 Tech Inspection Process
01:00:45 Track Insurance Considerations
01:10:06 Upcoming Events and Sponsors
01:15:06 Closing Remarks and Contact Information

Learn More

With headquarters just eight miles from Road Atlanta, Chin Track Days operates like a well-oiled machine. Mark affectionately refers to the operation as a “traveling circus,” with a highly committed staff that brings the same level of excellence to every venue. From Sebring to Circuit of the Americas, Chin’s footprint spans the eastern U.S., offering enthusiasts access to legendary tracks without the need for a franchise model.

Mark’s story is a testament to what happens when passion meets opportunity. From a closed gate at Sebring to a national calendar of track events, Chin Track Days has become a pillar of the HPDE community. Whether you’re a seasoned instructor or a first-time track enthusiast, Chin offers a place to learn, grow, and connect—with your car and with others who share the same love for motorsports.

Drive Your Car with CHIN Track Days

Chin Track Days maintains its own standalone website – chintrackdays.com – where drivers can find schedules, register for events, and access a wealth of educational resources. Registration opens every Monday night at 9 p.m. Eastern for events eight weeks out, and popular dates often sell out within minutes. Novice slots are especially limited, so early registration is key.

Chin’s instructor team is composed of seasoned veterans – many of whom have trained with NASA, PCA, BMW CCA, or hold MSF Level 2 certification. New instructors must have prior experience and are vetted track-by-track to ensure quality and safety.

Unlike organizations that blend HPDE with club racing, Chin Track Days is focused solely on education. While race-prepped cars are welcome for testing, the emphasis is on helping drivers of high-performance street cars develop their skills in a safe, structured environment.

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

Double Down on Story Time w/ Crutch!

Mike C

August 18, 2020

With a longer than normal pause and a big >sigh< you always know when it’s story time… So, grab your marshmellows, chocolate and grams… because it’s Story Time with Crutch!

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Bathurst or Bust!

Check out the full review that Mike C and Chrissy C did on their trip to Australia! Meanwhile, enjoy this video of “a lap of Bathurst”

Kiwis & Koffee

(FROM 2019) – I have been back state-side for a few weeks, but I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about the massive American Muscle Car car show I went to in New Zealand run by the Moonshine Car Club. Being in a foreign country, it was actually both nice and surprising to end up in the middle of that slice of Ameri-car-na. Yes, New Zealand has had it’s own slice of American car brands with Ford and Holden, but there is also a sizable following of good-ole American sourced iron.

Being a right hand drive country, the latest model of the Mustang is the first they can buy from the factory fitted to drive on New Zealand roads, but that hasn’t stopped the influx of even modern muscle cars into New Zealand. They obviously don’t have any restrictions like our 25-year import ban into the US. I saw everything up to a C6 Corvette, and current gen Camaros back to a first gen Mustangs, Camaros and GTOs.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Not only were they celebrating the American cars, they also had a slice of old-school American culture to go with it. 50s and 60s music, fair food, pinup contests (no, not a bikini or wet T-shirt contest, classic “pin-up” style clothing). Check out the shots from the New Zealand car show that Mike went to while stationed there in 2019 (ABOVE).

#tbt Mike’s Original GTM Bio!

(JULY 1, 2014) – I started doing HPDE events in mid 2012 and became an HPDE instructor in 2014. I have worked with several DE organizations over the last few years but a majority of my time instructing is with HookedonDriving North East Region and Summit Point Friday at the Track. Back in 2006-2008 I also had the pleasure of living in Germany and made frequent trips to the Nurburgring and Hockenheimring.

2003 VW Turbo Beetle S

1993 BMW 325i

I have driven an interesting smattering of cars on track that has given me experience with both FWD and RWD vehicles to include an 07 Rabbit, 08 135i vert, and an 11 Jetta Sportwagen TDI. Because there aren’t many instructors with FWD experience, you will often find me in the right seat of VWs and Minis on track.

Besides Hockenheimring and Nurburgring, my on track experience includes Watkins Glen (both layouts), Road Atlanta Full Course, 4 Pocono configurations including the Tri-oval, Lime Rock, VIR Full and Grand and several more. You can find track videos in my YouTube Channel, I have started posting pictures of events to Instagram, and I occasionally post on Twitter and my blog. Feel free to approach me if you see me at an event and introduce yourself.

“Well, I already know a few of you and Eric just invited me to join the group today. I have been tracking state-side* since Fall 2012 in my 2007 VW Rabbit (slush box :() and just started instructing this year with BSR (Friday at the Track), Hooked on Driving, Track Daze and SCCA. I was actually Tania’s instructor this weekend, and then made the mistake of soloing her, which is obviously how she broke her car lol. Eric then gave me some pointers throwing my Rabbit around Shenandoah and I also lost my axle heat shield during one of the sessions and I think it cut a CV boot so I need to get under the car tonight and double check that (And that is a brand new freaking CV Axle). Need it ready before the Friday at the Track in just over 3 days. I also bought an E36 325i to eventually turn into a track car (and that is a manual…yay!) My site has links to all my photos and videos, so just start there. http://www.mikecrutchfield.com/ – * 2006-2008 I lived in Germany and spent a lot of time and money at Hockenheimring and Nurburgring.”

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

The Ones That Got Away: GTM Panelists Reveal Their Automotive Regrets

Brad N

August 11, 2020

The Ones That Got Away: GTM Panelists Reveal Their Automotive Regrets

Every car enthusiast has one – that vehicle they let slip through their fingers, the one they sold too soon, never bought, or watched someone else ruin. In Episode 07 of Break/Fix podcast, our panel of petrolheads dives deep into their personal archives to share stories of the cars that got away. From rare Shelbys to sentimental Sciroccos, this episode is a nostalgic ride through missed opportunities and mechanical heartbreaks.

In this round of “What Should I Buy” we discuss cars we regret not buying, regret selling and regret having! Collectively, we’ve had and/or driven over a 1000 cars, so what is there to fret over? In this WSIB, we add a twist: “If you could only have 3 cars on your desert island, what would they be? Would they be one of the cars you regret?”

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Matt opens with a tale of a black-and-gold Shelby GT350H – yes, one of the legendary Hertz rental cars. Offered to him for just $13,000 back in college, this CS-VIN Mustang had snakes, stripes, and a four-speed. “It would’ve killed me in 20 minutes,” he jokes, recalling a terrifying ride with Mr. Jenkins, a towering mechanic who barely spoke but knew how to wring out a Ford.

Dan’s regret centers on a pristine 1968 RS Camaro with a four-speed, once owned by his cousin. Despite begging to buy it, she sold it to someone who chopped it up for drag racing. “Why?” Dan laments. “That car was perfect.” He also recalls a 1964 Chevy II Nova he nearly restored before hard times forced a sale.

Mike had a chance to buy an E92 M3 while stationed in Germany. Instead, he opted for a 1 Series convertible – a twin-turbo, six-speed joyride that saw the Nürburgring and Stelvio Pass. Still, the M3 haunts him. “It hit 155 mph on the Autobahn,” he says wistfully. “That test drive was unforgettable.”

Highlights

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

00:00 Introduction and Special Guests
01:00 The One That Got Away: Matt’s Story
04:21 Dan’s Regretful Camaro
07:09 Mike’s BMW Dilemma
09:30 Eric’s Childhood Heartbreak
11:26 Brad’s List of Lost Loves
17:40 Matt’s Rental Car Adventures
23:27 The One That Got Away
23:54 European Car Adventures
24:49 The Super Beetle Story
25:28 Non-Running Cars Regrets
26:52 BMW Regrets and Reflections
30:12 Dream Garage Picks
31:43 Desert Island Car Choices
44:02 Final Thoughts and Wrap-Up

Transcript

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

What’s going on everybody? This is your host of the GTM podcast, Brad ak the triple six with me, as always, is uh, Eric. Hey, uh, we have a few special guests tonight with us. We’ve got, uh, a couple club members. Hazmat, got Mr. Crutch himself, and then we’ve got Mountain Man, Dan, today’s episode. We’re gonna do something a little different.

We’re kind of gonna go around the horn style. Basically. We’re talking about the one that got away. No, we’re not talking about your high school girlfriend that you, you broke up with, broke your heart, and you had to go cry to mama. No. We’re talking about the cars. Cars that you used to own. Between the five of us, we’ve probably had, shoot, I don’t even know, prob probably 5,000 cars between the five of us.

I, I would say that’s an exaggeration, but probably not too far off. But anyway, we’re gonna talk about those cars, the ones that we regret getting rid of the one that got away. And then on top of that, we’ve got a special thing for you all. It’s gonna be the Desert Island [00:01:00] question. Alright, so let’s hear what Matt has to say.

Matthew Yip: All right, so you, the, the, the car that got away, huh?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. I mean, you’ve had several cars since I’ve known you, and that’s only been a short time, five or six years.

Matthew Yip: People used to give me cars. The the blue GTI that Eric ultimately ended up with, somebody gave me, and according to the Volkswagen nerds, it was the, uh, rarest color ever.

And the only thing that made it different from every other GTI 16 valve was it was blue, which apparently is a, is a big. But cars that got away when I was in college, I, uh, had a good friend who his father was a mechanic, owned a repair shop in, in the town of Star North Carolina, and they lived in the town of I Kid Unite.

Ether. Mr. Jenkins worked on a lot of interesting stuff. First time I had ever seen a load of seven or replica and he had a Westfield, he kept a 1956 Packard Caribbean convertible for the local millionaire. But he had a car that he offered to me and I should have bought it. That [00:02:00] would’ve paid the same for that 86 G t I eight valve that I bought that that I kept for many, many years.

In fact, Eric probably remembers that car very vividly. All I learned to drive on , he tried to kill me. More than once. The car that I was offered was interesting. It was a Ford Mustang. It was black and it had gold dust stripes on it. It had this really big ugly tachometer on the, on the dash and it had snakes all over it.

Crew Chief Eric: and um, I think I know where this is going.

Matthew Yip: The, the VIN started CS for tho for those who know the Shelby Mustangs, they made the GT three 50 H. They were rental cars. The first 85 of those cars were manual transmission. Manual brake cars.

Crew Chief Brad: Were those Hearst cars?

Matthew Yip: Hertz rental car.

Crew Chief Brad: Hertz. Yeah. That’s what I meant.

First shifter stuff

Matthew Yip: we rent we’re we’re manual transmission cars. After that, her excuse. It took an excessive amount of effort to here and break the cars. The, uh, the standard 2 89, I believe was the 271 horsepower motor. [00:03:00] The Shelby motor was a 2 89 and made 306 horsepower, which in that day was amazing.

The, the, the Mustang that I was offered was, it was 90 a numbers matching car. But it was at four speed at $13,000 because it wasn’t worth anything at that time. It would’ve been a hell of a car, but I, I guarantee you, none of you would know me now cuz I’d been dead about 20 minutes later. I remember one morning, I, I used to spend the weekends there because it was a nice way to get away from from school.

I remember one morning, Mr. Jenkins looks at me, he says he was about six, eight and he, and if he said three words a day, that was a lie. And he says, you written in must. No, sir. Well, you should. No kidding. You know, wrong. Let’s go for a ride. You know, he backs it outta the driveway and they, they were, they were, they were Chevrolet people.

You know, that’s a big thing in, in the, in the South.

Crew Chief Eric: Mount Manan smiling now. . Oh yeah.

Matthew Yip: Well, he says, He says it makes all them horrible forward noises. Goddamn them damn metal bushings. And he says, well, I’ll take it easy. We’ll go down, go into [00:04:00] town. You know, he takes it easy and he, there’s a, there was a bypass from Star to Ethan.

Don’t ask me why. There, there was nothing else out there. It’s not like they were bypassing the big city. Got it out on the main drag. Damn if that thing wouldn’t catch all four years, .

Crew Chief Eric: So on that, let’s, uh, let’s pause there cause I have another car in mind that I want to ask you about in a little bit. But I want to, I want to go to Dan next.

What, what’s the car that you regret either selling. Not buying or even owning or not getting for free . Oh yeah, that’s a big one for him.

Mountain Man Dan: I’d have to say for me, the car that got away, I never had the chance to buy, but my cousin when I was in high school, she’s a little bit older than me and her parents, when she graduated, decided to buy her a car.

They bought her a first gen Camaro, so she had this nice, beautiful maroon with black racing stripes, black leather interior. 68 RS Camaro, 3 27 with a four speed. She decided she was older having kids. [00:05:00] It was time to get rid of the car. I begged her to let me buy the car from her and she was like, that’s too much car for you.

You couldn’t handle it. Da da da. . I’m like, no truck. Now I can handle the power. That’s not an issue. Fortunately that car, cause it was all original. Original paint, original tear, original everyth. with the exception maybe tires and brakes and things like that. It was an immaculate car and it always was in the garage.

I don’t think it ever spent a night outdoors. Unfortunately, I did not wind up with it. The gentleman that she wound up selling it to, I got very frustrated with, for the fact that being the car that it was, he set it up for the drag strip where he cut it up, put a roll cage in. Pulled the engine out, all kinds of stuff.

Why that car was perfect the way it was, there was no need to do that, to go find one that was already chopped up to do that too.

Crew Chief Eric: So, hold on. Could you have gotten that car for less than a thousand dollars? Because I mean, you have a reputation to maintain

Mountain Man Dan: that car. I don’t believe so, but I wouldn’t have been willing to pay that little, and especially [00:06:00] for what it was, it was worth, well, more than a thousand dollars.

Crew Chief Eric: $1 Bob. $1 .

Mountain Man Dan: I think I may have mentioned when I was younger, my stepfather used to haul scrap vehicles a lot of times, and so we go to down to Virginia too. There was a family down there that owned some property and over the years, vehicles accumulated on it. We go down, started hauling the cars out of there cause they decided to want to clean the property up.

Many of these cars were in horrible condition where they’d sat in the same spot so long. They sink into the ground almost five, six inches up past the bottom of the door into the mud and everything.

Crew Chief Eric: This is a very familiar scene you’re painting here, but please continue. .

Mountain Man Dan: There were a couple of nice gems that we pulled out of there and one of em just so happened to be a 64 Chevy two Nova.

It just an endline six car. An automatic, but. Automatic was a paraglide. So that’s a good thing sitting so long. The bottom floor pans were shot. We started restoring it a little bit, took care, replacement floor pans and stuff. I was only probably 12 years old at the time, and the intent was for me [00:07:00] to fix this up until I became 16.

Unfortunately, hard times came, needed to sell it, so they got sold and I didn’t ever wind up with it, but it did turn into a very phenomenal looking car.

Crew Chief Eric: So in an earlier episode we heard from, uh, crutch and he talked about one of the cars he regretted. So, Mike, do you wanna unpack that or do you have a even better story?

Mike Crutchfield: Well, there’s, there’s a little backstory about how, while we lived in Germany, we had, uh, E 93, 25 B bmw. We had, I don’t know, about six months before we came back and the, the new one series was coming out, first time in the us. . And so we went to take a look at ordering one of those, but when we stopped by the dealership, they had an E 92 M three there at the time.

So I was kind of weighing my options of either getting the E 92 or the one series. And we had bought the prior BMW here. So the, uh, the guy who worked there said, oh, you wanna take that out for test drive? And handed me the keys to a brand new E 92 M three, about 500 yards away from an unrestricted autobon.

So ,

Crew Chief Eric: that’s a test drive and a.

Mike Crutchfield: It very, very [00:08:00] quickly hit 155 miles an hour, which was the governor on that. We ended up buying the one series. Part of me wishes we had bought the E 92, but that would’ve probably meant we got rid of it even sooner after we got back to the States. The one series was a hoots, uh, 300 horsepower twin turbo inline, six a six speed manual convertible.

A lot of, uh, interesting road trips with that car all over Europe, up and down Sylvia Pass, which is just as amazing as it looked on. I am so if not better, ,

Crew Chief Eric: I’m so jelly they

Mike Crutchfield: don’t even understand. And to this day, there are two pictures hanging in my house of that car. Uh, one from the top of Sylvia Bass where we pulled over, take a photo of just the car and then another entering the carousel on the nurburg ring with my wife actually driving it at that time there, there is another famous photograph of that car though, where my boss at the time came along with me toner berg ring and was sitting in the passenger seat.

And most people don’t even realize he’s in the photo. because they’re distracted by the fact that the car is airborne . Uh, as as we enter a breaking zone for our sharp [00:09:00] prang corner. Ooh. So air brakes, my, that’s

Crew Chief Eric: when you put your hands up, right? You work as an air foil to slow the car down.

Mike Crutchfield: Well, well my forehead was an air foil cuz my head actually lifted above the windshield cuz the top was.

No helmets required. Very, very different world, uh, over there on the track. So,

Crew Chief Brad: so what you’re saying is you wouldn’t have passed the broomstick test in that car?

Mike Crutchfield: No. No. Not, not in the slightest.

Crew Chief Eric: We, we’ll save that comment for another episode, .

Crew Chief Brad: All right, Mr. Monte. Quatro, your turn.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh man, I got a list of ’em, but you know what?

I’m gonna start with the earliest regret and it, it, it kind of popped into my head today for, for various reasons, but I actually, I had mentioned this on a previous episode and I’ve talked to you guys about it before, especially to Matthew. Uh, my dad, you know, we were always, we had coops in the house, you know, always two door Volkswagen, Chacos, all sorts of stuff, Carras, et cetera.

My dad had pre-ordered one of the first 16 Val Chicos the the A two s and it [00:10:00] was a triple black, black leather black car with black basket weave b b s wheels. And I thought that was the coolest car in the world as a kid, right? Come it was an 86 and I’m like, man, one of these days when I’m old enough, I’m gonna have, this car is gonna be amazing.

Fast forward a couple years. He used to autocross that car. Uh, the wheels ended up, you know, I think Matt ended up with a set of wheels from that car. Parts went all over the place and he ended up deciding that he wanted to sell it because he was moving on. He was buying the carrado. They had bought my mom a, um, second gen co cuatro.

They got rid of her eight valve Chico. And I was, and I was just heartbroken. . And the worst part was when my dad sold the car, he had it all packaged up, all cleaned up. You know, he was real anal about keeping the cars in really nice shape. The guy that came to pick it up came and got it at night, and my dad actually happened to be away on some sort of trip or business trip or something like that.

And I just remember when my mom handed him all the stuff and then they drove away and I could hear the exhaust of the car. I just. Bawling. And I looked at my mom and she’ll [00:11:00] verify this whole story. And I looked at my mom and I’m like, that was supposed to be my card. And I’m just like, you know, and it, it is, it’s a, it’s a memory and it’s a feeling that has always, you know, stayed with me.

And then I drove Matt 16 Val Chico many years later, and I, I kind of got over it. But ,

Matthew Yip: well, reme, remember, remember what I always. Don’t drive your heroes.

Crew Chief Eric: Absolutely. And I’ve made that mistake several times, unfortunately.

Crew Chief Brad: But how about you, Brad? I’ve had, I’m looking at my, I made a little, uh, diagram here, a little list like you, much like you’d see at the bottom of the Wikipedia for like bands, like who’s in the band and who’s not.

And I’ve got a list of all the cars that I’ve owned and it’s totals 23 vehicles. Since I was 16 years old. Now I say that to a bunch of car guys and they’re like, yeah, so I’ve had double that. You say that to my wife and she’s like, oh my God, look at all that money you wasted. . . But anyway, so there in that list, there are two.

To three vehicles that I really, really wish I had. [00:12:00] The first one I’m gonna say is my, my Ducati motorcycle. I was 20 years old, 18, 19, 20 years old or something. I don’t know why, but I got this hair up my ass that I really wanted a motorcycle, but I didn’t want any motorcycle. I wanted a Ducati, new Ducati at the time were.

13, $14,000 and you’re just completely outta my price range. But I knew somebody who knew somebody who knew some other people who happened to know someone that was a mechanic at a Ducati dealership selling a used 7 48. I got in contact with the guy, he had some cool cars as well. He had a, uh, a fourth gen Supra and he had, uh, a CJ lifted and all that other good.

So I ended up buying this Ducati from ’em, had it for a couple years, but then I found that I never really rode motorcycles like I had ’em. I’ve, I’ve had three, but I never rode ’em. I mean, it’s always a pain to put on all the gear and everything. And you know, someone my size in the middle of the summer, riding a motorcycle, you get somewhere and you lost five pounds of water cuz you sweated it all out on the way.

Plus the Ducati was air cooled so that didn’t, you know, [00:13:00] all that heat and everything you need to really keep it moving or it got really hot. Uh, so that’s, that’s the first one that they got away that I’m really, really sad about. The second was a 98 Chevrolet Camaro Ss. Now I had a 99 Camaro Z 28 that I, I bought used as a dealer after I got rid of the, the first gti.

I. The 99 Z 28, I had full suspension on it, and it was, it was a fun car. I ended up wrecking it as I explained in the, in our origin stories. Um, but the, the 98 that I bought several years later, I actually bought from a, a club member I bought from Andrew Mason. He was having a family. He was downsizing his fleet, uh, and he needed to get rid of the, the cool.

Sports car to get something more practical. So I bought the car from ’em and it was, it was a lot of fun. It was set up kind of similar to the 99 I had, but it was bright red. It was a beautiful car. And I ended up selling it because all my friends around me were getting Super S STIs, and I was like, Ooh, I want an sti.

So I sold the Camaro and got an STI and I regret it now because that would’ve been a great track car. Uh, engine engine for cruising [00:14:00] around the street and everything. Uh, so that’s number two. And then number three that I will have again someday, I will get into that later, is that my, my Jeep Wrangler, my 97, it was a tj, uh, which I think is the, the better body style, had the upgraded suspension and everything, but it had the, the more traditional looks.

It was green. It lifted three and a half inch. 32 inch tires and manual transmission and everything. And I just, I, I love that vehicle and I, I regret getting rid of it.

Crew Chief Eric: I am gonna call a yellow flag on that, uh, flag on the play. Gentlemen, I believe he said in the previous episode he was buying a Murano cross, Cabrio le in Champaign Rose metallic.

This is what we settled

Crew Chief Brad: on. That’s in, that’s in the future. And I, I have a three car garage so I can have two

Crew Chief Eric: and I, and I guarantee you all that is a future. Right there, .

Mountain Man Dan: I just know when you get that Jeep, we’re gonna Ls swap it, right?

Crew Chief Brad: Of course, of course. I mean that’s, it’s gotta be the plan. We’re gonna also,

Crew Chief Eric: we’re gonna add that to the regret column too.

Oh, [00:15:00] just mark my words on that one. Well,

Crew Chief Brad: my, my, you mean my mechanic is going to be doing the swap .

Mike Crutchfield: Across Cabrio is no geometric convertible. Ah, see, that’s convertible.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s what I was, I was holding that gem for Matt, because I know he regrets

Matthew Yip: Geome convertible. Come on.

Crew Chief Eric: He, he regrets not buying one of those yet.

Come on now, Matt. That is true, true.

Matthew Yip: Someone give me, if, if I did,

Crew Chief Eric: I’d have bought one by now. What’s really, really funny, we tried, we tried actually really hard. Me and a bunch of your, your friends, Matt, for your 50th birthday, we tried to find a fuchsia geo metro convertible manual. We were, we were gonna buy it

We were, we had a whopping budget of $52 spent. That’s about all their work. And believe you, we couldn’t find one. That was the worst part. It was like, there was a point there where they were everywhere. They’re like, ah, geometric, convertible, yellow, white, whatever. And the closest thing came was some clapped out stoner, you know, electric blue car in Denver.

And I’m like, I am not going that far. But [00:16:00] we will find that fuchsia geo for you. I, you know what

Matthew Yip: happened? They, they all bought the, uh, Chrysler PT d Cruiser convertible, the standard, uh, purchase. For any geometric convertible is you had to weigh at least as much as the car and as they got older and heavier, they needed to get bigger cars and that’s why they bought the PT Cruiser convertible.

Mountain Man Dan: I have to say, you, you say they went from the metro to the PT convertible. I think there’s a transition period where a lot of ’em got, uh, the Chrysler Seabring convertible.

Matthew Yip: I rented. I rented one of those in. And I auto crossed it and it was phenomenal.

Crew Chief Brad: Wait, wait, wait. Ho ho. You auto crossed at Chrysler Seabra.

Matthew Yip: Was it John Voz? I flew in and outta Cleveland because it was cheaper. I had, I had a mask enough points and I said, uh, they, they first they tried to give me a rom prix with like 40,000 miles. Which in rental car miles as all as those of you who travel? No, that’s like, what, like 200,000 miles in dog? . And so I, I went back, there’s no way.

Oh, we can give you a convertible. Well, it’s like March I think, in Detroit. [00:17:00] Sure. Give me the freaking convertible. And so I ended up driving it. I went to Erie for the weekend cuz I have a family friend I grew up with and they had an autocross there. The car was amazing. You would turn in and it would literally lay down on the, on the, uh, rocker panel.

And as you turned in, you could watch the rear of the car twist in the opposite direction. The, uh, thank you. Your sarcasm

Crew Chief Eric: nose. No.

Crew Chief Brad: So, so are you saying you regret not buying a Chrysler Seabring? Is that what I’m hearing? Is that the one that got away? Matt?

Crew Chief Eric: I think he regrets that rental .

Crew Chief Brad: You know, he said he got that with rewards points.

I don’t think a Chrysler Seabring convertible is a reward. That’s a punishment.

Matthew Yip: 1 1, 1 of my many trips involved going to, uh, Chicago. And the reward car that I got was a TAUs with a sunroof. You

Crew Chief Eric: can . I can’t. Are you, are you cashing in like the monopoly things from McDonald’s

Crew Chief Brad: and these, you’re in glu for punishment.

Matt.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh.

Crew Chief Brad: Are you taking [00:18:00] enterprise reward points and cashing ’em in? It hurts.

Matthew Yip: Yes. Now I, fortunately I had hurt, but still, oh, well, you know, the, the, the, the beauty is as I, as I started traveling more and became more, uh, more educated, I gravitated towards the Crown Vic because A, they didn’t get beat up like the little cars did, and b I usually got ’em in white.

because that way I kind of blended in except for the one, the one night I got lost in the garment district in LA who drives around and who drives around the garment district at, at 10 o’clock at night? No one. No one with a brain. But my, my coworker who would travel with me was a little gal older than I am, but she was like five foot tall.

And you’re

Crew Chief Brad: only five foot two.

Matthew Yip: Thank. And, and she, she would ride in that car, she couldn’t see over the dashboard and she, I said, what do you think of these things? She goes, well, it’s like my father’s, father’s Oldsmobile . But we, I loved those cars. They were comfortable could, you could park ’em anywhere cuz it was the damn big no one would get in your way.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, there, there you have it. Never a dull moment. [00:19:00]

Crew Chief Brad: So, so we’ve, we’ve gone around the horn. We’ve gotten everybody’s, uh, regrets. . Oh, no, no.

Crew Chief Eric: I have, I have a list. I didn’t cover ’em. I’ll give you No.

Crew Chief Brad: Alright, let’s, let’s keep it going. Let’s keep it rolling. Let’s see what you got. Mon cuatro.

Crew Chief Eric: All right. Regrets.

So I will say, I’ll, I’ll throw it in for my mom real quick. She regrets. My dad’s selling our wide body nine 11 that we talked about in the first episode. Mm-hmm. reason being was that was the car that he apparently bought for her. And I’m gonna put air quotes around that. Put the red. Yeah, the red one. She never, that she never drove.

Matthew Yip: The one, the one that I drove, and I think everybody in the Porsche club shipped themselves because I drove it.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah,

Matthew Yip: exactly.

Crew Chief Brad: He, he, I’m, I’m sensing a theme here. He had a tendency to sell the vehicles that were earmarked for other people. .

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Right. So with that being said, big regrets. I regret buying that bmw, but we’re gonna save that for the BMW episode.

Oh, he, I think everybody regrets buying a bmw. Oh geez. And that’s actually car I was gonna bring up for Matt and we’ll talk [00:20:00] about it in a second. Is, uh, his E 28, M five. So on my list, let’s just kind of wrap that up. One of the cars I really wanted to buy and regret the fact that Volkswagen never produced it is a car you all are gonna have to Google, which is a vehicle known as the VW Concept.

R came out about 2001, 2002 timeframe as a prototype built on the boxer, but it was powered by a 3.2 liter. Beetle, RSI Golf R 32 engine, and they were gonna bring it in as a kind of base market sports car, you know, $30,000. And it was fantastic. I love the look of it. It’s actually what inspired the look of the, uh, the Mark five GTIs with that kind of chrome nose kind of bakish.

It actually has the same headlights as an eos. , you know, stuff like that. They never ended up producing it. And I still have that picture, you know, as one of my desktop wallpapers. I, I mentioned in the previous episode, my wife and I both regret selling our SS Trailblazer. I blamed Dan entirely for buying it.

I blame myself entirely for getting rid of it, but that was the ultimate hashtag track truck. It [00:21:00] was an absolute pleasure to drive. Granted it was 1998, you know, Chevy interior, so you had to kind of put up with that. But everything else it offered was fantastic. and the last car, big regret. And it’s a car I, I’ve said probably many times over that I would still have to this day.

It’s like my dad who pre-ordered cars. I pre-ordered a two, 2004 VW Golf R 32. Now for those that don’t know, and if you happen to be in the D M V. In the late 2003 timeframe when the Baltimore Auto Show was still in the fall and the DC Auto Show was then in in, in the winter. It’s kind of moved a little bit over the years.

The car that was on display at both of those shows is actually my car now. 50,000 public butts sat in my car, unfortunately, thank God they fumigate it after it was over, but my car was actually 2003 triple black. and I had that car for three plus years, and unfortunately it was stolen right out from underneath of me.

It’s a void in my life. It wasn’t one of those things that I could get closure on because it was taken, and I’ve said many times before, I [00:22:00] would still have that car to this day. I mean, I found things that are as fun, if not more fun to take its place. But for me, that was my first big boy sports car that I bought on my own.

Saved up for it. I wanted it so bad. You know, I bought my 24 Val VR six, the first one, and I put a down payment on the R 32, the same day when I had heard, you know, yes, you can get one of these. And I actually had, I had, uh, down payment to two dealerships. Cause I wasn’t sure which one was gonna get it first.

Uh, yeah, so that’s a huge one for me. And it’s, oddly enough, Baltimore calls me every once in a while and says, did you ever find your car? I’m like, is that really my job? , like, we’ll just leave it there.

Mike Crutchfield: So you, uh, you bring up the concept, but I seem to recall there was a different Volkswagen that didn’t get made that you wanted more.

No, it didn’t get made or

Crew Chief Brad: wasn’t brought to the US

Mike Crutchfield: that didn’t get made. It was the, uh, Volkswagen Blue Sport.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh yeah. The wanna be nine 14. God, don’t remind me if you’re gonna go with

Mike Crutchfield: that, but you know what Chrissy would kill for right now? What’s that? The Tian shooting break?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, I [00:23:00] saw that. That that’s pretty high.

And we’re going, we’re gonna talk about that when we do our, uh, what car should I buy? Wagons edition.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, looks so beautiful. Followed by the episode. Entitled The Cool Stuff to Europe. Gets it. We’ll never see. Mm-hmm. .

Mike Crutchfield: Uh, Buick just discontinued theirs too, but that tox was pretty hot.

Matthew Yip: I can get, I can get you one of those.

Buicks. I, I have a friend who just bought one.

Crew Chief Eric: Does he own small French cars? One. Okay. I I, then I know where my vote goes. .

Mountain Man Dan: Yeah. So I’m gonna have to add on to the, uh, got away list. Eric’s trailblazer because when he did decide to sell it ,

Crew Chief Eric: you wanted to buy it that didn’t offer it to a 4,000.

Mountain Man Dan: Well, no, it was the fact that at that time I didn’t have spare funds to pay what it was worth, and I would’ve loved to have, but I couldn’t justify buying it when I have the collection that I do have already, if we’re gonna go with a couple other cars while I was stationed over in England, most people don’t think it’s much.

But for me, I, I had a German spec, Caro G six. Love that car. Unfortunately, when I went to ship it back [00:24:00] stateside things. The importer and didn’t work out and that didn’t make it stateside with me. So it’s somewhere still cruising around over in Europe, hopefully, and enjoying its life. Other vehicle that I kind of kicked myself for not getting while it was over there, body of mind now, station over there with Rizzo had a Hillman super Amp.

So those of you who don’t know what that is, look it up. Most people are gonna look at it, think it’s an ugly car. But I thought it was a really cool rear engine car that was, you know, it was an older car, but it was. Something about it. I think it would’ve been fun to go out and cruise around on the weekends with, and Brad, since you said you, uh, mentioned your Ducati, I almost brought a Ducati back from Europe with me cuz I knew what they were selling for here in the US mm-hmm.

So over there I could get it for like a quarter of the price. And with the military they would ship motorcycles and inside our, our household goods. So it didn’t count a shipping a vehicle. So I almost brought one back just for the purpose of selling it. So I could have told you had I. I’d have bought it and brought it.

Crew Chief Brad: There’s one other vehicle that I wanna talk about that I got, I had for a short time, and it’s a 71 Super Beetle. I got it from my, well, my grandfather owned it, you know, when I was very young. He [00:25:00] passed away. It ended up in my uncle’s hands. I had the grand idea that I was gonna get it and fix it up and, and just turn it into a, a street rod and, and make it really cool and everything.

Of course, I was in my early twenties and I made early twenties. Though I wasn’t able to do that, I ended up selling it to some guy for like 500 bucks and he took the, uh, the rear end out of it, the suspension out of it, and used it for a trike. So I regret getting rid of that car and if I could have a Super Beetle today, name a grandpa and have it done up the same way he had it.

Daniel, I’ve got one other question for you. Of all the cars on your property that are not running for those of you don’t, that don’t know? He’s got about 472 cars on his property right now. No, at last down

Mountain Man Dan: it was just over 30.

Crew Chief Brad: Which one? Which, which of the cars on your property do you regret is not running?

That would be the Mercury

Crew Chief Eric: Regretable wagon. Mercury stable wagon.

Mountain Man Dan: That’s a hard pass on that. . . That’s why he

Crew Chief Eric: has two. Okay.

Mountain Man Dan: No, there’s only one table. The other’s a Taurus, .

Crew Chief Brad: Excuse

Mountain Man Dan: me. [00:26:00]

Crew Chief Brad: one one. One. One’s for blue collar. The other’s for mid-level management.

Mountain Man Dan: Yes, there’s a difference. available today. Your local Earths.

Yes. Anybody interested in one hit me up. I can make you a great deal on it.

Crew Chief Brad: You can find him on Facebook Marketplace

Mountain Man Dan: for all of ’em on the property right now that do not run, I would have to say it. It does run right now, but it’s not at its final product, which is going to be my crew Cab Square body, them doing the dur, the Duramax swap in.

Crew Chief Brad: I thought you were gonna say your grand. your Pontiac or was it, is that a Bonneville?

Mountain Man Dan: It’s a Grand Prix. Yeah. It, it does run. I can start it up and drive it right now, but the reason I haven’t is the fact that I’m planning to put a stroker motor in that, and that vehicle doesn’t have the hundredth digit on the odometer and it’s sitting all zeros right now.

Cause it just hit a hundred thousand.

Crew Chief Brad: Right. So

Mountain Man Dan: I figure what better way to track mileage than putting it in with it? Reading zero.

Crew Chief Brad: You can’t argue with that.

Crew Chief Eric: I wonder though if there’s a, you know, with Mike and Dan on the line, if there’s anything about the burgundy E 36 that [00:27:00] we need to cover. Talking about regrets.

Mike Crutchfield: Yeah. Caging it in the first place. How’s that

Crew Chief Brad: Frank Time will live. I bet Mike regrets keeping it for as long as he did. And Dan regrets buying it. .

Crew Chief Eric: But I wanna talk about BMWs for a second. Matt, I mean, for me to, you. . I really like DOS Boot. And you had that seven 40 I bmw. That was such a fantastic riding car.

Granted, I didn’t have to live with any of the misery you did with its maintenance and stuff like that. Every

Matthew Yip: yuppy in America drove one. You know that they, uh, hello. I’m a. Stockbroker and I am very wealthy and I have a bmw. The ones who drove those were the same people who drove four 50 SEL Mercedes. My esteem for BMW plummeted was the E 36 was the first car that they compromised on so heavily.

The E 36 was the M car that had a single throttle body. It was production line built, and they ultimately offered an automatic because the market wind that my wife won’t let me buy [00:28:00] one because it’s a manual. Well, and, and, and to be wholly honest with you, that’s probably the one car I regret selling is the E 28 M five, compared to today’s BMWs, it’s horrible.

The seats are hard. The ride was stiff. The coolest thing about it was, and I, I read this so it’s not, actually, I didn’t come up with this, but as you drove it and you got on it really hard, it almost here, an F1 race somewhere in the back. You could, you could definitely tell when he opened up the throttle, I, I made a point of telling people that the short shift kit in my car had been installed by Rob Levinson himself, and I had the exhaust system that he designed for those cars.

Uh, I also visited him in, I think it was New York or Connecticut. I was forced. To drive his E 28, M five with a din turbo or

Crew Chief Brad: two.

Matthew Yip: Yeah. Terrible, terrible

Crew Chief Eric: thing, .

Matthew Yip: And it’s interesting, you know, as, as much as I’ve never owned a turbo car until now, the other car that I regret not buying, and I should have. Aan R has an 86, 9 [00:29:00] 30 turbo.

My uncle had a 78. That’s one that, uh, I, I could see owning. I, my uncle was incredibly generous, man. Uh, I went out for a wedding in the Bay Area and asked if I could take the car and he said, oh, take the Porsche. Go ahead. Nothing like coming across Dunbarton Bridge at two o’clock in the morning at 125 miles an hour because you can’t

Mike Crutchfield: I just wanna say it was just us lowly Americans who got the bastardized M three motor. The Europeans actually got independent throttle body, uh, M three motor.

Matthew Yip: That’s how we used to piss off the E 36 owners. They, they were the ones that were the freshly minted millionaires. They would go into the store and they’d whip out the a hundred dollars bills and said, oh yeah, real, real, real m cars have individual throttle box

And, and, and to show you what an idiot I am. There was a period of time where I owned two of the rarest German sports sedans ever built. I had Audi, Audi V eight and an E 28 M five, and I used to have people who would talk about, dude, dude, my, my, my GTIs rare because they [00:30:00] only made 20,000 in white. And I, I, I used to piss people off.

I said, I tell you what, when you have total production under 1200, call me

Crew Chief Brad: Mike, drop.

Crew Chief Eric: So Bradley, I guess the final challenge here, right? What three cars would you have in your garage?

Crew Chief Brad: Exactly, exactly. And I guess I can go ahead and kick us off here. I thought about it. For me, my, my wants and desires change.

Like I change my underwear every single day. It’s just, it’s, it’s hard to, to keep, keep my mind on one, you know, thing. But for today, the three cars that I would have in my garage, I’d have a, a Dodge Cummins Diesel. I, I’d have the dually just because I just. They’re badass man. Has anybody seen Lethal Weapon too?

When, uh, Mel Gibson takes his dually, it’s a Chevy Dually in that movie, and he pulls down that, that house up on stilts from the beach and everything. I’ve, I’ve seen a better

Mike Crutchfield: video. That’s, uh, one of our members, Nick, doing donuts around a skid pad in a dually diesel.

Crew Chief Brad: Big, big girls need love too. I want a, I want a dooly.

So, so that’s, that’s the first one, because I need something to tow my track car. Right, right. So the next vehicle I’m gonna have in my [00:31:00] garage is a Porsche nine 11. I’ve wanted one, I don’t know why, since I was a kid. I used to be a huge Ferrari fan, but they’re fragile and they, they like to barbecue themselves.

So I, I, I think I really wanted nine 11. It’s. , it advertises the everyday supercar. I mean, you can drive it to the grocery store, you drive it to the track the next day, go pick up your kids, your whatever. You, you can do anything with it. So I, I kind of, I won a nine 11. I don’t know which one I want to, A GT three Rs would be cool.

Um, but just a base, uh, regular nine 11 with a manual. I thought it would be a great car to have, uh, in, in my garage and. A wrangler with a motor swap something, I can take the doors off of the, the top off of uh, and just enjoy, you know, the weather. That would be my convertible. So yeah. And then for an honorable mention the Volvo V 90 Wagon, cuz I just think that they’re beautiful cars.

So Mount Man Dan,

Mountain Man Dan: you guys know that I have trouble with limiting down to three 300. 300 I GED

Crew Chief Brad: four.

Mountain Man Dan: That’s more real. I would have to say one of the cars I would definitely have, only because it’s been one of my favorite cars since I was a kid, [00:32:00] 57 Chevy Bel Air. Some people think it’s an overrated car cuz so many other people liked them and everything, but any of the, try five, you know, 55, 3 57.

But I like the big pins on the 57. If I had one, I would definitely have it modernized with an LS in it. But I, I should actually ask a question. Prior to listening to ’em all, how big is this? Because, oh man. It’s,

Crew Chief Brad: it’s, it, the island is a metaphor. It’s just the, the question is, if you’re going on a desert island, you can only take so many things with you.

Essentially, your island is your three car garage. You can only have three cars for the rest of your life. Did, did anybody else

Crew Chief Eric: just hear the theme Music from Sanford and Sun?

Mountain Man Dan: Um, other than that, I would definitely have one of my square box, shocker, . I would have to have one of my square bodies and of, of the, of the 15 year span of square bodies.

Which year do you pick? And the span of square bodies is more than 15 years. Just so you Yeah. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s like that Johnny Cash on 51, 52, 53 .

Mountain Man Dan: Honestly, like, so if I were to take one of ’em, it would [00:33:00] probably be between my K five, which was my brother. before, uh, he was killed, or it would be my shorted two-wheel drive that my brother helped me bill before he died.

So probably be one of those two. Although I’d possibly option for one of the four-wheel drive crew cab trucks, square bodies that I have because I might need to tow something. And then for my third car in the garage for years, I’ve always said I would never own. Volkswagen Jet? No, . Um, for the longest time I always said that I would never own a Cadillac cuz they were an overpriced Chevrolet.

And then Cadillac did me dirty and came out with the Ctsv and I fell in love

Crew Chief Eric: man. I thought he was gonna say the xlr cuz that was gonna be a. Big points win right there. I want the, I want the Simeron.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Or or the Kotera. He wants the Kotera. I’m cheap.

Mountain Man Dan: I’m cheap. I will take the citation.

Crew Chief Brad: Thank you

Mountain Man Dan: very much.

But so, so those will be my three vehicles, but I’m going to add a cheater to that. One of my Harley’s is gonna be in the bed of the truck.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, there you. [00:34:00]

Mountain Man Dan: That’s

Crew Chief Brad: a smart move. Boy, I’m, I’ve got a garage big enough to fit a dually in. So I mean, come on now, ,

Matthew Yip: if we, if we do it right, we can build some sort of a rack system, we can drive the Lotus in the back of my truck.

Crew Chief Eric: challenge accepted. All right, so Mike, what’s your three on your island?

Mike Crutchfield: I’m weird. I, uh, where it goes without saying, I have a thing for wagons and I don’t know why. There’s one wagon in particular that Volkswagen actually made, which I just feel like I haven’t to screwed around. B five Passat wagon, all-wheel drive stick shift.

W eight with the W eight motor. Yes, yes, yes. excellent

Crew Chief Eric: choice. The unicorn

Mike Crutchfield: of unicorns. I actually saw one for sale not that long ago.

Crew Chief Brad: There’s a reason It was for sale .

Mike Crutchfield: Well, yeah, cuz the W eight maintenance. It came with

Crew Chief Eric: a spare. Audi four, two that you can swap into it. ,

Matthew Yip: the best thing about those cars is how you change the oh two sensor

Crew Chief Brad: engine out

Matthew Yip: lift, lift, lift the carpet and drill the hole on the floor.

Mike Crutchfield: You know, as, as something that can [00:35:00] be kind of dual purpose. Ctsv wagon, that’s a win right there. Major points.

Matthew Yip: Good luck finding one of those at a price. Well,

Mike Crutchfield: and, and they have a habit of getting stolen these days.

Matthew Yip: That’s what I mean. I mean, you know, what, what were they new? They were $50,000 new and now they’re $70,000.

Mike Crutchfield: I don. Number three. Probably something stupid like an R eight. Nice.

Crew Chief Eric: I figured you would’ve thrown in the Kiwi station wagon you wrote about while you were over in New Zealand. What was that? Oh, the Holden Commodore HSV Wagon or whatever that was.

Mike Crutchfield: No, no, it was so, yeah, actually there’s a Holden Commodore H S V Ute.

I mean, just a, a whole bunch of the stuff I saw over there was really cool. But those, uh, some of those Holden h s v worked over Utes are amazing. They did the full thing like Dodge did with, when they came out with Challenger. They offer them in bright, obnoxious colors that look amazing on that thing, like a bright lime electric green.

Crew Chief Eric: I hope you and Dan enjoy your Mary Kay Cadillacs. That’s, that’s really nice. . Uh, but we’ll move on to Matthew .

Matthew Yip: The colors Chrysler used, they were from the, [00:36:00] they were from the seventies. They were, they were just retro, you know, what was it? Vitamin C and, uh, plum. Plum crazy. Oh, they were, they were, I mean, they were great names.

You know, cuz you, you see ’em today and they’re just,

Crew Chief Eric: I’ll pause you there in the colors just to add a little bit of color. Yeah. Uh, have you ever seen, and this was a factory card, the color pattern challenger, which featured every stripe of every color that was available at that time from Chrysler. It was a factory produced car and apparently it.

Today in a museum it was reproduced or, or, or whatever. It’s actually really, really neat and the story behind why that car was developed to showcase all those crazy colors like Sublime Green and, and Plum crazy, and all these other ones that we talked about. So I thought that’s a pretty neat piece of history there.

Matthew Yip: I like the Harlequin Gold. I hate to admit that I liked the new Challenger because I really wanted to hate it and then I drove one and well, you know, the 3 92, you just can’t, you just can’t, uh, you just can’t say no to it. But I wanted to find one in purple and I have yet to find one.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, I was gonna say, it, it, it was a [00:37:00] hard choice between going with the nine 11 for my, you know, dream garage or the Hellcat, cuz I, I really want a hell cat, but I just feel that the nine 11.

Would’ve been a better Just all around performer. Yeah. Which is why I elected to, to have that in my, my theoretical garage. Well, what about you, Matt? What are, what are you thinking for your, your garage, your dream garage?

Matthew Yip: If I could afford to do it every day, I would drive that pickup truck of mine, not, not worry about a car.

I alternate between liking the dually and liking the single rear wheel. I drove the exact same truck I have now in a dually and ended up buying this. 22 years later, the single rear wheel ain’t bad. It fits in parking spaces better, although within 20 foot long truck, as Dan knows, you don’t really fit in parking spaces anyway, so I, I’d probably have something like that, you know, full, full size truck.

Mountain Man Dan: The key thing about yours is it’s manual instead of the automatically had behind it.

Matthew Yip: In fact, I would tell the dealers as I was looking for those, I says, you know, I’m looking for an F three 50. You know, you’d see that look and they’d, uh, I, you know, I want the [00:38:00] diesel. And of course you’d get even more. and I looked at him.

I says, oh yeah, and it’s gotta be a manual cuz I never learned how to drive an automatic . My mom

Crew Chief Eric: says the exact same thing, .

Matthew Yip: As much as I like the nine 30 Turbo, I’ve had a fascination with these cars since I was 10 years old. I want a real cobra. My high school friend, hi. His, his dad. You, you’ve heard me talk about him.

Uh, my friend Billy’s, he had a super performance Cobra, which is the, uh, factory approved fiberglass version of the original AC Cobra. His, however, happened to have a 4 27 side wheeler in it. You know, the motor that the block is worth, like 20 grand. There’s just something about those cars. They, they said more than one buyer did not make it to the first payment.

They said you wouldn’t. A first time shooter, a 44 Magnum, just like you wouldn’t put them in a 4 27 Cobra.

Crew Chief Brad: Agreed. And

Matthew Yip: I like, and I, and I like that. I like, I like a car. You’ve gotta respect.

Crew Chief Brad: So, so we’ve got your, your Ford, we’ve got your, your, the biggest truck in the world and the smallest car in the world.

Your Cobra. What are you gonna [00:39:00] put in between

Matthew Yip: if I could find another one? And they were only 53 ever built. I really liked my Audi v8. It was an interesting car. Nobody knew what the hell it was. The automatic trans. Suck. It was a four speed speed that was geared for Europe. So just like a Mercedes, if you’ve ever driven a Mercedes, as you pull away, it starts off in second gear and it’s really soft.

Now, when you’re going about a hundred miles an hour and you put your foot down, it moves, unfortunately until you get to about, I don’t know, 40. It’s a slug. I, I, I, I hate to say I like the car. I mean, quatros are amazing cars to drive. They stick like glue. The sophistication in the, in the, uh, 90 to 93 Audi V8 Quat.

Is amazing. Uh, I would, I would venture to say that it was more technically advanced in its day than anything else on the road. You know, there, there, there certainly weren’t a lot of all-wheel drive cars. This thing had switchable abs, uh, front and rear fog lights, which were

Crew Chief Eric: unheard

Matthew Yip: of in the

Crew Chief Eric: us. And not to mention when my parents were looking at their coop, Quatro, the salesman, you know, was [00:40:00] showing off a black on black V8 Quatro, which was very rare color combination.

Cause all of them were Pearl White for the most. It was, uh, one of the only cars at the time to have an integrated car phone. And that was a selling point.

Matthew Yip: Yes. Yes. Well, the, the, you know, the neat thing was it had a ski sack and all four seats were heated. Put that all in perspective. You know, we, uh, Eric and I have had this, this, these conversations before as well, which is, yeah.

But that car, you know, that car sucked, right? But in 1988, the E 28 M five was amazing. But the v8, the V8 was more practic. I, I made the mistake of driving a E 28 M five to work one day when it snowed. My boss’s boss and I were, were in the car as I am idling out of the parking lot sideways. And he’s laughing at, because he goes, what the hell’s with this thing?

Well, that’s how a high horsepower car with, uh, with independent suspension and, and, and some tires happens to handle the weather. The Quatro, as long as you put real tires on it. And I, I learned that from experience was unstoppable. Uh, I drove it to work one day and [00:41:00] there was probably two inches of snow in the fast lane and all the, uh, all the big giant SUVs were poking along in the, in the clear flow lane at about 20 miles an hour.

And I went by them at about 35, you know, rooster tails of snow with my seat heater on and the radio on cruising along as if it were dry. But yeah, I mean, I think, I think those would be my, my, my three.

Crew Chief Eric: So what I’ve heard so far is we’re on an island. Yes. There’s no price point. We got guys bringing trucks to transport, I don’t know, coconuts or something.

We got Mike with the station wagon for to, to move Aborigines around.

Crew Chief Brad: Again, the island is a metaphor. Oh,

Crew Chief Eric: is it? So I, I’m defining the island here and I’ve defined my island as Nu Burging. Uh, yeah, it’s definitely a racetrack. .

Mike Crutchfield: I mean, New Zealand has race. And is kind of an island, just saying, and you’re

Crew Chief Eric: transporting sheep.

I mean, you got all these wagons on your island. I’m not sure what’s going on here. Seven sheep per person. . Yes, they are warm and infection animals. Indeed. Thank you, Matthew. So on my [00:42:00] island, on the other hand, I would have a 70 Challenger RT in white with a vanity plate that says Kowalski.

Mountain Man Dan: Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay. Very straightforward car.

That’s Oh yeah. Dirt primitive, big v8. And just go rip roar and have. In addition to that, I want a metallic emerald green Mark Onesco with a 16 Val swat.

Crew Chief Brad: I swear I I thought you were gonna say a Buick Skylar convertible there.

Crew Chief Eric: Uh, again, my money is on the Chevy Citation. Thank you very, very much.

Mike Crutchfield: h HR

Crew Chief Eric: that will not be on my island, no Prius’s.

They will be bazookas and turrets ready to blow those. At first sight. So in addition to that, I would have to say, I gotta have a Gen one viper, but not the Gen one Viper you’re thinking of, it’s not a GTS coop, it’s not a target. I would have the defender from Viper, the TV series because hey, it’s my island, and apparently no one else lives on there, so why

Mountain Man Dan: not enjoy my boyish fantasy?

So I have to, [00:43:00] The defender, does it count as multiple vehicles since it’s got your off-road option, your water option? Well,

Crew Chief Eric: that’s why I want it on my island because realistically it is an s u v. Okay. It is a sport utility vehicle. I can turn it into a pontoon, I can turn it into, it’s an all sorts of things.

He’s,

Crew Chief Brad: he’s gonna use it to get off his island .

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. And I will also use it to blow up Prius’s and h. But realistically, because I can’t have a movie car, it’s a really hard tie between what’s available. Since we’re in un unlike, we’ve set no budget. If I could get an F 40, that would definitely be in my garage.

That is a car that in 87 when it came out, I have never stopped loving that car. It’s an incredible design. It still looks good today. I’ve seen him in person. I can’t wait to drive one in my afterlife. I don’t know. But it’s, if I couldn’t have one of. I would definitely have a black on Black Alpha gtv. Six mm And this is the 1980s version like we [00:44:00] saw on Top Gear.

Not too long or the Grand Tour. . All kidding aside, Brad, take us home. I

Crew Chief Brad: think we’ve heard some really interesting, uh, debate here on, on what people want, why they want it. Uh, I don’t necessarily agree with everybody’s choices, but I’m sure nobody agrees with my choices either. And that’s the beauty of individuality and that’s the debate we call.

What should I. , what should I buy? Yep. Which there will be plenty of other episodes discussing all kinds of different car categories for what should I buy. So on that note, I guess we’ll go ahead and wrap it up. Thank you. Thank you Matt, Mike, and Dan for, for stopping by. And we welcome you guys for future episodes.

Mountain Man Dan: So just, uh, since you mentioned you were making a list of your vehicles, I decided to start, I’m nowhere near done so when I do get it done for a future episode, we’ll know how many vehicles I have owned over my, uh, span of. But I’m only up to high school years now. I’m sitting at about 30.

Crew Chief Eric: Is there a database big enough to store this list?

Crew Chief Brad: What’s the over under on him finishing that list and

Crew Chief Eric: on that

Crew Chief Brad: disappointment, . [00:45:00]

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly.

It folds full disclosure. Our high level assessment of all the cars on this list is really based on our members and our and owner experiences. We urge you to do your own research and fact check everything before committing to any one of these vehicles. G T M and Brad and I specifically, we’re not responsible for your satisfaction, your happiness with whatever vehicle you choose.

So make sure to visit, you know, vehicle specific online forums and or owners clubs for highly detailed firsthand information on any vehicle you might be interested

Crew Chief Brad: in. If you like what you heard and wanna learn more about gtm, be sure to check us out@www.gt motorsports.org. You can also find us on Instagram at Grand Touring 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. Crew chief at GT Motorsports do. We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey [00:46:00] listeners, crucifer here. Do you like what you’ve seen, heard, and read from gtm? Great. So do we, and we have a lot of fun doing it, but please remember, we’re fueled by volunteers and remain a no annual fee organization, but we still need help to keep the momentum going.

So that we can continue to record, write, edit, and broadcast all of your favorite content. So be sure to visit www.patreon.com/gt motorsports or visit our website and click in the top right corner on the support and donate to learn how you can help.

Learn More

What else should you buy? Check out other What Should I Buy? Podcast episodes for more car buying “advice” 😉 And remember: the debate never ends – it just shifts gears.

What about the Crew Chiefs?

Brad shares three regrets: a Ducati 748 he rarely rode, a bright red ’98 Camaro SS he sold to chase the STI trend, and a lifted ’97 Jeep Wrangler TJ he adored. “I’ll have that Jeep again someday,” he promises. The panel calls a yellow flag on his future Murano CrossCabriolet plans, but Brad insists there’s room in his garage for both.

Eric’s earliest regret? His dad’s triple-black 1986 Scirocco 16V. Pre-ordered and autocrossed, it was supposed to be Eric’s someday. But when it was sold, he watched it drive away, heartbroken. “That was supposed to be my car,” he told his mom. Years later, driving Matt’s Scirocco helped him heal – but the sting remains.

Honorable Mentions & Deep Cuts

Matt’s rental car adventures include autocrossing a Chrysler Sebring convertible and favoring white Crown Vics for stealth and comfort.
Eric mourns the VW Concept R and his stolen 2004 Golf R32, a show car turned personal icon.
Dan recalls a German-spec Corrado G60 and a quirky Hillman Super Minx he never bought.
The infamous burgundy E36, passed between Mike and Dan, gets a nod as a shared regret.
Brad’s grandfather’s ’71 Super Beetle, sold for $500 and turned into a trike, still tugs at his heart.

🏁 Final Lap: What We Learned

Regret is part of the car culture. Whether it’s a missed deal, a sentimental loss, or a vehicle ruined by someone else’s vision, these stories remind us that cars are more than machines – they’re memories, milestones, and sometimes, missed chances. So next time you’re tempted to sell, pause. That car might be your future “one that got away.”

Don’t agree, let’s agree to disagree? Come share your opinions and continue the conversation on the Break/Fix Discord!

There's more to this story!

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

Mentioned during the show… Brad, Mike and Daniel and others wanted to share their “I had one of those” list with the listeners.

Brad

1990 Honda Civic
2001 Volkswagen GTI 1.8T
1997 Ducati 748
1999 Chevrolet Camaro Z28
1994 Chevrolet Suburban
1996 Ford Mustang SVT Cobra
2004 Volkswagen GTI VR6
2001 Audi S8
2006 Suzuki GSX1300R Hayabusa
1997 Jeep Wrangler Sahara
1998 Chevrolet Camaro SS
2007 Subaru STI2005 Acura RL
2010 Honda Civic
2002 Honda Civic
2008 Yamaha Raider S
2001 Ford Crown Victoria
2011 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon
2003 Volkswagen GTI 1.8T
2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee Hemi
2017 Toyota Tundra
2004 VW Golf TDI

Crutch

93 Dodge Ram Mark V conversion Van
86 Cutlass Supreme Coupe w/302 V8
2000 Nissan Frontier King Cab SE V6 4×4
2006 VW Jetta TDI
2006 BMW E90 325i
2008 BMW 135i Convertible
2007 VW Rabbit
2011 VW Jetta Sportwagon TDI
2002 Ford F150 extended cab
1995 BMW 325i
1993 BMW 325i
2012 VW Passat
2008 Chevy Tahoe
2003 VW Turbo Beetle
2017 Nissan Titan XD Quad Can 4×4 Diesel
2008 VW Jetta

Crew Chief Eric

1987.5 Audi Coupe GT
1985 Audi Coupe GT
1983 Audi (ur)Quattro Coupe + V8
2003 Golf GTI VR6 24v
2004 Golf .:R32
2004 Jetta TDI PD-150
2003 Golf 2.slow
2000 Audi TT Coupe FWD
1989 Golf GTI 16v
2011 Golf TDI 2dr 6-spd
1990 Audi Coupe Quattro 20v
2012 Golf TDI 4dr DSG
2013 Jetta SportWagon TDI DSG
2008 Chevy Trailblazer SS
1995 BMW E36 ///M3
2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee eco-Diesel
2003 Golf GTI 1.8T APR-Stage3
2003 Golf GTI VR6 24v “YURI”
2015 Cadillac SRX-4
2003 Golf Estate VR6 24v #wookiewagon
2019 Chrysler Pacifica S Hybrid
1974 Porsche 914 Slantnose
2004 VW Passat B5.5 Wagon 4-motion 1.8T
2003 VW GTI 1.8T “eddie” > JOLF

Mountain Man Dan

VW Baja Bug
64 Chevy II Nova
82 Chevy Cavilier
81 Toyota Corolla
83 Pontiac Grand Prix LJ
86 Pontiac Grand Prix
91 Chevy S10
77 Pontiac Trans Am
Saab 9000 CDE
BMW E30
BMW 525
88 Austin Mini
89 Austin Mini
83 Austin Mini
91 Rover Mini
86 Austin Mini Cooper
77 Leyland Mini Clubman
Mazda B2500 Diesel
98 Nissan Sentra
92 Honda Accord98 VW Jetta
94 Honda Accord
89 Chevy K1500 Silverado
95 Chevy K1500 Silverado
99 Chevy C3500 Silverado
77 GMC K30 Sierra
81 GMC K30 Sierra
82 Chevy C10 Silverado
83 Chevy C10 Silverado
84 Chevy K5 Blazer
86 Chevy K10 Silverado
87 Chevy Suburban
91 GMC R30 Sierra
85 Chevy C10
66 Ford F100
99 Ford Taurus
05 Ford Taurus
99 Mercury
96 Chevy K1500 Silverado
96 Dodge Neon
04 VW Jetta TDI BEW
01 VW Jetta TDI ALH
01 VWJetta TDI ALH
03 VW Jetta 1.8T
04 VW Jetta 1.8T
02 VW Jetta 2.0
03 VW GTI 1.8T
03 VW GTI 1.8T
02 VW Jetta 2.0
BMW E36
82 Chevy C10 Silverado
Mitsubishi Eclipse
Chevy Malibu
86 GMC C30 Sierra Dump Truck
94 Chevy S10 Blazer
91 VW Corrado G60
07 Chevy K2500 Silverado Duramax
09 Chevy K3500 Silverado Duramax Dually
86 Chevy Z28 Camaro
91 Chevy Astro Van
05 VW Jetta 2.5
96 Honda Civic
Suzuki Samarai
AND MORE!!!

Thanks to our panel of Petrol-heads!

Guest Co-Host: Daniel Stauffer

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

Guest Co-Host: Mike Crutchfield

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

Guest Co-Host: Matthew Yip

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

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

Z man! The “Porsche Al” Story.

Gran T

August 4, 2020

At Gran Touring Motorsports, we love a good origin story – especially when it’s unconventional, heartfelt, and full of wrench-turning grit. In this episode of the Break/Fix podcast, Crew Chief Eric sits down with one of GTM’s original members, better known in our circles as “Porsche Al.” But as it turns out, that nickname only tells part of the story.

A Baltimore Beginning: The Z That Started It All

Al’s motorsports journey began not with a Porsche, but with a 1975 Datsun 280Z. Back then, he wasn’t a racer – just a guy hanging around his uncle’s shop in Baltimore, soaking up the atmosphere and learning by doing. After wrecking his first car, Al picked up the Z and dove headfirst into modifying it: headers, throttle body, Centerforce clutch, lightweight flywheel, and eventually a camshaft that tested his patience and mechanical resolve.

“I took the front of the engine apart three times in one day,” Al recalls. “Every time I turned it a tooth, I got closer. Finally, it fired right, and I knew I nailed it.”

That Z became a local legend. With help from his friend Big Jay, Al installed triple Weber carbs and tuned the car to perfection. Despite not considering himself a racer, Al found himself lining up against RX-7s, Mustangs, and Mazdas – and winning.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

One night on Baltimore’s infamous Northern Parkway, Al’s Z blew the doors off an M3 BMW in a quarter-mile race. The crowd went wild. Big Jay, ever the competitive spirit, was so shaken by Al’s win that he tore down his own Mazda the next day and sold it. “If I’m not the big dog, I’m not it,” he declared.

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 Grand Touring Motorsports
00:44 Porsche Al’s Early Days in Baltimore
01:17 The Z Car Journey Begins
03:05 Racing Adventures and Modifications
08:48 Transition to Porsche
14:12 Challenges and Triumphs with the Porsche
20:16 The End of the Z Car
22:57 Comparing the Z Car and the Porsche
26:23 The Allure of the Porsche
26:54 Returning to the Nissan Z
27:22 The 350Z: A Track Car Journey
29:06 Building and Modding the Z
30:11 Challenges and Rewards of the Z
32:46 Future Plans and First Track Event
44:26 The Jaguar F-Type: A New Addition
50:01 Wrapping Up and Final Thoughts

and much, much more!

Transcript

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here. In this episode, we bring you an unconventional origin story, one that begins with a Z, ends with a Z, and has a whole mess of Porsche in the middle. And to explain how this sandwich was made is none other than one of GTM’s original cast, one of our first year members, Portia Al.

Welcome to Break Fix. Hey, Eric. Thank you for the invite. We know you have a really great story about how you got the nickname Portia Al, but there’s a story that leads up to that.

Al Alsina: Early on when I was a little bit younger, my uncle had a shop. That shop was downtown somewhere in Baltimore. I would go down to the shop from time to time, just hanging out.

And one [00:01:00] of my friends there, his name is Jason, we call him Big J. You know, I wasn’t a big race guy or big on, uh, race cars like that. And I didn’t even really know. Uh, I had a car, my first car that I paid for. I hated the damn thing. In the meantime, while I was coming down the shop. Got one of those times I was driving somewhere, going too fast, I got in an accident, so I bought a Z.

280, 1975. During that time, I’m going back and forth to the shop. So my uncle had to go to Kuwait, he had to go to, uh, down to Fort Hood. So my, my buddy Jason took over the shop and ran it for him for a while. So in that time, going down to the shop quite a bit, he was like, Oh, we should do some work. Okay, what do we need to do?

So I changed the cam. which was a nightmare for somebody who, who really looked at the cameras, the easy job. So I installed it, not correct the first time. And what does that really mean? I didn’t set the timing correctly. Prior to that, I had installed a headers, bigger throttle body, and I forgot to add, I did put on a [00:02:00] Centerforce clutch and a light flywheel.

And when I say I did everything, I was doing everything to the car. Every week I put on a new car. And so the car incrementally just got better and better and better. But back to that cam. So I installed the cam. And of course, like I said, I did not install it in the right. Set up the first time or the second time.

Uh, maybe the third time. And with, if you’re not familiar with that, that particular type of Z. It has a side tensioner. And every time you take that cam gear off, if you do not put a chop down in there, the spring pops out, it drops down to the bottom. And I will tell you, in one day, trying to get it configured properly, I took the front of the engine apart three times, all right?

It was a nightmare. But every time I turned it a tooth, turned it a tooth, turned it a tooth, I finally got it tuned properly. You could tell the first two or three times I started, you knew it wasn’t right because of the way it sounded. But the last time, I got it started properly. I mean, got it, got [00:03:00] it set up prop.

Started and you knew right away the way that it was firing. I put it back together. I take it for a quick test drive J Knew a guy who had been racing z’s for a long time and they used to call him a z man And he had what was called a triple weber carburetors And so he said al let’s take a ride and see if he had him for sale because at the time I had to I mentioned that I had the big throttle body which really to me wasn’t really giving me that much, uh, performance.

I went over to the guy’s house and his house was like a mechanic shop, right? He was single. He had parts everywhere. He was a nice guy, but he had parts everywhere. It’s like going to visit Mountain Man Dan then. I gotcha. I understand. We would talk to him. Jason, uh, did the introduction and asked if he had the, uh, carbs.

He said yes. He said how much he wanted was 500 at the time. I had 500 in my pocket, which they couldn’t believe and I literally took those cars down to the shop [00:04:00] and put them right on. I didn’t clean them. I did nothing, but they were, I just popped them right on. The car started right up. And ran phenomenally.

And again, I would tell you that I wasn’t a racer. Uh, the guys down the shop, uh, Tree, Mike, and another guy who’s named, uh, escapes me right now. But Jay was kind of like the big dog on the block. Jay had a RX 7, the, uh. 13b. He was all tricked out. Another one of his friends had a Mazda, and Mike had a Mustang.

5. 0 had been tricked out. So it was at like, uh, 85, I think. These guys were astonished that in maybe two or three months, I completely rebuilt and the car was race ready and Jay asked me, Oh, why don’t you race these guys? And I was like, well, I’m not really a racer. So, so we go up to the light and from the light to the shop doors was about a quarter mile.

All right. [00:05:00] I can see where this is going. So I need to back up a little bit because I will tell you that. The name Big Jase, he had that name for a reason. He was very cocky. If he wasn’t the guy with the biggest, fastest car, then he wasn’t, he would take his shit apart. But that’s who he was, right? Now, I didn’t know some of this stuff early on, right?

I mean, you know he’s brash. You know he’s always Got a lot of mouth, got a lot to say when it comes to cars. So he asked me to go out. We’re lined up at the light. Just before the light turns, I stomp on it. I launch on the Mustang and, uh, the Mazda. By the time we get in front of the shop, I’ve got the Mustang by two cars.

Cars screaming. And I was like, okay. To me, I’m like, yeah, is, okay, is it fast? Ha ha ha! Is what I’m saying, right? Because I’m, I’m like, well, I’m newbie to this, right? Later on that night, let me [00:06:00] just say this, they used to race on Nolan Parkway and Wabash. In between the police rotations, when they would change shifts, they would, they would be road racing.

And you would go up and there’d be hundreds of people out on that strip. Jay asked me to meet him up there and I was like, all right. I took my nephew, I’m sorry, my cousin, who was probably 10 or 11 at the time. There were all kinds of motorcycles, cars, trucks. Everything you can think of were racing and people were making money.

So I got there probably about between 11 and 11. 30. And one of Jason’s friends had been watching me build a car. But if you go down to the shop, I will be coming after work. There’s so many people, I don’t know who’s who. So there’s so many people coming back and forth. When you’re working on the car, sometimes you pay attention.

I mean, I was in a safe environment, but sometimes you don’t, you just continue to work. All the other stuff is noise, right? And unless you’re getting help, it’s just noise. So I’m saying, say there was somebody watching me build the car unbeknownst to me. So he says, Hey, I want to [00:07:00] race your car tonight. I’ll give you 500.

And you know, I look at Jay, I’m like, what do you think? He’s like, yeah, let him. Okay. I said, okay. So he takes the car, he races an M3 BMW, quarter mile. He takes off and blows the. The M three away. They start arguing. I get my 500 up front. I get my 500 up front. And I will say these guys bet 5000. Whoa, right.

And so became a big deal. Because There became an argument about who left first and it was a whole, it was a whole thing, but I was like, I don’t know, I got my car, I got my, took my cousin, and we went home, because I had my money, I was no, I wasn’t a part of that, but you know, that was my kind of introduction to racing and to Z.

So J once my car one at Northern Parkway at [00:08:00] the races. He went the next day and took his Car part. And so he had on his, on his Mazda, he had every imaginable part. Headers, exhaust. He had the big throttle body carburetor that was proper for that year. He took it all apart and sold it. And then he sold the car.

He said, if I’m not the big dog, I’m not it. The next time he and I really had a good conversation about cars, he was driving a Chevelle, big body Chevelle, where he had taken the motor apart, put it all back together, And completely redid the thing. Now, I was not even in a class with that big boy V8. You know, but he was, he was doing something different at the time.

So for me, for Z’s, right, is a natural thing. I, I, so how did I get to a Porsche? We, we fast forward some years. Big J is now, unbeknownst to me, collecting Porsches. And so one day, uh, I go by his house, and [00:09:00] in the back of his yard, he has four. And I was like, what are you doing with all the 9 11s? And so at the same time, he was about to move to Atlanta.

So I was like, well, what are you, what are you doing with all the portions, man? I don’t understand. I’m like, I’m parting these out, and I’m taking three with me. I was like, okay. So you got four, you know, part out one, put it all in, you’re going to toe, make a couple trips and tone down. He’s like, yeah, you know, my story was, you know, you need an advocate for you.

Somebody that’s going to keep you motivated. So you need to let me get one of those forces. You don’t need three, right? You don’t. Absolutely. And so he took, he Literally took all three down there, made the trips, two trips, got everything down, and for six months we had a conversation. And we still talk to this day, but for six months, on and off, it was, Hey, Jay, what are you doing with that [00:10:00] extra Porsche?

Jay, what are you going to do with that extra Porsche? Oh, Al, somebody’s going to buy it from me. I said, Jay, that’s not what you want. You still need an advocate. And the whole time, when he was collecting Porsches, he worked. And drove for Porsche, um, modifications shop on route one,

Crew Chief Eric: uh, TPC turbo performance center,

Al Alsina: right?

He drove for them and for three or four or five years that he drove as a, cause he was not only was a mechanic, but he was also a big rig certified. So he had a CDL. So he used to drive for them to track, but the whole time he drove. They never shared any information. Interesting. Ever. Not once. And he complained about that shot more than anything, so finally he got frustrated.

Once he, you know, he had enough parts, figured he’d figure it out. What was amazing was, that in the three or four years that he worked for them, I met you, and I got more information from you, more information out of you and Shane, and then I met Ted. Ted into being a [00:11:00] turd, but more information on YouTube than he got in the whole four years.

Wow. And so, you know, he was, he was upset about it, right? Because people, he felt like they wouldn’t share with him. And I started sharing because you guys share with me.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And when we met and you said, Hey, you know, I don’t even remember how we even got on the subject of cars. And you brought it up and said, Hey, I got this 77, nine 11 target.

And I’m like, Oh, well I come from, um, you know, uh, let’s call it a vintage Porsche family with the nine 11s. We had nine 14 and stuff like that. And so, you know, we got, we, we started to bond over that. And so it was good to find somebody else that wasn’t like, Hey, I drive a three 30, I BMW, like, you know, I don’t know.

So it’s cool to, you know, Oh, I got a vintage Porsche. You know, it’s, it’s pretty nice. Right.

Al Alsina: And so, uh, I don’t know if Brad knows, early on in our conversation, Eric would say, Hey, Al, I have this parts for you. Don’t worry. You’re going to come and get it. [00:12:00] It’s true. It’s true.

Crew Chief Brad: He still does that to me now. I mean, he’ll call me and say, I just got you something.

Right. You know what I do

Crew Chief Eric: now? I just leave the parts in the garage with yellows. Post it notes that just say Brad and then when he comes over they’re just sitting there taunting him So I don’t have to even say anything anymore.

Crew Chief Brad: The best part was one time I left my car there at his house and I got there.

He was doing some work on it And there was like a 300 stress bar across the, the engine department. It was like, what the hell is that? It was like, Merry Christmas.

Al Alsina: Right. I, how do you like that? Right. So sort of somewhere in there. So, uh, Jay had heard my conversations, right. And one day, one Saturday morning, he showed up at the house.

With the car in tow. Wow. And put it in the backyard.

Crew Chief Eric: And now eight years later. So wait, let’s pause there a second. I never saw it in its original configuration. I saw it after you got it painted. So what was the condition of the, the Targa?

Al Alsina: So the Targa was in, it [00:13:00] was in great shape. It was white. I pretty much just replaced the carpet on the interior.

What you saw other than being white was the way that I got it. Now, I will say that there was no transmission and there was no engine. And I was good with that. So, you know, over time you can source, uh, enough stuff, right? And trust me.

Crew Chief Eric: So you sourced a motor

Al Alsina: for it. What did you end up with in the beginning?

It was a 3L. That was a great motor. I will tell you that I made some mistakes with that, but I rebuilt that in the driveway. I was not really comfortable with my ability, so I never really took it anywhere. But I would take the car out, and there’s a, there’s a few roads around my house that I would call my test track.

We all have one of those. And in the middle of the night, I would take it. and burn around the neighborhood and I mean it would fly. There was, there was a couple of times that I took it down to, I can’t remember the name of the shop that moved to [00:14:00] a 100. They did a dyno and tune on it. I never really felt comfortable with my work so I never took it anywhere and I always thought something was wrong with it.

And that being said, you think something’s wrong with it enough times, something’s gonna be wrong with it.

Crew Chief Eric: Transitioning from a late 70s or Nissan for most people that recognize it as a Nissan Z car to a Porsche, right? From an inline six to a flat six. You’re still dealing with six cylinder. Did you find the transition easy because they’re both carbureted motors or were they just so drastically different that you knew how to turn wrenches?

You just got to figure it out at that point. Turning a wrench was the easy part. Working on

Al Alsina: the motor, that portion part was a little bit more difficult to me. Never having seen one apart, never really kind of grasping. It wasn’t till we, or maybe Shane and I had some conversations about the motor, became more familiar.

And anytime, the more you do anything, the more you become familiar.

Crew Chief Eric: But

Al Alsina: I never [00:15:00] really felt A level of confidence for me in dealing with that car. The Z car is, to me, was more straightforward. Just, just in how to. The Porsche, everything had to be done a specific way. When I was looking or doing searches, I could always find something on the Z.

You could barely find anything on Porsche. That group, so because it’s a, to me, an older group, They don’t share the same as the younger demographic. They don’t share, they’re not posting stuff out on YouTube. If I wanted something for the Z, I could go on YouTube and have it in five seconds.

Crew Chief Eric: Porsche?

Al Alsina: Not so much.

So I had a hard time.

Crew Chief Eric: So how long did it take before the Porsche tax kicked in?

Al Alsina: Yeah, so right away. And so, you gotta know that when I go, I go all in. And so, it was Christmas. And I bought 3, 000 worth of carburetors, and then headers, and then, [00:16:00] you know, this thing, and it was always, you know, I need new brakes, I need, you know, if I’m going to do it, and I’m looking at, if I’m going to stop, what do I need to do?

If I’m going to do this, now. I would tell you the Porsche is so not like the Z, in parts of parts, but not really when you talk about, when you talk about Porsche parts, right? Because the cost is, I want to say maybe 10 times or 20 times the amount. So the last motor I had in the Porsche was a 3. 6, which I got from you.

When that motor went bad, and I don’t know if you guys know, Uh, the story about why the motor died. I don’t know if I ever told you that. It’s your opportunity to tell it. Last year or year before the motor died, going into, uh, the one, the fall. And so I parked it is when I noticed that there was something wrong.

And so you gave me a Tony, I think it’s translog. So I take it to him early January, maybe late December. He takes it apart. He finds a piston ring. [00:17:00] Down on the inside, there was no, nothing broken on the motor. There was an extra piston ring placed on the inside of the motor. Over time, that piston ring started getting chewed up.

And over time, you know what happens, right? You get metal fibers that you looked up in the crank. Number, I think, three and two position on the crank was worn completely out. So that knock that I was hearing, which I thought was somewhere else, I was like, how the hell can I have an issue when it’s a new bill?

So I will say that’s thanks to my friend Ted. Right. I won’t throw him under the bus by putting his last name out there, but yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: But that motor had some previous, we’ll call them curses or hexes on it too, because what did it eat? A rag or something, a shop towel, and another time something else happened, there was, there was always something always a little bit off about it.

Really surprised me because I did drive the car and it ran well until it just didn’t. [00:18:00] That’s the story, right? For eight

Al Alsina: years, I have a folder that, uh, you, so you talk about the Porsche tax that somewhere around, I don’t, I don’t want to say, cause my wife is outside the door, we’ll just leave it there.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re

Al Alsina: better

Crew Chief Eric: off,

Al Alsina: but I, you know, that, that portion of tax was hot when I listed it. And I had a couple of folks reach out and some, I wasn’t sure if they were scammers trying to get my personal information and I had been through that, Ooh, you know, I need my financier to call and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, that, that sounds like a bunch of crap, just like it is like those old Nigerian Prince emails we used to get back in the old days.

Exactly. And so, but once the guy from Germany reached out and he, you know, he gave me a deposit. A 5, 000. I knew that he was serious about buying the car and everything went well. I gave him more parts. I was just, [00:19:00] you know, when you’re done, and I know that you heard me say this, but when you’re done, I was done.

I was like, here, just take it all. I don’t even care anymore.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Al Alsina: But

Crew Chief Eric: it opened the door for the Z, right? So for the listeners out there, as you kind of put in the story together here, Al had his 911, which started with a three liter. So a 77 Targa and ended up with a three six twin spark in it for about eight years.

And then he just recently sold it. So a lot of this is really new information, especially to the members out there that, you know, been listening to the stories of Porsche Al over the years. He’s now hung his Porsche hat on the hat rack. And has gone back to his roots. But before we talk about the new car, I actually want to step back in time and do a little comparison between the old car and the nine 11 for just a moment, if you don’t mind, Al and you’ve got some other interesting cars in your resume, you, you picked up another car, which we’ll, we’ll probably talk about towards the tail end of the segment.

The nine 11 was silver. Was the Datsun silver too? No, the Datsun

Al Alsina: was like [00:20:00] a brown something. Okay, that’s

Crew Chief Eric: 70s color, okay.

Al Alsina: Right, right, but I ended up getting that painted a burgundy. Almost like a cranberry gray. And I did, uh, like with the Porsche, I did a lot to that car. It was a tragic ending.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, you know, I’ve never heard the end to the Z, like what happened to it.

Yeah, I had a Z and cool stuff happened. Then I got a 911. It’s like, wait, wait a minute. What happened in between? Did you drive a Chevette? I mean, no,

Al Alsina: no, no, no, no. So now the car is complete, right? I had it painted. The guy who painted the car, he put seven coats of paint on the car, right? With a clear on top.

So it was phenomenal. It was, uh, one of those days, you know, when you shouldn’t drive your car out. And I’ll say that. I guess I’ll just put it out there. So, I needed a damn cheap part. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. And I went to the store to get a cheap part in a snow storm. Oh yeah. Right, and so me and the car ended up [00:21:00] in a pole.

Oh no. Right, and so I, I hit a pole at the door jam. The car wrapped around the pole. Right. I don’t know how I didn’t get hurt. I ended up taking that motor. So the car survived. It ran perfect. But, you know, you got a 14, two foot deep hole dent in the car. So I ended up later on, I end up sourcing. Another 280Z.

It was a 280, but I can’t remember the year that changed the body style.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that was a 2 plus 2. It started to look a lot like the 300ZX versus your car was the same chassis body as a 240, 260, just with a bigger engine.

Al Alsina: Right. And so this one had a digital dash. It was only okay. And so I took the motor and transmission out and shoehorned it.

I tell you, when you take that motor, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it, motor and transmission together [00:22:00] on the Z, it looks like a Draxler motor, right? It’s very, like you said, very long. So I shoehorned it out and put it into another car and I pretty much got rid of that car. That was just before I joined the military.

So I drove that car for about three or four years, and then when I went into service, I parked it at my uncle’s house. When I came home from the service, it had been there from 94 to 99, right? It was at his house. And the year I came home, it got towed because he moved it from The house to the road or somewhere and I asked them where the car go, right?

Where’s my car? Cause you said it was okay, but ultimately the car got towed away and I never saw it again. Wow. So for a few years I had nothing until just before we met is when I picked up the Porsche.

Crew Chief Eric: When you compare your experience [00:23:00] with the Z, your first one, the 75, against the Porsche, which gave you the better driving experience between the two?

Oh, I can’t

Al Alsina: really quantify it as the Porsche, right? Because I’ve never, in eight years, I’ve never got any real time in it. So, you know, which is to me was tragic because I, I love that car was small when I do when I look at the car sometimes when I was on the highway, because there was a couple times I did drive, I even driven had driven into your house.

So, but, but when I looked on the highway is small. I can only say that I got the best driving experience from the Z. I remember making jokes to you a couple times how I had a better driving experience with the Volkswagen Jetta

that I had because it runs. You know, I never really have any issues. with the Jetta versus what I did with the Porsche. I mentioned earlier that I had the car dynoed, right? So, I wish I could [00:24:00] remember the name of the place that did the dyno. He used the new system where they take the wheels off the car.

And so, he gave me the sheet and was like, Oh, there’s something’s wrong with the car. The, it’s not necessarily the car, maybe it’s the clutch, right? And the clutch, because of this, up. What he said was identify any issues you had in your transmission clutch system, right? The way that transitions. I said, okay, so I’m driving home and me and my son were about a block from the house.

And I hear this, the fork broke. The fork broke. I was like, I just got the car back. And I would say that with the Porsche, it was always something. It like, it was like it did not like being in my house. It loved being a garage queen. I would say this to folks. Look, but don’t touch. Ooh, come and rub me, but don’t get inside of me.

Crew Chief Eric: She

Al Alsina: was, she was very temperamental, right? [00:25:00] And, and I’m just, today, I would say I’m glad she’s gone. I need something that I can, as a, as a car guy, I had gas on my chest, the truck just doesn’t do it. So, you know, I have that, I have that Ford F 150. It just doesn’t give me the satisfaction when you want to go just, say, a little over the speed limit.

You don’t get the same experience. In the big four door F 150,

Crew Chief Eric: right? Yeah, which motor sounded better? The Datsun straight six or the flat six of the Porsche?

Al Alsina: Hands down the Porsche. Hands down. Hands down. Unfortunately. It was a couple of things though that made, to me made it have a great experience with the Porsche as far as sound.

Even though the the Z that I had had a side draft by Weber’s. So with the same, same setup. Each car, each car had. a carburetor per cylinder. The Porsche had it and the Z. But just the from the configuration with the down draft versus side draft gave the [00:26:00] engine motor a better sound.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s a lot of rumors about who designed that car if actually Nissan designed it in the first place.

There’s there’s rumors that a certain West German company actually designed that, you know, the look and shape of the car. And I mean, they’re very attractive cars, especially the early Z cars are very good looking cars. They are very European looking. They didn’t look like anything else that had come out of Japan at that time.

So I wonder what drew you to the Porsche and not another Z car after having been through two of them. That was real easy.

Al Alsina: When I saw Jason with the car and I got a chance to look at it, I had. No experience with Porsche before. You hear it, to me it was always outside, it was always for somebody else. It wasn’t until he and I talked and I was at his house and I got a chance to really look at the car and have some experience because of him that I was drawn to it.

Crew Chief Eric: But, that evil mistress that was your 911 has driven you back into the arms of yet another [00:27:00] Nissan. How

Al Alsina: about that, right? Look, some days you just got to go home. You just end up home. How do you get there? Just, it’s like, you know, that penny you dropped on the carpet, right? You haven’t seen it for years. One day you’re moving all the furniture around.

There’s that penny. Comes right back to you. That’s what to me, the

Crew Chief Eric: Z is, right? It’s just natural. The 350 Z in this case, when it debuted in the early 2000s, what did you think of it? You got one in one

Al Alsina: period, right? I wasn’t ready. Right? Early 2000, I wasn’t ready because of family situation. Prior to the new one coming out, I had a 300.

Onion continues to be unpacked

Crew Chief Eric: here. I didn’t know you had a 300. Right. So I had a 300 before, yeah, just before I got married. So wait, which, which 300? The one that looks like the old ones or the newer style rounded one? The new style rounded one. Okay. So the 90s [00:28:00] version. Okay.

Al Alsina: Right. Yeah. It was a great car.

The reason why I got rid of it is once I got married and have kids. It’s time for that car to go. What are you going to do with a two door

Crew Chief Eric: coupe? Yeah, exactly. Right. So,

Al Alsina: family first. And once you get your come ups a little bit, right, things start turning, you know, you can afford a little bit more is where I am now.

So, I went back home to the Z.

Crew Chief Eric: Before we talk about your Z, what do you think about the current one, the 370? There’s a rumor that the 400 is coming as well. So, sometimes it

Al Alsina: becomes too much noise. For me to keep up with all the changes and all the, so the whole time when I was looking and dealing with the Porsche, all I kept saying was, I need something to drive.

I need a Z. And so you had put me in touch with Racer Run, right? To buy his ZA couple of times. I wanted to get something that was relatively old that I could to buy and put it on a track. I can’t look at the new stuff. I went that way. [00:29:00] Before, but you know, I just want to get gas off my chest, right? Get some speed behind my wheel.

So right now I, do you know that the Z, I don’t know if we’re ready to go down this path, but the Z is in the shop right now. I’m getting the roll cage put on. I’ve been ordering parts. I’m trying to pump my brakes a little bit.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re in at 110%. But actually it brings up a good little segue. Brad and I did an earlier episode where we talked about good starter track cars.

And we, we decided that the 350z ended up on the honorable mention list, mostly because it’s often forgotten as a good starter track car. And I’m not trying to downplay it. It’s an excellent track car period. Very forgiving chassis, great power. It’s just a really all around good car, but most people overlook them and they probably figure, Hey, they’re either stance bro cars or they’re too expensive to get into.

Now you were really fortunate to find another one at a really, really good price. Do you feel as though you’re a bit of a pioneer? I mean, you’re the only Z guy in our [00:30:00] group, but on the same token, you were talking about sharing of information and things like that. Do you find it easy enough to find parts for the Z and build it out?

Or has that been a challenge much like it was with the Porsche?

Al Alsina: Oh, it’s nothing like the Porsche. Their parts are available and cheap, right? And not only that, but I mentioned there are plenty of YouTube videos. So as I was stripping the parts away and not quite sure how I wanted to mount something or how I wanted to do something, There’s somebody out there who posted a video on how to when I mentioned earlier when I looked at Uh looking to buy a new three six motor for the porsche Even having the one that I had rebuilt tony at translog said that he could not do it for twenty thousand dollars So when I looked at sourcing one off of ebay that was rebuilt They were starting price was 25, 000.

I’m going to change here now to the Z the Z motor rebuilt is a [00:31:00] thousand dollars. I wanted to say when I bought the header system and exhaust system for the. For the Porsche, I was close to 1, 000. I got a whole system, headers all the way back for, I think, 400. The headers were probably a little bit more expensive.

Maybe I paid 175, but the rest of the system was like 300. And then I got a bypass pipe that they don’t include that piece, which is where their catalytic converters would go. So they sell a bypass pipe. Those were like 80, but everything else was like 300. Parts are very available.

Crew Chief Eric: We got to see a glimpse of your car.

If people, if listeners are out there and they go back to our website and search. Dino day, 2020. We actually got a glimpse of your Z in the earlier stages before you started modding it and things like that. Cause I know you wanted to get a baseline and you talked about dino in cars, all of your cars at this point.

So I think you got some baseline numbers. Are you going to have auto fab after they’re done [00:32:00] doing the cage and whatnot? Are you going to have them rerun it on the rollers just to see if the enhancements you’ve made have actually made an improvement to your numbers?

Al Alsina: You know what? I’m not ready yet. I think so.

Because the last time. When they did the dyno, there was something off about the harmonic balancer. So they couldn’t get an accurate reading. They had to do it like three or four times just to get it to set right. So it can pick up. So I already have a replacement harmonic balancer.

Crew Chief Eric: So what other mods have you already done to this car?

And it hasn’t even turned a lap on the track yet.

Al Alsina: Other than the exhaust system, the headers. I haven’t done anything else. Does it sound good with the exhaust on it? Oh my God. It does. It does. You’ll have to see. You’ll see.

Crew Chief Eric: You bought this car to build specifically to go to the track, to go road racing with the rest of us.

Where’s your first event going to be? Do you have a, you have a goal date to bring the car out and debut it?

Al Alsina: Yeah. So I think there’s, um, there’s an event. Looked on driving. Yeah. I [00:33:00] think I’m coming out to that event. That’s, uh, sometime in the end of August. The one at Summit Point

Crew Chief Eric: or the one at Pit Race?

Okay.

Al Alsina: Thanks. So, I didn’t see the one at Summer Point. The one I saw was with the cookout at Pit Race. That’s a good plan. Come to Summer Bash. So that’s the, that’s the, that’s the plan. I’m excited, right? It will be my first time at the track in that capacity. Meaning, in the race car, ready to go. You know, so I’m trying to make sure I have, I’m sure you probably get tired of my, what do I need to replace questions, but I’m trying to make sure that I have everything in place.

Crew Chief Eric: And so for the listeners, unlike the episode we did, where we talked about what I wish I knew as a newbie coming to the sport, Al’s dealing with a car that at this point is already 17 years old, it’s got a lot of things that do need to be replaced, you know, bushings, motor mounts, the exhaust was rotted out, actually, his catalytic converters were completely shot, which is robbing him of power.

There’s a lot, you know, brake pads need to be done, fluids need to be gone [00:34:00] through the car has about 160. So you really have to go over it differently. It’s a different conversation because he’s building something specifically for going to the track versus, Hey, I’ve got a, a really nice, you know, 2015 GTI, how about I go to the track for the first time?

So little bit different conversation for the people that have been following along with. So Al, you’re kind of in the middle and I know you being 110 percent of what you do, you’re going to be out in stage 12 land like I am, and they probably be a full on time trials car by the end of next season. But there, and there’s not anything wrong with that, but I’m really excited to have you come out and join the rest of us.

Having a unique car because you don’t see a lot of Z’s outside of Drift events and drag racing and, and, and some of the, what we call the stance bro events. It’s gonna be really cool and really unique. And with that exhaust note of that VQ engine, we’re gonna know where you are at at any given time.

Al Alsina: So let me ask you, why, why do you think that is that the Z isn’t being used for the racing [00:35:00] the way, the way that you do racing?

Crew Chief Brad: And this is all hearsay, that they’re kind of fragile. Transmission wise, when I was looking at buying my track car, I was interested in the Zs. Obviously, I didn’t go that way, uh, one reason is because I don’t fit. But another reason is because I didn’t have a surplus of funds to throw into replacing parts over and over and over again.

Now, going down the rabbit hole as I have, and I’ve had to replace many axles, a 60 axle is different than a 500 or 600 transmission. And that’s just what I’ve heard. And then the VQs, they’re pretty reliable. The head gaskets go every once in a while. I really can’t answer as to why they’re not bigger in the, in the racing world.

They’re, they’re really big in the drift world. Maybe it’s just, it’s just the culture of the car. A lot of people that are into that car aren’t into road racing. They’re more into drifting and things like that.

Crew Chief Eric: To Brad’s point, it’s probably the same reason that you don’t see a lot of Supras. And that’s also because those cars are a lot more rare.

[00:36:00] And I’m speculating because I have to go read the GCR, which is the global competition rules. I’m not sure that the Z classes well, and that’s why you may not see it because it doesn’t really fit into a lot of. Series. And so that’s, that’s where you end up with the whole discussion of buy what you see it around the paddock.

Especially if you’re going racing racing, because you’re either trying to do a spec series where you, it’s a Miata E36, E46, spec Boxster, spec C5, you know, stuff like that, where there’s a plethora of those cars and they just make them fit in the mold and you call it a day. And that’s what a lot of proper road racing and club racing is.

But the Z much like a 24 valve VR six. Or even the 1. 8 turbo Volkswagens. And I know we’re Volkswagen fans around here. I’m using them as an example. They don’t class. Well, SCCA does not have a class for them in the GCR, which means they’re a car that people would shy away from competition wise. They’ll go to something else like a Honda because it places an ITS or it places an ITA, you know, the older Mark two [00:37:00] Volkswagens in ITB and the, and, and so on down the line.

So it’s easy to go down the list and just. Pick something that qualifies and you can go racing now, because you’re starting out in high performance driver’s education, instead of straight on club racing, you can do whatever you want. They don’t really care. You’re you’re there to learn. You’re there to go fast and do what you want to do.

And if you have ambitions to go on to something else, you do hit a point where you come to an impasse and you say, well, do I want to go club racing or do I want to go to time trials? I have a feeling. That you may like time trials better than club racing, knowing how you like to take care of your cars.

It’s, it’s not full contact, like some of the other disciplines are, and you’re racing against the clock, you’re racing against yourself. In time trials, the classing system is also very different because it’s not based on the car must fit this mold. It’s based actually on a, like a penalty system, where you’re running this mod and these tires and this and that, and you can mix and match stuff.

So. I went to this event on Hoosiers and it bumped me up a [00:38:00] class. Well, I’m not going to run Hoosiers anymore. I’m going to run Nittos. That brings me up into a class where I feel I’m more competitive in or whatever it might be. So you got to jockey around with some parts, but everything you’re doing right now, especially, you know, with the halfback cage or the hill climb cage, you’re gearing yourself towards either doing time trials or hill climb.

Once you graduate away from high performance driving.

Al Alsina: Okay.

Crew Chief Eric: Again, that’s why I said you’re a bit of a pioneer. And I mean, you got the team behind you to support you anyway. So you need people to come turn wrenches. We’re all excited. Something new to work on. And we’re always willing to help. You’re at the tip of the spear on this thing.

You’re going to have to let us know, well, this was a waste of money, right? And that’s where we got to with the Volkswagen’s. Now we have the build sheets and it’s go down the list. This is what you need to buy, depending on what you’re trying to build. And so the same might be true of the Z. And, you know, we’ll try to see if we can find somebody out there to also get you better direction, but I’ve only come across a handful of these cars, and I know one of our other members who’s up in New York, who now has a Viper, started [00:39:00] in a Z.

And again, I sat right seat in that car for many, many events. And I can tell you firsthand, it’s, it’s an awesome ride. I have heard the same rumor Brad has had about the transmissions and stuff. I hear there’s a beefier one you can get, and then you kind of don’t worry about it again. At this stage of the game, you’re dealing with a 17 year old car.

Stuff’s going to go and you know how it is, right? When you’re doing this and you’re really dedicated and it’s not your daily driver, it’s like, send it. If it blows up, then you know what’s broken and then you fix it. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Crew Chief Brad: And if your car does well, that may inspire me to try and wedge myself into one or get a G35 cause they’re a little bit bigger.

Right.

Crew Chief Eric: To be truthfully honest, my sister and I, when we put the original article together that I was referencing earlier, the 350z came up with the list. Cause we both liked the way they look. The way they sound. I’ve ridden in ’em, they drive great, they got plenty of power and we’re always like, why have we overlooked the Z for so long?

Now they’re really affordable. It would make sense. It’d be a great rear wheel drive car to pick up and [00:40:00] have similar power to. You know what I have in the GTI. And so it would be a very easy transition. So yeah, I, again, as Brad is saying, I’m, I’m looking to you at the moment to say, where do we go from here?

Al Alsina: Right. And

Crew Chief Eric: so, you

Al Alsina: know, I have to rely on you guys because someone who’s new coming into the field There’s going to be a learning curve And so as I get, I will share, but there are things about racing, you know, I’m waiting for you to sit side saddle, hey Al, do this, do this, do this, no, no, no, not like that.

And so, uh, it’s going to be exciting. I hope to get, and you asked the question about. I hope to get at least two or three events this year. What that means, I don’t really know, but I know that I’m positioning myself to be ready. What Brad doesn’t know is that I got a trailer and ordered a trailer and got it.

Got it sourced, it’s ready to be picked up, and I’m trying to figure that out right now. [00:41:00] If I’m going to drive to Georgia, I’m kind of on the fence on the drive, not because I can’t drive, but I don’t know what’s happening down there from a mind perspective. And Eric mentioned earlier that the car’s in the shop getting the cage done.

Again, I just want to be in the best position in August, trying to have everything. The minimal set of things that I need so I can bring a car out and drive. I

Crew Chief Eric: think you’ve done the right thing. You took care of all the problems with the car because of its age and then you focused entirely on safety and that’s really the way to do it.

Because as I’ve said before, never modify a car past your ability to drive it because you continue to slide the bar to the right. And it makes it more and more difficult for you to find the limit. And, and, you know, we were debating break pads the other day and I said, well, you got this, this, and this, I would really tell you in the future, you’re going to want Hawks right now.

You’re going to want a set of EBCs because you want to experience break fade at the track. You want to know what it’s like to [00:42:00] encounter that particular use case. And then we’ll go from there. But if you just throw on a set of DTC seventies. They’re going to run you all day. You’re like, Oh, my brakes are fantastic, but you never really learn how to stop the car.

Right. And so it’s important and I’m not, I’m not trying to put you in a precarious position in any way, but again, you need to learn to out drive the car and then you can mod it. And you got to do your mods tastefully and slowly at that point so that the car and you grow together in the next step and airing on the side of safety.

Some people are like, ah, the heck with it. I’ll just buy a turnkey race car. You know, LMP2, Legere, and they go to town and that’s whatever, that’s fine, good for them. But, you know, if you want to really do it the right way and have a love relationship with the Z and, you know, not the relationship you had with, with the 9 11, then you’re really going about it the right way.

Al Alsina: Yeah, you mentioned a love relationship with the Z. You know, early on I mentioned that I, you know, as I do kind of replace parts. I start noticing things, [00:43:00] right? And I asked myself, and I even asked you, Hey, do you think I should do this right now? Right? And maybe, maybe not because when I look at the car and the age of the car, that’s a well, if I’m going to drive, if it’s going to go to the track without going so far overboard, because It becomes a, a touchy subject, right?

When you start buying, because I see that the valve covers need to be replaced. Well, if I replace the valve covers because of who I am, I’m going to replace the spark plugs. If I replace the spark plugs, I’m going to replace the ignition coils. If I replace it, so it becomes this, this cycle, right? Then you end up with, okay, I went in to replace this and here’s my budget.

And I went over my budget by, I don’t know, another thousand dollars, because the natural evolution, because you see these things, you think about how long it’s been, and I might as well replace that, and I might as well replace that. It’s like, okay, I’m never going to put the car

Crew Chief Eric: back together and be ready for anything.

I’ll say it again, if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times, run it till it [00:44:00] breaks, and you’ll know it’s

Al Alsina: broken. You know, said that line to me, and I didn’t know where he got it from, was. Carol said that line to me the other day when I was replacing or putting on the hood latches. He says, run it till it breaks.

And he knows, you know, his nose broke. I was like, okay. So he got that from you?

Crew Chief Eric: Probably. I don’t know. I’ve got a lot of those sayings, unfortunately. I need to write them down. Okay. Okay. As we wrap things up here, let’s talk about your other, because you bought two cars at once. You bought the Z and you picked up something else as well.

You want to talk about that?

Al Alsina: Uh,

Crew Chief Eric: well,

Al Alsina: I guess I can, right? It’s not a, it’s not a surprise. You know, I had a gas on my chest, and a Z wasn’t ready. Maybe it was more about me losing the Porsche. Regardless of how things went, I did feel some type of way. I bought my garage, right? I, there was a love hate relationship.

And so I needed something to take that place. Although, I [00:45:00] picked the Z up, it wasn’t quite ready. It’s not like I can drive it anywhere. So I bought a 2017 Jaguar F Type. Supercharged V6. And it is a beast. It is gorgeous. And she loves to be driven. I don’t have any issues with her. She’s got a wide in the rear.

She’s got a great stance. Everything works, and I get that gas off my chest. And it’s good. So, so during, during this time when, you know, most of us are wound really tight from being home a lot. The one thing I’ll do in the middle of the night is get in the car about eight, and I will drive for an hour in any direction and see how far I can go, and then turn around and come home.

So one time I made it up to, almost to New Jersey Turnpike. I’ve been down to Crystal City, but I didn’t go, I went through D. C. I went the D. C. way, in the D. C. You know, and so I just take these [00:46:00] drives. I’m not gonna say I can’t take the family and the kids anymore, cause that’s really not what it is. It’s just that I need to be out of the house for a minute.

Right? And that’s what I do. I take the car, and so I will say that the Jag, the paddle shifters, is phenomenal. And so, I’m not sure if you really know that you can switch to manual mode. When you switch to manual mode, also comes up where you can, there’s another lever, which takes it into dynamic mode. Once it goes into dynamic mode, it’s race ready.

Everything changes. The performance, the handling, you know what I’m going to do, Eric? And next time you come by here or I come out there, I’m going to drive the car. I’m going to let you take it for a

Crew Chief Eric: ride. I hear it. I see a test drive article coming.

Crew Chief Brad: Sign me up. Let me, let me come by. I don’t even want to drive it.

I just want to get in it. So I’ll let

Al Alsina: you take it. I’ll show you the basics, how to put it in, in that mode and let you take it out. [00:47:00]

Crew Chief Eric: There’s another test drive article coming. It’s great.

Al Alsina: Right. So, um, you let me know and we can do that soon or as soon as you like. Right. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Very cool. That’s another car. You know, we don’t.

Get a lot of Jags and an F Type is a great sports car, you know, a little bit more Boulevard GT sports car, but still a great looking car. You know, one of the newer Jags, it’s got all the modern stuff in it that you’re not plagued with all the classic British problems and whatever, but what, what a, what a great choice.

And we actually talked about the F Type on an earlier episode where we, V8 convertibles because there’s a convertible version. So I just wanted to highlight for everybody. Yeah, that yours is a coupe and that that midnight blue with the over the camel interior. I mean, just gorgeous car. Really, really stunning hashtag jelly on that one as well.

So good job, but regardless of all these car changes. For everybody that’s listening out there, he earned the nickname Portia Al because we had three Al’s in the club at one point, [00:48:00] Maserati Al, Portia Al, and Focus Al. But you’re the only Al that stands and we’re still gonna call you Portia Al.

Al Alsina: I’m good with it.

Look, I’m still here. I’m just glad that there’s that camaraderie, that you guys get together. You know, one of the things that surprised me about you early on, we had a lot of things in common. We looked up wise names. Right? Cars, transformers. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! So there’s a lot of stuff to geek out about, right?

I’m glad to be a part of the group and I’m also ecstatic about the possibility to see your dad’s car come alive. Cause I said all along I don’t care what anybody else said and you were trying to sell it. I don’t want to. I don’t want to. I was like, Eric, don’t sell it. Fix it. Don’t sell it. Fix it. Put it together.

Put it together. And I’m glad that that’s where you’re going with that. I am. I [00:49:00] am ecstatic to see the result of You’re you and your sister and everybody’s time on that car.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. So if anybody’s interested in what Al is talking about, if you go on Instagram and look for hashtag GTM project 914, I’ve been slowly posting the build pictures as I’ve been going along, resurrecting a 1974 wide body Porsche 914.

It’s an interesting build. You know, we’re modernizing it tastefully. We’re returning it to a 1. 8 liter, but you know, it’s still a VW motor at the end of the day, but yeah, you’re right. And so, you know, I’m, I’m glad there’s been a lot of people pushing me to get that car out of storage and work on it.

You’re not the only one race around the same thing. A lot, Matt, there’s a lot of folks that remember that car when it was running and they’re like, you need to do something about it. You need to get it back on the road. And so we’re getting very close. It’s going to make a trip to auto fab. Probably soon after your, your Z leaves there to get some work done and then we’re going to continue the build.

So it’s going to be pretty cool.

Al Alsina: Good. [00:50:00] Good. Good. I’m glad to hear.

Crew Chief Eric: On that note, I think it’s time to end.

Al Alsina: All right, sir. Well, thanks for inviting me on and I talk to you soon. Very good. Thank you much. Thanks. All right, Brad. All right, man.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out at www. gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on Instagram at GrandTouringMotorsports. 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 listeners, Crew Chief Eric here. Do you like what you’ve seen, heard, and read from GTM? Great. So do we, and we have a lot of fun doing it, but please remember we’re fueled by volunteers and remain a no annual fee organization, but we still need help to keep the momentum going.

So that we can continue to record, write, edit, and broadcast all of your favorite content. So be sure to visit www. [00:51:00] patreon. com forward slash gtmotorsports or visit our website and click in the top right corner on the support and donate to learn how you can help.

Jay eventually transitioned into Porsches, collecting 911s and working for a performance shop. But despite years in the industry, he felt shut out – no one shared knowledge. That changed when Al met Eric and the GTM crew. “I got more info from you guys in a few months than Jay got in four years,” Al says.

After many years of restoration… photo courtesy “Porsche Al”

Enter the Porsche Era

Jay eventually gifted Al a 1977 Porsche 911 Targa – white, clean, but missing a motor and transmission. Al sourced a 3.0L engine and rebuilt it in his driveway. Later, he upgraded to a 3.6L twin-spark motor, but the Porsche proved temperamental. “It was always something,” Al admits. “It loved being a garage queen. Look, but don’t touch.”

Despite dyno tuning and countless upgrades, the car never gave Al the confidence or reliability he craved. Eventually, a mysterious piston ring left inside the motor led to catastrophic failure. After years of frustration, Al sold the car to a buyer in Germany and closed the chapter on his Porsche life.

Back to His Roots (2020): The Z Reawakens

With the Porsche gone, Al returned to the car that started it all: the Z. He picked up a 350Z and immediately began prepping it for track duty—roll cage, parts galore, and a renewed sense of purpose. “I just want to get gas off my chest,” he says. “The Z is natural. It’s home.”

This video is from our Dyno Day 2020 event at Autofab Racecars. Porsche Al has been busy making changes to his Z in preparation for his debut at Summer Bash 6 at PittRace in August.

Unlike the Porsche, the Z offers affordability, accessibility, and a vibrant online community. “Parts are cheap. Videos are everywhere. It’s nothing like the Porsche tax,” Al laughs.

A Full Circle Moment: Current Project (2023) – Vintage 280-Z

Al’s story is more than just a tale of cars – it’s about resilience, community, and finding joy in the drive. From the streets of Baltimore to the backroads of Maryland, from wrenching in a shop to racing under the lights, Al’s journey reminds us that sometimes, the best way forward is to go back to where it all began. And so, he finds himself restoring this 1975 280-Z (below) back to its glory days (just like the one he talked about in his story). It’s great to see the love and attention being spent on cars like this, and we hope Al enjoys it once it’s ready. So here’s to Porsche Al—who started with a Z, fell for a Porsche, and found his way back again.

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

Open Air Motoring with V8 Convertibles

Brad N

July 21, 2020

Summer’s here. You’re itching for a toy. Not a track weapon, and not a daily driver – just something that makes your friends say, “Where did you get that?” or “What the hell is wrong with you?” at the next Cars & Coffee. That’s the spirit behind this episode of GTM’s Break/Fix podcast, where Brad, Eric, and special guest John from Project Motoring dive into the eternal enthusiast dilemma: Which V8 convertible should I buy?

The Criteria: Open-Air, V8, Under $50K

John kicks things off with a simple premise: a fun summer car, preferably with a V8 for the sound and visceral driving experience. Manual transmission? Optional. Engine swaps? Honorable mentions only. The goal is turnkey joy – not a multi-year build project.

The budget? Ideally under $50K, with most picks falling between $15K and $30K. And yes, SUVs and trucks with removable tops count. Open-air motoring is open-air motoring.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

The Extremes: Ferrari 348 vs. Model A Hot Rods

John’s first pick? A Ferrari 348. Mid-engine, manual steering, screaming 8,000+ RPM redline, and styling that screams Miami Vice. It’s not the prettiest Ferrari, but it’s quintessential. And at $30K–$50K, it’s at the bottom of its depreciation curve.

Eric counters with the opposite end of the spectrum: Model A Ford roadsters and other vintage hot rods. Loud, fun, and often cheaper than the Ferrari – but just as demanding in terms of maintenance and know-how.

Highlights

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

00:00 Introduction and Panel Setup
00:38 Debate Kickoff: V8 Convertible Criteria
01:34 Clarifying Questions and Criteria
03:40 Exploring Convertible Options
09:26 Ferrari 348: A Deep Dive
15:39 Classic Car Alternatives
20:10 Modern Convertible Contenders
28:53 Hardtop vs. Ragtop Debate
31:13 Supercharged Beginnings
31:31 Modern Day Cobra
31:45 Viper vs. Modern Alternatives
35:51 Convertible Preferences
40:08 Favorite Engines and Sounds
50:39 Top Convertible Picks
01:00:49 Closing Thoughts and Acknowledgements

Transcript

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Our panel of break fix petrol heads are back for another rousing. What should I buy? Debate using unique shopping criteria. They are challenged to find our first time collector, the best vehicle that will make their friends go. Where do you get that? Or what the hell is wrong with you at the next cars and coffee?

What’s going on everybody? I’m Brad with me. As always, my cohost, Eric, we have a special guest tonight. We’ve got John from the Project Motor, and he’s also a GTM member. All right. As you might recall, we’ve mentioned many times before in this show, the constant debate within GTM called. What should I buy?

Not an HHR. And in tonight’s episode, we hyper focus on which V8 Convertible should I buy? So, John, describe your shopping criteria.

John Caffese: So, we were talking earlier a couple weeks ago, Hey, summer’s coming around, we’ve all been locked inside for COVID, maybe we’re not tracking so much, but what would be a fun summer car if we wanted to buy as a [00:01:00] toy?

So, naturally, All of us have coupes and sedans and we have their sports cars or anything So we’re thinking what is a good open air car to have now? Obviously there was a lot out there and we were kind of narrowing it down to v8s For more for the driver experience, the audible noise, our idea, our debate went into what V8 convertible could we buy or would we buy if we were in the market?

Now, a lot of questions arise out of that as far as price points, new or sold. And those are some of the things we wanted to get to and talk about and maybe flesh out here now.

Crew Chief Eric: So let’s do some clarifying questions here, John. Some of the most important being, does this need to be a manual car? Manual transmission car.

John Caffese: I would say, there is no requirement for that. I actually was thinking of some that are not, because that would be the buyer’s choice. So if this isn’t going to be strictly a track car, but just a toy car, a street car, just something you want to cruise around in, or if you want to beat the balls off of it at the drag strip or something, that would be buyer’s [00:02:00] choice.

I have a couple of suggestions that one actually is an automatic, others may have some as well. Not only is manual extremely rare in today’s new and even, uh, somewhat late model used car market. Convertible and V8, those are, uh, three, I don’t want to say dying breeds, but certainly three traits that are hard to find together.

Absolutely. So I think in a new car market, there’s maybe. You know, cars that are of that ilk and are less than 100, 000. I think there’s maybe four in the market. So, so

Crew Chief Eric: no, there’s no requirement

John Caffese: for

Crew Chief Eric: me. Okay. Okay. So my other question then is, could it be an engine swapped car where it didn’t start its life as a V8, but it can accept a V8 as a project car?

John Caffese: So I would say, I would add those to maybe the honorable mention list because I think the spirit of this car Is maybe not so much spending that much time on it I I think once we start doing engine [00:03:00] swaps the sky Is the limit as well as your money and imagination? So I think it’s cars that we can kind of turnkey go.

Okay, but I am interested to hear some of those ideas Because instantly, you start talking instantly, I mean, you could fit an LS in anything, so.

Crew Chief Eric: 944 convertible with an LS swap, right? I mean, like, let’s just.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: right?

Crew Chief Brad: I can end this podcast right here, right now, with one, one car. Nissan Murano Cross Cabriolet.

Boom!

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, man! Right there. Good night, everybody.

Crew Chief Brad: Good night, everybody. I’ll talk to you all later.

John Caffese: So, you know, Brad brings up a good point. Here’s something I didn’t have on the list, but just, uh, your Nissan Murano makes me think of it. What? What? GT, GT Cruiser? Right? No, no. Any, you know what I didn’t have on the list, but it absolutely meets the criteria we’re talking about?

A Ford Bronco.

Crew Chief Eric: That was actually one of my clarifying questions. Did it need to [00:04:00] actually be a car or could it be a SB or truck of some sort or

John Caffese: truck a I think, I think open air motoring is open air mo motoring. Okay. I mean, if you wanted to have an aerial atom with the high boost of V eight in it, um, there you go.

Uh, that’s true. You could certainly bring that up. I don’t know if that’s a very viable car. You do have a price point though, right? What is your Right? So we’re thinking this is obviously not gonna be, or it could be a daily driver, but certainly not in the Northeast. It’d be difficult. I mean, for the more brave they can do that.

But that’s gonna, uh, include some tire swaps for winter tires, different set of wheels, and now we’re getting into different things. I mean, if the spirit of the car, is it to be a toy car, um, it’s generally gonna be a. Not primarily a daily driver or maybe a seasonal driver So I would say it’s probably going to be on the cheaper end of things So I would say most people for a first car, they might have a budget of fifty thousand dollars, right?

So just for argument’s sakes I was gonna say that’s pretty much the [00:05:00] cap. I think the realistic range here For the majority of the audience or just, uh, the public, if they’re getting a second or third car, that’s a toy, you’re probably going to be anywhere between 15 and 30, 000, depending on what your situation is and kids.

But I think anything with an asking price of 45 or 50, 000 market value, there’s going to be examples where you can find them for 35 or 40.

Crew Chief Brad: And just to clarify, who is the we in this equation? You keep saying we, we, we. Uh, just to see, is this with your, your, your dad or your, your mom or who, who’s the way, is it with a Rego?

John Caffese: No, I, I, I think, uh, we, in a conversation is, is mostly some of the, some of the people talking about the topics and trying to flesh out. I wasn’t sure if you were doing this with a group of

Crew Chief Brad: people.

John Caffese: No, no, no. So I think it’s mostly just some of what we were talking about before in preparation for this. Uh, and I think some of my suggestions are actually going to revolve around different buyers and I’m going to point that out.

Different cards for different folks for different situations that

Crew Chief Eric: might be better or others. So [00:06:00] so to john’s point, right? I think he’s referring to the gtm royal We and i’m going to put air quotes around that just to take a step back to clarify for the folks that aren’t on The what should I buy channel on slack?

I actually posed this question a couple weeks ago as you mentioned at the beginning of the conversation where it was like Hey, i’m already thinking about my next project car and I’m leaning towards a convertible or cabrio or vert, whatever you want to call it. But my criteria isn’t nearly as sharp as yours is because I’m okay with a four banger.

I’m okay with, you know, it doesn’t matter really the power plant. I wanted something fun, a little bit stylish, but I’m also a lot cheaper. So for me, I want to chop that last zero off of there and go, what can I buy for five grand? And then knowing, knowing me and how, you know, kind of anal retentive I can be about the build.

Yeah. I’ll probably end up being close to 30 by the time I’m done. I guess my starting price point is very different. So that was actually another clarifying question I had on my list was. Are you a hundred percent locked in to a v8 car? I mean, I want to have [00:07:00] this debate about v8s for sure But I want to know if I can pepper in some oddballs as we go along as a possible consideration

John Caffese: So I

Crew Chief Eric: had

John Caffese: I had a couple thoughts about that too Looking at the market a lot of the new cars are actually six cylinders or four banger turbo fours or even turbo sixes To replace the eight cylinders.

I think na motors in general with emissions and fuel regulations are dying So again, it’s going to really limit able if you want to buy new because if we’re talking up to fifty thousand dollars You can go buy a lot of brand new cars and then some It’s not two of them some of these I would say I certainly want to discuss the best options for that Engine be dams once we kind of flush out a little bit there because I think there’s a lot of strong contenders I was actually looking at a list of brand new convertibles for sale at dinner tonight And it’s not a lot of cars and I think it’s something like less than 20 percent of them even had a v8 So,

Crew Chief Eric: and very much to your point, when I was researching, I was just kind of, you know, doing the cursory cars.

com eBay auto trader stuff and just, [00:08:00] okay, start with just convertibles. Yeah, I got 3 million cars to go through, you know, that are available from, you know, 1900 to today. And then I started adding a manual transmission and a VA and this and that and the other thing. And by the time I was done, I was like, I got 500 cars to pick from nationwide.

So it really narrowed it down. And that’s why I wanted to make sure that. You know, your search criteria was a little bit more open to suggestion because that can bring in some really interesting cars in that price point that you, that you brought up and I know you suggested one this morning. So maybe we start with that.

John Caffese: We were talking earlier and I said, you know what I was looking at? I was kind of thinking about this and I said, okay, so. Here we are. We’re going to go in the very strictest interpretation of our own rules. So we have a budget of between 50, 000 or less. We want an open air motoring car. We want a V8, right?

So what is the purpose of this and why are we looking for it? Like what started the conversation? And the conversation was like, what’s a good driving experience? Outside of what we’re [00:09:00] normally used to cage cars or on track or right? So obviously convertibles or targa just we’ll call it open air motoring

Crew Chief Eric: Uh

John Caffese: a little more of wet noodles as a chassis not necessarily known as as sharp as some other vehicles Why are we like hung up on v8 for sound right?

We want that audible driving experience and the v8 pours out So when i’m thinking open air driving experience Back road bombing in the 40 50, 000 or less range. I said, yeah, you know what? How about a 1989 to 1993 94 I believe they ran up to 95 Ferrari 348 the 348s are in a weird spot There’s still a four valve motor before the three five fives where they became without last adjustments You do have to do the service out the engine out for the major but maintenance aside which you can skim away with It’s 300 some horsepower in your convertible or Targa It’s like 8, 900 RPMs or 8, 500 RPMs.

They absolutely scream. They sound awesome. Trill. Sounds like a bike or an F1 car going down the road. Very Miami Vice. I [00:10:00] mean, to this day, it’s not the most, it’s not the most prettiest Ferrari, but it’s certainly one where it’s quintessential Ferrari. It went away from the 308 and the fact that it’s got, it’s kind of like the baby Testarossa with the thing.

So it’s, it’s, it’s one off styling almost. The 355 after that went back to a little more classic lines. So I think the 348s are at the bottom of their price point much like a c5g will be I don’t think you’re ever going to get cheaper than they are now. You can get a driver experience quality car for probably between 30, I mean, it’s not going to be pristine.

It’s going to have 30, 000 to 50, 000 miles on it. But we’re driving a car. We’re not looking for investments, right? Here’s the problem with the Ferrari, right? There’s two types of people. It’s a Ferrari. That’s the problem with

Crew Chief Brad: the

John Caffese: Ferrari. There’s two types of people who are going to buy the Ferrari, right?

Especially with 348. One, someone who knows nothing about cars or wants a Ferrari because it’s a Ferrari and that’s what they can afford. So outside of maybe like a Mondale.

Crew Chief Eric: [00:11:00] I

John Caffese: just threw up a little bit in the back of my

Crew Chief Eric: throat. Yeah, exactly

John Caffese: They’ll go out and buy any ferrari they can afford because it’s a ferrari Now if you look at 308s 328s 355s, even 360s The 360 is a little more uh, uh, 355 with a rough life or history.

It’s about the same price as the 348 And 308s and 328s, or 348, ironically, they’re all about the same mileage, they’re all the same price right now. They’re all between 30, 000 and 60, 000. The cleaner ones are more, the ones you don’t want to deal with are less, the ones that are drivable and serviceable are in that range.

So literally any car you want to buy from 1980 to like 1994. You can get yourself a, uh, a Ferrari for 50, 000. My suggestion would be the one with the most horsepower and the newest and most modern chassis. Anyone who drives a 348 and reviews it says it’s absolutely amazing. Now, with that being said, let me circle back.

One, first person who buys a Ferrari doesn’t care. It says Ferrari. It sounds cool. It looks cool. I know nothing about the car. I’m gonna pay someone to do it. And I just want a Ferrari. That’s your buyer at 45, 000, [00:12:00] 40, 000. The second is someone who doesn’t give a crap about the prestige or the fact that it’s a Ferrari so much as the brand, as much as I want a car that’s open air handles, awesome, very European styling, mid engine screams, a lot of fun, small it’s manual steering.

There is no power steering on them. They’re really the big go karts at the time, because if you ever look at the

Crew Chief Eric: 348s, they’re actually really small. They’re an acquired taste, and I think you and I share that as the oddball that actually appreciate the 348s styling. Because it is I enjoy them. They’re very subdued, and I remember when the 348 Competizione came out, and I really liked that car because it was slightly wider.

You know, with the flares and the big wheels and all that. And it’s, it’s, I don’t know, it was the proper evolution because I thought the three 28 was such a letdown, you know, and we all fell in love with the three away because of Magnum and kids of the eighties and all that kind of stuff, but that being said, it’s still a Ferrari, right.

But I, I think we can give you some options. I mean, It does check all the [00:13:00] boxes, right? But there are a lot of other cars that check those same boxes and actually cost less and are less maintenance and less burden. Certainly. So you don’t casually

John Caffese: buy a 348. You seek it out. So either you want the drive, you’re all in on the driving experience and cost be damned, or you’re all in on the brand experience, cost be damned, right?

There’s no middle ground.

Crew Chief Eric: I

John Caffese: will agree with you. I would love a 308. I was lucky enough for my father had one I grew up with one I wouldn’t touch a 328 and a 348 even though it’s the same car is like completely different in my mind because it looks like a Little baby testarossa and a 355 used in another world as far as maintenance and performance.

But yeah, so I think I think if, if you were dedicated to have one or the other, Don’t you lose,

Crew Chief Eric: don’t you lose the gated shifter in the 355 though? It doesn’t, No,

John Caffese: so what you lose in a 355 that you don’t have in a 348 is the dogleg shifter. So they’re still gated and the 348 is 5 speed and the 355 is 6 speed.

So instead of having one and then two, three, you have your [00:14:00] traditional

Crew Chief Eric: one, two, your H gate. So not to diverge too far off because we could probably have a whole episode about Ferraris alone, but which one was the first one with the little joystick shifter?

John Caffese: So the 355 is a, is a transmission that, uh, debuted the, uh, the F1 transmission.

Yeah. Yeah. That’s terrible. Yeah. Eight up clutches. The 360 also had an F1 transmission. They got better, but it’s still very terrible. The 430, I believe like 95 percent of them were the, whatever version of paddle shift they want to call it. So if you find a 430, that’s an actual gated shifter. That’s going to be the big car that they’re appreciating value.

They actually cost more than a new Ferrari right now. And then the four, five, eight are

Crew Chief Eric: all on it. Now I’ll say this though. The three 48 I don’t like it as a convertible. That’s just a personal thing. I think I would not get a spider.

John Caffese: I, I, I love it as a Targa. I’m not a big convertible guy in general, unless it’s a hard top.

Crew Chief Brad: So Targa brings up another. thing that we can add. Are you considering Targas as the open air [00:15:00] experience? Some people say they’re not, some people say they are. So for your, for the act of this, for the purpose of this exercise, you are including Targas.

John Caffese: Yeah, I would because I think the Broncos and stuff like that would fall under.

Crew Chief Eric: Let me give you a counterpoint to the Ferrari. Like, I see the Ferraris too far out in the extreme. Like, I would never recommend that to somebody. In our group to say, Hey, you want a convertible to go have fun and take your wife out or your girlfriend or whatever your, your significant other or your dog.

I don’t care. Right. But the, but the point is like, it’s not a car. I would just foist on somebody that didn’t have the means to really appreciate it and take care of it. So the opposite extreme of that, because I was digging in and looking at the price points, Model A Ford, Ford Roadsters. There’s a bunch of those kinds of old hot rods that are actually cheaper than the Ferrari.

They’re a lot of fun. They make a lot of noise. Yeah, exactly. Right. But they’re also have the same problem as the Ferrari in the sense that you have [00:16:00] to be able to, to appreciate those cars, maintain them. They’re usually a hodgepodge or potpourri of like this Ford actually has a Chevy motor in it from like, you know, 1990 in a 1948 chassis.

You know, I’m just making those numbers up, but you understand from a dump truck, right? Yeah. But you understand what I’m getting at. Right. So You can’t, you can’t go into those cars blindly either.

John Caffese: Yeah, I’ll agree with you and I, I think I’m just going to rehash my point before. I, I think my example and now yours with, with, with the Model T or, or T Bug that I think is a fantastic example is that you are not casually going into that.

Like, that’s something that you’re like, Hey, this is what I want for any, any reason, whether it’s the cool factor or maybe you understand the engineering of it. So like you said, it’s either going to be a nightmare and you’re wrenching on it and it’s awesome. I’m like a factory five Cobra. Or anything like that.

Or you’re just buying it because it looks cool.

Crew Chief Eric: So that is definitely on my list. My plan here is we’re going to funnel towards like the ultimate decision and that was actually closer to the middle is a factory five cobra because of what it [00:17:00] shares towards you know a more modern car which actually brings me to my next point so if we start if we take the ferrari And a model a model T bucket or a T bucket and a Ford roadster as the outer extremes of this conversation and start to work our way way in.

If I’m coming at you from the left, the next thing I would tell you is 55 Ford Thunderbird, you can pick up for 25 K a Ford galaxy convertible and a Pontiac Catalina, all of those V8s. All of those manual transmission, all of them drop tops, uh, Packard

John Caffese: Caribbean. I mean, if you’re going into fifties or sixties, to be honest with you, that’s an entire generation.

I wasn’t even thinking about, I mean, they made just about one, just about every car had a V8 in it. And two, just about every car has some sort of manual because automatics were prevalent or that good. There were two speeds, maybe a three speed if it had a glide in it, but you know, a great, great. Yeah. I didn’t even think about that.

I mean, obviously any sixties muscle car. But yeah, I think those are cars to that. I don’t know if you’re casually buying. Uh, I think you’re seeking them out either for the fact that [00:18:00] it is a 55 thunderbird or you want that classic car

Crew Chief Eric: As you know, I watch a lot of restoration shows or what we call restoration shows And so, you know the care the care and feeding that goes into a lot of those 50s and 60s period cars versus the 70s.

You know, proper muscle cars is a little bit different. Like the owners of those cars, they’ve treated them with the utmost respect. They want to keep them as original as possible. If they do resto mods, they’re very tasteful. They’re very on purpose to keep the car drivable. Like the new EFI from Holly, which is a bolt on replacement for the four barrel car, a lot of the factory air conditioning, modern suspension.

where the car still looks and feels like, you know, like a Cadillac or a Thunderbird or whatever it was from that era versus, you know, I got a charger for 46 pack. My name’s blown and I got tails and, you know, flames and, you know, those cars are crazy and they’re great. And. they have their audience too.

But in this conversation, I guess we’re, we’re all kind of focusing in on a cruiser here. I [00:19:00] have a fondness for those, you know, fifties and sixties convertibles. And I think a lot of them for the money, they’re big value. And when you get them, as long as you don’t do the whole, bought it online without really looking at it and kind of, you know, knocking the frame rails to make sure they’re not.

They’re you know, they’re solid and all that kind of stuff. You’re actually getting good value for your money Because a lot of those those thunderbirds and the catalinas and stuff. They were running about 25k You’re talking

John Caffese: impalas. Uh in the 60s and 70s. They’re they’re in that price range some of the issues.

I see what that is So if you get one that you actually don’t have to work on, if it is any kind of original, or if it’s been restomodded to a certain point, you’re going to be on the upper end of the budget. It’s not over. And if you, if you are under it, you’re going to end up being over it.

Crew Chief Eric: And very much to your point, that’s why a car like the Barracuda, a Barracuda convertible or a Cuda convertible, because.

Barracuda and Hakuta aren’t the same thing. Actually, it’s, uh, But like a Hakuta convertible you’re looking at easily entry price of about 75k, right? So that’s why it’s not on the list. [00:20:00] I mean, I love those cars I mean, I love those old 70s challengers, but that doesn’t fit your search criteria. So that’s why they’re not on the list So let’s come at it from the right side from the modern side.

So we know the ferraris are on the extreme So what’s the next notch on the belt? Inwards from the right.

John Caffese: So I know you had mentioned one thing, so I was gonna let you lead that, lead that charge there and then wants to talk about as

Crew Chief Eric: well. I was gonna turn it over to Brad, ’cause I think he had an idea. If we’re not locked, I’d love to hear it.

If we’re not locked into v eights, I think Brad has a good one.

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, well, the Nissan Murano cross Cabrio is everybody’s dream, but they’re hard to come by. They’re very rare. Is

John Caffese: is that a VQ in that.

Crew Chief Brad: I think so. So it’s not, did they

John Caffese: put the 37 in it? So that’s got some power. Yeah, it’s, it’s

Crew Chief Brad: got

John Caffese: the, the prestige.

All right. Um, um, if you’re getting a Murano Cabriolet with a VQ, I’m buying an HHR and cutting the top off.

Crew Chief Brad: [00:21:00] If you’re thinking about what we’ve been talking about, he’s already got a project car right, sitting right behind him that if you’re just listening, you can’t really, you can’t really see it, but yeah, he’s already got a 60s Mustang that he’s working on.

He doesn’t want another project, so it has to be turnkey, correct? I being the four by four enthusiast, the off roader inside me and everything, I’m going to go a little different direction than what we’ve already talked about. Yes. Ha ha. Cross cabriolet. Great car. Everybody should get one. No, you’re not a true motorist.

You’re not a true motor sports enthusiast unless you own a cross cabriolet. I’m just going to, no, but I’m, I’m thinking, is it British? No. Yes. Yes, it is. Is it a jack? It’s not a Jack. It’s, I know I have, I have an idea. It’s a Land Rover defender.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, hey, .

Crew Chief Brad: Actually pretty good. You can get a nineties 96, 97 ish, you know, land Rover [00:22:00] Defender.

It’s got the same feel as the, is like a Wrangler, but it’s, it’s not a Wrangler. So you’re not a, did you hear that? A Jeep Row.

Crew Chief Eric: Did you hear that awkward little pause in the audio there? That was the Lucas Electronics failing.

LS swapped the world. Buick 400, I think, in those things. Or no, sorry, smaller than that, but it’s a Buick V8, if I recall. In the 90s? Yeah, like Matt’s uh, Matt’s Land Rover, his LR, his Disco 2 is a Buick V8, so it’s probably a very similar motor.

John Caffese: I, growing up, we had a 64 International Scout, I mean it was a rust bucket, but we took the top off, and that was, so I, I totally get, and I didn’t even think about, we, we mentioned Bronco several times already, and I know we’re coming back out with it, but yeah, no, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a solid pick that I, I totally, in preparing for this, I totally whiffed on until we, we called, and I was like, oh, wait, wait, that’d be.

That’d be super cool. Um some kind of wrangler I want

Crew Chief Brad: I want one Just [00:23:00] because i’ve had wranglers i’ve had right. Well, yeah, i’ll do it eventually.

John Caffese: So how does the range rover? Discovery whatever model you said work you buy it for three grand you put 40 into it So you buy two

Crew Chief Eric: of them you buy two of them like matt did and you make one out of it

Crew Chief Brad: That’s the discovery the defender actually was a I mean the 90s defender was a pretty pretty decent model They were they’re very rare because they didn’t bring very many of them over here.

So that means they’re very expensive

John Caffese: If it’s older than 25 years old, we can import one rather easily But

Crew Chief Brad: it depends

John Caffese: on

Crew Chief Brad: what your time frame is too. This isn’t something you’re going

John Caffese: to

Crew Chief Brad: run out of the

John Caffese: dealership I think that’s As solid as that device is, I think we’re all falling into the trap is that we are enthusiasts.

So that is a full on, down the rabbit hole choice, as much as, say, the 348 or the 60s or 55 Thunderbird is. A fantastic choice. I think that misses maybe the spirit of the mainstream Turnkey of what we’re trying here because I think that would be a great love passion for you as much as the ferrari would Be a love passion for me [00:24:00] or those 50 60 errors for for that person So just shift it back a little bit towards some of our earlier conversations that led up to this I know eric had a couple things that he wanted.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah So one of the ones from the right side and I need verification from you being a diehard bmw guy Was there an e92 convertible? Oh, he’s got it on the

John Caffese: list. He’s got it. I need to all right. So Hard top convertible v8 the only year with the v8 in it and it comes with an automatic the dct It’s actually pretty good.

That was going to be my counter to a car that you were going to say Oh,

Crew Chief Eric: yeah, we’re not there yet that that’s

John Caffese: That was gonna be that’ll be my counter that but uh, yeah, so An E92 M3 that comes with a six speed or a DCT if you just don’t even want to worry about driving it automatic. It’s got a rear seat that’s actually usable.

It’s a hardtop convertible. Since I had that written down, I checked some of the prices on them. They’re ranging anywhere from, believe it or not, like 18, 000 for a high [00:25:00] mileage one. So about 30 for a decent one, like any BMW, uh, M motor, especially from the E40 to Tom Ward. You got to check the rod bearings on them.

That’s a point of failure. Interesting fact, V8 in the E92, uh, the S65, which has eight independent throttle bodies, uh, is aluminum and actually 20 pounds lighter than the S54 it replaced, which was an M96. And they sound awesome. They get abysmal gas mileage. They’re like 19 on the highway. I don’t think any of us are

Crew Chief Eric: worried about mpgs.

If not, I would tell you to write the td

John Caffese: Certainly a car you can go down to the dealership and find one by buy it. There’s a million of them You’ll get financing on it. It’s going to be plush. It’s going to be comfy. It’s going to sound cool It’s going to look great They still look pretty modern and it’s super easy to drive if you want to carve up a back road you can I know BMW is kind of like almost cliche at this point.

It depends on who you are, but I think you could, I think you could acknowledge that, uh, anyone going down the roads and they go out to BMW convertible.

Crew Chief Brad: The counterpoint to that [00:26:00] car would be the SL

John Caffese: 55. Yeah. So let me, let me point to another. One on that list here. So that’s the s. That’s okay amg

Crew Chief Brad: No, no, no, but not the slk the bigger the bigger cruiser.

John Caffese: That’s certainly upclassing the m3 into like a six series So let’s

Crew Chief Eric: let’s bundle all those together then because I had on my list the f type Right, because those, as we know, Porsche Al just got a coupe and it wasn’t, it wasn’t hard to They made those convertibles. Yeah, they did. Then you have the S5 V8 convertible.

What was the one before the F Type? The XJ? Yeah. There’s, there’s The

Crew Chief Brad: XK.

Crew Chief Eric: The xk was I wouldn’t buy it. But yeah, it has a v8 You can kind of lump all those together You could also throw in the volvo c70 if you’re going non v8 car Just because of the hard top if you want to go all the way to the bargain basement on that You could go all the way down to the VW EOS as well, because it’s A GTI [00:27:00] convertible.

It’s RIO 3 53 70, those G 30 sevens, all those for me, just, they’re all just blobs of, of metal on top of wheels going down the road.

Crew Chief Brad: No personality whatsoever, but Have you thought about ’em? iata? ?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Spoiler alert. The answer to this podcast is not Miata. You mean a Fiat 1 24? Yeah, I’m all for that.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

John Caffese: I’m all

Crew Chief Eric: for a vintage

John Caffese: one. If, if we’re not racing it or tracking it, I would, I would take the turbo motor, uh, just so I can play with it and they make better sounds to me just cause turbo noises. I think to me, they come with a decent automatic now, right? And a hard top. So, I mean, certainly you can get in and go, I think a lot of people are going to shy away from how small it is.

If they’re just looking for a little, I say how small it is and I say little, but. I think what we were kind of lumping together as far as the luxury GT Boulevard cruisers. I think really that’s going to be the majority of the picks for the, Hey, I just want something to cruise around in. I’m not going to track it.

I want it to be sporty, but I don’t care if it’s [00:28:00] actual sports car.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s still come from the right for a minute before I start going super vintage on you. What about the Camaro? The current Camaros Gen five, six, I guess they are convertibles and they came in a four cylinder and VA options.

John Caffese: Yeah, so they got rid of the six bangers.

Same thing with the mosse. My son had a four cylinder turbo and the coyote and the, the Camaro is doing that. You gotta be careful though, because they knew. A new Camaro, especially like the two SS or whatever the top level package is, is actually the same price as about a base Corvette. So you have to ask yourself, do I need the backseat or do I need all the extra bells and whistles?

Or I just want to have cool sounds and open air or the Corvettes are target tops, even the, even the base coupon. So that’ll handle better, be a better driving car, totally different market and segments, even though we see a ton of them out doing the same thing. But I think for a street vehicle. You’re talking something different.

And then two, that’s a rag top or sport top. So I think that’s a big point that we should probably discuss, or a lot of people are going [00:29:00] to go into it. It’s like, Hey, I want a convertible. I want open air experience, but I don’t necessarily want a rag top. So we need to get a wrangle or a Bronco or a defender.

You’re going to have soft tops and core tops you can put on it. Uh, even if you have a Miyata, you can have soft tops, hard tops, you can put on it. Me, I’m more of a hard top guy, had some rack tops, there’s a rack top sitting right there, and I hate them.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s kind of funny because I feel like the hard top convertibles are this weird way of trying to have your cake and eat it too, and it just For me, it doesn’t work.

If it’s going to be a convertible, you need to be able to reach up and throw the top back as you know, going down the road and not worry about, you know, all that other kind of stuff. Like even driving home yesterday from Summit Point, I saw a Bentley hardtop convertible and he was trying to put it up, you know, while he was going down the road.

And I’m like. I mean, I mean, I guess it’s cool, but like even those cars, like there’s all the convertible Bentleys and rolls and all those British cars, but they’re not on the list because they don’t meet the price point for another couple of years when the bottom falls out of them.

Crew Chief Brad: If you’re looking for, [00:30:00] it’s going to be your only car, then I can see the appeal to the hard top.

Cause you’re making a compromise,

Crew Chief Eric: but

Crew Chief Brad: if it’s like a third or fourth car, it’s going to be a toy. I don’t think anything beats a rag top. I just think, I think they, the right car with the rag top just looks cool. It’s just, they’re just great. Like Eric was saying, throwing the, throwing the top back at any moment.

Like some of them, they’re all manual tops. I hate to go back to the Miata, but like a Miata is just a manual top. You literally reach up, you unclip two things and throw it back yourself. I mean, I think, I like the, the rag top versus the, the hard top. Now, granted the SL that I mentioned earlier was a hard top.

I don’t think they had the rag top in that year that I was looking at. I’m a fan of the rag tops.

John Caffese: There were rag tops up until 2002.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, and I’m talking about the 2003s with the motor. Well, I mean, if that that goes into a different range now, but I was thinking the ones that they [00:31:00] used to race against the Terminator Mustangs all the time.

There were the forum debates about what’s better the Terminator Mustang, or the SL 55. That generation of SL 55 had the Supercharged. Yeah. Also

John Caffese: supercharged. Yeah, they had the E55 and all that stuff in there. So, I mean, the SLK AMGs Starting from the first ones were supercharged, but then in 05 or 06, they went to the 5.

5 NA V8, which is awesome. The downside, it was automatic only. But it’s essentially a Cobra, a modern day Cobra. Very tiny car, front heavy, big motor, lots of torque, super light.

Crew Chief Eric: Negative. Negative. Negative. The only modern day Cobra.

John Caffese: That’s a great point. So what can you get like a mid 90s Viper for now? So I looked

Crew Chief Eric: because, you know, I argue with Andrew all the time about this and, you know, he’s, he’s changing cars constantly.

He just got that Elise, which is also an open air [00:32:00] experience, right? With a very, it’s, it’s, it. You know, incredible cosmic power in an itty, itty, itty, bitty living space. But, you know, he and I go back and forth. I was there, I make it feel like I was in Detroit when it happened, but we were all of the age when the Viper was released.

And you saw Iacocca and Carroll Shelby on stage together with the very first Viper. And you’re like, What am I seeing? Like, what is this? This car is from Star Trek, right? I mean, it was, it was so modern until you boiled it down and realized underneath it’s a truck and it’s basically a Cobra all over again, you know, 40 years later, no assists, no ABS, it’s bonkers, but it’s a timeless.

Design. It still looks good today. You get a really well cleaned, maintained, even some subtle changes, like going to the bigger wheels on the gen one vipers. They just look fantastic. Right now, Andrew’s of the camp of the gen twos, I guess you are the Mercedes built, uh, vipers. And I’m just like, man, To me, [00:33:00] it’s like I’m looking at the front of a school bus.

I don’t like the big flat nose. I don’t like the length and the width of them. You know, there’s something to be said about that V10 though. You’re looking for sound. That’s hard to beat.

John Caffese: The thing is though, who’s buying that? I think that’s the same person that’s seeking it out. You’re seeking out the Defender, the 348 or the 60s thing.

So if I was the, you know, Joe Blow and I had. 000 to spend realistically, and maybe, or maybe even a little more like we talked about. Am I buying an early to mid 90s car that could kill me? Or am I going to go down to the lot and pick up that M3, pick up that E class convertible? Which is a rack top, you know that could have a v8 in it tough sell or I could buy a brand new Four cylinder mustang, but I know that’s why we were saying, uh v8 for the experience But that four banger makes more power than the 90s mustang anyway, especially

Crew Chief Eric: with the power pack.

Yeah, absolutely So the thing about the viper though is if you look at the price point of the targa [00:34:00] viper Which it comes with its issues, right if you really dive into those cars, they don’t have windows The door handles on the outside don’t exist. That’s why you really don’t have the one. You got to be able to reach in there to do stuff.

They’re quirky. They’re not fully thought out until they hit about 97, 98, 99. At that point, you’re already about five years into the, into the run or into the build of that car because the, the GTS coupe had come out. And so they made all these changes to them and they, then those changes kind of trickled down to the Targa until they finally got rid of the target.

Now, that being said, if you look at the price point value for money, I mean, you’re talking a nineties. You know, I guess it would be considered a really high performance sports car. ’cause it’s not in the supercar category quite yet. Right. Because now we have high performance sports car supercar, hypercar, and God knows whatever adds after that.

But you can pick up a Gen one viper for about 20 5K all day long. I search for ’em on the regular just because it helps my boyish fantasy. But. It’s one of those cars that for 25k [00:35:00] versus the Ferrari that we started talking about, I can buy two in, in, in comparison, right? And have a parts car if I needed it.

So for me, being a wrench turner, I’d be okay with it. And I kind of want that brutal experience that the Viper brings. Like, it’s like, come on, man, send it. I want you to try to kill me. Secretly, I want to learn to tame that car, but you know, we’ll, we’ll get there eventually. That’s probably a topic for another day, but I still think the Viper could be a contender, but it’s a very long reach for that everyday cruiser jump in and go have fun car because I think there are some maintenance issues there with the car longer term.

John Caffese: So before we go to, uh, into the weeds and we can talk about this all night, I don’t want this to run on forever. So it’s too long for anyone to listen to. I have three. Uh, questions I want to ask either of you, either of you, all of you. And then, uh, I think we’ll all answer it real quickly. So we’re talking about some convertibles and we brought, we brought up a two seat first, uh, four seat.

So what would be your preference, uh, or your [00:36:00] recommendation to someone who’s saying, Hey, I’m looking for a second vehicle convertible. And then obviously because the chassis that you’re going to look at, whether it’s a, a two plus two or just a two seaters different me, I’m thinking verbal, I’m thinking open air experience.

While some of the two bucks twos are in the SUVs with a choice. I’m going with a two seater.

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, I’m going with a four seater

Crew Chief Eric: Okay, and I guess I’m going with whatever suits my wallet at this point I’m not partial. I don’t really care. I

John Caffese: think you can find things that fit the wallet in either category How about Eric personally? What would Eric personally? So

Crew Chief Eric: there’s a difference if I’m recommending for you like I have something in mind that I think fits All the criteria, and we can talk about that towards the end of the segment.

But for me personally, if I’m just buying for myself, the Fiat 1 24, both new and old. Um, I’m a big fan of nine 14, but then I already have one. So it’s like whatever. I [00:37:00] like the nine 11 targets, but I’m partial to the 9 64, which is your 1989 to 1992 timeframe with the three six, I’m. Outside of that, I’m actually okay with the Mark 3 or Mark 3 and a half VW Cabrios, the ones that look like a Mark 4, and they’re actually not, because a lot of guys do VR6 swaps on those.

They’re a lot of fun once you get them straightened out, all that kind of stuff.

John Caffese: Even the backseat on that is tiny.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I’m not but I don’t care. I can put the kids in the back still but I’m not putting four grown adults in that car Another one. I actually enjoyed driving. I got a chance to drive for a little over a week Uh while I was in san diego was a convertible beetle with the five cylinder As weird as that sounds that car checked all the boxes.

It was the simplicity of you know Crank the handle throw the top back plenty of power plenty of torque came in a manual Decent gas mileage. It was a great everyday car, you know, if it was just you so Missing three cylinders. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I am a big fan of [00:38:00] the 94 audi cabrio The one that looks like the coupe quattro, but they chopped the top off of it Which it is basically the same car that came with the v6 Sadly, it has a terrible automatic transmission strapped to it, but that’s easily remedied I think in addition to that the only

John Caffese: two or four two

Crew Chief Eric: seats or four seats Oh, I don’t care either.

I’m fine.

Crew Chief Brad: But let me clarify why I said four, since there was that awkward silence, you all were expecting me to say more. And I thought I was just answering a question, but anyway,

John Caffese: I

Crew Chief Brad: answered the question. That’s all I was required to do. But for anybody that doesn’t know me. I’m six foot four and 300 pounds, so most of the two seaters, I’m not going to fit.

I don’t care how far the seat goes back or whatever. I’m not going to make it. So I’m looking, the two plus two at least gives me room to put the seat back a little further. [00:39:00] Uh, and to go with what Eric was saying, you know, if I’m going to list some of the convertibles that are on my, my hot list, the defender, the Wrangler, uh, are the two biggest ones.

Cause right now I’m on a big four by four kick and I miss my TJ. Really, I, I miss it a lot. Uh, that, that’ll go into another segment, you know, and another podcast later also. Funny enough, I want like a seventies beetle convertible.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. The super bees.

John Caffese: Yeah. And,

Crew Chief Brad: and then I want a sixties Impala convertible.

John Caffese: So if, if size wasn’t the issue, Brad, let’s just say theoretically you didn’t have fit issues or the cars that you had, or you’ve been in two seats, uh, that you have fitted. I mean, what would your preference be? I think his preference would be to be six inches short. No, no, no, no. I don’t think, I don’t think that, I don’t think he’d give that up.

Crew Chief Brad: No, I want to be, I want to be taller. Um, no, [00:40:00] I, I, my preference is still four seater. Okay. So my second

John Caffese: question on the, on the two or three, I’m going to ask you guys, we’ll start with Eric. Um, of the, some of the cars that we’ve listed, obviously we’re talking about experiences and uh, open air has been a big thing.

And let’s go back to kind of why we pegged herself on, on eight cylinders. It was for sound so I’ll open it up to non 8 cylinders But of those things what would be especially the ones we’ve talked about but this way we don’t have to bring up something else

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, so it would

John Caffese: be a motor that’s like hey, listen, that’s just got a very distinct sound I think I have some ideas where you’re gonna go.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah yeah, I mean the first thing out of my mouth is gonna be vr6 just because You know, it’s in the blood. There are two other cars on my list that I didn’t mention. And they’re basically the same car, right? One is vintage and one is modern. The Carmen Ghia convertible, which I adore those cars, coupe and convertible and the TT, right.

And, you know, I already have a coupe, so it’d be kind of cool to have a convertible. The sound of the one eight turbo, if you get the right exhaust, something from maybe from tectonics or something like that, they actually sound really good. [00:41:00] The stuff we run at the track, it’s loud for the sake of being loud.

Right? So the VR has got a great sound, but if I had to really funnel in on a car, especially on eight cylinders, I’m going there, right? If I had to be reasonable about my purchase and say, I want something fun. It checks the box. There are four or five cars on that list. Fox body Mustang, because the five Oh back then sounds fantastic with the proper exhaust.

And I would actually venture to say the C4 Corvette convertible, even though styling wise, it’s, it’s, it’s still very Knight Rider and that’s fine. But the C5 convertible is another option because those motors sound great. You could also, Brad’s like falling out of his chair because I’m recommending a Chevy.

Crew Chief Brad: Nobody, nobody chooses the Barbie Corvette willingly. What the heck is wrong with you?

John Caffese: So, uh, clarify on the C 4, are we talking the Gen 1, Gen 2 small block, or are we talking [00:42:00] like the LT 1, the original LT 1? Which was still calculated as a small block, but it definitely had the crossfire in it. Ignition and that they do have a distinct sound

Crew Chief Eric: so I would usually defer to Mountain Bay and band to answer that question But in my personal case if it was my c4 Corvette I would probably ditch all that Have an LS2 in it or I would put a ZR original ZR1 motor in there right something like that because I can’t leave anything alone But to add to that list, factory five Cobra, like Andrew Mason has, that is definitely an option because I actually read it and they, and Dan reader and they come up on the list.

When you search like cars. com in that criteria that I said, manual transmission with a V8 convertible under 45 K. You can actually pick up replica Cobras for under 30. So I was like value for money. And you want to, if you’re building

John Caffese: one done, you can’t do it.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m saying buying one, buying one ready to go.

Right. So for under 30, it’s actually, it’s a car that gets people’s attention. If that’s what you’re looking for. It, it checks all the boxes. Now you [00:43:00] have to respect that car. And I will say they handle better from what I understand than the original AC Cobras and all that kind of stuff. Other two chassis cars.

I would hope so. And they have some advantages and modernizations and all that kind of stuff. So it’s a very much more tame car compared to the original, right? So that’s on my list, but I, you know, to kind of drive the point home again, being the responsible adult I have inevitably become, I guess, regrettably I have to argue for the S five 50.

Coyote powered mustang convertible.

John Caffese: I do like the way the coyotes sound. They have a certain spaceship sound to them that I just love I don’t know what it is. So brad, what would be a motor? preferably a va that Get your get your willies going the most of maybe something we talked about or that we didn’t That is an open air experience.

You would you would enjoy maybe it’s a really cheap

Crew Chief Brad: the

John Caffese: The 50

Crew Chief Brad: mustangs Are they, I mean, there’s nothing that sounds like them. [00:44:00] Uh, the five Oh Mustang convertible is just the early nineties, the Fox body, not, and then the. An impala a 60s impala with a big block.

John Caffese: Yeah a big block definitely has yeah That’s fantastic.

Like a

Crew Chief Brad: 454 496 big old cam

John Caffese: and yeah cam with like 800 lift and some something something

Crew Chief Brad: lopey You know, it’s got a nice little lobe to it But it but it’s not like too bad where it’s undrivable in the street. Um something with a little bit of lope and it gets 200 horsepower because that’s how the big blocks work, right?

So,

John Caffese: uh, uh, very I can smell the how rich it’s running. So it idles super 60s drag strip Like every shit you’ve ever been around, right? Yeah, basically so or if I just pulled, you know spark plug on Any modern v8 But I will say

Crew Chief Brad: I will say In current times like what’s going what’s out for sale now [00:45:00] and over the last say 10 to 15 years I don’t think there’s anything out there that sounds better than the mercedes amg v8s.

John Caffese: That is a hard

Crew Chief Brad: sound

John Caffese: to beat They definitely have a distinct thump to them So my answer is going to be kind of obvious my original then I got two or three Run the reps. So obviously any, the Dino style V eight Ferraris. ’cause in a four 30, it was a clean sheet. It’s not the, the Dino, uh, engine from the seventies all the way up to, I think the, the 3 55 ended in 2000 or 99.

99. So, but the 360 ran to oh five or oh four. Uh, and those were the last ones of those motors. So any, any any car that you picked there? Probably a 3 55. We’re 348, uh, 355 or the 360 specifically because they have the five valve. So they just the 9000 rpm They absolutely scream, uh people in my family have them.

You guys have heard it It’s ridiculously loud, but it’s so butter smooth It sounds like an f1 car going down the road now Not everyone’s can of [00:46:00] worms sounds like two motorbikes going side by side Sometimes it’s a little tinny a little raspy not everyone’s into that. I love it screaming. I just It sounds cool.

Uh kind of why believe it or not. I like the vq So the vq sounds very similar to that. It’s got that that certain how uh, even the vr6 has a very Rolling house similar to that. Yeah, it’s kind of you know, the vq and some of the ferrari motors are a little more. Uh, Shrill, which I like I will agree that the amgs have an awesome sound to it.

Uh, very smooth Um, but I will say that The newer Chevy lt. One motors actually sound different than the lss. I had an LT one and a C seven Corvette, and the thing that absolutely rustles my Jimmy’s is I remember in geez, 2014 or 2015, I was down at Daytona for the Rolex and the C seven R had just came.

And I’m listening to it go by and for some reason it can be in a pack of cars and I can hear that distinctly from [00:47:00] everything else. They just sounded like hammers hitting the ground. And uh, I really believe having, having one and having heard others, especially ones with exhaust at the factory LT cars, whether it be the new Camaro or the new Corvette.

Certainly have that very distinct sound different from the ls’s which was different than the small block More of the style brad was talking about the lumpy, but they’re still very smooth and they rev And I think they just they have a different base to them I can’t define it, but I think those that sounds

Crew Chief Eric: it just dawned on me john You’ve been talking about ferraris.

I thought you said fierro Isn’t that a target as well? Yeah, it could.

John Caffese: So, doesn’t have a V8 in it, luckily. Does have a V6. Can’t supercharge him. I mean, you can put a Ferrari body kit or V8 body kit on it. Fierro’s, listen, we’ve had a few come out to the track on the rated car. I mean, if you want to feed out 124, you get yourself a FIERA.

FIERA

Crew Chief Eric: X9,

Crew Chief Brad: right?

John Caffese: Yeah, right. Wait, wait, wait, wait,

Crew Chief Brad: wait. I interrupt this podcast with a special announcement. Oh boy. [00:48:00] Cadillac

John Caffese: XLR.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh God.

John Caffese: So that was actually the Northstar motor. It didn’t, so the Cadillac XLR, for people who don’t know, it’s a hardtop convertible. It’s a C5 underneath, even though it was around during the years of the crossover from C5 to C6.

But it’s a Northstar motor, so you don’t have to change the oil. For what they say, like a hundred thousand miles, they can go without oil. Like you won’t have it

Crew Chief Brad: long enough.

John Caffese: It wouldn’t go a hundred thousand miles before you had gas. My

Crew Chief Eric: big problem with the XLR is they took a C5. And ran it through the same software that they use to produce max headroom and we ended up with that car I mean like who designed that thing, you know,

John Caffese: I just don’t get it On one hand you have to look at the xlr and go what was cadillac thinking right on the other hand You have to you got to give credit to the xlr.

They were going where an uncharted territory and most importantly You’ll remember tim allen came out and was the one who announced this that was the first v car for cadillac

Crew Chief Eric: That’s

John Caffese: true. So [00:49:00] that launched their whole brand And the Cadillac XLRVs are supercharged, North Stars, and um, Supposed to be doing the same thing with that Blackwing motor, and then

Crew Chief Eric: And I know we’re supposed to be circling back to a conclusion here, which we will never I got

John Caffese: one more question for ya, and that one question, why don’t you finish, go ahead.

Crew Chief Eric: So, but I was gonna say, there are some other cars that we’re probably not even thinking about, like, it kinda popped into my head, the uh In in britain, it was the voxel insignia, which was sold here as the buick regal But the regal convertible if you’re just looking for something, I don’t want to call it run of the mill But if you’re looking at something somewhat stylish Reasonably priced you could pick up new that’s also another option and it does come with a six cylinder gm6.

I have uh, I mean You can, what is it, the

John Caffese: Cascada, where it’s a cruise? Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: something like that.

John Caffese: I think the Cascada is an Eos or a Beetle, if they still made them, or a Murano, believe it or not, if you wanted to go that route.

Crew Chief Eric: But I mean, for the listening audience, I think we, as you mentioned, we’re enthusiasts.

So we’re always kind of thinking [00:50:00] German or thinking very high end American, but there are other options to this, you know, there’s

John Caffese: a, there’s a, what was it? The Toyota Solaris is a two door Camry, a drop top, fantastic car will last forever. It’s super soft. It’s perfect for a rental fleet and you can have that in your driveway too, for about 10 bucks.

That’s the truth, right? I mean, the oil change will be more than, uh, than the car and it’ll have as much personality as, um, your dead grandfather. So, um, so my last question I’m going to circle back is. You’re gonna have to pick uh, it’s somewhat of a conclusive one because even that’s going to take some time Of all the things we talked about we wanted to go Hey, what’s like a blue collar car that can go out with a max max max of fifty thousand dollars preferably less Convertible that had a v8 in it all the other options automatic two seat four seat suv [00:51:00] Whatever open air motoring v8, right?

That was our thing under fifty thousand dollars I think there’s two picks here for each person. So i’ll start with mine So i’m going to go with my enthusiast and which would also be my personal pick Which as we mentioned before it’s probably going to be any car from modena that you can afford that’s not a mondial Because that’s just terrible but you want to pick a 308 be magnum pi you want to pick a 328 and be silly I think the 348 or 355s you can find one of them price range would be a little more beat up But that’s really an enthusiast car checks all the boxes.

It’s open air sounds absolutely wicked It will drain your wallet as fast as it drains the gas tank though. So that’s something you just got to be aware of. But I mean, driver experience, which is what we’re like really getting at, driver experience, I think it’s second to none. And I don’t think you’re going to lose any money on it as far as the value of the car.

I think you’ll be in that car whenever you pay for it. I think, so I think the only money you’ll lose on that is the operating costs and the maintenance on it. Because if you buy a 348 today for 45, 000, you’re going to sell it in four or five years for 45, [00:52:00] 000. Uh, regardless of you brought 2000 or probably 15, 000 miles on it, which would be a lot.

I mean, that’d be three, 4, 000 miles a year, which on those cars are a lot. Um, if I were to buy one, I’d probably be doing about five to 6, 000, maybe 3, 000 miles on it a year. It’s about what I do in a toy car is now, especially with the street car. If I wanted to do something a little more mainstream, something that had Bluetooth, something that had heated seats, something a little more comfortable, or I just, Hey, I can.

You know, it’s a nice day out. I can drive it to work three, four days a week if I wanted to, I could take it to the beach, I could park it in the supermarket and go to CVS and not care about dinging it up or every person asking me a question, whether it’s a Thunderbird or, uh, an older British tank that’s going to get a lot of attention or a bright red Ferrari.

I’m going to go with the, uh, the E92 M3. Hard top. I can live with that on a daily basis if I wanted to. It goes up and down. The three series they’re they’re very plain in their execution so that they get a lot of uh, Rib, they get ribbed for that Uh, but that’s a good thing in this scenario because it’s not going to be a ton of problems The bmws have some [00:53:00] issues, but they’re pretty straightforward Cars been around long enough where a lot of the problems are easily solved.

It’s we’re not figuring things out anymore We know which ones to avoid. We wouldn’t know which ones to find Your wife could drive it. I say that in the sense that anyone can drive it. So if they don’t drive A stick, it’s not a problem. There’s a really good transmission there. It’s not just some slush box.

If you don’t want the rattles of a rag top, you’ve got the hard top. It’s a V8, it’s bad on gas, seats four, it’s got a nice trunk. I mean, you can drive across country with it. You can drive. Um, it’d be perfect one lap of america car if you want to do a convertible So it’ll go on track and go there and realistically they’re way under budget, right?

So you could probably get a really nice example for 25 30 and have some money left over if you had to spend that extra money If you had a 45 000 hour cash or check that you absolutely had to spend You could spend another five ten thousand dollars on the car making it your own whether you do some wheels or some suspension or whatnot but I think [00:54:00] Generally speaking the type of people that were recommending these two aren’t necessarily doing that.

So hey, listen save some money Get a cool car that looks a lot more expensive than it is because it’s still a bmw It’s still only last year’s bmw. The g20 just came out So really it’s only a generation old even though technically it’s two but most the general public won’t know that they all look the same And then you go from there.

So my my personal enthusiast pick would be Probably 348. I think the the run of the mill If I were to say, Hey, I want to look at a convertible. I wanted to be eight. I wanted to sound cool. I’d say, go get yourself an M92, M3 and my runner up, which we didn’t talk about would be any, uh, C5, C6, C7 Corvette that you can find in the price range with a target top.

You pick your styling. They’re all truck motors, which stop transmissions and do smokey burnouts. So just pick one that you like.

Crew Chief Brad: So for me, I’m going to break it down to off roader, low and slow, and just street cruiser. So for the off roader, [00:55:00] obviously I want to do a defender, like a 90s defender, or a TJ.

Uh, Wrangler with a motor swap, probably an LS one because they’re, they’re, you can, they can be had for relatively cheap and they, there’s all kinds of kids out there, you know, that fit right in for the low and slow. I’m thinking like a 60s and it’s a low and slow a and B. It’s a 60s Impala or 60s Lincoln Continental.

Nice. Um, the, the suicide suicide doors. I don’t know. I don’t know if a well, yeah, I don’t know if a well sorted one’s going to be in the budget. Um, those cars are pretty desirable, especially after entourage came out. So,

John Caffese: so a decent one is about 25, 30, 000. I know. Cause I, I look constantly because I love those cars.

Crew Chief Brad: Okay. So, so then, yeah, that, that, that ticks all the boxes for me also for just. Regular cruiser, drop top, turnkey, you go to the dealership, pick one up anywhere, the SL Mercedes with the V8, it doesn’t [00:56:00] necessarily have to be an AMG, probably without the AMG moniker makes it better for daily driver use. Uh, and parts are going to be a little bit cheaper because it doesn’t have the AMG tax and things like that I think the SL Mercedes of the 2000s the early 2000s I think those are my picks.

John Caffese: They like invented sporty convertibles the SLs in the 50s I will do

Crew Chief Brad: an honorable mention and it’s going to be a 50 fox body mustang of the yeah the fox body generation Sam is so proud of you right now. So

John Caffese: Brad, a T top Fox body or a soft top rag top Fox body?

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, I said Fox body Mustang T tops only look right on Camaros.

You know, the mullet’s got a flow in the wind behind you.

John Caffese: Oh man.

Crew Chief Eric: I love

John Caffese: me

Crew Chief Eric: an

John Caffese: iron,

Crew Chief Eric: but go ahead, Eric. All right. So I’m going to lead with my number one pick for anybody that’s looking for a turnkey [00:57:00] vert in the last four years. That’s gotta be an S five 50 coyote powered five Oh Mustang. It’s a handsome looking car.

It looks good. As a coupe, it looks as good as a convertible. And a lot of people say, no, it doesn’t, but I actually, I’ve looked at them over and over the silhouette of the car is fantastic. It doesn’t lose any of the appeal that the coupe has. It’s got all the same packaging, all the same, uh, you know, electronic stuff, all the creature comforts, everything you could ask for is in that.

Mustang, right? At the end of the day, that for me checks every box on the list and Ford warranty and everything else that comes with that. Right. And I could go buy one today. Unlike the M three where I have to go hunt for one, the Mustangs are more plentiful. They’re just, they’re everywhere. And the price point is well under the tip, the MSRP.

That you put out in terms of what your budget was. So I think, again, the Mustang comes in a variety of colors. If they made a GT three 50 convertible version, sign me up, you know, with that flat plane crank, you can’t beat that sound. I’m sorry. That would be 70 or 80, 000, [00:58:00] but you get my point though. Right?

So there’s a lot of things you can do with the Mustang. The other thing I look at is. I’m not a fan of the hard top. Like we talked about the soft top is fine for me, but the aftermarket following for the Mustang is also much larger than every car we’ve talked about here, there’s wheel packages, brake packages, stuff you can swap.

Uh, you want body kits, you want wings, you want, it doesn’t matter. You want bling it’s available. Right. So I also look at it from that perspective because everybody wants to. Personalize their car. The E92 M3 is an example. It’s a solid car. It’s a solid choice, but you’re limited to what you can do. And you’re also still running around in those kind of German circles of, if you can’t get the parts from Bimmer world or ECS is the only place you’re going to get the parts for him, right?

Ford. I can, I can get parts for that car and maintain it at every seven, 11 in every state, right? It doesn’t matter.

John Caffese: You can buy a Coyote from Walmart.

Crew Chief Eric: Right. Personal, like, this is the car I have to have because I’m having an absolute midlife crisis. There’s really three of them in [00:59:00] that category for me.

The Factory 5 Cobra, the Dodge Viper Gen 1, and the Fiat 124 Abarth, right? But that’s a personal, guilty pleasure. I’m losing my mind and I have to have a convertible car. All of those fit those price points, but if I have to stay true to my roots And pick a VAG product, I would get an S5 Cabrio with, if the manual is an option, I would do it with the V8, but I have to have the chains fixed, right?

And the chain guides fixed. Immediately. Right. It’s like a 911 with the IMS bearings and stuff, right? So what year did they switch to the

John Caffese: supercharged motor? The three oh

Crew Chief Eric: that well, 13. Yeah. B. I don’t remember. I don’t, I I’ve, I’ve separated myself from the B six, seven, eight, nine, 10, whatever the heck they are now.

Yeah. But, but I just know that, you know, those, those four, two motors, when they’re taken care of, they’re actually quite reliable. They make good power. It’s easy to get 400 out of them, especially if you do like an RS chip and stuff like that. [01:00:00] So those are

John Caffese: what? 8, 000

Crew Chief Eric: RPM, 85. Yeah. They spin pretty hard.

John Caffese: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: And the other thing is you can get them with Quattro so you can actually use it in the wintertime. So I see that for me, it’s also a four seater, a two plus two, uh, so you can use that even to cart the family around and use it as an everyday car, even as a convertible. So that pretty much, you know, kind of wraps up my thing, but I, I would still, if I’m recommending for somebody else, it’s really hard to beat that Ford when you really look at it compared to everything else we’ve talked about here.

John Caffese: I think the S5 is a fantastic choice. I know we didn’t talk about it much. Um, I’m surprised you don’t have one right now. I may, I, you know, hopefully I see you this weekend. You might be driving up on one that we flushed it out and realize how much sense it makes for you and your life. But, uh, no guys, I enjoyed it a bunch.

I know we could talk all night about this. Hopefully we can pick some other topics or get back from everyone else and see what they say. Thank

Crew Chief Brad: you for being on as well. We appreciate you. I

John Caffese: appreciate being out. [01:01:00] So as long as I’m around, hopefully I can, I can help you guys out.

Crew Chief Eric: Absolutely. And this is a lot more civil than some of the conversations go on Slack.

So I really enjoyed this. But with that, let me close with something real quick. I want to make sure the listeners understand, you know, uh, where, where we are on things here as a full disclaimer, GTMs, high level assessment of all the cars we’ve talked about is based on our member and ownership experiences.

And we urge you to do your own research and fact checking before committing to any one vehicle. GTM is not responsible for your satisfaction, happiness, or overall track experience. with the vehicle that you choose. Make sure to visit some vehicle specific online forums and or owners clubs for highly detailed and firsthand information on any vehicle you might be interested in.

Crew Chief Brad: Did John write that for you?

Crew Chief Eric: No, no, no.

Crew Chief Brad: He is the resident law lawyer in the group. The

John Caffese: consigliere, yes. I got one question for Brad. When you’re rolling in your five Oh, who are you listening to?

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, wow. [01:02:00] Snoop.

John Caffese: No, it’s gotta be Vanilla Ice, man, you’re cruising in your 5 0. No, I’m

Crew Chief Brad: cruising in my 6 4. My 6 4. Oh,

Crew Chief Eric: alright, Dr.

Dre. Double dub. And on that bombshell, I guess we’ll end it. Peace.

Crew Chief Brad: See y’all later.

Crew Chief Eric: You’ve heard us say it many times before. Without members like you, none of this would be possible. GTM also relies on its sponsors and partners in order to achieve all of its goals. We wanted to take a moment to do a quick shout out to all of our affiliates out there. Chazz has used auto parts, hooked on driving, AutoFab race cars, OG Racing, Battery Warehouse, Radial Tire, RLC Automotive Industries, Crutchfield Decals and Numbers, Brian Schad Photography, Auto Italia, Ultimate Outlaws, Breach Tech Solutions, TLCT [01:03:00] MotorWorks, and Fontana Web Designs.

Without you guys, it really wouldn’t be possible. And if you’re interested in becoming a supporter of GTM, you can always look to our website and become a Patreon member, but also go to www. gtmotorsports. org under About and look up Sponsors and Partners for additional information surrounding advertising.

From all of us at GTM. Thank you for your support.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out at www. gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on Instagram at grandtouringmotorsports. 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 listeners, Crew Chief Eric here. Do you like what you’ve seen, heard, and read from GTM? Great. So do we, and we have a lot of fun doing it, but please remember we’re fueled by volunteers and remain a [01:04:00] no annual fee organization, but we still need help to keep the momentum going.

Learn More

What else should you buy? Check out other What Should I Buy? Podcast episodes for more car buying “advice” 😉 And remember: the debate never ends – it just shifts gears.

The Middle Ground: Factory Five Cobras, ’50s Cruisers, & Modern Muscle

As the debate unfolds, the panel explores the “middle zone” of the V8 convertible universe:

Factory Five Cobra: A modern take on the classic, with big power and raw driving feel.
1955 Ford Thunderbird, Pontiac Catalina, Packard Caribbean: Stylish cruisers with manual gearboxes and big V8s.
Restomods: Tastefully updated classics with modern EFI, suspension, and A/C.

These cars offer character, sound, and style—but they’re not casual buys. You have to want them.

The Modern Picks: BMW E92 M3, SL55 AMG, Mustang GT, Audi S5

For those who want comfort, reliability, and Bluetooth, the panel recommends:

BMW E92 M3 Convertible: Hardtop, V8, DCT or manual, usable rear seats, and prices starting around $18K.
Mercedes SL55 AMG: Supercharged V8, luxury cruiser, and surprisingly affordable.
Ford Mustang GT (S550): Coyote V8, great sound, massive aftermarket, and everyday usability.
Audi S5 Cabrio: Quattro grip, V8 or supercharged V6, and understated style.

These are the cars you can buy today, drive tomorrow, and enjoy without worrying about engine-out services or Lucas electronics.

The Oddballs: Murano CrossCabriolet, Land Rover Defender, VW Beetle

No GTM debate is complete without some curveballs:

Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet: So bad it’s good. Maybe.
Land Rover Defender: British charm, Buick V8, and off-road cred.
VW Beetle Convertible (5-cylinder): Surprisingly fun and practical.

Sound Matters: The Best V8 Noises

When it comes to audible joy, the panel agrees:

Ferrari V8s (348, 355, 360): High-revving screamers.
AMG V8s: Deep, thunderous, and unmistakable.
Chevy LT1s and LS engines: Hammering torque and classic rumble.
Fox Body Mustangs: Raw, lopey, and nostalgic.

Final Picks: What Would You Recommend?

Each panelist wraps with their top choices:

John: Ferrari 348 for the enthusiast; E92 M3 for the practical buyer.
Brad: SL Mercedes for comfort; 60s Impala or Lincoln Continental for style; Wrangler or Defender for off-road fun.
Eric: S550 Mustang GT for all-around value; Factory Five Cobra or Gen 1 Viper for personal indulgence; Audi S5 for Euro flair.

Don’t agree, let’s agree to disagree? Come share your opinions and continue the conversation on the Break/Fix Discord!

Whether you want a boulevard cruiser, a backroad bomber, or a rolling conversation starter, the key is knowing your budget, your wrenching tolerance, and your driving goals. And remember: you don’t casually buy a Ferrari or a hot rod. You seek them out.

Guest Co-Host: John Caffese

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

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

1...484950...59 Page 49 of 59

<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

Notable builds from this Season

Season 2.5 😉

And to Mike, Connor, Avery and the entire RVR team … we wish you the best of luck during these trying times. #staysafe.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Notes

What Makes WDCR HPDE Unique?

Transcript

Highlights

Track Night vs. HPDE: What’s the Difference?

What Do You Need to Get Started?

Is It Safe?

Why Choose WDCR SCCA HPDE?

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

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Showcase

Automotive, EV & Car-Adjacent News

Domestics

EVs & Concepts

Formula One

Lost & Found

Did You know… Tom Cruise, raced for Nissan?

Lower Saxony

Lowered Expectations

Squarebody Chevy, hauls 32,000 pounds of wood.

Check out how a tire works, from the inside!

Lego working Rotary

XXL lego go-kart

Motorsports

Rich People Thangs!

Stellantis

Tesla

TRANSCRIPT

Highlights

Would you like fries with that?

There's more to this story!

Other episodes that aired this month…

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

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Spotlight

Highlights

Transcript

Learn More

The MINI Curse Begins

There's more to this story!

As Eric put it, “Friends are the family you choose.” And in the GTM community, the Latton Lads are family.

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

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Spotlight

Notes

Transcript

Highlights

Learn More

Drive Your Car with CHIN Track Days

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

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Bathurst or Bust!

Kiwis & Koffee

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

#tbt Mike’s Original GTM Bio!

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

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Highlights

Transcript

Learn More

What about the Crew Chiefs?

Honorable Mentions & Deep Cuts

🏁 Final Lap: What We Learned

There's more to this story!

Brad

Crutch

Crew Chief Eric

Mountain Man Dan

Thanks to our panel of Petrol-heads!

Guest Co-Host: Daniel Stauffer

Guest Co-Host: Mike Crutchfield

Guest Co-Host: Matthew Yip

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

GTMSpreading Motorsports Enthusiasm - since 2014

GTMSpreading Motorsports Enthusiasm - since 2014

GTMSpreading Motorsports Enthusiasm - since 2014

**As Eric put it, “Friends are the family you choose.” And in the GTM community, the Latton Lads are family.**