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A conversation about cars, trucks, tugs and other machines of transport that flows like an ADHD fever dream, hosted by Hoonigan co-founder and 321 Action Action director Brian Scotto. Enjoy, it’s gonna be a bizarre ride.
Speaker 1 00:00
Welcome back to another episode of Very Vehicular. As always, I'm your host Brian Scotto, and today's episode was previously recorded as a live stream on YouTube, but we figured we'd prep it for you guys on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and anywhere else you listen to podcasts. So enjoy this one again. Like I said, it's a little rough around the edges because we did this one live. Oh, and one last thing: there are no ads in this episode, but I do want to thank all of our partners. So big shout out to FCP Euro, Wearer Tools, Heatwave Visual, obviously and always the boys over at KW Automotive, and lastly a new partner who has just joined GT Technic. Because according to Vinny, I need to wash my car more. Anyway, enjoy the episode. Welcome back to another episode of Very Vehicular with me, Brian Scotto, and this one today is a live show. That's right, we're doing it live. Yeah, so here's the thing: I was up in Toronto for the premiere of Sun Kang's Drifter film, which I did all of the action work on, so all the drifting scenes and stuff like that, my team put together, which was really rad to see that on the big screen. But that meant that we weren't able to get an episode put together this week, so I figured, you know what? Let's let's try a live stream. So we're figuring this out as we go, and we're gonna yeah we're gonna make this up. So look to start. Let us know in the let us know in the chat if you guys are hearing any issues or seeing any problems or anything like that. Otherwise, yeah, we're just gonna get after it. So to start, actually, I kind of want to talk about Tiff because it was it was a really good weekend. It was really cool to be able to go and see this thing that you know we all put a ton of work into, and actually got to see it, you know, like on a big screen. I have been making action films, especially Jim Khana films, forever, and this was the first time that I got to see it on a screen that big. We've premiered Jim Conna films before on larger screens, but nothing like this. Like this was like the you know it was at a it was at the Scotia Bank theaters in Toronto, which is like you know full size theater. This was in the theater one, so it was the largest theater in the building, and it was just massive. So it was cool to see that all come together. The only downside was I really wish my whole team was there. Unfortunately, the second unit gang, Will Rogie, and and that whole crew were were unable to make it up to Toronto for the event. But yeah, it was it was great to see all that. Great to see people actually get to see this event happening. You know, to right right off the bat, right. So, you know, and I think that's the one was like being able to. This was the first time that the public got to see the film, right. So up until this point, it's really just been friends, casting, crew, and things like that. So we got to go through all of that, and it was kind of fun and big hoopla. I actually ended up bringing not only my whole family, but also my mom and dad, and even my in-laws came. And a friend of mine pointed out, like that's that's when you know it's a big event is when you know you even drag your parents and and your wife's parents to an event. So it was fun. It was great to go. From this point forward, I know everyone's been asking me like where this ends up, and I'm not really sure. I don't know. This isn't that's not my part of the job.
Speaker 1 03:48
Like while I am a producer on the film, I my side of the producing really was helping set up all of the different pieces and really sort of put together, you know, how that was all gonna you know all the different car pieces, a lot of the different drivers that were involved, organizing vehicles, organizing where we were going to work, and and organizing what the actual stunts and maneuvers and you know and kind of things were in the film. That's what I was working on. But really, I think that you know, like the rest of it, which is the more behind the business side. I'm not as involved in. I think everyone's hoping that we see this as like a spring or summertime film. Let's be honest, car movies are best released in the time of the year where you can drive your cool car to it. So yeah, looking forward to everyone being able to see it in a theater. And yeah, that was that was Tiff. It was cool. It was. I actually forgot how much I really enjoy Toronto in Canada. We were we were staying at a spot like right there, like right just right outside of the city. It was really cool. I used to spend a lot more time in Toronto when I was on the East Coast. Actually, vacationed a lot there. When I was a kid up in the Algonquin, I know I previously called that Northern Canada, and a lot of people corrected me. So here's a little correction. Apparently, it's only about 250 kilometers north of Toronto, but for you Canadians, um, all of Canada is north to us. So yeah, it's it's just all the same. It's all north and cold. But yeah, anyway, Toronto was really rad. I'm bummed I missed a bunch of the car events that weekend, but like I said, I had family in tow, so it was kind of a little bit of a mini vacation. So anyway, next up, something I want to talk about because when I got back from Toronto, I actually went straight to the airport, and what was waiting for me was a little present from Johnny Lieberman. For those of you who listened to that episode, you know we got into a bit of a debate on really the value of EVs and are they appliances? Are they can they be performance cars? And you know I have really yet to drive an EV that has like really excited me. Like the 5n was probably the best of the vehicles I've driven, just because there weren't so many nannies. I guess there are a ton of nannies in the car, but there was I was able to defeat a lot of them and make them work. So you know that was one of those things where it was you know it was cool to be able to you know like drive that car and be able to slide it around, but I think that you know everyone's talking about Lucid Air Sapphire being like the ultimate. So when I got to the airport, it was there waiting for me to drive. So I picked it up. I drove it home last night. I don't want to give my initial feedback because like I just sat in traffic on the 405, I will say this: I hit the throttle just to kind of get around a car and scared everyone in the car, including myself. Like I could not believe how fast that thing gets up and out. That part was impressive, but I don't know if that's going to make it a driver's car. I'm about to drive it today up to Monterey for grid life, and you know I'll have it up there. It'd be I'll put like six hours on it. So one question is, is like, will the battery last long enough? Which is like one of my biggest complaints is like they don't really make good road trip vehicles. And two, is it thrilling or not? I don't know. Comment. Let me know if this is something that you want me to maybe do like a hybrid podcast on. A lot of people said, "Hey, can you? You know, you do car reviews again. Obviously, that's how I started in this business was writing car reviews for magazines. I don't know.
Speaker 1 07:29
Maybe I'll do like a little hybrid car review slash pod. Maybe I'll bring some other people on who've driven it. Maybe I'll let some friends drive it in the next week, and we can all kind of talk about it. I know the car is old. A lot of people have driven already, but really, my perspective is like the newest thing I own is built in 2004, and it's a van. So most of my cars and the cars I love, like the car I pulled out that's sitting behind me, you know, this morning that would be sitting behind me this morning, is a 1994 Audi RS two, and like that's what is exhilarating to me. That's what like driving feels like. Will this car deliver? I don't know. We'll get to that. So I also have one more piece of homework to do, or I should should say housekeeping to do before we get into like some actual engagement, right? Because the whole point of a live isn't for you guys just to sit here and listen to me. It's for me to you know take your questions, talk through topics we all want to discuss and and all of that. This is a test one. If this works, we'll try maybe bringing other people on for lives. But again, let us know in the live chat. Troy, our new producer, is watching the live chat, so he's noticing if there's any sort of technical issues or anything like that. Call out Troy, so so he sees them. So I actually have another piece of of main of like kind of big announcement, big news. So you know, I do a lot of other stuff other than this podcast, and no, I didn't retire to become a farmer. I actually had someone text me right before the podcast went live that said, "Wait, I thought you were like doing the Clarkson farm route and just not working anymore. It's not true. I left Tune again. I went and I did a year at an animation company where I was a full-time employee as a chief creative officer at Super Plastic, like you know, just doing all of that. And then I left that to start my own production company called 321 Action Action. And a lot of the stuff we do there is like a little bit more behind the scenes. It's consulting work. It's doing productions for you know for commercials, different things like that. Obviously, you guys know stuff like the Last Grumkana with Travis Pastrana, but you know I I actually felt like I was I was missing something in my life because one of the things that was really rad about the days I had at Hoonigan was that there was always this like what do I how can I call it like North Star like there was always a place for the ideas to go. All of my ideas were like how do I move Hoonigan forward? How do we do something new and cool for Hoonigan? How do how do we like any idea was always shaped around the concept of we could. Go do this with Hoonigan. We could go make this cool thing. So, you know, I I was you know in kind of like thinking in the past you know six or seven months while I got to work on some really good projects and you know just transparently I was making enough money to make a living. I just didn't feel like I was doing enough of what I wanted, right? I traded this world at Hunigan where I was making content every day, right? Even if I wasn't in the content, I was involved in every single thing that got made, and you know, I think that this is a big piece of like what I felt was missing was just this constant ability to to make something and to kind of like work on the craft and all of that. I'm really just driven by. I love making stuff. I love like it getting out there. I love people being able to enjoy it and then continuing to fix it and make it better. So I started talking to a bunch of other sort of people, saying, "Hey, can I come and help make content for you?
Speaker 1 10:58
And I actually started talking to a lot of creators, and you guys have heard a lot of those conversations, you know, on the pod here, where I'm going back and forth saying, "Hey, wouldn't it be rad if you and I could put a project together? We could do this, we could do that. But I quickly realized that the kind of one man or kind of one man plus a bunch of freelancer show I was operating at 321, action, action wasn't really going to be enough. So here's the big announcement. The big announcement is I have joined forces with the team over at F equals ma or FMA group, which is force equals mass times acceleration. If you're into physics, and you probably don't know who they are, but they are the group that is currently running Grid Life, Racer, and also ID agency, so like they're the ones kind of sitting over top of that whole group. I'll just start by saying they're not a private equity group because we've been there, we've done that, we're not doing that again. They're a they're a good family office group that is ran by a bunch of actual race car drivers, the Dyson family. Who, if you're as old as me. You remember the Thetford Porsches that Dyson ran back in the ALMS era and stuff like that. So, really great group of guys ran by a guy named James Schiefer, who actually has a ton of history with me because he was running the Edelbrock account, which was the first project that Hoonigan ever did outside of Chemblock. That was what really, and that was around Power Tour when we did Power Tour in 2015. And if that project hadn't have happened, we would have never have launched a YouTube channel. Like that was what showed us we had the ability to kind of go make content outside of our athletes, right at that point, and that should be a correctional outside Ken Block, but at that point, any project we had done was associated with an athlete. Whether it was Ken Block, Ryan Turk, B.J. Baldwin, Chris Forsberg, right, like Vaughn Gate, and all the different guys. Anytime we did something, it was with an athlete slash whatever a driver. The Edelbrock project was something that was about us. It was me and John Chase building cars, and and that was sort of the impetus for us to start making content and eventually make daily transmission. So that being said, I've worked with James for a long time. Also, a weird backstory is that my wife actually worked with James Schiefer at his company, Schieffer Media, before I ever met her, so it's all kind of in it's all kind of in the family here. Yeah. So anyway, you know, we you know from there it really became sort of a conversation of they needed sort of a creative studio to help them across all different pieces, right? To be able to go add some more entertainment kind of content around Racer right now. If you guys don't know, Racer is where you can go watch you know live broadcasts of DTM, Australian Supercar, the Nurburgring 24 FD is on there, and what they're looking to do is really to build out more of an entertainment side. So think about a lot of the content that I made for Hoonigan, but now sort of living for racers. So that's exciting for me. It gives me an outlet to go build to go make stuff. But then in addition, I get to work with guys like Chris Stewart at Grid Life. I absolutely love Chris. We have been talking for over 10 years about different ways to work together in the background. This is a little unknown secret, but at some point, Hoonigan tried to purchase Grid Life because we were like, "This is the future of events, and we wanted to do it our own. And then we saw how well Grid Life was doing it, and we thought, "Man, this is what we should do. So, really excited about that. I have a total notebook full of ideas already for grid life and for shows we're gonna do. I'm just gonna get ahead and you know, kind of.
Speaker 1 14:47
I don't want to tease it, but there is going to be a lot of people that you've seen on this show involved in content that we're gonna be creating for for the racer channels and for some other stuff. And I also want to say this. This doesn't mean that 321's only going to be doing stuff for FMA. It's still going to be doing other stuff. It doesn't mean that I won't do a future, you know, Jim Khanna film or something like that. If the right driver comes along, you know, there's there's there's a lot of different pieces here. So, yeah, that's sort of my big announcement. What does that mean for the podcast? The podcast is moving forward is no longer part of 321, so the podcast is going to live separately, and that was really important to me because I wanted this to just kind of be its own thing and be able to live on its own. It will continue as is, and yeah, that's it. So I really don't expect that many changes here. It's got its own team. We've got we've got Julius, we've got Troy, and me running this piece of it, and then you know three two ones kind of doing the more production and creative house type stuff. So yeah, that's it for updates. I don't know. Has anyone got any questions right now on any of the stuff that I just talked about. Otherwise, I'm gonna get into some Patreon topics that were brought up the other day because you know Patreon comes first. Anyone? Let's see what do we got here. All right, a lot of people saying that good thing. Oh, someone said can't forget Travis Pastrana. Look, Travis Verstrana, I've been talking for the past week about a project that we're doing together, so like there is no forgetting, Travis. I'm actually, oh man, I I wish I could tell you about this concept. It's fucking nuts, but yeah, that's gonna be that's gonna be a fun one. What else? What else do we got here? Anyone else have any questions? A lot of people ask, you know, saying they miss DT so much. Man, you know, I wish I could come up with what a modern day DT looks like, right? And and be able to create that for a channel, you know, for Racer or something. I think I think there might be a new version of that. I don't know if it could be every day, but maybe twice a week or something. I actually I haven't watched the new Grand Tour yet. I'd love for people to tell me what they think really quickly in the live chat, but I have read a lot of the reviews, and I have to say they seem promising, and I'm really excited about that. You know, as a content creator, as a filmmaker, like I want the Grand Tour to succeed. I want this to do well. Why? Well, there for years nobody would invest in a big show like the Grand Tour because everyone believed that the only people who could do it were the Three Amigos, and they proved it right. I mean, that group was the chemistry was just perfect, and they did such a great job. And you know, I think that Top Gear after the Three Amigos had some interesting moments here and there. Obviously, you know, Chris Harris, Matt LeBlanc, like I love their chemistry, but you know, they struggled with that show. And I think that seeing this show and actually seeing it take a little slightly different direction is good because it means that if it does well, this will fund other cool shows like this. I mean, and you know, we were just talking the other day. Like, man, what would a what would like a OG Hoonigan cast show look like that had the budget of a Grand Tour? That'd be a pretty good good time, right? Or maybe a show like that for like a Cletus McFarland or you know like an Adam LZ or a you know a Weston like these are the things that I think would be is the way forward for us. I love YouTube. YouTube got me to where I am today, but there is such an opportunity to do bigger stuff that doesn't have to serve an algorithm outside of YouTube.
Speaker 1 18:40
And you guys have heard me talk about that forever, so yeah, kind of curious as to where where some people are right now. A lot of people saying they love the new one, the new Grand Tour bangs. Yeah, man, a lot of people are saying yeah, high tides raise all ships. I think everyone's kind of yeah, they work really well. So look, that's great to hear that a lot of people are enjoying the new one because we need it. We need it, right? And and I think this also teaches a really important lesson to all the other people who are out there with properties like Top Gear and studios and things like that. Is that you know what? Maybe just finding a celebrity who kind of likes cars or bought some cool cars isn't enough to carry a show, right? I mean, the thing about these guys-I don't know the Throttle House guys personally. I've spoken to them a little bit on Instagram, but like I've watched some of their stuff. Like they're passionate. They're they're us, and I think that that's such an important part of what makes this real, I think that there is something unique about YouTubers because, like, YouTubing is not easy, and doing the work isn't easy. You got to do all the different pieces. So the people who do and the people who succeed at it, you know, really, really love this and are really passionate and really, really want to make this work. So. With that being said, you know I think this is the right way forward, and this is what I'm looking to sort of do in the projects I I do with Racer, which is like I want to go to you know some of the best creators we have in the YouTube space. Think about a lot of people who've been on the show or people you've asked and you want to be on the show, and say to them, how do we make something together that isn't your YouTube content. Like, I don't want to just do an evolved version of that. I want to do something completely different. How do we go make that together, or how do we go do something with four or five other YouTubers that you like to work with that are hard to do? Right, you know, a show that's you know Avinia Nacha, Tony Angelo, you know, are hurt. Like just mixing a bunch of people together that all have a relationship, but don't get to work together often. Right? That that's the fun part for me is being able to go do all of that. And the other part of it, it's exciting. Is when I sat down with James, I kind of pitched him a bunch of crazy ideas, including scripted concepts. You know, like TV show ideas, comedies. Think like tires and things like that, which, by the way, if you're not watching tires, that show is hilarious on Netflix. But you know things like that that live in the automotive space, and they were open to all of it, and that's just really exciting to me because that's just a lot of type of stuff that's really hard to pull off on the social platforms. Anyway, enough about that. Let's move into. We got some topics on Patreon. I think are pretty good. Someone said rebrand DT into WWE, which is weekly workshop. Basically the same thing. I love that. Yeah, this is. I'm actually really stoked to see all of this love on here for for Gran Turismo, I mean, I'm sorry, Gran Tour, because I think it's really important that that show does well. Okay, I'm gonna jump into some. Like I said, the Patreon folks always kind of get first dibs. That's just how it is. You know why? Cream. Anyway, so Abe Martinez asks motors to avoid that are actually great. First off, the episode that we were supposed to film for today that didn't end up happening because everybody was in the grid life grind get the cart done mode was Rob Dom and Soupy and I do a full out war over the top five swap engines that there are out there, and you know a bunch of those guys were going to bring up motors that weren't good, like a rotary, for example.
Speaker 1 22:31
So we'll wait for that to get a little bit more into that. Right, that's obviously coming up on a future firing order. But before we get into that, I think the one that I think you know I think is a really good engine that got a really bad rap for really good reasons is the six liter diesel. You know the six liter Power Stroke found in my van, and why that engine had a bunch of problems that were all fixable. Look, yeah, it'd be better if it had more head studs. We all know that, but in general, it is something that can be fixed. J and K figured workarounds and has built engines that are 1500 horsepower capable. And I think the reason that engine ended up working in the end is not really because there was an enthusiast market that wanted to make it work. It was that there were so many made and so many delivered in so many different vehicles. Right, you got them in vans, you got them in cab chassis. Obviously, you got them in you know in F chassis, and you got them into all these vehicles. And there were so many in the marketplace that like they had to get fixed. Right, like this was something that just required the you know the attention to get them done. So I think a six liter today is actually a great engine, right? You don't have to run def. You can actually build them to you know get good gas mileage or fuel. I should say fuel mileage because it's diesel. But that engine's a good engine today. It was not a good engine in 2004. So like that's one that I think got a bad rap that actually has been fixed over the years, and I'm sure Rob Dam Rob Dom will argue why the rotary is that same engine, right? And granted, you have to run it on premix, but that is what it is. All right, next question: Yon Inc asks, "What is OEM Plus? I kind of love this one. I guess I talk about OEM plus a lot, or so do my guess, and it's really not something that maybe I've ever explained. So OEM plus, I know this exists outside of Volkswagens, but in the Volkswagen community, it was basically modifying your car with only parts that were also sold by the manufacturer, or like a sister manufacturer, like you could have a Volkswagen and put Audi wheels on it, right? Or put Porsche brakes on it. And the whole idea was basically taking parts that bolt on and add them. So motor swaps from later cars, wheels from you know later cars that are. Bigger seats, right? Swapping out seats and all these things from either later cars or higher spec cars, and really not changing anything from the car that came from the aftermarket. Instead, it was all OEM. So the car is heavily modified, but is heavily modified with quote unquote factory parts. And I think that there's like two sides to why people do this. One, there is like a there's like a reliability issue because like, hey, you're really just you're not using a bunch of aftermarket parts. You're using parts that OEMs created that have like a ton of engineering and thought put into them. Granted, maybe not in the car you're putting them into. And I think the second part is there's just a snobbiness to it. Like I think it was just a way. In my feeling, it was like a it was a revolt to the Shogun era of crazy tuner cars with crazy flip flop paint jobs and all this crazy stuff that was happening in the you know that was happening in sort of like the late '90s, early 2000s, and like the Volkswagen market, and I think also like BMW market kind of went this like OEM plus mod where it was only OEM parts, and you saw it in the Honda market too, right? Like doing you know just like simple swaps that were you know you know move you know taking a this engine or that and only swapping in like Type R parts and things like that. So that is what OEM plus the definition of it is. I still love OEM plus cars, but I I also think that there's a great there's a world for aftermarket too.
Speaker 1 26:29
Like I don't know, there's a mix. It's hard. Like there's not enough OEM wheels out there that really kill it for me. I think that that's one of the the places that that I stop. And also you need coilovers. Like you you it's OEM plus, and you always have to have coilovers. So, anyway, next question. This one's actually is from WDG. Said he said Adam Savage said that we all die with an incomplete to do list, and then he asked, "What is complete? I have a really simple question for this. Complete is when you sell a project, whether it's done or finished. That's when it's complete. There's nothing I own from cars to bicycles to anything to my house to my farm that will be done until I sell it. Like I'm just constantly going to be tinkering and changing it. Some things require less, but I just feel like everything is a project, which is maybe why I don't finish things because I don't actually know what finished is. They're all just in different states of disrepair, and that is my life, friends. Next one, my buddy Shane, who's actually the man who created the the intro song for this pod and also for Firing Order. He says, "What is the best first mods between one and $2,000. That's simple. It's coilovers. Every car looks better lower. That's it. That's simple as that. All right. Let's let's jump into let's jump into chat a little bit. Chad, you got you got any topics that we want to talk about here? What do we got? What do we got going on? Let's see. What do we have here? I got some comments. Building battle was peaked. You know that is definitely a show I would want to recreate. That format worked really well, right? Like forcing people to build cars in 10 or so days. Maybe it was 14 days I forget for $10,000 it's kind of amazing that we actually pulled that off now that I kind of really think about that let's see what else do we have here someone said can you fight can we fight over if the Mark Five GTI Gli were super sweet or ugly AF. You know, I don't like. I know there's a whole camp of people who don't like Mark VTIs. I actually prefer it to the Mark IV, which I know is probably blasphemous to Mark IV guys. But there was something about the Mark IV that like if it wasn't an R 32 Mark IV I just wasn't really into it um yeah like uh like the R 32 was the I think the R 32 bumper fixed the Mark IV for me um I don't mind the Mark five that being said I think of the later cars the Mark seven is probably the best looking uh And probably the you know probably also the best car that they've made in a long time. I know I know I know guys on track love that car. This actually reminds me. Someone asked me, and I'm sorry, I don't remember your your name, but you had DM me, I think on Instagram, and you said, "What are my hopes and dreams for the Golf Nine? It was like a really weird question because, like, I just don't pay attention to new Volkswagens. Like, I feel like it's been a lot of disappointments, and I haven't been really happy with what they're making. But I don't know. I think, I think you know, more all-wheel drive platforms and all-wheel drive not only being in the top R class. Be great. I think that if you're trying to be competitive with a lot of other cars in the market for a driver's car, all-wheel drive is really the way. I not no knock on front-wheel drive cars. I just think having more all-wheel drive options would be great. Obviously, retaining some versions of manuals would be great. You know, I know that there's buzz around the Daza engine, which is the RS3 engine showing up somewhere in that in that product line. That would be fantastic. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe just not more heavy and adding more and more screens and computers. Like I would love. Like remember when the Rabbit came out? Speaking of Mark Fives, I think a stripper version of a Mark Nine would be really interesting, right?
Transcribed by https://otter.ai