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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.
S3 E21 Audio
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[00:00:00] Yo, what's up everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Very Vehicular, brought to you by Vyper Industrial, and as always, I'm your host, Brian Scotto. Today, we have a legend in the industry, none other than Steph Papadakis. This guy forged and pioneered his way during the early days of import drag racing, was a big part in the whole world of drifting, especially behind building the cars, and we get into a lot of nerdy conversations, as well as some very interesting conversations about what can make all the sports better, cars, all of that.
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Welcome to the show, sir. Yeah. It's good to have you here. Thanks for having me. I, I, the, I was telling, uh, Nick before the show that, like, this is a show that I'm really excited about, because I don't think you and I have really had a very long conversation in probably a long time. Like, I just wanna pick your brain on a bunch of stuff, and you have been in this for, like, a really long time now.
I'm not trying to, not trying to out your- ... your age, but y- your... Like, I remember reading magazines with you in them, and that was in a completely different sport. So. Yeah. Well, so I'm 49. Yeah. And, uh, I started getting into modding cars the moment I got my license when I was 16. Yeah. And I was already going to the racetrack at 17 or 18.
So- Yeah, I mean, we're talking, we're, we're, we're close to 30 years now. And you grew up here in California? Yeah. Uh, Orange County. Yeah. Uh, [00:03:00] and, and I've lived here pretty much my whole life. Yeah. You're ... I remember, though, you're originally from New York, or you were born in New York? Yeah, so my mom's f- side of the family is all from New York.
Okay. And, uh, I was born in New York, and my dad is actually Greek. Okay. From Greece, from the island of Crete. Oh, really? Yeah. Nothing gives that away. Yeah. Uh, so I lived there for a few years when I was real young. Yeah. Uh, but, uh, you know, around five years old, uh, they moved to Orange County. Yeah. And- Where about in New York?
Um, so they're from Westchester County. Okay. Okay. Yep. Yeah. And, uh, and Huntington Beach, uh, is where I pretty much grew up. I went here, yeah. Down here, yeah. Yeah. I was just asking 'cause I, I lived in Astoria, Queens, which is, like, a predominantly Greek neighborhood. So it's like, it's like one of the most, like, Greek neighborhoods in New York where you, if you're not Greek, it's like, it's hard to navigate your way around because you'll walk into restaurants, you're like, "Oh, yeah, everyone's speaking Greek here."
Like, literally. So it was the opposite. So my, my mom's family is, like, Jewish, New York family. Right. Uh, her sister and, they all went to, like, the city [00:04:00] after and, and, uh, uh ... And then the only p- person really Greek in the family is me. Yeah, yeah. And my dad. But, you know, they got divorced when I was around- Yeah
uh, five or six. So I grew up with- without much of that culture. Much of that culture at all, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Just the, just the name that, like, attaches to that, yeah. Yeah. So I, I read the other day, uh, 'cause I was, I was like, I was like, oh, I gotta do a little background because, like, I obviously, I know you from a bunch of different things and a bunch of different series of both of our lives, right?
From Meyer and the magazines when you were still sort of making that crossover into drifting from, from drag racing. But I read the other day that, uh, so for all of it started for you with RC cars is kinda how it all began, which is funny 'cause, uh, it's similar for me, but I think it's actually similar for a lot of people who are our age.
So, like, what, what, what, what was your RC car, like, kind of niche were you into? So I, anything radio controlled from when I was single digits, like six, seven years old- Yeah ... uh, I begged my mom to get me the RC car from Radio, uh, RadioShack. [00:05:00] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it had, originally it had the one with the cable that went from the- Of course
remote control or whatever. So it had the, the controller and a cable, then you were, like, leashed to the car the whole time. This is something that I think the younger audience doesn't understand is the running behind your RC car because it's connected to a cable. Oh, man, I, the r- I remember how much fun it was to walk into RadioShack, and there would just be, like, the craziest stuff there.
I had the Turbo Lobo I think was, like, one of the, it was like a RC truck that they had that I think was on a cable. It was like, yeah. The, the cable RC car, and then the- The slot car tracks- Mm-hmm ... that you would build. I really loved the slot car tracks. Again, you're- you've got a cable going from your little remote to the slot car track, and I had the one, the s- the, the, the basic ones in the house.
And then I really begged my mom to get me the one, uh, the RC car from RadioShack where eventually it had the antenna- Mm-hmm ... and it was wireless. Um, and then found, uh, the actual racing track. There was an off-road track in Costa Mesa called RCH, and I [00:06:00] was probably around 10 or 11 years old, and, uh, had a little Tamiya Frog.
Mm-hmm. And it was the total POS. It was the worst car. And eventually got a RC10. So this is what the, the bigger kids and the adults were using, and that's all I wanted to do. And so, uh, at the time, uh, this place, Radio Controlled Hobbies in Costa Mesa, was kind of the epicenter for the engineers and the professional RC racers.
Mm-hmm. This would've been in the, uh, like, late '80s. And I got to see people doing this as a career in there every day, and I was like, "Oh my God, I wanna do this." So the next, like, four years, that's all I wanted to do. RC cars, go racing. They had club race ni- races every night. Yep. And I was... I wouldn't say I was mentored in any way, but, like, the guys that I would look up to, they were maintaining their cars, and they were tuning it, and figuring out the tires, and lap times, and all of these things.
So already from, like, 11 or 12 years old, I'm racing- Mm-hmm ... and [00:07:00] learning how to kinda tune these cars and maintain them and everything. So that was my life. I, I was ready to drop out of high school- ... go homeschooling, because that's what I wanted to do and, and so I could go travel more. Really? Yep. So you were, you'd gone so deep in it that you were competitive and going and traveling and doing that stuff in, in the area?
Or... I was competitive locally- Yeah ... for a 12-year-old. Right. Uh, but not anywhere nationally or, or internationally. But I saw, I was at the club nights with the guys that were. Right. So I can see what my future could be. I'd be like, "Oh, I wanna be like those guys." Um, and I remember very, very precisely my mom saying, "Hey, are you sure that's what you wanna do?
I don't know if you're gonna have much of a social life." And I didn't really understand what that meant until- ... you know, many years later. Um, uh, but by the time I was 15, uh, there were some of the guys at the track that had modified cars. 'Cause c- you know, it's a crossover with, with guys that are into [00:08:00] modifying real cars- Mm
and then the RC cars. Yeah, for sure. And I was like, "Oh, you can do this stuff with real cars?" And I remember watching, like, Mickey Thompson off-road and some road racing stuff, and I was like, "Oh, I kinda wanna drive real cars"- Yeah ... not just RC cars. And by the time I was 15, 16 and got a real car, the RC car stuff was out, and all I wanted to do was race, uh, and modify my real car.
Yeah. Did you grow up reading, like, Radio Controlled Car Action and, and s- that as well, yeah? Yeah. So, but the RC Car Action was a bit behind because I was literally at the track with the people that were on the leading edge. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Yeah. 'Cause I, I, as someone who grew up in New York, and I, I was never as into it as that, but I was...
I, I loved RC cars. I think for me, getting to a racetrack was really difficult. We had this one place called Queens Off-Roaders, and it was, like, in kind of a... Well, now it's a nice neighborhood, but it was kind of a sketchy area when I was younger. So it was like my parents would have to bring me there and then, like, sit outside all day.
So it was like, it was kind of a big ask to get my parents to do that, you know, on, like, the one day off on the weekend. Um, so I only went there a few [00:09:00] times, but, like, it was 100% the thing that made me love cars. And Radio Controlled Car Action I often give credit to being the reason why I wanted to make magazines.
'Cause, like, for me, living in New York, which was not the hub of the culture at all, it was like I needed that transferma- you know, mation, or that transmission of information of what you guys were doing over to our side to, like, be cool, right? To be like, "Oh, this is what's going on. This is the new thing."
And I also had, you know, the gold anodized tub RC10. I was more of a K- Kyosho guy just because that's, like, what my local hobby shop really pushed, so it was, like, th- that Turbo Ultima 2 and things like that. But the, I did eventually get an RC10, 'cause that was, like, the gold standard. So- No pun intended ... so the guys I raced with were Brian Kenwald.
Okay. I'd go to his house, and they'd make me, like, polish their dog bones and all- Yeah, yeah, yeah ... that stuff, 'cause I was, like, three or four years younger than them. But I'd go to the racetrack with them. And so Brian, um, for you th- people that don't know, like, he was, like, the pr- pinnacle of, like, global RC car- Yeah
um- And the young kid in the group, too, right? Yeah. Yeah. So he had some medical con- conditions when he was [00:10:00] young, and, and was in and out of the hospital and couldn't go to normal high school, so he did home study. Oh, okay. So during the week when he was bored, his dad would just drop him off at the RC track.
So by the time he was, like, 17 or 18 years old, he had so many laps. Wow, yeah. And he was, he was a s- intelligent guy as well, kid. Um, he was just accelerating and, and did really well at it. And that was the reason why I was like, "Oh, I wanna drop out of school, too, and do that, what he's doing, 'cause he's got the best life.
He gets to play with this RC car- Yeah ... and build that thing all the time and travel the world." Yeah. So yeah, those were the kinda, like Mark Pvedas and, like, N- Novak- Yeah ... like the actual Novak guy. All those were the pe- They were at my track. And so we would go to, like, Rock & Bowl bowling after and go to late-night cocoa, like dinner d- at the diner and all- Yeah, yeah
these s- So, so I'm 13 years old, hanging out with these older guys. Um, and so that's, I, you know, kinda thinking back, that's where I got a lot of my, uh, I guess, d- I, I, I struggled to use the professional, but these guys were professionals. Right, yeah. So already at [00:11:00] 13 years old, I was seeing professionals Having sponsors and living a life of developing vehicles and racing them and getting the cars ready and all of this stuff.
Yeah. Um, yeah. At the time, did you like the driving part more or like the, the building and, like, tuning the cars more, or was it a balance for you? It was, it was a balance. Yeah. It was, it was the whole process of I need to work on this thing and get it ready, and I get these tires or this motor or whatever it is, make it a little bit quicker.
Now I'm gonna go to the track and prove it out. The frustrating thing was when I couldn't drive as well as I wanted to. Mm-hmm. That was really frustrating, and I learned, uh, what being disappointed was a lot- Yeah, yeah ... when I was that age, 'cause I would just get beat or be out in the front and then crash.
And so, uh, I was very immature, which, you know, all of us are at 12 or 13 years old. And I would cry and, and have, you know ... And, and, uh, but, but I kinda got over that I think that kind of earlier in my life. I got that out. Like, I realized, "Oh, this is [00:12:00] not helpful- Right ... to fall apart and throw my transmitter down and, um, and just get upset at things."
'Cause then I would see older guys do that. Oh, yeah. And I'm like, "Yo, that doesn't look very, like adults should do that." And so that just got stuck in my head, and then so ... And not that I don't throw tantrums once in a while. Yeah, yeah. I get upset, but, like, I kind of learned at an early age, like, that's not beneficial, and that's, that will, that, that's just not professional.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a good thing to learn. I think it takes a lot of people in motorsports a lot longer to learn that, and some people never do. I mean, I think that still to this day I've watched, you know, especially in drag racing. I don't know why drag racing just is, like, a different breed of emotional crash-outs than any other sport.
But I've watched people absolutely lose their shit in drag racing and, like, a- and end up being handcuffed and, like, taken off of track, right? And it's like, it's one of those sports where, like, eh, at least in New York, that's, like, somewhat normal. So yeah, how did the transition come where you went from 1/10 scale cars to real cars?
[00:13:00] So, uh, one of the guys at the track, this guy, RC track, this guy Justin, had a, a CR-X. Okay. And he had also had a carbureted Volkswagen Bug with, like, a 21 c- ccn, 2138 or whatever. Yeah. You probably know all the numbers. But, uh, so built, built motor, and he'd rebuild the carburetors and all that stuff in his house.
So I got a '91 Honda Civic Si basically right when I turned 16. And, um- Took a driving test the day I turned 16, got my license, drove that sucker straight to my buddy's house, and we pulled the springs off- ... and cut them and lowered the car. And, uh, 'cause I would just, I was already s- staged and ready to, knew what I wanted to do to the car.
And that was because of the group of people you were around? Or is there any, were you reading, like, I mean, what magazines? 'Cause that's mid-'90s, so it's like- Sport Compact Car ... Sport Compact Car and Turbo, really, 'cause, like, Super Street's really not a thing yet, right? Or at least not on the level. Oh, yeah.
Super Street is still years away. Yeah. So it would be Sport Compact Car, which was mostly show cars and things like that. Yeah. Turbo wasn't a thing either, [00:14:00] because it wasn't really doing import cars. It, it hadn't crossed over to imports yet. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, um, and Mini Truck. Okay. 'Cause I think probably all of us kind of wanted mini trucks when we were that age as well.
Yeah, yeah. Uh, so that was the other option of, that I didn't go toward. Could've been a min- a mini truck, uh, a Mustang, or a Camaro, but I wasn't about to get a V8- Right ... when I was that age. And I, um, or a rear wheel drive car. Yeah. So the Honda thing kind of made sense. And for you, did you or was there much of, like, a Honda tuning scene that you were aware of in Southern California yet?
Or was that something that you were just like, "Oh, this is a good car to get," and ... 'Cause I ask that, 'cause, like, nowadays, it's so easy to see all of that. But back then, like, no one was really paying attention to Hondas on, on the level that they are now. So not at the level- Well- ... now. Yeah. But there was absolutely a tuning scene here- Yeah
in Southern California, even Orange County. You had Ox- Oscar Jackson, that was based in Orange County. Mm-hmm. You had Light Speed Racing, that was up in LA. Um, there's a place, I mean, San, San Andreo or something. Like, there was, [00:15:00] there was, uh, Dynamic M- Motorsports in Irvine. Mm-hmm. There was already, uh, there was Robocar.
There's probably 10- Yeah ... or more shops in Southern California by the time I was 16. There was already a huge street racing scene- Yep ... that was already in the news and getting shut down by the time- Yeah ... I got my license. And that was mostly based sort of South Bay area, right, was the street racing scene?
From, from my understanding of what I, like, talking to Nads and everybody, like, that was sort of the hub for it, was up here. There was Long Beach. Yep. Kind of in the South Bay. Yeah. There was, uh, Ontario. Mm-hmm. There was, um, which is the In- Inland Empire. Yeah. Uh, there was Sylmar and other stuff in the Valley.
Um, so it was, it was all over Southern California. And, and it was a, I, I struggle to use, use the word continuation, but it was a reset of the old hot rod drag racing- Yeah ... from the s- the '60s and, and such. So now, in the, in the '80s and '90s The folks were using, you know, import cars and stuff, but they were going to the [00:16:00] same industrial streets- Right
uh, to do their drag racing, and it was usually Friday night, Saturday night. There was some Thursday night stuff at Dodger Stadium. Uh, but they were going to the darkest, longest- Mm-hmm ... streets with no crossovers in them to try to do their drag racing. Very different than the street takeovers now, where they go to populated areas- Yeah, yeah, yeah
and they try to do the intersections. It was very different. We were trying to find the safest, most out of the way, where there's no traffic places. Yep. Um, and then, uh, and then that transitioned later into, like, Terminal Island opening- Yeah, yeah ... and, and when I was around 17 or so, and that was kind of the beginning of like, "Oh, we can go to the track and do this."
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I forget that that, you, yeah, 'cause you have Terminal Island, so it's like Brotherhood, like that whole race, like that group, 'cause that probably made it a lot easier, a lot more accessible for you guys here. I mean, just like the RC car thing, there was ton... There was probably f- uh, five tracks that we- Yeah
could go to, all off-road, in Southern California area, when I was 13 years old. When I started getting into the real cars [00:17:00] at 16, 17, we had Terminal Island Raceway. Pomona would do an event once in a while. You had, uh, Battle of the Imports, that was d- already doing events in Pomona. Mm-hmm. There was a San Diego track.
There was Bakersfield. You can go up to Sacramento. Um, there was a Vegas thing. So, and I'm probably even forgetting something. Yeah. You know? Uh, so- Still had Irwindale, even though shorter track, but yeah. There was a ton of stuff, and that's- Yeah ... that's the s- that's, that's the benefit of the Southern California situation, is there was already, you know, in 1995, there was already 50 years or 40 years of racing and tracks and all that stuff that had...
There was stuff, uh, closing. Yeah. But there was tons of infrastructure already here. Easy to find people like-minded, easy to peop- find people that were also into what I was into. Uh, there was all the car clubs, and, uh, and so I just immersed myself in the car culture that was robust, just like I did in the RC car culture- Yeah
uh, when I was younger. [00:18:00] Out here, did you find sort of like the old, you know, domestic guys to be welcoming on the street race side, or kind of like annoyed that you guys were there? 'Cause, um- Absolutely annoyed. Yeah. Absolutely annoyed. The front-wheel drive drag racing thing was It made no sense to them.
Like, why would you make, why would you drag, drag race a car that's worse? And they weren't wrong. No. It was worse. It just happened to be what we were into, and it actually worked out probably pretty well for a bunch of us with 100 and, 130 horsepower cars, front-wheel drive, which w- arguably much s- more controllable and, and safer than getting a bunch of- Yeah
300 horsepower rear-wheel drive Mustangs and sending them out when you're, you know, 16 years old. Right, yeah. Or, like, today's generation that has, like, 1,000 horsepower on tap, which is wild to me. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I, 'cause, you know, growing up in New York, we obviously had a pretty healthy street race community that was actually oddly healthier before Fast and Furious than [00:19:00] after.
Like, I just felt like there was way more places we could go and all of that. Um, and to your point, it was like we raced sort of in the shadows. We actually worked as well as we could by, by trying not to upset the police. So we used to race, uh, Maurice Avenue on the Brooklyn-Queens border, and we knew, like, when shift change was, which gave us, like, a window to race, but then when the cops would come, the Brooklyn cops would chase us to Queens, and then we'd get to race for another hour, and then the Queens cops would come, and they'd chase us back to Brooklyn.
But they didn't wanna cross, they didn't, they weren't gonna cross county lines, 'cause they didn't wanna do the paperwork for, like, what was a small ticket at the time. So it's like we could race for four or five hours by just crossing the borderline back and forth. I mean, it'd be like crossing into Seal Beach and Long Beach, like, just back and forth all night and go for the whole night.
And then obviously, it sort of changed, because then it became, like, a bigger scene, and it was less of just, like, street racing. But when we were younger, going in Volkswagens and Hondas, like, we were not welcome. Like, all the old Mustang, Camaro boys were just like, "What are you doing here?" [00:20:00] And, and this was, you know, late '90s, you know, and I think always New York felt a little behind kind of, like, what you guys were, were doing out here, so it was always sort of on a bit of the catch-up.
But I just remember how, you know, watching, um, import drag racing kinda go from being this thing that seemed like, you know, a novelty to, like, oh, wow, these cars are breaking into the nines, now the eights, now the sevens, and so on. Um, what was that kind of transition for you? 'Cause you obviously were in, you know, this sort of building a cool, fun street car.
I assume that started getting faster. How did you go from just this being fun to you being sort of one of the biggest pioneers in the space? Like, what, what was that shift, and in your head, why, you know, did you think that there was a future, right? 'Cause it's very easy to do something when you see a future in it.
It's a little different when you're one of the first people to do it. Yeah, so there was, uh, when I was into street, street racing, there was a parallel path that was, like, Battle of the Imports. That [00:21:00] was really the only import thing. And, um, some of the street race guys had already stopped going to the street races basically because they had modified their cars so heavily, and the pinnacle was going to the Battle of the Im- Battle of the Imports and being the quickest front-wheel drive car.
So around that time, cars were doing 14-second quarter mile, trying to get into, like, the 13-second quarter mile, uh, which is, sounds ridiculously slow nowadays. Uh, but, but back then, when your car came with 108 horsepower- Yeah ... it, it was, it was difficult to do. Um, and so, uh, I blew up my car on nitrous by the time I was 18, or 17, 8- 18, and rebuilt the engine.
I said, "Well, let's go to the..." And I had been going to Terminal Island and liked the idea of I could get a time slip, see my time, do an improvement, change the driving, uh, and then try to improve that time. And it wasn't... It was weird, because I didn't think of, like, what I'm gonna do for work. [00:22:00] I just knew I wanted to do something in cars.
Yeah. So let me just graduate high school, and then it wasn't even about college. It was like, I just wanna go work at a place that does car stuff- Mm-hmm ... because that's where I'm gonna go learn the thing. And, um, by the time I was 18 and out of high school, my car had been broken or blown up so many times, it was never really running in a street car anymore.
It was just something I was bringing to the track. Right. And so these guys are running 13, maybe 12-second quarter miles, and I'm put- I got a job at this place called JG Engine Dynamics up in Alhambra, and he built race engines for a bunch of the Honda guys, and I was able to work on my car there. And I just swept the floor, answered the phone, and he was nice enough to give me a job.
Uh, and I was able to work my car there, and that was one of the perks. And, uh, eventually put a turbocharged Integra engine in there, uh, and made... And this was before the VTEC stuff, really. Yep. Made, I think it was, like, a whopping 300 or 400 horsepower, but was big. That was big back then. That was big, and it had [00:23:00] slicks, and ran, I think it was somewhere in the 11, 12 or 11, 12-something quarter mile.
Yeah. But then now, now the guys had been an 11-second quarter mile, so I was always, like, a second behind the leading older guys that had more money and resources than I did. Right. And at the same time, learning how to build a car, I was friends with everybody over there. And, uh, after a couple years of doing that, a buddy and I said, "Hey, why don't we open up a shop?
Uh, and we'll do a, be, be a tuning shop, and we're gonna put the bigger engines into the smaller cars." So it was Acura Integra motors into the CR-Xs and Civics, or the Honda Prelude motors into the Civics or the Integras. Um, 'cause by, by, by that time, I had a knowledge of building engines- Mm-hmm ... the wiring on the cars, and all, and, and some mechanical stuff, and that was, that was very popular.
So people are buying a car. They'd buy the engine from the Japanese importer or from the wrecking yard. They'd bring it to us, or we'd source it for them, and we'd put- You know, a Honda Prelude that makes, you know, a 2.2 liter, those make- Mm ... I don't know what they make back there, [00:24:00] 100, 180 horsepower, in a CR-X that, that, you know, weighs 2,000 pounds, and the thing- Yeah
just would rip. And so we knew how to do the wiring, the fuel system, the mounts, the shifting, all that stuff, and get it done. And so we started having those cars in, um, like Turbo Magazine and, and maybe Super Street was around by that time. And they'd put our little ... The, the, the shop was called HondaPro, and so we just started getting more and more business.
But in parallel, I was racing my, uh, my '91 Civic still, still that first car that I got when I was 16. Right. And, um, after about two and a half years at the shop, uh, I met this guy Sean Carlson, who, great fabricator. He had worked with this guy, uh, Jason Whitfield, and built him a really cool car, but they were never really able to get these cars to the start line, um, of the track.
To the finish line of the build, or the start line of the racetrack, and, uh, he promised to help me, or we kind of worked on a deal to help me [00:25:00] with my, my old '91 Civic that was now pretty beat up. Wanted to, like, restore it in a way, make it better for the racetrack. Mm-hmm. Um, and so I brought the car up to his place, and the front end was all
Let me give a ... There, there's so much to this story- ... that it's hard to, like, get, get it into con- What year is this? This is, like, late '90s now at this point? This is ... No, this is still- Mid '90s? This is, this would've been, like, 1997, 1998. Okay. Yeah. And I had put a Prelude engine in the car, but they don't really fit in these old EF chassis Civics- Mm
very well. So I had used a plasma cutter at my old work- Mm ... and cut a bunch of the, the f- the frame rail to make room for the transmission- Yeah ... and the pulley, and then just fabricated the mounts and, and drag raced it. And it was running 10.6s. Yeah. But the front end was all tweaked up. Yeah. It had a primered hood.
I didn't care at all about the look of the car. I just wanted to go faster. And Sean, who's really good at making stuff look good, and he was a really good fabricator, was like, "Look, you need some help with this [00:26:00] stuff. I'll help you out." So we figured out a deal that he was gonna help me out. I brought the car to his house, and we realized that the front of the car was so bent, we might as well just tube chassis it.
And this was- Mm ... Sean's MO. Like, everything sno- snowballed with this guy. Yeah, yeah. And because he was such creative and such ... Uh, he always had the next better idea. He can ... He just never f- finished anything. So I managed this, the, the project a little bit or a lot, and then was like, "Okay, this is where we need it to get to."
Um, so he did the fabrication. I did the engine and everything, and the turbo stuff, and we brought the car out maybe, like, six months later, front halfed. So it still was a '91 Civic- Yep ... with a Prelude motor. But it was tube chassis in the front. Yeah. Ran it, I think it ran, like, still, like, mid 10s, and we're like, "It's still not great.
I think that we could go much faster if we can get some weight down on it." And so we decided to just tube chassis the whole thing before the next Battle of the Imports. So we had, like, I think five or six months, and decided to, like, "All [00:27:00] right, now we're just gonna cut the back of the car off, keep the front tube chassis, and tube chassis the whole thing."
And, and we're like, "You know what? Why would we do that to a '91 Civic? Let's just do it to a, a current car." And at the time it was '97, that was a EK. Yep. And I'm like, "Oh, man, I don't wanna buy a whole car to just tear it apart." So we bought a roof, and doors, and rear quarter panels, and basically parts, body shop parts- Mm-hmm
uh, from the dealer, and hung it on the tube chassis. And the concept of this car was we are not gonna have any of this, anything on this car that's not needed. Only what the engine, the thing to make the engine work, the tires, and everything else behind the front axle, including me, is just dragging along weight that's gonna make the w- the quarter mile slower.
Mm-hmm. So get the weight down. So it was, like, minimal tubing, this little aluminum RCI seat. That was probably the most unsafe thing ever. Like, the floor was just thin aluminum on top of a, [00:28:00] a, a round tubing. Mm-hmm. Um, and a little metal plate for where my foot- feet went. And, uh, and then we hung the body on it, and we came out with a car, I think, in '98, or the end of '98, and we were the first into the nines with that car.
Everything worked. Yeah. Yeah, the concept was right. Get the bigger tires on there, get the weight down. It weighed 1,650 pounds with me in it. Wow. So, I mean, it, it was massively- Yeah ... or m- minimally, you know, like- And that's officially the first ever front-wheel drive tube car, right? At least in the US that we know of, like, on record?
Yeah, there were other tube cars being built- Yeah ... rear-wheel drive, but the guys, again, couldn't get to the finish line to finish them for, b- maybe they didn't know the fabricator, or they might've run out of money. Yeah. But for whatever reason, this moment, this was the tube chassis era. Yeah. Everybody said, "I need to build a tube chassis car," but we were really the ones to kind of come out and, and complete it, and get it down the track consistently.
And, um, so that was, yeah, first into the nines, and the front-wheel drive records. [00:29:00] HKS in Japan had, I think, a Celica- Mm ... that they were doing that was around the same times. Um, so, like, there was a bit of a race, and then Apex in Japan came out with a, a, a, an Integra with a Prelude motor as well that they were going after the nines.
So there was a lot. T- a company called Top Fuel out of Japan. Yep. There was just a lot going on at that time trying to beat these front-wheel drive r- records. But because we got this car done quickly, and then it was like, "Okay, I can see the next step here. Let's make a little bit more power. Let's put stage boost on it.
Let's, uh, put a different tire on it." You know, like, it was like these- Let's, let's put a wheelie bar on it, 'cause the Bergenholtz figured out the wheelie bar thing- Yeah ... soon after on the unibody, but they were heavy, and we had made a little bit more power. So we're like, "Okay, we're gonna take their idea, put the wheelie bar on it, but we're lighter weight, and we make more power, and then boom, we're a half a second faster than them."
So, like, we're always- Let's, let's talk about the wheelie bar for a second, 'cause I think that I remember w- we used to race a, uh, CNN performance team that I [00:30:00] used to work with. We used to race a front-wheel drive Volkswagen Jetta that we were the first into the nines years later. So, like, you know, it, it always takes Volkswagens a while to catch up.
It was like 2002 or 2003 we got into the nines. And, um, I remember, like, the old, like, Chevelle dudes would be watching us pull up with the wheelie bar, and having, like, the bigs up front and the littles in the back, and they just couldn't... Like, they just could not wrap their head around why we had wheelie bars.
Like, for, like, when Bergenholtz first did that, do- when you guys saw that as an idea, like, h- how, how did that all sort of come together and, you know, and, and why do you think it became sort of, like, the thing that, you know, really kinda moved the cars forward? But, like, do, who... Like, were you thinking in the same place, or was that, like, an idea that really stemmed just from them?
I was not thinking that way. This is something that stemmed from the Bergenholtz. Yeah. They had worked with a, uh, I think a Volkswagen drag race guy. Yep. Maybe Ron Loomis. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And I think together they had come up with this idea that, well, if we put the wheelie bar on there, it's gonna [00:31:00] extend the wheel base, and that's going to, uh, help grip.
Yep. Um, I don't know exactly what their conversations were, but they were definitely the first ones to do it. And then after seeing it, I was looking at the car on track and really thought about it. I was like, "Oh, they're right." Yeah. The, the... So the, the way this works, the way the wheelie bar works on a front-wheel drive car is, uh, so let's take your front-wheel drive car without the wheelie bar.
When you launch, and the weight transfers toward the rear, the, it has, it's picking up the front of the car. It's kinda pivoting on that back axle. So what we wanna do is make as much weight as we can over that front axle, and even in front of the front axle, to have that weight that transfers, uh, is farther out on the nose of the car.
Yep. And so if you put a wheelie bar on the car, and that wheelie bar is basically touching the ground when you launch, now your pivot point is not the rear axle, [00:32:00] it's all the way back where the wheelie bar wheels are, and it has less leverage to pick up the car. It has to pick up the entire vehicle, um, when it launches, so it, you have more weight over your front tires when you launch essentially, and it helps grip.
Yeah. It keeps the front of the car down. And so, uh, they figured that out, and then we kind of st- took it to the next step, where I thought about that. I was like, "Okay, well then, we want the lightest rear springs that we can get away with." Mm-hmm. So then on the car what we did was we put, like, I think it was, like, 80-pound springs in the back of the car.
So when you pushed on the back of the car- 'Cause now you don't need them anymore because the wheelie bar is kinda doing the work for you. Yeah, we don't want them. Right. We want, when that car, the front end lifts up, we don't want the rear springs to help lift the whole car up. We don't want them to do much.
Mm-hmm. And then what we did is we tuned the sh- rear shocks so they had a ton of rebound, really slow rebound, but really fast compression. Mm. So when you launched, it could slam onto the wheelie [00:33:00] bar, but it didn't wanna come up. So it would basically lower the rear suspension and hold it up, so it just stayed on the wheelie bar, um, the whole time.
Before the wheelie bar, what were you guys doing for, to kinda prevent the cars from squatting? What was sort of the tech before that? We wanted the rear suspension as stiff as possible. Yeah. So when I had my '91 Honda, um, we got to the point that we literally took the rear shock, and I welded the shaft to the shock body- Mm
so there was no rear suspension. Um, and the, the concept there was, well, any weight transfer, suspension, anything in the rear is gonna cause more weight transfer, so let me just lock out the rear. And that was an idea I came up with from the Top Fuel cars. Top Fuel Funny cars don't use suspension. They just use the tires and the, the chassis flex.
And I was like, "Well, we're drag racing." And I came from RC cars. On the PAN cars had almost n- no suspension. Mm-hmm. I was like, "Well, if the track is flat-" And the tires have compliance, then what do I need suspension for? Um, and it did [00:34:00] help, but I, I, m- it was dangerous if- Oh, yeah ... the thing got a little bit out of line, um, or if the track was a little bit contoured.
Uh, but, but we pretty much stayed off the guardrails at the track, um, so that wa- didn't turn into too much of an issue. Yeah, we, in our street race, uh, VR6, we did lockouts for the rear so that, like, right before we'd run, someone would have to go in the back and reach up and put in a lockout so that it wouldn't squat.
So that way we could still drive on the streets to get there otherwise it would just be miserable, but then we could, like, lock it out. So it was kind of one of those, like, little secret pieces, 'cause we basically had a, we had a full-blown track car, and then we had the same engine in a stock-looking car for the street races, which was really fun because, you know, it was just a black GTI, and, like, no one thought of it at all, and it was just- You guys had some resources.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we... I didn't have much money. I was- ... you know, 19 years old or whatever. Yeah. 18, 20 years old, and, uh, it was like, what can we do with just the tools in the shop? Yeah. So it was weld the shock. We would take the rear hatch off [00:35:00] and take a piece of, uh, Lexan from Home Depot, kind of cut it to shape, and then, like, tape it or try to screw it onto the rear to get the weight down.
Mm. I mean, these cars were- Yeah ... hacked. Um, but, but- But they, when you guys were in the beginning of it, we were so many years later that we were just watching what you guys did and said, "Oh, let's, let's try that." But I, I remember when I saw the first wheelie bar, I was like, what? That doesn't really make sense.
And then it makes perfect sense when you think about it, 'cause you just don't want the car to squat and lift the front. It's, like, the same situation because even though it's not rear-wheel drive, it's like, it's still just, like, you know, motion, like, force moves back, and that's kind of what you're dealing with, and it's a weight transfer problem, and you just don't want weight to transfer.
So it's like, that worked. How much do you think that, um, like, how much different tech sort of do you feel like that initial group was involved in, in, you know, in the sort of front-wheel drive import drag era? Because if you think about it, at least from my perspective, it didn't run for very long, but it ran really hot when it was going.
Like, it [00:36:00] really took ov- the space, and it was this huge thing for, I don't know, probably almost a decade? But it felt like every year there was, like, another, like, massive improvement, right? Where, like, traditional hot rodding and traditional drag racing was sort of running steady because that, that most of the technology that they had brought had spanned from the '50s and the '60s, and they were kind of continuing to develop there.
Like, how often did it feel like, ooh, there's this whole new technology, and it's put this other team ahead? It was constant. Every next event, there was... It felt like there was- You know, every six months there was another technology that was coming out. But in drag racing, we had the luxury of there was 50 years plus of drag racing, uh- Yeah
knowledge, just not front-wheel drive. So then we would learn, oh, two-step rev limiter. Oh, uh, you know, a, a, a b- a stronger axle so you don't break, so you find a, the axle shop that already exists. Um, oh, we do a little bit of aero on the car. Oh, you know, [00:37:00] you know, uh, you just kind of, like, kept applying stuff that had worked in the past just to our front-wheel drive cars.
Right. But in parallel, there was a whole rear-wheel drive scene. You had Adam Cerretari with his RX-7. You had Abel Ibarra doing tube chassis stuff already. Yep. So we weren't the fastest cars at the track. There were people running, you know, eights and sevens, uh, I don't know about sevens, but y- there as well, and that kind of just led into, you know, the bigger stuff in the future.
But- Yeah, is that why you shifted to rear-wheel drive eventually? Yeah, so the front-wheel drive car that I just discussed, that, it was a, that '97 Civic, ultimately the problem with that car was it used an H22 or H23 short block, but, like, a pre-lit engine and transmission. We got to the point when we started running high eight second quarter miles that it couldn't launch and last, like, three runs.
We'd break the transmission. And the, the gears inside are, are, uh, are, [00:38:00] like, helical cut or be- bevel cut, so they have an angle to it, and the best I could understand was when you launch, the ring gear was trying to, like, shove out, or the, actually the counter shaft was trying to shove out the side of the transmission.
And so after, like, two or three launches, we'd break the case. Mm. And, uh, so I'd go to the track with a couple of transmissions and break them over the weekend, and I was like, "This is masochism." Like, I don't wanna do this. So I was at a SEMA show one year, it would've been probably '99, and was looking under the hood of an Audi rally car.
Okay. It would've been, uh, like the 91- Now you're talking. Now you're talking. Yeah. And so the Audis used, it, similar to the, to the Subarus, used an inline engine with a, what seemed to be a transaxle on the front. Mm-hmm. Uh, and s- and then, uh, part of the out drive would go to the rear. Yep. And I looked at this and I was like, oh, the engine's really far forward, uh, and the transmission is narrow, [00:39:00] so we could have more space for suspension and get the far- the engine farther out forward to help front grip.
Like, this seems like the way to go. So then I started going down and start doing, researching those transmissions, and eventually ended up looking at, like, Volkswagen transmissions. Yeah. And I was like, oh, that's essentially the same thing, but it's just, it's just two-wheel drive, which is what we want for the front.
But all the Volkswagen transmissions were, um, from the factory weren't what we needed. They didn't have enough horsepower, so then I started looking at aftermarket stuff. The company called Fortin Racing in San Diego built a, um, off-road Baja type transmission- Yeah ... that they would put in Class 1 desert buggies- Yeah, yeah
and stuff like that. And it could deal with the transmission. It was straight cut gears. You could choose your gear ratios. There were dog engagement, so it was like a race transmission. He said he could flip the ring gear to either side. He could flip the transmission upside down, and I was like, "All right, well, this is how I want the configuration."
He's like, "No problem, I can build you the transmission." So we then took the Prelude engine that I was running [00:40:00] before, then put it on methanol, uh, and used one of those Fortin transmissions and built a new tube chassis car around it with better front suspension. Again, the weight farther forward, still using, uh, the concept of really lightweight.
The wheelie bars, all that stuff was already designed from the beginning. Yeah. And Sean helped a bit, like, with that, but he was already doing some Ford stuff, and my buddy Rob Miller helped with, uh, the build on that car, and so he was, uh, did most of the build on that one. And that one, we were able to get into the low eights, uh, 8.12 at 184 miles an hour was that, that vehicle, and- And that's still front-wheel drive?
Still front-wheel drive. This would've been in- You just put the engine further forward. Further forward, and with a stronger transmission. That's the thing I, the thing I hate about Audis. Work, works really well in- Works really well in front-wheel drive drag racing, yeah. Totally. Um, and so this, let me give, give you some context here.
This would've been in 1900s. [00:41:00] Uh, this would've been like year 2000. S- sometime in the end of the late c- late last century. Yeah, it would've been, no, it would've been, yeah, it would've been 2000, 2001. Okay. 'Cause we brought it out to SEMA, and, uh, and we ran it for, for a couple of years, 2001, 2002. And this is sort of peak, like, import drag racing era.
This is where, like, the money's starting to run in. Like, brands like General Motors are, like, starting to think about running programs. Mazda's involved with Bergenholtz, right? Like, this is where things are starting to kinda get bigger, right? Just to, I just wanna place the time, right? So yeah, so, so 2000-ish, 2001 is when Fast and, the original Fast and Furious came out.
Yeah. And now you have, like, DVD sales. Yeah. And you have a bit of internet, and then you have, uh, all the magazines. Like, everything is- How was, just to take a quick pause, how was that impact for you? 'Cause, like, as someone who enjoyed street racing, Fast and Furious had a little bit of a negative thing 'cause it brought too much police attention.
But for you, who s- was, were now in the business side of it, like, what, what was the change that you felt that that movie brought [00:42:00] to the industry? The sense and the reality was this went from, like, these obscure front-wheel drive cars at these obscure import races to more mainstream. And so you ended up having- It, it also moved from the import car scene to the sport compact car scene, 'cause you had Chevy building cars for front-wheel drive performance cars.
You had, uh, Ford building cars. There, there was, you know, not just the import cars or the Toyotas and the, and the Hondas and such. It felt like, "Oh, this is our time. It's gonna go mainstream. We're gonna be professionals, and we're gonna, you know, be the next greatest thing in motorsport." Yep. Um, but, and, and, and it, and it, and it was popular for, uh, you know, and it was popular, and there were car shows at Hot Import Nights, and there was just so much to it.
It was this huge boom. It was hu- it was a huge boom. Yeah. But it also went along with the, the carryover from the street races. It was [00:43:00] kids getting in trouble on the streets. It was news of crashes and street racing, all of these things. Yeah. Which I'm long out of, but there was a, it w- it was sort of linked.
It- Yeah, it still felt like it tainted it all, right? Yeah. It totally, yeah. And so it was challenging to get some of the bigger companies in there. Um, and then our events were big. You know, we'd have 15,000 people, but they weren't NHRA national events where they had 30,000 people. Right. Definitely wasn't NASCAR when they had 60,000 people- Yeah
at these events. Uh, so in the world of motorsport, it was small, uh, it was still small. Um, so it was difficult to get bigger sponsors. Uh, but you know, it, I was able to now make a living doing it, and, uh, really enjoyed traveling around and building these cars. And then, um, we were competing against the Chevy guys, and they were going after us and our record.
Uh, so it was super motivating. And, and again, I'm still in my 20s. Yeah. Uh, and so it was, it, it was for sure a boom, and, [00:44:00] and I was loving every minute of it, yeah. Do you feel like that space sort of, um, just, like, it was almost like someone turned the lights off one day? 'Cause from my perspective on the outside, it was like, it was the biggest thing, and then all of a sudden it was gone, and then a year later it felt like drifting f- started to fill the void.
Do you f- do you feel that way living in it, or do you feel like it kinda slowly, um, sort of petered out? And I know that there's still a ton of people racing imports, but it, the professional side of it seemed to sorta just turn off one day. All of a sudden, all of the, all of the brands that came running in seemed to either move to drifting or go do something different.
So this is my take on it. I think it ramped up over a bit of time, and it f- and it, you know... But when you're 22 Two years is so long Is a long, is long. So, uh, you know, when you're older, you realize, oh, you look back, that was six or eight years or something- Yeah ... and it was a bit of a blip. Uh, but when I was living in it, it felt like an eternity, so a whole [00:45:00] entire lifetime.
And this is what did it for me. So around 2002, uh, I, I thought, "Okay, this is gonna be a bigger series. I wanna be in the fastest class at the track." And so we started building a rear wheel drive car, and that's the one, the red one that, with AEM- Yep ... that we ended up building, and r- ran, ran it to the sixes, and it was, it was twin turbo NSX engine.
It was a really cool car. So we ran that from 2003, uh, to two, 2005. But as we're doing that, I'm realizing, oh, these events are actually not that good. Like, we'd only have six to eight cars maybe in our class with the rear wheel drive stuff. Right. The front wheel drive stuff was kind of breaking down, and we'd always have oil downs at the track.
And I remember very clearly my mom coming to one of the tr- the races at Pomona, and it was one of our big events, uh, in probably 2004 or so. And there were some oil downs, and it was hot, and she's like, "Honey, I, I love you and this is great, but I think I'm gonna go now." And sh- and [00:46:00] so it was like- Even a sport a mother can't love.
Well, uh, and well, it, I just realized the show wasn't that good. Mm. At least that was my take on it, right? It was sort of built around us racers, and it was built around the magazines, and, like, these moments that you'd see on, on, on the internet and whatever- Right ... the, the, the runs. And it was backed by an entire aftermarket industry, so there was, uh, a, a reason for it to be there.
Yeah. Um, but I thought, w- I'm always into progression, so I was like, "What does this lead to?" And I didn't see a bright future, and I was like, "This isn't leading to where I really want to be." And at the same time, we had done a couple of events with the NHRA Pro Series. They had brought us out there, and we had oil down their track, and it-
we had blown up, and I was like, "Oh my God, maybe we don't know what we're doing." But at the same time, I met these pro drag racers that had been on tour for their, their entire life, and they got [00:47:00] their red Solo cup, and they're getting drunk after, and they're just tr- going from track to track. And I was like, "Yo, I love cars, and I love going to the racetrack, but I don't think I love it that much."
Like, there's other stuff that I love to do. It's, it's like car- it's like carny life. It's like, you show up, you build up the booth, you race, and you pack up, and you go to the next town, and that's your life. And so, you know, I grew up in Huntington Beach. I'd go to surf class in the morning before high school.
I went snowboarding. I loved to go out with my friends and, and, and hang out, and, like, there was all these things that I loved to do in addition to racing. Yeah. And, um, I wasn't prepared to make it, you know, 90+% of my life. And that was that moment where I realized I'm a car guy, but- There's all these other people that are more car guys than me Oh, hey, please pardon this little story time interruption brought to you by my good friends at FCP Euro.
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And, um, and I started getting a wandering eye, and I, and, and the drifting stuff, I had been to one of the D1 events- Yep ... uh, that they had here in 2003. I was there too. And, yeah, and, and so this drifting event was... I couldn't get my head around it, and I remember watching drifting in an Option video- Yeah
probably like three- Was this the JGTC event, where it was D1 and JGTC at Fontana? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But they had that Irwindale one I think that I went to before that. Okay, okay, yeah. And, um, so maybe it was before 2003, but, uh, I remember watching an old Option video 'cause that was some of the early stuff- Of course
we'd see in, like, '99 or '98 or whatever, and there was- multiple cars drifting on a mountain road at night, and my brain couldn't comprehend it. Like, I saw it, but I couldn't believe that people could drive cars on the road and drift in tandem in that way. Like, it just didn't register. Mm-hmm. Like, [00:51:00] I remember later look- thinking back that I saw this on a video, but I was so, uh, I just didn't, like, I just didn't get it.
Yeah. No, I- Like, I didn't think that there could be that much skill. Yeah. That they could do such a thing. So anyways, uh, fast-forward, I'm, I'm looking at these guys on track, and I'm like, "That looks pretty fun." And they're having more track time, and I'm like, "I feel like I could build an engine for that."
Yeah. "I can kinda build a car." And so on the side, I built a Nissan 240 in 2004. Uh, we had been working a bit with Honda, so in 2005 I built, uh, five, uh, we built a Honda S2000, and I was just kinda playing around on the side, and I was like, "Oh." Dreams of grandeur, like, "I'm a pro drag racer. I'm gonna be a pro drifter."
At the same time, I had a, a Honda Challenge car that I was running at NASA. I had a little shifter cart that I was bringing to the track. So I was going to the track almost every weekend. Yeah. I had a sand car that I was going off-roading with. Um, so my entire life was, I, I had no kids. Yeah. I was unmarried.
Everything was at the shop, and everything was building [00:52:00] stuff, but it wasn't just drag racing. Yeah. There was other stuff that I wanted to do, and there was this moment, I felt like there was this moment in drift where I was like, "Oh, this feels like drag racing in 1997. I can backdoor motorsport again."
Like, it's something I wanna do. The cars are inexpensive to build. The technology is relatively low. I feel we can get on the front end of the technology- Yeah ... relatively easy. Um, and I can learn how to drive these things, and I can be a pro drifter. By then, in 2005, I realized, I crashed my car, my S2000 enough to where I was like, "Oof, maybe I've missed the boat here, or maybe I don't have the talent to do it, or maybe I'm spread too thin 'cause I'm doing all these other things."
Whatever the case, um, if we're gonna do a pro drift team, I don't think I'm the A driver that can go win these events. Yeah. Uh- Was that a hard thing to kinda grab? Because up until that point, you were one of the, you were, if not the top name, one of the top names in import drag racing, [00:53:00] and now you're in this other space, and you're making the decision of, like, "Oh, I might be past my driving prime.
I'm gonna change to t- a team owner position." Like, was that hard to... 'Cause I, I, I've worked with a lotta race car drivers. It's not an easy thing for most drivers to do, but I've heard you talk about it before, and it seemed like maybe it was an easier transition for you. Uh, how, how was that? It was, it was, it was relatively easy.
Hmm. So step back to when I had my old tuning shop, and I was, I had my tuning shop when I was, whatever, I was 22 years old, but also drag racing on the side. And when, when Sean and I built that yellow car, uh- I had to decide, like, am I gonna go full drag racing or am I gonna have the shop? And I decided I can't do both really well.
I'm gonna close the shop and I'm gonna go racing. Mm. So, so went over a f- few, I s- skimmed over a few parts of my life there, but one of them was I'm gonna go for a pro- I'm gonna move back into my mom's house, I'm gonna go full pr- pro drag, front-wheel drive drag racing, and I'm gonna close the shop.
Mm-hmm. So I had already decided some big life decisions kind of earlier, and now, so I'm [00:54:00] here, you know, fast-forward to 2005, and I'm like, "I need to bring in someone else that could be a, a top-level driver." So I'd met Tanner Foust at the same time, 'cause I was doing some of the drifting even- Yeah ... or all the drifting events that year, and, that Formula Drift had.
He was as well. So Tanner had, uh, some car trouble, but he was a great driver, and I could kind of see, like- Yeah ... 'cause I was now driving, I could see the difference between the good drivers and the bad drivers, and I was like, "Oh, this guy's a level up." So it was Rhys Millen, Sammy Hubinet, and Tanner were clearly the best drivers.
Um, and you had a couple of Japanese guys and a couple of Americans that were also good, but they were a level up. Yeah. And so Tanner was looking over at our pit and was like, "Oh, wow, he builds pretty cool cars." And I'd talk to him about car setup and stuff with, as far as the engine stuff goes. And, um, in 2006, uh, worked with AEM for the drag racing for years, and I convinced them that, "Hey, guys, the drag racing thing may have run its course.
Let's go to drift. And for the budget that we had in the drag racing, [00:55:00] this rear-wheel drive car, we could do a two-car drift team." Hmm. "We'll put Tanner in the A car," and we built him a 350Z, "and I'll be in the B car," which is g- the Honda S2000, "and, uh, we'll go do all the f- the Formula Drift events and some D1 stuff that they had at."
And they were, they were, they were with it. Yeah. And so we basically retired from drag racing, uh, at the end of tw- 2005, and 2006 built the two-car program, and were fully invested into, to, uh, drift at that point. And then that really exploded for you. It did. Yeah. Yeah. And I kind of, I was watching the drag racing continue to have, uh, to str- to struggle.
Yeah. Um, and, uh, the, the drift stuff just, until this day, right? You know, fast-forward to t- you know, 20 years later, and, uh, it's still as strong as ever. So, um, and then so we did the drifting for, uh, uh... We started the drifting program, and within the first three years, 2006, [00:56:00] Tanner got third, 2007, won the championship, 2008, won the championship.
Uh, and 2009, we did a deal with Scion- Yep ... with the, the Toyota brand, and, uh, we were gonna build a, uh, TC, Scion TC for them. Rear-wheel drive converted, put Tanner- Yeah ... in that car, and I made another decision. I was like, "Oh- I'm kind of not having that much fun driving anymore. I'm spotting for Tanner, so I would not qualify.
Put the headphones on, go up, and then spot for Tanner, and I was kind of almost looking for a way out. So, we were able to... We, we reduced it to a one-car program. Uh, we brought Rockstar on as the, the... Well, they were already a title sponsor- Yep ... uh, by this time on the, on the Z. Uh, but now we're working with Scion, Rockstar Energy Drinks, still AEM.
We were working with Toyo Tires at the time. Yeah. And we had a solid, sponsored, real program. Yeah. And, and Tanner was also doing rally stuff. You... They were starting to do X Games. That's how, that's how I knew ra- That's how I knew Tanner was through rally. Yeah. Yeah. And [00:57:00] Tanner is, um- He's an amazing driver.
I mean, just, like, his ability to get into anything and just instantly be able to wheel it. I had a brand-new Z06, like, no one had even driven it, 'cause I was in the magazine business, and then, like, handed it to him, and we just went sliding these roads, and, like, the amount of commitment that he had f- from go was, like, was just blew me away, because it's like, "This is a car you've never driven before," had never driven anything similar to it, and was just like, "Yeah, I'm just gonna casually put this, like, six inches off the wall."
Like, great. A- And so, there were moments like that. And there was a lot of those moments, in addition to Tanner was good with the ladies. He was doing, he was, he was, he was doing stunt driving. Yep. He was a Really nice guy Yeah He was honest. Yeah, yeah Like, he checked all of these boxes, and you're like, "What a dick."
Like, how How did he- How did he get so much- ... when others get so little? Yeah. Um, when I first [00:58:00] met him, I thought he was, like, six years younger than me, 'cause he looked so young. And I met him, and I was, you know, I was probably in my late 20s, and I figured he was, like, years younger than me. And we were talking, and he's like, "I have a daughter."
I'm like, "You have a daughter?" And he's like, "Yeah." And then he was like... I realized he was actually, like, a, you know, four, four or so years older than me. I'm like, "How do you look so young?" Like, and then he maintained that for most of his life. It's like... It was like, yeah, how did that work out for him? But yeah.
And he had a amazing work ethic. Yeah He was flying around the world- Yeah ... living out of a suitcase. So, so anyways, um, so Tanner did a great job, uh, with us. Eventually, he retired- Yeah ... and, uh, and then continued on the rally, and the stunts, and Top Gear- Yeah ... and all the, the amazing stuff that he's done.
Then we brought in Frederick Aasbo- Yeah ... and continued with the, the whole Scion and the, and the Toyota program. What was... Uh, to rewind a little bit, I mean, obviously it was really controversial when you guys took a TC and made it rear-wheel drive. I know that there was a lot of conversation of, like, should that be, should it not be.
What, what was sort of your perspective of it in the sport, um, versus [00:59:00] maybe some other people who felt like, "Hey, rear-wheel drive cars should, is what's on- only should be allowed here," versus Scion coming in with, you know, sort of wanting to be in the space, but not making the car for the, for the sport?
What, what was... One, what was your perspective in that from sort of a builder engineer? But then two, sort of what were some of the hurdles that you guys had to go through inside of, like, FD to, to make that car sort of, you know, legit and legal? Yeah, so I came in when drifting was already established from a, uh, the underground scene- Yeah
to the core drifters in Japan, and there was a core drifters here in the US. And there was a connection, I think, that they had to the spirit of drift, and the way that you drove, and the way that the cars were, and kind of looking to the Japanese, um, history of it. I came in like, "This is really fun. I wanna kick ass at it and win."
And so I just looked at the r- rule book, which was, like, two pages back then. [01:00:00] Brought in our driver that, you know, Tanner, that, that, uh, was an amazing driver, that, that... Then we just said, "Hey, what is the car that we could build that works within the rules, uh, for Scion, and what engine do we want?" So from day one, it wasn't about what the guys were doing before.
If you're, if you're thinking that way, then you're always gonna be a step behind. The idea, the concept was, let's leapfrog to the next thing. But understand it when we're doing it, right? So we did that with the tube chassis stuff, we did it with the drag racing stuff, and so now we're doing that with the drag re- uh, so, sorry, with the drifting.
And so TC S- Scion only made front-wheel drive cars, and they want us to use the TC, and but we need to make it rear-wheel drive. And, uh, if you want to have OEM manufacturer support in, it's gonna be Scion that cared about it, you have to allow a fr- a rear-wheel drive converted car. Yep. Like, [01:01:00] there's no other way around it.
I guess, I, I c- I understand that some of the folks maybe wanted to stay core or whatever, but the next l- if you wanna do this for a period of time, you gotta be professional and bring on sponsors. Mm-hmm. And, and that was one of the, the n- I think the necessary things that had to happen. And for me, that was right up our alley.
I'd been doing engine swaps for many years. Yep. Um, let's do something unique to talk about. Uh, people love the car 'cause it was, again, different. And so the car was a 20, I wanna say it was a 2011 Scion tC, and we talked to the Scion guys, and we said, "Hey, we want one of those N- NASCAR Toyota engines- ... that they're using, you know, in NASCAR."
And you have to understand that these engines are not modified factory cars. Yeah. They're, they're pushrod, they have overhead valves. It's basically a small block- Small block Chevy, yeah ... small block Sh- a- architecture, but with, like, global engineering experience from Toyota. So, like, the block, nothing is small block Chevy.
Yeah. The block is Toyota, the cam... Like, [01:02:00] everything is, like, bespoke just for this NASCAR program. It's, like, a tens of millions of dollars into this thing. And, uh, I'm like, "Hey, can we get one of those engines?" And the Scion folks were like, "We don't know anybody at the So- over there." So I was bold enough to, like, start making phone calls, 'cause I had known people from drag racing, and I was like, "Hey, we wanna use one of these things."
So I connected someone at Scion with someone at TRD, and eventually realized that they had... This is an interesting story. So N- NASCAR, I hope I get this right, T- Toyota said, "We wanna run NASCAR." And Toyota, and so NASCAR is like, "Sure, but you gotta start in these low, lower series. We're not gonna let you straight into Cup."
Right. So, uh, Toyota built these custom engines for running in, I think it was the Busch Series or whatever, like, the l- the lower-end series, and the Truck Series. Mm-hmm. And they were called the Phase Nine engine. And this Phase Nine engine made- 800-some horsepower, and they made hundreds of them because they're in all the trucks and all these lower- Right
class cars and everything. And finally, NASCAR let them [01:03:00] run in the Cup. They said, "All right, we'll let you run in Cup, but you ha- and, and, but you have to make these changes to this engine." Like, the engine was almost too good. Mm-hmm. And so they went to, I believe it was, like, the phase 13 engine. I may be getting that number wrong, but, like, the, the next- Yeah
evolution of that engine. So all of these previous engines, there's, like, 100 or so of these engines, all became op- immediately- Oh ... obsolete. Wow. So it was the right timing, where they're like, "Uh, yeah, we'll give you a couple of them." Yeah. "But you need to work with-" Would you like to buy 30 of them? No. Well, it was nice enough that they donated the engine to the program.
Yep. But it was a used engine that had been run a short course. Yep. And we worked with a company called, uh, Ed Pink Racing Engines. Yep, I know. And they worked with, and they were here in LA, and they worked with Toyota on their Midget engine- Yep ... and some other V8 stuff. So the engine was over at Ed Pink, and we told them what we wanted to do with the engine.
We wanna go drifting. So they picked the cylinder heads with the smaller ports for the short tracks, and a different intake manifold, uh, that was for the short track, and we raised the compression [01:04:00] because they were limited on the compression, but we weren't. Yep. So we, we raised the compression in it. Um- What was the compression on that engine?
I think they were limited to 12-ish or something, and we went up to 13 and a half. 13 and a... Okay, yeah. Uh, it was a different p- custom cam. I remember the cam being, like, $2,500 or something like that for, like, 'cause it's, again, it's a bespoke part. Right. So you gotta buy the core and everything. Um, and then we put fuel injection on it, 'cause back then they were still carbureted.
Yeah, yeah. Uh, so we put an AM, uh, a fuel injection on it with eight injectors and a throttle body, and I think we made, like, 650 horsepower. Because we needed power from 3,500 RPM up. Yep. And we needed it to live idling and all of these things that the NASCAR engines don't do. Like, they live at 9,000 RPM.
Right. So when you hear these 800 horsepower plus numbers, their power band is from, like, 7 to 9,000 RPM. So if we want to make some power at lower RPM, then we have to do a different cam, different heads that really restricted a higher RPM, uh, but we have a much [01:05:00] broader torque band- Yeah ... and, and power band.
So anyways, um, they built us the engine. We shoehorned that into the, uh, Scion tC. Uh, we put a GeForce GSR transmission on it, which is a, basically a NASCAR transmission. Yep. And a Mark IV Supra rear diff and axles and everything. And it was relatively competitive out from the beginning. Um, but we were, because now we're in this world of- There was nothing available for this chassis.
There was no steering, there was no suspension, there was no anything. We had to make everything. Right. And so the development of the steering geometry, the development of suspension geometry, uh, took a few years to kinda get right. But back to your question, which was, you know, how did, you know, the, the scene and all that stuff feel about it?
I think it was, it was, uh, it, it was polarizing. Yeah. You know, some of the, some of the people thought it was... It was weird, because it wasn't a competitive advantage. It was [01:06:00] t- absolutely a competitive- Right, 'cause you guys- ... disadvantage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 'Cause this was not a sorted car. Yeah. And the engine was really far forward.
To put some numbers on this, you, you want closer to 50/50 weight distribution on these cars, maybe 52% of the weight on the front, 48% on the rear, to have a good road race or, or dr- dr- drifting car. Yeah. And the S chassis and all that stuff had it. The limitation that we had on the Scion TC was it's a front-wheel drive chassis with what they were building back then, all these front-wheel drive cars, what they call a cab forward design.
So, the engine's out in front of the axle. The whole driver and passenger is moved forward in the car, so you have more, uh, space inside- Mm-hmm ... the vehicle. But the firewall in the engine bay is only eight inches behind the front axle center line. Mm-hmm. So, most of the engine bay is, is, is much shorter. If you look at the hood line on that compared to any rear-wheel drive cars, it's tiny.
Yep. So, the engine is mounted very far forward. So, we found kind of a loophole in the [01:07:00] rules, where, uh, you could m- modify the firewall to allow, like, alternator clearance or f- or ma- Mm-hmm ... intake manifold clearance. So, what we did is we removed the firewall from the car. We basically reformed it by hammering it out and everything to have it sort of go rearward more- Yeah
and then reinstalled it into the car. So, it was technically the factory firewall, but- ... we had reformed it so we could get the engine, I think, 12 or 14 inches- Oh, wow ... behind the front axle- Right, right ... which helped the weight distribution. And eventually, they closed that, uh, loophole a few years later. Yeah.
And they said you cannot move the engine rearward of where the factory firewall- originally lived. Yeah. Um, so the next car that we bi- built, uh, you know, didn't have that mod. Well, it's an interesting thing, I think, in any sport where there's always, like, uh, in the, in a recent, uh, episode of Firing Order we did, um, Chris Stewart from Gridlife said, you know, "Racers are gonna [01:08:00] race," right?
Meaning, like, no matter what, they're gonna try to progress, they're gonna push the limits, they're gonna, you know, exploit the rule book. Like, that's just what racing is, and that's part of it. And I think you get to this point in any sport where you go from this grassroots element where everyone just really enjoys going and doing it on the weekend, to like, "Okay, now we wanna win."
And, like, when winning becomes the focus, it's like progression comes. So I think, you know, in drifting, and a lot of people that I've had, like, these deeper conversations of, like, drifting is now, you know, it's been around for a while. Like, it's not the new sport anymore. Like, it probably still feels new to us because we remember before it, but there are kids now who are watching drifting that were born after drifting started in the US, right?
So drifting's, like, on its, like, you know, its next generation. You look, Turk's retiring this year. It's like the, the old guard is, like, moving out, right? And it's like, okay, then there's a bunch of young kids, I don't even know who they are anymore. But there was definitely this moment where [01:09:00] between you guys and ASD, like, the...
It was changing. Like, all of a sudden it went from this seems kind of grassroots to this feels like real race teams, like, really pushing the limit, and kind of going that. Did... At the time, did you feel like it was you guys versus ASD? Was that sort of, like, that, that moment where it was they're building something that i- you know, really feels like it's coming out of, like, the dirt track kind of world?
You guys are re-engineering from the ground up, and basically building, you know, sort of your own, you know, your own vehicle to go do this. Because like you said, it's, you don't have built-in geometry. H- how different was that moment, and did you enjoy that moment? 'Cause I feel like that's where you live, is you live in the engineering side of it, where it started to become not just a driver battle, but it became a team battle.
And, like, all of a sudden, people were now talking about like, "Hey, these are good teams to be on," right? Like, when Tony Angelo wanted to come back to drifting, he was like, "Yeah, I wanna go run one of your cars," [01:10:00] because he knew it was a competitive car, right? So what, what, like, did you... And is that, like, a part that really fed you, that you enjoyed?
It was, yes. Because I wasn't driving anymore. Yeah. So the thing that I was applying myself to was the team ownership- The engineering and the building of the cars. And so that's where I wanted to win on the track. 'Cause if, you, you can't, every weekend, there's only one person that wins. Everybody else loses that weekend.
Yeah. So you have to have other goals. Well said, Ryan. Got it. You have to have other goals. So my goals would be, well, let's come out, let's, let's people, get people scared of this car, let's make sure it's competitive, show that we know how to tune the thing, that it's reliable, it drives back into the trailer at the end of the day, uh, which is n- not always the case.
Uh, but that was where, I think my guys as well, like, the crew guys that we had, Sean, and Mario, and then they came from drag racing as well. Yeah. Like, they loved the building of the car, and the maintaining of the car aspect of it. We were not pure drifters, right? Yeah. We were motor sports guys, [01:11:00] uh, for better or worse, you know?
And, um, and I think Ian, that ran ASD, was the same way. And when he link- linked up with, uh, Vaughn Gittin- With Vaughn and RJ ... with Vaughn, uh, they, they, they connected on that thing. Yeah. Because all of us kind of saw the same thing. We wanna do this professionally, we want the sport to grow, we want this to be a good show, we wanna have...
Like, there was these main things that you just need to have to do this professionally. Yeah. Uh, and but we don't wanna shove off, or like, you know, disrespect the past in any way. Yeah, yeah. We wanna, you know, take that as well, but we've gotta evolve this thing. Yeah. Um, and, and because we saw eye-to-eye on that, and that concept, uh, w- there was a whole separate competition, you're right, that was going on, which was the car builds.
Yeah, it felt like the arms race, but it was like, who was gonna bring out a more competitive machine? And those cars all started to look different on track too, right? Like, you know, the, the monster truck era of the, of the Mustangs, because, like, they, the, they had so much grip that they were lifting the front, and lifting that front corner, [01:12:00] and, you know, that era.
And just the, the, how I think fast your cars sort of were able to transition through, and like, you know, just the drivability of them. And obviously, also, I mean, like Ozbo was a weapon himself, right? I mean, you always had those kind of drivers along with you. Um, it, it was interesting, 'cause it definitely, I think, was the first time that- I was on the rally side of it, and it's the first time that, like, rally engineers and techs were, like, looking at the cars you guys were building, where before it was like, "Oh, these
That's cute. They slide cars. We've been sliding cars for 50 years," you know? But then all of a sudden it was like, oh, this is interesting, that the development had sort of reached a point where, hey, this was really interesting. And obviously when we built the Hoonicorn, you know, um, Ian was heavily involved in sort of figuring out, how do we take sort of everything that we want i- it to do, and have weight transfer like a, you know, like a all-wheel drive rally car does, but at the same time, he was bringing in these different elements of, like, how it would transition and do [01:13:00] all that from what they were doing there.
And it was, it w- that was this moment of, I think, looking at it going, wow, there's, like, a real, you know, like I said, an arms race of, like, building the best car possible in FD, which I think changed FD. And look, some people will say that, whether that's for the good or the worse, and there's always the purists, but the purists also have a place to play still in drifting.
Um, you know, for you, um, where do you sort of ... And, and this can kind of shift into, into a different conversation I wanna move into, but, um, like, you've now been in drifting for 20-plus years. Like, how different does the sport feel for you from when, like, you got into it till now? 'Cause we started the conversation and we talked about how, as big as import drag racing was for us at the moment when we were living it, 'cause we were in our 20s, I'm 46, so I'm not much younger than you, um, you look back at it and it really was a blip.
Drifting's not a blip. Like, drifting has proven some staying power, and it's, I, I would argue, continuing to get bigger, right? Like, it's continuing to expand. H- how do you see it now, 20 years later? And not just in [01:14:00] FD, but just sort of like the whole, the whole space of drifting. Yeah. Um, it f- feels like we definitely shifted it away from the core and the, the history of drift a bit, and into this kind of professional world where- Mm-hmm
tons of horsepower, tons of grip, big tires, uh, understanding what the judges want, conforming to that, having a bit of strategy on the track. Like, these were all things that we kind of brought in, you know, years ago. Um, not that there weren't strategies and stuff before, but it felt like a little bit more sneaky strategies the drivers were doing back then than, uh- Right, right.
Yeah ... th- but, but, um- Like cutting brake lights and things like that. You know, nowadays, you know, it's, it's a professional motor sport. You've got kids that, like you said, came in that- Wanted to be drifters when they were young. They now have the resources to potentially buy a car, get an engine, put a team together, and try to make it in drift.
Yep. Um, they're starting at the track. They're not necessarily canyon guys that have transitioned to the [01:15:00] racetrack. Mm-hmm. They're pure racetrack guys. Um, and sometimes they're even coming over from, uh, motorcycles or maybe some kind of circle track or some other s- sort of motorsport, which is gonna give them a head start, for sure.
I, I have debates on this, whether the show is better now than th- before. Okay. I, I can't answer that question. I don't know. Hmm. I, I ... So there was some amazing D1 shows, um, and Formula Drift stuff 15 years ago when the cars were simpler. Mm-hmm. The, the driving lines were not as extreme. Uh, but just amazing shows.
And I, and I think having the diversity of the cars, the diversity of the engines, the obscureness of the judging from back in the days- Yeah ... coming out emotionally charged because you thought somebody should have win- won when they didn't, not, it, that sh- I think those all led to a really good show.
Mm-hmm. I think it's backwards. What people want all the stuff to be black and white, and I think it, drifting not being black and white is the thing that is, you get an emotional attachment to [01:16:00] it. Yeah. You go away saying, "God," like, "Drift, that was terrible," and you go talk about it. You go on the internet and- Right
y- and, and, but you're, but you come away with an emotion from it. Um, I think there's become a ... Actually, there's still, still a lot of controversy, uh, but I think as these c- the t- the, the cars and drivers and all that stuff become more technical- Yeah ... uh, I think you kinda lose some of that. Sort of- But just looking back at this last Long Beach event- I was gonna s-
it was chaos. I was gonna say, are, so are you a fan of the more robotic sort of, um, judging that they've brought in? And for those who don't follow drifting, FD has, is started to, um, sort of roll out this, like, what would you call it, like, computer-aided j- sort of VBOX sort of oriented, um, scoring system, right?
Is that ... Yeah, how do you understand it to work? Yeah, so, uh, yeah, so the, the, the electronics in the car can m- measure your angle, your proximity to the other car- Yeah ... uh, your driving line, all the, with, with huge accuracy. [01:17:00] Um, and I think there's merit there. Uh- But I think for the show, I don't think that helps.
Yeah. I think all of that stuff hurts the show. But if you don't really know what the judges sort of want- Right ... and having a vi- variety of ways that the drivers drive. Right. Like, you can have Chelsea or a Japanese guy with this huge angle. Then you have maybe, uh, Frederick when he first started driving, like very extreme, to people that are more controlled and more precise.
Like, that variety of driving is the thing that makes the show good. Hmm. As you go to electronics and you start making it more into this is the thing you need to do to get the round win, you have a conformity of the driving styles, which means there's less driving styles. And then overall, I think that takes away from, uh, the, the impact of the show over time.
I, I agree, but I'm actually really surprised to hear you say that. I, I always see you as very engineer-minded, so I would think that you'd appreciate something that feels more like a constant, because a constant is [01:18:00] always something you can build to win against, right? But you actually pref- you think from a show side.
As a team owner, do you like it better or you still don't really know yet? I s- I don't like it as much. You don't like it. Nope. Okay. All right. And, and, and I would argue your point, which is you need to understand what the judges want and what's going on on the track, and adapt to that. And that's part of the competition for you.
Part of the- Yeah ... that is the competition. Yeah. The competition isn't going in there and they're saying, "Cross the finish line first." Right. The competition is- Figure out what the judges want and the things that they don't even know that they want, and give them that. Mm-hmm. That creates progression. That creates us figuring out new stuff in the car.
That keeps the drivers continuing to figure out new ways of driving and more exciting ways of driving, and a new driver can come up and, uh, perform better even with a worse car- Yeah ... because they have some style that no one's seen before. I believe that all leads to a better show, and that all leads to a m- more opportunity for all of us to continue [01:19:00] to do this as a profession because the show is better.
So let, let's gear shift. You were at the Racer, um, creative summit two weeks ago. I asked a question to, uh, a bunch of panelists who were up there talking about, um, motorsports and the future of motorsports, and one of the things that they said was that, um, you know, the pureness of racing is more important than the entertainment side of it.
And I interrupted and kind of said, you know, "Hey, I, I, I don't actually think that's entirely true, because without entertainment we don't have eyeballs, and without eyeballs there's no business, without business there's no reason to go racing," right? And, like, that's the reality of it. You came up to me afterwards and kind of said, "Thanks for asking that question."
Uh, you know, w- what, how does that... And you now have, you know, 30 years of being in the business of this and, and racing. Um, you've watched series get a massive amount of eyeballs because of its adjacency to Fast and Furious and, and this massive mainstream exposure. You've been through [01:20:00] probably a ton of peaks and valleys on drifting.
I mean, early drifting it's, like, GQ and Maxim were writing about it. It, it felt like it was going to also be the next biggest sport, and then it had its lulls and, and then it has its back up agains. And I would say I think that there's, I think drifting culturally, not just FD, is, is kind of in a peak moment right now.
I mean, everyone knows what drifting is. Like, it's not this obscure sport that lives in the hills of Japan anymore. It's like m- you know, it's like parents have heard of drifting, and young kids all know what it is, and rappers talk about it. I mean, it's really kind of grown up. Um, but looking at all of that and seeing sort of, you know, this, like, you know, as we talk about the show of it, um, what do you think is important for not just the future of, of that, but just, you know, not just the future of drifting, but just motorsports in general?
'Cause I, we didn't get to talk quickly that day, but I kind of felt like you were, you know, you were agreeing that the purity of racing sometimes isn't as important [01:21:00] as the show. Like where, how, what are your feelings on that? So I would like... I, I like motorsports because I like the, uh, engineering and the cars- Mm
and watching extreme things on the track. I'm not interested in watching- 40 cars on the track that make within five horsepower chase each other down for two or three hours. Like, that's just not interesting to me. Mm-hmm. Um, I like seeing diversity and someone coming out with something interesting. So, so think back to, like, old IndyCar stuff when there was different engines and different chassis.
Uh, uh, and compared to NASCAR nowadays, which is built around a profile, same thing with IndyCar, which is basically one chassis and a couple of engines, right? Yep. They've, they've kinda turned into spec series. And, and I-- You think maybe you can make an argument that it's about driver versus driver, but I don't really care that much about the drivers.
I care about the cars. Mm-hmm. So if they would show us more of, how are these cars built? [01:22:00] Like, how is the engine being used? How is the tune-up being changed? It, it could be IndyCar, it could be all these formula... They're so secretive about it. Mm-hmm. And I talked to, uh, one of, someone important at IndyCar, um, on one of the teams, and, and he said, "It's war out there."
That was his quote. "We can't show those things. It's war out there." It's like, what are we doing here? Are, is it about you guys racing on track, or is it about us wanting to watch the things on track and being interested and starting to get attracted to, uh, connected to one of these cars? Yeah. I'm kinda shifting around a little bit here, because it's, it's hard for me to get all this out, because it-- I don't have a favorite driver.
Right. I have-- I don't even have a favorite car anymore in, like, traditional motorsport, because it's all the same car to me with a different livery on it. And there might be something different in the cars, but they don't show us what the difference is or how they're doing it different, so then there's no link.
And then, so I end up not watching any other motorsport, because it just isn't interesting to me. Right. [01:23:00] And maybe because I'm, I, I grew up where it was Mickey Thompson Off-Road, and you had these off-road vehicles. And I, I actually like Baja racing now. Yeah. 'Cause the trucks are just amazing. The, what, what they're able to do with the suspension and get the engines to live and the different terrain that they go through.
Like, all of that stuff is interesting to me. And in the top class, you still have rear-wheel drive and all-wheel drive. There's all different engine configurations. Like, there's no set standard still. Yeah. I don't, I don't know where I'm going with this other than saying that I like the diversity, and I like, uh, people to have a rule book where they can come in and innovate still.
Mm-hmm. Uh, and, and arguably most mainstream motorsport has stifled that Yeah, no, I mean, look, I, I absolutely love motorsports. Um, but I can't help but notice that there's just this steady decline. Um, sure, Formula 1 has this peak right now, I think, where everyone's, you know, excited about it, and mostly probably because they actually told a good story about a driver, about the drivers, and that sort of has sunk in.
But I don't, I [01:24:00] don't find it as interesting as other spaces. And I, I was thinking about this while you were talking about, you know, how cool Indy was back in the day because, yeah, you had all these different sort of... It, it was different motor configurations and different setups. Do you think that in some ways, like, drifting actually is the, like, spiritual sort of, um, you know, follow-up to, uh, to that era of drag racing, where it was a bit of a run, you know, run what you brung type of mentality?
Because think how, how many other sports are there where you have turbo four cylinders competing against, you know, V8s, right? And, and, and so many different platforms all in the same place, and I think that one of the last places that that really did sort of exist was in drag racing. And sure, there was a lot of rule books that sort of continued to tighten that up, but it was one of the few places that you could see two very different vehicles compete against each other, where, like, that just doesn't really exist anymore.
Like, the era of touring [01:25:00] car racing, where you have all these different stuff racing just does- It's not on the high level anymore. Yeah, no, I, I, I think that's one of the reasons why it continues to stay popular, because of the diversity- Yeah ... of the cars and diversity of the drivers, and the, the rule book is relatively thin, so you st- still keep new, still see new builds coming in that are, that are different.
Yeah And the evolution is still happening. Yeah. So yeah, I think that's, that's continued to be helpful for, for drift. Did you ever do much in time attack? Was that ever a space you looked at? Uh, no. No. I never did anything- Yeah ... time attack. I, uh, I, I, I- 'Cause I feel like that was, like, everyone got off the drag racing train, and it was like you're either getting onto the time attack r- boat, or you're getting onto the drifting one, and I think the drifting one's obviously had a bit more success.
But, 'cause I think in the same way, time attack has that similar mentality of, like, it... You can put a bunch of different things up against each other. Yeah, I, I, my perception at the time, uh, was that time attack couldn't, you couldn't do it professionally. Mm. So it just, there wasn't a space for me there.
Still not sure if you can, but- Yeah. [01:26:00] So, so I, like, some of the main things that are important to me is I, I love doing cars, I love building things- Yeah ... and I wanna continue to do it. So whatever we're gonna do has to have some endurance- Yeah ... and it has to see where there could be a professional outlet to it.
If it's not, it's could be something to fun to do as a hobby. Yeah. Right? Um, so we can go skiing, or we can go mountain biking, and I'm not pursuing any of those things professionally, although there's many people that do that professionally. Right. But I just do it as a hobby, and it's something fun. But you can go pick your bike up out of the garage and go take it out.
You can go, uh, get your skis or snowboard and head up to the mountain for the weekend and go do that. If you wanna build a time attack car, there's a huge amount of, uh, infrastructure that you need to have and continue to devel- develop it. Um, the cost and the, uh, yeah, the continuation of, and the, uh, the development of something like that is beyond the resources that I have.
Yeah. Uh, so if I can't, if I don't have the resources and I, I can't do it [01:27:00] professionally, um, I just sort of put a little bit of a blinders on so I don't get distracted, uh, and, and take myself down a road that I can't, you know, maintain. Yeah. It's the Snack Intermission, brought to you by Vyper Industrial.
Welcome to Snack Cart, that moment where we take a little bit of a break, brought to you by Vyper Industrial. Today, 'cause I knew this Zac was gonna be here, I figured I'd try something a little healthier. It's a granola. Right. But it is coated, as the young kids say, as chocolate chip cookie dough. It's clean.
It's top nine allergen free. It's kosher. It's whole grain. It's ancient grains. It's plant-based. And, uh, some gluten-free bullshit. I'm sorry, guys. It sounds horrible. Let's give it a whirl. This is a mess. It tastes like a little bit of science. I love cold cereal. It's, like, one of my favorite foods. So if you, if you put this in a bowl with milk, I would eat the whole bag.
I like the expression science as a flavor- Yeah ... 'cause it definitely is. Like- It's got some [01:28:00] science ... it's got some science in there. It's very engineered. And you're going for more. No, I am. I'm just, I'm, I'm starving. You're just... Yeah, give it a score. As a handheld snack, it's, like, a two on a sunny day. I think this would be good, like, in a, in, like, a yogurt.
Or yogurt. Like, throw this up in a Greek yogurt. Or yogurt. You motherfucker. This is kinda, like, a 7 out of 10 for me. I'm gonna give it a five or six, but I don't really eat bad snacks. You only eat healthy snacks. Yeah. And it's a little dry. There's, like, a weird burn aftertaste that happened. Yeah, there is a burn.
Yeah. I don't know if... Is that okay? Is there, like, a s- side effect going here? Anyway, back to the show. Let me ask you a question. Um, back to the, like, kind of the, the idea of the show versus, you know, the sport of it. H- how do you make the show better? Like, like, how would you... If you were in control, let's just say FD, 'cause it's something that you're involved in much, but, like, you know, how, how, how would you try to improve the show?
I mean, that's, that's the, that's the ultimate question, right? Um, I think the flow of the [01:29:00] sh- the, of the event needs to go smoother. I learned this from the drag racing, when there's the oil downs and the stalls in between the runs- This is your mom going home ... and every- Yeah. It's the mom litmus. Will mom stick around the whole time?
That's right. Yeah. And so D1 had a solid, tight, two-hour show. Yeah. They even had a really tight, uh, qualifying. And so they would, there would be cars, like, let's say in qualifying, the car was barely at the finish line finishing their run, they're already sending the next car into smoke. Yeah. And they were able to run the whole qualifying within, like, 90 minutes or something like that.
The same thing with, with the, the events. There's no replays, there's none of the stuff. The judges were like, "Oh, we got a winner. Move the next pair. Move the next pair." And what ended up happening was the show was tight. You'd have people placed- Mm-hmm ... where maybe you didn't think that they should have. Uh, and then so again, back to the whole thing where you got a little bit emotional about, "They should have won- Yeah, yeah
or they should have," but it didn't matter. You moved on to the next thing, you forgot about that, or maybe you didn't forget about that, and the show was good and tight by [01:30:00] the end of, by the end of the night. What we're doing now is we're adding extra layers, we're adding more... We're, we're basically building this now around the drivers so they're happy and they're not marching up to- Right
get angry at the judges or the series, or getting in Instagram, uh, getting upset where someone at the series has to come in and start writing paragraphs. It's just so cringe when that happens- Yeah ... uh, to try to defend themselves. It's like... And, and implementing more judging, more replays, more electronics to still have the same people complaining at the end of the events.
So all of this ef- extra infrastructure and complexity has not fixed the underlying issue of it's a judged sport and people are gonna be unhappy when they lose- Right ... and they're gonna complain. We might as well just tighten that whole wor- flow of show up, put a better show together, and let the [01:31:00] things, you know, fall out as they may.
Yeah. And, and us as a competitor have to look at it, and, and, and I've watched enough sports where I'll watch basketball, and you have the top players get called on a foul, and you, they're like, "Ah." And sometimes they don't get called on a foul. Mm-hmm. You win some, you lose some, and at the end you hope that the universe sort of equalizes out, and you be a good sport about it, and you realize that the flow of the game is more important.
And I've sort of applied that to rationalize myself at these drift events, where sometimes we get a call and sometimes we don't, but at the end of the day, uh, we have to understand that hopefully there's a balance, but the s- the flow of the show and the event itself is the primary concern, 'cause if that doesn't work well, none of it matters.
Yeah. Have you done a Drift Masters event? No. No? Yeah, I, I had Adam LZ on the pod a couple weeks back, and, um, he... I asked him to compare sort of what it's like to be in FD versus Drift Masters, and he said that the show is better in Drift Masters, [01:32:00] um, but as a driver, FD is better because Drift Masters doesn't care about your, like, five-minute rule or any of that.
Like, they just keep the show going. And he's like, "So as a driver, like, FD i- is more lenient and allows you to sort of, you know, worry about this or, or, or complain or do whatever." And in Drift Masters, it's just like, "Oh, your car broke? That's cool. We're moving into the next race or the next round because w- we, we have an audience that we have to care about," you know?
And 'cause from... I haven't been to a Drift Masters event, but I've obviously seen a ton of it online, and it looks crazy, right? Like, it looks just like such a bigger show. So I was asking him, like, kind of how it got there. I was kinda curious 'cause you're sort of saying the same thing, that maybe FD's a little too concerned about the driver.
But then on the flip side, I think there's a lot of other motorsports where their failure is, like, not worrying about the drivers at all, right? So it's like, it's this weird mix of how you get there. So I would, I would ask this question, and this is an impossible question to a- answer, but if we could have...
I would go for the, [01:33:00] the, the, the solution that would probably build the series. If you could say, "Look, there won't be any more five-minute rule or... And, and you might lose a little sometimes, and you're not sure why." Right. But the series can be twice as big, three times as big, you know, you know, five X. Yeah.
And it's a real thing. Absolutely. Uh, and then some drivers will not conform to that and not wanna compete anymore. Yeah. But you might be missing out on a, on a big growth. Uh, but if it was not to build it, and the drivers are unhappy, then I think that's the worst of everything. Right. And that's what I think everybody's worst...
W- That's, that's the thing that's impossible to answer, right? Yeah. It's, it's, what, change the whole format so the drivers are unhappy and the sport doesn't grow? Nobody wants that. Yeah. No, that makes sense. Uh, shifting gears a little bit, but sort of in the same mindset, one of the questions I've been asking everybody who's been around for a little bit, you know, not like guys like Nads, although he's been around a lot longer than us have.
Um, you know, where do you think sort of the health of the [01:34:00] entire, you know, industry is for us? When I say industry, I mean car culture, so not just drifting, but just, like, everything that's going on. We've all lived through sort of these different peaks and moments. Do you... Where do you think we are at right now?
Do you think we're in, you know, a peak, a lull? Like, how does it seem from, from sort of your perspective? And I, and I... You, you know, you work directly with the automakers. You're involved in a lot of these different pieces. You're obviously involved in the competition side. You're still involved in SEMA and things like that.
H- How do you see, like, the general health of, you know, where, where we're at at the moment compared to, you know, your experiences from the '90s all the way till now? Um, I don't wanna be too much of a pessimist here. No, I, I, I- Yeah, I, I, I think we're definitely on the, the downside of it. Okay. I mean, with, uh, the tightening of laws, the EPA- Yeah
and a lot of shops getting in trouble, uh, it's really limited, uh, the motivation. Th- th- we're not, y- there, there are no, there aren't new tuner shops. No. There's less, right? Yeah. There aren't new [01:35:00] tuning companies. There's less. It's sort of sliding back into the underground again. Um, I've been building OEM plus cars for myself to drive around.
Now, we're in California. It's very difficult to, uh, to pass smog over here. Yep. Um, so the extreme builds are hiding in garages, and, uh, and, you know, obviously this whole thing with people just putting them on Montana plates, and now there's a whole task force cracking down on that whole thing. So, uh, it, it's, it's way more challenging.
Yeah. Um, and, and, and you have the guys on the, the, the, the intersections taking over still and doing burnouts- Absolutely ... and all that stuff. Absolute nightmare for the culture. So for the, you know, how do they know what's an enthusiast like you or me versus, like, the kids that are, you know, doing burnouts all over the intersection?
Yep. Um, so there is still, uh, probably some negative, uh, uh, perception- Yeah ... of the automotive aftermarket folks. Um, so yeah, I think it's, we're in a challenging situation at the moment. It, it's... I've heard this side of it. Um, [01:36:00] I- But hold... So actually, let me, let me... I wanna, I wanna put- Yeah, yeah ... some positive spin on it too.
Yeah, yeah. But I have a '72 Celica, and I want... It has carburetors on it, and I wanna put fuel injection on it, and so I could do- Right ... custom stuff as much as I want. There's electronics, wazoo. There's fuel injectors, wiring stuff. Like, anything I wanna do to it, I can just do. I can dream it up. I can go online.
I can buy the parts. If it doesn't exist, I'll go on SOLIDWORKS or some kind of CAD software- Yeah ... design it, get it made. Like, the ability to build stuff now is unlike any time in the past, and the speed to do it, and the knowledge on how to just... All... Dude, I will go and... I, I used to go around Google and search on how to do stuff on forums and everything.
I will have engineering questions and go on ChatGPT, and a whole, the whole conversation about something I'm planning on building, and, and get more information there than it would take me hours on the internet or have to, like, phone a friend. So, like, the ability to [01:37:00] have a concept, and get to a design, and get the parts, and put it on the car nowadays is unlike any time in the future, and it's way better today.
Yeah. I, I'm gonna put a little pin in the AI thing, 'cause that was a question I was, I had on my list of things to ask you. But I, I think that what's interesting for me and, like, kind of the health of where we are in, in the culture is The negatives I'll roll out first. I, I agree with everything you've said.
I think from ... I think it's really difficult to be a tuning company right now. The risk of getting a $15 million fine, you know, for, for evading CARB and things like that is just, is just an, a nightmare situation, and I don't know why any business would wanna be in it, right? I know that when I was, uh, you know, at Wheel Pros, um, they were, like, strict, like, "We do not wanna do anything in the tuning market.
Like, we don't wanna be involved with tuners. We don't wanna be involved with exhaust systems." Like, those were ... Th- those businesses were businesses that they did not wanna buy. They just wanted to live in sort of the aesthetic or suspension world 'cause it was the only thing that wasn't gonna get them in [01:38:00] trouble with, you know, EPA or something.
So, like, that's a nightmare situation for that side of the industry. Um, I think that then from the ownership side, like, yeah, it sucks. There's task force and all that. That being said, there's probably more wild cars on the streets of California right now than there were 20 years ago, right? Like, there's more people running crazy thousand-horsepower swaps and all that stuff.
It lives in the underground again, and everyone figures out a loophole around it, right? Um, but I think that culturally, like, car culture feels really big to me right now. So I think on, you know, I always was sort of on that side because I was always on the media, whether it was as magazines or through Hoonigan or whatever, I was always looking at, like, what is the, the sort of pulse and, like, the lifeblood of the space right now?
And, you know, when I first got into it, it was in the mid-'90s, and import tuning was growing and then got big and Fast & Furious, and that felt like this one peak. And then there was, like, the hip-hop car culture sort of exploded, [01:39:00] you know, and made SEMA into this massive thing, and wheel culture and all of that through, like, the mid-aughts.
And then there was this, like, real lull. Like, it just felt like the Prius era, where everybody was driving Priuses. Like, if everyone was talking about how young kids weren't driving anymore, and we, we rolled through that era. And then, like, about, uh, probably, I guess, pandemic, you know, right, you know, maybe right before, it really started to kinda grow.
Um, and a lot of times I think, like, man, we ran Hoonigan during sort of, like, the malaise, like, slowdown era. Like, yeah, it felt big to all of us who were there, but when I was looking outside of, you know, the endemic sponsors, like, nobody wanted to do automotive. Now you've got, like, fashion brands doing automotive.
You've got, you know, all these other people who ... And not just automotive, but, like, our culture, right? You're seeing, you know, people using golden era JDM cars in ads that have nothing to do with car culture, right? You can go to a coffee shop, and there's a 911 parked inside of it, and they don't [01:40:00] even know the spec on the car, right?
And it's like cul- as a culture, that has really gotten to an interesting place. And then the other part, um, and I think that's a positive, I think one of the negatives again, though, is- I don't know what the future enthusiast car is, right? Like, we all- an enthusiast car was always a car that was, like, 10 years old because it was now affordable and you could get into it, right?
For, for you it was, you know, Civics. For me it was Volkswagen Golfs. Um, you know, these were approachable cars. I don't know what the modern approachable car is outside of the, the twins or the, you know, the BRZ and the, you know, the GT86. Like, that's really the only current car in the marketplace that hasn't really become a car that feels like it's too big, too heavy, too numb, doesn't really feel as much like an enthusiast car in the lower, in the lower price point.
I think, like, that's a certainly, um, a negative side of it. But then to your last point, like, I, I can get a 3D printer and, like, make stuff. Like, that's incredible. I wish I could have done that when I was into RC cars. [01:41:00] I mean, think about when you were, like, being able to do something like that even at that young age.
So I don't know. It's a, it's an interesting one, and I, I don't know which... I, I, I don't know the answer to it because while culturally it feels like it's exploding, I do know that when that happens, sort of like a tidal wave, the water eventually pulls back out. Like, the trend pulls back out, and we end up in that era of Priuses again, where the trend goes the other direction.
Um, and then all we're faced with is all these other problems that we have. So I don't know. It's a, it's an interesting one. I, I'd just like to ask those who've been through it a bit, 'cause I think everyone has a different vision. You and Nads have a similar one, that things are on the down. I, I think things are on the up, but maybe I'm just trying to be an optimist.
Yeah, well, look, bagged on the kids doing burnouts in intersections and stuff, but the word I just said, kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I'm starting... Like, all the Infinitis and the 3Ds and all the VQ cars. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but it's clearly a, a surge in those. Yeah. Uh, there's a surge in the, the Mopar stuff. Of course, yep.
And, um, I'm starting to see a bunch of [01:42:00] old '90s Hondas on the road again. Yo, yeah. Um, so... And they're young kids in those things. Yeah. Like, they're teenagers, early 20s. Yep. So, yeah. I mean, as bad as the takeover thing is There is... A- and like I, I, I really, I, I really am not a fan of what it's done because it's so, like...
And I hate to be, we're like old, being like, "When we street raced, we did it with, you know, with class." Yeah. "And we were, we were, we were composed, and we didn't take the risks." But there was a reality to it, 'cause it was like in the dark industrial park, so there was no one there. Like, this is a completely different space where it is, and I've talked about this probably too much on the pod, but unfortunately I think it's just this thing that we're all, we're all trying to kind of figure out and deal with.
Because for me, and when I worked at the sheriff's department here in Los Angeles, it was like, I wanna be able to just give these kids a place to do it and, and have it be something that's legal, and that's why we were doing the burn yard stuff at Irwindale. But we quickly realized that the people who were showing up to our events were not the same people who were showing up to the Takeover.
It was like part of [01:43:00] what made the Takeover cool to them was that it was illegal and it was disruptive. And like, it wasn't disruptive to go to Irwindale and pay $10 and sit in the stands and watch it. Like, it wasn't the part that I thought which was cool, which was, which is the actual automotive, building a cool car, sliding it around, and doing that.
Like, that wasn't what was sort of, you know, moving, moving that side. But at the same time, it's like there is, we aren't in a place right now where we're dealing with a younger generation that doesn't care about cars. They just care about cars in a way that is probably detrimental to the rest of us all caring about cars.
It's like between that and, you know, diesel trucks like, you know, um, coal running and stuff like that, it's like both of those are bad for the, the, the culture as a whole. Yeah, but, but the, the industry doesn't need to always... I mean, as long as there's something there and, and they don't- Yeah ... you know, limit us with too many laws- Yeah
then, uh, I, I kinda like having a little bit of an underground thing with- Yeah ... my mod car and, and whatever I do. I don't, doesn't, I don't, I don't [01:44:00] have- Yeah ... I don't f- I know why any of us would have ambitions for it to be some big mainstream thing again. Yeah, and I, I don't actually think that it being mainstream has ever been good.
Right? I, I think it, I think it gets too close to the sun, and whenever that does, there's an immediate sort of backlash, and we lose a lot of rights, right? And I, and I think we're also forgetting that automotive aftermarket includes truck. Yep. And I can't go anywhere- It's true ... without watch- looking at a modified truck.
It's true. It's true. So, and that's cool. Yeah. Jeeps, Toyotas, sh- mo- ev- everything. Yeah. So they're all over the place. Yep, yep. Yeah. No, and that's, that's obviously a space that is just continuing to grow. Like, it was, I think it was, like, 80% of the Wheel Pros business was trucks. Which is funny, 'cause my mind is still very much sorted in cars, but, like, you go to the, you go to Middle America, and it's like there's a bunch of really big trucks, like, parked in every town.
Like, that's there. Just a little... I mean, I like, I like trucks, too. I got a F600 that I'll eventually build one day, so. Yeah, man, I've, I've, uh- You, you got a really cool RAV4. So I, I, [01:45:00] I actually sold that to, to a buddy. Oh, did you? Yeah. Oh. He's been hounding me for years for it, and so he drives it around the West Side, uh, and so- You took me for a spin in that when we, when Hoonigan did the rally event, and, uh, you came out to that.
Oh. And I got a little quick- I wa- It was funny, 'cause I wasn't even working at Hoonigan anymore. I showed up for something else. You were there, and I was like, "Oh, sick. Let me get a, let me get a ride in this thing." That thing was super cool. Yeah. Wow. So I sold that, and now I have a Lexus GX 550, one of the new GX's.
Yeah, yeah. But I've got w- 35's on it, and, and suspension, and so that's my new off-road thing. Yeah. Um, all right, this is a complete gear shift, but about, I don't know, I guess about six years ago, so it's, like, 2020, you dived into YouTube, and you were on a tear. Like, I- you did, I don't know, like, six or seven videos in a ru- row that were all a million plus views.
And I will tell you, as those of us who were working in YouTube every day, we were like, "Who's this motherfucker?" Like, like, how did you just show up? And you were absolutely crushing it. Um, I think, I, I know one of the ones that I [01:46:00] remember off the top of my head was, like, 1,000 horsepower, like, you know, Jay-Z build.
I think you did a tear-down of, like, the new inline six. Um, and you were doing these, like, really nerdy, um, but well sort of explained engine stuff. And then you got into more technical stuff. And you w- you had a pretty good run on, on doing the YouTube stuff. I've seen you haven't done much recently, but you're still, you're still tapping in it.
You obviously went to a Creator Summit, so you still see yourself in the creator space. That's, like, a whole different chapter for you, and honestly, one that I would have never have predicted, 'cause you always were in the race car, race team, that side of it. Um, how did that really all sort of come about?
And did you, did you really study it? Because it's not very normal for people to come out of nowhere and have that instant sort of, like, success on it. Yeah. Like- I, I did a lot of studying. Yeah. So, uh, in high school I took photography. Mm-hmm. We did, uh, we had a, a dark room, and, um, so I learned some competi- co- uh, composition and- Yep
and some stuff. [01:47:00] Uh, and then later, uh, we realized... So in the, in- You know, 2018, '20- even before that, we realized that in order to be a professional motorsport team, you have to have a, a s- strong social presence. Yeah. And, um, we realized that Tanner was a big, uh, pull there, same with Frederick over the years.
Uh, but the team wasn't doing that much. Mm-hmm. And if we lost a driver, like, it would be difficult for us to continue because we'd maybe start with a new driver that didn't have much social, so we should have our own. And then- Sure ... and, uh, so that was sort of the impetus on, on starting some YouTube stuff.
And I looked around and said, "Well, what would I wanna see? What do I enjoy talking about?" Like- Yeah ... it's, I love engines and I love this stuff. And so I started doing some research on... So I started filming a, a YouTube video at first, and I, it was so overwhelming that I couldn't even get through it. And I'm like, "Okay, I need to stop trying to do it with cameras and editing and everything."
So I just got my cellphone and I said, "Okay, I'm gonna do 15 [01:48:00] seconds, and I'm just gonna do Instagram, uh, little videos," 'cause- Mm ... before Reels and all that stuff. And so I just started, "I'm gonna film something, do a little better." And so at night I would go watch, um, uh, YouTube videos on how to film- Mm-hmm
about different gear. And I, um, and I realized, oh my gosh, the people that were some of the best storytellers and had the best production were the people that were explaining the camera gear. Hmm. Because they were gearheads, and they were watching. So it was this sort of, like, self, like, revolve, like, they were building content for themselves.
Like, it was- Yeah, yeah, yeah ... this weird thing. So they're, I'm watching a video and they're talking about how the camera works, and, but they knew how to use cameras really well. So the way that they were framing the video and the way they were doing the voiceover with the narrization, narrating it and everything, I was like, "Oh, this is my format."
Yeah. So I took the format of the guys that I was watching, the videos that I like to watch, I'm learning something about cameras- [01:49:00] Yep ... and just applying it to engines. So it was somebody else's kind of format, just applied to a new, uh, a new c- new industry. Yeah. And people, I guess, weren't doing that. And I talked to Mickey the other day, and he's like, "Oh, yeah, you did that the, the, the, the, oh, the do- dubbed over thing, like the narrated thing."
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like, "That was the thing you just didn't do." Yeah. And I was like, "Oh, I didn't know that." I just did the stuff that I was interested in. 'Cause I couldn't get, I, I'm not good at, like, sitting, standing in front of a camera and just being able to rattle off- Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah ... an entire YouTube video for 15 minutes.
So I'd, I'd film the whole thing. I would, uh, edit it so it told a story visually first, and then I would narrate over it, but I'd have, like, 50 takes. And then so I would spend, dude, hours- ... editing my audio and tur- putting it into something that was actually, you could actually listen to. Yeah. And then that was sort of the- The, the, the concept that I came up with.
Um- No, we were all surprised 'cause it was one of those, like, all of a sudden you're looking at, you know, [01:50:00] top videos in the automotive section, and it's like Donut, Hoonigan, Steph Hockenhull. We're like, "Wait, what?" Like, who, what is, what did he make? Like, wasn't he just on our show last week? Like, what is he doing?
Um, and it was cool to see. And I, you know, I remember reading, like, the comments. I think there was just something kind of, like, oddly therapeutic and soothing listening to you explain stuff that is pretty high-tech and nerdy, but in a way that people were learning. And, like, that's just a... It's a huge spot in the YouTube space, which is, like, educational stuff just does so well.
And if it can be, uh, you know, that sort of cross the line of education and entertainment, that, like, infotainment world, it's like it checks all the boxes, right? So I, I did enjoy doing it. I still would enjoy doing it- Yeah ... now. Uh, but the reason I've tapered off is I just don't wanna film my life. Yeah, I feel that.
Yeah. I know. And so I, I, I literally saw what the future had in store for me. Yeah. And I had a couple of conversations with TJ Hunt, uh, Adam LZ- Yep ... [01:51:00] um, and realized from their stories on how much there is really the, the, the YouTube treadmill. Mm-hmm. And, uh, I pres- I looked into the future and said, "I don't wanna do that."
And, and the moment I did that, the motivation just dropped and, uh... And sorry, I know people love the videos. And, and I tell you, I really do like making them and, and- Yeah ... uh, I, I, I just, I just- We, we talk about it- Yeah ... on this pod all the time, the, the YouTube trap, right? It's like Vinny and I talk about it, um, that the every week you gotta do it.
Um, it's the hamster wheel. I talked about it with LZ last time. Like, it's just the way the platform works is, like, to be successful you just have to keep cranking out more and more and more. And the reality is, is that, that eventually you end up cranking out stuff you don't wanna make, and that doesn't feel good, right?
Like, to be in this thing where you're like, "Oh, this... I didn't enjoy making this, but I had to make it 'cause I had to have an upload, otherwise I was gonna lose my viewership," and all of that. So, like... And it's [01:52:00] also the, the, the... I think at a certain point, too, it's like how much of your life do you want in front of camera or to be, to be kind of, like, attached to that kind of stuff.
Yeah, I, I can't believe... I mean, you put your wife in there. I think maybe you've had some pictures of your kids- Yeah ... and doing that scene. I watch folks do that and I'm like- Yeah ... "Oh, that's just not my... That's just my sto- not my style." Yeah. Like, I'll show you all the tricks m- on my race car and stuff like that.
Yeah. But at some point- Yeah, no I wanna be able to turn off work I mean, some people's lives get really, really there. Like, uh, you know, as, as Hudson's gotten older, like, I kinda make sure he's, if you see him, you're just seeing the back of his head, and he's not really, like, involved in stuff. Ashley exited out of content pretty quickly at Hoonigan.
She did a couple things and was like, "Yeah, this isn't what I wanna do." So, you know. Um, and for me, I never really wanted to be in front of camera. I enjoy the behind the camera thing, but, you know, I enjoy podcasting, too, but... All right, so I, I know you've got to heart out. Um, I'm gonna ask you one last question.
Uh, I read an interview you did, and you said that you looked up to Robbie Gordon, because Robbie Gordon did it all. Um, [01:53:00] you are now sort of in this world where you, you know, you've, you've done drag racing, you've done some amazing builds, you've been very good at running a team, um, everything in drifting.
Uh, you've, you, in this conversation, you've teased things like Baja's interesting. Like, what is next? What's, what's sort of the next chapter for you? So we have a whole nother division of the company called Papadakis Engineering. Yep. And so we've already done several large projects, uh, in the non-auto- automotive space.
We've done a couple in the energy sector for large, uh, hydrogen, uh, energy- Okay ... storage device and things like that. So with our understanding of mechanical fabrication and everything from wiring to, uh, heat management to, you know, a car has all of those things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And because we understand how to lay out a project, get that done, get to the start line, you know, on time, on budget, it applies itself really well to, uh, some of these industrial builds, and really an industry that's [01:54:00] challenged with that.
Uh, you know, we're all used to these projects in industry where they go over, over budget, way past their deadlines. Yeah. They ask more money from the pu- uh, from public. That's just public stuff, but also, like, these private companies will go to build things as well. Um, so we're supporting, like, a, uh, like VC venture capital startup companies where, uh, they've got a influx of, of capital, they have a product that they wanna build, but they may not have the time to get a, uh, R&D facility and staff it, and go through the trials and tribulations of having to get, you know, to the point to where they can produce- Yep
like, a first article. They just wanna, you know, work with somebody, and so we, we, we have a, a services that we can help, uh- I was not expecting this as the answer. I was expecting you to be like, "I don't know, maybe Dakar, maybe this." You're like, "I'm doing stuff in the public sector now, hydrogen." So I like that you're onto the next- I, I like to do things that don't have instructions- Yeah
um, but that we can con- con- continue to build with. And in motorsport, [01:55:00] because things have gone so, uh everything's kind of the same in spec. Uh, it's, it's a huge turn off. And, and spending so many time, so many days at racetracks, I mean, sorry to like, kind of, but- No, I, I get it, man ... I, I, I'm 49 and I've been going to racetracks for, you know, so many years.
It's nice to have some weekends off where I can do some other stuff. Yeah, yeah. Oh, no, I get it. One of the best, uh, things I did in my life was buy a farm, 'cause I go there and I just don't do race car stuff, so, or car stuff. Well, sometimes I do car stuff, but it's amazing how much fun, uh, tractoring has become.
Like, it's just- I think we talked about this a few years ago, yeah ... something, yeah, something I just never thought I'd, I'd have an interest in. City kid, but it's like, I, I spent the past week, like, researching, you know, different strains of kumquats and it's like, ooh, I didn't know that was gonna be a thing that was gonna scratch an itch for me, but it does.
But, but that's the thing, right, is, is I don't know a thing, but I should know a thing. Mm-hmm. I wanna research it, and then kind of bring, and then bring that to fruition. Yeah. Like, that whole process. Uh, and I think that that's just a [01:56:00] mentality and a certain personality. You landed in, in, in automotive. Yep.
But that could've been in a bunch of other industries- For sure ... but that, and then succeeded in that. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a place where you and I are very similar is I really enjoy the researching something and doing something that, that ha- not that hasn't been done, because I'd wanna do something that has been done.
I, I, Vinny and I get into this argument all the time, 'cause Vinny's like, "Oh, you just like to be different." And it's like, it's not that I like to be different, it's that I like the challenge of doing something someone hasn't done before, and that's very different than being like, "I just wanna be different so I'm gonna paint my car, like, pink and green."
It's like no, I, I, I like building a, something that someone hasn't done so that I have to, like, go figure it all out. Or that a few people have done, but they've, I'm gonna try to do it different because, like, I enjoy the weird challenge or the, the hurdle of doing that, right? And whether that's building cars or building brands.
Like, Hoonigan was sort of this like, we're just gonna figure it out as we go. But, you know, there was, it was always a different thing, but we were doing a lot of it first [01:57:00] and it was like, okay, how, how do we make this? How do we make a skate video for cars? And it's Gymkhana. Okay, cool. How do, how do we figure out how to shut down roads?
Like, it was all this stuff, and that was, like, really interesting to me. So seems like you kinda get fueled by the same thing. Yeah. And if you're able to get to the finish line and finish the project- Yeah ... then you might be able to make a living at it, so. Yeah. I don't always get to the finish line, but on the things that make money I do.
Yeah. It's the personal stuff that, it's the personal things that don't get finished, so. Well, sometimes, you know, having some of that stuff out there is, I think, important. I've gotten to the point where I've completed my list, my inbox on my email is pretty much gone. I've cleaned out my house, and I'm like- I got like 12,000 unread emails.
You and I are different there. But it's, it's, but it's a different- That goal to get to the end where I've completed all of the stuff isn't a great feeling, 'cause now it's like, what do I do next? Yeah. And so what I do is just, okay, well what's the next project? What's the next project? So I'm starting to learn as I mature more that [01:58:00] managing projects and havi- having them overlapping and realizing that I don't have to finish every project.
There can be projects that go on, like your car builds and stuff like that- Yeah ... that can take decades. Like- As long as you enjoy it. Like I always tell to the people, I'm like, "I'm not in a rush. You're in a rush for me to finish my car." Exactly. Like, I'm completely happy at the pace at which it goes, you know?
So there's a entire baker's cart full of parts for like three different projects I've got going on. It's like, I don't know, I'll pull out a drawer at one point and fix something. It's just how it is. It's like it services me, so. Cool, man. Well, thank you for coming on. I wish we could talk for another hour, but I know, I know you gotta go, so the audience will have to just forgive you.
All right, thanks for having me, Brian. Thanks, man. All right.
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