107. Schwartz Performance, Hellcat Corvette, Chasing Records, Chassis and Restomods w/ Jeff Schwartz

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the minnoxide Podcast. I'm your host, Harris, AKA minnoxide, man of many automotive aspirations. And today we are here at Schwartz Performance. Is that typically what you mostly go by? I always think of chassis.

Yeah, Schwartz Performance, that's it.

Yeah.

And today I'm here with my co-host Dan, Mr. Gunnit Garage.

Yep, how's it going?

Well, sweet, why don't you go and tell us about, a little bit about what it is that you do. Obviously, you're very well known within the industry, but we do have a couple of youngsters that listen to the show from time to time as well. So just kind of explain what it is you do, and we'll go from there.

Well, I spent most of my career in manufacturing. incidentally, I was born and raised mostly in Minnesota. You probably know that, but Bemidji. Anyway, Schwartz Performance, I started the company in 2004, and it started out just, I don't know, Resto Mods, I always liked that type of car, so I started doing that. I had built an 82 Fleetwood Brougham Cadillac in my garage that was a pro touring Resto Mod type car, and I won the Car Craft Real Street Eliminator shootout. I was on five episodes of Hot Rod TV with the car. That was the car that actually really put me on the map. I did it in my garage before I ever had even a thought of starting Schwartz Performance, but the car handled, I would take it to Road America to track days. I'd give Vipers and Corvettes a hard time on the track. So most people know me by that. Then, you know, I started the business. We started building chassis right away. And now I have my own manufacturing company and we have 127 vehicle applications for chassis. We just came out with Corvette chassis all the way up to 1982. We were the first to do many things. We were the first to come out with a muscle car chassis that bolted in. Prior to us, there was no bolt-in muscle car chassis manufactured by anyone. So we were the first to do that. We were the first to do a bolt-in full frame for unibody cars, Chevy, two Novas, Mustangs, Mopars, et cetera. You know, others now do that, too. But we've been the leader in new ideas and thinking outside the box, I guess. My background is in road racing. I was a pro driver in SCCA and IMSA. I had an FIA license. I set five SCCA National Track Records in 1982. I still race in that Optima series, Optima Ultimate Streetcar that you guys are familiar with. And, you know, I love having fun with cars. So I guess that's kind of a little bit of background.

Yeah.

You're a rare breed in which you do the customization side, you make things work, but then you also do the track stuff too, and very well at that, right? I mean, it's not everybody that's able to go out and get championships or set records or whatever the case is.

Yeah, I guess, you know, I like going fast and doing all sorts of things with engine powered vehicles. And so I've done motocross was my first thing, mainly because it was cheap. You know, you could race for cheap back in 74 when I started racing motocross. It was like six dollars to enter a motocross race, you know, and it costs you five bucks in gas to get there and back. So, you know, and then obviously I got into Corvettes and started doing autocross. And my friend Fletcher Belt invited me to watch him race at Road America at the June sprints. And then, you know, that led to that. And, you know, throughout life, I've done a lot of different types of speed activities. And I love them all. Motocross is a passion of mine. And I do restore vintage dirt bikes as a hobby. But I love flying through the air. You don't get the same exhilaration with a car as you do flying off a jump on a motocross bike.

It's funny you bring that up, actually. Our first podcast on the way down here. Have you looked into Nitro Cross at all by chance?

I'm aware of it. That's more stunt type stuff.

Yes, we just had some two young guys on where they... You know they're young when I'm saying they're young. Right. Where they race and they're doing these crazy jumps with cars. So you kind of have a passion for different varieties of speed then. Is there any of them that kind of strike you as one of your favorites, or is it just kind of come and go?

Well, I think each one has its things that are exciting about it. I think the car aspect of it, I love being able to, you know, like set up the car and make the car work properly. So that that's like more of a challenge, I guess. You know, I love going around, you know, Road America on my Ducati, hitting 182 miles an hour down the streets and, you know, going through to turn one at 110 with my knee grinding on the pavement.

You do that on turn one?

Yeah.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, turn one is about 100 mile an hour corner, so. Wow. So anyway, I just love, I love that. It's, it's, you know, there's a song that says, everything that kills me makes me feel alive. And I think about that often when I'm riding a motorcycle on the track, you know, because it is dangerous. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

You are vulnerable. I mean, we have safety equipment we wear and, you know, essentially a leather suit with armor in it. Now they have airbag suits that I need to get on one of these days. But yeah, it's a I like all forms of racing. I guess as I've gotten older now, I've kind of returned to some of my roots of riding dirt bikes in the woods on trails. You know, that's enjoyable to me as well. And, you know, anybody that rode dirt bikes, they started riding trails before they ever went into racing motocross or anything like that. So I like that. And I really enjoy the simplicity of autocross. I did a Corvette Club Autocross a couple of weeks ago. And, you know, that was kind of the start of my car racing career. Nineteen seventy nine, I I did National Council of Corvette Clubs, and I won the Midwest Regional Championship. And I did two events about a month ago. Corvette Club Autocross, and I ended up finishing second in both events and with a fresh car, my seventy three Vette that I just finished last fall. And I haven't done any events other than that one. So I'm sure I'll be able to win with that car once I do a couple more events with it and get more seat time in it.

Just out of curiosity, riding dirt bikes, what brand, what kind of bike you're riding?

Well, right now, I ride a Mako 1981 Mako in Vintage Motocross. And then I have a Beta 300. It's a I think it's a 2018 Beta 300 two stroke that I ride in the mainly in the woods. OK, so I don't really try doing motocross on modern bikes anymore. I had a crash a couple of years ago. It took me quite a quite a couple of months, actually, for the bruises to go away and to heal up from. Two years ago, I was doing a YouTube video with a professional camera crew, and I flipped the bike over backwards, and the bike landed on my ankle and broke my ankle and my foot. So when I motocross, I raced the Mako, the Vintage bike, and the modern bike, I ride in the woods mostly trails and things like that.

Okay.

So do you typically lean towards any brand? I notice you do a lot of GM stuff, Chevy stuff in particular. Do you just find a passion for that, or are you just kind of a passion for everything?

Well, that's an interesting question, too. I kind of consider myself, of all the brands, I probably have gravitated more towards Pontiacs. And some might be related to the fact that my dad, who passed away when I was an infant, had a 55 Pontiac that he street raced in northern Minnesota by Black Duck, Minnesota. That's where he was from. And they did a lot of drag racing up there on the streets back in that day. And he had a 57 that he bought after later on. But knowing that, I kind of paid attention and I liked Trans Ams and things like that. So that's probably, I guess, but if I look at what I own, I have a car collection right now and I've got a 92 Trans Am in there. So I've got a variety of stuff. I love all brands, actually. I mean, who can't appreciate opening the hood of a Mopar and seeing a giant 426 Hemi. And now we've got one here that's got a 572 Hemi in it. So it's like those big giant old school engines of the days gone by, you've got to appreciate that. Even if you're a Chevy guy, you've got to appreciate that.

Yeah. I do, I mean, I'm not much of a GM guy, but I do appreciate most brands. But I just don't see very many Fords in here or around here. That's the only...

Well, it goes in cycles. I mean, if you had been here a few months ago, we had a Mercury Cougar and we had, like, I don't know, three or four 67 to 68 Mustangs.

Okay.

So they were all notchbacks. We've done a lot of Mustangs, actually. I think we've done more Mustang builds here than Camaros.

Okay. That makes you feel a little better, yeah. What would be, so in the Cadillac that you did, said the first one that kind of launched everything, did you put a chassis in that, too? Or what was the first car that you built a chassis for?

Well, I think that the Cadillac was significant in that no one had ever made it a car like that handle. And I did this way before the 94, 95 Monique Impala SS came out. So there was virtually no parts available for it. So I had to find pieces from the junkyard that would fit, and I had to fabricate things. I made my own control arm bushings with Delrin bearings and steel liners so that the control arms would move freely. And I made a lot of my own stuff. I'm a machinist by trade, so I made a lot of my own stuff for that Cadillac. It didn't have our chassis. It had the stock chassis, but I made the car work really well. And so that was kind of the springboard of making suspension work, right? And I think Motocross, which required you to adjust shock absorbers and forks, the damping, compression damping rebound, the amount of preload, the spring rates, all that kind of stuff. Motocross taught me those basic mechanics that transfers to automobiles. So the first car that I did a chassis on for myself was well after we started manufacturing chassis. Probably the 65 Tempest and my 81 Twin Turbo Trans Am were the first two cars that we built as shop cars. The Trans Am made 1,040 rear wheel horsepower, by the way. And that was, I'm trying to think of how long ago that was.

I was gonna ask that.

That's quite a long time ago. Probably, we're 24 now. That was probably 15 years ago.

So way before 1,000 horsepower was standard, which it seems to be kind of now today.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

That's crazy.

Yeah, no down pipes in a 2 and back then.

No, no.

So there's a few different directions we could take this. So one of the ones that comes to mind, especially when you get to this caliber of shop, right? Especially when you start early on, when you're doing everything yourself, when you're creating a business, was there, what was the, what was the timing or when did the realization happen that you wanted to add more people to your team?

Well, when I started the business, I figured that it, I could, I could probably have two to two to three of us total, you know, myself and a couple of guys. And I thought we could probably do about a million dollars in sales and I could pay myself maybe 100 grand a year, you know, and, and that was kind of my, my thought process. So my five-year goal was to do a million dollars in sales and, and make 100,000 profit. And I met the sales goal in three years. It took me probably ten years to meet the profit goal. But anyway, one of the things was I, that I realize now is I didn't set my goal high enough and I had to continually raise the bar and raise my goal because I achieved it early.

What was the first customer car?

The first customer car was a Dodge Dart, and it was Richard Weiss Jr. from the Baltimore area. And I was given the job by Jimmy Day who runs the Optima series.

Oh, okay.

So, long story, but he was running a shop, and he was the project manager for that project for the customer. And there was some conflict with the shop he was working, so he became a freelance and continued managing the project for that customer. And it ended up getting subcontracted to me, because I was the only one stupid enough to take on the project with the goal of getting it done in like nine weeks or something like that.

Was there at any point, like, as you were continuing to scale, or again, when you were adding people to your team, did you find yourself having all the skill sets that you needed, or did you kind of have to be like, all right, well, this guy is really good at this. I want him on my team because he can do it better than me. Or did you feel like you covered most of those bases?

Initially, I covered most of those bases. But, you know, very early on, I had one of my friends who was restoring a B-17 bomber with his brother, and they had to make many parts. The plane had been cut in half and he had to make many parts from scratch, make wooden bucks and hammer aluminum stampings over wooden bucks to make them look like they were punched out on a press. And so he started with me on the very first job and he's still with me today. So I would say his skill set of fabricating sheet metal was far beyond my capabilities. And then I can weld, but as time went on, I found people that could TIG weld way better than I could. So yes, I did have the need for that. And I think the two guys that I got that started with me initially, one was like a really good TIG welder and the other one was a fabricator of sheet metal. So that's what was two skills that they were a little better than me.

Now, I see there's a lot of projects going on here. Some of them, the paint on these things is gorgeous. Do you guys do that in house? Do you have a body shop you work with or?

Well, we have a paint booth here, and we've done probably close to a dozen cars where we've painted them in house. But, I've had difficulty with getting skilled help that can do that type of work in a timely fashion to the quality level that we have. So, I have several sources that I use that I subcontract paint work to. And, you know, one is in Wisconsin, and a couple of them are in Illinois. And, you know, so far, that's worked pretty well for us.

Yeah, because I don't know if anybody, if they go to your website or anything like that, and you guys have this chassis thing nailed down, but you're not just building chassis. You guys are doing full up from the ground builds.

Yes, when I started the business, we were doing performance upgrades, you know, putting disc brake kits on old cars, you know, vintage air, adding air conditioning, doing upgrade type stuff. We were also, me being a machinist, I was actually building engines for people. I had friends that had the machining equipment needed to, you know, balance a crankshaft or, you know, bore out an engine block. And I was doing all the assembly. I would dyno test the engines on various dynos that I had access to. So I was doing engines, chassis, upgrades, all, pretty much everything related to this. I even did some late model performance stuff. I did a turbo kit on a late model truck and a supercharger install on a late model truck. And I did everything, but then as we got busier, then we became a little more specialized in trying to focus on, you know, what we do best, you know? Now that we've got the chassis where we have so many different applications and that's always been a, when we started doing chassis, it was literally about 20 years ago. And initially, those were being subcontracted. And then in 2009 or 10, I ended up buying out the chassis company and brought all the jigs in house. And one of the employees came to work for me. And initially, I rented space from them in Janesville, Wisconsin, and was building our chassis in Janesville. And then after a couple months, I moved it to Woodstock where we were at that time. So, yeah, it's been kind of a wild ride.

Being from Bemidji, what brought you down here?

At the time, I was 16 years old, and I had just finished a sophomore year in high school in Long Prairie, Minnesota. That's where we lived at the time. And we lived in a trailer park on the north side of town. But my mom was in a relationship with a man, and he got a job down here. And she basically packed us up and moved down here. It was kind of hard because, you know, you're at that age of 16 when you had a girlfriend. So I had to leave her behind and all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, that's how I ended up here is my mom moved here. And then, you know, a few years later, I went and visited some of my friends in Long Prairie, Minnesota. And every one of them were alcoholics and all they did was go to the bar and drink every night. You know, it was like, and I looked back. I mean, when I visited, I think it was probably 1984 that I went and visited. So it was like 10 years after I had left. And I thanked my mom for dragging me out of that, out of that deal. So, you know, small town, rural America, you know, it's not just Minnesota, it's just any small town, rural America, you know, it's, I guess it's too easy to get into that habit.

Yeah. Not a lot of speed shops popping out from places like that.

No. And somebody asked me one time, like, you know, I drank as a teenager and did, you know, some partying in my young adult life. But, you know, I don't really drink anymore at all. And it's like people ask me, like, why don't you drink? And it's like, you know, I have no problem with it, but I don't really feel I have so much fun in my life that I don't really feel like I need to alter my mind to have a good time. Like, I don't need a drink to make me relax so I can have a conversation with people. You know what I mean?

Well, it seems like you're drunk on adrenaline too.

Well, I guess there's some of that. But I think, you know, once you've done this for so many years, I don't really think your body releases a whole lot of adrenaline unless it's an oh s*** moment. Do you know what I mean?

Are you a competitive guy then by nature?

Yes, very competitive.

Yeah. So, there's a lot of crazy brainchild in here. I think that's a good way of putting it. I really like that Hellifent 68 charger. That's again, I grew up Mopar, so that's kind of where my head immediately goes to. But tell us a little bit about this crazy idea behind you, because it's a Hellcat in a Hellcat motor in a Corvette. So, where did this come from, and how do we get to this point?

Well, I guess...

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Well we've grown and obviously now we're in a 34,000 square foot facility. I understand that B****** rides, which is Dave Kindig's shop that everybody knows and talks about, they recently expanded to 34,000 square feet. So we have a 9,000 square foot facility where we do R&D and store cars. Plus we have this 34,000 square foot facility. So as far as globally with respect to square footage and number of employees, we are one of the largest shops in the world probably. There's a couple here or there that might be bigger. But that charger is a 70 by the way. It has a Hellifent engine, 1,000 horsepower. We had a shop car, a 65 Tempest, that we campaigned for more than a decade going to events like LS Fest and Good Guys and did all sorts of autocross. We would do track days at Road America. More recently, we supercharged it and really gave people fits at Road America. But we sold that car a few years ago, and we came out with a new line of Corvette chassis. So we really wanted to promote, have another vehicle to promote our chassis. And I've owned Corvettes since 1978. So I thought it might be time to build a Corvette as a shop car. So this 79 Corvette behind us here is a car that my friend Jack, the plumber, we call him, found at a customer of his. And the guy had bought it brand new. It has 52,000 original miles. The engine ran like a top. It had been stored for 17 years. We put a battery in it. He must have put stabilizer in the fuel, and we just, it just fired right up when we put a battery in it. It hurt like a kit, and there wasn't even a drip off the oil pan. So we were going to do a small block Chevy, and I bought a bunch of AFR stuff, you know, the good heads 210 cc's that flow like LS flow numbers, and you know, you can make a really high horsepower small block. So that was my goal. I was going to use the original short block to the car, put a new top end radical cam and all that kind of stuff. And my sales and engineering staff called me up one day, and I was not at the shop for whatever reason, and they called me on the cell and said, hey, what do you think about putting a Hellcat engine in a Corvette? And they gave me the pitch that it would break the Internet and so forth. And we were in the process of building a really nice Monte Carlo SS with a Hellcat engine that the customer now is enjoying. And I thought about it for about 30 seconds. And then I said, well, let's have a meeting about it when I get back on Monday and we'll discuss it. But I knew then that that was probably the right idea. And, you know, we like doing oddball stuff. We've done so many oddball projects over the years. My friend Marks Gremlin that basically had the overall fastest time at the Carcraft Summer Nationals in Milwaukee in the autocross. He was beating Corvettes and Vipers and everything with a Gremlin, you know. And, you know, we've done a lot of oddball things all the way back to that original Cadillac that I did. So I thought a Corvette with a Hellcat engine, the Mopar people love us and the Corvette guys might hate us, but they'll appreciate the chassis that we put in there to handle the roughly thousand horsepower it will have. Once we change the pulley and do a couple of tweaks to it.

Who does your tuning?

Well, I've got a variety of people that do tuning. I have software here that we own. I have HP tuner software and I have Tuner Cat. I've got a few different Holley software. But I found that, and we can do some tuning here. Like I said, we have the software and the laptop. But I've found that the guys that do tuning every single day can do it so much faster, get it done way quicker. And in the end, time is money. So I have a variety of people that do tuning for us. So some of it depends on what make and model it is. So I've got a couple guys that do Ford stuff. I've got a couple guys that do GM stuff. And I've got a couple guys that do Mopar stuff.

So when you look at TV shows like West Coast Customs or Overhaul and just all these shows from the early 2000s, and I guess some of it went into the 2010s. I stopped watching TV in 2010. So how similar is that to that, right? Because you don't build a car in 30 minutes with commercial breaks here, I'm guessing, right? So what did realistic timelines look like? I'm sure it varies from car to car, but what does that conversation with a customer look like?

Well, there's quite a few questions there, but yeah, I've made appearances on many TV shows as guest appearances. The show Over Haaland was a show that many people grew up watching because it was on for a long time. So yes, they take a long time to build a car. I think that typically it takes us about a year and a half to build a complete car with the paint and interior. And, you know, some of them have taken four years. I would say on average it's probably two to two and a half years to build a complete car from top to bottom. With respect to TV shows, I've done a lot of Skype interviews with various, you know, Discovery Channel and Motor Trend and so forth about doing TV shows. A lot of TV shows, they want you to bring sponsorship to the table and they want you to essentially pay them to have a TV show. And I have a very successful business, so I don't feel like I should have to pay them to give them content. And, you know, so I've chosen not to do that. And I think that doing a TV show and trying to deliver a quality product to customers is very difficult. And I'm happy doing what we're doing, quite honestly.

Well, speaking of content, we looked at your YouTube channel and stuff. You guys have been doing that. I mean, your monthly updates, all that stuff. You guys were kind of early adopters of that even. Your stuff goes way, way back.

Yeah, I think platforms like YouTube and Spotify and various different things gives you the freedom to actually create your own content and not really have to make a deal with some network that's basically trying to exploit what you have into profits for them. And most of the time, you know, they want to create drama and that can ruin families and ruin relationships with your team and things like that. So, I think that they want drama, people, conflict amongst people and tattoos and controversy over actual getting the job done in a nice, correct fashion for the customers.

Right.

Well, that's one thing that, if we go back to Joe Rogan and Chris Harris' episode where they discussed it, is nowadays you could hop on YouTube and with enough work and investment of time and resources, you could have way more views than any TV channel. I mean, that's what it's gotten to.

Yes, and that's quite interesting. But you cannot underestimate the amount of work that goes into that.

It's a full time job.

It is a full time job. And I know many people that have, you know, young people that have tried to, you know, for years to build a following on YouTube. And, you know, it really takes some very, a lot of very hard work and probably a few miracles along the way to actually, you know, get to like a million subscribers.

Are you familiar with Patience Metal Fab out of Minnesota?

I've heard of the company.

Okay.

And I watched one of your, I guess it was Instagram, several of your Instagram things where you were talking to a gentleman from that company.

The reason I bring them up is so they recently, I shouldn't say recently, it's probably been like a year at this point. They hired a gentleman named Art and he is their full-time media guy. And they've been growing their YouTube channel. I think it's up to like 20,000 subscribers or something now. And they do something very similar to you. Whereas, but the one difference is, is they have two or three cars that they kind of take you on a journey on over the course of whatever, however long the project takes. And it's been fun to enjoy that. So when I found your channel, when we were preparing for this, I like your monthly updates. It's cool to see a car progress, 15 cars in one video on the progress they've made. So I don't know, it just came to mind, but I definitely urge people to check that out. That is very cool.

Yeah, we enjoy doing it. We generally have between 20 and 30 cars under construction at any given time. And we do not build cars to flip. We do not build cars. You cannot build a car properly and then flip it for a profit. That doesn't exist.

No, that's a classic car thing, right? You never get out what you put into it. That's supposed to be how it works, right?

Yeah, I mean, the only, I mean, there's ways to make money on playing with cars. And, you know, the, you know, you buy something that has a bad engine and you get it real cheap and you put an engine in, make it run and you sell it for the price of a running car. So there's ways of making money doing cars. But, you know, most of the things that I've seen people make money on at car auctions, like say Mecham or Barrett-Jackson, is they do deceptive things and basically half-assed in order to make a profit. So I've seen people where they take a car and they buy it from some local guy that's had this, you know, they go to a local cruise night and they see some cars and they try to buy a couple of them, right? And maybe a guy's got a GTO and they'll pull it apart and they'll take the engine out, pressure wash it, roll it into the paint booth and paint it with automotive paint so the engine looks like a brand new engine that was done at a high-end shop and they, and then they'll detail the engine bay with some satin black, you know, tape it off and paint the engine bay satin black and they'll drop the engine back in and then they'll buff the paint and shine it up a little bit and it'll look like a freshly restored car. They'll fix and maybe throw a new set of carpet in it so it doesn't smell musty and just do a few little things like that and then they'll bring it to an auction and you know, mark it up 300% from what they paid and and sell it. But the unsuspecting customer looks at it and it looks freshly restored. But when you take it out back, the engine's burning oil and it's got a puddle on the ground and that kind of thing. So that's how you make money at auctions. And there's so much of that going on where they're doing that kind of thing. So if you're ever buying a car at an auction, either know the car, know the history of it, or hire somebody to go look at the car and really, you know, look it over good to see.

Well, you can't buy... You don't do that to flip, but it seems like I can buy a project from you in all kinds of various states of... I see a chassis over there that's got engine transmission bolted in it. I see some other boxes of goodies. So, like, you offer all kinds of different levels of...

Yeah, I mean, what we...

Completion around here?

Our goal is to get the car on the road and the customer to enjoy his purchase. So if he's buying a chassis from us, you know, we try to offer the most customer service that we can. So do you have a motor for your project or an engine? No, I don't. Well, we could... What are you thinking of putting in there? And we're set up with all the OEM manufacturers so we can supply any engine and any transmission for any of these cars. So, you know, we offer that to our customers, and many times they prefer to do a one stop shop. So, you know, we put the motor and trans in the chassis and ship it to them with the engine and trans. And so it helps them get their project on the road sooner. And, you know, we have the expertise where if they need a fitting for a 4L80 for, you know, to adapt the trans cooler line to an AN fitting, we know where to get that stuff. And, you know, we can, when they buy stuff from us, they have us as a resource to, you know, get information to finish their project.

That's cool.

To go back to like the auction side of things, have you ever had somebody purchase a car at auction and bring it to you guys because they realized it needed a ground up rebuild or anything like that?

Yeah, I've had numerous customers that bought cars at auctions or at dealers. And one of my very early customers bought a 66 Galaxy from a well known car dealer museum in our area. And he went to jack the car up and the the jack collapsed into the frame. And upon further inspection, there was newspaper stuffed into the frame and Bondo put over the frame to cover up like a skeleton of rust, you know? Excuse me. And the battery was mounted in the trunk, and the battery cable shorted out. And it almost burned the car to the ground, and he was able to get the battery disconnected. And then he went to jack it up to look, to inspect it, and he found this problem. So we ended up locating a frame in Arizona, in the desert valley, auto parts, and a rust free Arizona frame, shipped it back here, had it sandblasted and powder coated, and then basically transferred all his suspension and brakes from his chassis, which was in good shape, onto a solid chassis, and fixed it. But that was not a cheap date. He probably spent as much as he paid for the car to do the proper repair. I had another customer that bought a car, and he backed it out of the driveway, and put it in drive and the car wouldn't go anywhere. And someone, when they assembled the rear end, when you put an axle in a rear end, a 4.9 inch rear end, you have to rotate it. And there's two sets of splines in the posi unit that have to engage. And if you push it in and don't rotate it, it won't go the second step in. So when they were building the car, they must have pushed it in and couldn't get it to go in, pulled the axle out and chopped it off with a chop saw. You could see where they had chopped it with a chop saw. Oh my God. And then put it back in. So it was just barely engaging. And then when you backed out of the driveway and turned, it became disengaged from the spider gear. And then it wouldn't move. The car wouldn't go forward because the differential was just spinning inside.

Right.

So we ended up having to put new axles in it. And it had to be flat bedded. And he had just bought the thing. Also, it had engine covers. It said 6.0 LS2 or maybe it was 6.2 LS3. It was either a 6 or 6.2 on the engine covers. And he said, this car doesn't feel very fast. So we got to looking and there was a 5.3 cast into the block. So it said 4.8 slash 5.3. It was a 5.3 engine, but somebody had put 6.0 liter engine covers on it and represented it as a 6.0 liter. So there's so many of those stories, you know?

Oh, and one of our friends' shops, he's working on two auction cars. He got under it, he's like, I cannot believe how much money he paid for this thing or how much work it needs to do, or that a shop like this can even do something like that. So obviously, we're coming up, was it 20, 21 years that you've been in business here. How have you avoided temptations or controversy over 21 years? It's not easy to do for some people, it seems. But obviously, you've built a very reputable brand over time. So how did you manage to accomplish that?

Well, I always tried to look at things from a customer's perspective. And, you know, in that many years, there are some people in the world that you cannot please. OK. And I've had a couple of those. But, you know, we try to think of it from a customer perspective and try to do the best that we can to satisfy them. You know, we've, you know, given people money back and said, you know, if you don't like what we have here, you know, when we build cars, we invoice every week. And one problem is when you're building a car and you have, let's say you have two guys working on it, you rack up the hours quite quickly, you know, and sometimes if you do like a monthly invoice, you know, there'd be quite a large invoice at the end of the month, you know. So we've never done that from day one we've invoiced every week. And we also only take advanced deposits on chassis because we have to buy a lot of products that go into the chassis, like the brakes and all that stuff. Probably on a chassis, about 75% of a chassis is purchased parts. And only 25% of it is what we manufacture. So if a customer is dissatisfied in any way, when we're building a car, we can stop it at that point. And he doesn't owe us very much money. If he's paying his invoices every week, he only owes us a week. And then he can take it somewhere else if he likes. But anyway, we just try to do right by people. And like I said, there's been a couple that we couldn't satisfy. But by and large, I'm real happy with our reputation.

Do you know what the most expensive build you've ever have come through here was?

Yes, we've had a couple that were approaching a half a million. And I'd say today, with the cost of things, our typical builds probably start about $3.50, $3.00 to $3.50. We've done a couple where we didn't do any paint work at all, and they were around $200, where we don't do paint in the interior, or minimal paint in the interior. Okay. A typical pro-touring build is usually $150 in parts, and you can reduce that a little bit by using a junkyard engine. But by and large, using junkyard parts doesn't really save you a lot. It seems like it may be at the time, but I had a guy bring me a junkyard engine one time, and once we got looking at the engine, it had been in an accident, and the valve cover was kind of shifted. It was an LS engine, the valve cover was shifted. Well, that valve cover had shifted from an impact, and it actually broke the valve guide off in the head and bent a valve. And the engine wouldn't even turn over because the valve was locked up. So, the amount of labor we ended up putting in that, we had to pull the engine apart, pull the head off, go get it, new valve guide put in it, and machining and all that. Like he could have bought a brand new crate engine for the cost he paid for the junkyard engine plus the labor to fix the junkyard engine. He could have bought a brand new engine. And the engine he got was like 60,000 miles or something on it.

Do you have a favorite crate engine right now that's on the market?

Well, everybody loves the supercharged Chrysler Hemi's. But the fact is, they're all put in big, giant, heavy cars. So I had a Challenger Scat Pack for a while, and it was a great car, I loved it. I sold it because I wanted to get a Hellcat with a manual transmission, which they were reintroducing for 23. But none of my local dealers got allocations, and I never, I ended up not getting one because of that. But imagine, you know, those cars weighing about 4,300 pounds, roughly. And imagine putting, you know, a Schwartz G machine chassis with a Hellcat engine in, say, a Plymouth Duster with our chassis is going to weigh, and that engine is probably going to weigh 3,300 pounds. So it's a thousand pounds lighter. So that's quite a, quite a performance advantage. So I think, you know, putting 700 horsepower on something light is a pretty good deal. We did a few months back, it was probably about a year ago, we had a bunch of cars in here with LT5s, which was supercharged ZR1 engines, 755 horse out of the box. Typically, whatever the engine has out of the box, with a free flowing exhaust, long tube headers, and a free flowing air intake, they typically make 50 or 60 more horse than stock without really doing anything to them. So, you know, a Hellcat redeye engine is 800 horse, and you know, when we get done with putting it in a car, it's probably 900 horse. And that Chevy LT5 is around 800 horse. And then we've got LT4s that is really a bargain, and we can get those around 800 horsepower. So I think all those supercharged engines are pretty good. So I would have to say, you know, those are the best value for performance, for what you pay. Personally, I like the LS7 engine a lot.

I was hoping you'd say that.

The 427, the big, you know, the big displacement normally aspirated, and I've not owned a car with one. So I'm in the process of building that SLC with a LS7, because I just love that, I love that engine. But you can't argue with the supercharged performance. I have a Z06 that's making 800 horsepower with the LT4, but the way the supercharged engine delivers the power, it's, these OEM type superchargers are very instantaneous. So the boost builds practically right off idle, and they, you know, have a real hard time getting traction. They blow the tires off the thing and things like that. So anyway, that's one of my favorite engines. I also have an AMG, a CL63, a 2008, it's 16 years old, but it has the six two liter AMG engine, and that was developed, that was the first V8 engine developed by AMG exclusively. So it's not a modified mercedes engine. It was an engine created by AMG for the AMG cars. And I mean, that thing's a ripper. It's 520 horse or something.

That's such an awesome, that's such an awesome car. I always said the Germans do V8 second best.

Right, yeah.

That's just like Jamie's. Oh, really? So he has a different trim, but yeah, that same sort of deal, supercharged V8 sort of deal, yeah. But yeah, I've always said that they do it second best. Like we have an AMG GTR, and it sounds like a bat out of hell, you know?

Yeah.

But it's hard to knock that good old American muscle.

Right, yeah.

But I did notice you have some, a Euro car, a mercedes over there. Are you guys starting to do more of that?

Yeah, we basically do anything the customer wants, and obviously with the popularity of Singer doing Porsches, I mean, that is like a huge deal. They've got a plant in LA that's ginormous to where they do those cars, and they have another one in England in order to do an M car. So it's like, yeah, there's more interest in European resto mods as well. So we have a Jag, a 64 Mark II Jag that we're doing. That is at the upholstery shop right now. It's not here in our shop, but that has an LT1 powertrain, and a one-off G machine chassis with independent rear suspension. That one's got the double A arm instead of the multi-link, just because of fitment issues with the back seat and wanting to have a functional back seat. The multi-link takes more space in the rear to put into a car. So there's more and more interest in Euro cars. And the only reason we did American engines in those cars is because the customers wanted, both customers have owned European cars. And they've had the experiences of dealing with mercedes, BMW, Jaguar, dealers, that the repairs are just exorbitant and crazy. So they wanted something inexpensive to maintain. So our chassis, all the replaceable components on our chassis, are available at any auto parts store. You know, wheel bearings, tie rod ends, all that kind of stuff. And so by putting an American engine in there, they have that, you know, cheap maintenance, I guess.

Does every car come with a list that you're like, okay, I need this part? So go into O'Reilly and ask them for a 64 Mustang, this, or do you guys, can they order that stuff from you, or how do they know what to get?

Well, typically if someone drives their car enough to wear out a component, you know, they would call us and we could ship them the part the next day, you know.

Okay.

So that's what we normally recommend, but sometimes people are worried like, you know, well, what if you go out of business? Well, you know, we've been in business over 20 years, it's unlikely that that would happen, but you know, most of those parts, all the bearings have numbers on them, you know what I mean? You bring a wheel bearing into a Napa store, they look at the number and they can get you the part. You know, same thing with tie rod ends and things like that, so.

Okay. I'm curious, right? Because obviously people right now aren't spending as much money, and you've been through, you know, that 2008, 2009 sort of thing, did that affect business at all, especially considering this is more of a, the hobby and leisure side of things or not really?

Yeah, through 2008, we were in a growth period and we were growing in double-digit growth every year. So I didn't notice anything in 2008 as far as any type of slowdown. You know, more recently, I'd say that the last three and a half years have been kind of strange. The, you know, during COVID, everybody initially slowed down to zero phone calls. And then when people figured things out, then it was like the floodgates opened and everybody was spending money on everything. So, it was like, so it was, it was, the phones literally stopped ringing for a couple months. And then, and then the floodgates opened and we were busy like crazy. More recently, I would say the, you know, the last two years, it's starting to decline. And, you know, fortunately, we're introducing new products, and which creates more interest and, you know, helps with that.

One of the things that we talked with one of the Restomod shops that we had on before is we're starting to notice some of these, like, later models catching people's attention as people that, you know, that were, you know, teenagers 20 years ago are starting to come into more money. They're starting to get the want to buy the stuff that they wanted. For example, like, a lot of people are starting to buy up, like, those Gen 1 Audi R8s because of the Iron Man movie 15 years ago. Are you seeing any shift in, like, consumer preferences?

Yes, as the demographics shift, you know, the market shifts with it. If you go look on any type of advertising, Facebook Marketplace, you know, Craigslist, anything like that, and look up, like, you know, model T's and model A's, you know, restored model T's and model A's, they're giving them away. They can barely give them away, you know. I see that stuff all the time for less than $10,000, you know. And it's because all the people that were into them cars are dead now. So, as the market is shifting, you know, yeah, street rods are soft, you know. I think a 32 Ford is always going to be kind of an icon, you know what I mean? So because of video games and things, certain street rods might remain, you know, Tri-Five Chevys probably might remain, but first gen Camaros, maybe. But yes, as the demographic shift, it goes to newer products. So we were the first to come out with the G-Body Chassis for General Motors G-Body cars, and we came out with that more than, it had to be more than a decade ago, I don't remember the exact date, but more than a decade ago, we came out with that chassis well before anybody else, and we came out with the Tri-Five Chassis at the same time, and that G-Body Chassis outsold our Tri-Five Chassis like 10 to 1 up until just recently. Lately, we've had a run on Tri-Five Chassis now again, so, but G-Bodies went all the way to 1987, and it's a cheap car that you can get into, and somebody asked me one time, well, what do you think the popularity of the G-Body is? Well, one is younger demographics, but if you go to buy a 6970 Mustang to build into a pro touring car, you're going to spend $20,000 for a shell, where you can buy a running and driving G-Body car for six grand, you know? So the price of admission is cheaper. Same thing with a Tri-Five Chevy, you go to buy a body of that, it's going to cost you a pretty good amount of money just for the body, and you know, you could, if you get the body for cheap, then you can have more budget to build your project. So we get a lot of calls for Fox Body stuff, you know, at some point, we'll probably have a chassis for Fox Bodies. I don't right now. Square body pickups are a big thing now. So that goes all the way, I think, to 87 or somewhere around there. When do square bodies end?

That's you, Dan.

I don't know. I can tell you the Fox Body's from 79 to 2004, so that's a pretty broad range.

Right.

Yeah, so when do you decide to add a chassis to your line up? Just from phone calls, are you watching trends or?

Generally, somebody wants one. So, you know, if somebody calls up and says, hey, I want a 67 Ford chassis, it's like, okay, well, we'll build it, you know? So we build them a 67 Ford chassis. And then if it's a car that we think we're going to sell more of, then we'll build jigs and fixtures and have the jigs and fixtures for the next customer that comes along.

So if I need one from scratch and it's not one you offer off the shelf, does that typically cost a little bit more or?

It does. So, you know, typically, if it's one we don't have and it's one we're probably not going to produce, it's probably going to be about 10,000 extra.

Okay.

For the engineering and one-off fabrication.

Who does your engineering for you?

We have two full-time engineers that work here, and we have 3D scanning capability. So if you have that oddball car, you ship the car to us, we put it up on a lift, we 3D scan it, we engineer the chassis for it, and it usually takes about a month to engineer the chassis. And then it's probably a couple of weeks to build the chassis. So that's how we do a one-off chassis or something that we don't have. And like I said, if it's a popular one, then we just build the jigs and then continue to make them for...

How do you do that on... So when you're talking muscle cars, easy piece of cake, right? That there was a frame on car, no big deal. But when you start getting into the unibody stuff, and you need a chassis, what are you building? Just are you using parts of the actual car still, since the technically the chassis is built into the car itself or...

Well, when we pioneered the full frame for unibodies, what we wanted to do was to not add a bunch of weight to the car.

Right.

And we also wanted to stiffen it and make it stronger so that it could handle modern powertrains, because modern powertrains make way more than the old stuff did. And so we engineered it to wear the chassis. We do in every application, we have to take off the front frame rails. So in the case of of a Camaro or a Nova, that front subframe unbolts from the car. In the case of like a Mustang or a Mopar, that front frame rail gets cut out of the car. So we leave the core support and remove the frame rail from the core support back to the tow board of the car.

Okay.

And then all the other unibody structure remains in the car. And then our chassis runs parallel to the rear frame rails inboard of them and bolts to the existing unibody structure in the car.

Okay.

So on a typical unibody car, let's say a Camaro or a Mustang, the leaf springs, have you ever had a leaf spring and picked one up out of a car?

Oh yeah.

They weigh a ton. So you got two of those leaf springs that go out of there. The cast iron steering gear box and all the tie rods and center links and idler arm and all that stuff, that weighs a ton. So that's out of there. So a typical car with our unibody chassis in it loses about 50 to 75 pounds from its original weight. So we designed our chassis to not add weight to the car. So it stiffens it. We leave all the existing structure in there. There's one sitting in front of us here. And as you can see, that's a Mustang chassis. You see those little tubes in the rear. That goes into the forward leaf spring mount, that little tube in the back there. That goes right up into the pocket where the leaf spring is. And then we weld plates onto the tow board for these other holes to be bolted in. And all the structure is there. And this looks flimsy by itself. But when you add that to the unibody structure that's still in the car, it becomes a real robust foundation for a supercharged coyote making 1,000 horsepower.

Yeah, I know, cause on the Fox bodies, once you start adding horsepower, you can literally twist the car. I've seen where they've done that. You do a few revs and you can't even close the doors anymore.

Right, yeah, I did a Vega a number of years ago with a 5.3 in it, and it started popping spot welds.

Yeah.

When it comes to these custom chassis, how much is safety a consideration?

Well, safety is always a consideration, but when you put a modern chassis into an old car, you now have modern brakes and modern steering and all of that. So we also have ABS brakes as an option. It's about $5,000 to $6,000 extra, but we can give you an ABS system as well. So, you know, all that stuff adds up to better safety. You've got, you know, rack and pinion steering that responds immediately to inputs, and you've got brakes that will stop you on a dime and give you a five cents change.

What's going into the R&D on this stuff? Do you have, like, a team? Is this just your brainchild stuff? You're sitting around thinking this stuff up, or...?

Well, I have a team here. So, in the initial phases, it was just me, you know? But, you know, now we have, you know, we have a team of people, and we all come up with ideas. And if it's a good idea, we run with it.

Who's a, like, a competitor or a shop that you... You kind of... Who do you respect out there in the industry, whether it's a competitor, a shop, or just even like a parts supplier even?

Well, you know, let's... Let's just not talk about respect, but let's just talk about big players, okay? So the biggest player in this realm is Roadster Shop. They've been in business roughly 50 years, and they're now no longer family owned. It's a large conglomerate. There's another company, Speed Tech, they were acquired by QA1 recently. So, you know, we're one of the few, you know, family owned businesses. So, you know, I think me starting from nothing, you know, you know, we end up commanding a lot of respect for what we've done. As far as others that I look up to, I have to say, you know, what Singer has done with the Porsche market, that's just incredible, you know, what they've done.

I got to, a few episodes ago, we got to go to a shop that had a Singer there. It's actually at a car show in Minnesota today. And the entire car is just carbon fiber. I mean, just this is, I think Singers start at 400 or 500,000, I believe. This one knows well over double that.

Yeah, I think most of the stuff that rolls out of their shop now is around a million, usually. Because there's not really any low end stuff anymore. Everybody wants all the goodies, check all the boxes.

Do you do a lot of stuff with carbon fiber?

We have. We have. We have not done like at a complete carbon fiber car, but we've done a lot of carbon fenders, carbon hoods, that kind of stuff. The mercedes has a carbon fiber insert where the sunroof was. It's a one-off molded piece that fits up into the sunroof opening and his panel bonded from the bottom and it's exposed on the top.

One second, I hear the sound of disappointment from our audience. Let me address this real quick. Guys, I hear you, loud and clear, and you want a free sticker, don't you? I would too. They're pretty sweet. Take a second to go to minnoxide.com/newsletter or click the link in the description to sign up for the free newsletter and I'll send you one. Y'all thought I was beefing. Okay, back to the show.

Is there, speaking of newer stuff, is there, so obviously you specialize in taking old stuff or even anything and making it perform better. Is there something now that's out that you feel performs great right out the box? Is there some, a certain car or something that you would be like, great man, I wouldn't really need to touch much on this?

Well, being a car enthusiast, I'm always looking at stuff that's out there.

Right.

And some of what I do is, I will buy a car and evaluate it and compare it to what we have. Back in 2015, when the Z06 came out on the C7 platform, I bought one of those and we did extensive testing with our 65 Pontiac. And we were within a couple of hundreds on an autocross course between the two, with, you know, equal tires. So, you know, we've done a lot of comparison data like that. Obviously, the Lamborghini STO that I raced in the Optimus series the last two years is a car that I admire. And, you know, the performance is pretty good out of the box. They haven't done anything to it as far as mods go. So that's one.

Yeah.

Obviously, the Mustangs and I'm glad to see that Ford is still making Mustangs. I'm disappointed that Chevrolet is discontinuing the Camaro. The one thing that I've got to say, though, is all of those cars, you know, Challengers, Mustangs, Camaros, they have gotten ginormous, gigantic. When I had my Scat Pack, I had it parked next to my 70 thunderbird and I took a photograph from a front view. My 70 thunderbird looked miniature next to the Challenger. The Challenger was taller and wider and heavier. And so I think, you know, the modern car companies, modern cars, they've gotten too big and heavy. As you know, I own a Scion FRS and I love that car. It's getting a new motor at P&L Motorsports right now and hopefully it'll put out around 600 horsepower when I get it back. And I can't wait to run it in the Optimus Series next year in the Sport Compact class because that thing is just such a car. When that car came out, when the Scion and the Subaru BRZ came out, that was just a phenomenal car. I was so excited about it. I went to SEMA that first year and the whole show was just loaded with those cars, with everything from Rocket Bunny wide body kits to super chargers and turbos and all that. I think the American companies have missed out on that. Yeah, the Focus RS was Ford's version of a Evo or Audi RS3. I had an Audi RS3 for a while. I went down the rabbit hole of Mods and ended up blowing up the engine and then building an engine and then blowing up a center diff. And, you know, it's anyway, so.

We know that rabbit hole.

So I think that American car companies should come out with an affordable rear wheel drive small car that would that would allow modifications. You know what I mean? And that that Scion or 86 GT, they call it now, or I think it's called the 86 GT Toyota, right?

So the GR86.

Yeah, GR86. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Now it's a GR86 was 80 last year. It was the 86 GT or the year before.

I think it might have been trim or something.

So anyway, those cars are phenomenal. They're talking about maybe putting a three cylinder out of the Yaris in there, but the Yaris GR, but I think it'd be better off just doing a four cylinder if you're going to do that. But anyway, it'd be great to see a Camaro come out with an engine that's maybe hybridized or something, right? Like a turbocharged four cylinder with 350 horsepower and then 150 electric motor on top of it. That would be kind of a cool car.

I am curious, right? Since you've driven the STO, what are your thoughts on this new Temurario coming out from Lamborghini? Have you done much digging on that one yet?

Yeah, I mean, I've seen it, watched the videos, that kind of thing. I'm going to have to drive one. So I'm actually set up to drive the... I'm losing my train of thought here, but the...

The Revuelto?

Revuelto, yeah. So I'm scheduled to drive the Revuelto next week. I was supposed to do it this week, but my schedule didn't allow it. So I'm supposed to drive that next week. So I'm curious how a hybridized drive train feels like. You know, I look at it more kind of like a nitrous system, you know, like a nitrous bottle that you don't have to fill up, but you have to charge, you know. So the idea is pretty cool. The e-ray has really done some phenomenal quarter mile times with that, you know, the LT2, I guess they call it, LT2 with the hybridized drive train. That thing really makes tracks. I'm disappointed that Lamborghini didn't keep the V10. I would have preferred if they had kept the V10, even if they made it smaller displacement. You know, it was a 5.2 liter. They could have maybe took it down to 4.5 liter or something and kept the V10 and did the hybridized thing. But I guess, you know, the firing order of the flat plane and the 9,000 RPM red line might make it exciting. So I'll have to see how that does. But one of the reasons I bought the RS3 was it sounded just like a V10, you know.

We're all too familiar with those. Actually, our home base studio at Ratified Motorsport, that's what they specialize in. Yesterday, we did a podcast with Rata Race Lab down, not too far from here. Where are they at?

McHenry? McHenry, aren't they? They were in McHenry.

Yeah, they just moved north into Genoa. So they're in Wisconsin now, barely.

Genoa City.

Yeah.

There's a Genoa, Illinois.

Oh, is there?

So Genoa City. Yeah, that's close by.

Yeah, we're familiar with that platform. It's a great platform. It really is. Did you watch the Engineering Explained video on the Temerario yet or no? About the specifics of it.

I did not, but I mean, I know it's a, you know, 9,000 RPM redline and, you know, it's got some, you know, good horsepower out of that engine. And I think where they may have missed the boat though is on the pricing of it because the price, the base price on it is, I don't know, closing in on 200,000 more money than a base Huracan was, okay?

Everything's just exploding nowadays.

A base Huracan was like, you know, in the, a couple years ago was like 250 or something, you know, and now that thing, the base is 450. So you start adding carbon bits and, you know, carbon bits on Lamborghinis are not cheap, you know? So I'm thinking, I'm thinking I would, I would buy a Revuelto, I would buy a Revuelto probably first before I would buy that one.

Okay, because it still has the V12, right? It has that sound and all that. So the hybridization is happening at a crazy rapid pace right now. So are you, do you find yourself excited for hybrid and electric cars then?

Yeah, somewhat. I did put a fair amount of seat time in a 296 Ferrari. So I've done a fair amount of seat time in that, and that's hybridized. And it's very seamless. You don't even know that the electric motors are there. It's just adding power kind of everywhere, you know? I guess it fills the torque in the low end, but you know, it was very non-noticeable. You didn't notice it at all. It just felt like a very fast car, and it had a pretty good sound to it. They've probably done the best job of making a V6 engine sound good.

Yeah, I agree with that. It is very exciting, right? Because you kind of get that instant torque. Like, if you look at the torque curve, or what the torque curve will look like for the Temurario, it's just like a zip up and then flat. Because by the time the electric power tapers off, the turbos start kicking in. So definitely very, very exciting on that front. So will we start seeing more batteries and some of these like resto mods in the future potentially?

Yeah, I think so. You know, the thing that that concerns me a little bit about the hybridization of production cars is the cost of repair, you know? And also the values. So, you know, Tesla plaids are half price right now.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? And they're only a couple of years old. So are hybridized cars going to do the same? You know what I mean? Because the battery life, you know, we've in manufacturing, we've dealt with electric forklifts for decades. And, you know, it loses its juice over time. And then you have to replace the battery, and the battery costs as much as a forklift. So I think that that's a concern that I have on the production cars, is are they going to have value? And then all the additional electronic devices to troubleshoot and to potentially go bad, you know, we know how old European cars are, old BMWs and things like that with electrical issues and old Audis, you know. So what's it going to be like on a hybridized car when you have, you know, twice as many wires that, you know, to break? And the other thing that is disturbing is all these manufacturers are making their wiring harnesses with the insulation on the harness are a soy-based product. So rats and mice are getting into cars and squirrels and they're chewing stuff. I mean, I've heard of people having their wiring harnesses eaten three times, you know, and had to bring it in like a Chevy truck, bring into the GM dealer and after replace the harness at, you know, $3,000 three times, you know, and that kind of stuff. So, you know, sometimes we try to be green and then we screw ourselves by, you know, now the squirrels have a tasty thing. I had a chipmunk get in my garage the other day and I had the STO and Maserati MC20 in there and it disappeared and I couldn't find it for like two days. It was in there for two days. Finally, I got it out of the garage, but I pray that it didn't chew on anything, but it literally went up inside the car. I saw it go under the car, I looked under the car and it was not visible. So, you know, that's...

That's a little nerve-racking.

That's a little nerve-racking. So with respect to hybridizing these cars, I would have the same concerns of the OEM things where, you know, more things to go wrong. So a lot of requests we have are being able to do things with your car from your cell phone and we've integrated that type of stuff into these cars. But it's not without potential problems, you know. Same thing with push button starts, you know. In the old days, you had like a push button on the floor and you'd put your foot on it and it would actually start the car. I don't know if you've ever seen a car that old, but like 50 Chevy's pickups have a push button on the floor. You just push down with your foot for the starter.

Oh really? I have done the brights with the foot, but I've not had to start the car from that way.

Right, but anyway, now we have to do a push button start. We gotta push the button, and then it trips a relay, which trips something else, and then it starts the car. But most of the time, they have a key fob attached, and you gotta unlock the key fob, and then you gotta do it all in sequence, and if you do it out of sequence, it won't start. So I just love having a key that you turn to start it. Okay.

Yeah.

So this is one of those things where, like, you can do it, but it does add complexity.

Right, and potential maintenance issues down the road. So, you know, we'll see how that all shakes out. We're willing to do anything customer wants, so if they want to electrify, they want to add that as a power booster, we'll certainly try to do it, whatever we can do.

I want to talk about these, like, land speed records, or just these records in general that you're doing, especially when you, again, talk about the FRS or the 86 platform. I mean, what made you choose to go down that route? What are some of the accomplishments you've done with that?

Well, for many years, I've known of this organization called the East Coast Timing Association, and they started way back when doing events at Maxton Air Base in North Carolina. And it was an old air base and they would do events there. And everybody knows the Southern California Timing Association, which puts on events at Bonneville. But as I've gotten older, I try to minimize my risks. And to me, driving flat out on essentially a dirt road, which is Bonneville, is kind of silly. As far as the risk factor goes, you know?

We've had people tell us that that experience is very, it's off-putting, because it almost gets a little.

Right, you have to just have faith in God, you're not gonna die.

Right.

And just keep it hammered down. And you also have to gingerly apply the throttle so you don't kill yourself. But when I heard about this East Coast Timing Association, I said, air base, now that's a place to go fast in a car. You know, you got lots of space and things like that, you know. So for many years, I had thought about doing it. And then more recently, they started doing events in Blytheville, Arkansas. And there's an old B-17 bomber training facility in Blytheville, Arkansas, that's got a 14,000 foot runway. And which is, I guess, 5200 feet to a mile, right? So it's like two and three quarters mile long. And so they set up, of course, a mile and a quarter, which is two kilometers. And then they time you at the half mile, the one mile and the 2K. So every pass, you have the potential to break three records. And I didn't realize it when I until I went there, but I went there with my Ducati 1299R Final Edition. It's a twin-cylinder motorcycle. All factory stock except the factory race exhaust and the race ECU. And I was planning on going with my Scion FR-S, but there was some driveline vibration issues that I was working through after my 300ZX Trans Swap happened. So it wasn't ready. So I took my 599 GTB Ferrari as a substitute car, and I figured I could probably break a couple 12-cylinder records and motorcycle twin-cylinder records. So I had kind of a mission of setting a record in the car and a record in the bike. But when I got there, I kind of figured out how the whole thing worked, and then they told me that you can run higher displacement categories with your vehicle. The rules are, you know, X amount of cc's or cubic inches is your maximum for that class, but you can go up. You just can't go over the displacement rules. So in the case of the Ferrari, it was a 6-liter. It was 5.99 liters, you know. So I ran the up to 6-liter class, and then I did all the various classes that they had. I think up to, I think 10-liter was the biggest class that they had. So these are for guys that are using those Allison aircraft engines that were 12 cylinders and things like that, that they have these different categories for displacement. So basically, I broke all the 12-cylinder records, half mile, one mile and two kilometers. I was able to break every record. And then the motorcycle, it was kind of the same thing. That bike makes 198 horsepower at the rear wheel and it's 237 at the crank. It's got titanium rods and valves from the factory. And so I broke all the records with that, with the bike. So I think it was something like 63 records or something the first time. I also, with the twin-cylinder, you could also run four-cylinder classes. So I actually broke a few records in the four-cylinder class with the twin-cylinder as well. Some Hayabusa records actually.

And then, again, just because I'm so intrigued by this, where did the love for the FR-S come from? Because I hear from so many people that it's just an amazing chassis overall.

Well, like I said, when I first saw the car at SEMA, it's like it's a low-cost mid-engine rear-wheel drive, a low-cost front-engine rear-wheel drive car. And I mean, that's what everybody wants in a performance car, is you want a rear-wheel drive car that's inexpensive. So I just thought it was a great idea, great platform. And in the light of everything becoming so big and bulky, you know, everybody knows how much a Miata handles, but that FRS has, like even in stock form, you know, a little over 200 horsepower compared to what a Miata had back at that time that it came out, you know, was, you know, the Scion is just a great car. I mean, ergonomically, when you sit in it, when I sat in it for the first time, like you just close your eyes and reach your hands out and the steering wheel is right where it's supposed to be. Your head is just lightly touching the headrest. It is the most ergonomically perfect car, at least for my body. I just fit perfectly in it. And I'm about 6'1 and 190 pounds, you know? And I just fit perfectly in that car. It's just good looking. It's got good lines, styled good, high quality. I don't know what's not to like. You know, I guess it is a little weird because I'm an old guy that grew up on American cars. But back in my history, I did race two different Renaults in IMSA series. And then I also in SCCA, the five national track records that I broke were in a Chevy Citation X11 front wheel drive sport compact car. So I do have some history with sport compact cars.

Yeah, it's just with a guy that has access to the caliber of cars, you have access to, it is just, it's an oddball in your collection. That's why, I think that's what...

Well, I own two Evo's as well. So I've had two Evo's, and the first generation that they brought to this country, you know, the, what was that called? Was that a...

Was it the four?

Four, I think, yeah. I think it was the Evo four. And then a final edition, I had a gray final edition that I brought over to AMS and had them do their package on it.

Well, funny story, how we, and I don't know if Harris told you, but how we came across you was that we ran into a gentleman that used to own an Evo at a Dunkin Donuts, and he's the one that told us to come shake your tree.

Okay, yeah, I, that was my friend Sean. I heard from him this morning, and he mentioned that he had bumped into you guys. So, you know, thank you, Sean, for hooking us up. Yeah, absolutely.

It's such a funny story, though, because he was wearing his Optima shirt yesterday, and then Sean just was like, wrote America or whatever it was, and just got to chatting, and I didn't even realize that you guys were based this far north. I had no idea where I thought you were based out of, but it just kind of one of those happy little coincidences that just kind of worked out.

Well, we used to go to the Carcraft Summer Nationals all the time in Minnesota at the State Fairgrounds, because that's kind of like my homeland, so I always felt like I wanted to go there. Before I started my business as an enthusiast, I used to go to that Carcraft Summer Nationals. Now they call it Street Machine Nationals. It still exists up there. And then I've gone to the back to the 50s a few times, and Minnesota has a gigantic car culture, because it seems like everybody's mechanically inclined because they still have shop classes and high schools up there, and people learn how to do things at a young age, and people build stuff in their garage, and it's like really great car culture up there. But in 2013 and 2017, the readers of Carcraft Magazine voted Schwartz Performance as the Pro builder of the Year. So we do have some claim to fame, I guess you'd say. But lately, we've just been concentrating on keeping our customers happy and building cool stuff for everybody and getting it out there so people can enjoy it.

Well, I think this is a reoccurring theme that we're starting to see on the show, is your work does your talking for you, right? You know, so if you end up in a magazine or end up being invited to some, you know, crazy national show, I think it's usually just because of your work. Are you starting to notice that as well? I mean, have you noticed that over the years?

Yeah, I have noticed that, yeah. Yeah, and every time I bring a car out in public that we've, you know, we've built, there's always a lot of, you know, compliments and people are, you know, shocked by the high-end quality.

What about the Superlight? We kind of glazed over it earlier this episode, but what's the plan with that car?

Well, in my younger days, I guess 20, 22 years ago, I had owned a lot of Corvettes at the time, and obviously I love road racing and track driving and that kind of thing, and sports cars. I've always liked a luxury car ride, but a sports car handling, and we've pretty much done that with our chassis, with, you know, low friction, you know, bearings and long travel shocks and that kind of thing. But I always liked a car that road good and handled good. And there was a period where I went through, you know, Corvettes, and I got to a point like, where do I go from owning a Corvette? What's the next step? So I learned about a car called Ultima GTR and made in the UK. It's a self-assembly supercar. And I sold a bunch of stuff and gathered enough money to get a deposit on one. I visited the factory in England in 2002, and I built one of the first LS-powered Ultima GTRs. And then later on, I twin-turboed it. I took it out to the Silver State Classic and won the zero to 200 to zero event. I beat the big red Camaro that everybody is in love with. And I put 50,000 miles on that Ultima GTR, drove it on Hot Rod Power Tour, drove it everywhere. So that was my first supercar. And now I've been able to move on to store-bought supercars, and I've had a few of those over the years. But back to returning to my roots, you know, the Ultima GTR was kind of my roots. I built it in my garage before I owned the business. And after I had that car for a little while, I discovered another car that wasn't available at the time I ordered it, called the SLC. And I ended up being in Michigan, I think, on Hot Rod Power Tour one year, with my Ultima GTR. And I went over to Race Car Replicas, who builds the SLCs, and I met Fran Hall, the man behind that company. And he gave me a tour, and showed me the products, and I was really impressed with it. It was kind of like, damn, I wish I had known about this before, but I don't believe it was available at the time I ordered the Ultima, but whatever. So now, fast forward, I have one here, and I'm planning on building it for myself. Initially, I was gonna go crazy, twin-turbo horsepower with like 1500 at the crank and 1200 at the wheel or something like that. But I'm thinking this one has a heel and sequential gearbox, and I think that I should be building it more for like fast lap times. And I don't think 1500 horsepower is gonna get me the fastest lap time. I think it may get bragging rights at the Cars and Coffee event, but I think I would rather have something function than be something to brag about. So I've decided to do the LS7 engine, one of my favorite engines, and I think I can get around 800 normally aspirated horse with the CNC-ported Ling and Felter heads that I have and the camshaft that I have. So I'm hoping to assemble that. The rotating assembly is being balanced right now. I've got like 14 to 1 compression pistons and and H-beam rods and a forged crank, and it's going to be a dry sump boiling system and all that. So that stuff's at the machine shop, the blocks be in the line board and decked, and I'm going to start assembling that hopefully next week or two. Oh, wow.

How much of, how much wrenching are you still doing? When it comes to your own cars, are you doing it? Are you still in the shop?

So I, that's a tricky question. I mean, I'm busy with so many things. I don't have that much time to dedicate to everything, but I have a pretty good team here, and sometimes I'm able to leave a little early on a weekday and go to the other shop is where I work on my stuff. So we call it our R&D facility, but it's got a lift there. We do like 3D scanning of cars there for design work and stuff. And we store customer cars there as well as some of our, you know, my fleet of toys and things. So I've got a 50 studebaker there that was my purchase brand new by my two great uncles that lived in North Home, Minnesota. And they bought the car from Erickson's Garage in Kellyer, Minnesota. In the fall of 49, it was a brand new 1950 studebaker Champion. So I acquired it from my second cousin Ray in upon the Iron Range. I forget what the town is, but he gifted it to me if with the promise that I restored and do something with it. So the bottom of the car was rotted off of it. So we built a chassis and did that. The car is now painted. I recently fitted new glass to all the mechanism that rolls the windows up and down the channels. And it's got a, it's painted. The windshield is in it. The headliner is in it. The seats are in it. The, I did an LS engine that I disguised as a studebaker V8. So it's got studebaker valve covers, air cleaner, oil filler. And I'm working on that. I, I'm working on wiring. The lights are wired. I have to wire the air conditioning, wire the dash, put the engine wiring harness in, and put the glass in the window. So, and then it's got to go to the interior shop to get finished up. But that one I'm working on, I recently finished a 73 Vette, that a friend of mine built years ago, was stored in a barn for 40 years. Convinced him to sell it to me. I, you know, resurrected it. He had done all sorts of chassis mods, so I didn't put a chassis in it. I didn't want to destroy the stuff that he had done. And it's a wide body, flared fender, 73. I subcontracted the fender flares and the paint. I put the engine in, put the trans in, adjusted the valves, assembled the engine. I had a Corvette shop do some of the assembly of the interior pieces. And so I work on my, the stuff that I'm building, I always try to do most of that work myself. This SLC, I've got one of my guys fitting the doors, the hinging of the doors. So one door is hinged, the other one is, he's got to finish up. And I put the engine in it the other day for mock-up purposes. This TR7 that I've got here that I'm doing an LS swap on probably is something that I'll do myself. I'm going to put the engine in trans in that probably in the next month or so. And then I'll move it to the other shop. I'll finish up the studebaker. I've got a C10 truck there that's all fabricated. I just have to make sure that I mount the ECU and a few other things, and then that's ready to be painted. So I work on a lot of my stuff, but I've got too much stuff to do all of it. So I, my friend Pete at Lake Barrington Motorsports does some stuff for me on, he usually has two cars at any given time. Right now, he's got my 924 Porsche D-production vintage road racer that I have yet to drive. It's running and driving now, and we're just working, finishing up the details. I hope to have that at some of the vintage racers next summer. And then, I recently tracked down two Corvettes that I bought brand new, an 84 and a 96, and they are almost the same shape as when I sold them, believe it or not, many years ago. And the 96 Fett is getting a cam put in it, and valve springs, and headers, long tube headers and stuff. So I have others working on my stuff. I rarely have people here working on my stuff because they're working on customer stuff, and if they work on my stuff, I lose the income of the customer stuff. Plus, I'm paying them whatever they're making per hour. So I'm better off having my stuff done offsite if I can't do it myself.

Okay. Is there an aspect to working on cars that you absolutely hate? Like some guys hate wiring, some guys hate messing with carburetors. Is there any one part that just, you're like, I just really don't want to do that?

Well, probably putting the window mechanism back in the doors is one that I've been dragging my feet on a little bit lately. Wiring, I quite enjoyed doing the wiring of the lights. I put weather pack connectors on everything, so I enjoyed doing that. When I first started in the business, I dreaded wiring, but now it's just, you just start at one end and just start doing it. You know what I mean? It's like, you just put the connectors on and start doing it, and then it's not as difficult as what it seems. It's relatively clean work wiring, so I really don't mind that. I really don't like working on greasy, oily things and fixing oil leaks, you know? Like pulling an oil pan off and changing the oil pan gasket or fixing a rear mainsail. That's the kind of stuff that I dread doing, and I don't think I ever want to do that again, actually.

So as we start to wind down here, because we are closing in on two hours, time flies when you're having fun. Before we do our usual Minnesota goodbye, where do you see things going? What do the next few years look like for you? What are some exciting things in your future that you're looking forward to?

Well, we are currently manufacturing jeep chassis, private label for a company, attitude Performance in, I think they're Arlington Heights, Illinois. So we're doing jeep chassis for them. They're going to be using a body out of Canada to put on these jeep chassis, a reproduction body out of Canada. So it's like an off-road jeep with a really trick suspension set up on it. And then we're in the design stages of an off-road pre-runner chassis for square bodies and for F100s from the, the F100 will be like 68 to, I don't know, 80, 79 or 80 or whatever that body style goes. And then the square bodies are 76 to, I think they're 90, no, 90 is in the, probably 87 I think it is for the square bodies. But anyway, it's a pre-runner chassis. So right now, I'm not aware of any product on the market that's a pre-runner two-wheel drive, tall, long travel suspension chassis. So I think around the Midwest, a lot of people want jacked up trucks. They want like the smooth ride that you get with the, you know, Raptor and T-Rex trucks with that off-road suspension that gives very compliant ride, because we have frost and potholes and winters that we deal with that ruin the roads around here. And most people don't take their trucks and go, you know, around these parts, the Midwest upper Midwest, don't really go rock crawling and crying, climbing a lot of hills and things, you know. So if we build this chassis, I think it would be, give people an opportunity to not replacing a rusted out chassis, number one, is a benefit of it. Or, you know, building something with a brand new chassis that with all the suspension on it, that will save you time on your build, give you the smooth ride. You can take it out into a plowed field and just go blast an off road across a bumpy plowed field and impress your buddies. But it doesn't have the expense of that extra differential in the front and it'll handle and drive better because you're not fighting the front wheels trying to push the front end. You know how it is driving a four wheel drive truck in four wheel drive when you're trying to turn, right? So I just think that it's going to be a new market segment for us. So I'm really excited about that. And we are doing a 68 Firebird project, which is electrification. So we're well underway on the engineering of the chassis for that. I hope to have that chassis done within the next few months. And this Corvette should be running and driving by the end of the year. And the rendering is up there. That'll be a wrap that'll be putting on, put on the car.

Oh, so you're going to wrap it instead of paint it?

Yes, painting has gotten so ridiculously expensive. I don't even know what to say about it, other than, you know, I hate how expensive it is, you know?

That'll look good. I mean, that'll represent the shop well.

So we wanted kind of a patriotic theme. Yeah. So red, white and blue. And then we kind of did the slash three different colors, which is what AMC did with their race cars. Yeah. All the AMC's had that paint scheme on them. But we changed the order of the colors around from what the AMC had. And then we got the Hellcat engine in there. So I don't know.

Can't get much more American than that.

Well, we're going to, the AMC guys will either love or hate the paint shop.

So, so like, you know how to like the C6 ZR1s, they have like that kind of glass hood. Are you going to do that sort of deal here too or no?

We're using the stock fiberglass hood, the one sitting there with the...

You're just going to leave the hole in it?

Yeah. Okay.

Gotcha. I was curious what you were going to do with that because I saw it in the video.

We thought about doing the clear Lexan shield like the C6 ZR1 had, but at this point, you know, it could end up happening. We've had that discussion, but I think for the time being, we just want to get the car done and do it. And the other thought is, we've got this ginormous splitter on the front, and we've opened up the air flow to the front of the car to cool the intercooler heat exchanger as well as the radiator, because we're planning on having this in near 1,000 horsepower tune. So we've got a bigger crank pulley for it and so forth. So we need a lot of air flow. The hole being in the hood will actually help relieve the under hood pressure. People put louvers on the sides of the hood and in the fenders, and I can't rule out that we may put some louvers there as well. But I think if we close off that opening, it's going to have a performance disadvantage. Leaving it open will allow some of that air to exit.

That's what the, like the newer Shelby GT500s, they have a rain tray you take out for track use. They say it's not to cool the engine bay, it's actually for aerodynamics.

Yes, yeah, exactly.

Which, going back to your off-road stuff too, by the way, that is an exploding market. I mean, it's even Shelby, when I was down there talking to them, they sell 70% more trucks than they do than they're doing cars between their Baja's and their Shelby trucks, so.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah, we have a friend that knows all too much about overheating C6 CR1s.

Yeah.

Okay. So anyways, Dan, do you want to pop the usual three?

Sure. At the end of every episode, we like to ask our guest, which this is going to be a mind blowing one here. We like to ask our guests to pick three cars, a daily driver, a track car and a show car. You can have build whatever you want, swap, whatever you want, a limited budget. And a guy who already has probably a bunch of cars is going to be a difficult one.

But that's going to be difficult. But for winter, we really need four cars when we're in the Midwest here because we need a winter daily and we need a summer daily. Yeah, those are two different cars, right?

I'm the tough guy, though. I usually force people into the little box to one daily.

All right.

So your daily has to be winter.

My winter daily is a Ram 2500 with Cummins at Spantoon. So that's my winter or inclement weather. So I drive that in the summer when it's raining and so forth. So I guess that's going to qualify as the daily driver.

OK.

And now, just because I'm curious, not that it's going to count for our rules, but what does what would the summer daily be? I'm curious if you were to pick one.

Well, I drive a different car each day when it's sunny out. So CL63 AMG, the 73 Vette with the big block, the 84 Corvette, the 96 Corvette.

Nice rotation.

I normally don't drive supercars to work, but yeah, just about anything.

Okay.

C8, you know.

All right. So then track and show.

Track, I have a car in a box over there. So you notice that next to the studebaker that's on the lift above the Mustang, there's a crate next to that studebaker. Okay. And I had a guy in Bulgaria build me a body that is a Bentley Speed 8.

That's like, wait, so Speed 8.

The LeMans winning race car from like 2005.

Oh, okay. Okay, I know what you're talking about.

The Bentley boys, they went back to LeMans for the anniversary of Bentley. Yeah. And they won LeMans. It took them two years, but the second year they won.

Yeah, I think CarWow did a video on that, where they took the drag race against the modern Formula One car. That one, right? I love that car in video games.

Right. So the Bentley Speed 8. So I have a Bentley Speed 8 body there, and I am building a chassis for that, and building that into a complete car. It'll be a street legal track car.

Holy s***.

And I'm painting it exactly like the Speed 8 that won LeMans.

So like that, it's not British Racing Green, but it's like a variation of it or something, isn't it?

It is, yes. It's British, like a British green and silver.

Holy s***. dude, I don't think you understand. That is probably one of the coolest ones that we've heard on the show. Okay. Okay.

I have a photo of it I can show you, all right? So I have it on my phone. I'll show you a photo of that.

Okay.

But so that is the track car that is my ultimate track car that I hope to build before I die. I got to interject this, okay? We are all dying, okay?

Yeah.

We just don't know when, okay? And so many people waste time playing online games and surfing the internet and all that. You need to understand that we are all dying. Every one of you listening, you are all dying, okay? So get out there and do something while you still can, you know? As you get older, you start realizing it more. But since my father died as an infant, my whole life, I've been living life like there's no tomorrow. He got ill one day and died at 22, okay? From polio. He was sick for a week and then gone. So we've seen with this COVID stuff, people dying, young people, whatever. So, you know, these dream cars we're talking about, try to get out there and do it, you know? And sitting behind a computer, wasting time on, you know, Facebook and that kind of stuff. You know? I mean, I'm on there myself and I'm guilty of wasting time. But we got to try to minimize that because we are all dying. So let's go out and do some fun stuff. So the Bentley is the track car.

And what are you going to put in there for for an engine?

Well, it was twin turbocharged originally. So I have to they were using an Audi based four liter V8 with twin turbos. OK, so I've got a twin turbo. So I'm not quite sure on what engine I'm going to put in there. So I have one of the limitations is the cockpit of that, not the cockpit of that car, but the body design of the car. The rear engine cover comes off the cockpit and goes down at a pretty steep angle. And the engine bay is very short. And the back of the car is very low, just above the transaxle. So the engine is limited on the front to back dimension. And the Audi V8 is one of the shortest V8s front to back. So, I'm unsure on the engine. I have two possibilities. Well, I have multiple possibilities, but I would like to put a V8 in there so it sounds like the original, because it had the Audi V8. So, I have a dry sump LT1 that I'm going to mock up and see if that will fit. It may be too long front to rear. I also have a V6 engine. So, not many people know this, but when the LS came out in 1997, and then they put it in trucks in 98 or 99, they never updated the truck V6. The 4.3 liter truck V6 was an old iron block 350 with two cylinders lopped off, essentially. When the LT came out, they finally updated the V6, and they took the LT engine and chopped two cylinders off and boarded out to 4.3. So it's like a 350 cube LT1 with two cylinders less. It puts out 300 horsepower and 300 foot-pounds of torque in stock trim. So I have one of those, and if I cannot fit the V8, I may end up putting that V6 in twin-turboing it for space constraints. Or the other thought is just to put an Audi V8 in it. So those are kind of the three.

You have a lot of options for that. That'll be interesting to see.

The transaxle, I have a whole rear suspension assembly and transaxle from a C7. So the C7 had a rear-mounted transaxle.

With the whole torque tube and everything?

Yes, so what I can do is take the truck bellhousing, which is a removable bellhousing from the transmission. It's the same transmission in the Corvette, the 8-speed, that was in the trucks. But it's paddle-shifted, programmable, more. It feels like a PDK, actually, when you drive it. So I'm planning on taking the torque tube off and machining this bellhousing to mate to the transaxle so I can bolt the transaxle directly to the engine. And this Bentley body requires the output of the transaxle, the CV axle shafts, to be very far away from the engine. So the Corvette is that way. The Corvette transaxle of the C7, the axle output is quite a ways away from where the torque tube bolt is on. So when I put the bellhousing on there, the dimension will be correct to fit the body of the car. If I put a, like, a Hewland sequential in there, then I need to add spacers and make custom input shafts that are longer to get the trans back far enough to line up with the fender openings.

That's going to be awesome. Before we get to Showcar, what do you think in timeline for that whole thing? I mean, that sounds like a pretty heavy project to do.

Yeah, I mean, I've got a bunch of projects in process.

There's that too.

That'll probably take me three or four years to finish up. And then hopefully that one will be the next one.

Okay. And then what about Showcar?

The latest Pagani.

Okay. The Utopia?

Yeah. The manual trans one.

Okay. Would you do any like track version or just whatever the latest one is?

Well, it's kind of a... That latest one is a manual transmission and it's kind of a, you know, all of their cars are kind of track focused, you know, track capable. But I'm hoping to meet him next week in England, in Italy.

Okay.

So I'm visiting the Pagani factory next week after next.

Okay.

So Ducati is building me a special one of one V4R motorcycle and they're unveiling it at the Ducati factory to me next week after next. I'm on the 26th, so that week of the 23rd, I'm gonna visit Pagani and take a look at what they do. But I love the idea of the V8, or I mean the V12, all his cars are V12, and he says, I'm not gonna do hybrid, you know, because my customers don't want it. So his philosophy is, and mindset is what I share.

A man of taste. Yeah. Where can people find you?

Well, Jeff E. Schwartz on Instagram and schwartzperformance.com. Schwartzperf is our Instagram for Schwartz. And Schwartz Performance is our YouTube channel.

Awesome. Dan?

You can find us at Gunna Garage with two N's.

And as for everybody else, you've made it this far into the episode, so you've found us. Congratulations. Jeff, thank you so much for making this happen. I'm glad we were able to sit down and chat. Dan, thanks for existing, and we'll see you all next time.

Thank you.