128. The EPA Lawsuit, Platform Development, Tuning and Security w/ Cobb Tuning

Yeah, how's this start? You just get an email one day going, hey, we're watching you. Does somebody in a suit and tie show up at your door?

Essentially, the EPA arrived at our SoCal facility and basically presented us with a request for more information.

Are you able to speak to what it costs to develop a new platform?

It totally depends on the particular platform and how much IP do we already have access to, or is there a carryover, but it can vary from the neighborhood of like $100,000 to a quarter million dollars or more.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to the Minnoxide Podcast. I'm your host, Harris, AKA Minnoxide, man of many automotive aspirations, and I'm here with my co-host, Dan, Mr. Gunner Garage.

Yep.

We're out here in Texas.

Yeah.

We finally tried Terry's, Terry, Terry Blacks. Yeah, there we go. That's across that one off the, because we know everybody's gonna ask us, did you try it? So we got that off the list. And today we are here at Cobb Tuning in Austin, Texas, and we are here with Matt Bryant, director, I'm gonna nail this, I guarantee you I'm gonna nail it, of Quality Assurance.

And Customer Experience.

Yeah, there we go.

Yeah, you almost had it.

And then Lance Lucas, see, we literally talked about this like 30 seconds ago, director of?

Head Subaru Calibrator.

Close enough, yeah.

It's okay, every episode's better when you start with a swing and a miss. But anyways, yeah, we came out here, we've been talking with you guys since about PRI at the end of last year, and we managed to fly on out here to learn a little bit about what it is you guys do, some challenges you guys have gone through in the past few years. And I guess all the fun stuff you do, which by the way, Subaru is a new world for us. Like we're used to like Ford, Chevy and everything in between. But why don't you go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourselves and we'll go from there. So we'll start with you, Matt.

Cool. So obviously, as you introduced me earlier, my name is Matt Bryant. I work here at Cobb Tuning for going on about eight years. I started in 2015, customer service one. And I saw a job opening, bought a 14 WRX and I was wanting it to make it go faster. And then found that Cobb Tuning was right in my backyard. Ended up coming to one of the car meets, saw the job opening applied. And since then, it's all kind of been like a roller coaster of excitement. And worked here for about seven years. And then from there took a hiatus for about two years to go into biotech. Worked over there. And then the bug for making cars go faster wouldn't go away. It was always nagging at me. And so I ended up coming back. And customer service has always been a passion of mine. And so I came back as the Director of Customer Experience. In my previous time here, I had worked really hard to build up this department. And we have a worldwide reach. And it's something that I'm super passionate about. And so coming back and working in that realm, and then also the quality assurance side. So anything before a product gets to a customer, it's something that I get to help curate in conjunction with a lot of other people here. It's been a really incredible opportunity and continues to be every day is an adventure.

Did you... So you bought the car. Was there any part on the application where it asked you about vehicles and what you have and what you drive and stuff like that?

No, it's a huge part. And something that we've always taken a lot of pride in here at Cobb is that while we're not looking always for automotive enthusiasts to work here, we are looking for people that are passionate about what they're doing. And so, you know, we have people that have psychology backgrounds. We have people that have data science backgrounds. We have people like me. I had a film, television and digital media background. And so completely adjacent to what I'm doing here. But cars are kind of what unite us. Because if you're doing something every single day for 8, 10, sometimes usually a lot longer than that, hours a day, you want to make sure that you're enjoying it. So part of that application process is, what do you have? What do you want to do to it? And it's something that we continue to ask about today. One of the questions actually on our interview sheet is, do you prefer an RX7 or RX8? And that's on our list of questions we're screening people.

Which one puts you to the bottom of the pile?

You know, I'm not going to give away the secrets. That's a tricky one.

It is a little bit. Each one is its own cult.

Yeah, no, 100 percent.

And then why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself as well, Lance.

Yeah, awesome. Thank you. My name is Lance Lucas. I've been with Cobb now for right about, gosh, 15 and a half years, I guess. So I first, I graduated undergrad in 2006 and put a couple of paychecks in my pocket and was like, well, what am I supposed to do now? We'll go buy a car, duh. So all my friends at the time, being from Oregon, were into Subarus. And of course, the WRX was kind of the hot thing at the time. And I started doing my research and ended up buying one. And 90 days later, I'm a diehard enthusiast and I'm on the Internet searching for how to tune it, how to modify it, all those things. And that passion kind of slowly a couple of years later led into a job opportunity here.

Which 15 years ago, that's roughly 2010. So there was actually a bit more than forums at that point probably.

Yeah, I mean, Nasioq was still king of Subaru communications for the community.

Okay, is that like a forum or something?

Yeah, N-A-S-I-O-C, North American Subaru Impreza Owners Club. Yep. And that was, and you know, any main or any big car community has like the forum, right? Like Vortex or whatever, that was our Vortex.

So you gave us a pretty awesome tour beforehand. And I don't think I was expecting, I knew it was going to be big, but you guys do a lot of different things over here. Because like I've worked in warehouses before and everything's just nicely organized. And why don't you go ahead and explain to everybody what it is that you guys do? Because you have a wide array of products and offerings. And some of our audience might not be huge on the Subaru. You guys do more on the Subaru, I suppose. But I want you to go ahead and explain everything that it is that you guys offer. So we have a clear picture of what it is you do.

So we offer Cobb Tuning. We got our start with tuning the ECUs. So tuning in and of itself, Trey Cobb was our founder in Rockwall, Texas, and started with taking the ECUs themselves, reverse engineering them to be able to tune for different modifications. And then from there, it slowly expanded into complementary hard parts. And that's honestly what brings us here today. And so we have these two cars behind us here. We have an FK8 Civic Type R, and then we also have our VB WRX. And these are kind of like our showpieces of what we do here. And it's a one-stop shop. It's an ecosystem that you can come to Cobb, and you have everything under the sun that you're going to need to be able to support your car. And so that's everything from your tuning solution to all of the complementary hard parts. And everything that we design and build is here at our headquarters in Austin, Texas. And during the tour, I was showing you guys, from the moment that somebody calls or emails us that has a question, to the warehouse where we're packaging everything, going to the quality control, and then moving to the other side of the building, we also have the engineers, the brains behind all of the conception of it and the execution of creating those parts, whether it's in our manufacturing bay or in a CAD system. And it's a really powerful environment to be in, because we control the entire system, and we're able to make sure that the customer, at the end of the day, has the absolute best experience possible. So it's something that we take a lot of pride in.

What would be your, would Subarus be your number one market? What's your number one and number two that you sell most of?

Yeah, Subarus, I would say, are the bulk of everything that we do, and Lance can speak to that.

Yeah, we started with Subarus, and that has kind of been our core, not our core focus, but a primary focus the entire time. And over time, we've then tried to expand outwards. I would say Ford is probably our second biggest platform in total. And then maybe neck and neck with Volkswagen Audi. I think those three are probably the big volume platforms. And then Porsche represents a really good opportunity for us, but we obviously don't sell the brute numbers like we do it for a GTR or a Golf R or something.

Yeah, I've been noticing a lot of the Porsche stuff on your, I guess, on your website and on your wall over here, the Porsche Beaver, which made me giggle. But how has the market expansion happened over like, so you've been here for 15 years, roughly. How has the business changed? I'm sure it's changed drastically with the social media boom and restrictions and all that fun stuff. How has it changed over the last 15 years?

Oh, gosh, that's a good question. I would say the big thing that is a challenge and an opportunity is trying to keep up with the times in terms of what performance people are after. So when I came into the company, we had support for cars like the 350Z and the RX8. And over time though, those aren't a permanent business model, just supporting that type of car, the RX8 or Z or whatever it might be. And so it's kind of finding along the way those new opportunities when Honda all of a sudden releases turbos on everything, being able to react to that. And now all of a sudden there's a whole new set of customers that are interested in them from a performance aspect, things like that. So.

And I would say a really good tag onto that is that we found that each customer base is also entirely unique. So we start with a Subaru customer and they have specific desires, needs or expectations for a product. And then we move over to Ford, you know, and we have our Focus RS, Focus ST, the Fiesta ST, which was one of the greatest cars they've made in my personal opinion. And then you have, you move into the truck market, you know, so we also support F150, the Raptor, and then we have hard parts for the Bronco. And these customers also expect a totally different experience. And the same thing, you know, to the point about Porsche, those customers are entirely different. And we have to make sure that what we're providing them is what they're expecting and, you know, to the level that they want to have for their cars. And, you know, everything at the end of the day, whether you spend $15,000 on a car or $250,000 on a car, everyone wants a comprehensive product. They want it to work great. Sometimes, though, we do have to cater those products or those offerings to that particular customer base.

Do you offer tuning services for all of those platforms as well, other than just the devices? And do you have to have a head calibrator for each kind of one of those?

Yeah, no, so in Lance, I'll let you take that from the calibration side.

So we offer tuning. Everything we do kind of starts from a tuning solution. And then we offer a full package or set of maps that we call like a map suite or stage packages to complement the various parts and packages that we produce. And then beyond that, we facilitate custom tuning. So people can go to authorized pro tuners in our network and then have their car calibrated or adjusted for things outside of what we might support, potentially for their local fuel quality, elevation, whatever it might be. We don't directly provide custom tuning to customers. We leave that to the next step in the chain, which is the businesses below us.

Okay. So yeah, we talked about this a little bit before. So you can offer like a can tune to start off with and then somebody can take it from there.

Yep. Like an atom like you were asking about earlier.

Okay.

In the OTS maps too, they have been developed for the parts that we have. So we always start with a stock car. We optimize it. We make it, I would say effectively what it should have been from the factor or what our expectation would be to make it the best that it can for 91 and 93. Then in the case of like Outback, there was a desire for an 87 octane. A lot of times, like if you go out to West Texas, you can't find high octane fuel. We need to make sure that we're catering our products to that clientele, like what we were talking about before. Then as you branch outside of that, the OTS maps, we've had guys on stage two WRXs and STIs with 200,000 miles on them. Perfectly fine, perfectly happy, but as cars age, the mechanical condition of the car changes, those tolerances changes. Contrary to belief, the tune does not go bad and things don't change there. That's a permanent thing, it's fixed. But sometimes you do have to update for parts or the condition of the car as things change over time.

So I'm glad you brought up the whole 87, 91 thing. Since you guys sell to all 50 states, I believe you still do all 50, right?

Yeah.

With different rules, of course. But what about fuel considerations? Because one of the things I've noticed on your website before is certain states, I think it's like Arizona, California, Nevada. How do you overcome bad fuel or worse quality fuel in different states? Was that always a consideration?

Yes, in a sense, because our goal is to provide performance. So the OEM has to calibrate to the lowest common denominator. Our hope is to maybe be able to provide something that's a few notches up in denominators to people if they know they have it accessible. So if you live in a state with 93, we want to make sure to get you the performance that your car can facilitate on 93. Whereas if you live somewhere like Arizona, California, Nevada, it's really hot. The fuel quality itself isn't that great, but it's much more problematic. So we have different tunes in a word or two less aggressive to help account for that lower resistance to knock that we encounter in those different conditions.

So how resilient? Again, I'm going to keep going back to Subaru as an example. Like how? Because like there's some cars you can you can find poor tuners and they'll do a horrible job. And for some reason, they just won't blow up.

Sure.

Are Subaru's or even some of the other platforms you guys work on, are they a little more sensitive to it? It has to be taken to a tuner that knows what they're doing or is there a little bit of flexibility?

So Subaru is probably the worst example of the if you make poor choices and you're using poor calibrations and poor parts, you'll have a bad outcome. That is absolutely true, especially the old EJ engine that they don't use anymore. It was very susceptible to damage if the engine saw a lot of knock, if it was exposed to too much torque.

Is that the Hawkeye Subaru or I think it's not?

Those did come with an EJ. Really anything, any WRX sold until 2014 had an EJ, and every STI sold in America had an EJ.

Gotcha, understood.

And those engines, they were very peculiar. And so they would punish you for making poor choices. And then other platforms, like a Porsche, by and large, the engine is very, very strong. And it can tolerate a lot more outside the lines than, say, the Subaru engine can. So it kind of differs. In a sense, that's what makes our opportunity for Subaru so big is that you do have to do it right. And so there's, you can't just throw a quick bunch of boost at it, or some simple part and have things turn out the way you're hoping to. It kind of has to be an ecosystem like you was talking about if you want the result that you're looking for.

So how do you pick a platform to add to the market, right? So I guess, what is the most recent addition to your offerings platform wise in the last few years?

We're currently working on, right now, which we've publicly talked about, we don't have the offering at this moment, but we're working on Toyota right now.

I got a TRD you can use for testing.

Yeah, I know. Sorry, when you guys pulled up, I was like, that's rad.

It's 300 miles on it, by the way. It's brand new.

No, no, that was a gas, by the way. It had 11,000 miles on it.

Oh, it does?

They're still brand new.

They didn't reset the trip meter. And so I would say the newest beyond that would probably be Honda, honestly. And so we started with 2017 Civic Si. We have the Type R, like this one right here. This is 2020. And then we also have FL5, which is the newest generation, the Integra Type S, which is over there. And that's been a really exciting market to be able to get into because it's not something that we have been in for a long time. Because like Lance was talking about before, small displacement turbocharged engines, so forced induction is where our bread and butter is. And it's been really fantastic to the point that the control strategies that are used, so the actual ECUs that are used, are translated between these different vehicles. And that gives us an upper hand when we go into them, we already understand how these computers work, we know the tables that we need to be looking for and how to expose them, and to extract the most performance reliably out of all of it. And so to your point, I guess it's a long-winded way of saying, when we're looking at adding support for new cars, we need to look and make sure that it's a market that wants to be modified. They want to be tinkering with it. I would say perhaps a misstep is probably like the base F-150, like the 2735 stuff. We have a tuning suite that's available for them, but that's a general work truck that people are buying. They're not out there looking for the maximum amount of power or even tow maps, things like that, that we offer. However, the other part of that is the Raptor community. They are all in on whatever modification. You guys saw our Raptor outside, and that's a vivacious community that wants everything that we can throw at it. And so, I think over the years, we've found where is our sweet spot, what works really well for us, and what is that customer base that we can appeal to.

Well, it has to be great for you guys right now because everybody's going to that platform, right? I mean, even Ford is, I mean, they're going to smaller and smaller displacement with turbo chargers and before it was V6 or V8, maybe an inline four and then those were your three options.

But it's definitely opened up the opportunities for us. But it's still the person that buys the car. Are they interested in modifying it? And what is it about it that they're looking for? Like, for instance, the Outback, the 87 Octane map still makes power over stock, which is really fantastic. We found optimizations there. And so, finding what it is that they need is always the name of the game.

I have found it seems like there's an indirect but an existing relationship between how the OEM markets and sells the car. If they market it and sell it as a performance vehicle, either through branding, marketing, whatever it might be, it gets that natural traction, whereas you could put this very same drivetrain, very same capability into the more benign version, and that the community just doesn't adopt it. They don't pick it up like that. There's a few hidden gems from the past, right? Where it's like that random car that came with a turbo, right? And it was like the community figured out it was a great platform. But by and large, it seems like the OEM kind of drives that conversation for us, at least at the start. The WRX is very much a performance car. It's sold that way. The nickname is World Rally Experimental, right? Type R, that's a very clear branding, but it gets a little wishy-washy when it's like EX.

Okay.

Well, I think sometimes markets can pick up even after they've been out for a while, right? Because they were appealing to a certain customer, now they've become used, they've got miles on. Now you've got people buying them for a cheaper price point and they're the people that are like, okay, now we're gonna go all out with this. So sometimes they can take off years later even.

And that was BMW for us, I would say by and large. I mean, those cars, you know, started out as executive cars, you know, bankers, et cetera, you know, for stereotyping a little bit. But...

Hang on.

I've seen the movies.

Yeah. But the, you know, the 335, the 535, those became wildly popular on the second-hand market. And they made so much power. And they were an absolute riot to drive, as long as you maintain them, which ended up being sort of the crux of those. People weren't maintaining them, and they would continue to push them. But that's another car. That engine was incredibly stout, could take an absolute punishment.

Which generation are you talking about, like M54?

M54 and M55.

They were sort of like the hidden gem, because with a few parts and tuning, they were equal or better to an M3. And that was really a big upsetting thing in that community, right? Because M3 owners are very particular about their car. And all of a sudden, there's this kind of ratty-looking base model, potentially going faster in a straight line.

Well, it's crazy. Like, one of my friends was selling his 1 Series, which was making like 600 wheel at one point.

At 135. It's awesome.

Dude, those things are awesome. And they're so cheap right now. Like, I could totally see myself in just a fun, cheap build. And it's like, I'm getting way ahead of myself here. But so where are you guys in the pecking order? Like, let's say an OEM is dropping, hey, we're dropping, let's say, I'm going to use the CA Corvette as an example, or let's say the 2020 Supra. We're dropping this platform. At what point do you guys decide to jump on the platform? Is there somebody else that has to do the groundwork for you? Or are you guys at the front of the line ready to kind of help the overall car community, I suppose? If you can't just slide it in, get it to fit right, or it bends a little bit funny, it's time to get some proper mandrel bends. Whether you are a weekend warrior or a shop owner, Haze Performance has what you need to get your charge piping or exhaust dialed. From flex couplers to T-Bolt clamps, if you want to lay down some pipe, go to hazeperf.com and use Minnoxide 5 to get 5% off any Haze Performance products. That's hazeperf.com. Let's get back to the show.

Gosh, that's a good question. I think, especially on a modern car, there's at least a few things that have to align before you can have an opportunity. One, something we talked about a little bit earlier, but security. Is there a known way to be able to read the ECU, to reflash the ECU, to change the tune on the ECU, even if we can read and write it, can we put our custom stuff on it? Those sorts of questions. There might be times when it's the perfect car, but if we don't have the first clue about how we might solve that problem, it might not be the biggest opportunity we have in front of us. Then another one is back to the earlier topic is, where do we see the car being adopted in the performance market? Are the people talking about it online like, man, that car is awesome, this is something fast, this is something I want to modify, or are they looking at it like, oh, I could buy that for my family? Making some of those determinations early on is helpful to figure out what direction we need to go.

Is there somebody's job who is that to scout that stuff here?

It's all of us. Yeah. It's one of those really cool things about being here. One of my previous jobs, I still remember it, she taught me ownership thinking for all of the employees that are in the business. And that's something that is really encapsulated here in that if there is something that you want to do or you think is a really good opportunity or you're like, why don't we make this part or support this car or whatever it is, you can call a meeting, you can send an email, you can send a Slack, whatever it is. And you can say, I think we should do this. And then you can start working with people to determine a lightweight business plan or product brief to say, this would work really well. Here's an opportunity for us to jump into it. Here would be our ROI, et cetera. And I would say, in general, that's how it's gone for the most part. And it's been really cool.

How the heck would you even go about putting together a proposal like that, especially on the ROI front, right? Because I call it Mickey Mouse math sometimes. But you mentioned you guys are about to be breaking into the Toyota market a little more. Could you specify a little bit more what cars at all? Are you talking like Camrys, Corollas or...?

So it's going to be Tacoma, 4Runner. And then from there, we would be looking into the GX Land Cruiser on the Lexus side. And so there are opportunities there. And to the point about how you go about doing it, sometimes it is a bit of guesswork. You have to look at what do the sales look like? Who are those particular owners historically? What is their behavior been? What is the demographic for them when it comes to expenditures? Are they doing a significant number of modifications? What's the average price point for that? You know, you look at, we went to Overland Expo this last year, Lance and I did along with some of our coworkers. And, you know, it's not a realm that we have previously kind of, like, gone into and been exposed to, and it's wild. You know, when you sort of get the groundwork level of, like, how far people are willing to go with these builds. And also, it gives you a chance to expose, like, where are those opportunities for us to come in and provide something that they don't have yet? Because tuning isn't something that's generally, you know, widely done over there within that market. And it's something that we saw as a really ripe opportunity for us to get into. Because, again, they are turbocharged, and that's sort of our opening the door of, this could be a viable thing.

Okay. You find yourself then more, having to learn more about the four by four and like off road market then? Are you guys trying to develop suspension parts and things like that as well?

So we have, as you guys saw earlier, our Raptor out back. And so we've done, the truck market already, we have exposure to, especially with like Texas Raptor runs and Baja. We have a lot of experience there. We also have one of our coworkers, she's real deep into the truck market itself. And that's her background. And that's what her specialty is. Lance came from the Subaru world, that's his bread and butter. And for her trucks have been something that she lives and breeds and using her expertise and going into that market and polling people and finding out from the shops, like what is it that you guys need? What do you want? How do you want this to be executed? That's the information that we take to the table to be able to determine what are we going to do.

So real quick though, so you just come back to this demographic thing a little bit. Is that a matter of, let's say, collaborating with a company of, let's say, Hagerty for demographics or is that you guys working with like SEMA or what does that look like to know who your demographics are?

It definitely involves working with SEMA. So they have a data program available and we do frequently reference that where you can look at vehicle registrations, things like that. They host measurement sessions. You guys probably talked about that with the folks from Detroit. So when a new car comes out, that seems like something going to be popular for companies like us or in the SEMA organization, they offer those measurement sessions to come out and peek under the curtain a little bit.

Over at SEMA garage, you mean?

Yeah. So they bring in, gosh, I remember I was not formally in attendance, but there was one going on for the 400Z in California when that car had released. So that gives companies like us, it sees the chance to poke around a little bit, see what do we see that looks familiar, what do we see that looks foreign, and start figuring out those sorts of things.

I think having this model that you guys have for having a passion for what you're doing here is a huge part of it too. You say you had that individual that knows a lot about 4x4 stuff. You've got these people going home at night after they're done, and they're scrolling Facebook Marketplace, they're in forums. I mean, if you're like me, we get paid to do what we love.

Yeah.

When you're off the clock, I'm at home on Facebook looking in forums, reading about stuff, thinking about what I'm going to do for my next mod. You can see a hole in the space sometimes. You can be either there's one individual that's only making one part, and they're booked out for months, and there's just not enough for the demand that there is, or you've got people that are wanting to do this and nothing exists for it. So it's a good way of keeping your eyes on how that's going to on the enthusiast side.

No, absolutely. Yeah. It's always just looking for that opportunity. What does that need? That's what we're here to film.

Yeah.

If you can get started on the hurricane platform, that'd be great. We'd love to see something like that. These are already shows. I mean, people are itching to modify them already.

I own a Jeep, so I'm right there with you. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I can talk about that all day long. I'm just excited for that platform. Okay. So let's talk about a little bit, I guess, what's the most difficult part of your guys' job? And we talked a little bit, we had a little kind of a pre-meeting yesterday, so I got a little bit of an understanding on this. But I guess who kind of wants to take that? Because there's a lot of things from behind the curtain. And as an average enthusiast, we might not see. What are the difficulties of being a business of this size? Because you guys also have different rules to play by than a small shop, Joe Schmo over here. Probably not a good way of referencing it, but either way. So I guess whoever wants to take that.

That's it for our point. Did you have anything on the top of your head that you wanted to go into?

I think these days, it's just that there's, it's the bigger picture, right? You know, when I first started modifying cars, as a teenager, it was very simple, right? You do whatever you can to put more air through the engine or lighten the car. Like the, you're following very basic guidelines, right? But it's, and now it's just not that simple anymore. You know, you have to put things through emissions compliance or safety compliance or things like that to, to ensure that we're making, meeting our legal obligations, to that we're keeping people safe, you know, all those good things. And so it's more of just that you don't, you can't approach a car or platform with the singular ad power goal. You kind of have to think a bigger picture from the very start. And so that, and that bigger picture helps guide your decisions early on, which is helpful.

And I think to that point, the complicated nature of what we do these days, whether it's from a regulatory standpoint, from a vehicle dynamics perspective, with how complicated they've become, intricacies of them is especially like for me, the education standpoint of telling people like, this is what we have learned about this platform. This is how we think that you should approach it. In our experience, this is going to be the data to be able to back that decision, to be able to broadcast that education, to be able to show people that you need to pump the brakes on that modification that you're trying to do over there. It's going to be an absolute nightmare. You're going to blow up the engine. You should go do this. And that's often how we approach every single platform that we do. I think Subaru is a really prime example. From the factory, oftentimes their fuel system is quite limited, especially as it was on the STIs previously. You could pretty much max them out on stage one, just about, especially if it got cold outside like it is today. And so saying, don't go do those airflow modifications. We would much rather you focus on doing fuel system upgrades, so that way you have a solid foundation. And a lot of what we do, too, I was actually speaking with a customer yesterday who rolled up to the front of our shop, is that we always approach everything kind of like a pyramid. And we want to make sure that you do it once and you do it right, and you're not coming back to have to do it all over again. Because a lot of these modifications are expensive and complicated, and they're an investment in your vehicle. We want to make sure that nine times out of ten, these are daily drivers for people, we want them to be rock solid when they're going to pick their kids up from school, whether they're driving to work or it's the weekend. And they've booked a session out at Circuit of the Americas, whatever it is, we want them to have a great experience in the car to work. Fantastic. But being able to educate people on that in the appropriate fashion, again, multifaceted with the complication of the cars, the regulatory environment, all of that is a feat. And it's something that I would say we struggle with every day, but we're always making sure that we can broadcast it the best that we can.

Yeah, so I'm assuming you guys also offer multiple maps, right? So you got like, hey, this is I'm dropping my kids up at school map, and then here's my track day map, things like that.

It depends on the particular car. For Porsche, for instance, we do have your standard 91, 93 octane maps, and then we also have 100 octane maps. We just released a video that kind of gave a behind-the-scenes look at that. We booked a weekend. We've done this many times. But this one particular weekend, we sent our videographer with our engineers to show what are we actually doing when we go to the track, so that people can get an inside look at the fact that we're at the track, we're putting the car out there, the same one that you daily drive every day, to beat the tar out of the car on the track, one of the premier world tracks, to show that this is going to work fantastic here. It's going to work great when you go to the PCH, or when you are going to tail the dragon, or whatever it might be.

Do you have a general idea of what all your customers are doing? For example, all right, 20% of people are doing road courses, 10% are doing autocross, or is that just so far out there you wouldn't even have a clue?

Super subjective for us, I would say. Yeah, all anecdotal.

We're also, for the longest time, we're also a company that was very, I don't say against, but we never really considered data collection as something that we should be doing, right? And I'm a very private person, like I didn't want, and so even just, we didn't even start collecting basic statistics, like what car the access port is connected to and things like that until very recently. So that's something we could probably be a little better at, is making sure to be fully aware of privacy, but being a little better understanding of how the people are using our car, for sure.

That's definitely a tricky thing. It's like, yeah, collecting data is a slippery slope.

Yeah.

I mean, you guys have definitely seen how controversial it is lately, especially with GPS systems and the way that cars are communicating out and broadcasting your driving data to insurance companies and stuff like that.

There's a sticker right on the dash of the Tacoma we're in right now that says, by the way, this is collecting data constantly through Wi-Fi networks and sending things back to Toyota and all that stuff. Only the owner or driver should remove this sticker or something like that.

Okay, I just want to make sure it wasn't tracking my speed.

It did not seem like it came from Alamo. I think it came from Toyota.

The only reason is I used to have a Gladiator for a year or two.

That's what you have, right?

Is that what you have? Okay. Yeah.

So I don't know about you. I've maxed out the speedometer on that. I've done 111 in that thing, which is far sketchier than doing 180 in a Viper. I'll tell you that right now. So I want to compare it. So we'll see, I'll make sure it's not tracking us. Okay. Well, I think we've kind of, I think we're probably, what? I'll go for it.

I have one. So we've talked a lot about tuning, which we've had several tuners on. Can you tell us what it's like on the beginning end of it? Because you guys not only do tuning or have to figure that out, but you create, make the device that a tuner would be using to open these cars up, right? So what does that look like developing that product and then getting access to the ECUs of the OEMs?

That's your ballgame.

Oh, gosh. So it depends, right? There's no one answer, but it kind of, we have, like I was saying earlier about, when you look at a new opportunity, right? Do we have information that will lead us into that? We do have two sister companies, Ecutech and V-Flash. Ecutech operates in a similar space where they're primarily offering a reflash-based solutions for different vehicles. And then V-Flash, their business model primarily is as a, it's hard to describe, but as a platform, if you will. So they're secret sources. They are able to bypass security, work through encryption, et cetera, on the vast majority of platforms that are supported. And so even some of our competitors use V-Flash's technology to gain access to the cars they support.

It's a very small world once you start connecting all the pieces.

And so the step one is kind of reach out in our network. Hey, V-Flash, what do you guys know and understand about these cars? Have you ever required IP related to them? Hey, AccuTek, same questions, right? And then just slowly progress from there. There's no real one answer to what key is used to unlock any door. It's all different, yeah.

But you have a team that's working on development of your devices and what you would go with new, or when do you decide you're going to release a new revision of what you have? And so you have engineers and things that are working on that kind of stuff?

Yeah, so we have software teams, we have like device teams that are working on that. We have electrical engineers and the hard parts engineers as well that I pointed out to you all earlier. And I would say everyone works in a collaborative fashion because no one, I would say there's no one person that does like the access port, because the access port encompasses not only hardware, but also electronics and software. And so everybody has to work together in that. And I will say it is, I think about it from like the Apple perspective of the ecosystem that we have. We do provide the tuning software, we provide the device, we provide the calibrations that the pro tuners are able to use and the consumers. So that way they are all in one ecosystem and we provide a much better experience that way versus something, there's been requests in the past for phone based flashing. And it's something that for us personally, we like having the handheld device because it is a controlled device. We know exactly what hardware is in it, we know exactly how it's going to perform, we know what all the limitations are in it. We've constructed it to be an automotive grade piece of equipment so that way when it sits in your dash and it's 170 degrees in that little crevice right where the windshield meets the dash, it's going to keep functioning. And the same thing happens, like it was one degrees when you guys left, you know, where you all were coming from. And so I think it's important to make sure that we, you know, curate that experience and controlling the hardware from the beginning to the end is part of that.

I'm so glad you bring that up because we got to experience something fun in Detroit. When it comes to how a car is designed, it was so cold in Detroit, it was like 20 degrees, oh my god. And every time we would breathe, the haptics in my GTI would turn the light on and off. And we were like, what's going on? Is your car possessed? And every time, and then the light would turn.

That's wild.

Yeah. So these are the things you get to engineer for you. You have to be aware for how heat and cold goes through that. So do you guys have a pretty intense testing process for, I guess, the various things you make for cars then?

Our CAN Gateway, I think, is probably one of the most recent products that we put out, and the stresses that we put it through, because it is a device that allows you to bring in additional devices onto the CAN network. So if you wanted to monitor fuel pressure, stuff like that, you don't have to hijack any other sensors or modulate anything. This is something that you can natively plug right in. And with that device, because it's living in the engine bay, we put it through what manufacturers do as they're going through. So environmental test, drop test, shock test, all of that. And it's incredibly expensive and very time consuming. But at the end of the day, it's the reason that people come to us. And it's the reason that they trust us with their cars. Because you don't want something catastrophic happening to this thing that is plumbed into your fuel system. Or the thing that you just spent $46,000 hunting around for six months to try and find.

Are you able to, just real quick, are you able to speak to what it costs to develop a new platform at all? Like let's say, again, the Toyota is an example.

It totally depends on the particular platform. And like to Lance's point, how much IP do we already have access to? Do we have a leg up in this particular realm or is there a carryover? But it can vary from let's say in the neighborhood of like 100,000 to a quarter million dollars or more. It just purely depends. And that's not even factoring in like capital expenditures with car acquisition. Like we were talking about Porsches earlier. We have a GT3 and that car was multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars. And that is a tool for us. That's what all of these cars are, tools. We're passionate about them, but we have to use them to do our jobs. And they are as important to us as a screwdriver.

All right, Dan, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you think your wife loves you?

Oh, it's got to be like an 8, solid 8.

So I think it would be great if she used your credit card to go to ToonByShawn, shawn.com to get you a Haltech ECU for 5% off using Cobb and Oxide. Is that math out?

Absolutely.

I don't think we tell her about this ad until it runs, though.

And like you mentioned ROI, so like the Porsche is a tricky one, because if we keep that GT3, that's a quarter million dollars against that ROI, right? That's a big number of access ports to sell to get back there. So it's a pretty delicate balance of how much can we spend to get into it, how long can we keep a very expensive car, and then when can we start being net positive on that project. And some of those are tough, like GT Turbo is another one we've struggled. People want us to support it because it crosses with like the Euros. And we look around, we're like, we can't afford a Euros. It's not in the cards this month. So there's some practical challenges like that.

Yeah, but can you put a price on the how much fun it is to have it around here and drive it?

Well, if you figure that out.

I see a foe doesn't love that.

Yeah, if I could get an ROI on that for you, I'll figure that out and let you know.

Yeah, please do.

I find it very refreshing that you're not going to that, sell the phone based stuff because I'll tell you what, I have one car with, are you guys familiar with an N-Gage? I have an N-Gage in a Mustang of mine and I absolutely love it. It's small, it's compact, it's got touchscreen like we were talking about. It goes in there, I can get readouts of information that I want. I can upload my tunes, I can collect data with it. It was one of the greatest things. I loved it. And now, you can't even, they don't exist. You can't do that way anymore. Everybody wants you to go to an RTD device and use your phone. I'm still kind of an old school guy, like I still listen to terrestrial radio every once in a while. Like I don't always hook my phone up to my truck. It's just, I kind of miss that whole thing of having just a nice piece of hardware to go with your tuning.

Yeah.

So, you've hit on one of our biggest conundrums, which is how do people want to continue using external devices in their car moving forward? Some guys, like you said, they want to hop in, plug in their iPhone, and it's just, it's there.

Not even plug it in. It's wireless.

Yeah, right.

That has to be it.

Just wireless car play in their pocket. It's doing something in their car the entire time they're driving. Yeah. So, for that guy, having tuning stuff on his phone probably doesn't work out very well, because it's already doing nav, calls, everything else, right? True. On the flip, there's guys who want to hop in and that's the device. They're like, I don't want this other device in my car. I want that phone. I spent a whole bunch of money with Apple. It works great. So, that's been a challenge for us is to figure out how to serve both of those guys at the same time. That's a big question for our next generation of hardware, is how will we best bridge that divide or find that compromise.

Because it is tough and I think it kind of harks back to the previous thing when we were talking about the Outback. That's a transition car, I would say, for people coming from a WRX. They have families, their people count is growing, and so then they switch over to an Outback to be able to carry all their stuff around or their hobbies have changed. And the ages and the demographics for each car, I think, sort of dictate what that desire is a lot of times. And it's a struggle, you know, because the demographic that we support is from, they just got their permit sometimes, or their license, all the way up to people that are retired and they're living in Florida.

It is funny whenever I see somebody, because again, I come from the VW world. It's like when I see a 65 year old get out of stage two GTI. Yeah. It's like, it's such a wide range. Yeah. It's so funny you bring up the whole wireless thing, by the way, because my old co-host, I can't remember which of his cars it was, but he was like, I need to get a second phone that can actually connect. I think it's what is G80M3. Yeah. Something because it's something goofy or whatever. I can't remember what it was.

So our sister company, Ecutech, they have their product for the user experiences based on phone. And there's a good chance he was actually using Ecutech on that car on the BMW. And they have a fantastic phone implementation. We have a fantastic handheld implementation. And the million dollar question is, how do you make either option available now for the guy?

Back to the development question. So we had Kyle Nelson on a few months ago, who was one of the founders of MA Performance. And he discussed of how do you gauge that somebody's going to give you an ROI? And what are some of the concerns of developing a platform? So one of the things that he mentioned was like, well, we can't afford to go develop this platform and go test every single product at SEMA Garage, because it's like, you know, whatever, $10,000 a product or whatever.

It's incredibly expensive.

So do you guys kind of have to overcome some of those hurdles? Like, let's say, you know, the 2026 model drops, you're going to have to go, do you have to do a bunch of testing on all the different, like intakes and exhausts and all that? So what's that kind of look like?

Especially as of now, I suppose.

Yeah, especially now.

Yeah, so it kind of depends. The answer is always it depends, right? So like when a new generation of WRX comes out, a VB WRX, Subaru hasn't sold one like this before, it didn't have this engine before, it's a pretty new thing for them. When we do come up with products for those, a lot of times we are going to have to demonstrate, like yes, your calibration does not worsen emissions. Yes, your intercooler does not worsen emissions. But then over time, that information can kind of be rolled forward. So then we can support the generation of car now without having to test for each model year. Until Subaru then drops a new one on us, and that will sort of flip that situation over again. And there's also times when there are engine families or model families, and you can get groups of coverage. So we have some either executive order or like SEMA certs that apply for both this VBWX and that outback around the corner, because they both share the FA24 engine. So if we demonstrate compliance on one, they'll say, great, that means that we have a reasonable basis to believe that you've done good things on the others as well.

So you're very expensive though, too. So it is something that goes into the consideration of our product development. Just like you're mentioning, we can't do, there are so many dreams that we have of all of these different builds that we want to do, or the modifications that we want to do. But we going back to the ROI part of it, like we are a business, we still have to get paid. We want our paychecks to cash out, to be able to go do our own hobbies and things like that. And so we have to make sure that whatever we are doing and whatever we are pursuing is fulfilling that need. But we're also doing it in a responsible manner that, we've been here for 25 years, we plan to be here for 25 more, and then 25 more beyond that and et cetera. But we have to be able to do it responsibly.

You get to a certain size where that just has to be part of what you do, right? It's not, you're not just a couple of guys welding together down pipes in a garage somewhere and shipping out 100 a month or anything. You're now, you're at that level where-

It's much larger than that, yeah.

You've got eyes on you, you can't play those games.

Yeah, and it makes it difficult at times, it feels like an unlevel playing field.

Right.

Like in all honesty, and it becomes really frustrating, but it's also, we have to take a step back and realize like, we are who we are, we've come this far and we've grown this much, and we will continue to do all of that. We just have, you know, this is the new landscape and we have to roll with the punches and adjust and we've come up with some incredibly innovative products. Again, the CAN gateway is one of those things that stemmed from this, that has allowed us to do things in a compliant fashion, that plays nicely with everything that everybody wants.

How did this, where did this start? Did it start with tuning? Did it start with crack in ECU? What was your first hard product? You guys know?

It was actually with ECU tuning. Yeah. Well, I guess some parts. So when the, you guys aren't Subaru guys, so you're going to laugh at this, but when the 2.5 RS came out in like 98, 99, that was the turning point of Subaru starting to tease performance into our market. If you guys remember the mid-90s and present, it was a very, very pedestrian car, right? Yeah. And then late 90s Subaru kind of put like a hood scoop on it, some aggressive wheels like made it a little bit more headed that way. And the community kind of started getting into the car. And that's when Trey, the founder of the company, started manufacturing some mods for the car. I think he had like some cams you could do in them, some basic stuff like that. And then of course, the very next thing you need is tuning. So that's where he went and started working on tuning solutions. And right about then, the 2002 WRX came out. All of a sudden, there's this all-wheel drive turbo car available. And he went in.

It's all history after that. Yeah.

He went all in.

I will say, some of my favorite videos to watch in line is Subaru's pulling out like big trucks out of the ditch. I don't know why, but I get hooked on it. I just keep watching it. Yeah. So, did you, were you tuning cars or playing around with that before you came to work here? Did you learn your tuning abilities through working here?

A little calm A, a little calm B. So, I grew up in kind of a motorsports adjacent, I guess, family. So, I raced go-karts as a kid, things like that. And then I was always into like nitro, small displacement RC car engines, things like that. And so, I had a pretty good understanding of all the fundamentals. I tuned carburetors, I'd adjusted points, I'd done stuff like that. And then when I bought the Subaru, that then gave me a modern EFI platform to start learning that side of the gig. And with the Subaru, the great thing is it was tunable. There's so many cars out there you just simply can't tune or the tools are very rudimentary, but at the time, there were tools available where a guy like me that was just kind of excited about it could download and start. And so, it kind of just progressed from there. And taking all the knowledge I'd gained from carburetors and manual ignitions and all that and kind of just slowly building it forward.

I'll say, points and carburetors, you're dating yourself now. I fall into that category as well. I remember when I first started buying Fox bodies, some people were taking the EFI off of the like 87, 88s and going back to carburetor because they just didn't understand. They couldn't play with it. They couldn't tune it. They didn't know what they were doing. And now if you look back, that's kind of funny to think you go backwards like that.

Yeah, exactly. So growing up, I raced for what are called quarter midgets and they use a little single cylinder engine and it's just got a set of points. And I remember with the degree wheel with dad teaching me how to time the engine and all those things. And so it was, and then being my generation, I kind of grew up with a computer in my hand or close enough. So it was kind of just merging two things that had slowly been building.

That's awesome. Yeah, I'm trying to get my children very much into it. My daughter just took small engines and she successfully took hers completely apart, put it back together and got it started. And her shop teacher was very shocked and she's like, this has not happened a lot. And he's like, no, this happens never.

Yeah, I'm not going to say I didn't forget to torque a set of connecting rod bolts at one point, that may have happened. Yeah.

I will say it is pretty cool to see the younger generation wanting to get more and more involved with this sort of thing. I mean, that is a rare thing though. Like you guys also have two kids.

Yeah.

Are they getting involved in the automotive world yet or not quite?

They love coming here more than they like cars currently, just because of our snack room and all of the other stuff that we have here. But my son, not as much, my daughter is much more interested in it. She's only five, but she enjoys coming out and working on the car, or watching what I'm doing or handing me tools, or whatever it is. And that's been really cool and super enjoyable. And then my son's much more into the, I'd say, nerdy stuff. He likes the coding side of things. But that's also very valuable.

He'll be cracking ECs one day.

Our new RE, it'll be great.

That very much is a hand in hand. Usually those tuners are a little bit of a computer nerd, no offense. You kind of have to be right. You have to understand all that functions.

That is one of the coolest things about doing this podcast, is you start kind of putting people into buckets, like, oh yeah, this personality type likes doing this. And it's like, obviously, so it's been really fun.

So the young people are definitely something we need help with from the collective. Especially for a period, it became parents are giving their kids an Uber account instead of a car. And you talk to young people and they're not interested. And you're like, are you going to get your license? Maybe, like in a year, I'm thinking about it, right? I think my nephew, he didn't get it till he was like 19 years old. You know, I had mine the day I could, because it was like...

It was like six months before he knew it. Here's my reservation appointment. I'm going to be there. I'm ready to go.

And that shift, I can't explain that, but that one we've definitely seen. And anything we can do to get young people back interested in autonomy, because that's where we looked at it when we were kids, right? Get out of dad's house. And now it seems like that motivation has changed.

Well, it's so weird. So my first year in college, I wasn't allowed to have a car on campus because they had a whole lottery...

It was weird. It was stupid.

Screw you, St. Thomas. But anyways, but it's like... I wanted to throw myself off a building because I couldn't drive anywhere. I was trapped here. And like, yeah, you know, Uber and all that sort of stuff here. But it's like... That adds up to. But do you guys kind of see more young people getting into it? I mean, what are you guys seeing on your end? Are people still buying, you know, Subarus from 10 years ago and modifying them at 16 years old?

I think the hardest part right now is the fact that cars are so expensive. And that's our big struggle is the fact that, again, like Type R, $46,000, BBWs.

They got 60 at one point, I think, too.

Well, with all the markups.

Yeah.

So you can finally get the mid-list or like slightly below MSRP. You know, WRXs, those like 32, 33, somewhere in that neighborhood. And then on top of that, you know, you start adding modifications and insurance is incredibly expensive. And we, I think the market is coming back, I think, to having more attainable cars for more people. And especially as things have moved toward the direction of forced induction, you know, we're having more cars, especially on the economical front, that are turbocharged. I'd say like some of the last economical ones we have were like the Mazda Speed 3, we had the Fiesta ST, the Focus ST, those were readily available for anybody and everybody for the masses. And they were an absolute riot to drive, they were easy to modify.

Wasn't the Fiesta ST like $16,000 when it came out?

It was really cheap.

I've heard of at this point.

But there was so much fun, they were like little go-karts. And so I think that we're starting to make our way back that direction, and I think that's going to help making it attainable for people. But on the customer service front, we do have people buying used cars, but again, WRXs hold their value disgustingly well. It's great for a seller, terrible for a buyer. And so you're buying a WRX, a VA with 60, 80,000 miles on it for not an insignificant amount of money. And that's a big thing for a lot of people.

Do you have any platforms you've had to kill off over the years yet?

I wouldn't say we've killed it. I would say the NA platforms way back when, so like G35, 350Z, 370Z, G37, we originally supported the Civic SI, but it was naturally aspirated. Again, the market was not there for the device and what we are offering. You didn't make any power. And so it's really hard to justify, you know, six, seven, $800 for a device that makes you one horsepower or two horsepower, you know.

DNA market's got to be pretty weird.

Yeah, because you don't have a something you can just add a couple PSI to to give you that extra. Maybe tops get 30, 40 horse out of something in NA, I'd assume.

And that's with extensive modifications. And Lance can obviously speak a lot more to that than I can from a calibration perspective.

Yeah, the NA cars are definitely tricky. For a long time, I think we were a little scarred from our attempts in some of the NA markets because we didn't have great success. And it was kind of the exact problem we were talking about. We couldn't deliver people what they were looking for, which was a faster car at a reasonable price point. And over time, we were like, well, we're just going to focus on turbo. That makes sense to us. We know we can at least always deliver something to the customer that they're going to appreciate. And when Porsche came into our fold, we had to kind of start reconsidering that again, right? Because a naturally aspirated Porsche is very much a performance model in their line. In a Subaru, naturally aspirated means it's the base model. In Porsche, that means it's the good one. And so we did have to kind of reconsider that. And there are some cars where we can deliver a good game, like the GT3. Some of the GT4s where they're essentially artificially neutered from the factory. They just use throttle limiting as their way to distinguish between trim models.

How neutered are they?

It's fairly humorous. You can actually put them on a chart and you can see how it's segmented between each of them to make sure they fit into nice little buckets.

Well, I know the Germans like to do that. Every German company does that, especially like you mentioned the BMWs earlier. They love to do that. I guess what are you doing for the GT3s and the GT4s? What kind of power gains are you seeing out of them?

I would have to go back and double check for gains on the GT4, but I can say the single biggest from them from the calibrations perspective is they only run part throttle from the factory. That's their way of detuning the engine to provide the power level at that trim or that base level that they're looking for.

You're also now working in a market where they're probably willing to pay $1,000 to have 30 more horse. That's not an NA Subaru situation.

That car literally just comes with a throttle stop. One of the easiest things you can do is to uncork that, and then apply more specific changes, small changes to air fuel ratio, ignition timing, cam timing, that sort of thing. But then on the flip, you have the new gen BRZ. It was a car we chose to support. A fellow calibrator of mine who's probably even better at Subaru stuff worked on it. He spent weeks and weeks and weeks on it. It makes about three to four horsepower over stock. So from a customer perspective, that's a tough sell.

Yeah.

My mind's just spinning off that Porsche thing. Like that's, yeah. I have a follow up question there. Man, I lost him.

Sorry.

No, it's okay. Yeah, you're forgiven.

Was it even my fault?

Oh, yeah, that's what I was going to ask. So is there, because it's not like you're, for example, doing like getting rid of cats or whatever. Is there some, I guess, emissions or any other things that you had to worry about, like for the GT4, for example, or was there any concern of crossing any lines or doing what you were doing or not really? Was it just that simple?

Yes and no. I mean, it's always a concern, right? It's absolutely always a concern. However, you still do have an opportunity to make big power. So like when you guys were talking with Greg, right? Like Mopar can still make the Hellcat and all those cars that can still make those crazy amounts of power. But still fit inside of that emissions-compliant box. And so our focus is making sure that everything that happens within that emissions-compliance box is equal or better to how it was from the factory. And then anything that happens outside of it, we've done our absolute best to not negatively impact emissions.

Right. So I think we've kind of been tiptoeing a little bit around the whole episode. Are you guys able to kind of speak to the whole emissions and all that stuff that you guys have been going through the last seven years?

Seven.

No, it's wild. It's been a whirlwind.

I was still in high school, by the way. I was just to give you an idea.

I was not.

What you're doing is you're just making us feel bad about how old we are.

He does that to me on the dailies, don't worry.

Stay my knees crack morning and night. So, we're good.

Permanently in my mind, my wife gives me a hard time. In my mind, I am 25 at all times. That is just a permanent stagnant age for me. But yeah, I mean, I think everything, obviously, the consent decree came out with our EPA settlement. And it has been going on for about somewhere between like five and seven years from the initiation to now. And it's been a lot of work. It's been incredibly expensive. I think that, you know, it goes back to what we were talking about earlier. When you get to this size or this prominence or anything like that, it's, you know, all eyes kind of turn and look at you. And it is the landscape that we're in right now. And it's, there's struggles that are associated with it. We've had to change the way that we do things. We've had to provide significant investment back into what we're doing in a sense of, we have new staff doing new things that are strictly just compliance oriented because there is so much work that's involved with it from just a logistics perspective of coordinating with emissions lab from the paperwork, which is like nonstop. There's, yeah, I mean, there's so much that goes into it. And then also from the calibration perspective, they have to make sure that everything that we're doing stays within that box, that we are not making it any worse than it is from the factory, that we are still making power for our consumers. It's this significant balancing act. And we've invested millions of dollars that we otherwise would have been able to put into other projects that go specifically into this. And it's something that isn't just a one-off investment. It's something that we continually have to do. It is a new operating expense that we have. And it's unfortunate at times in the sense that it handicaps us from, you know, our customers are vivacious in that they like, they want flex fuel, they want this, they want that. And we want to provide it to them like, yesterday. But we have to go through all of these steps because to the point earlier, like, we're here for the long haul. We're not here, you know, we're not taking a YOLO approach to what we're doing. It is, it's very much that we want to make sure that you have the absolute best product and that even on this new playing field, this is what we're going to do to be able to provide that for you. And it's tough. It's a struggle, I think, within every single department, whether it's from a customer standpoint, education, selling it, also from the calibration perspective, to make sure that the parts that we're developing are compliant and within that box.

So if we can just go backtrack, do you want to explain to the audience what exactly, how this all came to be?

Yeah. How does this start? Do you just get an email one day going, hey, we're watching you or it's like, does somebody in a suit and tie show up at your door? What did that first process look like?

So I was a hipster for sure.

Oh, okay.

Yeah. So I believe the formal start would be that we used to own three retail facilities, Cobb Tuning Surge Line, Cobb Tuning Plano and Cobb Tuning SoCal. Surge Line being in Portland, and that's where my tie-in for the companies originated. Then we had a facility in Plano, which is a Dallas suburb. And then we had a facility in Southern California, in Fountain Valley. And I believe it was in middle 2016 or thereabouts. Essentially, the EPA arrived at our SoCal facility, and basically presented us with a request for more information. And that's sort of how it usually starts.

I got that phone call too, from the shop. Yeah, I just think I remember that.

Was it a student tie guy then?

Yeah, there was no... I know online there's been a lot of talk about raids and things like that. There were no guns present or anything like that. So it hasn't been anything like that.

But they essentially walk in and say, Hey, if you're a young enthusiast learning to wrench or an experienced shop owner already running 7s at the drag strip, the High Performance Academy is a resource where all horsepower junkies can go to expand their skillset. Whether you are learning how to build an engine, tune your ECU, or dial in your suspension setup for some weekend autocross, the HP Academy has the perfect step-by-step course for you. They've provided the listeners of the show with a special 55% off discount code that you can use risk-free on any course that you're choosing. Use code MINNOX, M-I-N-N-O-X to get 55% off, or click the link in the show description to choose a course of your liking. Go check it out. Let's get back to the show.

Here's who we are. Here's some questions we have. Who do we need to speak to up the chain to start that process? That's how it starts.

Is that an instance where they're walking around the shop? Is there a certain amount of things you have to disclose?

What does that come with? I think you can be as compliant as you want to. I think there are multiple instances of this happening. There are some individuals that were resistant. There are other people. We took an approach of being compliant and helpful in a lot of cases. And we had talked about briefly in our call yesterday about our settlement being at 2.9 million. You were asking about how bad could it have been? And I think that our approach and the reason that we took our approach of being compliant and helpful and assistive and like, what do you need? What do you want to know about? We can educate you on our product and how all of this works. And working with them hand in hand over the past five, seven years to go through this process has put us in a position to be successful in the future. And so for us, we opened the doors to them. We said, how do you want to go about this? What do you need to know? Other people took an opposite approach. And you know, that's their ball game, but we chose to, our particular path forward.

Practically speaking, I think it probably depends on what they're interested in there in the first place. For a company like us, they looked at us as a manufacturer. So they're not necessarily like trying to look under the sheets or into dark corners at our retail facility. It was like, let's start a bigger conversation about the products you're making. If they were approaching a local shop where they maybe thought there were cat deletes going on, they're probably gonna start looking in the shop, you know, for those deleted types or things like that, so.

So in this instance, what were they looking for? Was there a particular thing that they were basically skipping out?

Something that set them off to start looking into?

Their concern starts from tuning, right? So they see us in the aftermarket as a major tuning player. If you go on the internet, you can find pictures of Subarus going really, really fast at the drag strip and on the dyno and all those sorts of things. So from their per angle, that just starts asking questions like, is this a company that's doing those things the right way? If they are-

Are you removing stuff? Are you doing this? Are you doing that?

What else are they facilitating? What are they allowing versus what are their users choosing to do on their own fruition? All those sorts of things.

Yeah.

So can I touch on that? Trying to think which direction I want to take. Can I touch on that? Because the whole off-road use only thing, it doesn't fly.

Nope.

Yeah. Can you kind of explain why it can't, it's not as simple as that?

Well, did it at one time and then it just didn't?

From an enforcement perspective, yes. From a legal standpoint, most likely not. So that's the big thing I think that's been hard for the industry is that we are all reacting to changing enforcement, right? And in a lot of ways, that's usually how average Joe looks at the law, right? Like when you're driving down the freeway, you do the speed of traffic or the flow of traffic. And that's kind of how our industry operated. There's, we know all these laws are on paper. We see they're enforcing against big oil and gas and all these other players, but it doesn't seem like these particular activities are a core focus for them. It doesn't seem like what they're after. So that's not to say we want to do anything nefarious or with bad intention, but at some point, you know, these small little individual instances doesn't seem like the spirit of what they're trying to accomplish, right? That changed over time. They started then focusing more and more on to the smaller and smaller, if you will.

Did you guys have some product you had to destroy or repurpose?

Yeah. So currently, we don't have downpipes. And we...

Of any kind?

Across the board, we eliminated them. And that was something that had been... We had worked towards, actually, in conjunction with Jesse, a particular manufacturer of the Catalyst. We had done extensive research to find an alternative downpipe or an alternative catalyst to be able to provide an OE-like solution for people that didn't impact emissions. Again, making sure that we were staying within compliance. But that ended up not being something that was, you know, in their eyes, accepted. And there wasn't a pathway forward that was economical or feasible for us at our size to be able to continue investing in because it would have been a multimillion-dollar project just on that one particular thing. And there's no telling how far that rabbit hole goes. And, you know, we have to, you know, again, to some of the other points we've talked about, take a step back and look at what is it that we can provide people? What are we really good at? What can we invest in? And so, you know, products like that, we had to cease and desist. And then there were some changes that we did to our software as well to make sure that, you know, to Lance's point earlier, there's a difference between what our software, what we were doing with our software and what other people were leveraging our software to be able to do. And so we had to make sure that we closed any loopholes and that, you know, you can only use our software to do these things here that are within the law.

Was that a big part of the occurrence? Was your other, what you call pro tuners out there, maybe turning off certain things that you guys necessarily weren't doing on your end, but was that, that was also a big part of it? Was that a good portion of it or?

It definitely exposes us to some extra liability for sure. I think most of the industry typically operated, back to your kind of your off road thing, under that the liability fell at whoever was committing the act or choosing to do the thing, right? If the owner chooses to install a Catalyst product on his car, the owner has committed a violation. That's sort of how we always kind of assumed that things worked. Ultimately, over time, they have forced that liability upwards in the chain, and they've basically said, you didn't do it, but you facilitated it, and that's not something that we see a legal path for facilitating, so that's not something that should be on the table anymore. To the off road part point, it probably could have worked okay in theory if people actually did it to the letter of their claim. And so one of the big problems is people would put off road use only and then sell 50,000 intakes.

There's not that many race cars.

Yeah, the EPA knows how many mustangs are sold every year. SEMA tells them how many race cars there are, built every year, converted every year. So they can do some real basic math and figure out if you're even in a reasonable playing field for the sales you're claiming. And by and large, I think the companies weren't. You know, they were using that as assuming that they could defer the liability down in the chain, and that just isn't the case anymore.

Was there any kind of, were you able to use any kind of like, well, we didn't know? Or I know that with the government, especially when it comes to taxes, you can't use that excuse as to like, there was no line drawn in the sand. Or was there some leeway there? Did you be like, okay, we want to black and white now from here on out? Or how did that go about?

I think it can go, it goes both ways. I think depending on the exact thing that you're looking at, they have some incredibly smart people that work with them, just like the incredibly smart people here that develop a lot of this stuff. And so again, working together to be able to walk them through what the product is or what the software is, or what is the question that you're asking necessarily? Is this the outcome that you're looking for? This is how it could be done? And then making sure, again, like we had talked about, closing those doors. So, you know, if it's related to DTC, like diagnostic trouble codes, related to like catalyst inefficiency, we want to make sure that nobody can utilize our software to turn those codes off or hide them or prevent, you know, force readiness, anything along those lines. We want to make sure that people are following the procedure so that way the OE functions on the car function as they were intended to. Because it all comes from the federal level and that comes like back to the education standpoint of, you know, there are particular counties that like, you can drive any car with any modification and they don't care on the local level. And it's difficult sometimes speaking to those customers because they're like, it doesn't matter here. And it's like, that's cool. But like for us, we conform to the federal mandate and this is what we do here. And these are what our products provide.

That's where we're at. There's not really any standard or testing or anything that we have to go through. So some certain things I have to get from smaller shops in unnamed areas and secret emails and things like that.

So there definitely is some pushback that we were able to offer. So their proposal is not the one we accepted, right? That's a very long-winded negotiation over many, many years. And it's also, there isn't a black and white answer like you're asking for, for so many of these things. You know, the language they're enforcing from the Clean Air Act was written in the 70s, I believe is actually literally 1970. It hasn't been updated at least. It hasn't evolved to keep up with the technologies that are on these particular cars and whatnot. And so the regulators are kind of having to draw some inferences. And after they draw that inference, they can't necessarily give you even a black and white answer. They can say, we believe this is the best way forward. But it's not written down.

That's right. I remember, again, Kyle Nelson was talking about that. It's all in the gray. Subjective.

Subjective. And probably by intentional design, Congress wrote a very vague law for the EPA to start enforcing. And so there's a lot of interpretation that has to be done before they can start doing that job. I don't necessarily agree with how they choose to do it sometimes, but I understand the conundrum. It's not easy.

Does that, with what happened with you guys, does that kind of set a precedent in the industry? Like, for example, the whole eBay thing set a precedent with the whole diesel side of things for sure. Or even like the whole diesel gate thing with my boys at Volkswagen. Is there a precedent for companies of your size or other people in your space now?

I would definitely say I think it's notable enough that it provides a basis for people to say, that's what they did, that's how that happened. And, you know, to Lance's point, like, making the negotiations as fair as possible, I think, are the hard things. And the pushback that's associated with that of saying, you interpret it this way, but in reality, this is how this functions, or this is what the purpose of this is, definitely plays into that. And I hope that it provides people a shorter path forward than it was for us. And I think that's something that we've often had to do. We've, you know, for better or worse, been pioneers in a lot of different aspects. And this is one of those that, like, we took a huge lump or like a pummeling to be able to get to this point at the end of the day. And hopefully, it provides, at least other people, a closer starting point to the finish line for being able to do it.

How ridiculous was the first offer, so-called, from them? Was it pretty bad? Their first, this is what we're going to do?

Well, they had Howie Mandel with a suitcase being like, damn it, all right.

Right, next case.

As I recall, they wanted to take some things off the table that probably would not have left our business in a viable position.

Okay.

Wow, okay.

Yeah. And at the end of the day, like, I think genuinely, we generate money and taxes and everything like that.

Right.

We're, you know, a local business here in Austin, and there's an incentive for them, for us to continue operating. But we also, from the flip side of it, like, we have to be willing to play ball and, and conform and concede on some other aspects there. And so I think that it's always a negotiation, it's always a compromise. And that's kind of how we ended up where we're at.

You guys were through that thing from the beginning to the end. It's not like you were hired, you know, in the middle of the whatever situation. Was there a certain energy or vibe or, I don't know, is energy a good word? I feel like I'm dating myself here.

Vibe is more your style, right? Isn't that what you can do?

I know, there's a few guys screaming at the windshield right now, stop saying vibe. But was there a certain energy or did culture change at all during that period? Was there a sense of fear or what does that look like during that whole time frame?

Confusion.

Confusion?

Uncertainty. Uncertainty.

I think that's the word. I would say up until the November of this last year, there was uncertainty and confusion about what can we do, how far can we go, what are the boundaries because like Lance is pointing out, in a lot of this, it's very much up to interpretation on some of those aspects. And so until we had clarity on what we could do or couldn't do, it made it difficult because our business did not pause for the last seven years. Like we're still developing, we added new model year support, new platforms, etc. And so we always had to strike that balance. And there are many discussions and planning meetings to figure out what can we do that's going to work well within these very vague boundaries as we're trying to define them.

You're picturing that scene from Wolf and Wall Street, right? Where they're running around, everybody's screaming, they're shredding papers, and the phones are ringing, and it's just chaos. Is that what you're picturing?

I'm thinking more to SpongeBob's scene where they're trying to burning the brain.

Oh, whatever.

That's another before my time thing.

I think that's fair, though.

It's exhausting, too, because we'd have a decision made, and then it's like, nope, pause, you can't do that anymore, or we're actually going to go this other direction over here. And it gets really complicated because again, adding support for these, like we talked about before, is incredibly expensive on top of all of the regulation aspects and those investments. And then, you know, to Lance's time, he still has to have access to a car, he's got to have dyno time, he's got to have soak time on all of these things. And so we need to make sure when we are doing something, when we're investing something, when we're starting a project, that we're not going to have to come back and redo it all over again.

Well, did you have to pause production on some things, even while you didn't have a definite answer? Because technically, they can hit you per sale on occurrence, right? Is that how they ended up doing it, per unit sold?

Yep.

So even if you're like, okay, we don't really know about this yet, we probably should pull it because if they decide, then if we sell 10,000 more in that meantime, that could be even more.

Yeah, there are aspects that we did that were preventative, that were like fairly certain that this isn't going to fly. And then there are other aspects where, you know, it's a little bit more vague sometimes. And you have to kind of take a gamble or take a chance, you know, like, I think this is going to work. We think that, you know, to our best judgment and the engineering efforts that we've put into this, that this is going to fly. I don't know if there are any specific projects that we had to necessarily pause on.

Yeah, I can't think of any specific examples, but if you look in our consent decree, I think it's Appendix A, it's a list of what they refer to as subject products. And then it has a, many of them have a date next to it when it was no longer considered to be a subject product. That basically means that we went through the process of establishing compliance as they were looking for, which at the end of the day meant CarBee-O. So yeah, there are many products listed that were essentially, we were penalized for, but then they no longer became a subject product during the process. So they're still fully legal to sell now, but we were penalized for their period when they weren't.

Even if they were already compliant and if we didn't change anything, we had to have that certificate to go along with it. It's good.

Were you already working with a company or anybody to help you with that process before this? I don't even know when SEMA Garage started, but were you already a member of that?

2010, I believe, was Diamond Bar, I think.

We were always a member of SEMA. We were not necessarily doing big formal projects through SEMA Garage like we are these days. We had been working on it. We had some products that had an EO. We had some intake products, things like that. But others in our product line, I guess either we weren't sure that they required compliance or that many others were operating without it. So that kind of precedent seemed to be that they weren't going to require it. EPA let us know that they required it.

And some of that tied into engineering best judgment, too, of like, we think that this is fine because, you know, it's incredibly expensive to go through that process. And, you know, from our perspective, if it was from our judgment compliant, then why should we, because Lance had mentioned that other people were doing it. So we were like, we feel like it's a good product. There's no need to go spend that exorbitant amount of money to get some paperwork to go along with it.

Is California the toughest state to work with? Or is there anybody else that kind of falls into that tricky category?

Anything else Cobb? Right now, we don't have to deal on an individual state level outside of California. So it's one versus 49. Cobb is certainly difficult in some ways. It's a really big organization. There's a lot of bureaucracy, lots of rules. But to that point, they actually have a lot of those things defined. So when we want to know how to make an intake compliant, we call Cobb or SEMA Garage and say, hey, what's it going to take? And they say, step ABCD. And if you pass on the other end, you're good to go. EPA doesn't have those guidelines. And if you were to call the EPA and ask, I'm not even sure if they have a phone line to handle that sort of thing. But that's not advice they can offer or give or otherwise. So they would say, well, you can follow some of the formal processes we have established for OEMs, or you can follow the CARB process because we also recognize that. So in ways, CARB is difficult, but it's clarity. So at least the beast you understand.

So as long as you're within CARB guidelines, you're pretty much good with the EPA then. Is that how that works?

If you have a CARB EO, EPA recognizes that as compliance for the other 49 states.

Gotcha. Okay.

How were they to work with once they started the process? Did you have like a liaison over there or something? Was that whole, after you guys started the whole process, were they fairly easy to work with?

The EPA?

Yeah.

That's a good question. Yeah. I would say the challenging part was just the human element. As I recall, one of the people assigned to our case went on like paternity leave two different times because his family was growing and things like that.

Seven years.

Yeah, right.

Personnel changes, different administrations.

Yeah. Presidents change, all of a sudden paperwork stops flowing in and out of an agency for a while and things like that. And so, yeah, it's a beast of an organization.

Yeah. So, no, I mean, it's a very drawn out process. Okay.

Well, I imagine it's not like you're communicating every day, right? Were you guys doing any other communicating, or was that somebody else handling it on your behalf, or somebody else within the company, or?

I personally was not.

Yeah, by and large, it would have been our legal team, and then a couple of established officers within internally. Occasionally, people like I and Matt will have to provide.

Documentation. Yeah. Anything like that.

We'll have to explain on a more technical level like what some aspect of the product does. So at one point, I had to go through and describe how some of the software features work and things like that. And then lawyers translate that information into the presentable form and send it back to chain.

Yeah, because I can't imagine if there's a car guy on the other side that's fully understand... Like I can't imagine there's like a top level tuner on the other side.

Yeah, I would say that's probably definitely true on the EPA. I've been to their seminars where they have the representative at the seminar at SEMA. Previously, it was a gentleman named Evan Belser. This year, I believe it was Ed Kulchinsky. I don't know them personally. I doubt their performance automotive guys. Cobb, though, I will say that you actually do have some of those advocates. So our previous Cobb representative had worked for banks. So yeah, so and that since he's an advocate for us, he knows what we do. He worked for companies making products for people that want the same thing that our customers want. So in that sense, he was an advocate for us. He's like, okay, here's a path for this product. Here's how I think we can get it through. So that was great in that sense, right? Like, yeah, he's still the regulator. He's still the guy with the badge, but he's also our friend.

Well, that's one of the things we talked about with Greg Banish on episode 123. Like, I can't remember who he was talking to, but it was one of those speakers that you mentioned earlier.

And it's like, you know... That was Evan Idley, yeah.

Yeah, and it's like, from their side, all they see is these rolling cold diesels, and they think, oh my god, exhaust tuning, blah, blah, blah, bad, you know? And that's not exactly the case. And when I was doing my highlights with Sam Barros from episode 110, it's like I was learning a lot about like EPA regulations and Euro 6, 7 and all that. And it's amazing how much cleaner cars have gotten in 20 years. Like, I don't think we give it enough credit. Like, I think we're like 95% down on gaseous emissions and whatever, something like that.

Yeah. And I think kind of to that point is why our industry now has that increased focus, because in the past, there were many other industries who are also creating really big problems in the environment. EPA has gotten a lot of those cleaned up, technology has improved, all those things. And so now it's kind of just this micro focus, right? Like funneling everything further down into the funnel.

Well, it's not like cars have been getting worse either. I mean, I understand the emissions, but they're beginning faster. I mean, they're not getting any lighter either. They're getting heavier, but they're getting a little more fun to drive, easier to tune, work on, maybe not work on.

Oh, actually, I'm glad you brought that point up. So now one of the things that Ben Kaminsky touched on from SEMA Garage was these ADOS systems are about to start getting enforced more and more. How are you guys as a company going to overcome that? So just to clarify for the audience, ADOS being like front brake assist. I don't know, that's the only one that pisses me off, to be honest. I can't think of the other ones.

Lane keeping, all that stuff.

That's the only one that pisses me off today. But are these things that you as a company are trying to overcome as well? How does that affect your tuning, your modifications and all that fun stuff?

Well, we definitely have to have an increased awareness of it. Okay. So a very practical one, the Ford Raptors, they have a sensor up in the front area for object detection, right? If you put a new intercooler in there, that sensor has to move, and now that system doesn't work the same way. So there's a lot of things and we just have to kind of answer, what does the car do? Then when we try to do XYZ to it, are we going to upset that particular system? Fortunately, we're pretty hands-off on most of the safety-related stuff, but really any physical mods to the front of the car that will make things angry are the ones that we have to worry about. And it's the sensors up front, like even the license plate bracket on a Volkswagen. It's like in your car, if you put your license plate over in the corner, one of those sensors starts just freaking out. And that's so...

Or if there's snow on the front of it. I found that one out last week.

Yeah.

Just put me auto stop right. I'm trying to get out of my parking spot. Now I can't move.

So we do draw some red lines in terms of things that we don't want to mess with. So a lot of the newer cars have like super calls of BOS, that's brake override system. So basically if a driver panics, puts both feet to the floor, the brake gets precedent, the car won't accelerate.

Okay.

Performance guys want to put their foot on the brake, put their foot on the floor and get rolling boost, right, to take off for the street race. So that's one feature that we haven't been able to add for those guys because it's a safety feature and that's something that we're not willing to...

Compromise. Yeah.

I wonder if that's what Brian did to my car. Because I used to brake boost my old Mark 7. And then once I got a new custom tune on, I almost wonder if he enabled that feature again. Because I lost brake boosting ability completely.

I'm seeing that come, though, but still adding all this other technology is going... What am I seeing in the Explorer STs now? They're adding Transbrake. You can get a tune in a Transbrake now, which is incredible. I mean, who cares about the foot brake now if you can do something like that. So it closes some doors, but it opens others at the same time.

Yeah, absolutely. Exactly.

What are you guys' concern for regulation going forward? Because I'm sure that's something you're keeping an eye out for. What do the next five or 10 years look for? Do you guys have, I guess, a vision board somewhere around here? Pinterest. Yeah, Pinterest.

There you go. I know one that is on the whiteboard, and it's industry-wide, is if safety regulations were to increase, especially as it relates to some of the off-road stuff like lift products, big wheels and tires, bumpers. That has been a relatively free space to play in. And I think there's some questions about, are we going to have to start demonstrating safety crash testing or things like that? Like what we have to do in the emission space, right? And yeah, destroying the car is even more expensive than emission testing it. So that one has, I think, got everyone a little bit curious as to what's going to happen.

I think on the sports sit-in side or the sports car market, it's one of these things I think the emissions was enough for us to focus on right now, where I think that we've devoted so much energy and time and money to that. I don't know if there's necessarily anything else in particular that we're super focused on. I don't know if we could handle that right now on our shoulders.

Another one of the things we talked about on our recall, I don't know what to call it, when we chatted yesterday. So you work more on the customer side of things. So one of the things that came up during this whole EPA crackdown and all that, when somebody wants to warranty a product that you no longer sell, what did that conversation look like? Was there some issues that came along with all that?

Definitely. I mean, part of our consent decree is that we can no longer provide any technical support for any of the products that we no longer offer. And so, you know, for instance, like downpipes, you know, we'll have customers reach out and they'll say, hey, I found, you know, a Cobb branded downpipe on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace or this, you know, somebody was parting out their car, whatever it might be. You know, I want to get this, you know, donut gasket or hardware or whatever it is. And unfortunately, our support per our decree is that we can't provide any. And it's a really difficult thing to have because it's the opposite of customer support. It's closing the door on them. But it is part of, you know, that compromise that we've had to make to be able to move forward. It's difficult, but it is what it is at this point. I mean, it sucks, truly.

Did you have to roll out a firmware update on already installed devices too? Or when somebody had already had something, were they okay?

It was all part of it, yeah.

Okay. We had to force an update for our tuning software to remove what the EPA refers to as delete features. And then the firmware for the access port. Didn't necessarily have to have a cataclysmic change, but it had to facilitate all of those changes as well.

It wasn't something that they could just ignore either. They had to have been a-

No.

Okay.

If you wanted to continue using your device, as soon as it would get plugged in, that's the update that happens. Okay. Anytime you take something away from everybody or anybody, naturally, you're going to be upset over it, and it sucked. That was a really, I would say, especially within the customer service side, it was a really dark two years of going through that transition period.

And we also weren't allowed to announce it. So we kind of just had the way it was done, is the way that we had to do it based on the negotiation.

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Basically, as the least of worst options, I guess.

So you guys weren't even able to tell people why you were taking stuff away then? Is that how I'm understanding it?

Essentially, yeah. The change had to be rolled out, and it's essentially this is what our new product looks like.

Okay. And then basically everybody's on the Facebook forums going F Cobb and all that. Okay, yikes. Okay.

Yeah, it's brutal.

So then you had the customer support side.

Go ahead. Had we done some type of announcement, we would have been in violation and we wouldn't have gotten to a settlement.

Wow.

Okay. Interesting.

I'm assuming you had people out there know, though, like it wasn't unknown what you guys were going through. I'm sure you had advocates out there too that were like, hey, shut up guys, they're going through this b******* right now.

Sure. I don't see that in a lot of comment sections.

I know those people are few and far between.

Yeah. And certain people with enough vision forward probably saw what was coming. Based on the breadcrumbs we had been laying, discontinuing products, streamlining our offerings and so forth. So, there were many people who weren't surprised, just disappointed. But then there were a lot of people who were just outright mad. They weren't expecting it that day.

And you can't blame them.

Right. So, were there difficult conversations along the way? Was there any reimbursement or anything? Or I guess, or is it like, hey-

Return devices?

Return, yeah.

I mean, one of the things, again, that's always made me really proud to work here is the fact that we take every single interaction as a unique one. Even if it's similar to another one, it's always, I'm dealing with you, or I'm dealing with you, or I'm dealing with you, and each of you bring something different to the table. And so, every instance that we were addressing, we did our absolute best to take care of them or appease the situation. But ultimately, sometimes, if they were running a non-compliant part or something that had been deemed non-compliant and we removed something that allowed them to utilize that, there wasn't anything that we can do there. In some cases, it ended up with a return device or return product. Sometimes it ended up with a consolation of some sort, but it just sucked. Nobody was happy at the end of the day, because to Lance's point, we could not warn people about this. We couldn't say, hey, we're going to release this thing. It's going to be an update. It's coming out on this date and this time. It was, we have to do this, and this is the way forward, and it just sucks.

So are we talking dozens? Are we talking hundreds? Are we talking thousands of like phone calls or emails? In the thousands?

Oh, absolutely. So on a monthly, on a standard month, we're anywhere between, you know, 6,000 to 11,000 customer inquiries. Jesus.

Like currently?

Just on standard. Yeah, just standard. And so then you take that, and we did a global update to all of our access ports, and that affected a majority of them. And so then you have to look at the number of those people that are going to be contacting us. And that's not even like our entire customer. That's just a small snapshot of the entire customer base that are contacting us for some support of some reason. So yeah, it was a lot, and it was exhausting, and it was a really hard time.

Yeah.

And from my perspective of owning customer service in the sense of like, it is what I live and breathe, that was a hard thing to have to go through.

Did you come into that role like immediately when you came to this company then?

I did. So I started out at customer service one. I had like, the extent of my knowledge was owning that car, the 14 WRX, and then also car magazines growing up. And I drove an SN95 Mustang.

Oh, you got hesitant.

All right. And I loved it. And you know, that was the most like American muscle. I was constantly on that website, like searching and looking for parts and stuff like that. So I kind of worked my way up to this point.

And the reason I wanted you to quantify that is because again, we see the Google article or whatever, the news article or what was it? What was the website again? It was directly on the EPA website, right?

Oh yeah. I went through and read the EPA strictly put out a thing telling how it was settled and what you guys had to go through.

And that's, you know, you see the 2.9 million there, but when you think about it in the grand scheme of things, I mean, like for example, again, I keep drawing back on our episode with MA Performance. It's like, you know, they would build 120 engines a year at their peak, but think about all the customers they had that would get intakes and exhausts and all this other stuff. So it's almost unquantifiable beyond the settlement, I'm assuming.

Sure. And I mean, they could have, you know, shut us down, you know, or made levied something that was so drastic. But the fact that we did make the sacrifices that we did, we compromised in the ways that we, we felt that were justified, we're able to come to a consensus to be able to keep moving forward and to keep innovating and iterating. But it definitely did not come without its pain points.

Is there any advice you would give to, I guess, others in the industry or better yet, advice you would keep from your enemies? No, I'm kidding, but.

The enemies, keep doing what you're doing. Yeah.

Do more of it.

Yeah, exactly. Shout about it on Facebook.

We have a bunch of downpipes when you download it, you're going to have them.

I mean, from an advice perspective is, and it sounds super silly, but if there's a problem, you can work through the problem. There is always a solution at the end of the day. It may not be readily apparent to you. And that's how I approach everything is, you just have to work the problem. And the problem that we were presented with was, they felt that our stuff wasn't compliant, and we had to figure out how to make it compliant in their eyes, and how do we make that financially viable at the end of the day. And it required shuffling things around, investing in certain aspects, not investing in others to be able to get us here. So it's a very like generic sort of like PC answer, but like, and then stay like glass half full as much as you can. I mean, because it can get overwhelming and depressing and frustrating, but you can shout at the sky all you want, but it's not going to change your circumstance.

I would say for the other businesses in the industry, one thing I hear a lot is for manufacturers that are, they're not sure where their products fall in the compliance realm. They're nervous to engage that conversation because they think that's going to shine a light if they are doing something wrong. And my counter to that would be you have an advocate in SEMA Garage, they aren't the government, that you can have very private conversations and talk to fellow enthusiasts who have a fundamental understanding of the things you're doing, and they can help guide you to then, quote, unquote, exposing yourself to liability when you're ready. I think it's this catch way too, if companies aren't sure if they're on the right side of the law or not, so they don't want to talk to the law because they think, well, now I'm just going to get in trouble as soon as I let them know who I am or what I'm doing. But we do have third parties like SEMA Garage, like Automotive Consulting Services that can help bridge that gap and get you ready to take that next step into the formal compliance realm.

Yeah, and when we talked to Ben over there, it sounds like it's based on your volume and what you make. So if you're scared because you're just starting out, you don't know where to go, it doesn't sound like they're going to really nail you to the wall depending on the size of your company.

You can be a pretty small member to be a part of SEMA Garage. It's actually, I can't remember the exact figure, but it was reasonable for a small shop to be a part of.

Yeah, is there anything about this whole process with the lawsuit, maybe anything that we're overlooking or questioning, we're not asking like unique off-landish situations that happen throughout that you guys can think of?

Hmm, that's a good question.

I'm just laughing because these camcorders, they kind of look like we're in a deposition.

Yeah, not that you guys maybe not have sat through some of that. We just don't know, I mean, it's kind of a new territory, right, like we don't really know, we never talked to anybody that's gone through something like that, so there might be some things that we're missing that things that you guys thought were even off the wall or...

It's not so much like a question, but I think to Lance's point earlier, I wish we could have educated people or told people what was going on during the process, and we legally could not do that, otherwise we would not be here today and their cars wouldn't be tuned. And I think that, you know, it's one of those things of, I think, you know, people think of us as a business and they think for-profit and that's a money grab or anything like that. Like at the end of the day, like we live and breathe this stuff. We drive these cars. You all saw my car up front and Lance has been tuning and driving Subarus like all of your life. And, you know, we've invested so much in this place and in these products that, you know, everything we have is in them. And the last thing that we want to do is take something away from people or for them to have a bad experience. And, you know, Cobb is ingrained in us as much as it is, you know, this business here. And so never would we want to backstab anybody or sweep the rug out from under them. But that's just how things unfolded and it was out of our control through and through. And I think that I would say that ultimately applies to all of the automotive companies that have to go through this one way or the other, no matter which segment of the industry that they're in.

You also said that you had to do a global update. Are you guys, so you're global, you sell in a lot of other countries and you had to also change in those situations too or is there some places where you didn't?

Since we are a US based company, that's what we comply with.

The Clean Air Act includes language illegal to manufacture. It doesn't say where. So if you're making it here, they could technically use the language of to manufacture that you were manufacturing it here.

The one part of government that's not ultra specific. Like if you look at like, look at tax codes, there's tax loopholes because the tax guidelines are longer than a CVS receipt. Like it's never ending, but this is the one part of government where it's super vague and open to interpretation. It's like, come on, give me a loophole. But this is me ranting as somebody who's not on the business side of things. So I know we're kind of, I don't even know how far in to this. We used to have a timer back in the day. It's gone now. So it's like, now we just kind of go. One of the things we didn't really touch on, a little bit on your side of things, but what does your day to day look like?

So that is a constantly evolving situation. Currently, my day to day is all things Subaru calibration. So we're seeing our calibration efforts for the DBWX, Outback, Legacy, all those good cars. A big part of it also is the emissions compliance side. So getting a calibration for the Subaru, ready to go through the emissions compliance process, go through testing, filling out the paperwork related to that, answering the questions, working with our full-time employee who does the submissions, that sort of thing. And then another big component is supporting the B2B users of our software. So the shops that are tuning cars, Adam, and those types of people in the world.

So, are you doing filling out the paperwork yourself, or you have your, I guess, your employee here that does this?

I have to fill out some of the form boxes, but yeah, he gets the lion's share of the packet filling, if you will.

You got to type in all the technical stuff and then send it over.

Yeah. Well, some of the questions we have to answer are just practical in nature. It's, you know, what do you foresee these changes impacting related to economy, or how will they impact high load operation? How will they impact low load operation? How will they impact idle? So sometimes you're just answering questions, you know, as an average guy, like, with some, that has some background knowledge over the tune. And then other times you're filling in some very detailed forms of we increased boost by a maximum of 3.1 PSI, and AFR changed by 0.07 lambda. And so there's some technical, there's some words.

So does this mean that you're, because again, you're based out of Portland, was it?

Yeah.

So does that mean you're kind of like remoting in and doing a lot of Dyno stuff, or what does that look like?

Oh gosh, it's a little all over the place there. So I have possession of whatever car I'm working on at the time. So I have a 20WX that Cobb owns and I'm in possession of. I sometimes will rent local Dyno facilities up there, if I need to be doing stuff on the Dyno. A lot of what I'm doing day to day as the Subaru Calibrator is living how a customer would live. So I just hop in the WX, drive it to the gas station, drive it to the convenience store. The vape shop. Yeah, exactly. Live just like them, right? And so I can, when someone calls in the customer service and they say, my car does this thing every time, I can go try that myself. Or they can say, I'm on the freeway and it gets terrible mileage. I can say, no, it doesn't. You're full of it. I've driven that car for a year. It doesn't do that. So it gives me that ability to speak in context with them.

How far are you from California's facility from there? Is that quite a hike still too?

Yeah.

It's got to be like 16 hours or something.

Yeah. 16, 18 hours.

Okay.

Yeah, because they're in Diamond Bar.

Portland Diamond Bar.

Okay.

Two-hour flight. So, all right.

So then how often are you switching through cars then?

Oh, gosh. Once every major generation, I guess. So what car did I have before this?

You had a VA, didn't you? Or did you have a VA?

I think I had a Mark 7 GTI. And I did some calibration and verification on that. And before that, the original EcoBoost Mustang, 2015.

Okay. You're just speaking to me and Dan today. GTI Mustang.

Once every two to three years, three to four years. Okay.

Okay, so it's not crazy intensive. You have to ship a car, a different car, out there every month or anything like that?

Usually not. Now, I'll fly down here and use the cars here if it's something like that. Okay.

Gotcha. So then, are you dealing with every time there's a change to the car? Like, let's say you're testing a new intake or anything like that, or is that somebody else's fault?

A lot of times, yeah, because a lot of times I'm the person that helped develop that product, get that off of the whiteboard. So I'll, at some point, you know, say like on a WRX, we do a stage one tune, like you were saying, we optimize the stock car. And it's like, okay, well, now what? You know, should we explore intercooler? Should we explore intake tubes? Should we explore charge pipes? So we'll throw a bunch of sensors all over the car. And it's my job to then look at all that data and say, oh, here's a big obvious gap that we could potentially help fill. Hey, hard parts, guys, why don't you work on some options for this part? When you got a prototype ready, we'll all touch base and we'll figure out if we accomplish the goal or not.

And then in that instance, you'll kind of go in there and get some of those numbers, I suppose then. So if you do develop a new intercooler or whatever. Okay.

Yeah, so we'll look at say pressure drop across the core or inlet versus outlet temperature on the stock piece. And then we'll, you know, throw up our replacement candidates and choose amongst the best one or whichever one suits all the.

Okay. So, okay, so there's a little more. Would you say it's a pretty intensive, I guess, procedure then?

It can be for some products. You know, some like our VA WRX intake, we probably went through a dozen revisions before we landed on something we were happy with. Some other products like intercoolers, we have a pretty good idea for building it with a Garrett core and good intakes. It's going to work. So we don't necessarily have to throw that through a dozen iterations.

So once you go through all of your own testing, then it's time to send it to someone like SEMA Garage, for example, or?

Yeah. So we'll go through all the hard parts development, which is the nuts and bolts of how does it perform as an intercooler or as an intake tube or whatever. We'll get that finalized and then we'll work on building out a calibration package to support that hard part. So then from there, we do all of our effort, hopefully test in as many conditions as we can. So that's another good thing about being in Portland. I can test in December when it's 20s or 30s in Portland. I can fly down here and test when it's 110. I can drive up Mount Hood and get up 6,000, 8,000 feet all of a sudden. So things like-

Really OEM approach.

Yeah. That's what they do, right?

We got to hit all the different conditions.

That's what they have to do. So once we've whittled and refined on that calibration as far as we think we need to, then yeah, you engage that next step in the process, which is either a SEMA garage or directly with Cobb.

Okay. Do you guys do a lot of talking with OEMs at all?

Very little. Not because we don't want to. We'd love to. If Ford or anyone else is listening, please call us. On the Japanese stuff, by and large, they don't have that kind of presence here in the country anyways. So Subaru of America operates two pretty small offices, like Ann Arbor and Cherry Hill, New Jersey, I believe. But by and large, the car is made and designed and so forth in Japan. So it's not like we have that friendly Detroit around the corner where we can go sit in the right cafe and all the employees come out at one time.

It's so ridiculous over there, man.

Yeah. So we just don't have that kind of opportunity like the domestic people do. Yeah.

It's so funny. Like when we just dropped the Lingenfelter episode yesterday and then we had Sam Barrows on it and all these people. You have to say, I have my buddy at GM or my buddy at Ford. Yeah.

Yeah.

That's definitely a different environment.

Do you guys take these cars then to events and tracks and stuff like that? Do you guys?

They do everything we do. So, we were at Circuit of the Americas with the Porsche. We have another Circuit of the Americas. We can plan for the development of our Type R's. So, we have exhaust, intake, rear motor mount, ethanol, cat-back exhaust systems. All of these things are coming out here shortly. And so, we go and prove them all out at the racetrack. We daily drive them. So, Sam, who was in here earlier, who pulled the white FL5 out that we replaced this FK8 with, he's our head Honda calibrator. And so, he lives with these cars similar to what Lance is doing.

So, basically, your position but for the Honda world.

Yeah. Gotcha.

Yeah. And then, we have the same thing for Volkswagen and Porsche and Ford. And it goes across the board. And so, and again, employees also have access to these cars to be able to drive them. We can take them to lunch, we can take them overnight. We have events this weekend at the local Honda dealership, Cars and Caffeine. We're going to be there. We'll take our cars out. So that way, we can also give people hands-on experiences with the vehicles. They can see that these aren't just show pieces. You can look at them. They are not perfect examples. They have scratches and little nicks and rashes and everything.

I do like this car.

Thank you.

cobbtuning.com/careers, by the way. No. So, oh, man, I'm kind of running ahead a little bit.

Who gets to driving when you guys go out? Do you guys take turns? Do you guys have designated drivers? Is it whoever is working on that platform? Yeah?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We're not terribly competitive. It's usually just kind of like first come first serve. I think a lot of the times. Just don't curb rash the wheels. That's the number one thing.

Yeah.

They're looking at you, Dan. Yeah.

Yeah.

Don't hit curbs and bend them. So, you have a wide variety of people that are kind of like your counterparts here. When you are wanting to expand into another platform, like you are like for the Toyota segment, does that mean you kind of look for somebody that has your particular skill set but for that platform, or what does that look like?

I think a lot of the times it depends on how related it is to what we've already done. So Toyota has similarities to what we've already done, and we will generally kind of get a inside look into it. Usually, we call it a bench setup or a bench ECU, we'll do some very rudimentary tuning with it on the dyno, to have an understanding of what's going on here. Do we need to bring in some outside expertise, or is this something that's familiar to us?

Okay. And then I promise I'll start wrapping up here soon. But for example, let's say we have again, a 26 is coming out here, or whatever the next generation is. How long is that process to get something unlocked, or is that just so all over the place?

Totally dependent on the vehicle. Okay. Sometimes it can be a sprint, which for us is like two weeks. It can be something super fast to be able to add support for. Otherwise, like for the 25 FL5, that is something that requires six weeks for us to be able to add support for. It just totally depends on the particular platform. And also sometimes they will change modules inside of them. They can change security. It all totally depends because the manufacturers, the OEs, they don't give us any inside look at what's going on. So it kind of leaves us sometimes in a guessing game.

So that's kind of a weird situation too because technically the government is cracking down on them to make those, like security stronger on those. But then, but that's not an area where it matters for you guys. Once you're in there, it's fine as long as you're not changing carb basically emissions situations. Okay. You would think it would be beneficial for you and OEs to work together in that situation.

It would be awesome, right? Yeah.

That would get crazy too, I'm sure. We would love it.

I mean, the whole aftermarket would love it. I think I heard like when you were talking to Greg, it's just they view it as such a liability that distracts from their core business of selling cars. And even when you go tell them like, yeah, 55% of new WRX owners intend to modify it, it still just makes them so cautious that, yeah. Right.

Do you have an actual number for that by the way? Because I saw that somewhere, that 55% of...

At one point in history, yeah, that was one of the numbers that got pulled. That it was like 55% of new WRX owners intend to modify the car within six months of purchase.

Which is nuts.

I thought that number would be higher, to be honest with you. Just anybody who's buying any kind of sports-oriented car.

Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, then you're also talking about like Alpex and all that stuff, too, though, or like less sport. Like not all of them are WRXs either.

The Tribeca.

I think even to that point, though, like, you know, I think our view is a little distorted. The vast majority of cars on the road aren't modified.

I know.

Even Corvettes, Mustangs, etc. Right. And so it really is a niche segment of the market.

The special sick individual that hates money.

Yeah, exactly.

We like to punish ourselves.

Yeah. I would have thought a higher number, but knowing it's 55 percent, that feels good too. Yeah. That feels solid.

So one of the things we touched on in the Greg Banish episode was, for example, when you look at it from an OEM perspective, they have access to 16,000 parameters. And then when you work with, he mentioned HP tuners in that episode, it's like, oh, you are only giving the end user three to four hundred parameters. Is that a similar number for you guys as well? Or I guess...

Probably by ratio, yeah. I couldn't tell you raw numbers, especially the Subaru stuff. It's all manual reverse engineering. There's no factory data that has ever fallen out of the back door or was found on the floor at the right diner or whatever. So I don't know if we could even tell you the specific number of tables it has, but I could certainly tell you how many we have defined, and that's going to be in that three to four hundred range. Yeah.

So it's probably something similar. Maybe not as crazy as like BMW or something.

And it's one of those things too, is it pertinent for what you're trying to do at the end of the day? And it comes down to optimizing our efforts, because the more time we spend doing one thing, we don't have as much time to do another thing. And so if we expose the tables or the calibration data that we need to tinker with, that allows Lance to do his job, and then we're able to knock out that and move on to the next thing.

Do you know what the number of per-year units sold is just running your tune versus who has also gone with a pro-tune? Is there a number where you're like, okay, 80% of our units are just running a Cobb tune? Or would you say more people are using a different tuner?

We do have some basic statistics related to that. Kind of back to the data collection thing. When people plug in their access port to update it, it sends home a few pieces of information, like what kind of car it's installed to, and if they're using one of our OTS maps or not. I don't know where that exact percentage falls.

You have to pull that. Yeah, I would say the majority, I can confidently say the majority of users use our OTS maps. Okay. And that's one of the reasons that we've invested so heavily in our ecosystem of stage one, stage two, stage three, whatever it is, because it comes down to that ease of use and that confidence in, I bought this, they make it, they've designed it, it's gonna work. And then it's like a touch it and forget it type of thing. But there are also other people that use custom calibrations and things like that. And to that point, I just want to clarify, we don't collect any identifying information associated with that. It's purely just access port, OTS, serial numbers, stuff like that.

Okay, so nothing crazy.

Exactly, yeah. People will call us asking about vehicle history, VIN tracking, stuff like that. And it's like, no, we don't collect any of that. We don't care, to be honest.

No, but you need to know what's going on out there with your tunes, because you offer support on that. So you would know if somebody calls you with an Adam tune, you'd be like, call him.

Yeah, exactly. And all of the pro tunes are locked to that specific pro tuner. So whoever it might be, that's their calibration data. We don't expose that. We don't look at that. It's locked to the, it's their IP. It's locked to them. And so oftentimes when people call us and they're like, hey, I have a custom calibration. It's like, you need to go work with that calibrator. That's that relationship that you've built. They know your car better than we do at this point. Because they've tuned for it.

How big is your support team?

We have, at one point it was, we've gotten up to around 12 to 14. I'd say currently with our hybrid system, we're around eight to 10. It just depends on the particular point of the year, but.

Yeah. Well, that's crazy, because like you mentioned, what, 7,000 to 11,000 inquiries a month. That's still like 400 some emails or calls a day.

Yeah. It gets kind of wild, yeah, at times.

Well, sometimes, if you're, this is just getting too into the nitty gritty, but sometimes the phone calls could be like an hour long, I bet.

And there are a lot of companies, especially being in the customer service front.

They're KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, that you're looking at. And they're like, how long did you stay on the call? Did you hit this number or that number? And for us, it's all about taking care of that individual. And I think that's one of the things that has separated us so much from everything else, is that it can be an hour phone call. We may talk to the same person like four or five times a week. There are people that come and just hang out at our shop sometimes, because they just want to look around or see what we're working on. And that's the environment that we've curated and what makes us so unique.

Well, sweet. On that note, do you want to pop the usual three down?

Yeah. So at the end of every episode, we like to ask our guests or guests to pick three cars. I need a daily driver, a track car, and a show car. You have a limited budget. You can swap whatever you want. Sky's the limit.

This is perfect.

And don't worry, these can be non-compliant.

Yeah. Your track car especially can be non-compliant.

Off-road use.

You first.

Okay. So track car, Exige S260. Okay.

The daily-

The Lotus?

It is, yeah.

What's the S260?

So it's the supercharged variation. It makes 260 horsepower. Okay. It's the previous generation. It's the S2 chassis. Got it.

Because that's like the Toyota motor and all that?

Yeah. And then we had a track car. Is that the other part that we had? And then a daily driver? Yes. Or no, it was a show car.

Show car, track car, daily driver.

The daily driver would be a Lamborghini Urus, I think.

Not an RSQ8?

No. Okay.

It's all about the badge.

And then, oh, the show car. Probably a Lotus Alon, I think. I have a soft spot for Lotus, I absolutely love them.

I'll come back to that in a second, what's the Alon?

So it's gonna be one of their two seat, their little coupes, and I absolutely love it.

Is that like an older one?

Yeah, so it's way back when, and I absolutely love them. I have a picture of it in my office, I'll show it to you.

Yeah, you'll have to show me. Where's the love for Lotus come from?

It's always been, so Colin Chapman, reading his biography, and Lotus is themselves just all about adding lightness and stripping everything out of the car that you don't need and the grassroots approach to what he was doing when he was getting into racing and it all just being in his garage is incredible. I love it.

I've heard there's some of the best handling cars on the track.

I haven't had the privilege of it yet. Once my kids get old enough that they don't have to sit in the back seat of my car, that's when I'll progress into that.

I loved watching it. I used to go attend autocross events when I was like, just to practice photography, right? And there'd be a ton of Lotuses, man. And they all look the same, by the way. I don't remember what their years were, but it was like a long period that they were just the Elise. They're cool to watch on the track.

What were they running at AMP when we were there? The pro drivers there?

Those were the Avoras.

Avoras, okay.

Yeah, so like the Raleigh's I mentioned off-camera, I used to run one of the drivers was like a Ferrari Cup driver, and then he teaches on the side, and they were leading us around the track in Avoras. Super cool.

Which are Camry V6s, which is wild.

Yeah.

I think I fit great in them. Elise, not so much.

Which is great because then you know they'll run forever, and then you should just be able to go to O'Reilly's and get parts, right?

The maintenance on them is fantastic. Yeah.

Until you have to take off that rear end, it's just impossible to access.

Yeah.

The big issue is like if you get into any accident, it's effectively just two clamps that are on the car, and then it just totals out if you do anything. But I do want to change. Sorry, Lance. I've taken up too much time.

I'm buying him time.

That's what that's about. I want to change out the Elan for the Cortina.

Okay.

The Cortina. And then again, I can show you a picture of that one.

Yeah. All right. Three Subarus. Here we go.

So for daily driver, I actually would probably choose Golf R. It's something we support and I own an S3. And I love the S3 other than that I would have liked it better as the hatch.

Okay.

So when I went to buy mine, the Golf R had gone out of production at the time. And so they were only making the Audi. So I bought the S3.

So Mark VII, Mark VIII?

Probably Mark VIII, yeah. But I mean, at the time when I, it was the car I really wanted, was the Mark VII and a half.

The VII and a half. Isn't this one a VII and a half?

I believe so, yeah.

I think so.

Yeah.

Yeah. No, I miss my Mark VII. I love the VIII and once I actually start doing some handling mods on it, we'll see if I still, if I love it as much as the VII.

You don't breathe in the car before it warms up.

Like that's not what I'm saying. That's not what I'm saying.

VII was peak golf, man.

Yeah.

I think so. But anyways, I digress.

So I really like the Golf RS3 platform. That's just a really cool car at the right price, at least when they used to be $40,000 to $42,000. Yeah. Track car, C5 Z06. Oh, that was like the big new cool thing when I was in high school and I wanted one so bad. And it was when the C5 like really, like was reinforced as like a performance car, right? Like before that, Corvettes were performance, but they were like kind of this pedestrian. They made noises, but they weren't like a supercar. They weren't fast. Now that the Z06 came out and all of a sudden it was like it was fast and I really wanted one. And then what's the third one? Show car?

Show car, yep.

I'm going to go back to childhood. I want a monster truck. I want Bigfoot.

Yeah.

I had those movies on VHS when I was a kid. I wore them out. I had the posters on my wall. I would love to own one of the original Bigfoot.

That's awesome. I got a cool story off camera to tell you about that. But yeah. Okay.

I don't know if that's in bounds or not, but that's...

That's the first monster truck we've had.

Okay.

Yeah. Good point. Yeah. I mean, we've had truck. Like trucks are usual for car guys too. They need to get their car to the track, right? Yeah. Monster truck is a new one.

I like this original. Question for you guys. RX-7 or RX-8?

Ooh.

They didn't know this was a two-hour interview.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

I still lean, I would like to do, if I were to do an RX-7, I would do one of those hybrid builds. Like, you know where they take apart from the 8? What was it? They take the irons from the 8 and then whatever from the 7s, and then they make this ultimate hybrid rotary motor. Or I'll just take a 7 and LS swap it like everybody else. But I like the styling of the 7. The 8s, all right. I just like the styling of the 7, man. It's cool.

Don't you?

FD RX-7. I'm a 90s kid, so yeah. I like them. RX-8s, I think they look pretty cool. But, and to be honest with you, I'd probably take the rotary out of it. I mean, they're cool and all. I like that whole engine of the future thing, but I'd like a Coyote swap.

I'll just Dazza swap it. We'll be good to go.

Well, what about you then?

For me, which I get s*** for constantly, an RX-8 R3 is the specific trim that I want.

Oh yeah.

And for me, it would be an absolute perfect track car.

And what makes it perfect for you?

So it's underpowered, because I'm not like a big power guy. That's when I drive a BRZ. It's kind of like a Miata with a hard top. But, and I just love the fact that it revs out to 9,000 RPM and it's buttery smooth and it just handles beautifully. It's fantastic.

I've tracked both an FD RX-7 that was built race car and my 2021 GT500 track pack car and probably half the horsepower in the FD. And they felt like almost the same car out there. It was very weird. Other than mine, you have to really muscle it around the track because it's 4,200 pounds. But the power to weight ratio, it felt very similar. So it was kind of cool.

They're righteous. They're super fun.

I have to know for you now.

I'm going 7. I remember my dad's coworker had a red 93. And my dad took me for a ride when I was a kid. And that was just the fastest thing I had ever been in by a wide market. It made all the sounds. It was little. It was cool.

They are the definition of cool.

Very cool. I get it.

Any other final things we want to touch on before we close out?

Not really. But I appreciate you guys coming out to Texas, man. This is super fun.

I'm glad we were able to make it happen, man. I love coming out here. We're coming back out here for Texas 2K next month. So we'll see who else we end up talking to around out here. But yeah.

Yeah, fantastic.

Yeah, well, we're hoping to have an extra day to play around, but I decided to get definitely ill for 24 hours.

So that's the season for it, man.

Yeah.

Where can people find you guys?

So they can jump online. We have obviously our website, cobbtuning.com. We also have all the social media stuff. We have Instagram, Facebook are the primary things. TikTok, we're not as invested in right now, but-

I deleted it.

Yeah, but anything on Instagram and Facebook, we've got everything available there. And obviously our website, our support team is always available if they need anything.

Sweet. Well, awesome. On that note, thank you so much Lance, Matt for coming on.

Absolutely.

Thank you guys. Thanks for existing and we'll see y'all next time.

Does this mean that we have to stop knocking Subarus as much now that we've had these guys on?

They're already knocking off by themselves. Yeah.

There's a highlight.

Perfect.

And well, podcast over. As always guys, be sure to check out all of our sponsors. They are what make this show possible. It allows us to travel and have some awesome guests on the show. So whether it's HP Academy, Tooned by Shawn or Haze Performance, all these guys have awesome services, products, everything in between. So be sure to check them out. All the codes are in the show note description or on my Instagram or wherever else I've mentioned it in the show. So be sure to check it out and we'll see you all next time.