140. Air-Cooled Porsches, Upholstery, Restoration w/ SonderWerks

This car at some point in its life had gotten in an accident, and when these cars weren't worth very much, the then owner decided to cut the target top off the car and turn it into a cabriolet. Getting it to fit right on the foam and on the frame is as much of a talent as sewing the cover itself. There's a lot of tugging and pulling and slapping and hitting and twisting and turning. It goes into getting those things on the frames correctly.

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 Ford loving co-host, Dan.

Yep.

Gunner Garage.

Yeah, I'm being stared down right now by a bunch of Porsches.

This is one of the eye-candiest backdrops we've had in a while. So that, needless to say. But today we are here with Dave Van Epps. Nailed it.

Very good.

Nailed it. And you're gonna correct me on my phrasing. Is this Sunderwerks?

That's correct.

So go ahead and tell us a little bit about what it is that you do. Obviously, a lot of all Porsche stuff in here. So tell us a little bit about what it is you do, how it came to be, and we'll go from there.

Okay. Very good. Well, Sunderwerks is a full service, primarily air-cooled. I mean, we service all Porsches, any model, make new, old, air-cooled, transaxle, whatever the case. But we do everything here. So we can build you a car from soup to nuts. We have full in-house upholstery, paint and body shop, engine shop, mechanic shop, so we can do it all. And we do specialize primarily in air-cooled cars. About 70% of our business is air-cooled stuff. And we're located in Cornelius, North Carolina, lovely Cornelius where you are right now on a lovely day. And we've got about 14,000 square feet here, two different buildings. And we just love doing what we do with these great Porsches.

Well, one of the things that I said to Dan as we pulled up, I'm like, this is a lot bigger than I thought it would be. Because we were looking through some of the Facebook content. We got introduced through a mutual friend, Henry. And I was doing a little bit of research. And then we pull up and it's like Disneyland for Porsches.

Well, it is. Yeah, it is.

And then you took us on a tour around, obviously. I mean, you have quite a bit here. So I'll have a variety of questions as we progress. But what's your most common car that you guys work on here?

A Porsche 911, typically something between 1965, which would be the first year that the 911 arrived, and in 1998, which would have been the last of the air-cooled Porsches. Now we do earlier cars, 356s, 914s, we do all of them. But in terms of your answering your question, the most common, certainly the 911s. And you can see, looking here in the backdrop, that other than that rogue Cayenne that we have in here for upholstery, that we've got mostly 911s in here right now.

Well, we can go more into the older stuff. I really want to touch on that Cayenne right out of the gates. So that's a really cool offering. So somebody bought that right off the show floor sort of deal, and they're just redoing the entire interior. What are you guys doing with that?

Well, in this particular car, we're pretty well known for our upholstery work, and we have five full-time upholsters here. And we work with the Porsche dealer locally, as well as a number of Porsche dealers in the area. But once we've done a couple of touches on different cars for people, the word starts to get out. And sometimes with Porsche, getting a lot means getting the car you want the way you want it is hard. So people that want the car presented a certain way will come to us and say, okay, this is the way I could get this car. Can you redo the interior? So in this case, the client had a car that is a navy blue exterior, and it had a black and burgundy colored interior, and this gentleman did not want the Bordeaux. So we're removing all of the Bordeaux from the car and actually putting in a blue and white, what Porsche calls papita. Other people would call houndstooth. So it's a blue and white houndstooth. And hopefully you can get some B-roll of that later and we'll cut it in and see how cool it is, because it's really unique interior.

It's really cool. I mean, again, like the reason me and Dan reached out to you is because we know nothing of this world, whether it's Porsches or interior work. So obviously we have a lot that we want to learn about.

I'm not a big Ford guy either, so.

We have some seats. I have a 79 pace car with Recaro's and the houndstooth.

There you go. There you go.

I've seen it before.

That's as close as we get.

Yes, yes. Very good. Yeah, still about a few seconds apart on a Nürburgring with the whole GTD and GT RS, but no sweat.

Who's counting, oh, who's counting?

It's only how much money. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so how did most people typically find you, right? Is it through clubs? Is it people reaching out? Is there customers that you deny? Like, would you ever take, let's say Dodge 392 Scat Pack in here?

No. Okay. We basically kind of started as a Porsche only shop, and that was a function of putting three different local businesses together back in 19, excuse me, back in 2018. I had sold another company and decided that I wanted to do something different with the last, you know, my third act of my career.

Okay.

Loved these cars my whole life, had owned some, and then ultimately was like the opportunity came about that I could buy an upholstery company that was local, that was struggling. So I acquired that company and its assets that ultimately put it together with a body shop and a mechanic shop that focused on Porsches exclusively, put them all in this building back in 2019, and then it became Sunderwerks. And since then, it's really been word of mouth. Okay. So from the first days that we opened, if you have a classic air-cooled car, you're not taking that to a Jiffy Lube or to your general mechanic because they're not going to have any idea on how to work on it. So the minute we opened with a staff focused on air-cooled cars, the clients just started coming. And it's just as built and built and built over the last seven years.

Were those businesses already working together or was this like a vision you had and you went and acquired these businesses individually knowing that this is what you were going to build?

Two of the businesses were working together. The original mechanic shop that I bought had partnered with the body shop and they were two, one was about 20 miles from here and the other about 30 miles in the other direction, but they worked together. Okay. The upholstery shop, which was the first one that I acquired actually, didn't have no relationship with any of it. And they just did general upholstery, a lot of hot rods, a lot of old Ford Mustangs and Camaros and those sorts of things. But what I quickly realized after acquiring that business was, it was very hard to make money doing those custom interiors. Lots and lots of custom fabrication and hours and wood shop and metal bending, and just hard to charge as much as you really needed to to make money in that industry. And so the pivot was very quick and easy to move to exclusively doing Porsches. And that's worked out beautifully because people are sending us cars from all over the country. Or they're literally just sending us seats, boxes of seats. I've got stuff that came in yesterday over here and a few boxes back here that come in, and people just ship us in the seat. And when you do the same thing with the same cars, and that's what you do consistently, it becomes much easier to get good at it as opposed to having to figure out where I'm going to source this piece for a 61 Lincoln Continental.

You're just breaking his heart today.

I'm sorry.

That's not my intention, but knowing, I think I see a Lincoln logo on his leg.

There's Jagermeister here too.

Very good.

You have both.

That's fantastic. Wonderful.

Okay. Yeah. And that's a great point that a lot of people don't think about is how can you improve processes and all that? Because like you mentioned that one of these, sorry, the, how is it, I'm gonna get it right. Was it from 74 to like 87 or something? 89.

I think what you're referring to is the period of time that Porsche has made, what people commonly call the G body. Yep.

So a lot of interchangeable parts and stuff. Okay.

For almost 25 years, most of the parts from those cars are basically interchangeable. I can take a door from a 74 and it will fit an 89.

Okay.

And that's a long run for any auto manufacturer, for sure, right? And Porsche continued to try to evolve these cars as time went by. And it's very interesting to look at them and watch the cars that came out in the 60s, watch that evolution and see the little bits and things that Porsche kept doing to tweak the car to either make it more sellable, more comfortable. And the hoops they needed to jump through to try to fit certain things into these tiny little cars. We were talking about air conditioning a little while ago, and that's one of the things that none of these cars were originally designed for air conditioning. So when Porsche finally did air conditioning, it was kind of a cobbled together mess.

And what time period was that, roughly?

Well, you could start to get air conditioning as an aftermarket accessory in the early 70s, actually. And it was a dealer-installed option at that point, and companies were making these kits that got installed in the cars here in North America. Obviously not quite as warm in Germany then, so they didn't think about air conditioning over there. Didn't need it.

So I want to know a little bit more about you. Okay, so where does this passion for Porsche come from?

Car guy my whole life. My dad, my grandfather, all car guys, meaning had this great appreciation for cars. My grandfather actually sold Chevrolets and Oldsmobiles and so on way back when. So every holiday and every family gathering, there was always that timer on the table just shooting this, the 12 or 13 year old kid who's hearing about an Oldsmobile Tornado, front wheel drive and those kinds of things. So I was really became a car guy at a young age. The minute you see your first Porsche 911, particularly, you're hooked. You see it and it's like, okay, I want one of those someday. I had to wait quite some day, quite a long period of time. I think I bought my first one in my middle 30s. Happened to be a 86 911 Cabriolet in iris blue metallic. And I was hooked. Loved it. Had that car for a number of years. Loathed the fact that I had to sell it to move from California, where I was living at the time, to here, the Charlotte area.

What made that move happen?

At the time, it was a career move that had nothing to do with Porsches. Yeah, and so that was really kind of what started it, was just this love for these cars, and then having the first one in, just enjoying it so much. And then later on, acquiring a more modern Porsche, and then following that, a transaxle car, a 928, and then another 911 Cabriolet, and it just sort of kept snowballing. So, and at this point, I'm very fortunate in that the business and my love for the cars and the people that support this business, we all kind of have a common bond, and having the business help support my love for these cars. So, it works well. Probably not great from a business perspective because I spend too much on my own cars, but you know, it's what happens.

That's just a car guy problem.

That's a car guy in general, without a doubt.

What, this general repair that you acquired, was it already working on Porsches?

Yeah.

Okay.

It was. He was a Porsche specialist. Okay.

So, this, it wasn't, not that you don't have plenty of knowledge base, but you didn't have to basically build that up from scratch.

Correct. That would have been a real problem for me. Obviously, I'm not a mechanic, an upholsterer, a body guy. Okay. And as a result, I'm just a guy that assembles teams, great teams with talent. And so, you find the guys that have that knowledge and put them together. And that's kind of where it starts. And then over these last seven years, it's really evolved. So that guys that were here then have moved on to do other things. The owners of those businesses that I acquired while they originally came with me into this business, like all business owners who sell off their businesses, then they ultimately kind of move on and go off into other things. And so we've had to find a nice team or a group of guys that know the product, know how to do upholstery or do paint and body. Obviously, the mechanics that need to understand these vintage cars, these air-cooled cars, they're a few and far between. So I've got my engine builders from New Zealand. I've got some young guys that we've trained from the ground up right out of one of the technical schools that are here and they're fantastic. But then we also happen to have some factory trained Porsche guys that help us with more of the modern cars. So that's, and your team keeps ebbing and flowing, just like a professional sports team, right? You're always trying to find that right combination of people and people come and go, and that's just the nature of the business.

Well, you're kind of like playing coach in this case, then. Like you're, I mean, the biggest thing that a business owner does is organize personalities. So explain that then, how do you go about acquiring talent, right? Because for example, you mentioned like the original owners of the previous shops, have they all moved on from? So then how do you ensure, how do you get to this level of quality? Because you're working on a number of quarter million dollar cars in here, and whatever, varying in each direction. How do you ensure that that level of quality is met?

Well, you ultimately have to start with a core group of a few people that are really well, very knowledgeable about the product, and or upholstery or whatever the case. And I'm fortunate that I've had them. And as we bring new people in, sometimes you can't just go into one of the employment sites and say, give me an air-cooled Porsche mechanic. They aren't growing on trees, unfortunately. So you do end up having to train or cross-train some people over time. But you really want somebody with general mechanical knowledge and somebody that has experience with older cars. Because nowadays, most of these cars, you're plugging a computer in and you're doing nothing with, right? You're just plugging it in and it's telling you what's wrong.

You swap the part.

In this case, we have to troubleshoot. You have to see what's happening with the fuel system or with the electrical system, understand the basic principles of automotive, and then be able to apply that specifically to the parts that make up these cars.

Whether you are new to working on cars or a seasoned shop owner at the top of their game, the High Performance Academy is where all car enthusiasts can go to expand their skill sets. If you want to learn how to build an engine, tune your car, improve your wiring or suspension setups, the HP Academy has the perfect step-by-step course for you. As a friend of the show, they've provided listeners with a special 55% off discount code that you can use risk-free on any course of your choosing. Details are in the description of the show below or go to the partner's page of minnoxide.com. Go check it out. Let's get back to the show.

There's a lot of variety over that, the last 50 plus years of Porsche development, a lot of variety in these cars. Important to know.

Do you see some things that have stuck around though since the beginning? Do they have some rollover from their early days that the systems they're still using now?

Oh, sure, sure.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of things have evolved, but obviously now with the newer cars, they're no longer air or technically speaking, really oil-cooled. I mean, they call them air-cooled cars, but it's really the oil that's circulating inside the crankcase that's pumped back out of the car and brought back into the car to cool it. Now the cars have a standard water jacket, like you would see on any modern car. That change came along in 1999.

Which is already later than I would think, to be honest with you.

Yeah, yeah, but I think Porsche worked really hard on the air-cooled cars to maximize their performance and still street ability as a consumer product. So they had to ultimately morph away from the exclusive air-cooled engines and move to the water-jacketed motors. And still very similar theory around this flat-six motor that they use. So, and that's what's obviously in the 911. But now Porsche also has Cayenne's and Cayman's and Macan's and you know, the cars that actually saved Porsche or turned Porsche into the company that it is today were these SUVs. Yeah. And then, to some extent, the earlier Boxster, which came around in 1997 here in the US.

Oh, that's right.

The little two-seat Boxster was a big hit and kind of replaced that entry-level spot in the lineup that the 914 used to have back when.

We have a mutual friend that's screaming, yes, at the windshield right now.

Oh yeah, why's that?

He has a Boxster.

Oh okay, great balance car, a lot of fun.

Yeah, I will say I had the opportunity to drive a GT3, a 2015 GT3, I want to say a couple years ago now. And it's just, it does feel refined. I should be able to take it on the track hopefully this year, but that actually kind of leads me to my next question watching the Nuremberg Ring in the background. Do you do any track-related stuff or race car stuff?

I don't personally, and I'll tell you the reason why is I'm smart enough to realize that going down that rabbit hole is a very expensive deviation in this hobby. Yeah. It just changes the game. There's plenty of people that I know that do and love it, and that's great. I tend to spend more of my time on what we think is more of a rally drives with these cars. So we'll get 50 or 100 guys together, all with air-cooled Porsches, sometimes with even other qualifications, only torsion bar Porsches versus suspension Porsches. And we go up into the mountains or we'll go into some area which has great roads.

Over to like Tail or Blood Mountain?

Yeah, less Tail of the Dragon, only because of it's crowded and more people there. And there's this area of the country here, and whether it's Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, the mountain roads are just phenomenal here. So, it's kind of a car guy's golf weekend, is to go off with the guys and we'll go drive probably a little quicker than the speed limit on some mountain roads and have a lot of fun.

Observe the speed limit.

We will observe it as we're going by it at twice the speed limit potentially.

Have you seen the thing on Facebook where it's like, my lawyer was able to get me off because he could indeed prove that I could not read the speed limit sign at 165?

I didn't see that. We're not quite going that quickly, but by and large, it's a lot of fun to put these cars through their paces. Considering that a modern day Camry can probably still beat a 911 AeroCore from the middle 80s off the line.

I got a Jetta out there if you want to drag race.

We could. The Jetta might do just fine, but it's a very visceral, very analog experience driving some of these older AeroCool cars. And that's a different sense of the car and more definitely connected to the highway and in a way that creates a few white knuckled moments or the kind of thing where you're hanging on maybe more than you would in a modern car for sure. And the limits between a modern Porsche on the Nuremberg Ring and an AeroCool Porsche from the middle 80s on the Nuremberg Ring would be, you're probably lapping that car. You know, I mean, it's really quite remarkable, but the experience of driving that slow car fast is really what everybody loves.

Well, and that's the biggest thing I hear about, especially like when, for some reason that, and correct me on the generation, but like 87, 88, 89, I think that's all the same generation. Yeah, yeah, that's always kind of been my favorite look, but like even like, for example, I'm gonna use Joe Rogan as an example here. He says it's his favorite car, right? These classic Porsches. And it's like, there's something to be said about that. I don't know what it is about the older cars, but it just gets people going. So how much experience do you have? So you take these out, do you do all this mountain driving, you do tracks and all that stuff. I mean, do you find yourself leaning towards the older cars and the new cars?

Oh, without a doubt, yeah. Without a doubt. I mean, I just recently sold one of what I'll, modern Porsche 991, which is a 2013 variant. Great, fantastic car. Because I just was finding that I wasn't driving it as much as my older air-cooled cars. I happen to have a 964, which is a later generation of the air-cooled cars between 1989 and 94. Those were available in the US. Great car, and a lot of people really, really enjoy that car, as well as the 993 variant of the 911 that came just after that. And those two variants had bigger motors, bigger displacement, more refined suspension, and as a result, they will go faster and turn better on these mountain roads, and a lot of guys like that. And then, you know, the minute you switch over to the water-cooled cars in 99, it's like a different club, you know. Now you're in a different club. This is in the club, these two clubs, they're the Jets and the Sharks. They don't play together, right? So typically don't play together. But there's a general affinity for Porsche across the entire range of products and the events that we do, and the dealers that are here in town or in the area, and the events we throw ourselves, we bring them all in, all the new, old, modern cars. We do it all.

Do you have, for somebody looking to get into it, whether it's late or early or whatever, do you have, like, what would you recommend as an entry level, this is how I want to get my feet wet and get into the, and have some fun?

Okay.

You have a car you recommend?

That's a great question. I get that question probably two or three times a week from somebody calling in looking for a car, absolutely. And they love the shape, and that shape is so iconic. And they say, everybody tells me I have to have an air-cooled Porsche. I tend to try to tell them that they should be looking at either the 911 SC, which was a three-liter variant from 1978 until 1983, or the Carrera, which was 1984 to 1989. So that period of time, 78 to 89, that is really the sweet spot from my perspective, and those price points will vary with the model of the car. So I will tell people, a 3.2 Carrera is a terrific car, very refined, reliable, a lot of the sort of things that Porsche was learning along the way, the refinements that they kept improving these cars with, those later 3.2s had all the little upgrades, better air conditioning, engines were more reliable, but by and large, you could set two of those cars side by side, and not without, you know, from the front, and not necessarily know what you were looking at. So the cars are very similar, they just have different power plants. And so that's kind of where I go with these cars, and those are gonna be cars that are your, and not a basket case car, but you're probably gonna spend a minimum $50,000 to get into an air-cooled Porsche in that vintage.

Okay. What's one to stay away from?

Minimum. What's one to stay away from? I love them all. They all have their little quirks. A lot of people don't seem to like the, what people call the mid-year cars, which would be 74 to 77.

Okay.

They had an engine, a 2.7-liter motor with a magnesium case that tended to fail over time with the heat cycles, and it would lose head studs and require an engine rebuild. A lot of that has been addressed here some 50 years later. Those cars aren't really running on those original, un-rebuilt motors at this point. But in the hierarchy and pecking of 911s, those are the least expensive of the 911s. The earlier cars before 74, what people call long hoods, pardon me, those cars have tended to be more expensive. The earliest of those cars, they nicely sorted out early, 65 obviously, first year, very rare in the US., very expensive, super expensive. But when you get into kind of what we'll call driver quality cars, those tend to be 75 to $100,000 cars, the long hoods. And then there's a butt for every seat, as they say. But, you know, I would always just suggest buy the best condition car you can afford. No matter what it is in the Porsche line, just buy the best condition one you can afford. Because if you don't buy it, no matter what, the cheap one may look good, but you'll spend easily 15, 20% of what you spend on the car probably to get it sorted, maybe even more. That's on a car that you're not buying as a project.

Yeah. What's the biggest basket case you've got? Does any come to mind? I'm sure there's been like one that's like, damn, this won't leave.

Which one, Bobby? What's the basket case?

996, right?

No, no, no. That's not a basket case. We've had some cars that have been really rusty.

Okay.

And that's a problem. Porsche, any of the Porsches prior to 1975, I think, weren't, they were not undercoded. They weren't galvanized metal. So those cars rusted badly. If they got moisture trapped in certain spots, they would just rust out, and you'd end up with just giant holes all through the car. And there's been plenty of times when we'll get a car in. I think I showed you guys a 74 that's out in our body shop that came in as a running, driving, painted car, and the client wanted it restored, knowing that it had some issues. By the time we blew the paint off of it, the car was swish cheese. And just lots of rust that had been badly repaired. With the 911s, if a restoration is done well, you won't necessarily outpace the value of the car. With some of the other models, 944s, 928s, 914s, that restoration costs the same amount regardless, but the values of those cars aren't as strong, and therefore you can quickly outpace the value of the car doing a restoration on a 928 in particular. So that was Porsche's transaxle front engines, theoretical replacement of the 911, which fortunately never happened. So a risky business car.

How long did they do that for? Did they do that for just a short period of time then?

Do what?

The transaxle cars are what they're doing?

I mean, still today, they make transaxle cars today, but the vintage transaxle cars started 924, 944, 968, what am I, 928, and then obviously they were off for a little bit and then ultimately came back out with Panameras and the cars that front engine, rear wheel drive sort of deals.

But they were still making the 911 throughout this whole time?

Correct, 911 never went away, fortunately. It was supposed to go away with the advent of the 928, that little futuristic V8 rear wheel drive car. And fortunately, that was a bad time for Porsche. Those late 80s, that was just not a good time for Porsche. They were really struggling as a company and all these cars were hand-built. The 928, only 65,000 total were ever built. So, with that in mind, I mean, that's a low production car by American standards. And that car was around from 77 until 1995. And by the last year of that 928, they were really, I think they might have built less than 100. And the car had just gotten blown up with expense. So, it was a very expensive car for the time.

Where does your knowledge for this come from, right? Because you've had this for seven years, roughly. You're passionate about it beforehand. But obviously, to have a shop of this caliber, you need to have extensive knowledge about over several generations. Where does that all come from?

I make it up.

You make it up. It gets chatty between the back, like, hold on, what generation was I?

I mean, it is one of those things that really you just pick it up over time. It would be like your knowledge on Ford's and knowing what the codes were, and where the transition points were. And I certainly don't consider myself an expert. There are far, far more knowledgeable people out there on the subject of Porsches than I am. I'm just passionate about the brand and have done what I can to immerse myself and learn what I can learn either by watching, observing, reading, buying and selling, and then talking to a lot of other enthusiasts who know the cars really well.

What do you call when you're in a quinky dink on a particular generation? Or do you have various experts? Who do I call? Yeah, who's your go-to help?

Probably the internet, really.

The internet, okay.

If I had some questions.

Like forums and stuff?

Yeah, and or if I'm trying to do research because I want to know what pattern was used on a piece of interior, for example. And that's there's a lot of variations on these interiors, and people want something restored to its original state. Porsche used all kinds of crazy vinyls and leathers and other materials during the 70s and 80s. And, you know, finding a piece of vinyl that happens to have a pigskin embossing in it that is in cork. You know, you've got to look around, because this stuff isn't made anymore. So some people reproduce it. Sometimes you're looking for new old stock materials. So I do a lot of research on the internet, looking at German websites and other websites, trying to source certain materials for these cars as we're doing restorations.

Have you picked up a lot of German over the years? That's the extent of my German. Okay. So sourcing some of that stuff. For example, I think it was this Targa back here that you were talking about, out of the million back there. Yeah.

The Slantnose?

Yes, the Slantnose. So you have to source some things for that one over the course of several months is what you were telling us. Kind of take us in depth on that project.

Okay. Well, that particular car happens to be available for sale here sooner than later, but it is a pretty rare Porsche as Porsches go. It's a middle 80s Slantnose Targa Turbo. So it's a turbo car with the Slantnose package, which was really derived from Porsche's racing pedigree, that Slantnose aerodynamically, they wanted to get rid of the pop-up headlights, or excuse me, the fixed headlights, and they went with these pop-up headlights. But that was all really for aerodynamics. But the Slantnose in the 80s became the car that every kid had on his poster in his bedroom, right? With the big whale tail. This particular car was a Targa, shipped to the United States, I think fewer than 75 were ever shipped into the United States, turbo Targas, Slantnoses, that were actually made by the Porsche factory. Option that way. This car at some point in its life had gotten in an accident, and when these cars weren't worth very much, the then owner decided to cut the Targa top off the car and turn it into a cabriolet, which was commonly done in that period. When you had some issue or an accident with a car and you were going to rebuild it, you, oh, we'll make this a convertible. Convertibles are great, they're hot. So we'll turn it into a convertible. Well, as a convertible, the car is worth very little as a modified car like that. In this case, the owner brought it to us to have us turn it back in to the Targa that it is. And so we've had to kind of look around the country to find the bits and parts. There's a few parts aggregators that do exclusively Porsche parts around the country, right? There's one near us here in the Rocky Mountain, North Carolina area called DC Automotive. I think we got a lot of the parts for that car from DC Automotive. They've got about 140,000 square foot facility there with nothing but Porsche parts under roof. So you're looking for things like the Porsche glass and the Targa bar and the latch mechanism. Surprisingly enough, the hardest thing to find for that car was the actual Targa top. The Targa top itself, because there's so few of those that float around out there in that particular year. So that was difficult to find. I actually found one from a gentleman selling it personally in San Francisco. And that's how I found it. But it was very hard to find that Targa top. But we did.

Are there some companies that remanufacture parts of that too?

Yeah, you can really, for all intents and purposes, you could probably build almost an entire car at this point. Okay. And I believe Porsche is even starting to now resell the blocks, the engine blocks for the air-cooled cars. Yeah. And Porsche has figured out in the last 10 years or so how much they were missing with the sales loss to the aftermarket on reproducing these vintage parts. So they have started year over year over year to add more and more reissues of the vintage parts to keep these cars on the road, because I think they really do understand that the heritage of the Porsche brand is so very important. Yeah.

So how about modern cars? So I know, for example, you got the Cayenne back here. Have you had people send in, like, let's say seats from like a more modern, like, you know, GT3 or Turbo S or whatever?

Do you see that? Oh yeah, we do. When it comes to interiors, we do all of it. So we're doing, you know, complete re-color of a car. We had a blue GT3 touring in here that it had black seats, and then the customer wanted it redone in a brown, very like espresso brown color. So we redid the entire interior on that car. I would say that Sunderwerks is, as it relates to modern cars, we definitely, we certainly do all the upholstery on all these cars, but we do specialize from an engine perspective and transmission perspective in the classics. A lot of specialty tools and training and knowledge that goes in to rebuilding a GT3 motor, for example. There's some great shops that do that work all around the country, smaller group, but these cars are really engineered to be race cars. I mean, that's what they are. They're streetable race cars. So we tend to stick to the things that we're best at, and we work on just air-cooled cars and getting the most out of these air-cooled cars. We do your basic services, and I think I've got a GT3 in here right now that we're doing some basic service things on, but I would want to be tearing apart one of those motors.

Do you have, would you, on a rare type car, do you consider yourself kind of a purist, and have you ever been asked to do some things that you didn't want to do to a car that was maybe on the more rare side?

On the rare stuff, I'm fortunate to have been, never have been in that position where I had to say, no, you know, we're not going to make this change on this super rare model. I have, the client's always right, of course. And if a client has a very distinct vision of what they want, whether I think it's in good taste or not is not my, none of my matter. You could come in with one that's painted like a fighter jet, and you want to put an ejector seat in it. We can work on all of that. But having said that, a lot of people will come to us looking for our expertise. What do you want to do? What do you think? Because you're an expert at this. What do you want to do? Excuse me. What do you think we should do?

Consulting sort of.

Correct. And so from a color palette perspective and materials perspective, we'll give them our guidance there.

Who's we? Is it you working with the customer?

Myself. I'm not myself, but I have a great team in the upholstery department when it comes to that sort of stuff where I bring in my engine expert who's going to talk through what it is we want to do.

So you can call on those resources when we're in here. So if you want to talk paint, you'll bring in your paint guy as well, I assume. So then you'll kind of piece it together.

Yeah. And we've had guys that come in that where their cars have been terribly repainted in a color that's not the right color for the car.

Perhaps Plasti Dip, their Mustang, no one.

Yeah. Plasti Dip is a good way to try it all right.

See, we can make it permanent.

Yeah. You like the way it looks. Okay, we'll figure that out. But yeah, we do. I tend to like to show a little personality in the cars. So I'm not the purest and if somebody brings me an 86, 911 3.2 with a blue leather seating, I'm not a big fan of just leaving it alone and it can only go back to this. I like to do some more bold choices. And most of the people that interact with us like that too, which is why they come to us, because we've got different materials, different things we can do with those interiors to personalize the car and make it really personal to them.

Yep.

Yeah.

So how about when it comes to like, for example, I love modern wheels on a classic car. Do you see a lot of that here as well?

Not as much.

Really?

Honestly, that's a good question. Honestly, there are obviously certain wheels that are known with these cars. And it's funny how that the Fuchs wheel in particular, the five pedal design that is on most of these cars you're going to see around us here, that is such a-

Like that one over there?

Yeah, like that one right there. Exactly. That is such a wheel affiliated with these cars that there's variants of this wheel, and there's companies out there that are making copies of this wheel that will take some artistic render version of the wheel. And, you know, so you'll see some of that. But there's also wheels that I absolutely hate personally to see on older cars. I'm not a fan personally, and again, sorry for anybody out there that may have done this, but I don't like taking the more modern wheels, like even from another air-cooled car, and pulling them back on some of the older air-cooled cars. I just don't think, it doesn't look right. It just doesn't look right in that regard.

So real quick, I have to ask this one. So when it comes to...

I'm about to be trapped here.

You might be, and we can absolutely cut this out. So when it comes to, let's talk Liberty Walk, Gunther Works and Singer, where do those three stack up for you?

Oh, fantastic.

All three?

Love, yeah. I mean, those are such departures, but even if we'll break that down, I mean, the Gunther Works cars, very specific 993 variant cars, unbelievable engineering that's involved in doing all of the carbon fiber and the unique headlights and tail lights and all the interior pieces. I mean, just beautifully done. Those cars aren't the standard Porsche 911. And so you can put whatever wheel you want on one of those cars, and it's not going to bother me. When you look at what Singer has done though, and if you look through their catalog of cars, almost all of them, certainly in the first iterations that were what they call the classic, I think is what they call it, which is really an homage to the 73 911 RSR, those almost all come with a Fuchs looking wheel made by another company, but it looks like the original Fuchs. It's a larger size wheel, but it looks like that same five-petal Fuchs, and people do it in different color variations and so on, but that all ties together, and those cars all look fantastic. They're beautiful.

Modernized in a classic look.

Exactly.

Okay.

Yeah, that Restomod kind of thought. If you do it that way, there's again, there's lots of wheels in different periods of time back in the 80s. Everybody was putting the honeycomb BBS wheels on everything. So we'll get some of those cars in here. Not my personal taste, but that's okay, right? I mean, the beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and some of those are perfect fits for those cars in that period. You jump in that car and it's still got a three watt CB antenna sticking up on the back glass and an Oingo or what was it? An Oingo box alarm. I think something like that. I'm dating myself, obviously, but all the car alarms and the alpine stereos that got put in them and the ridiculous giant holes that were cut into the doors to put silly stereo systems in these cars, none of that made any sense. We undo a lot of that stuff, guys. I'll tell you that. We do undo a lot of that.

There's a lot of like 69 and 70 Mustangs too, where they cut into those rear quarter panels on the inside of the car. So hard to find without a 6x9 hole.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

A couple of Jensen 6x9s in the back there, baby. You know, I know. I totally get it. Exactly. It's the same. And we find that on a lot of these cars and we end up repairing those. We'll either have to do a door panel and re-cut it correctly or... But you hate to see that, but it happened. And there was a time when aftermarket stereos were pretty popular. It's less so today.

Did these cars have... So I've also seen, at least in the Ford world, everything at one point in time... I mean, there's your true, these were race cars, we only made so many of them, type cars that really always held their value. But there was times, especially in the 80s and 90s, where cars tanked, right? There was maybe in the early 2000s where they weren't worth anything. Is that kind of a similar thing with these? There was a time where you could have picked one up for maybe 15, 20 grand?

Well, even less, depending on the year and the condition of the car. I mean, there's still cars. You can find basket case cars out there for not a lot of money. But the certain models and during a certain period of time before the nostalgia really started to hit on these cars, there was a lot of low dollar cars that just got neglected as a result. And certainly, less so than 911s, more so than 924s, 914s, 944s, 928s. Those cars just didn't have the staying power in terms of the desire for those cars, and therefore, they just kind of quickly fell into disrepair, and then the values fell out. But the 911 has always kind of maintained a reasonable value, but since roughly 2015, about the last 10 years, values have just gone just through the roof on these cars. Obviously, they're not making any more air-cooled cars.

What do you think did it, Bill?

It's a great question, because I really can't tell you, other than my own feelings about how generationally things tend to change. The cars that we all lusted after as teenagers, collectors are now in a spot where they can afford them. They've had great careers, and now we're going to go out and find the next group of cars, right? The guys that were buying the 57 Chevys, those guys have kind of aged out at this point, right? So it's now, we're now seeing this emergence of all the JDM cars and the 80s cars and the 90s cars. And that's great. That happens with, as we age, right? And we just fall into the group of, these are the cars that I grew up with as a kid, and boy, I lusted after that 84 Chevy Camaro. Terrible example, by the way, but I know I did lusted after that car because my grandfather sold Chevrolets. Or the Corvettes. And now these are, you know, as collector items, it's a great hobby because you can get into these cars, buy a nice car, enjoy it for a number of years, and then ultimately sell it on and not lose money or make money, you know, in the, you know, if you've kept the car up in a nice condition, so, yeah, it's really, it's a heck of a hobby. And I'm fortunate because I think this particular car transcends a lot of time. So, given that the 356s were made back in the 40s, all the way to the modern 911, and you can look at that lineage and see that entire car and say, oh, I understand that's a Porsche through and through.

So much history.

Yeah, and as a result, that car continues to be still desirable. I get more thumbs up rolling down the road in an air-cooled 911 than I would in any modern car.

Really?

Seriously, any modern car. Maybe I might get a thumbs up in a Lamborghini or a Ferrari or something like that.

We don't talk about them anymore. Those are the other prancing horses now.

Yeah, those Ferrari people and the Lamborghini people. No offense, folks, but it's not an air-cooled car.

This is a German channel only, folks.

I talk about this all the time about this design. I mean, it's so unique in what they've done, and they've just kept it, I mean, even in the modern ones, I mean, sure, things are starting to blend a little bit, but you can tell there, like there's the 911 in that car.

DNA, absolutely. And they've gotten a lot bigger and a lot wider. If you put a new 992 variant 911 next to a 65 911, and there's pictures out there which show those two cars side by side, this one looks like a Mosquito compared to the current modern car. I mean, it's a much larger car today, which obviously gives it its road going performance and handling characteristics and so on.

Do modern cars lose something because of that?

I think I'd have a heck of a time sitting behind the seat of a GT3 RS on a racetrack, so I would say no. But as a street car, yeah. I mean, some of this stuff is just over designed for that kind of use, and it wasn't really intended for that sort of use. But it's back to that difference between the analog, direct connection, no power steering, hands feeling the steering rack in your hand, turning it really hard to make the turns or park. There's something about that that's really appealing. Just like your, I mean, what your Mustangs do you have?

I pick one. We got out of, we had a couple 6-9 Mach 1s. We sold them a long time ago to get into Harley's, and then I started having kids now back into cars. And then when I went back into cars, I got into Fox body specifically, because those are the cars I grew up, like you're talking about, rusting after.

But those early cars, those middle 60s cars, you drive one of those, and it feels like a death trap sometimes. The suspension hasn't been done. And there's no cup holder. You're all over then. There's no cup holder, of course. And there's not a cup holder in a 911 either.

Yes, I know.

Is that a German ad?

No, you can't. But the Germans weren't really happy about cup holders. I don't think they really like cup holders. They have them in the modern cars, but the early cars, cup holder. What are you doing? You're supposed to be driving, not drinking.

Well, there they just get the little coffee they swing in. They don't know that here we need a 32 on Starbucks.

That's right. You need a little something you just tip it and go.

I would say that, so I have a 2021 GT500, which is a track car, right? And then, but I enjoy driving around town in my 86 Thunderbird Turbo Coupe way more than I do in my GT500. Sure, it gets looks and things, but when I'm in that car, I want to be on the track because it's purpose built. So I think what you're kind of saying is a similar deal. When I just bomb it around town, the 180 horsepower feels great. It's a five-speed. I can bang through the gears. It's a lot of fun in town.

And you'll have more conversations about that too, when you roll up some place than you will with your modern car.

Yes, because they don't see, you don't see them on the road.

Right.

What is that, you know, or like, you know, especially like, again, that I don't know what it is. Like, I really went down to 87 through 89 rabbit hole multiple times over the years, because I used to be a photographer before I did this.

Sure.

And there's just something like that's just so appealing about that car to me. And it's like, you just have so many questions you just want to ask about it. And it's, I'm born in 99, right? So it's like that is before I was even thought.

Sure.

And it's just so cool to see that sort of history.

Yeah, absolutely. And the 99, I mean, that's the first year, you're a 996 guy, which is the first year of the water-cooled cars. Yeah, you're a water-cooled guy. You're a water-cooled guy. But that means that there's the beauty of that, right? So at some point, you may want to birth your car and you're going to look back and say, hey, how can I find a Porsche that I can get into? And that's why the 996, which was largely kind of disdain when it was first released.

Is that the egg omelet?

Yeah, that's what people call the fried egg headlight or whatever.

It's thrown on me.

And it does. And as time goes by, it'll grow on you. And I was just talking to somebody else about that earlier this week. And that car will gain a following. And prices are already starting to come up. It's reached its minimum depreciation level. And it's hard to find a decent 996 now for less than 20 grand. I mean, it's really hard to find one. I mean, you can find other cars that are kind of clapped out and lots of miles, but it's hard to find a good one for less than 20. And that's the nice thing about Porsches is there, as a new car purchase, certainly the 911s don't depreciate very much. They hold their value extremely well. Good investment.

So how do you evolve as a business, right? Because for example, you mentioned like, as the younger generations come up and the older generations phase out, do you see yourself transitioning to more of that water-cooled stuff? Or do you just stay in the, like, how does that work?

Well, we'll move with the market as the market continues to move and we'll evolve certainly as the more, yeah, of course, and as the more newer cars or, you know, when you think about a 99, 996, 911 variant, that car is 25 years old, 26 years old. So that's already almost, it's in classic territory for sure. And we will absolutely continue to support those cars. And as more, you know, I don't know where things are going to go with the electrics. That's going to be tough. That hasn't been a great path for Porsche so far. So we'll see how that plays out.

Have you done any swaps yet?

No, no, no, no, no, no.

We've had a shot that's done one, two, two of them. How many?

Two EV swaps.

EV swaps into 964s? I think it was 964s.

Could have been.

Yeah, something like that.

There's a local gentleman here that we work with, great guy, super engineer. And he did one, he put a Tesla drivetrain and some Chevy Volt batteries in a 911. Most 911 folks cringe at that.

Yeah, that was the most passionate you got this whole episode.

Yeah, it's probably true.

I think you blew out the microphones in that one. No, I don't know.

It's just not the kind of thing that you tend to do. I mean, I've looked at it. I think there's probably a market, a very tiny market for that kind of thing. Find a car that's got a damaged drivetrain or something. Even then, people would rather see you put an internal combustion motor back in that car.

So we found his limit as a purist.

Yes, that's as far as I go. I'm sorry. We like those ice engines.

So, okay, this is a question I had earlier. What's... I wouldn't say this is a trap. This is more so of you pick your poison. What's your best customer look like, the ideal customer, and what's a customer, I'm going to use nicer words here, that you would shy away from, or car rather.

Yeah. Well, we're very fortunate. Of course, like any service-oriented business, there's certain customers that are going to be a bit more demanding, or have expectations that aren't realistic. I would say by and large, our customer base understands what they've got, and what it costs to keep these cars operational and running. You're not going to take a 50-year-old car, fix it today, and then this guy is going to not show back up for another five years. I mean, these cars do need attention. And I'd say if there's a bad customer, and that's a tough word to use, it's an inexperienced 911 buyer who loves the look of the car, but doesn't really understand what it's going to cost to keep this car on the road and safe. And we end up being the bearer of bad news sometimes when they, and then we're the butt of the upsetness because of the fact that their motor is blown up. And we're the ones telling them that this is $25,000 or $30,000 to replace this, and that's a lot of money, it really is. So yeah, there's that kind of a client. But by and large, I think the people that we work with understand they want quality, they want to make sure the car isn't just held together with bailing wire and scotch tape, and we'll point out things that we see. But by and large, the customers are pretty receptive. What I will say is, of the departments that we have here, the paint and body, the mechanical and the upholstery, upholstery is my favorite, and I only say that because the time to turn it is pretty quick. The customer kind of knows exactly what they're getting into when we start, because they're not going to get a surprise with upholstery typically like they might with paint and body, or with an engine. And then when they get the product back, they're always thrilled. The car smells like new leather. It's wonderful, you know, and it looks great, and we spend all of our time inside these cars. So we're in the car driving.

I think about it more often, yeah.

Right, I'm not, what can I see? I can't see the back of the car or the sides of the car. I mean, I know I'm driving around in a great looking car, but I'm in the interior. So when I touch it, and I feel the soft, and I'll have you guys touch the green car, excuse me, the light green metallic car behind, and feel that leather, and just go, oh man, it's just nothing like that. So it's really wonderful.

I'm just thinking to myself about the worn out leather on our Delta plane.

Well, that's the problem, right, is even if you are now a modern day car, when you date leather, like, I don't think that's, it's pleather of anything, I mean, anything.

There's more of that that's happening in cars for sure. I will say, and we have some videos that we play here on these screens sometimes that show the production of Porsche's seats, and they do a hell of a job. I mean, they really pick the finest quality materials, and they have laser guided plotting that cuts the hides to the right shape and get rid of the defects from the marks that are in the cowl, right? You know, the barbed wire mark or whatever might be in the cowl when you get that hide and you got to work around all that kind of stuff. So, and that's interesting, you know.

I'm just skimming it.

You don't get into the details like that.

No, I'm just thinking about like, oh, I don't like that mole. Wow, get out of it. OK, so we don't actually touch too much on the interior or upholstery side of things. So kind of touch on that a little bit. How do you educate yourself on this? Obviously, you city of five full-time upholsters. Is that the correct word?

Trimmers, some people in the business call them trimmers.

OK, so what's special about that profession? What do you guys do?

Hardest thing I have to find. I would OK, young people out there, if you want to get into a great career as a tradesman, this is a trade that is dying to some extent. And the folks that are that are expert in this are becoming fewer and harder to find. They're aging out. And it's not one of those trades that people have kind of fallen on the backside. It is the hardest thing I have to find is find good upholsterers.

OK.

And once that I mean, we're very specific and we only do Porsche interiors. So back to what I think I said a little while ago was when you do these things over and over again, you start to learn the little tricks and the variations between the years and model of seats. You learn what it takes and what are the materials that are needed to redo the interior of a 74 2.7 car versus that same interior on a later car, an 80s car is going to use different materials, different leather, not as much vinyl. And then you move a little further forward and then they were using split. The back of the seat was vinyl and the front of the seat that you touched was leather. And so these are all these little differences from year to year. So in my, from my perspective, I'm using books and other reference materials to find, here's what was done in 1974. And here's the materials that were used. Here's the factory options. Here's what we could do that would look great as well. So.

I know there was an issue with, I told you I had a 79 pace car with Helms Tooth Recaro seats in it. And there was an upholster somewhere that ended up with a bunch of new old stock material. And it was like people were rushing to send there because there was only so much of it. And I don't know, I'm assuming there's people that repop it and stuff now, but for a while there was very hard to get a hold of.

Yeah, absolutely. And some of the classics, Porsche used a number of different fabrics, things they call papita, which was Hounds Tooth. And then they were using Pasha, which is probably one of the more famous 70s sort of materials. It's that checkered flag looking inserts that you would see primarily on a 928. There's a 928 in the parking lot.

Like the wavy looking one that we saw at the back?

Right out here. If you see that T-shirt right there that says Sunderwerks on it, that background is Pasha. It's kind of evolved from a waving checkered flag. And that became an insert material on 928s, 944s, and 911s during the late 70s and early 80s, you could order that. And so that stuff went away for a long time until somebody finally came back and reissued it. But then you have tartans, sort of the heritage of the Scottish tartan, different combinations of colors woven in these boxy patterns and whatnot. So Porsche had three or four of those that they used a lot. Tweeds and just all kinds of stuff that kept up with whatever the times were. Back when your grandparents had shag carpeting, Porsche's carpeting was a little longer back then. Now it's a little tighter and a little shorter. So, you know, and you're trying to find all those nuances when you're restoring a car.

What's the toughest year or generation to restore then?

Boy, I should have a really quick answer for that. I'm not sure that I do.

I'll have a lot more long answers here for you soon.

Okay, great.

I'm just getting warmed up on.

Oh, no, please. I haven't got a time already.

Are you doing good on time, by the way?

I'm fine. Cool. At least for right now. Hardest cars. I mean, there's certain rare cars, certain cars that were equipped or that were very specific. Some of the later long hood cars, some of the high performance cars, some of the RS long hoods where you had very specific bits and parts that were only there for one or two years. And those, they're harder to find. I would say restoring any 928 is a difficult process because a lot of those parts are on the titanium now for sure. Because that was not a high production car, so there's not a lot of used parts out there. And because it was such a low production car, there's not a lot of repop parts because there's not a big market.

Yeah, why would you be willing to sell 100 of them, right?

Exactly, it's very difficult.

It's a very niche market in that specific market. No different than I'm sure there's Ford products that you would have a hard time finding.

The Thunderbird I was telling you about, the 86 Thunderbird Turbo Coupe, I think was a very cool car. But it's not a Fox Body Mustang, even though there are a lot of platform similarities. So anything that's not Fox Body specific, I can't get parts for it. So that's why there's three or four parts cars sitting all back as well.

That you have to steal from.

Oh, I do it all the time.

Oh yeah, I've got a few of those out behind the back of the building here too, that you're having to peel off from, to be able to put something together. And that's why you tend not to throw out a lot of stuff.

Yep. Which is kind of bad. See, I've been telling you that.

I mean, if you look around, if you go into some of my storage areas here, you're going to say, wow, this is only seven years?

Yeah.

Because there's stuff piled to the rafters, either old fenders or suspension parts, or those kinds of things. And yeah, there's a lot of that that comes off these cars as people are upgrading.

What about, is there any interchangeability with these with any other cars? For example, a good example is anything from Lamborghini is technically Audi, right? Is there anything similar with some of these older cars or even newer ones?

Well, I think there's some similarities, clearly between the 356s, the earliest of the Porsches and Volkswagen, because obviously there was an overlap in some of that. The 914 was a Volkswagen-derived project, and that particular car, which was really only a six-year run from 70 to 76, that car shared a lot of Volkswagen parts. And there's some 356 parts as well. There's engine swaps that tend to occur in sort of the air-cooled universe, where people will, you can drop a Porsche motor into an old VW bus, or something like that, I mean. And those sort of things do happen, sure. And obviously Porsche is still part of a Volkswagen group, so I'm sure if you look in the parts bins from some Audis, and when I'm hiring new techs for modern cars, I definitely look at an Audi tech, or a Volkswagen tech, because there's similarities in the troubleshooting processes, and some of the software that you're using with the modern Porsches and Volkswagen and Audi.

I'm glad you actually brought that up. I was going to ask you that question earlier. So when you're hiring somebody to do upholstery for you, what is that, how do you get that sixth person? How do you know someone's going to be talented enough, or coachable, or what do you look for?

I had somebody who called me yesterday. It's a great question, because I'm dealing with it right now. Because I am looking for that next person, because we're very busy. You're really looking at the quality of the work that they have done. So if they can't show you images or pictures of previous work that they've done, and I can tell very quickly when I look at somebody's seats, even if it's a box body Mustang seat, if it was well done or not. And how are the stitch lines and how is the fit? Because sewing the cover is only one piece. Getting it to fit right on the foam and on the frame is as much of a talent as sewing the cover itself. There's a lot of tugging and pulling and slapping and hitting and twisting and turning that goes into getting those things on the frames correctly. If I can't get that from somebody for whatever the reason, we'll bring them in and I'll have them do, we'll give them a seat and say, here you go, go at it. It's normally, they can typically get a seat done in about two days. But if it's taking much longer than that, or they don't really, they don't know what they're doing, then you can tell that they're either gonna need a lot of training if they have good fundamental skills, or they're not gonna be a good fit.

What are those fundamental skills look like? Let's say somebody's listening and maybe a potential employee 10 years from now or something.

Call me. Obviously, attention to detail. The ability to measure and cut. And you have to be good on a sewing machine. And there's lots of... I'm not. I'm none of those things, right?

Yeah, I got a D in that class.

Yeah, I love it. I know HOMEAC was not my thing. But...

Oh, no, I was the only F I ever got, actually.

Okay, well, very good. Here you are today. But having said that, you can tell when somebody sits down in front of a sewing machine, I can tell pretty quickly if they're gonna be good or not.

Okay.

Because it's like a symphony when you're watching it.

Okay.

When you're... the movements, the movements with all parts of their bodies, their knees, their feet, their hands, the backing up. I mean, it's fascinating to watch. And I would certainly encourage you to be able to sit down. You can shoot some one of my guys doing some stuff. And it really is a symphony when you watch it being done correctly and beautifully and focused correctly and being able to understand how these two pieces go together so that when you turn this now inside out to put it on the cover, it's not going to pucker in a certain place or I mean, those are the little details. And you can tell a good seat from a bad seat. I can show you a 911 seat that was done beautifully and a 911 seat that's just done terribly. And some people may look at both and go, both are acceptable. When I look at it, I look at all those little details and can tell what was done well and what was done by somebody that doesn't do a lot of it.

What's the difference between a top-notch shop and somebody who just wants it back on the road?

Yeah, sure.

Well, I've seen that with a lot of those repop seat covers. You can just order and they put on there. And sure, they look the part and they're passable, but they almost seem loose or a little bit wrinkled in certain areas that...

You just set me up, Dan. It's like it's the difference between an off-the-rack suit and a custom tailored suit.

Yep.

Because that cushion over 30 or 40 years and the heat and humidity has shrunk or pulled in or contracted or the shape has changed slightly. So you try to take that off-the-shelf cover and slide it on the seat and attach it in all the right places. It's not as simple like a lot of people just think, oh, you go, you pull it on and there you go. There's all these little places where you're attaching it and pulling it down through the cushions and so on. To get that fit, you really have to spend some time working on it. And sometimes you will fit a seat and the cushions aren't quite right. And so we have to pull it back off and we'll make it tweak or a tuck here and then put it back on the car.

Well, at the end of the day, like you said, these cars were hand-built, right? So it's not, I mean, they could even roll off brand new and still be variants. It's not like they were all kicked out by a machine and then put together by robots in a factory.

That's very true. The old stuff, these old seats and so on are, there's definitely variations from what one craftsperson did back then and then the other, of course.

You know, that makes me giggle. It's like, you know how some Nissan GTRs and a lot of AMG's are signed by whoever built it or who assembled it? I can almost wonder if somebody does a high output. If they see a signature from a particular person, they'd be like, ah, not this guy again. That would be funny, but anyway.

There's times when you pull off a cover on a seat and somebody will have put their name on the inside of the cover. We put little surprises inside of all of ours.

Really?

If you have to dig it apart. Yeah.

Cut one open and look.

Cut one open and see. That way, that's how we bring the customer back.

It's an automatic invoice for you to repair the cut overs.

It's our seat, right?

It's a treasure. There's treasure inside this seat.

When do you have to give up on a project, and particularly to like upholstery in this instance, like, let's say you make a few mistakes or whatever, at what point is it no longer saveable? Or sometimes, do you even have to like source a new seat altogether?

Very rarely, sometimes, if you got a bent frame, you might have to source a new seat. But we get them all. We had a guy come in who had rented a... This is a funny story. He rented a Cayenne, like on a Touro, and somebody shot at him in the car. I don't know the whole story, but they put a bullet hole that went through one side of the car, through the headrest, right through and out the other side of the other headrest in the back. So we had two different headrests that we had to try to fix. And so we had to try to match the color, because this guy was trying to return this car to the owner repaired, right? Yeah. We didn't give up. It was tough to find that, because it also had an embossed logo in it, and just a bunch of other stuff that we had to try to come back with. But it's very rare. Certainly, when it comes to upholstery, we're not going to give up. It's very rare that you would have to give up on upholstery.

Or more so, when do you have to throw away a piece of fabric?

Quite often. All the time.

You're probably cutting your own foam and everything here too.

Yeah. I mean, there's foam cushions that have been repopulated and made, but other stuff is, you try to use what you can, but we will either improve or remake other things that we can't get or that are in too bad a condition.

A factory ECU can get you really far, but if you're trying to get the most out of your car, you have to take your tuning to the next level. Whether you are doing a highly original LS swap or are a glutton for punishment and want to keep your rotary, a Haltech can help you extract top level performance while keeping your car tolerable to drive. If you go to tunebyshawn.com, you can schedule a free consultation to see what is right for you and your build, but you can also go there, save 5% on all Haltech goodies using code Minnoxide and do it all yourself. That's tunebyshawn.com, let's get you back to the show. What's your favorite part about what you do?

Obviously, the cars and watching the car progress.

Okay.

Like watching the car that was really, you know, in really bad condition become a beautiful 911 again or a beautiful, whatever, 356. I do like the people and I've met some really nice people in this business that I would have never met otherwise. There's groups that I've joined, these driving things that I do. That's really been the benefit for me. It's really opened up a whole another automotive lifestyle that, you know, probably I'm fortunate because I have a wife who supports it and likes it and okay and understands it because I'm sure there'd be plenty that wouldn't. But it's really is it's just fun to build something that has gotten a nice reputation over time, that people seek us out. It's been kind of fulfilling to accomplish that on a business that I really didn't really know a lot about seven years ago.

Well, and I'm not sure if you appreciate how crazy this is. Like this is a rare thing to see to take this many businesses, put them under one roof and still be around several years later successfully. And you said you're mostly a referral as well.

Yeah. I mean, we don't really advertise per se. Okay. We have an Instagram page and a Facebook page and maybe a couple of Google AdWords that will pop up when we're trying to sell some accessories that we make and so on. Anything in particular? Well, we make some accessory products for Targas, covers, and a lot of upholstered products that we do that people need to replace. And so those are available on our website at sundeworks.com. And that part of the business hasn't really needed a ton. I could do more, of course, if I advertise more. But we're, I think, as you can see from the number of cars in the shop and the number of cars that are on the parking lot, people find us. Right. We're nicely located here kind of in this part of the central south between Florida and Maine. We're kind of centrally located. We're at an airport with a hub.

You're not very far, yeah.

Yeah. So people find us and ship cars into us from all over the place. We have cars. I'm sure I can find four or five different license plates here from Florida or Maryland or Virginia or other places that people are sending cars into us to repair.

Do you get stuff from the west coast frequently, too?

I wouldn't say as frequently for obviously the obvious reasons. You know, there's a lot of good shops out in Los Angeles, too. True.

Anybody you'd recommend talking to? Because we do plan an LA trip soon.

Oh, geez. Well, let me think on that. I'll certainly get you some names, but there's some really great shops. Obviously, if you wanted to focus on some 356 products, you know, and the outlaws that Rod Emory is building out in Los Angeles. Great guy. Great guy to have on a podcast as well. But, you know, there's just lots of good shops. And because of the population bases and the number of cars that California has, there's been a number more of these sort of specialist shops that kind of pop up out there. Yeah, we are kind of a rare thing to have a shop that has all of these things that are one roof. And, you know, based on our location in the city and the right staff to keep executing on it. So, yeah, we're fortunate in that regard.

Did you ever get to a point where you're like, what am I doing?

Every day.

Every day.

Right now, as a matter of fact.

Yeah.

No, I enjoy it. There's certainly like in any business, you go home, you know, after a hard day where there's been an issue or a problem or something that you've had to resolve, it never goes the way you expect it to go. Never goes that way. We're human beings that are here, right? So you're gonna turn a nut or a bolt too hard at some point and break something. You're gonna not tighten something up that should have been tightened. It's just the nature of the beast. We're working very hard to avoid all that, but we're human beings too, and so some of that stuff happens. And it's really what you do on the back end of that that differentiates your business from the next. And we definitely stand behind the business if there's ever an issue, so that's important for us.

I think about that every time I get on an airplane or on an amusement park ride. If somebody worked on this, they could have had a bad day.

You better hope they didn't have a bad day, right? Exactly.

Yeah, I'm driving back now, Dan.

Yeah.

But so you've had a variety of projects here. What's the most complex or expensive project you've had come through in the last few years?

We are building a car right now for obviously because of our location. NASCAR is very popular in this region, and we have a number of NASCAR drivers that live around us here. So we've built cars for people like Jeff Gordon, built a beautiful 964, backdate for him, very singer-esque kind of car. The car that I think I showed you earlier, which is being built for another NASCAR driver here, is probably the most expensive car that we will have built to date. 3.9 liter air-cooled motor, carbon fiber panels on the roof and tail of the car, and other spots on the car. It'll be a very expensive car. But obviously, it takes a lot of time to execute on this stuff, and that's why it costs so much money.

How about, for example, let's say somebody wants to send in and get some seats for... What's your most common model that you have people send in?

911, a G-body seat between 1974 and 1989.

Okay, so let's say somebody wants to do some sort of custom seat. Take me through the process of what I would do, and ultimately what it will cost based off of the choices that I make with you.

Well, we try to keep it pretty simple. Okay. There's definitely some differences in material costs between leather and vinyl and different fabrics and so on, but the bulk of the costs on these things is in the time and the labor it takes to do it. So I try to keep things simple and we just kind of price things. You decide if you want the thing returned to its vinyl, we'll do it in vinyl. You want it in leather, we'll do it in leather, but the prices are going to be about the same pretty much. Yeah, they are. I mean, this may be a few hundred dollars difference in the material cost.

Can you do anything like exotic?

Like, again, like, well, if you could bring, you know, you want an ostrich or I was going to say ostrich. Something like that. You know, I'm sure that that ostrich leather might cost me a heck of a lot more money, in which case I'd have to pass that along. But by and large, I haven't found that to really be the case just yet. Now, Singer has really made woven leather very popular on their interiors. That's very expensive. That could almost double the cost of doing a seat. Current prices, if you sent me a single seat to do, a single seat in leather of that vintage is gonna run you somewhere around $2,200, by and large. You know, within $100 one way or the other to redo that seat. That's everything. Restoring that seat to like new condition. A full car, if you, you know, this green car behind you. To do that entire interior, every piece of that interior, which is what we're doing on that car, from the headliner to the carpeting, you're gonna spend $13,000 to $15,000 to redo one of those cars.

That's not reasonable for that quality of what that is.

I couldn't agree more. I mean, there's certainly jobbers and shade tree upholster guys that would probably do it for less money. But if you want quality work and from a reputable shop and so on, that's kind of what it's gonna cost you.

Are you guys doing anything dash wise to like fiberglass work and building any of that kind of stuff too from scratch or?

Not so much of that. No, we really don't have to. That's what we were doing before when we were doing a lot of these hot rods and custom things where it was, you know, in the wood shop, putting boxes together and then covering them and, you know. For us, it's really not too much that we have to do that is custom. And fortunately, there's a lot of guys that are, a few companies that are making molded parts that we can buy and cover. So if you want something custom, a custom console for a 911, for example, there's not a lot you're going to do to change that custom console from one seat, from one car to the next, because it's only, you know, yay wide and the yay long. But so there's guys that are making variations of that console that we can then we'll buy them in and recover them and add our own touches to them.

OK.

How about when it comes to paint? Because we went through your shop over there. What was the one that was currently in the paint booth? What color was that?

Chiffon white.

OK.

Yeah, tough color.

So OK, so kind of go into that. What makes it difficult to get the correct color for a car, especially when it comes to restoration? I'm sure that there's some difficulties to that as well.

So the bottom, the real issue is color match. Am I painting the entire car? Am I trying to paint a portion of the car? Was the car damaged? Am I trying to retain the rest of the original paint, but now blend or match something? You'll see a lot of cars. I can take you out in the parking lot and we'll go look at several cars and you'll say, oh, this one was panel matched or we call it butt matched, right? So the hood got repainted, but the fenders didn't. And when you see the line, you see that hood against the fender, the colors aren't the same. We've all seen that, right? Most times body shops deal with that by blending a little of the new color onto the old panel. And then, and then re clearing the whole thing. So it all kind of blends and you don't notice that subtle shading difference as it's changing moving across the curve of the fender. But color matching and blending is computer aided right now, so you can take a camera and shoot a picture of a color of a car, and it will kind of give you some formulas as a baseline start. But it's very rare that that's going to be a great match. These paints fade over time. They've been in the sun, they're 50 years old, they've cracked, they've baked. And so you're having to try to match paint to old paint. That can be hard. So that those are some of the troubles with paint, right? Quality of the paints, you have to use great quality paints. The Porsches were painted originally with Glaserit paint. It's an old school brand that's been around. It's rolled up under the another brand right now as the paint. It's highly, it's very expensive paint. We use that. We'll use good PPG products or other. It depends on the needs of this particular restoration. Okay.

You said expensive. How expensive is the raw material there?

Oh, boy. I mean, I'm shocked. I mean, the material costs on a car, just the cost of the paint and the clear and the primers and so on can run $5,000 cost to paint a car with good quality paint.

Okay.

Absolutely.

And that's just for the raw materials?

Just for the raw materials, not the labor. So a good paint job is going to cost you $25,000, $30,000.

That was my next question then. Okay. And then how often are you stripping cars completely down or repainting them? Or do you typically just... I guess, what are your variations and processes there?

What's the need on the car? We did one last week where there was some rust in the door jam. Client didn't want us to do the metal work, wanted us to kind of cut out the rot and kind of do the typical sort of Bondo filler, you know, fiber, and that material has gotten a lot better. But they didn't want to do a full metal repair on the car. We did it. It came out looking nice. And we'll see if it holds up, you know, hopefully it'll hold up. And then there's other guys that send us a car, completely perfectly good car, looks like a nice car from the outside. But you start to take things apart, you realize that the car is full of holes.

Yeah.

And so then you're stripping it all the way down with sandblasting or some other media blasting or paint strippers, so that you're able to now see what metal work, what metal repairs need to be done.

Here's a, so I like to ask this question of everybody who's restored cars that we bring on the show. So, do you often have to repair auction cars? Like somebody had to get something from like a Bear Jackson or a Meekum or what have you?

We do.

Okay.

There's plenty of cars that we get in where they've come from an online auction or from an auction and the car doesn't run right.

Okay.

It's, you know, it doesn't run well at all. Or the paint work underneath was terribly done and they look great in the pictures, but the minute you open a door or a panel, you'll see that it's full of Bondo or something like that, you know. Yeah, unfortunately, that's just the nature of the beast. But we do a lot of those repairs for sure. We see that a lot. I think there's two or three cars in here right now that we've gotten in that we've had to do a lot of work to bring that car up to the level that the buyer thought the car was when he bought it. So, which is a shame, but it does happen and that's kind of where we're here to help with.

You hear about that a lot. For example, we had Schwartz Performance on it. We actually had a clip go viral. I think it did 15 million views across multiple platforms because he was talking about the same sort of deal, like restored cars. Why does we start to wrap up here? Damn, I just lost the whole question there. Where'd it go on me?

Because we don't stand to wrap up here right now. We can't wrap up because we don't have the last question.

I was going to say, was there anything else that you kind of wanted to touch on? Like what are some misconceptions in this world or anything like that?

You know, I think we all, it's the classic case of when you do things that you love to do, you're really not working. And it's really not a misconception. It's, this is hard. What we do is hard, and it's hard and there's stress and there's pressure and it never goes the way you want it to go. And so the idea that as expert as we may be at certain things, this would be a misconception. You're always going to have things that just don't go well. And you have to be able to pivot and adjust to the situation and hopefully come up with a solution to fix whatever the issue is. And you asked a question a little earlier about ever throwing up our hands. No, I don't think we really throw up our hands. There's times when we may ask for outside help or call others to try to, you know, see have you seen this issue or this problem? But if you like what you're doing, like I do, and I have a good group of people around me, and that's very important as in any business, you got to like the people you're working with. And it's really hard when you don't. I'm fortunate that I'm in a position where I get to, you know, pick the people that I've hired and have a great team. And they're continuing to help build the business and make it bigger. And I'm continuing to recruit to hire more technicians and upholsters and body shop guys and everything else. So, and it's fun. I've been talking more and more to folks like you guys on these sort of things because it's an interesting subject. I mean, and there's lots of guys that love this hobby and want to learn about this hobby and how to, you know, get involved even, right? I have a dream job for a lot of guys, you know, that spent a career doing this. And now they're, instead of building wooden boats in a barn in New Hampshire, you know, I'm here, you know, helping, having a team of guys that are building and restoring Porsches, which is great.

Do you have, over the years you've been doing this, do you have a favorite build or a spec that came through? You're like, right there, that's the one.

Yeah, there's a couple of the cars. I mean, let me think about, there's a 79 SC that we did in Oak Green Metallic, complete restoration, every bit of the car with a cork interior. The car just came out. It was a stunning looking car. Nothing, no crazy departure. It was really just a full restoration, but great car. I'll send you guys a picture of it. Wonderful car owner, super happy with it, wants to bring us another car at some point. And so yeah, it's projects like that where the car is just, you know, OEM plus, where we've done something that's enhanced, because the car wouldn't have come with leather here or there, but we've added it. And now you look at it and it's just it's a piece of art. Really, really gorgeous. So yeah.

Do you have a go to interior fabric that's your personal favorite or design?

I like all kinds of tartans. I really do like that sort of those, the colors that go along with that. And sometimes the individual design and and figuring out how to pick up a few colors that may or may not make sense individually. But when you put them together, they kind of tie together. This this light green metallic car behind you with the cork interior, I, we helped select a tartan that's going on the inserts of these seats that is just outstanding. And it pulls a little bit of this green, but it's got some purple and some browns and it just looks gorgeous with the car. So I like that sort of stuff and I like adding the personality.

What are you most proud of?

This team, the team of people and the fact that they do come together and work really hard. You know, it's a sports analogy for sure, but having that team of guys that all get along with one another and have certain skills that they're good at and they're all kind of helping one another. And I'm really proud of the team. And as a result, the team has made Sunderwerks well known and respected in this business. I certainly wouldn't be able to do it by myself. There's no doubt, no question. So it's the team.

Yeah, I think what you've done here in the short period of time that you've done it in, grabbing three shops that may or may not have made it or could or could not have been struggling at the time, and what you've turned it into is pretty amazing.

Thank you.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you.

Well, in that case, do you wanna pop the usual three down?

Sure.

And then we'll probably do a Minnesota goodbye knowing us.

Yeah. All right, so at the end of every episode, we'd like to ask our guests to pick three cars.

Okay.

We need a track car.

Okay.

A daily driver.

Okay.

And a show car. You have an unlimited budget. Build whatever you want. What do you pick? Wow.

I wish I had a moment to think about this, but I mean, the track car GT3 RS, that would be pretty straightforward. The 992? 992 GT3 RS. Yeah. I think the new car is phenomenal car as a track car. As a daily driver, probably a 992 ST Oh. Which I, you know, from all reports, I'm not driven one, but I'm told that it is a wonderful combination of suspension and characteristics that make that car very, but it's aspirational from my perspective.

I think that's the one that, do they only come in manual only too?

ST, I think, yeah, I'm not sure if you can buy an ST as a PDK or not.

Yeah, that's like a pretty crazy one.

Yeah. You should ask me this question again. I'm not sure I'm doing well here.

No, that's fine. People like to overthink the pick three. It's like, oh, can I redo it? I'm like, no, next time you're on the show. Yeah.

So redo it then.

Yeah.

Then you said show car. Yep. Probably a 959, which is the Porsche supercar from the middle 80s.

The Bill Gates car, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And it's very unique, but it's got 911 DNA, for sure. And it was the supercar of its day. And we see a few here that we service and work on.

Really? Okay.

We're going to be helping the local Porsche dealer with some upholstery on a restoration project on a silver, silver gray 959.

I should have asked you that earlier. I was going to ask, have you seen a 959? So I'm like, there's no way.

Is that what we saw in Vegas that was in the hallway outside the McLaren dealer?

No, no, that was a 917.

Yeah, that 917, the quintessential, which would have been a great answer for a track car as well.

We can go back, double down.

Which one's it going to be? All of the track car.

GT3 RS?

Yeah, I still think it's GT3 RS. I'm not sure I'm ready to stick my legs out over the front suspension on a 917.

That was Jerry Seinfeld's car that we saw in Vegas. I think it was a 917.

Sold for $25 million.

Fun fact, some of the people we've had on our show back in Minnesota, they actually went out to Road America and did the footage of that car over there. It was listing photos and videos and all that crazy stuff.

Meekum put that all together. Yeah.

Super cool. Just crazy. Have you actually done anything crazy like that? Like that kind of goes away from your norm here? Or is the 959 going to be as crazy as it gets?

I don't know. Well, I mean, we've had some vintage racers here, some cars with a lot of racing pedigree and so on. Haven't had an original equipment 917, but my first employee who is now retired, was one of the technicians in Germany that built the 917 motors. So he was there when they built the first 25 homologated 917s. And he was, again, my first mechanical employee that I hired here at Sunderwerks. I think he's in his middle 70s now and is finally retired, but a great guy. Yeah. And well known in this area because he's certainly a wealth of knowledge on Porsches.

Okay. Yeah.

Didn't really have to do a lot of resume checking on that one.

No, I didn't. He showed me a picture of him standing next to, you know, you're in. Okay.

Those guys got the best stories, man. Yeah, absolutely. Is there anybody that you would like to shout out or give any recognition to, whether that be partners or people you work with, employees, whatever?

I mean, again, I could name all 17 employees that we have here as folks that I'm really thrilled to have on the team. We do have some great vendor partners that we work with. We do have a great relationship with our local Porsche dealer here at Hendrick Porsche. But other than that, I would say, no, nothing that comes to mind. Again, I could shout out everybody here, but I'd need a list.

It's going to be like the Star Wars credits, right? Exactly.

And I would.

Well, then on that note, unless you have anything else?

No, I would just, I just want to say, so I am a Ford guy, but I would put this at a very close second for me. As him and I do, we're kind of enthusiasts of road core stuff. And I don't think I've ever been on a track that I haven't shared with a Porsche of some way, shape or form. And when you think track car, I think that's a lot of people's go-to for what you would.

So I would agree.

I have respect for that.

I would agree. Yeah, that's very good.

Well, perfect. On that note, where can people find you?

Well, you can find us at sunderworks.com and sunderworks is spelled with an E, not an O. It's kind of the German version. It means special factory. It's loosely translated in German. But sunderworks.com would be one way to find us. Probably the best way on Instagram at at sunderworks and Facebook the same way at sunderworks. I would say, you know, shout out a phone number, but who uses the phone anymore? But that's all of the phone numbers on the sunderworks website and so on as well.

Quick question actually, relating to the phone number comment. What's your average demographic here? Is it all over the place?

Oh, wow.

For customers as?

Yeah, really, you'd be surprised at the age on these cars, how far the cars like you would think. And you know, it's not atypical to think that the average age is probably from 47 to 55 is where the sweet spot is, because those are kind of the guys that can afford a lot of these cars. But there's a growing early 30s kind of group of guys that are finding their way to these cars so they can do the rallies and have fun with the analog air-cooled stuff. So it's a pretty wide range. It really is. OK.

Yeah.

Perfect. Well, then on that note, Dan, where can people find you?

You can find us at Gunner Garage on all things. And yeah, I drive out here with a 944 because that's what I can afford.

We'll find you in that. Yeah.

Yeah.

Perfect. Well, on that note, thank you very much, Dave. I'm glad we made this happen.

My pleasure.

I'm going to give you a better handshake than that.

There you go.

I gave you a dead fish.

Oh, no, no, it was good. It was fine.

You guys made it this far into the episode. So thanks for following us and we'll see you next time. Thanks again for watching the show, guys. Be sure to go into the description down below and check out all of our sponsors. They are what make this show possible. It allows us to travel the country and talk to some really cool guests. So be sure to check them out. Support them just like you support us and see you all next time.