16. HUGE Viper ACR Group Buy , Tools for Ralliers, Tech In Cars w/ Blake Krone

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Minnoxide Podcast. Today, we are talking to Blake about his rallying experiences and the tools that he creates for rally organizers. He is also part of one of the largest group buys of Gen 5 Viper ACRs ever.

Well, hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to episode 16 of the Minnoxide podcast. I'm actually keeping up with the numbers now.

I know, you're remembering them very well. You don't have to ask me anymore.

Yeah, I mean, this is the first episode. I'm just running it off my mouth. But no, but introducing my cohost, Sean, the smartest of all mouths. How's it going, Sean?

Hey, guys, how's it going? I'm doing very well. Harris, how are you?

I think, I wonder if the mics can pick up that SVJ. So side note, we are here at the Auto Motorplex in Chanhassen. We are recording right outside of Cars and Caves, inside, I don't know why.

Yep, that is right. We are live.

No, no, no, we're not live, live.

Yeah, well, if they wanted to come and check us out, but obviously not right now.

Time travel, we've invented time channel. Where's the DeLorean?

We should get somebody on here with a DeLorean at some point. That is really loud. But anyways, we got to introduce our guest, Blake. I don't know how to describe Blake. There's so many different ways. You're a Viper connoisseur enthusiast, as is your wife, with you guys have your matching Vipers. Part of the, you're most known for, in my opinion, the big old group buy, which we'll get into that at some point. You're a techie guy. You create very fun tech stuff, especially for car people. I mean, how would you describe yourself?

Well, that's pretty much it in a nutshell. I mean, I usually tell people, as lame as it sounds, I'm like, car enthusiast, sometimes a carpenter, code poet, because sometimes I write applications, and runner of my mouth, because I used to do podcasts, and I do a lot of speaking at engagements and everything. So yeah, I mean, that's me in about two seconds.

Yeah, that's quick. I mean, I was expecting like 15 more minutes of that, but damn, all right, good podcast.

Well, I mean, we got to get to the content.

Yeah, I'm not gonna say anything anymore, because you're now, you have that in your head, that that's your joke.

Well, here's the deal. I'm like Adam Sandler, I transcend comedy. I don't know.

I didn't know I was supposed to wear my cowboy boots today.

You know, I know life is over when I start wearing Crocs. That's, yeah, okay, I was about to check.

Nope, I'm not wearing Crocs. We are no Croc household. The only reason why the kids have a couple pairs of Crocs is because of the grandparents' bottom. That's the only reason why they're allowed to come home. Well, the Crocs, not the kids. I mean, the kids, I guess we didn't.

I can't remember somebody. Oh, who was it that posted? I think it might have been Grady or somebody. Somebody on Crown was wearing Crocs, and they're like, yeah, that's the fastest Crocs that have ever gone. I think it was like 200 miles an hour or whatever.

Oh, yeah, there's a few Crocs usually on Crown.

Dude, people get a little comfortable on rallies. I'm like, guys, especially if you have a challenge type rally, it's going to be a lot more running involved. Like, for example, car immunity. Use my code. But like this season, like it's going to be a lot of challenges. What's your code?

You can't just say use code and not put in code.

Use code, buy a ticket. But yeah, save $100. But anyways, that was just an impromptu plug. But that's because I forgot the last three episodes. But anyways, back to Blake. So I have a few people that have been excited to hear from you. I have like, you know, like techie friends. And they're like, oh, yeah, sounds like perfect for me. So let's start with that background. So what are you? Little code poet and all that fun stuff. So do you hardware software? I mean, what do you do a lot of?

I've kind of done a lot of all the different aspects of technology. It's my primary focus has always been on mobility and doing things with like wireless technology and understanding how to get devices and people connected to it. But and that started way back in 1999 when I went to the University of Minnesota as a freshman, like, hey, this is really cool. But I've been using computers since my grandpa bought me my first Mac Classic way back in the late 80s, terrorizing Bolton boards and doing all sorts of stuff. And it's always been like I knew technology was going to take off. I knew that was going to be something that was going to be big going forward in life. I actually wanted to always be a mechanical engineer, and I wanted to go work for Dodge or somebody, and I wanted to build cars. I was a mechanic in high school and everything, so I'm like, cars are cool. I got scared off by thermodynamics, so I switched into computer science. I absolutely hated programming when I was in college. I couldn't stand it at all. This is dumb. This is lame. I hate this. So I went on the networking side of things, but now I spend so much time doing application developments because there's so many different use cases for technology. You have an idea. It's like, okay, how can I sit down and write that? Like last night, I was working on two brand new applications, just started coding away, started writing and figure out what's going on with it. So I've done a lot with hardware, with server support, to understand the ins and outs about how the servers. I've built some of the largest wireless networks in the world on cruise ships, airports, malls, stadiums, you name it. But I've always also had application in the background. It's one of the things I tell my daughter, especially, is diversify your income. Don't just rely on one income stream. So I always had the wireless as what I called my main job, and then the application development was, okay, this is something I can do on the side from home. I don't only need much other than just my laptop to do it. That's been the great thing about all the cloud technology services that are out there now. You can spin up servers in seconds for whatever you need.

It's freaky gnarly how quick.

It's scary how quick it is. And I've been watching a show on Apple TV called Extrapolations, which looks at climate change across the different decades and how choices today impact choices in the future. And one of the things that they focus on is cloud storage, cloud servers, like the whole cryptocurrency and everything, the compute power that's necessary for that, how that's impacted our carbon footprint. You know, it's not so much as vehicles, it's these things that nobody ever thinks about, which is the compute side of it. So anything with technology, I'm a huge fan of, and I get involved in a lot of it, looking at different ways of doing, like I said, tracking people I've had, and not in a nefarious way, but looking at it from how can you provide security at malls to be able to track kids and know where the parents are. We've got systems in place that have helped locate large groups of violent protestors that have gone from certain city centers into certain malls and areas, and you can track them and understand who's the agitators and who's actually there on good causes, but who's also just an agitator that goes around the world, because everybody has a fingerprint. We all have, and it's not just what's in your DNA, you have a technology fingerprint as well, that it's really scary when you understand some of it, but understanding it then also helps you, okay, how can we build this in a way that is not so scary?

That's the tough part, right? Because people, obviously, there's adopters, but then it's just kind of toeing that line of what's acceptable. So that's freaking wild. But no, I think I've always figured that you were involved in different aspects of it, but I kind of met you through, obviously, the car community, and then also kind of, well, we actually had a meeting, this time last year, roughly, when you were working on Rallier, I'm not sure. Is that still a project?

It is still a project. It's still kind of going in there. I had hoped to be further along than I am over the winter months, but you know, it's like everybody in Minnesota, we just go into hibernation mode, and we're like, I don't want to work on anything. I really want to put pants on today. I just want to sit and watch TV because it's so cold out. But no, we're still working on it and still looking at how can we build and further car rallies, you know, multi-state rallies, not necessarily speed rallies, like a cannonball type thing. But how can we make it so that there's different activities that you can do while you're on a rally? How can we connect people on the rallies? And how can you connect people that are not on the rallies to people that are on the rallies as well? And make it so that, you know, there's a stigmatism around car communities on everything is, you know, we have these loud cars. So they tell us to get off the streets. So we go and we build a track. Well, then they build homes next to the track and they say we're too loud there. So then you go back to the street racing and then it's problematic. And you know, you've got to look at it as in anything out there, there's a small fraction of people that are the bad apples. Yes, that's always going to be the case. I don't care what it is. You look at everything and there's always going to be that. So now how can we change that a little bit? And how can you make it so that if people feel that somebody is driving uncomfortable, okay, where can they go to report that? And we can at least have a discussion with the drivers or have a discussion with the organizers to say, this is what's going on. Yeah, I love that SVJ out there.

I really do wonder if the microphone is able to pick that up.

Does that guy do that every time?

Which SVJ is it? Is it the highlighter yellow one?

I have no clue. There were no cars when I got here.

If it's right out in front, it's going to be I think it's an orange one.

The orange one. Is that Jason then, I think?

I can't remember.

I don't know. Either way.

Looking at that as one thing about how can we do that, and also from an operational standpoint, we've been behind the scenes on operations as you have been too on the past on rallies. There's a lot of work that goes into these things that people don't realize. They look at it as, oh, I just show up, I wake up, I get in my car, I drive, I eat, I get in my car, stop, go to the bathroom, I get to where I'm going, I party, I go to sleep for a couple hours, and then rinse and repeat. You don't realize.

That's it in a nutshell.

That's what it should look like, though, from the rallier's perspective, too. It's like, hey, I'm here to have fun. I don't want to work here.

For you, it's a totally different story. You're behind the curtain, pulling all the strings.

That was a loose f****** curtain, too, by the way.

I clearly saw what you were doing behind the curtain.

How do you park 100 cars at a facility that on a good day maybe only has 30 cars at a time in their parking lot? How do you get 100 cars to leave?

At the same time? 100? How about 12? We couldn't get everybody to leave at the same time in Nashville.

There's a lot that goes into those from logistics and planning, and some of the rallies have volunteer staffs, bless their hearts for going and doing this and putting up with the drivers, too, because we all are very opinionated, I think, as drivers in some of these rallies, too. I don't need any help parking. I can park. I can do this just as better as anybody else. And we're trying to get everybody parked and stuff, so the volunteers take a lot of the brunt of complaints. But it's a lot to understand where all those people are. So that's one of the solutions that I worked on also, is providing connectivity for communications on rallies and being able to have radios that are in use to be able to ensure that you've got connectivity pretty much anywhere, because we've all probably that's been on rallies, we've used like the old bail-fing radios that they work sort of when you're close to each other, but once you get further than a couple hundred feet, they no longer work anymore. So we put together cellular-based radios that allow us to be able to have connectivity across the multi-state lines.

Yeah, having that instant access, you don't have to scroll through your contacts, and you can talk to multiple people that are all on the same channel instead of selecting one person, letting them know, and then playing this game of telephone.

Yeah, that the message gets messed up. We had our radios out with the new TV series coming out, Banging Gears, that Golden Peaks production was involved with. They rented our radios. And unfortunately, I didn't go out to Vegas to check it out, but I sat there. I had the radios on my desk, so I was listening to all the chatter on the channels, and it was fun listening to it, even from afar, because they're challenging. I'm not going to give anything away from the show, because you guys will want to watch the show, but it's like car A versus car B, and they're placing bets like, who do we think is going to win? And all of a sudden, car B completely upsets car A that they thought was going to be a no-brainer to win. I'm just sitting there, I'm just like, I wish I would have seen that live, but I'm hearing it on the radio. So yeah, communication on rally events is so critical when you've got people, and it's also critical for the drivers, too. We rented some of our radios to teams that had three or four or five cars in their crew so that they could all communicate with each other just to say, I need to go to the bathroom, or I need gas, or whatever was going on.

Are these like CB radios, or are they handheld?

It's a handheld. Basically, it looks just like a Balefing-style two-way radio, but it's cellular-based. So essentially, it's an Android phone that we dumb it all the way down so that it's not trying to get speed. We don't care about throughput. We don't care about trying to pull a 100-meg file down quick. We just need the bare minimum of connectivity. So we like to be on the extreme lower end of the LTE service tier so that we can roam between all these different towers. I've got national contracts with everybody. I can roam to pretty much anywhere. There's only been a couple spots that we've ever lost entire connectivity, and that's in the middle of Bumfunk, nowhere in the deserts, basically, where we lost it. Or the Tale of the Dragon, because nobody's got service on the Tale of the Dragon. It's pretty rare that you have service down there.

Yeah, those mountains are crazy.

So yeah, it's just a handheld radio. We've got, when we run it with the staff for the rally events, they all have the surveillance FBI style earpiece that goes into the ear and then the little chirp button so that they can just, it's just a chirp to talk. You don't even have to say, like you say, you don't even have to say, I want to call Sean. It's just, just hit the button, and it chirps, because it's all based off of Zello. We just, we have the paid version, so we get a little bit higher quality of service on it, and there's more things I can do with it than just the free version. I can have multiple channels, so we've got the media channel, so the photographers, when they're trying to coordinate the launch, they can coordinate the launch and get their photos.

Good luck.

Yeah, and then once the rally has passed the launch, they move to their own channel, and they can be like, hey, where am I? Who's here? Where are you at? Where's the rally? Where's the group? So they can find them and stuff. So yeah, it works really great for being able to provide quick connectivity to a lot of folks. I love it.

It was great. I remember when I downed 11 tacos at Bravo's when you were telling me all about this. So I told the story so many times, but I think it's time to make it officially public. So basically you and I met up at Bravo's last year, which is like a street taco joint. And he was telling me about this business. And I ordered 11 tacos. I was planning to bring some home. I'm like, I just wanted to sample all these different things. And there was this old lady like Nexus wasn't that old. She would.

I mean, you define old, she's not grandma.

She had her f****** card, dude. That was at the AARP for sure. I for a fact. But anyways, she's like maybe like a foot and a half from Blake's nose, right? Because, you know, the table right next to us. And she's like, you're not going to eat all of those, are you? And then I took that as a challenge. So I'm like, f****** right, I am.

You see how big this boy is?

Yeah, I'm like because like she challenged me. And then I got the taco number nine. And she's like, wow, you really ate a lot. Looks like you're running out of steam. I'm like, I f****** am, but I will show no weakness.

Yeah. And then you put two tacos in each hand and you're just shoving them down your throat.

It was it was the total Cobra Kai moment. No mercy.

It was freaking ridiculous. Dude, I had a tray of tacos.

He's not kidding. Like, you know, when they bring the big tray to serve everybody in the restaurant, their food, like they just plopped it down on the table and said, here you go. So here's your tacos.

He had a meal for four just sitting in front of me.

Meanwhile, I have like four tacos or whatever. I'm just kind of sitting there with my little fork and knife like, and I'm going to war with this old woman.

I'm inside the inside of my head looks like, I don't know, it sounds like a Slipknot concert, you know. So but anyways, back to the say you were telling us about like the radios and all these different things for rally and just tracking and all this. And it's very cool because ultimately one of the features and I personally really like this feature was kind of being able to track speed within reason. Right. So it's like if somebody like, I don't know, I think you said there was like thresholds, like if somebody gets over a certain amount, you know, because those are arguably going to be the problem. Rally is depending on the area and you could. I'm all for having a blast on rallies, as everybody in this room is.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

But then there's some people that and we've seen the consequences of it that do push the limits at the wrong place in the wrong time. So being able to see that.

Yeah, I always equate it to my wife and I when we have the conversation with folks is, you know, we're not we're not front of pack. We're not necessarily back of the pack. We're usually kind of somewhere in the middle.

The safe part, the best place to be.

Or we're somewhere completely off on our own and we're just doing whatever on our own roads and we don't really care.

You don't have to worry about other people.

Yeah. And and I always say that it's the folks that are doing the buck 50 buck 30 on average, not yeah, top speed on average. They're the ones that I say they knock down the hornets nest. Then they shake it up violently. They throw it in the mailbox. They close the lid and they wait for the poor mailman to come and deliver the mail, who then gets totally screwed because all these hornets come out screaming. And, you know, by that point in time, once the later packs come in, yeah, the cops are all pissed off at those couple of people that, you know, they're there. They're driving extremely fast. Granted, some of them are very skilled drivers, but time and place. That's why we have track events at most rallies that are put on. There's a time and place for being that excessive on your speed. Yeah.

I think when there's traffic, too, that's especially dangerous, you know, especially if they're also weaving in and out. You know, I totally understand if you got a straight line and nothing in your, like, line of sight, then gun it.

Yeah, if you're in, we're heading to Salt Lake City, you know, we're in Montana, wherever, or Wyoming, whatever, okay, yeah. You know, there's nobody around, no big deal. So, yeah, one of the aspects was that GPS-based tracking, that, you know, basically your acceptance of the rally would be also, we're going to put a little GPS tracker in your vehicle, right? Runs for, I mean, I've tested it with some of the different settings for reporting data, and I can get a week's worth of time off of one battery on these things. So, yeah, you just throw it in there, you don't have to turn it on, you don't have to turn it off. We have a safety dashboard that reports whether the vehicle tracker is turned on or turned off. We know that. We know where they're at. And it's not that we're saying, okay, you know, you're sitting here, so sit and you're going 80 miles per hour, and this is the exact latitude and longitude that he's at. No, it's more of the, you know what, over the past 30 miles, his average has been 130. Maybe we should have a chit chat with him. It's not so much that, you know, the minute you do 125, you're flagged. It's more of the, is this a continuous thing or was this a blip thing? You know, if it's a blip thing, like you said, John, where we just, okay, we have this quick little section. Yeah, let's go fast for just a second and then we come down.

Yeah, that's great, because I think safety should be probably, especially for someone like Harris, who's the organizer.

Okay, I was wondering where you were going with that too.

You started to see me chuckle.

So he, you know, he's the one that, you know, is going to be the one that takes complaints because it's his, essentially his name on everybody's cars, and he's going to have to deal with that flak.

Yeah, and there's liability aspects of it from both ways. There's the, there's the train of thought of, if you don't know, you don't know from an organizer standpoint.

Right.

You can't be held liable if you don't know. Yeah, I was trying to think of that word. Thank you. I couldn't think of that phrase all of a sudden. But then there's the other side of it, too, that says, you know, you know what? I can prove that, yes, people were driving recklessly, and yes, we booted them. You know, that's the thing is that if you can go back and you can say, we are not about speed, we are not about passing on double yellows, passing on shoulders, whatever. The problem with all this is that unless somebody reports it or unless there's data that backs it up, you can't do anything about it. And that was part of the whole public safety side of things, is that each of the rallies that leverage the platform also have a safety report link that they can go and we can report on it, and they can pick the address of where this event occurred. So they could do it when they get home, because obviously they shouldn't be using their phone while they're driving themselves. So when they get home, they could certainly report that it was at this address. Well, yeah, if we had any speed alerts that were there, we can coincide the data or correlate the data, and be able to look at it and say, okay, yeah, this person was speeding at this point in time. They did get reported on it. Let's go have a chit chat. Maybe it's not necessarily a means for expulsion from the rally, but should we at least have a talk with them, be like, hey, just think about this. Make smart choices.

Yeah, and we've seen that happen before, too, where people get kicked off rallies for being reckless. Especially the year I went 2018, I think two people got sent home on the second day.

Yeah, I mean, I've been around where people have been asked not to continue on. Even after accidents or even after things have happened, they still mess around and it's like, the f***, really? Like, what did we all just talk about here? If this is your goal is to be first to lunch, you don't win anything. You don't win a trophy. You don't get anything.

Well, I think that's... I remember Venom Rally. I think there were points associated with being like first, second, third.

That was a problem.

And that was a problem, and that never happened again.

So the reason that that happened, and we initially talked about not doing the first, second, third thing, and the first year, it was a freaking problem. Even though I liked the guys that were the culprits, it was still an issue, because they were blowing through towns in three digits, which is an issue, especially when you're in the middle of nowhere. And that's how, again, the Hornet's Nest analogy. But then we adopted the Krone Rally approach, which was the optimal time. So that was just like, all right, which my formula was, spoiler alert, it was basically GPS time, give or take 20, 30 minutes in either direction to account for stops or whatever. So try to keep people on that normal pace. And the only way that they would be absolutely hooking is if they took really long breaks. But other than that, that was kind of how we, what my formula was. And most people didn't know that until after they found out they won or lost.

Well, and I think, you know, gamification is extremely prevalent in everything that we do nowadays. We've looked at it. Anything out there now is gamification to microtransactions when you look at playing games these days.

Yeah, it's a billion-dollar industry.

So there's nothing wrong with trying to gamify something. It's figuring out what's a safe way to gamify stuff. You know, like, think about things like, okay, maybe have it be where you get awarded XP points because you drove for 10 miles with somebody new. You know, how do you seek out and how do you find new people and meet new friends? Like, we've made so many friends through the various rallies, organizations out there, and you only see them a couple of times out of the year, so it's like, okay, I want to ride with you. Or like, you know, maybe Sean's got some really cool new mod on his car that just looks sexy from behind that I just want to watch. So I'm going to go and I'm going to find his car. I'm going to rally with them for like 10 minutes or whatever. Okay, I got some points because I rode with you. Or maybe I was, you know, I had that perfect smile. Could be the gamification means that you rode alongside a media car for X period of time. So there's things that you can do to gamify things that's more about interactivity between the drivers and getting people to, you know, have fun and be spirited, but still be closer to speed than it's expected. You know, 10 overs, 15 overs, whatever that you're going to do.

Right.

Or even think about things like how can we get it so that we can bring, instead of bringing profit to these cities by means of tickets, how can we bring profit to these cities by means of saying, OK, there's, like, for example, we're coming back from Omaha the other weekend, and, you know, Blue Bunny has the largest ice cream manufacturing plant in the world in Lamar's Iowa. If you didn't know that, there's a fun fact for you. So there's there's an ice cream parlor that's in downtown Lamar's. It's kind of a de facto road trip destination stop for a lot of folks.

Right.

So make it be like, get 30 XP points if you stop and upload a photo of your receipt from grabbing some ice cream at the Blue Bunny parlor.

I like those intolerant Blake. Come on, this challenge is, you know.

I'm sure they have an ice cream for you.

No, you just have to deal with it and then use a bottle or something.

How many XP points do I get for s******* myself in the car, Blake?

I'm sure they sell bottle water or soy cream.

No, I mean, I think, but things like that are ways that you could bring technology into some of these rallies that have been always known as or assumed to be known as a race. Because most of them aren't about races. Most of them have some sort of cause that's behind them for raising fundraisers, bringing awareness to something that people don't understand or they don't know about because they just focus on a couple of bad apples.

Yeah, I just think the well-known, like Gumball and Crown Rally, these are the more well-known because they just have the most exotic cars on them. But then you have charity rallies, like what was that?

Cannonfall, Cannonball, out of the cities here.

Survivors rally.

Survivors rally, yeah.

These are a little less known just because they're just kind of more local, and they don't grab as much attention. I think Dustball is also one of them. I want to go on that one one day. That one's supposed to be a really good one, and it's for charity.

I feel like most, especially the bigger rallies, they do have an aspect of charity. Crown Rally probably did the best with Rally for a Cause. I can't think of anybody else who's raised more rally-wise.

Yeah, it's just about at a million, if not a little over.

I think it surpassed that last year.

Yeah, we did surpass it last year. We did surpass it.

Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see what goes forward with that. I do know that there's...

Stay tuned.

Yeah, there's interesting stuff in the works on that front that hasn't been confirmed nor denied, but the rumor mill. But yeah, no, I really am happy with what you're doing on the tech side of things. I think it's going to be great if it's adopted correctly. And ultimately, if you were to work with an organizer, there is a lot of customizability too, versus what I wanted versus what Crown Rally wanted, right? Like, you know, when you were explaining what they were going to do potentially and what they ended up doing versus what I was thinking to do for my rally. Rest in peace. But just it's interesting. And the customizability that you bring to the table is pretty sweet. There are some features on the website that I liked. I can't remember what they were at the time, but like it was basically like kind of like a full integration thing. Can you talk about that at all?

Yeah, so we've got some plans for in the future as well around how do we enhance the driver and the co-pilot experience as well and maybe bring some more joy to the co-pilot other than just, I need substance. Hey, remember, we're still alive. It's bathroom break. Wait, that's the person in the back seat that's supposed to do that, I think, by the rules of the road. So anybody that knows me and knows my cars, my Viper ACR, you look at it and you'd be like, the f***'s going on with this thing? The dude's got a big CB whip off of the back of his Viper. I don't have it on right now because I'm rebuilding the entire system. So technology and putting stuff inside of the cars has been a huge goal of mine as well for these rallies, is that from a VIP perspective, I would love to be able to just hand you basically a box or a tablet even, Sean, and say, this is your rally box. So let's go back to which Fast and the Furious was that when they were running for Borrega down in Mexico, going across, and they basically got the box and said, when the GPS calls, you drive. You know, so like having that same style ideal where you've got that unit that you put into your car, section cup mount or whatever, that has your maps, it has the rally routes, it has the comms, so it has the two-way radio system built into it already, and everything is self-contained in there. Then we also have that all built in on the website as well for having discussions, having photos. Basically, it takes Facebook out of the equation because Facebook is a huge privacy concern, and the goal that we're building towards is being able to share your data without having to worry about who that data is being sold to. I will never sell the data. I'm not looking to make profit off your data.

I've heard that one before.

Because this is not a free platform. This is a platform that you would, yes, have to pay for in order to have access to some of the features, but then also doing things like build journals. I want to know more about these vehicles that are on the rallies. I want people to write about the builds in their cars. And I want to be able to have a QR code on the car, so that when I go to a car show and I see that rally or QR code, I scan it, boom, there's all the build blocks of this. Here's all the information about what they've done to that car. Here's the rallies that they've been on. Whatever they want to put as public information, they can. And you can see about it. My ACR is not a showroom queen. I was mistaken on a Facebook post that AJ tagged me in the other day asking me how many miles on it. I only said like 28,000. I got 36,000 miles on my ACR. I'm like, oh my gosh, okay. I mean, yeah, doing 6,000 miles worth of rallies every year will add up pretty quickly.

Yeah, that was pretty sweet. And I remember when you drove the s*** out of it on the salt flats, too, I can't remember who was losing their minds about that.

I didn't go mine on the salt flats.

You didn't? That was just the desert, right?

It was on a dry lake bed.

Okay.

So it was outside of Vegas. And I was humming and hoeing about doing this. So I've got, if people know these names in the car world, you know, Brad Hoffender, who does the Rally for Cause, very vocal, big guy, like you don't want to say no to him, but he's just a big teddy bear at the same time.

I know, he's such a sweetheart. He was so nice when I met him first time in 2018. And I think it was his house or somebody's house or whatever. And like I was 18 at the time. He's like, you want a drink? I'm like, I'm too young, but I'll take it.

And then you've got Josh Wei, Dynamic Photo Works, great guy, and Jacob from Golden Peaks. Like all three of them through different channels, like whether it was the Crown Radios on the media channel, it was Instant Messages. Like we're just getting blown up with, bring your car out here, we're going to Drive Lake Bend, come bring your car out here. I'm just sitting there, I'm just like, like I said, it's not a garage clean, it's got PPF on the front, it's got some chips and dings in it from driving.

Battle scars.

I mean, both cars have been thrown up in at least once by either myself or my wife or whatever reason is not feeling good. So no, they're not perfect condition cars. I consider it a pretty used car when somebody's blowing chunks in a car. So I'm sitting here, I'm like, do we want to go out here? I mean, it's been a long drive. We were staffed, so it was, you know, we had to run a lunch stop, so it's really tiring. Well, we're getting closer and closer, I mean, like 10 miles out. And I look over, I see this huge dust cloud out in the distance. And I'm like, that's got to be them. F*** it, let's go. So we start driving towards this dust cloud. And I got to tell you, we got some of the most amazing photos.

It was awesome.

I keep telling Josh, I'm like, can you just make some of that video kind of appear somewhere on a drop box somewhere? Because I haven't seen the video of the drone clips yet. I've only seen some of the photos like what Alex and them have been taking. But there were so many awesome photos on it. Did the car get filthy? Yes. Was it worth it? Oh, God, yeah. It was just so much fun. There was other people that were just out there too, just having fun. Adair, he's got the Taco Bell, Sienna.

The Senna?

Well, it's not really. It started as a 720, I think, and he modded over it. But he's got a couple of cars. He had his green M6 out there. He corded the s*** out of the tires. To the point where you had footlong whips coming up with the tires. And he's like, well, I guess we're driving slow to get to Vegas, because I still have to drive it back to Vegas for the day. But we had so much fun out there. Jacob was just out there busting in his M with the camera car, yep, the camera attachments on it. He was having so much fun out there. For everything that happened on that rally, it was great. Let's just go and let's just relax and let's just hang out as a couple guys, as a couple friends out there. Let's just have a good time. And then we got back and I looked at the Gtechni crew guys. I'm just like, yeah, sorry.

The detailers on the rally.

They had to wash the car. I'm like, sorry about that. Do your best.

Just run it through a touch list. You'll be fine.

And then the funny thing is, we were going to go do rollers on the strip with it. I'm like, all right, do we want the car clean or do we want the car dirty on the strip? Which one do we want to go with?

What did you decide?

We ended up with clean because they...

Oh, you bastard.

They sprayed it down. By the time we got down there, those guys were quick. They had already had it cleaned up. So yeah. No, but yeah, so like we're talking like integration, all that stuff. How do you make all this stuff more fun? How do you bring all the technology into the cars and how do you get everybody again more involved and try to break up some of the clicks and just get it so that instead of a couple clicks here, a couple clicks here of different groups of drivers, how do we get all the drivers involved?

Right.

How do you entice people to want to do these rallies? And we've had folks on the, especially that last rally, we had folks that don't know how to use Zello. So I ran the free Zello channels for Krone, and they're like, well, how do I set this up? How do I use this? How can we simplify that entire process to get everybody involved? Because even sometimes on those Zello channels, you might only have 30, 40 people involved on it. If you've got a car pack of 100, 100 plus, a lot of people are missing out on the fun of the communications.

Oh, yeah. That's half the fun, too, is the group chats and then the Zellos. Especially if people don't overuse it. That's the other problem. Like, hey, what are you guys doing for blah, blah, blah? It's like, I had eight shots yesterday.

Or sit on the mic button. It's just like, get off the mic. That's what's great about when you actually use the paid version of it as an admin. I can shut them off. I can override them so that I can break the stream so that then their button is disconnected.

That's the most annoying part. It's like somebody's on the f****** button.

It's like, get off of it. So looking at it, it's more than just, all right, let's line up these cars. Let's get them all there. It's also about bringing awareness to the builds of the cars. You think of people like JFB Offroad that just build these massive, hemi-jeep gladiators.

The Hellcat Gladiators, yeah.

And it's just like, I would love to watch a progression of one of these builds. He shows up with these massive, b***** trucks. Well, what's some of the details behind it? And then it's also about getting that awareness again so that when folks are at the launches or at the arrivals and they scan a QR code, they know that it's a safe QR code to scan, and they scan it to get more information about the rally and understand what it is, because how many times are you on a rally like, oh, what's this all about? You got your car, it's all plastered, crown, gumball, that, whatever it is. Like, well, what's all this about? And you don't want to be rude and say, well, I want to kind of keep moving because we got eight hours of driving still ahead of us yet today, but you also want to drive awareness to it and discuss it with them. So you want to make sure that there's ways to more easily engage with everybody out there, whether they're a participant or not.

I think another cool aspect of that would be conversation, right, even between rallyers. So let's say we're to scan someone's QR code, you see their build. Well, now, instead of having that five to ten minutes of like, what's done to the car? You can ask specific questions like, oh, what about this part of the project? Because especially people like, well, more like Sean, because your car is modified to the gills, all of them. But basically, if somebody comes up to you, what's all done to it? Well, that part is done to it. Now you can start talking about the specifics again to the more fun part instead of a rinse and repeat answer. I think that'd be a really cool way to drive conversation, too.

Or posting the build photos. With the Viper, the ACR, when we bought it, it was the one-of-one, so we'll talk about that group by a little bit here. I was buying it as a one-of-one meant I have photos from every single build stage of the car being put together, including them mixing the paint to spray on the car. I have photos of the unfinished body panels with a plastic jar that the paint was being mixed. And the guy that did the photos, he's not a photog by trade. He was just part of the team there at the Conner Assembly plant, but he was able at least to capture interesting enough photos about what the steps of the process were going, like pouring the actual paints together to mix them, to come up with colors and stuff. So you think about having a place that you can post all those photos in there, and somebody can look through and see it, because we have a book that we made, a photo book that we printed out, and we have it at a lot of the car shows, just because people like to flip through it and see it. That's so cool. Oh my gosh, you get full build photos of this thing being put together. That's what's fun to me about going to car shows, is seeing things like that. It's great for you to rattle off all the mods that you've done out of your car, but as a builder, I want to actually see that build experience. I want to understand that process that you went through to get from where you're at to where you're going. And I have no qualms with the whole build versus bot. Everybody's car is everybody's car. Don't get me wrong there. If you actually did spend that time to build it, I want to see it. I want to see some of those photos. And I know we all get lost in the process. We're like, oh yeah, I'm going to document this. And then two hours later, you're done building. You're like, crap, I didn't take a single photo.

Oh well.

But if you have them, I want a place to share it. I want a place to be able to look at it, especially during the winter months when everybody is heads down, turning ranches, doing the builds to get ready for car shows. It's another way to keep us engaged during the snowy months.

That was one reason we started this podcast. Well, I guess we brought the podcast back. You know, it's because during the winter, we want people to be able to engage. And once we add video here in the next few episodes, ideally, we want to be able to throw up on the TV, like, you know, the photos of your Viper being built. And then when people watch it, they have a visual correlation. It's like, oh, I remember summer. You know, so...

Ah, back when we didn't hate ourselves.

It's freaking gnarly, man, but I think... I'm glad that there's events like the Polar Run and stuff. I really should do one of those, one of these. I heard... I was talking to MJ, and she said that it was an absolute blast this year, probably one of the best events she's ever done. So stuff like that. But, yeah, no, I think it's interesting having you back to back with Daniel Balto of Carmunity, because you guys have very different takes on... I wouldn't say similar idea. I think yours is a little more...

It's got more polish. It seems like you really know... You're doing the work. You are the coder.

No, you have the polish, but also you don't have the stress of like investors or whatever. Like you're doing it at your own pace, I feel, or at least that's from my understanding. And you're building the way you see fit for multiple applications rather than just being a social platform with some applications in it. You're doing the application first, then you're having the social aspect later.

And I've spent so much time on this whole like monetization with technology. I've worked with so many different retail stores on figuring out how they can monetize the consumer that walks in their stores. I mean, so many retail stores just from your phone having the Wi-Fi turned on or the Bluetooth turned on, we know who you are. We've already built that profile. We understand the stores that you've walked into. We understand if you walk into one of our stores versus 100 of our stores. And understanding all those elements. Like, I don't like that. I don't like that we have profiles. The reason why in the United States that we haven't switched 100% to chip and pin, nobody wants to give up the 16-digit identifier about you. You know, your credit card number being in the clear text, that's the identifier. That's what's built that profile off of every single purchase that you've ever made in your entire life. It's built off of that. When that profile, when that number changes, we have your name so we can update it and correlate it. Like, we've got all that data. So I didn't want to build another platform that was all about big data, that was selling data. I wanted to build another platform that this time, you have to want to be invested in this in yourself with the costs in it of paying for some of the features. Because you want to be there, you don't want to be the product. Facebook, you are the product. There's a reason why it's free. You are the product. Instagram, you are the product. Everything you put up there, you read the fine print, they have full rights to all of your photos, everything that you post. Even Twitter now, they have full rights to use all of your material and any, especially now, in any machine learning language model. And they can do whatever they want with it then. I'm just like, oh, okay, I'm going to start to roll back some of the things that I post here and some of the photos and stuff. I don't.

It's interesting, and even for me, I'm in a camp of, I'm a relatively open book in that regard, because again, I do have a heck of a following nowadays, and it's just being careful about what you put out there. Even this podcast, there's certain things where I'm like, yeah, let's roll that back a little bit. This is the most PG I talk, by the way, is on the podcast. But there's something to be said for that, is a lot of people, they don't want their data to be used. So being able to respect that too. And I know that there's, especially when certain apps came out, you know, it was just like, oh, I don't know about those terms of service, you know, and it's interesting.

Yeah. Yeah. And most people don't read terms of services. They just...

The South Park episode about it.

Oh, yes. A huge South Park fan. I have all the South Park episodes basically memorized. I go on any of them.

It's such a good episode.

And that's something that I try to instill in my daughter because she, and she's good about it because she keeps out, she's like, can I get this app? I looked at it. And she's starting to catch on to what it is that I'm looking at it like I'm looking at the identifiers and the app store labels. She's an iPhone user. So I look at those and I look to see, okay, what is it using this tracking about you? If it's some coloring app, why do they need to track who you are on a device identifier level? I'm like, no, you don't need to know that information.

It is in everything.

I'm like, that's when there's something that's hidden behind it. You know, like she loves TikTok. She absolutely will never be able to have TikTok installed on her phone.

Good.

That's wonderful. It's not installed on any of our phones because of the fact that it always asks for copy-paste access, which means it can have whatever was copied. So if you copied a password and you opened up TikTok, it's grabbing that information. Even though you're not actually using it, it's still grabbing that off of the clipboard.

Here's a question for you. So for example, I noticed this recently. If I go to put in my Google verification code or whatever, it gets texted to you, and it grabs it from your texts, right? Do you think if I were to have TikTok open on another page and I have that Google verification open on another thing, would that be able to be grabbed?

There's certainly ways that you can grab that and hijack that for sure. And that's been a huge concern for a lot of folks is that the browser should stop auto-filling the verification codes that come in, especially now that you've got iMessage, Google Messages, whatever that are being able to be used on a laptop or a desktop device as well. It's great for us. I absolutely love the feature. Yeah, because it saves you from having to go there and copy it and just click the button. That's awesome. But it kind of defeats some of the purposes for sure. Like the security. I mean, we could spend hours talking on security and what you can do on, what you shouldn't do on the Internet. I mean, I've... Security has been another thing that I go way back deep into compromising plenty of things and proving to people that their systems are not as secure as they think they are and be able to get away with stuff. And again, that's why my wife and kids come to me and ask, like, okay, what can we do with this app? Because, you know, I did all that stuff back in the day. Like, I said this, I can't remember where I was saying this, but I made this comment, and my mom just looked at me like, like mouth dropped. Like, really, you did that? So back when I was younger and we had dial-up days, you know, and all the modem sounds get online, those were loud. Like, you couldn't sneak online, you weren't always connected. So I remember putting pillows on top of my modem to be able to muffle the sound so that I could go online late at night or early in the morning and do whatever I wanted, you know, whatever I was doing as a kid on the internet back in the day. Oh, boy. So it was like, you know, the security for me, like I've been around the block so much time around different applications, understanding security, trying to figure out what we can do. That's the other thing I keep bringing into it is like data integrity, data protection. I want to make sure that all of our data is secure and safe and we're not getting rid of stuff and we're not sharing things that shouldn't be shared with other folks. But yes, I'm like you too. I'm an open book. I post way more than I could, but that's also because it's all about building a brand and building a brand.

There's that aspect.

You have to be somewhat open in that regards.

Yeah, it's interesting. And that's what I try to coach people on too, especially when they're building stuff. I'm like put stuff out there that shows who you are. Don't fake anything. But then there's also like, all right, easy, big guy. You don't want to post that. Like, you know, Mr. Beast describes it as like a bell in his head or whatever. And it's like, you know, just understanding like, all right, this is where the person who's watching or listening, that's when they're starting to get bored.

Yeah.

You know, same thing applies to like, you have to think of it from the other perspective. Like somebody wants to hijack your s***. Like a bell is going to go off in their head and like, I can use that maliciously.

Or all these people that are doing all these quizzes to find out what Disney princess you are.

Oh, my God. I'm going to throw myself off the roof if I see one of those.

All those things are our harvesters for password security questions. It's like the number one tip I give to people, don't answer the question how they're asking it.

Yeah, Wizard Mother's maiden name. Last four digits of your social security number.

Well, even on the password question field like on the app, so let's say that you're filling out your Facebook password question apps. And it says, where were you born? Well, duh, you put that in your freaking profile, so don't put that as one of the options. I'm not going to question. But when they ask a question like that, instead of that, put your favorite color in. Put something that you're still going to remember, but it's completely irrelevant to the question being asked. And as long as you have those correlations in your head that, okay, every time somebody asks me the question, what's my hometown, and I put in orange, if that's my favorite color, I know that that's going to be my answer, and I'm not going to get locked out of my account. Don't ever answer the question how they're answering it.

That's a really good security tip.

The love of all God. Use password managers. Use something like one password or something like that so that you can have a completely random password for every single service that you use. You shouldn't even be able to know your passwords.

Yeah, that's something that I changed within the last year. I used to only have one or three passwords ever. So if one didn't work, I'd try the other, and then I would try the other, and then I'd get in. But then I got a keeper, and it can generate passwords randomly from one character to a hundred characters. And you can change if it can have exclamation marks, like special characters, lowercase numbers. You can make it as different as possible, and you hit random, or if you sign up for a new website, it will be like, here, use suggested password.

Yeah. I also recommend, folks, Troy Haunt, he's a security researcher out of Australia, Microsoft MVP. He set up a website called Have I Been Pwned? So just look up, do Google for Troy Haunt and security, and this will come up. But it's legit service. You can sign up. He goes through and he gets all the data breaches. He scours the dark web for all the data breaches out there, and he parses them and loads them into it, and he can get an email that, if your email address was included in that breach, you'll get an alert that says what information was included in that breach. So there's a lot of cool things from security that you can do on there. Like I said, you can have tons of conversations around that.

Yeah, and another thing that we're going to, as this podcast gets into triple digits, we're going to have a lot of repeat guests, so we could always get super deep in different things. You want a few people that's involved in a million different things, and they somehow correlate. Where you manage to find the sweet spot between tech and cars. And this has been largely a tech podcast, but I think for the sake of time, let's kind of transition into the Viper and then being the 107 build. Because there's some crazy, I saw the VinWiki video a couple years ago about that. I'd love to hear your perspective on it.

Yeah, so it was pretty interesting. Because I bought my 05 SRT-10 used. Viper has been my dream car. I grew up wanting a Viper, American Muscle, anything like old Kudos, all that stuff. I was never really the guy that had the Lamborghini poster on as well. It wasn't my cup of tea. It was all about American Muscle. So then that really lame-a** TV show called Viper came out. It's got horrible acting, but it's got a Viper in it.

It transforms, too.

Yes, and they just sold one of the Defenders off. Oh, I so wanted to buy that. I was like, I want to buy this. But no, I had no money for it. So I saw the Viper. I'm like, this thing is amazing. It is raw. It is not like anything else that's on the market. It's crazy. So bought the old 5 used, and then I started wanting the Gen 5 Vipers because obviously there's some creature comforts in there. There's some new technology in it. So being the tech guy, I'm like, I want some of this technology. And I dodged and announced, all right, this is it. This is the last year to make these. And I'm just like, going back and forth, I'm like, OK, do I buy one? Do I order? Like, I'm very particular on how I want it. I don't want stripes. I'm not a stripe guy. I can't stand stripes on the car. It's like there's some that are done really well, and I will enjoy it, but I just I don't want to own a striped base car. Yeah. And I want certain colors. I don't like red. It's my wife. She puts it in screams middle age crisis. So when we're looking for a way, she can't buy a red one, and you can't buy a silver one because there's too many of them. So out of the old fives, there was not really much anything else I could buy until I randomly found this copper. I'm like, this is sweet. I love this. So we decide, OK, we want to try to put it in an order. And I was talking with Matt McCarran and a few others in the Viper Club, and he's like, Yeah, we're going to we got a group that wants to buy. I started talking about the details. I'm like, All right, I can swing this. Let's do this. Add my name to the list. So then I was another one. So I think I was like I was like the sixth or seventh. I was like one of the last ones that was going in the list to get this. So we all we all got together on it and. Trying to find a dealership that would work with us, like everybody's like, No, can't be done. We can't guarantee that you're all going to be able to pick up your cards at the same time. So if you don't know the history of the Viper at any given day, only three came off the production line. It is one of the last. It was one of the last cars that was 100 percent hand built. Robots did not molest the car body until the absolute last end when it was doing the gap analysis to check to see how the panels were fitting and everything like that. It was hand hand painted engines, hand built. Everything was hand built on the Viper. So there's not many that come off these product lines. So they're like, like, we can't guarantee when you're going in, because some some people want custom colors. Some people want factory colors. So that kind of determined where you were on the product line as well. So nobody is like, no, we can't do it. We can't do it. Or they wanted some insane ADM on top of the price. Like, no, we're bringing you seven sales that you don't have to do any work for. You literally just need to put the paperwork in. You don't have to sell us on this. It's already done. We just want to put in these orders. Everybody knows what they want. We just have to put these orders in. So finally, we found the guy Sean Grady down in Atlanta. He's like, I could do this. And if you watch the VinWiki, he's like, yeah, I said we could do it. I had no idea if we could do this. You know, he never told us that from a standpoint. He's just like, no, I can do this. I can do this. So we trusted him that he could do it. And, you know, he pulled it off. He was able to do it. We got all of our orders in on the last. It was either the last day or the second to last day. Like that close the orders the next day. I was like, oh, talk about cutting it closer. That was crazy. And so we got our orders in, and then we started looking at colors. I wanted to do Copperhead Dodgers like, no, we're not going to we're not going to do that because on a one of one program, they're like, we're not going to do that pearlescent top coat, which is the defining factor on a true Copperhead. Like, we'll get you as close as we can, but we're not going to do the pearlescent top coat. I'm like, all right, that's fine. So we started getting the paint samples to come in and started, you know, put them on the trunk and the hood of the old five to see how they matched in the different colors. I'm like, yeah, it's not as, you know, it's more orange. It's not as red, but you know, this is, I like it. Let's go with it. So it's the only Gen 5 that's ever been painted in that color, which would make you think it would baby it even more because it's not like I can go find another body panel for the thing, but no, we just drive it. So we got the order in, and then all of a sudden you start getting the notifications, like, you have new photos to view in the concierge section. It's like, my car is being built. So the orders went in October. I started getting the photos around January. Like, ooh, okay, we were supposed to pick up the cars in August. That was the expected timeframe. And I started getting photos already, and I'm just like, still left off. I'm like, this thing is going to be ready a lot sooner than August, I think. This might become a problem because of course that I'm sitting here having the debate of, do I keep the 05 or sell it? I originally sold my wife on getting the ACR on that we were going to sell the 05 to pay for it. But then I wanted to do, at the time, Prefix, who does all the paint on the Vipers, they paint tons of different cars out there. Well-known car company in Detroit, they just do, and they do a lot of the concept cars builds and stuff for a lot of companies. So they do all the paint. They also had a Targa option that they were doing on Vipers for a very short period of time. So I mean all them like, hey, I want a Targa. Like, yeah, we're not really doing them anymore because there was a weather stripping or something that they used that they couldn't get anymore.

For the Gen 5s?

Well, because this is the thing is the parts were, some of the parts were leveraged, because there's never been a convertible or anything on a Gen 5 other than what Prefix did on their Medusa conversions. So they were leveraging some of the parts from the Gen 3s and the Gen 4s to do this targa conversion. Well, because those aren't manufactured anymore, you can't get all the parts for them. So they're like, this weather stripping was one of the pieces that they needed to get. So like, if you can get us a number of cars, there's like 15 car or 30 cars or something like that, if you can get us cars, yeah, there's 15 cars, we will do this again. So originally started off as $15,000, which is a little steep, but also you have to think of the fact that they're cutting into the roof of a car and doing a targa conversion. Not necessarily too bad, honestly. So we started looking at this and I started calling out, okay, who wants to do this? I'm like, Karen, do you want to do this? Christopher was also part of this. I'm like, you guys want a targa? We got the option, we could do a targa. Karen was kind of on board. He's like, it depends on the price, maybe we could do this. Well, we went to Jerry Woods Kreutzer who bought up a crap ton of the allocations. Basically, he closed the allocations and he built a bunch of these custom series cars that he did different color scheme and stuff. And we went to him and we were like, but you want to do some Targas on yours? So we got the cars. We got 15 cars. So I went back to him and said, okay, we got 15 cars. I want to do the Targa. Well, it's going to be $30,000 now because they didn't think we were going to get the cars. Right. And this is an intensive process to do this. Yeah, there's only a couple out there that have this done. I would say probably less than a dozen that ever had the Targa conversion done on them. There's an ACR in Dubai that had it done, which is why I want to do it, because it just looks so sexy. So then at that point, I'm like, no, I'm just going to keep the old five. I'm going to keep the other car and have two cars instead of selling one car to mod this other car. So the running joke now is a family of four needs two two-seaters because we bring our kids these everywhere we drive them to school. We drive to dinner dates. And there's dinner dates where it's just the wife and I. It's like, OK, whoever's there last buys dinner. You know, we just enjoy the heck out of the cars. So start getting the photos of the cars, start and start seeing progress really come down. I'm like, wow, these are going to be done really soon. And they're like, yeah, like, it's going to be done here in the next month or so. I'm just like, it's winter. I don't have a trailer to get this thing home. How am I going to get this thing home? So we ended up deciding on April 27th. This is the date that we're going to pick up all these cars. And at that time, it was only six of them. One of them had to back out, knocked up his wife, decided to have a kid, decided to get rid of the car, feel bad for him. But I mean, such is life, that happens. And it was going to be a great car because it was a Nardo Grey. I mean, it was going to be really cool looking.

There's a Nardo Grey one out there though, right?

Where do you think that Nardo Grey one is? The dealer kept the allocation.

The dealer kept it, okay.

Yeah, it was bought and paid for and everything. It's just the dealer turned the allocation in and he ended up keeping it for him to sell it out of the dealership. So no big deal on that one.

Didn't it just get, it was just on Bring a Trailer, right? Like a month or two ago.

Yep, it was just sold again. So I actually started making, because one of the deals was, in order for us to get the pricing they gave us, we had to do financing because the dealership gets better kickback on the financing than they do just on all right of a sale. I'm like, I don't really care. Yeah, finance, whatever. So I started making payments on the car and it was still sitting in the factory completed because I was waiting for the pickup date to be able to go out and pick them all up. So then we all went out to the factory, the Connor Avenue Assembly Plant in Detroit to pick up the cars. We all sat around a table in the big conference room, started doing the paperwork one by one, signing a life for you on your car, paying for this car. I had my daughter with me at the time, pulled her out of school for this experience. I'm like, you're never going to be able to have this experience again. Yeah, you're coming with me. So we flew out there and then we drove the car back home. So we drove it out of the factory after doing the tour. After walking the assembly line, I actually put a part on somebody else's Viper because the guy was like, you know, he's thinking he's kind of being, you know, being smarty, like, anybody have any Viper tattoos? I'd let you put a part on a car if you did. And I'm like, no, but I have Viper shoes. So I have driving shoes that have the Viper logo on them and everything's like, and their color matched to my car. He's like, all right, yeah, you win. Come over here. You can put this piece on. So I put a duct on somebody's car and it was funny, it was when we were doing the reveal, my daughter was so short, she couldn't get the car cover over the top of the wing because of how tall and how big the wing is. So I had to come and help her. And she put the final piece on the car to make it actually complete. So she put the final placard on the car that our name placard on it for the customization.

The dash.

Yeah, the dash plaque.

Nice.

And so yeah, so then we drove it home and first stop in a brand new six mile ACR is the McDonald's outside of the Detroit airport because we were hungry. So we've got that thing loaded up with greasy smelly fries right off the get go. Like, yes, let's load this thing up. And we drove it home. I mean, she slept most of the way, but we left around 1130 a.m. I put some roll on that temporary paint protector, the roll on paint stuff that just sprays off with the pressure washer. Pulled into the garage at 1 a.m. It was a nice long day. There was a couple moments as we were going through Wisconsin Dells because it was sleeting and you're on damn near race slicks. So that was fun, but it was a really interesting experience because all the cars, while all of them were ACR extremes, they all had their own uniqueness in. Okay, who did carbon bits? Who did which color seatbelt and which color driver stripes? Who opted for the 18 speaker kit because I need music? Yes, the sound of the V10 is amazing, but I need music too in my life, and it sounds amazing. So it was interesting to see all the different personalities that came off of it, and it was like a rainbow. There was so many different vibrant colors. There is the plum crazy purple on McCarran's. We got the snakeskin green on Topher's ACR that matches his Gen 4. It's the exact same config with the stripes and the silver stripes and everything. And there's some really cool blues in there, and then there's the traditional red with the black stripes on it. So it was fun to see them when they were all lined up because we had three that were delivered in the showroom. And then we went, because they only had three car covers, because obviously they've never had anybody pick up this many Vipers before. It's only usually just one that was picked up on a day or in a group, for example. So they had the three first. We did the tour, and while we were doing the tour, on the other end of the plant, at the end of the production line, they had the other three. So they ran over there real quick with the covers to cover them. But then had all the cars lined up. So all six of them were just lined up against the wall there when we did the final pickup. I mean, it was fun. My daughter, at that point in time, it was like, okay, why did you miss a day of school? So she had to do a little presentation on it. So she had photos and stuff of it. And yeah, we talk about it all the time, because it's one of those experiences, like I said. We're probably never, ever going to be able to do that again. There's not many car manufacturers that does that. I know Corvette, you can go pick it up at the museum.

Ferrari, Lamborghini. But this is so much cooler than that though, because first of all, it doesn't exist. And how often do you do that with American cars?

Right.

Especially one of the greatest cars of all time coming from America.

Yeah, and just the fact that seeing like, and talking with the workers, they're so proud of what they were able to build.

As they should be.

Yeah. And it was just, it was such a fun experience. And they take, there's so much care that goes into it. Like, you know, they have protectors that go around your rings so that you don't scratch cars. They have watch protectors. And this is all Viper branded stuff. So I have a watch protector at home. With the Viper logo. I'm just like, like, this is so cool. Like they, they, they think of so much stuff like belt protectors so that the button protectors so that your cars don't get scratched. And looking at the photos, like there's a tiny nick in the paint and you can see where they circled after Prefix painted the body or painted all the panels in their facility and shipped them down the road to the manufacturing plant. And once they get installed, Prefix then comes back out and does a look at it and says, okay, do we need to change? Like does, will this buff out? Do we have to repaint, respray anything? Like there's so much time and energy that's put into that car that you didn't, never really even thought about. You know, Corvette produces 30,000 Corvettes in a year. The Vipers only ever produced 30 some thousand in its entire lifespan all the way back to 1992.

Yeah. It's crazy, man. And after hanging around Minneapolis Mopar for as long as I have, all the, what's it called?

Oh, that guy's crazy. He's so awesome though.

I've learned so much from him when it comes to Vipers too. And I grew up Mopar, right? So I knew a lot of fun facts, but man, like when you get into stories like this, and that's why I was really happy to have you on. I think you're our first Viper guest as well, right? Yeah, I think so.

It's about damn time, but I mean, there's not too many Viper owners out there.

No, I mean, and we're, it's funny, it's cause we're known, at least down around in this, the Chaska Chan Hat scenario here, cause there was a next door posting during COVID. The guy wanted to do a card show in the Fireman's Park at Chaska. And right at the bottom was, oh, PS, if anybody knows the Viper couple, can they invite them, please? And I was just laughing. I'm like, oh yeah, my neighbor saw it and sent it to us. I'm like, yeah, we're known. It's like, I talk to people. And the minute I say, yeah, we're the ones that have the orange cars. And they're like, oh yeah, I see you guys driving around all the time. You're everywhere. You guys are like, I legit drive it to Home Depot if I don't need to get anything. I've had copper rods sticking out of the cars before. It's like, why not?

You're a true car enthusiast that absolutely drives their s*** out of their cars. And the fact that you guys bring the Vipers together again, two cars, four kids, you know. Or, no, no, no, no, not yet.

Not ever. We're gone.

Two cars, two kids.

Otherwise, you gotta get another Viper.

Yeah, true.

Well, yes, I do. As scary as it is, the daughter is a year away from getting her learner's permit.

Is she gonna learn it in the Viper? She's gotta learn how to drive a manual, right?

Her first car will be a BMW 3 Series. That's a stick shift, so she can't pay attention to her phone, and she has to pay attention to driving.

I like it.

I've already had those.

There goes that SVJ again. And on that note, let's do our wrap up, actually. Our usual question, because we have been here for quite a minute, we should probably check out the show at some point. We do like to ask this question, questions, Sean, if you wanna. I can't think of one.

Okay, yeah, I don't know why you're so terrible at this. So if you could only pick three cars, they're gonna be your daily, your track car, and your show car. What would they be?

Ooh.

I mean, you daily the ACR, you track the ACR.

Don't prompt him. He's gotta do some thinking now.

ACR is a show car.

You know, honestly, I would probably say.

Any budget, by the way.

Yeah, I was gonna say, at this point in time, I have any budget so I could afford the consumables, I would say ACR track every day. Because just because that thing is a beast, like I'm not even anywhere close to hitting anywhere near limits of that thing. And it's still so much fun on Road America and on the tracks. So I would say track would be the ACR. Show car, Jesko, or the Gamera.

Yeah, that's like your Cars and Coffee show car.

Yep.

Yeah.

Just cause, oh, so beautiful, Kona Segg. Daily. You know, right now, I'm actually leaning towards like a TRX or the one that I really want to get is I want to get a what's the Vengeance by what is it, Renzvani.

It's basically the armored truck.

Yeah, it's an escalator. Like don't get me wrong, it is an escalator with a body on it. But yes, I would buy it with the shocking door handles, and I would forget to tell my kids that it's not unlocked yet and just watch them just because that's the dad that I am.

OK, that's probably what my wife would say. She really liked the Range Rover Velar because the door handles, they go inside the car. So when you lock the car, they're flushed with the body. And then when you unlock them, they come out. And she likes that, you know, she was driving in the city, like somebody just can't run up and like pull on the door.

Yeah, check it. But I have an entire idea for the Vengeance as a rally management search and rescue. I have an entire platform that I've already been 3D modeling and stuff to build off of that frame. I just need, I love it. I just need $300,000. So yes, those would be my, those would be my choice.

Yeah, well, can you put a price on safety?

No, you can't. And at the rate that we're going, well, yes, they did. But at the rate that we're going, I might need that armored vehicle to go into some of the big cities.

It's fricking gnarly. Well, I think that, I mean, actually you can answer this question or not. I'm just curious because I do remember that dealers, couldn't even get rid of Vipers back in 2017, you know, 16.

The hindsight, if we knew what we knew back then, oh my gosh, we'd all be millionaires.

Yeah, ain't that the truth? You don't have to shares, but if you want to, what did you pick it up for back in 17? Or do you want to keep that off the radar?

Below invoice.

Below invoice.

Yeah.

Geez. So that's nice.

So there's one of me, there's one side of me that is kicking myself for putting 36,000 miles on it.

Why?

Because, yes, I could have a $400,000 ACR, because I could certainly sell it up as the fact that it is the only color that's ever painted in that. It is a pretty good spec. The only thing I, like it is fully spec'd out with the exception of the interior and exterior carbon bits. Those are the only things I did not get on it, because I'm like, it was like $3,000 for 13 bits of carbon that are really small. I don't really care about that. No big deal.

Right.

So there's part of me that, yes, kicks myself for driving it. But then at the same time, I have 36,000 smiles from driving that vehicle. Are you kidding me? I could care less. And I honestly could sell it for the same that I paid, if not more, with my 36,000 miles on it right now.

Oh, you could still get a gnarly amount, especially for the right lunatic me, that would build it to the gills.

Or AJ, because AJ keeps asking when I'm going to sell it, and I keep having the same answer for him. Never.

Never. See, that's the thing. You beat yourself up for driving it, but I can tell you're not that guy who just buys cars and lets it sit. That is such a sad life for so many of these Viper ACRs with triple-digit miles. It's so, so sad. And you really get to enjoy that car where a lot of people see those cars, and they're like, oh man, it should be driven. Like all the seals are rotted out. You can't even drive it now if you want it to.

You'd have to rebuild it.

Yeah, and that would, it's crazy. So I think you shouldn't beat yourself over that because I would be the same way. If I had an ACR, it'd have over 20,000 miles on it.

I have one relatively low mileage vehicle, and that is a 1980 Dodge pickup truck, D50 Custom that was my grandpa's, and I'm at like 73,000 miles on it because it was the garbage truck. Up at like 4 million, that's all it was. That's like, in terms of age to mileage, that is the lowest ratio vehicle that I have. And it's just because it was grandpa's truck. It was a truck that I loved when I was a kid. I always want to play it, and he willed it to me when he passed. So that's another vehicle that I will never sell, even though there is an extremely long list of people that want to buy that truck. It's just, that's got history onto it. But yeah, drive vehicles. They're meant to be driven. Enjoy them.

And you live by that motto pretty freaking well, man.

We try. We really do.

You guys do more than try. I mean, you guys have accomplished. I mean, is there any ACR extreme out there with higher mileage? I didn't see any doubtful in that comment section.

And everything for us, it's doing car shows like this. We've trained our kids to search out kids. We're not the creepy people with a van and free candy in it. It's like, find the kids, tell them to sit in the vehicle. Parents are always like, no, no. I'm like, dude, let the kids crawl in it. Like, they're so worried about kids crawling on the seats and stuff. I'm like, look, I have two terrible kids right here. No, I love them. They're great kids. But if we have two kids that are in the vehicles on a daily basis, it's like, our whole goal is to let others enjoy these as well. You never know whose day, week, month, or life you're gonna make by letting them sit in one of those vehicles.

I've had people come up to me and they're like, this is the first Hellcat I've ever seen. It's so beautiful. It's so gorgeous. And it's like, please come check it out. See it for yourself.

And that's why we support the rallies that have Shriners attached to them. When we actually get to our favorite part about doing Crown Rally, going to the Shriners Hospital, getting all the colors out there, and the fact that so many other participants open the doors, are like, go to town, have fun. There's so many of them that will turn them on, let a kid rev it, because there's some people that will never be able to have that chance in their life.

I wonder if that's what they're doing with the SVJ down there.

It is, because today's charity is for kids. So, and I think, you know, we're getting long in time here. We've got to wrap it up, but I think that is what's important for all of us that are car enthusiasts. That's the one message that I would love to spread more, is at the end of the day, it's just a car. But to somebody else, it could be a life-changing experience. Take the five seconds and talk to somebody. If a kid comes up and runs and touches a car, who cares? That's what a microfiber cloth is for.

You know how funny I'll be, and my intrusive thoughts are awful, but I hope if a kid, like, let's say I had your Viper, and a kid just ran up, like, about to pull the door handle, but they trip and they headbutt it, and now there's a dent? I would leave that dent there forever because it's just the perfect story.

Oh, it is.

I was going to say that's a great note to end on, Blake, but now we have to end on a kid headbutting a Viper, so.

Leave it to Harris.

Thank you for getting the last word in, Harris.

No, no, and I think, yeah, I f***** it. But my point being is I really wish there was more people. People like Hugh Wheeler. I remember Lambo Dad, when he did the, I want to have 3,000 kids sit in my Lambo. I always tell the story.

Or sign it, draw on his hood. That was so awesome.

Think about it, man. Like you said, especially when it comes to kids, especially that are sick or whatever, they sometimes might literally not have an opportunity ever again to do something like that. I remember seeing some of the pictures from those Shriners events, and I was like, that's just so cool, man.

I have photos of kids standing on my wing.

Really? That's awesome.

Why not?

I mean, the thing will support my weight.

Yeah, it handles a thousand pounds of downforce.

1700 pounds of downforce.

1700, okay. I think that was Gen 4 that they had to do a thousand pounds.

I have a bigger wing.

It's a lot bigger, 1776.

Yeah.

Yes.

But no, thank you for everything that you do. It's pretty freaking awesome. I think everything that's coming up from your end, I really hope to... Anything we could do to support you and the people that will listen to this, just what can people help you or support you, I guess?

Yes.

Yeah, so I mean, the big thing for me, like support, honestly, is the next time that you're at a car show and you see them asking for donations, give. Like that's the thing about me is like, yeah, I need money to pay my bills, but I much rather see stuff going into there. You can find me online, blakekrone.com. It's K-R-O-N-E. I've got tons of different websites, but that pretty much links to all of them. Rallier will hopefully be launching here very soon. We're just putting some finishing, polishing touches on the aspect of it that it's not free. I've got to get some money for it, so we're just working out some of the kinks there. But that's going to be launching, I hope, this summer yet, unless I keep adding more features to it and then sidetrack myself even more. But yeah, just support people in the community that need help. That's the biggest thing for me. And there we go. We ended it on the better note again.

Great.

Oh, no, don't you challenge me.

And you guys can find me at 1MN Mopar. I'm on Instagram. That's just about the only place I'm at. And then you can find the host, Minnoxide, at...

Here.

You already know. If you're listening, you already know.

Here. Yeah, well, thank you very much, Blake. I really hope to do more of these. And can I go sit in your Viper now?

You can go sit in the Viper.

Yeah, okay. I'm going to go challenge that wing, too. No, I'm kidding.

I mean, you haven't had 11 tacos today, so you should be good.

Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you very much to the two of you, and on to the next one.

Yeah, thanks for having me.