161. Cannonball Records, Modifying Mclarens, and Founding AMS Performance w/ Arne Toman

The V8 guys didn't get it.

Yeah.

Like in the least, like we were a joke to them. So we would go out to the street races, and be like, all right, who's the fastest car here? Okay, cool. See that go on over there? We'll spot you too. And they'd be like, what? That car, obviously we went a little faster. We averaged 103 across the country in that car. Got 11 miles per gallon. We averaged 110 in that car. 11 miles per gallon.

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, Mr. Gunner Garage.

I'm feeling pretty comfortable today sitting in front of this car.

Dude, this thing is, shout out to, I'm so sorry. I'm like, is this Zach or was it? It's Zach.

Okay, it was Zach.

Thank you so much for letting me use your garage. This thing is sick. Of course. Yeah, no, Dan was very happy once we came in here.

I think we barely made introductions and I was like a moth to a flame over here. I just walked right up to it.

Just walked past everybody. But anyways, today we are here with Arne Toman of Cannonball Garage. I'm glad we could finally do this. I've been having our friend Gary's been telling us forever to have you on the show, like probably for the better part of two years.

So here I am.

Well, yeah, I'm glad we got this coordinated. We're out here for Woodward Dream Cruise. So just real quick, go ahead, tell everybody who it is you are, what you do. And well, honestly, just go from there.

Gotcha. Well, I guess my biggest claim to fame would be the current Cannonball run record holder. But I've been in this game far too long. Started out co-founder of AMS Performance, did that for 15 years. I've got a CNC machine shop where we do aerospace and firearm parts. And now my big thing is Cannonball Garage, where we specialize in Mclarens. But most people don't really want to hear about anything about that. We want to hear about these two hunks of junk behind me.

Well, let's kick it off with that. Let's get Dan and the audience caught up to speed. So what's the difference between these two cars? And in what phases did they come to fruition?

Well, so we've got my 2015 E63 AMG. This is the car that I built to break the Cannonball run record held by Ed Bullion. It's about 700. We've got detuned to 700 wheel horsepower. It's an AMS Alpha 9 kit. I just wanted something reliable, powerful. So we set out and broke the Cannonball run record in 2019 with this car and all was good. We went 27 hours, 25 minutes. I was very happy. Check that off the bucket list. But then lo and behold, COVID came. This car got totaled by a semi truck. Driver fell asleep. Totaled this thing 12 hours later, some random guy broke my Cannonball records. So then I threw together the Fraud Taurus. That's a 2016 Audi S6, disguised sort of, as a Ford Taurus Police Interceptor. So-

Well, you took the little vinyl eyelids off.

Yes, I have to put those back on. But other than that, like that is how it ran.

Okay. Any reason for the Audi and not like a Taurus show? Just start with a Taurus or?

Well, Taurus show is a great car. Yeah. But the only car that's gonna break a Cannonball record is a German Super Sedan or a Porsche. Like that's, I mean, the speed, the endurance, the handling, it's not just a straight line.

Yep.

And then you also need efficiency too, because obviously you can't be stopping for gas all the time. We have a buddy, Greg, that did it in the Taurus, that's HO. I think he did 30 hours, 31 hours, something like that. I mean, a respectable time, but it's just not as fast as, you know, one of these German Super Sedans.

So before like the last like 10 or 15 years, how frequently were records being broken? Like, was it like sporadic or was it just as frequent?

Well, I guess we should go back to what the Cannonball Run is. Sure, yeah. I always like breeze over. I figure like, oh, everyone knows what this is. So Cannonball Run is an illegal underground road race from New York to California. It started in the 70s as an actual like organized race by Brock Eates, kind of a thumb your nose at the government and their overreach and then the 55 mile an hour speed limit. But he wanted to show that good drivers and good cars could drive across country faster than the speed limit safely. Like that was the whole premise of the thing. But you know, the movie came out in 81. It was just getting too big, too dangerous. So it kind of shut down, kind of went underground, became the US Express in the early 80s. So they were still racing across the country. But in 1983, it was the last like organized Cannonball Run. And the record stood at 32 hours in 7 minutes. And it stayed that way for over 20 years. And really the, I call him the guy who like reignited this whole Cannonball thing is Alex Roy in the blue M5. In 2006, he set out to see if this 32 hour barrier could be broken because Brock Gates had said like, maybe it could be beaten by a little bit, but like 30 hours is a wall. No one ever going faster than 30 hours because of traffic, law enforcement, it was a lot different than it was in the 70s and the early 80s. But yeah, so he went out and broke the record, 31 hours and four minutes back in 2006. And that kind of like sparked the Cannonball bug in me again. I saw the movie as a kid and I always had the latest radar detector and a CB radio in my car. And I was always speeding like a little Cannonballer, but I never thought that people were doing this or this was a thing or even possible until Alex Roy. So yeah, so he had the record for seven years and Ed Boling came around. He broke that 30 hour wall that nobody could, you know, that they didn't think was possible.

Which that was what, 2013, 14?

Yeah, that was 2013. Which that was great because it's like, oh boy, like I was just chomping at the bed, man. Give me more Cannonball content because there wasn't like that much information out there.

Sure.

And when I started into this whole thing, like that's what I set out to do. I said, I'm just going to document everything in the Cannonball world because guys like me, I'm like, I don't know if there's 10 people or 10,000 people that want to know about this Cannonball run, but I'm like, I'm just going to document everything. But yeah, so Ed broke that record and I was like, yeah, man, maybe there'll be a movie, all this stuff. And I'm like, dude, that's unbeatable. He had this perfect weekend and no Cannonball ever goes perfectly. Let me tell you that. But I was gutted. I'm like, there's no chance I could ever beat that. But I got my first chance to actually do a Cannonball in 2015 with the 2904. It's kind of like 24 Hours of Lemons meets the Cannonball. So you have to build a car for 2,900 bucks, pay for fuel, everything. Safety stuff is outside of the budget. So you can do anything. I put like $10,000 into this 07 Crown Vic that was a taxi cab and prior to that was a police car. I call it the P71 Black Turd. So yeah, so I got invited to do this race. And at the time, the 2904 was kind of a lark. It was like people are really dressing up and more about theatrics and just getting these junk cars across the country. So I thought, I'm going to exploit every rule and I'm going to take it seriously. And I'm going to go out and go real fast to kind of like, you know, check it off the bucket list of doing a real Cannonball. Well, the organizer had told me, like, well, we have a special guest. I can't tell you who it is, but we have a special guest this year. And I'm just like, man, who could the special guest be? It's like Alex Roy or Ed Boyan. Is it Burt Reynolds? Like, you know, I don't know what's going on. So I just like I build this car and I'm like, there's no way anyone could beat me because this thing is just I've dissected the rule book and made the best car possible. Two weeks before the race, I find out it's Ed Boyan who is the special guest and he has bought a $1,500 S55 AMG that has been like totaled twice, 12 owners, and he has taken the rule book and dissected it and built this, you know, 150 mile an hour Autobahn cruiser that I have to race against. So I did end up losing to him in 2015. I lost by an hour, but that was my first taste of Cannonball. I did it in 33 hours in a quarter million mile P71 Crown Vic.

Which that in itself is crazy, by the way, right? Because like, what was the earlier record? What was it? 32 hours?

32 hours, 7 minutes was the record from 83.

Right. And to kind of get within breathing distance of that is kind of intense.

Yeah. And at the time, you know, there was a spreadsheet kept of like all the times of cross country, you know, racing and stuff. And I was number six. Like on my first attempt in a quarter mile. I'm like, man, like maybe there's something to this. And when I got to the Portofino, Ed was there and he came over and congratulated me. And he's like, man, he's like, we thought for sure, like you were like a 36, 40 hour car. Like, you know, it's very impressive. And he invited me. He's like, we've got this like secret Cannonball or Facebook group and he's like, and you just got in. So I'm just like, whoa, you know, like this is like so crazy. Ed Bowie, I remember meeting Ed Bowie in New York. I thought like he was the biggest celebrity to me.

Okay.

You know, this is before Vin Wick and everything. But, you know, just being the Cannonball record holder. Yeah. You know, he was like my idol, right? I'm like, is he going to have like bodyguards and how'd you find out about him?

When did you guys get linked up? I guess.

Well, I found out about him when he broke the record.

Okay, sure.

So, you know, I did all my research on him or whatever at the time. But they got so I met him at that race. And we became friends immediately. And the next year, we actually did the C2C Express. So you got the 2904. This is a cheap car, Cannonball. Then you got the C2C Express, which is the old car, Cannonball. We're talking about period correct cars. The rules were 1979 and back. So I did it in my Bluesmobile. I have a Bluesmobile replica. So I asked Ed to be my co-driver. So he came with me and our other buddy, Forrest. We all dressed as the Blues brothers and raced the C2C Express in my Bluesmobile. We won that race. It wasn't a super impressive time, 34 hours. But yeah, we got-

You won a Bluesmobile. You're probably really pushing it.

Well, I LS-mopped it. Don't tell the Mopar guys. But yeah, I'm like, there's no way this 360 is going to make it. So it's got an LS in it now.

Well, I wonder if that's what, cause you said it was like maybe mid 80s and then it kind of really didn't spark back up until mid 2000s. Do you think, if you think about the technology over the 80s and 90s, like we don't have anything super impressive going on here. Do you think just now with all of this kind of stuff is just going to make this, makes everything a little bit easier too?

Yeah, you know, as Brock Gates has said, 30 hours is an absolute wall and go faster. You know, and these guys, they did it in the 70s. You know, they grew up, got older, wiser, and they see all this traffic and all this law enforcement and urban sprawl, like, I can see why they didn't think it was possible. I mean, heck, we didn't know. And that's why Alex Roy decided to like, try to figure out a formula to break it. And I guess it just became like technology and the speed of cars and everything just outweighed the obstacles, I suppose.

Right. I don't know if you've ever had it. Well, you've had something from the 70s and 80s up over a hundred miles an hour. S*** gets sketchy too. Like even I'm driving this one of these up and down woodwork right now. I'm like, you know, floating back and forth all over the place.

Yeah, no, I mean, I've driven some like the Blues Mobile is. Yeah, I went through everything and it's got a little more modern suspension.

OK.

You know, it was pretty good. You know, we did have it over a hundred. It was pretty safe. But yeah, back then, probably the best car would be like something like a Mercedes or whatever. Like I just sold an 83 Mercedes SEC and that car is something else. Man, it had to have been the greatest car in the early 80s that had blow people's minds because mine was 40 years old. And, you know, it was a little worn. It was still so good. Yeah. But yeah, but the American cars and stuff.

Yeah, probably.

Oh, yeah.

No, I don't think spotters went over 80 mile an hour.

Yeah. Yeah. I remember when everything like 85 was like, yeah, yeah. It's like, oh, it only says 85. I guess I can't go faster than that. Oh, shoot.

The government thinks we're dumb sometimes.

Have you had any of those cars, by the way, like where you'd just be past like the speedo?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I've got a 77 Survivor Trans Am that my parents' neighbor bought brand new in 1977. And it is all original. I mean, the engine's never been apart, rear end transmission, nothing. And I took it on this race called the Southern Classic. So the Southern Classic is a race. So you remember the movie Smoking the Bandit. I don't know if you remember the premise of the whole movie, but the whole thing is Burt Reynolds get bet that he can't go from Atlanta and get a truckload of Coors and tax Arcana because you couldn't sell Coors whatever, Eastern, the Mississippi or whatever it was. So these rich guys bet him you can't do this in 28 hours. You can't go get a truckload of Coors and bring it back. So what they do in the Southern Classic is we leave the Lakewood Amphitheater in Atlanta, south of Atlanta, and you race to a gas station in tax Arcana. You pick up a six pack of Coors and you race back. So I've got the 77 Trans Am and I'm getting back to your Spenometer question, I swear. But yeah, that only goes to 100. So I do this race dressed as Burt Reynolds and I just wanted to finish like that. I'm like, this is like this childhood dream car of mine. I dress as Burt Reynolds. I'm going to do this race. This car has magical powers. I wasn't planning to go over like 100. I'm like, it's not like these Pontiac 400s are not good for sustained high RPM. People warn me. If you hold it over 3000 RPM for any lot of time, it's going to blow up. So I get out there and the car just wants to run. And within like two hours, I've got the speedometer buried. And yeah, it's over. It's all the way over by like the drive thing. You know, it's like this far past the hundred, 118 miles an hour as fast as that car will go. And I ran that thing so hard. I did it in 15 hours in one minute. It's 1,360 miles. That was the average speed with 10 fuel stops in an all original Trans Am, 91 miles an hour. The only person that beat me was an 84 Ferrari 328 GTS quattro valve.

Oh s***. Okay, so you bring up a great point there about the Ferrari. What? And with this car, you want to kind of not draw attention to yourself. A Ferrari kind of draws attention to you.

Yeah.

I mean, how does somebody dress like Burt Reynolds in a fricking Yeah, I mean, that is a little bit different than the Cannonball. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's taken a little less seriously.

But like, so does that go into kind of like your decision making? Like, I know, for example, like this is like a silver sedan is what it's referred to.

Oh yeah, for the Cannonball. I mean, for me personally, any of this cross-country, you know, road racing is stay under the radar. You know, I guess I went a little a little overboard with the fraud tours, but it's still like even now, you know, now it's a famous car. So people either don't notice it, do notice it and don't know what like, what the hell did he do to that car? Or they notice it know exactly what that thing is. Like you go to like I go to Cars and Coffee, like everyone's just like, I know that car. But in the general, you know, grand scheme of things, like 99% of the public doesn't even pay attention. It just kind of, you know, flies under the radar. That's my, that's my main thing. Yeah, you wouldn't want to take a red Ferrari and try to break the Cannonball record. And that guy that ran the Southern Classic, it was like a slate gray, blue, it didn't stand out. And plus it's an 84 Ferrari and he wasn't going that fast. I think he's, he had 147, but I don't think he wasn't doing 140 the whole time. I don't know if that thing would make it.

But. So, okay, this is a question I was thinking on the way down here. At what point do you abort or run? Like, whether it's in a fun or a bad thing.

I haven't had to. I mean, well, I mean, when I did it with Ed in the Blues Mobile, we were stopped on the Indiana toll road for 45 minutes. There was some rolled over truck or something that, you know, these things happen. It hasn't happened to me on a real competitive run. You know, for the C to C Express, they're like, it didn't matter. You were in this race with these other people. So, you know, it was what it was. I got, on this run, I think we didn't have any inclement weather at all. This one, it might have rained a little bit for a short amount of time. But, you know, I guess if you're trying to break the record and at this point you get pulled over or there's like a road closure or something, I guess it depends on where you're at, you know? I mean, if you're like at St. Louis, like halfway through and, you know, you're trying to do it in 24 hours, like, you're pretty much screwed. Like, you think you'd have to abort the mission at that point.

Well, it's kind of like, you know, you're from AMS, right? So it's like drag racing, like, you know, you're 60 foot, it's everything, right? So you have to get the front half, right?

Yep.

This is just drag racing on a way bigger level.

Yeah, that's why you blow the tires off the thing. It's just like, just fricking coast down the rest of it. Like, what's the point of running it out the back door at that point?

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Is there any point in it that kind of sucks? Like it, I mean, it sounds really fun and exciting, but like you're also in a car for 24 hours, right? So like when you, is that first half hour, you're like, or is it because you're sustaining speed and you're doing that? Cause like when I rally, I'm drowling, it's pumping, everything's cool, right? But then that 30 hour drive home sometimes is a real pain in the a**. So like, is there a part of it where you're like, this is going to kind of suck?

Yeah. I mean, you just, it's like a, it's like a wave of emotions. Like at first, you know, you're excited and then you're just like, man, it's just the stress of this. And then you're like, this is miserable. Why am I doing this?

Right.

It's all over the place. And, but, and, you know, a lot of it is exciting. You know, it's like, you are in, in the danger of going to jail, I suppose, you know, for a lot of it or most of it or all of it. So that kind of keeps you going, but it is monotonous. You know, a lot of people are like, man, that's gotta be the most exciting thing ever. It's like, I have dash cam footage of the whole thing, right? It's boring. Like if you go back and look at it, like you'd fall asleep. Like it's, it's really not that exciting, but you know, there's no radio on. I mean, it's a military mission, really, in the grand scheme of things. Like, you know, it's like safety is number one. Like that was, nobody wants to break the 50-year safety record. What's that? So there's never, well, there's been one accident in Cannonball. It was three women in 1972 or 75 were in a limousine. In fact, you know, the 70s are pretty wild from what I hear. But a woman fell asleep. They had this like loaned rental, whatever limousine. A woman fell asleep and they ended up rolling into a ditch and one woman broke her arm. But as far as Cannonball goes, that's the only accident.

But they were like actually attempting to Cannonball in this limousine?

They were in, yes. This was in an organized Cannonball case.

Okay. And that's kind of impressive when you think of it that way. Well, how big is the community anyway, right?

It's been in a huge resurgence. Honestly, like I, we're at the tail end of it. Like it's gotten too big again. I feel like we're like in the late 70s again, where it's like too many people are interested. It's just, I feel like I lived through the second half of the heyday, but now you're getting on the route, all it's gonna take is them clocking you in on the turnpike and clocking you out and calculating your speed and giving you a ticket, right? Or speed cameras or anything. Once that happens, it's over with, or you're gonna have to find another route, but that's gonna slow it down.

Sure.

And there's one rule, there are no rules, there's no handicaps because they have speed cameras now. I mean, it's just like the clock starts in New York, it ends in LA, that's it.

Well, then the countermeasures just get more intense too then.

Yeah, I mean, right now we're probably at someone in advantage over the police, but I'm sure the police are always up in their game.

Yeah, so they're sitting in a Cannonball group somewhere watching and listening probably.

Right, yeah, exactly.

Speaking of routes, then let's talk about routes a little bit. What is that? Like, what's the perfect time to leave? What's the better route? And if you run into something like a 45-minute delay, do you sit there and contemplate, do I get off on this exit, run this side street as much as I can for a minute and then hop back on? Like, what does that strategy look like?

Well, you obviously want to avoid the big cities at peak times. And unfortunately, you leave, you know, a giant metropolis, and you enter a giant metropolis. So it's a lot of calculations. Like, we've got spreadsheets, you know, with figuring out average speeds, when you're going to hit this state line. What does that mean to when you're going to get to this city? And there's really only two routes that make sense. Well, sort of a third one also. So there's the southern route, which is the most popular one. It's basically I-40. You know, you go through Columbus, Indianapolis, into St. Louis, then across through Oklahoma, the top of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, that kind of stuff. That is the shortest distance, but it has a little more, a few more cities, less elevation, which is good. Then there's northern route, which is basically I-80 to Denver and then down, which is less traffic, less cities, but then you have to go through Vail Pass. Oh, okay. Which slows you down quite a bit, and it's a little longer. And then there's a hybrid one. It's like you could take the southern route to St. Louis, cross Kansas, and then get on the northern route. I don't think anyone's ever set a record that way. Both my records were on the northern route.

Okay.

Yeah, every time.

Oh really, okay.

Yeah, I just know more people on I-80, so I can have people scout more assistance. I know the road better. That's just my preference, but Alex Roy, Ed Bullion set the record on the southern route. It really depends. I mean, there's construction. Like right now, one could be better than the other because of construction. Who knows? They were doing a lot of construction in Colorado on I-80. At one point in Decker, I guess that would be 76. Yeah. Well, wherever in on the route in Colorado. So that was down to one lane. So that slowed down. So there's a lot of calculations and things go, you don't just jump in the car with your buddies and just go nuts.

You're covering a lot of distance. So how important are the little things? Because if you're going across town in 30 minutes, everybody's trying to beat their GPS a little bit, at least I am, right? You're like, I can shave some time off, but the longer your route, the more time you can shave off, right? Are you basically making up everything? If you have to stop, are you pinning it right after that? Or is it like, get back up to speed as fast as possible?

Yeah. I mean, pretty much.

Are you factoring in every little thing?

Yeah. Everyone's got their strategy, right?

Right.

You know, so other people have other strategies. Like some people are like, how much fuel do you carry? I'm like, well, it's about 65 gallons total. I like to do four stops. They're like, oh, it would be really great if you just had enough fuel for the whole thing and you don't have to stop. It's like, well, sure. I guess that would help the average, right? You wouldn't have to stop, but like you're going to carry, you know, a thousand pounds of fuel, you know, through, you know, mountain roads. Like that doesn't make any sense. And then what if you got to take a leak, you know? Like you're going to have to stop to use the bathroom. So my personal strategy is I like to set up the car for four stops because then you stop every five and a half to six hours. Okay. It's like that way. We're not, we're not doing, we're not peeing in bottles and, you know, that's going to be my next question. You know, and like, I'd like to get out of the car. I like to stretch my legs. You need to switch drivers, you know, like things like this, like that's what works for me.

Walk the car around a little bit and just make sure everything's, you know, wheels not coming off.

Yeah, right, exactly. So it's like you got to clean the bugs off the windshield. Sure. You know, maybe check the oil. You know, like things like that, like you got to get out of the car. Like, I don't think it's realistic, but I think Ed did three stops. Alex Roy did five or six. So, you know, everyone's got their straight. A couple of guys have done two stops. Oh, but, you know, like, I don't know. You know, I've broken the record twice and my four stop thing seems to work for me. But, you know, maybe I got lucky.

I saw a guy in a Silverado that had like a custom tank built for the bed of this truck. And he was doing a solo run with just himself. You know, he's peeing in bottles then.

Yeah, for sure. I think he's actually got a urinal set up like where it just goes. It's like a funnel and it goes out the floor.

So somebody in a Volkswagen behind him is sitting there going, put wipers on, what's going on here? Yeah.

Oh, he's a machine. He's even a few years older than me.

Yeah.

And yeah, he did it nonstop solo, which is a whole other level of just insanity.

Yeah.

Like just to do it nonstop, like that is crazy to me. Like that does not interest me in the least.

Yeah.

Because I was saying, any interest in that?

No. Gosh, no.

Well, that's probably an even smaller pool of people going for a solo. What's his record? It was like 30 something.

He did it in 35 hours, I think. Jay Roberts holds the record now on the solo in a Prius, of all things. He had like 100 gallons of fuel on it. He's a machine too. He's also a few years older than me. Like dude, this guy is something else. But yeah, I think he broke the records low 34s, maybe high 33s or something like that. Yeah, he's a better man than me.

Yeah, for a solo, that's intense.

I'm not going to argue that.

Well, you also have an affinity for these German... Dan's never really experienced a German sedan. He's like, how do you make it this far?

That's why he brought up the Taurus SHO. Yeah, yeah.

Well, I was thinking, I was like, if you're going through the lengths of making it look like a Taurus...

Why not just use a Taurus?

Yeah, well, I mean, they can be tuned up and they can be pretty quick, but I've been in some of these cars in the back seat. I've never driven one, but I've been impressed.

You need to drive one. And here, I'll tell you a story. I set out to build the best American car, American, we'll get to that in a second, a car to do the Cannonball. So I took a Caprice PPV, which is technically a Holden. So it's an Australian GM, like whatever. We'll call it an American car. It has a Chevy badge on it, right? It's got an LS motor, you know? So I built one of these things to be the ultimate Cannonball car. So I put an LSA blower on it. I put CTS-V Brembo brakes on it. I basically made the Caprice PPV that Chevy could have made, you know, with all is almost all Chevy parts. I put headers on it in a pulley. But other than that, like Chevy could have built this car and I took it on a few road trips. And like, that was kind of the idea. I'm like, this is an exercise. See, what can American car do? It just didn't have the handling of brakes or acceleration or the fuel economy. You know, like I got 11 miles per gallon in this 700 wheel horsepower Mercedes doing a Cannonball. That car, obviously we went a little faster. We averaged 103 across country in that car. Got 11 miles per gallon. We averaged 110 in that car. 11 miles per gallon.

What are you getting up to for top speeds? Like, what is your fastest sustained speed you think?

My fastest speed in this car was 193.

Over what period, like how long did you sustain that for?

Not super long. You know, like sustained speeds, I'd probably cap it at like 180.

Okay.

But yeah, we did shoot up to 193. This car, we capped the speed of this car. It could have gone faster. It doesn't like much more than 160. You start getting a weird wind noise. You just kind of like feel where the car is comfortable. The car is comfortable at 160. Over that, it's, I don't know, for a sustained amount of time, like it just doesn't feel great. But we hit 175 in that car. And I purposely capped it at 175 because there's a famous quote from Dan Gurney who ran the 71 Cannonball with Brock Yates in a Ferrari Daytona and they won. But he was a famous race car driver. So the press, even back then was just like, well, how can this be safe? And his famous line was, at no point did we exceed 175 miles per hour. Because they had hit 171. So that was his kind of comeback line. It's like a famous line in Cannonball. So I wanted to like not break that. So I purposely capped it at 175. This car will go, I think we topped it on the way back. It did 189.

Okay.

Like flat, flat out. I've never topped this one out. I'd imagine this car will go over 200.

Probably, yeah, I could see it.

Well, what are you running for tire then? Because that's a very, at over 150 miles an hour, like that's a very important aspect of things, right? And a sustained period of time, like talk about heat, all that stuff. What are you picking for that?

Usually an all season Michelin. You do all season because there's times like when you go through Vail Pass, we usually run in the spring or the fall, in general. So you can get temperatures that may dip below 40 degrees. So it's like, you don't want to be running around on a summer tire, like hockey pucks. So I picked the best Michelin all season, pretty much. And whatever at the time is the best. And then you got to look at weight ratings. Make sure that you're well within that. You got to calculate how much fuel you're going to be carrying, how much the car is going to weigh. Because yeah, I mean, the only thing separating you from the road is the tires.

Right. Yeah. Well, and then like I've blown a tire at 90 miles an hour before. That's already sketchy. Like you get 150 miles an hour and blow a tire, things get weird.

Yeah. I never have questionable tire. They're almost basically brand new tires. You know, I'm not messing around with tires.

Yeah.

I don't mess around with tires on the Cannonball. I don't mess around with tires in my life, you know? If they're five years old and they've got three-quarters treads, I'm out of here, man. I'm just getting new tires, man. Yeah. Tires are cheap.

I'm like that too now as an adult. I remember as a kid, I'd be like, God's got cracks on the side of it or whatever. It holds air. The cords aren't showing yet. That's a good tire.

Yeah, right. Exactly.

You guys should change the tires on the AMG before the rally. Yeah. How fast? OK, what about shutting it down, right? Like when, like, let's say the radar lights up or whatever. Like, do you have any, like, you know, having to decelerate very quickly moments or is it not too intense?

That does happen. My worst one was in this car. The brakes on this car are phenomenal. Yeah. Like this, the S6 brakes suck. I've even upgraded to Huracan front brakes.

Oh, really?

They still suck. I mean, it's better. I mean, they're not just for like having to stab at 150 miles an hour and getting down to 70. Yeah. It's just like this car does not like it. Like, you ever slam on the brakes on a car and you're just like the car is not liking, you're like, oh, okay. And you're like letting up. Like, you're like, okay, I'm going to modulate this car. You just stuff the pedal of the car. It's like, you want to stop? All right. My worst one ever was we were actually, so I held another record or held that. I think it got broken, but it did recently. So I tested this car on the Southern Trail. It's us Cannonballers, like there are other routes and things to do. The public doesn't care, but like in the community, it's important. The Southern Trail is the shortest distance between the Atlantic and Pacific. It's 2365 miles. So I wanted to see how this car would do because I'm going to go out and try to break Ed's record. But I'm like, well, it was low hanging fruit. The record was like 26 hours, 20 minutes. I'm like, okay, well, that's probably attainable. It will also test the team. It'll test the car, kind of like see if this is possible. So we're on that run and I was in California and I was doing 170 and my all of a sudden, instant on radar, just like like a full peg. I stuffed the brakes so hard. Like it was the only time that this car ever became slightly unsettled. I mean, just slightly, ever so slightly. I went from 170 to 70, like that. And I'm like, oh crap. Like, did he get me? Like where is this? This is at night. And I just got down to 70. I'm like, where is he? And all of a sudden, boom, another hit. He was shooting the guy in front of me. So when he shot the guy in front of me, I was doing 170. When he shot me, I was doing 70. So that was the sketchiest moment, but this car has brakes, man. I'm telling you, you stuff that pedal, it's like you want to stop it. I mean, it's throwing out a fricking anchor. Like this thing is fricking phenomenal.

I got to ride around in a E63S a few years ago. My dad was demoing one for WarCord ever. And I was like, this thing is nice. Like I do with my fair share of Mercedes.

Yeah. I mean, for the money, this is the greatest value of car. You will not touch a car that is faster, handles better, stops better. Because these things are down in the mid thirties. I mean, I think you don't even get one in the high twenties at this point. That you will not find a better car for the money. These things are decent too. But you know, this, and people are like, oh, what car is better? I'm like, I mean, I love the disguise. I love the fraud tourists. Like I love everything about it, but this is a way better car. But it's an AMG. Like this isn't an RS6. This is an S6. They're not really comparable.

Why'd you choose to do an S6 over like an RS6?

Well, so-

Or did they even have an RS6 at this?

They did not have an RS6. So the only reason I ended up with this car is it was during COVID. And this car got totaled. My record was gone. Like I just had to find a car and my buddy owned this and he had just gotten a GTR. So I just called him like, I'm buying your car. Like I need your car. Like that's it. He's like, well, I just bought my GTR. I was thinking about selling them. Like I'm literally coming now. Like I didn't have time because we threw this car together. And like, it was like three or four days. I had four guys like round the clock, not all at once, but like we were like working on this car around the clock because I knew the COVID window was closing. Cause there was only like, you know, people remember, you know, like that like six weeks maybe, maybe four weeks of where like, where nobody was out. Yeah. Like we did this in May and like already though, the West Coast was open. Like it was mad traffic out West. East Coast was pretty light. I definitely had an advantage. I'm not saying I didn't, but if we would have done, I think if I was in this car on April 4th, the, when it got totaled, that was like the magic weekend. We're like two weeks in, you know, when they're showing on the TV, people dying in the streets in China. You know, like, it was just like it, like nobody knew what was really happening, like or how bad it was. Like nobody was out. I think if I was in this car, we could have went sub 24 hours. I probably could have went 24 hours flat in that car. Like it was like, that's how little traffic was, but we did it in May and already like states were opening up. And at that point, you know, like there's all the cops are pulling people over. I remember reading articles like a week or two before we made the run where California is like we're done with the all these people thinking they can just do whatever they want. They were starting to pull people over, you know, starting to be vigilance. Like it wasn't like April 4th would have been the week. You would have set a record that would have been completely unbeatable forever.

Do they keep, is there like a little asterisk next to COVID and not COVID records there? I mean, how do they keep it?

When it first happened, like there was a big divide, even in the community, like people are like, oh, it doesn't count, it doesn't count. And I lost the record, okay? So I had every, like, it would have been good for me to say like, yeah, that doesn't count. But there's one rule, there are no rules. It doesn't matter if there's a zombie apocalypse, like, there are no rules. Because I made the case, like, I just lost my record and I'm saying it counts, right? Like, when does COVID end? When did it end then? So I was like, okay, there's an asterisk. So when did it end? Is it 2021, 2022? Was it some point 2020? Like, how do you decide that? You know, like, it's not, you can't police that. And for me, like, I'd lost the record, I lost my car. Like, you know, it would have been perfect time for me, but that doesn't count and get up on my soapbox. But like, I mean, that's not right. Like, you know, that's, it is what it is.

Well, talk about this. We actually just, I think it dropped like two or three weeks ago, your latest video with Ed on Vinwiki. You mentioned something about the spirit of Cannonball. What does that mean? Cause you were talking about like your approach on, like, if you were to go do it again.

Oh, it's safety. Like for me, my approach is I don't want to negatively affect anybody. Like I don't want to scare people. I don't want to have them change course. I don't want to hit the brakes or steer or anything. I don't want to affect them at all. And to me and to everybody else, I for the most part that I can think of, that's their safety. You know, we don't want to upset anybody because Brock Gates, he wanted to show that good drivers and good cars can drive fast safely. Like I stick to that. So, you know, if you wanted to break the record, I fear how you'd have to drive, you know, and put that safety record in jeopardy and put people in jeopardy.

So you're not doing like what these people in New York are doing, like swimming between traffic?

No. Oh, gosh. Like that, you know, I've been seeing that lately and I'm just like, gosh, I hope people don't put me in that bucket because I don't drive like that.

Unfortunately, it's kind of like drifters and sideshows, they're getting thrown into, like a grandma looks at that, oh, that's the same thing.

Like, oh yeah, no, I mean, yeah, yeah, these sideshows are ruining all of automotive. It's like if you're into cars at all, it's just like, oh, you're into those sideshows. And they're like, oh my gosh, those people are not car enthusiasts.

Yeah, yeah.

Those, they are hoodlums who just happen to use cars to do their hoonigan s***.

Right, yeah. Yeah, no, it's, yeah, I've seen some gnarly crashes from people like doing that swimming and stuff. So, okay, so you guys, when you leave a metropolis like New York, then you're not exactly being reckless. You're just trying to get there.

I try to be as smooth as fast. Sure, I guess I could do the swimming and stuff. Dude, they're going to call the cops. Right. They're going to be like, you keep doing that, they keep getting calls about this, they're coming after you, man. Right. I mean, I've gotten called in, they've come after me just for driving fast. Because people, everybody's got a cell phone, right? So like you don't want to upset these people, because they will call the cops. I've been called in a number of times and like doing stuff. To me, I'm like, really? I'm like, I'm not even doing anything. Yeah.

I was more sensitive. Yeah. I was in Iowa just recently on a rally and I got called in. I got a, because they couldn't get me on anything else, I got a no front plate ticket. Because he was trying hard to get me to admit.

Was that our triple pullover?

Yeah, it was.

Yeah.

Got three of us.

Yeah. People are ultra sensitive. My latest one is I've got this E63 AMG wagon. I'm the lead car for this ultimate road rally. It's Chicago based rally, but I lead all the rallies. I lead 10, 15 minutes before everybody. They have an app and I can see where everybody is. I know when I need to get ahead of them or slow down. We were so far ahead of them, me and Stan. We're driving along and we're going like 85. We're not even doing anything. All of a sudden, the scanner lights up. We've got a white Mercedes traveling at a high. Me and Stan are looking at each other like, what? We're not even doing anything. We're like coasting. These people, Iowa is very sensitive. I've gotten called in Iowa and Wisconsin too. These people are just highly sensitive to anyone going 15 over the speed limit. They pass me. You can't pass me.

We were on some farm community and I'm like, we're talking Iowa farm roads, right? It was straight, nothing, and I passed a couple of trucks. I can see for miles on this road. I did nothing, insane, but they see a sporty car come flying by.

Yeah. Jealousy, maybe. I don't know. But yeah, Iowa is tough. Iowa uses a lot of airplanes. Yeah.

Oh, that's right. Okay. So touch on that actually. So, is it not... When we call it countermeasures on the police...

Yeah, I was thinking...

I call everything that's in the car police countermeasures.

Yeah. What does that mean?

They call it on their end though. Right? Because more so like, for example, like various states, right? Like some states have used planes frequently. Like, is that something you take into consideration? Like, oh, through Indiana, we have to be looking to the sky.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I know the route very well. And, you know, I've done a lot of gold rush rallies and stuff. And I would actually put a handbook together. You know, because the gold rush rally will change where they go. They're all over the country. So I would I would put together a handbook of like what the police cars look like, what unmarked cars do they use? You know, what are the what are the what's reckless driving? You know, do they use airplanes? What kind of radar do they use? Like, I like to know that information just to kind of see, because every every state has their tactics. And, you know, some of the worst states are Virginia, Arizona, Arkansas, of all places. Like Arkansas, they have a very low threshold for stuff. So be careful in Arkansas. Ed almost got arrested there.

Come to Michigan, because they put big red dumb bulbs on the top of your car.

Oh yeah, I love Michigan. Like, you know, I had to wonder, with the big red bulb on the top, did they buy a lifetime supply? And they're just like, we got to keep using them until they run out. You know, they got a warehouse somewhere, it's like racks filled, like, oh, we got another 20 years of these.

I actually had the same question coming here, this whatever, because you're a guy who makes parts, right? I was like, did they cut a deal with an LED manufacturer that was like, yeah, we want these for the next 180 years? Or is that company like, why do we got to keep making these? They're like pissed, right? Michigan's like, nope, that's our standard.

It is so ridiculous.

Yeah, they got to keep the tooling around just to make that one dumb light.

Yeah, I mean, it's great to spot them. Yeah. But gosh, if I was a cop, I'd be like, just like.

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Yeah, driving around in a clown car.

Right?

So let's go the other route then. Tell us about countermeasures in your car. What are we running? Are we running eight radars? We got CB radios. What is the gold standard there?

I like to run two radars, usually a built-in system, like a Redenso or maybe like the unit in R9 is supposed to be really good. I'm just starting to test out those things for like long range. I want like an early detection system for Ka band. And then I'll use an Escort on the windshield because I like that they have that app. It's kind of like a crowd sharing app. So other Escort radar detector users, like you get notifications. Like if you were out in front of me five miles ahead and you got a Ka blast and you had Escort live on, like it would tell me.

Oh, I didn't know that's a feature.

Yeah. So I'll use the built-in system with the super long range for that, like kind of like early detection. So it's like when that goes off, I'm like, I'm on alert.

Yeah.

Like I'm off the gas. Like, OK, what's going on? And then when the Escorts start going off, like that's like, all right, this is really serious.

Yeah.

So I'll run two radars, laser jammers, front and rear. I've got a police scanner, CB radio. At this point, it's mostly for nostalgia. Like, OK, like the truckers do not, you know, they're all governed, right? You know, that's why you get stuck behind a truck, passing another truck at, you know, a half mile an hour delta and you're there for a week. You know, they're not speeding. Like, they're all they're all governed pretty close together. So like, they're not they're not trying to call out the Smokies. You know, like it's just like not a thing. They're they're listening to podcasts, Spotify, whatever, whatever they're doing. So at this point, it's pretty much nostalgia. I haven't had a save on a CB radio and I don't even remember the last time. But I've got that gyro stabilized binoculars because, you know, if you use regular binoculars, you kind of bounce it around, you know, you need the gyro stabilized thing. I run a thermal camera on the roof of the car. That's to see the heat signature of police cars or deer. Like, you know, you can see like in Pennsylvania, I remember one time, we like, we just saw like a pack, 50 of them, like on the side of the road. She's like, whoa, okay. Like, you know, slow down. So I like having the thermal camera, especially, you know, you're running like in the desert at night in the back of your head, you're just like, is there a cop hiding in the bush somewhere? You know, it's just like, it's always in the back of your head. So it's nice to just kind of like have that, you know, in your arsenal.

So outside of like the deer, has the thermal camera ever like had a pretty strong save?

I have not had a save on a run with a thermal camera. Okay. In general driving, like road trips and stuff, I've had a couple.

Oh really? So you run on like regular road trips too then? Yeah.

I mean, yeah. There's a time and place for speeding.

Okay. Sure.

You know, I tell these people all the time, like you drove around with me, like just around town, you'd be like, you drive like a grandma, but there's a time and a place. Like, if you're not going to make up any time or there's stoplights and stuff, what is the point?

About five minutes is the point yesterday.

Well, right. I guess, I guess.

Yesterday we were on our way for the Ford tour and the tour bus leaves at 1222. I made there at 1215. There was like nine or 10 stoplights. It was a happy ending.

Oh no. Yeah.

Yeah. We made it work.

Yeah. You know, unless you like going like a good distance and like, and there's open space, like I'm not I'm not swimming like, you know, like if it's rush hour, just like it's like, what are you going to do? Yeah.

You don't get a thrill out of that.

Yeah. No, to me, there's no point. Like I don't I don't want to put anyone's safety at risk.

Right.

I like I have a family.

Right.

I don't want to like cause any problems for anybody. So so yeah, I don't I generally don't drive all that fast. There's a time and a place you can put me on interstate like in non peak times.

Sure.

I drive fast, but that's the only time.

Yeah, no, I have a pretty standard like I like to go about nine over because I feel like if I'm not double digits, I'll just set my cruise there then go if I'm not in a hurry. Right.

Exactly. And sometimes just like it's just too much to think about. You know, sometimes I just want to like zone out and just go.

Yeah.

You know, like now I have I got this electric pickup truck of all things. I hate pickups and I hate electric trucks. But I have one because of this gigantic rebate. I got it was basically free at that point. But yeah, I find myself in that thing. I'm just like, whatever. It doesn't matter. It's got super cruise, which is so cool.

OK. So it's important.

OK.

Yeah. So I love the super cruise, man. It's kind of nice to just like keep your hands off the wheel. It even works when you're towing.

Really?

Yeah.

It won't change lanes for you when you're towing.

OK.

Man, I tell you, I didn't think I'd like it, but I like it.

All right. Yeah, we're noticing a lot of the there's a ton of like mockies and stuff out here. So we've been we've been toying with the idea of doing something electric as well.

But oh, is there an EV Cannonball record yet?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. And the EV Cannonball record is a good indication of how technology has come in the last like 10 years. Because Alex Roy actually set the the electric record, I don't know, probably 10 years ago, maybe a little longer. It was like 58 hours or 57 hours, right? Now, it's down to like 40 and change.

Okay.

And that is just like faster charging, right? Longer range and more charging stations, you know? Like, so it's been fun to watch that fall because it's like, it's a good indication of like these trucks.

I think that's a good way of indicating. Yeah, that actually kind of makes sense because like that's been the conversation for the last decade, right?

Like, oh, it's not viable, right? It's like, oh, it's only good for cities and stuff.

Sure.

But, you know, that that proves that like you can actually, at least with the interstate system, you know, you can do it.

Sure.

But yeah, I didn't think like I didn't think I'd like electric vehicles. And like I said, I got this rebate that it was like, I would be dumb not to take this. Right. I didn't want to like it. I did. I'm just like, this is going to be ridiculous. Man, I gotta get it now. Even as a car enthusiast, I hate to say this, but like I get it. If you have a commute, like electric cars make sense.

Yeah. No, my wife has a 45 minute drive to work and it was like, I wouldn't have to worry about oil changes. Exactly. Like I can just put her in it and I don't ever have to think about the car again.

It's so nice not to have to worry about maintenance. Like the only thing I'm going to have to put, I got the same for 36,000 miles in three years, this is the least. I had probably set tires on it.

Oh, I didn't know if you would have to at that point.

Like I'm not going to have to do anything. It's just nice to have one vehicle that you just like, and what I find out is like, I always care about my cars. Like I'm always like polishing them and changing the oil and making sure they're maintained. Like this thing, like is not even a car to me.

It's an appliance.

Like really, I treat it like it, and I never, and I didn't, and I didn't like, I have like, this car has no soul. I don't care about it. I just jump in, you don't have to warm it up. You just go. And I really didn't think I would enjoy that, but now I get it. And this is not me preaching that EV is out of the way. Like just, you know what? If you're a car enthusiast and you have a commute, I think an EV is good for you. Like I think that you will actually enjoy it. It'll be nice to just have one car that just gets you from point A to point B and you just don't care.

What about hybrids, right? Cause you kind of have these like, like, you know, when you stop regenerative braking, that's the word I'm looking for. Is there any hybrid records yet?

Well, yeah, Jay Roberts that holds the solo record, he did it in a Prius.

Oh yeah, I guess, yeah.

But I don't know enough about hybrids to know like, you know, is that really gonna help? I figure the weight of a hybrid, like I think hybrids are good like in the city. It's like when you're accelerating. So how much accelerating are you doing on a Cannonball? You're doing some accelerating. You're not doing too much braking. Like I don't think hybrid would be an advantage, but I don't know enough about it.

Sure. Well, so speaking of accelerating, one of the things that you also mentioned on the recent VinWiki video was you're gonna have to start entering that four digit horsepower range in order for it to maybe make sense and just to kind of be faster out of the hole. Like, do you really think that's going to be an important thing to consider over the next few years?

That was Ed that said that. He went a thousand. I don't think he'd be a thousand, but you do need high horsepower because like you do, at least further way I do it, like I slow down to pass people. So I get past them, make sure it's safe. And then I jump back up to, you know, whatever 150, 180, whatever it is. So it's like every second counts, right? If you've got this car that takes forever to get back up there, like that's time.

So 61 30s are important.

Yeah. So 60. Yeah. So yeah. So if you want to use a common metric for car people, 60 to 130 is very important for these things.

Okay. Do you have like a number in mind or like?

I would say, I guess if I was going to do something, I would probably, because his fuel efficiency is also efficiency. I mean, you don't want to go too crazy. You also don't want the car to break either. So like, I guess if I was building a car, like maybe 800 wheel, which I guess is getting close to a thousand crank, you know, like, I don't know, I didn't specify crank or I think he was just in general, probably saying what I'm saying is like, right. You need a pretty powerful car at this point.

Yeah, which makes sense. It's like, I'm just thinking like, even like, so this one makes 800 wheel or 700 wheel.

700 wheel.

Is what I did. So like, yeah, I mean, that's what five or six seconds. My brain is mushed. It's like, I'm not gonna try to do math, but anyways, yeah, you do need that. That makes sense. Well, okay, let's take a break from the Cannonball stuff for a second. Tell us a little bit about Cannonball Garage and we'll probably connect it all back at some point.

Yeah, well, I'd love to have you out, but we're a McLaren specialist. As far as I can tell, pretty much one of the first independent McLaren shops. They really don't exist because everyone just has to deal with the dealer network. So we're probably about 80 to 90 percent McLaren. I do some turbo Porsche stuff. I still do some Nissan GTR just because of my AMS days. I really don't advertise that I do it, but I hear and there work on some Nissan GTRs, but primarily McLaren. It's a British supercar, so they can be a little quirky. McLaren has a terrible reputation. They're not as bad as people say, but they're not the greatest. When they start making road cars, 2011. It's a young company. They've come a long way in a short period of time. We're deep in them. I mean, we're one of probably at this point, maybe 10 people in the world doing McLaren engines. I get cars from all over the country for engines. I've done engines for people out of the country. We're in deep with these things. We hold the quarter mile record. We hold the 6130 record.

Okay, you do. Okay. That's the red one, right?

Yeah, the red 765 1300 wheel horsepower.

Oh, it's 65. Okay.

Yeah. I'd been doing the McLaren thing when I sold my shares of AMS in 2017. My old business partner was my best friend growing up and stuff. He was cool. He's like, I don't care what you work on or whatever. I just didn't want to go down that lane. When I left AMS, we were just starting to do the Lambo and Audi R8 stuff. And it seemed cool, but I'm just like, I just want to make my own path. And I was doing all these exotic car rallies, like Gold Rush Rally. It was the first one I did was 2016. And all these guys had McLarens. There's like 10 of them. And everyone had problems. This was the early McLarens when they were really problematic. And the next year, I went back and all the guys had sold their McLarens in. And I'm like, hey man, what happened to your McLaren? He's like, oh dude, I loved that car. Like it gave me some problems, but I really loved it. But nobody could work on it. What do you mean no one can work on it? They're like, only the dealers can work on this car. Like that's weird. So the more rallies I would do, I would talk to more McLaren people and they're like, oh yeah. Like, you know what? I had mine for six months, I got rid of it. Like it gave me some problems. The dealer had it forever. I just kept hearing this over and over. And I'm like, man, I got to look into this McLaren thing. So the more I looked into it, the problem with McLarens is you can't buy like a Chinese knockoff diagnostic tool. And then you need their special hydraulic bleeding machine because the suspension and the aerodynamics are hydraulic. Without those two things, you really can't work on these cars. And at the time, there was no knockoff. There's some knockoff stuff now that works okay. You really need a McLaren diagnostic tool, which McLaren is not going to sell you. And you need their hydraulic bleeding machine, which they're not going to sell you. So if you owned a shop and you had one or two customers with a McLaren, you're not going to go out and spend $100,000 on tools to work on two cars.

I think that's what it was.

So nobody jumped into this McLaren thing because it was just too much trouble. And then you hear all the nightmare stories about these cars, and people are just like, no thank you. So we had worked on a couple at AMS. We had done like tuning down pipes on a couple. So I'd seen them before, and I'm just like, this can't be that difficult. I'm just like, well, this is the perfect avenue. There's no one in this lane. I personally don't want to jump back into a make of cars where you're arguing on forums. And I did that with AMS for 15 years. And it's just like, it takes a toll on you, man. Like, as far as Mclaren, I don't even look at Mclaren forums or Facebook groups. Like, I'm just over here fixing these cars, sorting them out, enjoying myself. Like, I don't take it nearly as seriously. I call it a hobby, but I mean, obviously, it's a function business. I want it to do well, but like, I don't treat it like it's the end all be all of my whole livelihood. You know, because all my guys are like former AMS guys. Like, we're done with that. We just want to like work together, enjoy solving problems, and whatever happens around that happens. So, yeah, it's been great. You know, like I said, we're pretty much one of the first independent Mclaren shops. There's a few more out there now, but I know we got a good foothold in there, got a good name. We just did our hundredth tune with M Engineering.

Oh, okay.

So M Engineering, owner of M Engineering, funny enough, was an old AMS employee. We hired him to decode the Bosch ECUs and the Mercedes when we were getting into Mercedes, but he went off. Cobb actually poached him from us.

Okay.

That was fun. But he ended up, you know, working doing their Parsha program, and then he started doing the Mclarens account on the side.

Oh, okay.

So he is the name in Mclaren tuning.

That's like the main go-to, right?

Oh, yeah. No. If you look at every record that's ever been in a Mclaren, it's him. They are the best. And what we love about them is this is not just that most people that tune Mclarens, it's a plug-in server tune. And everyone claims, oh, it's a custom tune, it's a stage two tune, bro. Dude, the exotic car market in like European cars, like, oh, gosh, it's so shysty. Like, yeah, everyone claims they're like, they're custom tuning it. I mean, there are a few, but most people are just, it's just server tunes. But yeah, every car we tune is done on a dyno, data logged, you know, sent back to Mitch and John and M engineering, you know, revisions, like, you gotta be careful with Mclarens. Their weak link is the connecting rods. That's not saying their engine's bad, but the weak link is the connecting rods. And you can easily overpower it even on stock turbos. So we're, you know, dialing the torque back, keep the horsepower high, but dial the torque back, make sure it's safe. But yeah, we just did our 100th custom dyno tune. We've done more tunes with M engineering than they've done with any other shop. Great partner. So I have like, I have no interest in getting into tuning them myself, like when you got like a resource like that, you know, with a great friend. So.

So, okay. I have like nine million questions now. So take me back a little bit further here. So what, what was your role at AMS? I've never heard this story before. Like, so you're a co-founder.

Yeah. So I'm the co-founder of AMS. AMS started. We, my business partner, Martin, I've known him since I was four years old. We grew up together, like, you know, middle school, high school, the whole nine yards. He went away to college and I started driving tow trucks. I got into towing semi trucks and stuff. So he comes back from college. He's a mechanical engineer and he's like, man, I was on this formula SAE team, which is like they build like little go karts or whatever, you know, all the engineering students.

That's a great way to simplify it.

Yeah. So he's like, you know, he had a Mercure in high school, Mercure XR40i. I know what that is. It's a German Ford that was brought in from 85 to 89. They had a turbo 2.3 four cylinder from that Mustang SVO.

Yep. I have 88 turbo coupe. Same.

So you know all about it. So he had one in high school. We didn't know anything. I was in the hot rods. Like I was into like muscle cars and we would always mess around with my muscle cars, but this was his daily driver because he scammed his dad's like, you were getting a four cylinder. So he scammed his dad into getting a Mercure. But we didn't know anything about turbos back then.

Right.

It was a fun little car, but he came back from college. He's like, man, I did this. I did this turbo stuff with this formula, like he knew all about. You know, he learned all about turbo stuff. He said, we got to get into this thing. I'm like, all right. So I bought a Mercure XR4TI and we kind of split. I'm like, I bought the car. He's just out of college. He's making no money. He's working for his dad for peanuts. He's living with me and I buy this Mercure. And he and I start messing with it. And, you know, he's all into numbers. So he's taking it to the dyno and he's learning how to tune and stuff and he finds that there's no good camshaft for the 2.3 four-cylinder Fords. So we're testing camshafts. The best camshaft that we found, ironically, was a 2.3 or 2.5 liter Ranger cam from a naturally aspirated four-ranger. It was better than all the other cams that were like performance cams. Well, it turns out everybody does circle track with these things. No one had a camshaft. He's like, man, I'm going to design a camshaft. So he designs a camshaft and test it and it works great. So now we're going to make a camshaft. So he starts the company AMS.

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Birth off of a four, two, three, two, three, two, three. Right, exactly.

So I just start helping him with it. So it's his thing. I just start helping him with it. He's my buddy, you know? And at the time, like the towing that I was doing was getting kind of slow. And this AMS thing is just starting to pick up steam. And he's like, do you want to come help me with this? I'm like, heck yeah. So AMS was totally bootstrapped. Like there was no outside money. The only outside money that ever went, it was always like, work on cars, make some money, make this part, sell it, make some money, and like expand and buy equipment and that kind of stuff. I brought in $3,500 for my share of AMS to buy the first lift. And we put up the lift in the back of his dad's shop. We're like, oh, if we have a lift, we can be easier to work on cars, we can work on other people's cars, we make more money. And that's what we built AMS off of. We started in 2001, June of 2001. Obviously the timing was good. The first Fast and Furious just came out. And at the time, Martin had a Galant VR4 as his daily. And we were sitting there messing around with Miracours. And the camshaft thing was going OK, but we're dealing with a car that's already like, the newest one was 10 years old. I've learned that that's a recipe for failure. Trying to specialize in a car that's so old. It's like you wanted something newer.

Well, and they didn't have the following that the 5.0 and all that stuff did, right? Like the 2.3 got it. Yeah, right.

And it's not, I mean, it's a decent motor, but you know, like you get more than 400 horsepower on it. It's difficult, right? Cast iron cylinder head, you know?

So then do you know Tim Rellman then? Are you familiar with him?

Oh, that name is really familiar.

What's the, what did he do to his Miracore? He's all wheel drive swapping. That's what it was. Yeah, he's big into all wheel drive swapping. He did an S550, they all wheel drive.

The first S550 that's all wheel drive.

Oh, I'm kidding.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, so that was his claim. Famous Miracore. So that's why.

Oh, okay. Gotcha. So, so yeah, so we're like, we're trying to start this company off Miracores. And obviously we're, we're car guys. So we start modifying his Galant Bear 4. And we put it like an exhaust and a boost controller on it. It was already faster in the Miracore. Like, what are we doing? This 4G63 is way better. So we just like basically jumped ship on Miracores and went head first into DSM stuff. You know, this is like 01, 02.

Yeah, that was hot.

Yeah. And at that time, like in street racing, like the V8 guys didn't get it.

Yeah.

Like in the least, like we were a joke to them.

No, I remember all that s*** talking, little four cylinders.

Yeah, right.

And yeah.

So, so we would go out to the street races. We were not very good at hustling. So we would go out to the street races and be like, all right, who's the fastest car here? And be like, oh, it's a Z28 on a 28 inch slick and a trans break, you know? And you know, 150 shot. We're like, okay, cool. See that Galant over there? Yeah. We'll spot you too. And they'd be like, what? Okay, we'll spot you too. Like, all right. And we'd just go and just fricking knock their dick in the dirt.

You know?

Yeah. We had this like former rally mechanic, Adam Dubienchik, and he had this Galant, and he was just like, he was a great driver, a great rally mechanic, and like the worst hustler. You know? But that's how we got our name, was, you know, street racing. We just went out and just leveled everybody. Like to the point where like you had an AMS sticker on your car, you weren't getting a race. In fact, my wife had a 94 Talon. They made like 400 wheel horsepower. Anyone who was legitimately on my wife's car, but we had taken the street races. She had her scrunchie on the shifter. Be like, dude, it's my wife's car. So we would go out and hustle people with my wife's car. But we had a customer that had an identical 92 Talon. And I remember one night he called me. He's like, dude, I'm down here in Naperville. He's like, get your car down here. They think it's your car. I can't get any races. So we made our name street racing. Then the Evo came out in 03. We got one of the first ones in the area. And then our big thing was just take a platform and be the fastest. Like that was our, people are like, oh, what's the magic recipe? It was just like, pick a platform, be the best at it. Set the records. Like that was the recipe. And the rest falls into place.

So let's take 03 or the Evo, for example, then. So you guys have been around, you said established in 2001, was it?

Yeah, I mean, I guess, it started in my garage in 99, really, I suppose.

So it's just you and a buddy at this point, basically doing some cool stuff. So when the Evo comes around, is it still just you two guys?

No. So we grew really fast. As soon as we opened, like we, it was me, Martin and my buddy Tim.

Okay.

And he was our mechanic. And very quick, I mean, we got super busy real quick.

When did you get your first shop? Like when did you move out of dad's garage?

Well, we were in the back of his, so his dad had, his dad did the kind of like tool and die type stuff.

Sure.

So he had rented, he had one unit, we did his tool and die and he had rented another unit because he's supposed to get this really big job that like didn't pan out. So he had this like extra unit. So we were like renting, they were renting out the front of it. We were just in the back. So that's where the first rack was. So that's when I like say like the start of AMS was June of 01, because that's when the first rack went up and we had like our first like little spot. But quickly like we were just overrun with work. Like, because I mean, import shops didn't really exist back then. And it was becoming real popular. And so, I mean, within, I think we hired our second mechanic, Adam, in September of 01. Like, it was like two months in. We had, it was me and Martin and two techs. And then we needed like someone to run the front. So we hired this guy, one of our customers actually, I think in like October. And then I hired my first shop hand, who coincidentally is my business partner with the CNC Machine Shop. He was my very first shop hand, sweep of the floor stuff. I hired him in probably like November or December of 2001. So I mean, we grew-

So this is ramping up quick.

Oh yeah, no, within six months, we were like one of the biggest shops around. We had like six, seven people. Like it grew really, really fast.

So, okay, so now you have six employees and this is before the EVO. So this is just mostly the DSM stuff?

This is almost all DSM. We worked like working on a couple Mercours. Sure, but our big thing wasn't just working on cars was we wanted to make products. That was always what AMS was about. And kind of like as the camshaft was done, we started messing around with Martin's Galant. We made a T3, T4 turbo kit for the 4G63. So the way we did it was we made an adapter plate. So we were using the factory exhaust manifold. And just because his dad had a machine shop, we were able to like make these adapter plates. And then we made jigs and make the down pipes and the rest of the exhaust and stuff. So we like out of the gate had parts. Like we made, we had a Galant VR4 intercooler. We're making, for the first generation clips, we're making intercoolers and intercooler piping and that kind of stuff. So that was always our thing. It's like, we want to be a parts manufacturer.

Okay. So where does, okay, tow truck driver, basically. Where does your skillset come into play? Like what were you learning or what did you know already?

So, I was handling like accounting. So, people would always ask me like, oh man, you're a co-founder of AMS, like what do you do? You're like, I'll say like a wrench or this thing. I'm like, all the boring crap you're doing a business that nobody else wants to do. That's what health insurance and you know, like just anything that was like monotonous and boring, I'm very organized.

Sure.

So, I was a good fit.

What? You organized Excel sheets on every tollway?

Yes, exactly. It's like organization is kind of my thing. I'm very thorough and you know, I've got checklists and that kind of stuff. So that's, so that was my role at AMS was basically that. And Martin is the mastermind, like he is an engineer and just very numbers oriented. So that was kind of his role in things.

So how do things progress, right? So, okay, so Evo 2003, it continues growing. And that's still 14 years before you sell off.

So, so yeah, so I mean, we just, you know, we dominated Evo's pretty much from the get go. I think there was a time where, I mean, we held the record for four or five years. We're just constantly, we're just beating our own record. We're just going out and like, people were just chasing us. There was very few times that we weren't on top. Then Nissan GTR comes. And you remember when the Nissan GTR came, everyone's like, this car is unable to be modified. It is so advanced. You can't even launch it unless you're at the racetrack. I mean, I don't know if it was just a fricking marketing ploy from Nissan to get people talking about this car. But when it first came out, nobody can work on this car. Well, that piqued our interest, really. And we had one of our great customers that we'd done a bunch of Evo stuff for, bought one. And he's like, can you modify this thing? We're like, I don't know. They say it's not possible, but send it. We'll figure it out. And that's what started the GTR program. Very quickly, we're the first in the nines. And then we were the first in the tens, which whatever, who cares about that with GTR? But we were the first in the nines. Then we were the first in the eights. Then we were the first in the sevens, and then the first in the sixes. So we just like, again, same thing. We just broke the record and just kept breaking our own record. There were some times where we were kind of going a little bit back and forth, but we just basically just hit the ground running with that car and found out very quickly that it is one of the best tuning platforms ever made. It's actually very easy to make power.

So are you... It sounds like your main goal was always make parts, but it sounds like you're getting really good at building cars. So is what's keeping the lights on mostly the car builds, or are you building parts at this time?

Parts, the shop was always like a necessary evil, because you need to know the cars.

Right.

And you need to know your parts fit. And if something goes awry, like you can catch it in your own shop.

Right.

So the shop was always just like a necessary evil. We talked about like, oh, we should shut this down. It's not very profitable and stuff. It's like, well, you need these, we need some sort of shop because we got to build our halo car. And then, it's very expensive to just build your own car. And then we have customers that also want to go really fast. So then we were getting to the point where we're campaigning multiple cars. And it's nice when you got someone who's actually paying you to build a car and you go to the racetrack, you bring three cars. It's like you can support them. You're there anyway, you can support that. And you start getting into classes, too. GTRs, I think they were the first platform. They started doing the micro records. Or maybe really took it to the next level. It's like, oh, this is the fastest car in the stock ECU. This is the fastest car in the stock turbo. You know what I'm saying? There became all these micro records. I was so in-depth with the GTR. Maybe I just noticed it. Maybe there are other platforms that were doing micro records, but I sort of feel like GTRs were the first car to really get into these micro records.

The first one with floor mats.

Yeah, this is a full interior. We didn't have your floor mats. Well, I got the non-floor mat record then.

So, you being obviously heavily involved in the accounting side of things, when you go through each iteration, 10 seconds, 9 seconds, 8, 7, 6, how much more expensive does that get each iteration?

Oh, infinitely.

Okay.

Oh, yeah. And just like it's infinitely hard, it's like, oh, to go 10 is like, wow, that's a lot of work. To go 9s, that's a lot of work. Now you're getting into the like, to go 8s, like that's a whole other world. Then to go 7s, like, I mean, you're like talking about like doubling the horsepower, you know, like, and figuring out how to get the car to hook and everything else. Like, it's infinitely harder. It's like exponential.

What was, so I met, I forgot what his name was. I met one of the people from T1 down at Texas 2K. I didn't meet him. I was listening in. We were a big, you know, you know how Texas 2K circles are, or whatever event circles are. And I can't remember what it was, but there's like a limiting factor to the GTR. Like, were you involved in some of the technical conversations?

Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah, the limiting factor, we were getting to like 1700 wheel horsepower, and we weren't blowing, we had too much cylinder pressure, but we weren't blowing head gaskets. We were ripping the block apart. So everyone's chasing these problems and trying to figure this out. And Ivan, my engine builder now at Cannonball, he was the engine builder at AMS. So he was a machinist, so he doesn't just know how to build engines. Like he's into machining, like a super smart guy. At this point, he's been building engines for, gosh, 35 years. So he, I can tell the secret now, because it's out, but we were the first to figure it out. He drilled the block deeper, because to get farther into the meat of the block, because we were just at a weak point, that the factory head bolts just went so far, and when you got so much cylinder pressure, it would just tear the block. So we started tapping the blocks deeper to hold the block together. And that ended up, I forget what the threshold then was, but that's why we were able to keep ahead of everybody, because everyone was stuck blowing up their engines at 1700 wheel, and we were reliably making 2000 then. But then eventually we had to get into a billet block. So we designed a billet block, and AMS still makes, I think they're about to make their hundredth billet block for the GTR. But yeah, so from there, you find the weak points.

What a great way to like, not everybody thinks of that. When you say it, it kind of makes sense now, right? We're getting more steel down in there. We're gonna make it a little stronger. But what an easy way to, I mean, it's not like super easy, but like in the grand scheme of that's a small fix to get...

Oh, I remember the meeting when we came up with the ivans. Like, well, he's like, I think we could tap this, which I'll just get longer head studs and we'll tap the blocks. And we're just like, oh man, if this works. And then it worked and no one, and we kept that so secret because then we were the only shop. It's like, oh man, you want a 2000 horsepower GTR? Like, we're the only name in the game. So for a long time we did that. And then before the billet block, the girdle was kind of a weak link. It was like twisting and stuff. So we made a billet girdle. So we were the first to come out with a billet girdle. So that was kind of tidied us over until we got to a full billet block. But you know, it's like, if you wanted to get to a certain level, you needed this billet girdle. So yeah, it was all just like, we just go to the track, break parts, figure out how to fix it, and then you break the next thing. And we're doing that with Mclarens right now. Like right now, what's holding Mclarens back is no one has TCU control. So no one can control the clutch pressure or the shifting. So that's why we hold the record 861 at 169 miles an hour. It's pretty fast. But when you compare it to Lamborghini, it's not fast at all. They're going sixes. But no one has control of it. So, oh man, it was such a gong show to get that car to go 86. The way we had to shift it, we were at the track all day just trying to get a pass where the car would shift. Because no one has control of it. So that's why the record is not that impressive. It's really hard to put it together. But once someone figures that out, hopefully soon, but it's been a while, we're gonna start scannering transmissions.

So, okay, so is that just Mclarens across the board then? Or is it like, are you able to get crazy with 570s, for example?

No, Mclarens are pretty much all the same. There's two motors, there's 3.8 liter and a four liter. They're basically the same. One's got steel sleeves, the other's got aluminum sleeves. Okay. They're all using the same transmission.

Oh, really?

Yeah, Mclarens are all pretty much the same, in general, except for the Artura, which is this hybrid thing. But every other Mclarens is, I mean, if you had the engine transmission out, and I put them all together, you'd be like, it's all the same.

So, okay, so you said the connecting rods are kind of like the main thing to go there. So what's the 765 making horsepower-wise, roughly?

A little over 1300 wheel.

And then where does it land torque-wise? Is that one also a connecting rod thing?

That's 930.

Okay.

No, so we've got, so that was, coincidentally, we built that car four years ago. That was our first engine build. And the only thing upgraded in that engine is our, it's got our connecting rods.

Okay.

It's got our first generation of our connecting rods. Yeah, we have our own rods. At this point, we got rods, pistons, gaskets, hardware, because that's the other thing with Mclaren. Mclaren will not sell you any internal engine parts. The only thing you can get for a Mclaren, you can get cylinder heads or you can get a fully-dressed crate engine. You can't buy a crank. You can't buy bearings. You can't buy a block. You can't buy anything. So we've had to develop everything. Main bearings, rod bearings, you know. And when we need main bearings, like, okay, great. Like we'll have somebody make main bearings. They're not going to make you 10 sets. You got to buy 100 sets. So you're talking six digits. It's like, oh, you need this, 150 grand here, 125 grand there. You know, just to get this stuff off the ground. So another reason why a lot of people aren't into these Mclaren engines is like it's cost prohibitive. I was just dumb enough to just like jump right in.

Are they working with you at all? I mean, obviously as you grow at all a little bit, they're not, no.

No, Mclaren is not like other car. They're small. It's like when we were at AMS, it took us a while. We got in with Mitsubishi. They gave us a couple of cars and they gave us support. When I was kind of like on my exit of AMS, we were putting together a deal with Infiniti because AMS Alpha became kind of a Nismo, how Nismo is the Nissan. Alpha, our high end brand of AMS, became the Nismo of Infiniti. Or kind of like TRD is to Toyota, that kind of thing. So, we got in with these manufacturers, but I don't think like Lamborghini or Ferrari or anybody is working with anybody, and McLaren is definitely not.

Okay.

They're definitely keeping things to themselves. They're trying to keep independent shops out of it. In England, they had some guy come in to, I don't think he works for McLaren anymore, but he outlawed selling parts to independent shops in England.

That's insane.

It only lasted for, I think it's illegal or something, and I think they ended up firing the guy, but they really try to keep things close to the chest. They don't really want people messing with their stuff. But it's a liability, right?

Right.

Because these things, McLaren Motors were letting go because people don't dyno test them or keep them in safe limits. They just throw a server tune in the thing, just wastegates freaking wide open, just making all the torque. They bend the connecting rods, throw a rod through the block. That's why McLaren is getting a bad rap. All these things blow up. It's like, well, sure, if you throw all the boost at it.

Yeah.

I mean, the weak link of the GTR is the rods.

Okay.

The weak link of Subaru is the rods.

I'm sure you guys found every weak link.

The weak link of this car is the rods. Like, it's just, well, why don't they put stronger rods? It's like, they're trying to make 700 horsepower. Why are they gonna put rods in it that can handle 1400? Like, it doesn't make any sense. It's just gonna be heavy. And McLaren's big thing is weight. They are weight weenies. You ever heard these road bike guys that call them weight weenies? They have like the carbon fiber bike and everything's carbon fiber and everything's weight, weight, weight. That's how McLaren is. They've put some, like the 675 has the tiny, like pencil thin connecting rods. It's like, why? Well, they want it to rev faster. They want everything to be light.

Well, also, I think it was the 765. Initially, when it came out, I was having like windshields break. It was like 40% thinner than the 720 or something.

Yeah, yeah, they, Mclarens is all about the weight, but that's what makes a Mclaren work, is like an 800 horsepower 720 can go toe to toe with like a 1,100 horsepower Huracan or R8 because it's lighter.

Right. Okay, so you've obviously spent a lot of time working on them and that obviously comes with, there's a market there. That's why you got into it, there's a market, but do you actually like Mclarens then?

Oh, yeah, I do. For the money, it is the best driving experience, the sexiest car. I love anything that's of value. Like, that's why I love these things.

Sure.

Because you get them cheap, you do a couple of mods, it's a lot of car for the money. Mclaren is so much car for the money, but that comes with a few problems, but no, I love them and we've loved sorting out the problems. And it's been fun to like, especially we get so deep into them, like taking apart the engines and just seeing like all of a sudden it's like, oh, they started DLC coding the followers. It's like they solve the problem, they fixed it. Like, oh, they saw the problem with the rods, like now they changed the rod design. We're seeing all these like things that like even Mclaren techs don't see, that's like the advantage of us, like we really get in there. Like if you're like a factory trained Mclaren guy, like you're trained like maybe replace a cylinder head.

Yeah, to fix, not improve.

Yeah, you're not authorized to take engines apart or fix them. Like we're getting like, we are like in like, we know as much as the engineers at this point, or maybe more, you know. So that's been fun, but I know I do really love Mclarens. Like I, my dream is, and I'm working on it right now, I'm trying to find a blown up motor 720. So I want to, cause again, I need the value. Yeah. I'm not just going to buy a perfectly running one, but I've already been collecting parts. Like I've got a built engine for one. I've got an extra transmission for one. Just, I've been collecting parts to find that car that comes through that the customer would just want to let go. And now I'm going to build the 720.

Are there other, cause you said it's a great car, but a lot of people get rid of it because of some of the issues. Do you see it picking back up? Is there other, you said if somebody else cracks this transmission thing, are there other shops out there doing what you're doing too?

They're starting to pop up. There are more and more, but they're, man, Mclare, it's a tough car to figure out.

Right, that's kind of why I'm getting it. Like, isn't anybody else in that group?

We get, we're, you know, we're not the cheapest, but we always, we just had a car come through that, you know, needed a motor.

Sure.

We gave them a price quote and an accurate time. The big thing was timeline. We gave them, like, I'm realistic. Like, I'm not gonna, like, tell you what you want to hear. Like, I'm gonna tell you realistic. Like, I like to exceed expectations. They end up calling somebody else, and they're like, I'll do it for half the price and half the time. Like, okay. And it wasn't nasty. I think, by all means, like, I understand. And internally, when the car left, I said, that car will be back here in a year, and it will have blown up twice, but it'll be back. And sure enough, nine months later, it had blown up twice. And customers are like, can you just fix this? Like, yes, we can. You know, it's like, you try to tell people, but, you know, they don't always listen. But yeah, it's like, you do it right the first time, you know? Like, take it to the expert. But yeah, we get cars from all over the place that people can't figure out. You know, we're at the top of the game and the McLaren thing, and yeah, we get all the problematic cars, but we enjoy that. Like honestly, like, I like, my biggest thing is, like, I like making McLaren ownable, like, because without, you know, without a good independent shop, like the dealers take a long time and, you know, they don't have options. We've even rebuilt engines for dealers because they're only got options. They have $80,000 crate. So they blow up, the car blows up, right? Their option is an $80,000 crate engine. It's about $10,000 to install it. So, 90 grand. If you've got a 2016, you know, 650, like the customer's not going to pay that. And we've run into that, the dealer's like, man, can you help us out? Can you get something together for this customer? Like, otherwise this car is junk, you know? So yeah, so we've even rebuilt engines for the dealers because dealers don't have access to it either. Like they can't get a block or anything. Their only option is this crate engine.

Is there one you recommend to somebody that wants to get into a Mclaren? Is there like, what's the Camry of like, I want reliability and...

The Camry? Well, I guess the Camry would be the 570.

Okay.

But the 720 is so much better. Not that the 570 is bad, but I like the 720 so much more. And the difference in price can be as little as 50 grand. You know, when we're talking about expensive cars, like 50 grand is not that big of a swing. I just urge people, I'm like, if it's a cost thing, I would wait and try to get a 720, because it's just that much better of a car. Not that the 570 is bad, but the 3.8 liter, it can only do so many mods to it, and it's just the potential is not there. Yeah, I could take a 720. You bring me a 720, tune and down pipes, 93 octane, it'll make between 800 and 840 wheel horsepower. Tune and down pipes, done. We'll dial the torque back and it'll last you forever. For not that much money.

Well that, do you fix some of the reliability issues then, too, or is the reliability problems?

Reliability is really the connecting rods.

Okay.

So we just keep the torque down.

Okay.

We actually tune it. We don't just plug in a tune.

In their stock form, they're not as bad as everybody kind of leads them out to be. It's when people start messing with them is when you get those issues.

Generally, the biggest problem with Mclarens is people just running too much power through them.

Sure.

Because they're just plugging in a tune.

What about, okay, so stock stuff, because I've heard everything. Like, is there some things that are just myths when it comes to the Mclaren world? Like reliability-wise, let's put the engine stuff aside. What about like electrical? That's what I hear.

Electrical, they are sensitive electrically. They will go into like weird faults. Most of the time, you just put the car to sleep, give it five minutes to collect its thoughts, and you fire it back up, and you probably won't ever see it again.

Okay, you like time out.

They are very sensitive. Like they will trip lip modes and weird things. You know, they are a little sensitive in that regard. Other than that, we see some coil problems. Like we have an upgraded coil set that we have. And factory coils are very expensive. So we have an upgrade that's like half as much as you'd pay for, like, you know, the factory stuff. We found some ways to like make things, you know, less expensive but more reliable. Their biggest fault was the suspension accumulators. Like basically, like on the early cars, every two years, you have to replace the suspension accumulators. It's like a seal that goes bad in there. There's an upgrade, like so then they got better on the 720. So it's like every three to four years, you'd have to replace them. But now there's the McLaren 765 style. We can upgrade your 720. I've yet, since replacing those, I've yet to have to replace those. So I think they've actually sorted that out. So now if you just put the 765 style accumulators on your 720, like that'll probably be the last one you do.

Okay, so MP412C, right? Like that one had its own fair share of issues right out the gate. What was it? Was it a water pump? Or what was it?

Oh gosh, it had so many problems. Windows that wouldn't like randomly go down, like dashboard leather shrinking. Oh gosh. Like it almost tanked the company. Like we had a customer, our first McLaren I ever saw was, we had a customer that had, we'd built them a whole bunch of cars, but he bought a brand new MP4. And he had it for six months. He's like, forget this pile of trash. And it ruined McLaren's for him for like, I think he has a 750 now. It's like, it's taken years for him to like, come back around to considering even owning a McLaren. It was so bad. It was just always in the shop. They had a lot of quality problems. But you know, like I tell everybody, they started in 2011, man. It's a young car company. That they've come so far in such a short time, honestly, is like really pretty cool to see that. They really have like looked at things and fixed things.

Should somebody even consider an MP4 then?

At this point, they're pretty sorted out. You know, all those problems are sorted out. It is a pretty good value. There are some things that can go wrong that are pretty expensive, like the steering rack goes out. It can be pretty expensive. So, your $80,000 MP4, like if you're stretching to buy an $80,000 MP4, I wouldn't do it. Okay. It could get real expensive. Just because you can afford the $80,000 doesn't mean you can afford this car. But that goes for a lot of super cars, really.

Yeah.

One I used to hear from somebody who used to work at Ferrari was the F360. It's like, oh, it's cheaper than the F430, but by the time you're done working on the F360, you might as well have just gone to F430.

Yeah, I have a friend that has a 360 and he's definitely...

A glutton for punishment.

Yeah, he definitely is.

I bet he likes Mazda RX7s, too. Just a glutton.

Exactly. It's his daily. Yeah, no, they're kind of like that. I would probably steer clear of it. I think the best...

Of the MP4?

Yeah, it's tempting, right?

Right.

But I don't know. I say save your pennies and wait for a 720. I think that's...

So just skip the 570 at that point.

That's... I don't know. Like we have a shop, 570. And we bought it for 100 grand. It was a rough car. And they had a problem where the driveline dampener had these springs in it and they would explode. And it usually jams in the starter and you think your engine locked up. But actually the flywheel just exploded. Well, this one started running really funny. And it actually shot the spring through the under tray like a bullet. Like it was like sticking through. So at that point, it's like, okay, we'll pull the trans. We'll just do the DOD. It's like, well, it's almost as much work to just pull the motor. Just pull the motor. All right. Well, the motor is out. Like, might as well build the motor, you know? Like, you know, you get in there, the famous, you know, while you're in there, you know? So it's like, but now most of those five, like most of those six fifties and five seventies, they had that problem. They fixed the problem in 2017. So if you've got a 2016, this still has the original one. It's not if, it's when, but at this point, I think they've almost all blown up. Like, I don't think there's probably, like there was a while there where we're doing them all the time. Like I haven't seen one in a while. Like I think they've finally run the course. And it's not like you're sticking the same garbage in there. Like Mclaren, again, notice the problem, improved it, fixed it. We haven't replaced another, like once you do it, like we haven't like, oh, it went bad again. Like, you know, it's like, they fixed the problem.

Yeah, two years to stop the spread.

So you gotta, you know, there are these caveats. Like we tell people all the time, like if you're gonna get a Mclaren, send it to us for a PPI.

Okay.

I can't tell you how many cars, like even a thousand miles, 720, like, oh, it's only got a thousand miles stuff. Like you get it in, it's had downpipes on it before. It's been tuned. Like it's been put back together. They missing bolts and stuff. Like it's, it can be dicey. Definitely, if you're interested in a Mclaren, send it for a PPI.

What do you charge for a PPI?

I think it's 700 bucks.

Okay.

And you know, and sign up to an expert because like we know what to look for, you know? Like we.

Who else in the industry besides yourselves is like, let's say somebody wants to do a PPI, who else would you send it to? Anybody in particular come to mind?

McMedics in Atlanta. Now I would say that it's either us or them.

Okay. That's the most common that we have like in Minnesota. Like I think it's like a handful of times a year, McMedics comes and services a bunch of cars at once. Yeah.

So yeah, no, we're, we're good friends with Kevin and Shawn. Sure. Yeah. We're, you know, we're all, we're all in this McLaren game together.

So I'm sure you guys are always talking.

Oh yeah. No, exactly. You know, so, you know, if we've got a question, you know, they're happy to answer, you know, they got engine questions, they call us and yeah, no, we've got a great, great relationship with them.

What's the best year 720 to get? Is there any years to avoid?

It really doesn't matter.

It really doesn't matter.

No, it doesn't.

I heard it was like 2020 plus or whatever. It was like, what'd you want?

Yeah, you know, nothing jumps out. I've got my guy, like I don't, I'm not in the super day to day operation of Cannonball. I spend a lot of my time with my CNC machine shop.

Okay.

Like I've got guys that run it. Jordan might have a different answer for you. Sure. Like nothing jumps out of me. There's like a real problem.

Obvious answer.

Like I could tell you about 12C's and 570's, like the problems. But yeah, 720's are like, to me, the 720 was like when they really got things figured out. Sure. 570 is like still had a couple issues, but it was a lot better. Every car is like leaps and bounds better than the last one. I feel like 720 was like a real jump to like, all right, we know what we're doing.

Well, with McLaren, they always kind of had that like fail fast approach, right? Like just figure it out as quickly as possible and get onto the next thing. I mean, who's gone through more versions? I mean, maybe the Hellcat has 19 different trims, but okay, what about what year 570 is to avoid? Is it right?

2016, just be, if you get a 2016, just make sure the driveline dampener has been changed. Like that's the biggest problem with those things. And I guess it really depends on what you want to do. Like I'm like a bang for the buck guy. I'm like, if you can do to get the power of a 720 with tune and down pipes on a 570, I mean, you'd be able to build the motor and bigger turbo. I mean, you'd be like really spending a lot of money. I mean, you basically at that point, you should just spend the same amount of money as the difference to get a 720. Sure. So like, what's the point?

But if you're somebody who just wants to like look cool at cars and coffee and have somebody just drive around.

Yeah, no, there's definitely a place for it. It's just me, I'm like, I think differently. But if I just like, I want to say I own a Mclaren and have a pretty decent car that performs pretty well that I don't really care to modify too much, and not trying to be faster than the next guy, then yeah, 570 is great. But for me, like I'm just like, man, you just do a tune downpipe, make it 800 wheel horsepower just reliably. Like I'd rather do that. Yeah, then you know, try to, it's like trying to take like a lower model car and do all these mods to it. It's like, take like an E550 with a 4.6 liter, and you do all these mods to it. It's like, oh, it's as good as the E63. It's like, why don't you just buy the E63 with a 5.0 in it, and the big brakes and the better suspension? Like, why fight it? You know what I'm saying?

I know a guy who tried to make a fake GT 500 once. Yeah, I know what car he has now.

Right. And maybe after doing it, maybe he learned.

Well, I had the car before the GT 500 existed. So then it came out and then I was like, well, I really want one, but I have this.

We'll see. That's different.

Yeah.

I'm going to give him help. That's why we work so well.

But I'm a value guy. So I bought a rebuilt title car because I knew I was going to rally it. I knew I was going to track it. I didn't want to go out there with a $120,000 car and be scared of everything. And I beat the limit piss out of my car and I enjoy every minute of it.

That's why I want to buy like a blown up or rough 720. Cause it's like, I don't want to care. Kind of like that's like Ed Boyan's philosophy. He's like, it's like find the worst example of the best car.

Yeah.

And at that point, they go fix up a little bit so it's drivable and just like enjoy it. Then just like, you don't worry about it.

Well, that's my favorite thing. Like that's stuck with me for years. Didn't he have like the highest mileage 4 GT at one point or someone else?

Mercy Lago.

Yeah, but it's like, you know, you want to actually drive this thing and not worry about it. Right.

At the end of the day, it's a car.

Yeah. People forget about that.

Well, is there, I was going to ask that about Mclarens too. Although from what I hear, they're usually broken so they don't have a lot of high miles on them. But like, is there a mileage to look out for?

No, the worst thing you could do to Mclaren is not drive it.

That's what I've heard.

You want electronic problems? Park your Mclaren for a year. You'll have electronic problems. Like, the most problematic cars are the lowest mileage ones.

Yeah, okay.

So, I'm talking about like low, low mileage. You know, you got like, oh man, I just picked up this 570. It's five years old. It's got 300 miles on it. It's like, oh boy.

Well, my friend picked one up a few years ago in Pennsylvania or whatever. It was like a 570 in some beautiful blue color. It's a fistful, this thing blue. I don't know if it's only that. And it's a lake or something. And it had 30 something thousand miles on it. And the only issue he had is the screen turned off. But he solved that by, he was on the forums or whatever. And it's like, oh yeah, you don't want to start the car. You want to do the accessory or whatever first and then start the car. And that's solved. He never had that issue again.

Right. Yeah, there are some quirky things with Mclarens. Like the start button won't work.

Yeah. Oh really?

Yeah. And you're like, oh. Seems important. We had that problem with, we rebuilt Freddie Tavarish at 675 in a week. We built his motor, four liter, swapped it to get the Jay Leno's. So me, Stan and Freddie, get this car in the trailer, take it out to Jay Leno. We were given like two weeks to get, like build the car and get it to Jay Leno. So we go out there and Jay's trying to start the car, car won't start. So you have to really slam on the brake.

Okay.

That's one of the problems with these cars. Like if the car doesn't start, first stab the brake pedal, like real hard, like you're trying to push it through the floor and then the car will just start. If that doesn't work, sometimes the key, the transponder and the key, is like the sensor is behind the start button. So, take the key and push the start button with the key. Yeah, there's all these like stupid things. You're like, this car is broken. What's wrong with the battery dead or whatever? It's like, no, no, it's just doing Mclaren things.

It's like I'm being punked with somebody.

So, you gotta take this car out and drop it off to basically Car Jesus at this point. And Jay Leno is like the gold standard there.

Yeah, and he can't start, we're like, punch brake pedal. And he's like, what do you mean? What do you mean? So, he had to get out of the car and there's just like, oh, it fires right up, you know? But yeah, that was a puckermole, because we built this car in literally seven days. Like, we've had a blown up motor car, we built a four liter, we four liter swap, no one had, to my knowledge, no one had four liter swap, that there's some differences with the transmissions. We had to like pillage transmissions and make a different transmission, like all this stuff in a week. We get the car to Jay Leno's, he goes to start it, it won't start.

So, everything's just going through your head at this point.

Oh gosh, yeah, I'm panicking. It's just like, oh gosh, I hope it's that. It's sure enough, it was just the common McLaren problem.

So, as these things are getting, like TCU, right, as that gets figured out, do you think there's gonna, the aftermarket is just gonna explode for them over the next five years?

You know, the person who buys a McLaren is not like the twin turbo Lambo guy. They're more about rallies and just like doing mild mods and enjoying the car. There's not a huge group of people trying to go super fast with these things. Okay. And that might be because of the TCU. I don't think it'll be, obviously, it'll open things up.

Sure.

But we've got the motor totally figured out. The next thing is gonna be this transmission.

Well, you, I mean, outside of the rods, have you found any other limits in the motor?

There are some other things going on in there that we're working on. I can't disclose, but.

I guess there's something there.

But yeah, motors are the least of my concern. But yeah, once that TCU is figured out, 100% it's going to be something that the transmission will be next for us.

That makes sense. I'm just, go for it.

Do you think with these supercar companies and Mclaren specifically, do you think by not offering support to shops like you, it hurts them or do you think it's?

Yeah, I suppose, Mitsubishi embraced the tuner market. Nissan, I don't know if they really did. I guess they did in a way, because that sells cars, right? Because those are tuner cars. I feel like supercar companies in general, they're like, we're the best. We built the best car. You cannot prove this. You know, they kind of like have that uppity feel. And that's not just Mclaren. Like Ferrari is probably the worst. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, like nobody modifies Ferraris.

Yeah, they don't let you paint your car.

Yeah, right. Yeah, you modify. Yeah, you modify a car, you get a cease and desist letter. Yeah, like from Ferrari. But I think that's kind of like the attitude of all these these bigger, you know, supercar companies. It's just like, we're the best. You can't prove this. Like, what do you you stupid Americans know what you do, what you're doing?

You're like, come on, we might do some redneck s***.

But I think I think that they I would think that that would help sell these cars, but maybe not. Maybe it's maybe it's just me growing up as a tuner, you know?

Yeah, you know, I do wonder that sometimes because like me and Dan are very heavily involved. I mean, with this podcast, your episode 160 something at this, I forgot the numbers at this point. Like, it's like, are we just too involved in this world at this point? Like, do we forget how normal people think sometimes?

Yeah, I, you know, I think we're we're so in the trenches like that. We don't see like I, you know, if you ask. Like the car, the whole car thing, the car modifying and everything else, like, oh, man, it's alive and well. But if you like really like zoom out and take a 10,000 foot view of it, it is. It's I hate to say dying, but it's like getting smaller. Like when I went to high school a long time ago, like everybody in high school could respect a cool modified car. Like everyone understood like, oh, man, you had a cool car, like he's a cool guy, you know? Like now kids don't even care about getting their driver's license. Like my nieces didn't get their driver's license until 18, 19 years old. My daughter's almost 17. She still never driver's license.

Yeah.

She's just not that important.

I was a late bloomer. I got mine when I was 17.

Jeez.

Well, you're a younger guy. Yeah.

If you, I see it when I look at the OEMs and stuff and what they're doing. I mean, look what Chevy keeps killing off their stuff. Like they have these halo cars that they're doing, but they're not, they're selling way more traverses and escapes and things like that than anything else.

Yeah. No, they're focusing on that because it's like these, these specialty cars are not trickling down. Like, you know, Mitsubishi had the Evo. It's like, well, it's a halo car. It's like, well, I'm going to get the Lancer. I can't afford the Evo. Oh, yeah. It's got the heritage or you're like, or I'm going to get a Mitsubishi because they make a real cool Evo and I'm going to get an Outlander for a daily drive. Like, it doesn't like, they used to work and I don't think that works anymore.

You know, we talked about this with Paul Rodi. Actually, you might know Paul Rodi. You've probably done a few rallies with him. But Dodge actually kind of killed it in Ephraim because like, you know, you can get the Scat Pack, the Hellcat, but you can also get this lowly V6, but it's still a Charger, right? Like you still kind of had that sort of energy. I think you kind of get with the Mustangs. Not so much, but...

I try to not, I don't, but you get like...

Oh yeah, right. The other day, they caught you ragging on them.

Whatever, the EcoBoost and V6 stuff, like you gotta get... It's gonna kill it totally off if you're giving those guys s***, at least to their face.

Right. Yeah, so it's like, yes, I suppose it is alive and well. We're here at Woodward, you know, and it is still big, but I think it's just like as a culture in its entirety, like it's shrinking and it's becoming more fringe. And, you know, it goes back to electric cars too. Like, you know, like it's an appliance. Like cars are becoming more and more of an appliance to people and they just don't care. It's just a way to get to where they're going.

Yeah. Especially when you can just get in and it basically takes... I mean, this autonomous thing is getting bigger and bigger too.

Yeah, no, I mean, the writing's on the wall. Like it's not, we're not just gonna have this resurgence and it's gonna be like it was 30 years ago. It's never going away. You know, even if the EPA came crashing down and you can't modify any cars, like people will still be modifying older cars. Like, you know, like I have friends that are in the nostalgic hot rods, you know, still doing, you know, old blowers and, you know, blow through carbs. And, you know, it's because of nostalgia, you know, it's like to have that feeling. And I just started a car dealership, 52, 52 Motors.

Oh, that's right. Tell us about them as well.

So, 80s, 90s to early 2000s enthusiast cars.

That's all the best cars.

It's hard for me to wrap my head around this, but that is the new classic car.

Yeah.

It's really, a Mitsubishi O3 Evo 8 is a pretty much classic car at this point. So, yeah, so I started a dealership with my buddy Eric Gowdy, who he was my sales manager at AMS for 13 years. He went off and when I left AMS, he also left and went into the car industry for Chicago Motorcars. And yeah, he just came to me and he's like, man, he's like getting older and I just like, I love these enthusiast cars and like nobody's selling these things. Like I want to get into this. I'm like, you are talking, if there was ever like a perfect business for me, it is an enthusiast car dealership because I don't even know how many cars I own. I think it's 20. I don't want to know.

Yeah. People ask me that a lot of times.

Don'ts count, but you know, Arne and Zipco's too. Yeah. So I'm sitting here like, I get this like wild hair. I'm like, oh, I got one of my recent cars I bought a year and a half ago is I got fixated on a Beretta GT pace car. Do you remember like the teal? They made the teal in the yellow?

I can't even believe you either. I drove in high school, a 90 Beretta pace car, that five speed, 3.1, all day four. Yeah, I have a Z26. Is it a Z26 already? I have a Z26 quad four, five speed.

Five speed, a banger. Oh, yeah. Like that's my, I think it'll be my next one. Yeah, so I like, I just got fixated on this, right? I'm like, I gotta get one. I gotta get one. And I was sending them to my buddy and he's like, I gotta get one. And I'm just like, this is what kind of started. I'm like, dude, like, if we both-

Good luck on finding a nice one.

Oh, I found a really nice one.

Did you?

I have a 60,000 mile, like two owner. Like, I mean, it is mint. It looks like maybe it's like two years old. It's mint. But anyway, so I'm like, okay, so I'm like, you're gonna buy one and I'm gonna buy one. Neither of us are gonna drive this car. I'm like, why don't we just buy one together? He's like, that's a good idea. So since we bought it, he's driven it once. I picked it up last year so I could do the oil change on it and brought it back. We keep it over his place. So yeah, so like, I started thinking like, man, I guess they're sharing cars, but then it's like, why don't you do a dealership? Because then you could just like buy the car. And I love fixing cars. That's our big thing is like, we want to go through the app shop, have all these resources, like get the car, go through it, change the fluids, like Evo, need a time belt? Do the time belt, change the fluids. So then it's like, the cars might cost a little bit more, but when you buy a car from me, like it's sorted out. You get the car, you can enjoy it.

Are you guys planning on doing like consignment and stuff too then?

Yeah, so we're doing some consignment stuff. Like right now we got a Evo six and a half, Tommy Mac and an addition on consignment, all stock, beautiful car. We just consigned, we're going to try to stick to the 80s, 90s, you know, like early 2000 stuff, but we just did, we just sold a KTM. Like, we'll do some other stuff, but like, like the expo or like the KTM expo or the, whatever the newest carbon fiber, sure.

Like the monocoque car.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, but like most of what we got, like right now in stock, we've got a 91 cyclone that was owned by owned and sorted out by one of like the designers or he was on the design team, the cyclone, we got Impala Supersports, Grand National.

Okay.

You know, I got, it just sold the stock Evo 8, just sold stock Evo 9. I got an AMS built Evo 9, like a 600 something wheel horsepower, all AMS built Evo 9 coming in right now. Supercharged Z06, you know, just like enthusiast stuff, but mainly like, like stuff that like you or I, when we went to high school, like that was the coolest car ever.

Yes.

Like that's what we're focusing on.

That is, so as you're saying this to me, so I'm 43 and I have a pull shed with four post lifts lined up in it and I have a collection and I'm racking through my head, it's all 80s and 90s. 93 Cobras. I think my newest one in the collection is a 99 Celine Cobra.

Okay.

So yeah, it's all 80s and 90s.

If you ever want to sell them.

Well, that's why I asked you because sometimes getting, so with cars like that, it's hard to get it in front of the right eyes, right? It's not always like, so I have some 93 Cobras. If I put them up in my local Facebook marketplace, I'm not reaching that entire market. I get thrown out a 93 Cobra Facebook page, but then a lot of times you're dealing with tire kickers, things like that. It'd be nice to have a place where you get sent something like that, you know, you're going to get top dollar for it.

Exactly. And that's kind of, you know, it's kind of like a bring a trailer dealership, I suppose you could say. Like we want to have the nicest examples, you know, we want to make sure that we go through them. We're going to sell modified cars too. But if you want to consign your modified car with us, like I'm going to put it on the dyno. Yeah. I'm going to make sure that this car is right. I don't want to sell garbage. That's the biggest problem with selling modified cars. Like, oh, it makes this much power. Like it doesn't make any power. It's, you know, smoking blow by, you know, like, I want to make sure what we sell is good.

That makes sense. Well, it's only a four hour drive for you.

Yeah, it's not bad. Yeah, I'm getting like this kind of stuff, like Chicago Motor Cars does, you know, things like that, but not on a way higher level of newer s***, right? I mean, it's like you bring it there to get it in front of the right people.

Right, exactly. They've got the big audience in that respect. I don't think we'll ever get as big as them, but already just, you know, I've been in the industry for a long time now, and so has Eric, like we know, like a bunch of people and already like it's taken off. We've already sold a whole bunch of cars before I even got my dealer license. You know, it was already like we're already like cycling through and it's already it's going great. And I am enjoying the heck out of it because, like, you know, Impala SuperSport, I've never owned an Impala SuperSport. Well, now I went and picked it up.

You were talking 95, 96, right? Those are the Caprice with the Corvette s***. I f****** want one of those bad.

Yeah, I got original owner, originally family owned, 69,000 miles, drives perfect, not a squeak or rattle. It's just nice. Like, you know, I put like probably 50, 60 miles on it. Yeah. And I'm like, OK, that was fun. You know, now I didn't have to buy. I did all the same things I would normally do. Bought it, sorted it out, painted the bumper, fixed this, fixed a couple little things to just make it perfect. Like, I enjoy that. I think that's why I like Mclarens so much. It's like, some of them are so bastardized by other people. Like, I get them in, it's like they're missing bolts or they got the wrong bolts. It's like so satisfying. Like, that's the wrong bolt. You know, like, go to my parts bin, put the right bolt, like, make it right, you know? It's like, right, it's missing bolts. Like, go to my bolt bin, put in all the bolts, and like, it's like, this car's leaving better than it came. I love that. I do that with all my cars. As soon as, like, I totally sort out a car, that's when I sell it. Like, well, my work is done here.

You're one of those guys. Like, you'd always see that on, like, Chicago motor cars. Oh, fresh build, 2000 horsepower GTR. It's like 10 miles on the build.

Oh yeah, that happened all the time. Especially, I remember at AMS, like, people love the build and I'm the same way. Like, you want to buy a car for me because if I'm selling a car, like, it is sorted out. Like, it's always running the best and in the best shape when I'm selling it. Because I don't know, I can feel like this is like the right thing to do. Like, I can't even explain. I can't just like go and like flip stuff. Like, I have to fix stuff. Like, if I see something that's like out of order, like, my mind must make order.

My friend's selling off his Twin Turbo Viper, and he's like, I can't get rid of this until it's perfect. He's like, he's like a little like, same thing like, oh, we got to get the right bolt here and all that. Because like, you know, I've seen the underside of that car. It's like these small little things that nobody will ever notice.

Right.

But he knows that he's like, I got to make it perfect.

Like, oh, there's a dash light out. What? I can't sell it. The dash light is out. How can I sell this?

Well, that's going to be hard in that market you want to be in because some of the stuff is hard to get for those things. Like, you know, I have 93 Cobra, which I really like, and I can go on LMR. I can get the screws, the bolts. I can get everything. But I really like my 88 Turbo Coupe, which unless it shares anything from the Fox Body platform that it's built on, isn't possible to get.

It's going to be hard to get. Yeah, it's going to be a little tough. I might not be able to get total utter perfection.

Sure, but close enough.

I'm going to do my best.

Yeah, at least you probably have the access to make some stuff, too.

Yeah, right. Exactly. And there's a lot of people, you know, 3D printing is fascinates me. And I've got friends that are into that, you know, making replica parts because that's one of the, like, I think the hardest thing, which is now becoming the easier thing is like all these cars in the 90s, all the plastic stuff, it's like, what do you do to like, when these brackets or door handles break, I'm like, well, now you can 3D print stuff.

Okay, since this episode, I went ahead and bought myself a 3D printer. It's been super fun watching what's basically silly string turn into something strong and usable. And I've gone down rabbit holes of understanding various materials and learning just how strong a 3D product can be. Turns out it could be very strong. So when I found out that HP Academy is about to drop a 3D printing course, I was pretty excited. Getting into 3D printing is relatively inexpensive and super easy. Mine was like about $800 and I got printing within 30 minutes of getting home. I also went ahead and joined a group called 3D Printing Car Parts on Facebook and I've seen some pretty awesome solutions for classic cars and tools and whatever else. Anyways, this is one of my new favorite courses from the HP Academy and you can get it for 55% off using code MINNOX. Or go ahead and use the link in the description below. Let's get back to the show. Well, what was it? We were at PMD Garage and they're big into like the classic Pontiac stuff. They love it. I mean, they do a little better thing. They do like the modern Camaro Trans Am kits, updated bumpers and all that to make it look like the classic Trans Am.

We're doing these old school steering wheels, because they also have CNC machines and all that. It's crazy. But as we start to wind down here, is there anything else that you kind of wanted to touch on? We touched on the Cannonball stuff, the Cannonball Garage stuff, obviously the dealership. What else is in the works for you?

Well, I guess another interesting fact about me is I love anything long distance endurance. I'm big into cycling.

Okay.

So I just last year set my longest single day record of riding a bike.

Okay.

How many miles do you think you could ride in a day?

Well, I know because I looked it up and I was going to ask you about this. So I'm going to stay out of it. You guess.

Well, it's got to be what? It's got to be what, two, 300 miles in a day?

300.

Okay.

Yeah.

So someone read a David Goggins book.

Yeah. So I'm into recumbent bicycles.

Okay.

So where your feet are out in front of you. And when I get into something, like I go to the out, the most fringe edge craziness. So I have a vellomobile. So it's a, it's designed in a wind tunnel. It's a nine foot long carbon fiber bicycle. It's like all enclosed. It looks like a missile. I mean, it's designed in a wind tunnel. So it's super efficient, but it's all pedal powered. It weighs, I think this one weighs like 65 pounds or something. But it's all enclosed. It's got turn signals, headlight, brake lights and everything. And I used to be in the cycling when I was in my thirties. Like my longest ride was I rode from Chicago to Indianapolis. And I always like, I can't just like set a mileage goal and just like go in circles. Like I have to like, like see something so far away and just like go there. So I rode to Indianapolis, 225 miles and my knees were smoked, man. I never thought I would ever be able to like ride again or like just life got in the way. I stopped cycling, I totally fell out of it. I started getting back into it. I got umbilical stem cell injections in my knees and that rejuvenated my body. Next thing I know, I'm like riding and walking and like doing all this stuff. So last year, I got this new Velomobile. It's like the newer style. I just got it and it was October. And I really wasn't, I was in somewhat decent shape, but I hadn't been like training for this, but it was an 80-degree day in October. I had just gotten this thing. I hadn't sorted, it was used, I hadn't sorted out. I'm just like, the day before, I'm like, I'm gonna get in this thing and I'm going to ride it as far as I possibly can. I'm like, my goal is gonna be Upper Michigan, at least Green Bay. I've ridden to Green Bay before. It's 200 miles, but I'm like, I think I can get to the border. It's gonna be 250 miles. I'm like, I'm just gonna get in. So I had four in the morning, I just got in the thing and started pedaling. 10 minutes in, I got pulled over by the police because they didn't know what it was. So he just pulled me over, he's like, what is this? I'm just like, I turned on my flashlight, I'm like, see, it's pedals. He's like, oh, okay. But yeah, so I just, I pedaled my way up there. I got up to the border at 9 p.m. There was 250 miles. I was at the border of Upper Michigan. I drove all through Wisconsin, all the way from my shop in Northwest suburbs of Chicago. My buddy met me there with my van and he brought me some peanut butter jelly sandwiches. I had those sandwiches and I'm like, like you got some extra time. He's like, yeah, what's up? I'm like, if I ride to Escanaba, it'll be 300 miles. He's like, do it. He's like, you're here, man. Do it. If you got it in, you do it. So I rode the loneliest stretch of M35 on the side of the highway in the middle of the night and got to Escanaba Mission, 302 and a half miles in one day. 19 hours and 20 minutes or something like that.

Holy s***. Yeah.

That was incredible.

That was 10 days off. I set a walking record.

Okay.

I wanted to walk 50 miles in one day. See, I told you, long distance things. I get these ideas in my head, but I walked from the northwest suburb of Chicago, my shop in Gilbert's, Illinois. I walked to Navy Pier in Chicago, 50 miles.

Oh my God.

Ten days later, I rode my bike. I just, like, I don't know. I'm telling you.

Okay, so many questions. I love goals.

I love setting, like, just like the Cannonball.

Right.

It's like this, like, unachievable long distance goal. Like, I just, like, I must go. They're like, why? I'm like, I don't know, but I must.

So, it's enclosed. Does it have, like, any AC or, like, a fan or anything? Like, how crazy is it?

It's got Nacoducts on it. So, like, it does direct air at you.

How fast are you going on average? What's your average speed?

My average speed, like, low 20s is what I average. Like, I'm a, you know, it'll go faster. It'll go as fast as you pedal it. Like, it's pretty fast. The fastest I've been downhill, not in that one, but another one was, like, 59 and a half miles downhill. Yeah, these things feel low. What's nice about this thing is it's so, it's heavy, right? And it's a recumbent position, so I can't, like, get out. Like, when you're on a regular bike, you can, like, stand up and push, right? When you're going up a hill, recumbent bikes, you have to, like, gain speed on the flats to hit the hill with a speed. So when you hit, you hit the rollers pretty good. Like, you get some speed going downhill, you keep the speed up, then you get to the next hill. It's like, you can get farther up and, like, it can hold speed pretty good. But I generally try to hold it in the mid to low 20s, just because, like, for endurance, I don't want to, like, wear myself out. But I'll go out at night and I can ride 50 miles. I have a loop that I do around my house at night. I'll go out and ride 50 miles in a little over two hours.

Just a quick 50.

Yeah, no, I got it. It's like, I've like this year, I've got a goal of riding 2800 miles.

That's a good goal.

In riding and walking, human powered miles is what I'm classifying it as. I'm so far behind. I had hernia surgery earlier in the year. And then just, like, recovering from that, like, I'm so far behind. I'm a little worried because whenever I set a goal, like, I always, like, achieve it no matter the cost. I already told my wife, like, if I'm not going to make it, and it's like December 1st, you might just pick me up in Florida. I might just get in and just go.

Are any of these records that you've set? Or have you?

No, no, no. I do, gosh. My ultimate goal is to ride across the country in no set time because the record, you want to know what the record is for riding across the country? 3,000 miles across the country riding a bicycle. What do you think? How long would that take?

10 days, 11 days?

Yeah, it's pretty close. The record is 7 days and a little under 8 days. Well, the average speed, average, this is with sleeping, resting and everything, it's like 17.5 miles an hour. This is one of these 20-year-old road bike cyclic. There's no chance a middle-aged guy is ever like, I don't care what kind of spaceship aerodynamic bike I have, I am not an athlete. Like I am a mind over matter guy. Sure. You know, people ask me when I did that walk, they go, how long do you train for? And I'm like, really didn't. You got the peanut butter samples. I do like, you know, I walk at night and stuff like a little bit, but I didn't like, you know, it wasn't like training for a marathon or something. I'm not a runner or a training guy, you know, it's like, yeah, I stay somewhat active, but I just usually just mind over matter everything.

Do you do, do you set like little bits of like, okay, made it to here, then you're like, all right, now I'm going to make it. Do you do like little bits as a time? Because I'll do that sometimes, like even if it's just something as stupid as like, I'm carrying something that's super f****** heavy, and I'm like about to get to a spot and I'm like, all right, I made it here, I'll take a rest. And I was like, God, you got like another 10 feet. I'll just keep going.

Yeah, I sort of do. It was like when I was getting into long distance cycling, like I like long distance. Ever since I was a kid, I would always like figure out like, oh, can I get there? It's 15 miles away. Can I get there and get home by dark? You know, like I would set these milestones. Yeah, milestones, right? So my first one was, I wanted to ride a century, a hundred miles. Like, how do you get there? I'm like, well, I'll just, at night I'll just start going out riding and I just say, oh, next thing you know, 30 miles. 50 miles, you know, 75 miles. Like I would like, but I would set it pretty far out there. So then it was like, I did, I hit a hundred. I'm like, what if we can do 150? You know, like work my way up and I would do 150 and then be like, what if we could do 200? Did 200 a couple of times. I'm like, then I'm like, okay. Now, now we're starting to get like, now the stretch to 300 is kind of a lot. I'm like, all right, I'll see if I can do 225. That's kind of where I stopped. I rode the Indianapolis, I stopped. My dad's health started failing. My aunt's health started failing. I started going through, selling AMS. My life just changed. Like in the last 10 years, I've lived in a lot of change. So I just stopped riding. But yeah, then I'm just like, my body can be able to handle it. And it wasn't until I did those stem cell injections.

Where did you go for it? Was that international then?

No, that is not. It's actually legal currently here in the States.

So did you go to like Austin, like Waste Well?

No, no, it's called Amplified Wellness. A friend of mine is a naturopath of mine. She started doing them.

That's cool.

That changed my life.

Really? Okay.

Like honestly, like that totally rejuvenated everything. Like I wouldn't have been able to do that kind of this 300. Because 300 was always the goal. Like from back then, like I'm like, 300 was the ultimate goal. Like I'm like, I think it's possible. And my idea was always to ride to St. Louis because it's pretty flat. And it was like something that was like somewhere far away that's like notable. Like I thought like, I ride to St. Louis. That'd be cool. But yeah, like I just, I knew, I've ridden to Green Bay a bunch of times. So like I knew the route there. And it's so pretty up in like upper Michigan and up there. And so I just kind of like, and I didn't really like, I didn't really plan it. I just like got him like, do you know what? I'm gonna go there. You know, I'm just gonna start riding north. I don't know. But yeah, so that's my big goal now. Like I think it's multi-day stuff. I think I'm gonna ride around Lake Michigan and ultimately ride across country.

I want to do all this on Snowmobile. I want to, my daughter and I have been into that kind of going, there's two, there's guys that ride from Minnesota to Alaska.

That's insane.

Yeah. I wouldn't mind riding my bike to Canada. That's something that's crossed my mind too. Like just ride to another country would be, and then ride back or something would be kind of neat.

The first state.

Yeah, right. Riding to Upper Michigan was cool because it's like I literally rode in three states in one day. Like I thought that was kind of like notable, kind of a neat little footnote, but I'm doing that with my daughter. My daughter is 16 now, and last year we did a metric century, which is 62 miles. So this year we have a goal of doing 100 miles. I think I want to ride from Key Largo to Key West. I'll probably do it this winter.

Really cool.

Dude, the whole Mind Over Matter thing is for real. I just saw a post yesterday, an 80-year-old just completed the, I think it was called the Badlands or whatever. It's one of those 135-mile race. They have a 48-hour limit, and he managed to do that on foot. I think he was running or whatever. It was one of the things that Goggins does.

Oh, gosh, those ultra marathon guys.

Yeah, ultra marathon of some sort.

Those 100-mile, I am not a runner. I have the flattest feet. Some people are built for running. I am not built for running. I feel like it destroys my body. I don't understand these 65-year-old people that run. They're built different. That is not for everybody.

Physically built different.

I always say, if you see me running, something's horribly wrong. I'm running from something or two.

If you see me running, you should start running with me.

Yeah. Well, he busted his a** at PRI last year. So in a foot race, I don't know if you know Garrett from American Muscle HD. He's a big Instagrammer.

Yeah, I met him yesterday.

So him and Garrett lined up at PRI and did a foot race.

Oh gosh.

He says he's pretty slow. And I actually, for being a big short guy, I'm pretty fast at very short distances. Okay. Otherwise I die.

Not an endurance guy.

Once you're over 40, man, don't be doing that stuff.

I know, that's what I feel.

You learn.

He's PRI, so I had spent four days walking like six, seven miles a day in and out of the place all around.

You're feeling pretty good. Yeah.

Well, no, my legs were a little sore. As soon as I took off, my muscles went hurt and I was like, oh, there's a video.

Yeah.

It went viral a little bit. Sweet Mitch, we popped the usual three.

Yeah.

Two hours flies by when you have a good time.

Yeah, it does. Well, we're going to definitely have to do a round two at the shop.

Yeah. Oh yeah.

We'll have to figure it out.

Oh, there's a lot. I would love to get Ivan involved because he's been around. I mean, we got some guys that have been around and seen.

Ivan was your original shop hand, correct?

No, that was true. Ivan used to run Sound Performance, which did Supras. Yeah. Then he came on to AMS in 05 and he was shop manager and engine builder. He raced Alpha Omega. He built and raced that car.

Really?

He came by and he's been working with me for the last four years. He's my engine builder and kind of the head of, we call it Cannonball Special Operations. It's kind of a play on MSO, like Mclarens Special Operations is CSO, Cannonball Special Operations. That's kind of our division of like engine building, performance, you know, that kind of push and limit kind of type stuff.

We'll do a sequel.

Yeah, but no, I mean, there's a lot to talk about with Mclarens.

Oh, we barely gonna scratch the surface.

Yeah, no, I've been around a long time, so I've got a lot of stories and a lot of things that I've done.

A couple more Cannonball questions that I can't even remember because we moved into the AMS stuff and then that was like super interesting. So I just erased all the Cannonball s*** right now.

I was not bored at any point, by the way. Yeah, no, it's hard to take 30 years and put it in two hours.

Yeah, no, it really is. It's hard for me to wrap my head around, I'm like the old guy in the industry. Yeah. As you get older, you'll realize this, as you get older, your mind will never get older.

Yeah.

You'll always think you're 18. Even my 84-year-old mom, I'm like, mom, I think something's wrong with me. I'm like, eternally 18 years old, mentally, she goes, Arne, I'm still 18 in my mind. It's just my body's not cooperating.

Yeah, I'm the same way. When it started to get real for me is when I started to see kids get out of cars. And I'm like, that's a baby driving that car.

Yeah, right. So we call the police. I should detain that child. Someone's going to love it when you go about driving a car.

All right. So at the end of every episode, we like to ask our guests to pick three cars. I need a track car, a show car, and a daily driver. You have an unlimited budget, build whatever you want.

Oh boy. A track car. I would say probably a mildly worked over Mclaren Senna. I wouldn't want to stock. You can't leave anything stock. Show car. Gosh, I'm not a show car guy.

A Beretta pace car? I mean, nothing?

Oh, the car you take to get someone ice cream with. A woodward car.

I get, man, a neat, there's a lot of neat cars to have. I think what stands out to me would be like an 89 Turbo Trans Am. Like a zero miles perfect 89 Turbo Trans Am. If I can go back in time, I would go get one of those, maybe like a GNX, something like that, something like a really notable car like that. But yeah, that 89 Trans Am is really something. And I think that people didn't really understand what it was.

No, so did it have the same like as a T type or a Grand National, like that was the-

Yeah, it was a Grand National motor in a Trans Am. It was made for one year, they made 1500 of them. And they ran like 12 stock.

Is that what we saw last night? Was it a Camaro or what was that?

Dude, I think that was a Trans Am.

It might have been a Trans Am. So I saw when yesterday, I was like, did somebody Grand National swap this?

So I saw an IROC recently that had been swapped.

Okay, maybe it was, because I think it was a Camaro.

There was a white IROC that I just saw on Instagram that had been a Grand National.

Okay, so that's what it was. That had to have been what it was.

Yeah, so the 89 Turbo Trans Am was a 3.8 Buick Grand National motor in the Trans Am. You know, with all the buttons on the steering wheel, like when Pontiac was doing all that.

I really want to, not a Cyclone, I want the Typhoon really bad or a Grand National or a T-type.

Yeah, they're all really cool. All right, so show car, track car. What is the last car? Daily. Daily?

He says lightning, I'm all losing.

My electric Silverado, no, that is a good daily, but unlimited budget, huh? Man, I'm so practical. Like, I can't like think outside the box of like what I like, would be totally unattainable. I, you know, the best, best daily driver I think is E63 AMG Wagon.

Sold. You don't have to convince me.

I have one.

Yeah, I'm sold.

That's the best, but man, you know what? There was another notable car that I like a couple of cars that I'm going to add a couple in. Sure, sure.

Notable mentions.

Notable mentions. Sledge, Callaway Sledgehammer Corvette. Oh, that car has made such an impression on me. 255 miles an hour in 1988, driven to the testing ground 700 miles there and back, went 254.8 miles an hour on the test track in 1988. That is so crazy. Then, Roof Yellowbird. They had a lasting impression just seeing that. They had a helicopter shot of the thing drifting around the Nürburgring in 1987. Those cars really meant something to me.

Well, the Callaway record, I don't think that was broken until the Veyron came out.

Yeah.

I think that's what it was.

Oh, it was for years. Yeah. And they said it and I've watched all the documentaries and stuff.

Sure.

So Callaway is there and they're going to the next stuck at 230 miles an hour or something. The guys at the test track are like, what the hell are you trying to do? We want to go 250. And it's like, back then, people were just trying to go 200. 200 was nuts. And here's this company, again, exponential, right? To go from 200 to 250 is an enormous leap. And to do it in 1988 with the technology, the videos from back there are hilarious. They've got this laptop that weighs like 50 pounds and the screen's this big. I was like, what are they even doing? Can you imagine how rudimentary all the tuning and stuff was? Like, gosh, to do that in 1988, man. That what? And Reeves Callaway died a couple of years ago or something. Like, jeez, like, what a brilliant mind to do that. Like, guys, you know, like, you know, the stuff we did with AMS is going to be old.

You didn't know about the sledgehammer?

No.

Oh my God.

You're the old guy.

Yeah, but I'm not a GM guy.

But that car, like, oh my gosh, you got to look up the Callaway sledgehammer.

He had to explain to the Drift guys the other day. He had to explain who OJ was the other day.

Oh yeah, that does get hard.

They're older than me. He was 31. He didn't know who OJ or the OJ Bronco was.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah, you know, I have a blues mobile from the movie The Blues Brothers.

That might even be before you.

Yeah.

Oh, it's definitely before me. Yeah.

Yeah, I it's as time I've had it for 15 years. And before it was like everybody knew what it was and just slowly over time.

Yeah.

People don't know what it is.

That's crazy.

People still get excited who know what it is. But it's just it's you get more puzzled looks as time goes on because these kids just don't know.

Yeah. Crazy old guy.

Well, yeah, right. Exactly. I'm the crazy old guy.

What was like what like 80 percent of that movie is just them driving around in that thing.

The whole movie, it's a car guy movie. It's just, that's what got me into police cars. I think that's what made me do the fraud tourists. Ever since the movie, The Blues Brothers, and I grew up in Mount Prospect and remember from the movie, it was an old Mount Prospect police car. That movie has always meant the world to me. I think that's what got me into police cars. My wife drives a 2020 Explorer Interceptor. I'm all about police cars. I don't know what it is.

That is awesome. I think it's one of the slowest car chase like type movies too, because they're not like cruising around super fast or anything is doing dumb s*** in it. The original Gone In 60 Seconds movie, that's another movie that like three halves of that are the last two thirds of that movie is just the car chase. The very end with the Mach 1.

Well, we'll have to do this again.

Yeah.

Yeah. Think of more Cannonball questions. We do it at my shop.

But oh, actually before I forget, my brother sent me a list yesterday. We're going to do a rapid fire round. Answer these as quickly as humanly possible. Okay. I'm not going to ask all of them. Some of them are a little f***** up. Oh, man. I'm so glad you reminded me of that.

I guess they're texting too much from last night as you've gone through much.

I know. All right. Rapid fire. All right. You already kind of answered this earlier, but just for the sake of rapid fire, y'all ever pissed in a Gatorade bottle to save time?

No.

All right. Do you know anybody that has?

Oh, yeah.

Okay. Did you track caffeine consumption?

No.

Okay. What happens if... All right. Has there ever been like an instance like where you had to like do an extra stop for whatever reason, or has it always been four stops?

Like to always four stops. Yeah.

Okay. Let's see. Let's see. What's the go-to snack stick?

Right now, it's Gargetto's, the special request, those little rye chips.

Yeah.

That's my new thing.

Sure. Go-to beverage.

On a Cannonball, NOS energy drink.

A what?

NOS energy drink.

Okay. That was going to be my next question. I like to go to energy drinks. So let's see. Entertainment-wise, are you guys ever listening to podcasts or anything? Or are you just locked in?

Locked in. No music.

For 20 something hours. That is crazy. Well, then I think...

The police scanner.

Yeah.

That's what I'm listening to.

I'm not going to...

My first rally I ever did, I had a playlist made and it never came on. Like I didn't, I don't do that.

Maybe you just throw the radio out the window for that.

Last one. What's the funniest thing that's ever happened on a Cannonball run?

So I... It's a little bit of a long story. I know it's a long story, but I got it right here. I made fun of Doug because he carried an extra pair of shoes. And like there's no room in the trunk, right? So we're at the start of the first run in this car. And I'm like, Doug, like there's no room for this. Like, why do you have extra shoes? And he's like, dude, you never know when you need extra shoes. I'm like, you're crazy. The first gas stop. We're on the Ohio Turnpike. So you pull up to the pump, you grab real close, you grab the opposite side, and it goes in the actual filler of the car. And then the close side goes to the far end of the fuel cell. So we do that. So, you know, it's chaotic, man. Right? So we're over there. I'm switching. I'm like getting something out of the car or something. I'm getting over the hose. I kick the hose. I kick it out of the car, and I immediately cover my shoes in gas. My only pair of shoes. And now I got to listen to Doug the whole rest of the way. He's like, oh, you're giving me crap for freaking bringing shoes. He still gives me crap. So I always bring an extra pair of shoes on any road trip I ever go on. And that's probably the funniest thing that's ever happened.

That's funny.

Well, awesome. On that note, where can everybody find you?

I'm usually Instagram and TikTok, Arnie's Antics. That's A-R-N-E-S, Antics.

Awesome.

And I got a website where I do some blogging, kind of spotty, but if you want to see what cars I've got and stories about them. I also did a story about my 300 mile ride and my 50 mile walk. It's not just all car stuff, but it's the hub of the things I'm doing. But yeah, Instagram and TikTok is pretty much where you can really follow along.

Cannonball Garage and cannonballgarage.com. And 5252 have its own thing.

And 5252motors.com if you like 80s and 90s and nostalgic. The cool cars, the real car.

Yes. Dan?

You can find us at Gunna Garage doing stuff with cool nostalgic cars and not posting.

Awesome. Well, Arne, thank you so much for making this happen. Thank you to everybody involved.

Yes. Thanks, Stan, for my buddy Stan putting us in touch. Yeah. Now it's been great.

Dan, thanks for existing and we will see you all 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.