167. Machining and Custom Parts, Cannonball Stories McLaren Specialization W/ Arne Toman

And I remember Ivan hit a bump at the Texas Mile in the shutdown. There was like a serious transition, it was a bump. And he just happened to hit the parachute at the same time as he went over this bump. It lifted the back of the car, and he did a 233 mile an hour drift.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide podcast. I'm your host, Harris AKA. Minnoxide, man of many automotive aspirations, and I'm here with my Ford-loving co-host, Dan. Yep, Mr. Gunner Garage. Is there a Ford's in here? No, I don't know if I saw any. No, just a couple of cool Grand Nationals.

No Fords.

No, not allowed here?

No.

There are some Sheddies in here, and actually I like them, so.

Yeah, I'm not opposed to Fords, but you're sure.

Well, I guess with the new 52-52 thing, would you ever see some Cobras come through here, probably at some point?

Yeah, no, I mean, I think that with 52-52 motors, you know, 80s, 90s, early 2000s, you know, we don't discriminate.

Yes.

But nonetheless, I should probably introduce you. We are here with Arne Toman, owner of Cannonball Garage and a lot of other cool stuff. You've had a lot of cool stories, and obviously the current Cannonball record holder. For those that listened to the previous episode, got to send them that way, of course, a little bit. It's only been one, probably a month since we got together at Woodward Dream Cruise. So first of all, anything new going on here? I know there's a lot of McLarens in here. We'll probably kick off with that because these are such reliable cars.

Yeah, well, you know, McLarens are not as bad as people make them out to be. But, you know, they're not the greatest. At the end of the day, British supercar. So yeah, expect some problems. But no, I mean, we're just got a lot of motor jobs here. You know, we specialize in McLaren engines, which not many people do. So we get them from all over the place. And yeah, I'm just kind of getting ready for the winter.

Yeah, well, you have a whole shelf full of them over here. So obviously some of the back in the background here over here. But are those all like 570, 720 engines up there or?

It's a mix of both. So McLaren doesn't sell you engines. If you if you have a bottom end problem, like short block problem, like you can't get one. The only thing you can get is a fully dressed crate engine. And when I say fully dressed, we're talking intake manifold, injectors, alternator, AC compressor. I mean, like it is like it is a fully dressed crate engine.

Drop it and plug it in and go. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. For the, you know, for the tune of $80,000. Okay.

I was gonna say how much is that?

So, you know, I just buy any engine I can get a hold of, like any core engine, you know, just cause I need blocks, I need cranks. I've had everything else developed, you know, hardware, gaskets, rods, pistons, you know, you name it, cause you can't get it. So I've got a few dollars wrapped up in development stuff for McLaren engines. But yeah, I mean, I just grab whatever I can get because, you know, it's just not available from the factory.

So, okay, when you say develop then, so what are some things that you're selling McLaren wise that you guys make?

I don't sell anything to the public.

Sure.

Like if you want my parts, it has to be your build. It has to be our build. I mean, honestly, I want to take responsibility for our stuff. I learned that, you know, long ago at AMS, like you start selling stuff to the public, next thing you know, they're calling like, well, what's the torque spec for this? And what's that? And well, I used your gasket, now my bearing is bad. Like, I don't want any part of that. Sure. So I want to take full responsibility. And honestly, like people call like, oh, can we get one of your engines, ship it? I'm like, honestly, just ship me your car. Like I can make sure it's broken in properly. Like, and if there is a problem, like I can handle it right there. You know, it's just easier. We deal with these cars day in and day out. And, you know, it scares me when you got some shop that is working on their first McLaren and trying to pull the motor. It's like, you know, are they going to clean the oil tanks out? You know, like if you have a motor failure, like one of the biggest things I see, I saw back, you know, just my experience in the industry is people don't like, oh yeah, well I sprayed some brake cleaner and I got the shrapnel out. It's like, no, you gotta like send your stuff out to a professional place to be like ultrasonic cleaned.

Okay.

You know, like I send my stuff out to people that do stuff for like aerospace. Like I'm not messing around with.

Right. I did that for an intercooler core that I had out of a Whipple blower. And I thought that I had flushed everything. I spent a whole half a day, water hose, parts cleaner, brake cleaner, and I got a lot of s*** out and I still sent it in. And they still sent me a baggie back with a trapple in it. And I did ultrasonic cleaner. They go really through it.

They sent you a baggie bag with everything too?

Yeah.

Yeah. So I mean, yeah.

You kind of want to know how much debris sometimes, right?

So for all your viewers, if you have an engine failure or anything like that, like send the stuff out to be cleaned, you will never get it clean yourself.

Yeah.

It is just not possible. I've seen so many people that fire up a brand new engine and they thought they cleaned everything out. And next thing you know, it's like, well, you're pulling that apart again.

Yeah. Do you think there's some, I've also heard some things about like some real fine stuff of aluminum will burn up, you know? Are you in that camp of like, if something passes through, some of it will be all right?

I don't know. I'm a freak about this stuff. Yeah, me too. For me, like I will go to the ends of the earth to make sure it's clean.

Yeah.

So where's that come from, right? Cause obviously we just did our episode with Martin from AMS. We got to see, you know, understand how that side of things went. And then obviously you talked a little bit about your story in the last episode. Where does this attention to detail come from? Was that just your entire life? Or was it like a process you learned?

I, you know, I don't know. I like, I have, like, I need every, I need a sense of order for like my mind to function. So it's like, I need things in a certain way. I don't know what's, what you would call this.

Sure.

But I mean, that's, you know, for me in this industry, like I'm not the super, super technical guy. Like I don't rebuild engines. I don't work on the cars. Like I understand how it all works, but it just comes out funny at my hands. You know, I learned early on when I was, I remember my first semester of, because I have a degree in automotive, it's like to be a mechanic. And I remember I went through the first semester and I'm just like, I suck at this. Like I understand it, but like I am just not good at it. So yeah, I just, I don't know. In my business career, it's always been like the backend kind of stuff. I'm very organized and you know, like I keep really good notes about everything. I don't know, it's just how I'm built.

It all seems out of place here.

Yes, exactly.

Going back to the send it to me and I'll make sure everything's all right. Do you ever see sometimes too where people think, so this happened to me once in an expedition, I thought that I had an engine failure. We had a dead cylinder, no compression and I had a broken valve spring. So do you ever in that case too, is it safer bet? Cause sometimes it's not as bad as they may think, or is it always that bad?

No, it's not always that bad. We've seen some weird, weird failures that didn't require like a full engine rebuild. It's a...

So you could spend 80 grand, replace it in an engine, you didn't need to replace it.

Right, exactly. So it's best to send it in. And honestly, if like we had a situation like that, you would give them a core engine. And I'm so busy. Like my goal is to have engines on the shelf. Like I've gotten there like one time where I had an engine at shelf and like, it was like three days and up next thing, I got a customer for it. But you know, it's a hefty core exchange. So like we would end up, you know, we end up getting these cores and, you know, you find out what's good, what's not, and you kind of assess, you know, from there. But yeah, I mean, it's send it to an expert. Like these days, you got to specialize. Like I don't, you know, I don't ever, I don't tell you, I'm the expert of Ferrari and this and that and the other like. McLaren, like that is 90% of what I do. You got, you got to specialize these days because you can't be an expert at everything anymore. It's not like it was like 30 years ago when you had the corner gas station and the guy had his snap on diagnostic tool. And, you know, he could fix any car. Like they're so complex and there's so many nuances with every car, you know, Porsches, Ferraris, Lamborghinis. It's like, that's why you see these people that specialize in a platform. And that's, that's who excels.

Yeah.

Well, one of the things we didn't even touch on last time was you guys are also the record holder for the 720 right now, too, right?

I think.

Yeah, we hold the, we hold the quarter mile and the 6130 record for all of Mclarens.

Okay. So what goes into that then? Because that's, well, I think I saw, you have a sign over there. I think it says 1400 horsepower or something on it.

Yeah, 1300 wheel horsepower, 861 at 168 or 69 miles an hour is the, the record that we hold. Right now, these cars are held back by transmission. No one has TCU tuning, control, the clutch. So like that is what's holding it back. Cause like in the grand scheme of things, at least in my world that I'm used to, like back at AMS when we're, you know, running, you know, low seven seconds or high six second quarter miles, like 860 is not really not that impressive. But yeah, as soon as someone can get this unlocked, like that's gonna be the game changer. And honestly, like we have the engine program completely figured out. But once someone comes up with TCU and clutch control, like next thing that's gonna be breaking is the transmission.

Okay.

100%.

Cause nobody's really found the limit for those I imagine, right?

No, some people have had problems with shift forks and there is a seal problem that was plaguing these things probably about five years ago. I think that all these cars that had that problem are fixed by now. But yeah, the transmission for sure is the next.

Okay.

Is it going to be the next problem?

Is there an aftermarket solution? Does anybody make like a sequential or another DCT? Can you throw a Tremec in it?

Nothing yet. You know, just from my time in the industry, it's like you get out there, you break it, you make that part stronger and you find the next week link. So that's, I'm sure that's where we're going to be. It's just no, like we can't put down enough power to break transmissions really yet because we don't, you know, like right now we're using dots and clutches. You know, we're just adding clutch plates to kind of like mechanically make more pressure. Okay. But we're not able to change line pressures or shift points and stuff like that. So.

So is there more in the motor then? Do you have more in there to turn it up?

Oh, sure. Like, like. So the car that we hold the record with was the first engine build we did over four years ago. And it is literally just a connecting rod upgrade. It's still factory pistons. Like, yeah, I mean, it is our base stage one engine. And it's been in the car for four years, making 1300 wheel horsepower. Hasn't skipped a beat. The pistons are actually like we we guess they're probably good for about 1600 horsepower. It's kind of what Ivan, our engine builder, is assuming. But, yeah, I mean, obviously I would not suggest doing what we're doing with that car, maybe. But we've we've had great success with it.

You have a stage two or stage three program.

Oh, yeah. No, we've got, you know, we've got pistons and, you know, that's we've been developing, you know, over the years.

OK, so is that a customer car that I imagine?

Yeah, it's I mean, he's more of a friend.

Sure. Yeah.

Really.

Friend, shop, customer.

Yeah, yes, exactly.

So does it get some decent mileage on it, too, then?

Or yeah, the car got five thousand miles on it or something. I mean, and he goes out and like like he's not like shy.

Sure. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So we actually just had the car back on the dyno because we never really spent too much time on 93 octane, but we just have like nine hundred fifty four wheel horsepower on 93 octane.

Right.

That car and nine eight hundred pound feet of torque or something. So.

So, OK, so then what about materials, right? Because like you are how I think I'm a better way to ask is how exotic is the stuff that you're working on? Right. And by that, I mean, is like, are you able to like do like sleeve upgrades or whatever, like just how crazy can you get with those engines? Or is it just like take it off the shelf and just party?

No, I mean, yeah, we've got upgraded sleeves that we've had to had to make. Not that like the factory sleeves are the worst thing in the world, but there's some improvements for cooling and that kind of thing that we've done. But these cars, like Mclarens are not like these twin turbo Lamborghinis. Like nobody's really trying to make 2000 horsepower because you can't do anything with it without having control of the TCU and the clutch pressures and stuff. Like there really is no point. And Mclaren people are more like into like rallies. I mean, Mclarens is not really like a drag car, you know? It's a road car. But most of these people are just kind of into like rallies. They do tune down pipes, you know, they make it sound a little bit better. There's not like a huge demand. There's not like a huge rush of like all these people trying to set the world on fire with these cars. It's just, how fast is this car gonna be? It's rear wheel drive, you know? Like it's just not the best platform to try to go sixes, you know?

Well, I also, I mean, they aren't exactly holding value, like Huracans, for example, right? Like, so I mean, if somebody wanted to go barking up this tree and everything was figured out, would it kind of make sense to pursue it or just, it doesn't whatsoever?

McLaren is the, as far as exotics go, I think the best driving experience. Sure. And especially for the money. Like this is the sexiest car, the best driving experience for the money hands down. But, you know, I mean, yeah, they don't typically hold their value too well, which is good because like a McLaren 720, you can probably get in the high 100,000s.

Are they just already dipping into that now?

I've seen them down to, you know, even 160 or, you know, maybe even 150 for like a really rough high mileage example. And to me, that is a ton of value for a car. Yeah.

Especially if you could send it to you, right? Like for us in Minnesota, it's like we don't have a McLaren dealer, right? So like we had to send it down to Chicago sort of deal. But now knowing that you're a little bit closer, it's like, oh, it kind of makes sense for some people as well.

Yeah. I mean, that's that's the thing. Like we were one of the very first like probably when I started, there's there was one other guy. But, you know, there aren't a lot of McLaren specialists out there. So we get cars from all all over the country, even, you know, cars shipped up from Nashville just for an annual service.

Right.

Because there aren't people out there doing it. It's a it's a good niche to have.

But, you know, how did I remember we asked this last time or not? But how did this come about? Like, how do you so you don't have a McLaren, right?

No, I do.

Do you? OK. Did did did working on your own car? Is that where I did?

No, I back then. No, I didn't have. OK, I was at AMS. We worked. We had a couple of customers with them and we did like tune down pipes.

Sure.

On McLaren. So, you know, I was familiar with, you know, what they were about.

But why pick this platform as I say, you had the machine shop. How did this shop get born?

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So after I sold my shares of AMS, Martin was really cool. He's like, I don't care if you work on Lambos and GTRs and stuff. He was really cool about that, but I'm just like, I just wanted to like pave my own way. I didn't want to be right in AMS backyard trying to do the same things they were doing. And at the time, I started doing the exotic car rallies and started talking to McLaren owners. And they're just great cars, but they're like, nobody can work on my car. And that doesn't make sense to me. Like, what do you mean no one can, nuts and bolts? Like, how hard can this be? And what I ended up finding out was, you really need a McLaren diagnostic tool and their special hydraulic bleeding machine, because they run aerodynamics and their suspension are all run on hydraulics. So if you don't have these things, like you really can't work on these cars. And if you had a shop owner, then maybe he had one or two customers in McLaren, he's not going to go and spend $100,000 on a bunch of specialty tools to go work on two cars. So as I went to these rallies and stuff and talk to these McLaren owners, you know, they would they would end up selling the car because it's just too difficult to own because no one could work on it. So if you if you tell me something enough times like I'll pick up on it.

Sure.

So I'm like, you know what? That's a that's a good niche. And I like it because at least when I started, there was like really no competition. So like I didn't have to sit there and monitor forums and Facebook groups. And, you know, to protect my name against this, that or anything like AMS was 15 years of just internet battles. Yep. Of just people being s***** with each other. You know, I'm the fastest. No, you suck. Or this this happened like, oh, that shop sucks. You know, it's it's just ridiculous. And like, I just don't care anymore.

Do you have to deal with that as much anymore then?

I just don't pay attention.

OK.

And from what I would figure that through the grapevine, I would hear about these things. But I mean, we're, you know, in the McLaren game, I mean, we're top of the food chain, you know, like right. And we don't really have like all the engine. I think we built 40 engines now. I've yet to have any failures.

OK.

You know, I mean, Ivan's been building engines for 35 years. We're meticulous about what this isn't our first rodeo.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah.

OK, I kind of want to kind of turn pages here. I keep hearing about this van of yours. I don't I've never seen a story about it or whatever. I never looked into it. I just keep hearing like you ask Arne about the van. What's this van I need to ask about?

Oh, gosh. Which one?

OK.

I think the band is what you're talking about.

Oh, yes. I guess that would be my most notable van. But I have, I don't know, probably 10, 10 different vans.

OK.

Big van guy.

Bunch of Ford Econ lines or what?

No, I'm big into the Duramax, diesel, Chevy Express and GMC Savannah's.

OK.

I actually have six of them.

Is that what took to the trail? That's the diesel.

That's a diesel. Yeah.

Oh, sweet.

Yeah. That's my oldest one. It's got three hundred ten thousand miles on it. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. So, yeah, GM put Dermax diesels in vans from 06 to 2016.

OK.

And they're very hard to come by and very sought after because a lot of these things like these vans rust out. So it's like it's become a hobby of mine. Like, why do you need six? It's I can't even answer that. But the guy I bought this last one from, he spelled it out for me. He has nine of them. So I asked him, I'm like, Rick, like, what's with all these vans? You know, like, why do you have so many? He's like, I really don't know what to say. It's just become an obsession. And it hit me. I'm like, holy cow. That's me. Like, I have this obsession. I love finding a needle in a haystack. But anyway, getting back to the Vandit. So the Vandit is a Honda Odyssey. It's a third generation 07 Honda Odyssey touring. And I had this van and we use it for running errands for my machine shop. We go run out to anodizing, nitriding. We do a lot of third party processing for our clients. So we need like a minivan. But I love themes. And I was coming back from the Amelia Island Concours with my buddy Shawn. It was like one in the morning. And we're brainstorming. What kind of theme can we do? We're like, oh, a team. It's like, oh my gosh. I mean, that's like-

Done to death.

It's been done to death. And then it came to me in a vision, the Vandit, a Smoky and the Vandit themed Honda Odyssey. And I'm like, that's it. I've never seen something like this before. So I'm like, I'll just put like a fake hood scoop on it, put a bird on the hood, get some like gold mesh wheels, put some chrome tips on it and like whatever, it'll be a fun little side thing. So I ended up putting this van together and we reshaped the tail lights to look like a 77 and 78 Trans Am with like black vinyl. Sure. I put the twin turndown exhaust on it. We redid the dashboard in like that fake, like brushed aluminum finish. And this thing, it came out so nice that I'm like, I can't put this into service. Like I can't let other people, and it became my personal van. But I love this thing. And we have a locally, we have a Facebook group called Chicago Petrol Heads and Car Spotters.

I'm in there.

Yeah.

Yeah, right. Everybody is.

Yeah.

Everybody. I don't know. It's like one of the bigger car spotter pages. Yeah, it's got to be the most spotted vehicle.

Really?

On that page from the last two years. Like my wife will be driving the thing and to get spotted all the time. And I love this thing. It's a total conversation starter. Like that's my daily driver. A quarter million mile Honda Odyssey.

Is it tuned up or anything or just chill?

It is bone stock.

Bone stock, okay.

That's what everyone asks. Oh, what's my... It's VTEC, right? Yeah. Oh, it's VTEC, yeah. But I need it to like function. Like I don't...

Yeah, right.

And it's just funny. I've got a stereo system on the outside of the van.

Oh, my God.

And a separate CD player and amplifier on a separate switch. So I could be driving down the road, just hit a switch, and I'm playing eastbound and down. So I'll be sitting at a stoplight, and someone will be like, hey, nice man. I'll just like flip it on, you know? It's ridiculous.

That was... We used to use, I think it was like an 07 Odyssey, whatever, Scout Rally Routes back in the day. That thing was awesome, man.

They are one of the greatest vehicles, man. Carts are cheap. They last forever. I mean, this thing's got 265,000 miles on it.

Holy s***.

I mean, you'd never know it. I mean, it's a big fan of the Honda Odyssey.

I think me and Doug back in the day, like we were just bombing through like the Montana, or not, like the whole west side of the country, just going like 110, 120 past the trooper. It was like, ah, you were taking too long to left lane. Because he pulled him over, right? And he's like, well, you just passed me on the right, or whatever. He's like, I didn't want to, you know, be an a****** about it, you know? Yeah, those are the good old days. Okay, so then other than that, so you kind of mentioned like nitriding and all this stuff then, is that more so for the machine shop side of things?

Yeah, that's my CNC machine shop. So we do military drone parts, so aerospace stuff and firearm accessories. And we do, I mean, I've got an FFL and an SOT, like I do lowers and that kind of thing here and there, but primarily aerospace.

Okay. And then are you pretty public about some of that stuff? Or some of that stuff more so like close to the chest or what exactly are you able to talk about on that front?

I mean, what can I talk about? We make a jet turbine for a rocket drone. Sure. Yeah.

Is it, are those processes pretty intense then? Like, how does that compare? And what I'm getting at here is how does that compare to the car world, right? Because McLaren's are already, I'd say a relatively complex car. Is that just a whole another level when it comes to that stuff?

Yeah. Aero, like the tolerances, you know, we came from making, well, our machine shop used to be AMS's machine shop. And when I sold my shares of AMS to Martin, I bought his shares of our machine shop, which was a separate company. And since then, I've grown into doing firearm stuff and got into this aerospace. So I was doing firearm stuff and the tolerances with firearm stuff compared to aerospace is like pretty loosey goosey. It's actually kind of funny. You think like firearms, they gotta be so accurate. It's like not compared to a jet turbine.

Right, yeah. So did you have to learn a lot about that entire world or is that just more so like, hey, here's a part we just gotta make in?

Yeah, so my business partner is an engineer actually. He was my first shop hand at AMS. He was sweeping the floor and taking out the garbage. And we taught him fabrication and welding. And then he was our first engineer. He ended up running our engineering department. So he's the kind of guy that if you give him the time and the tools, like he could literally do anything. So he's like an engineer, a machinist. So we actually, for our Firearm client, we actually design all of the products. So we're a little different from most CNC machine shops where they just get handed a print. Like, can you make this? Like, sure, like they don't even know what they're making. Like we actually develop a lot of products. Now for the aerospace stuff, like that's our customer's designs. We're not designing that kind of stuff. But yeah, we have in-house engineering and another thing we like to do, like I mentioned, like anodizing, nitriding. Like for my Firearm client, I handle designing their stuff, making it, third-party processing, kitting, there's some assembly and things like that, packaging and actually handle their fulfillment. So we call ourselves a manufacturing partner. But even for our aerospace client, like we make these like landing gears, like we actually like we'll assemble it. So we'll give our customer like a, like a full assembly. Sure. Rather than just like, oh, here's your parts. Like you figure it out.

Basically bolt-in ready kind of type deal.

Yeah, exactly.

What are you making for Firearm parts? And can you talk about who your partner is or where can we get some of these products?

Yeah. So we handle all of the manufacturing for JMAC customs and they are really big in the AK space.

Okay.

Like not a lot of people like I guess pimp out AKs and they're like top of the game as far as like if you're an AK enthusiast, like they are like they make the nicest stuff kind of like similar to what like these guys like like totally deck out like an AR 15. Yeah, they do that for in the AK space.

Oh, okay. Yeah, the AR 15 market is huge. There's a lot going on there.

Yes, exactly. So yeah, I guess AK is a little more fringe.

Yeah, sure.

But I like the AK because it's like you can like throw the thing in sand and the thing still works. You know, it's like ARs are like kind of finicky and AK is like let's party, you know.

Well, that's kind of like what it was designed to be, right? Like it was supposed to be like the most like robust, like just survives in anything sort of condition.

Yes, exactly. Yeah, I like the AK platform a lot.

Now, I know this is an automotive podcast, but I think most of our listeners can definitely sympathize with this market as well. So I've also heard that there's like a different environment like when it comes to AK is like where it's made in the world, right? Like there's different qualities as well. Have you learned anything about that or?

I mean, I know we make the best stuff there is. Sure. I mean, there's a lot of that's kind of their niche, right? Because there's a lot of stuff that just kind of like, you know, this will work. You know, they make the the high end stuff.

Okay.

You know, and I like to be on that that that side of things also, you know.

So you do a lot of things, right? Like, what is it? Take me through a week of Arne, right? What are your antics? Right. I have to use that little thing. Like, what does a normal day look like for you then between these three businesses?

Oh, yeah. Well, right now, I probably spend my most time with 5252 Motors, and that's my my new car dealership that I started with my buddy Eric Gowdy. He was the old sales manager at AMS back under my tenure. We're doing 80s, 90s, early 2000s, rad, rad era stuff. And every business I start, like, it's never like, oh, we got this like huge injection injection of cash, and we've got this, you know, investor or whatever. Like, I bootstrap everything. So, like, literally the dealer is starting out of the back of my shop. So right now, I'm the accountant, controller, you know, insert every other thing besides like sales and buying cars. So like that right now, I spend a lot of my time kind of doing that and getting this thing off you guys right now too. Just, just us too. Yeah. But it's taking off. Like, I'm already looking for more space and I'm going to, it's, this is going to be a thing. That's for sure.

This is going to be a thing.

So, so I spend a lot of time doing that. Like business development, marketing for Cannonball. Right now we're, we just moved into the building next door for the machine shop. So a lot of logistics, as far as like we're, we're trying to not only run the machine shop, but we're like renovating the space and, and kind of upgrading our, our quality lab. And like, it's just, it's all over the place. So it's anything from building maintenance, because I own both the building. It's like, oh, it's, I'm always having to like switch hats. And honestly, I'm at like my wits end, because it's always like, oh, there's a problem over here, go solve this. Like, oh, there's a problem with this other business. Solve that. So there's a lot of, a lot of juggling.

It'd be so funny if like, like walking from this side of the shop to that side of the shop, you just actually switched hats.

Exactly. I'm like, oh, I'm going to put on my MDI cap now. Yeah. It's a, it's a lot of juggling. And honestly, man, it is, this year has, I'm looking forward to next year because this year has been just absolute chaos and growth and like, oh my gosh. Like it's a, it's a good problem to have, but it's, it's still a problem, man. Holy cow. To keep up with all this stuff.

Do you take any days off? Or do you just find like hobbies and everything sorta?

Yeah. I don't know. Like I go pretty hard. Like I, like I do all this all day. And then like, like two nights ago, I jumped in my vellomobile, which is my enclosed recumbent bicycle. It was designed in a wind tunnel. And I just went out for a couple of hours and blasted out 50 miles. You know? Yeah. I don't know. I probably should.

That's your you time?

Yeah. That's my, that's my me time that I kind of decompress. It's like, you know, some people, when they maybe sit on the couch and, you know, watch the game or something. Mine is, you know, go blast out 50 miles in a couple of hours on a bicycle. I don't know. Life is short, man. I'm like, I just, I just want to take it all in and do as much as I can.

Oh, I took a breath.

I know. I had something that you jumped in there on me. Anyway, yeah, it's gone.

Swing and a miss. Yeah. Okay. So I kind of want to go back to a little bit to the Cannonball stuff as well. Cause we touched a little bit on various vehicles. Did we talk about the, what was it called? The Black Turd?

Oh, it was a P71 Black Turd.

The Black Turd. Yeah.

Did we talk about that? I don't think we did. Yeah. So that was my first Cannonball car. I got invited to my first Cannonball race. It is called the 2904. It is a race typically from New York to San Francisco. That's where the 2904 comes from. The idea was you had to race for a dollar a mile. So you have to buy a car, pay for fuel, tickets, whatever, for $2,904.

I didn't know that part. Okay.

Yeah. So it's basically like the 24 hours of lemons meets the Cannonball essentially. Things like brakes, suspension, tires, anything like safety related is outside of the budget.

Okay.

So when I got invited to this, it was 2015 and the race, it was typically like a lark. Like everyone was more about like theatrics and themes, and not really taking all that seriously. And since I figured it was a once in a lifetime thing, I always want to do a Cannonball. And I'm like, I'm going to take the rules, I'm going to dissect them, and I'm going to build the best car possible, and I'm going to take it real serious. And that year was special because the organizer, John Fekara, he's like, we have a special guest this year. And when he said special guest, I'm like, is that Alex Roy, Ed Bullion, Burt Reynolds? Like, who's the special guest? And they kept it close to the chest until like two weeks before. And the special guest was Ed Bullion, who at the time was a current Cannonball record holder. And I had built this Crown Victoria, it's a 07 P71 Crown Vic. So it was a former police car, former taxi cab. And I rebuilt all the suspension brakes, like anywhere I could make this car like perfect without, you know, affecting the budget. I did that. I even made like plywood splitters, front and rear, but for aerodynamics. Like, I mean, it was some serious redneck engineering on a shoestring budget. And I thought, for sure, I'm like, oh, I got this in the bag. And then I find out Ed Bullion had gotten a 03 Mercedes S55 AMG that had like 12 owners, had been salvaged twice, and he painstakingly rebuilt this car for this race and came within budget. So I'm like, great. Now I got to race the Cannonball record holder with this car. I'm totally outgunned. But yeah, I got a 55-gallon self in the P71 Black Turd. That year, we ended up running 33 hours. We were an hour behind Ed. We came in third place on my first Cannonball. And that car is what got me into this Cannonball world, because before that, I didn't know, was there some underground society or whatever? This was the only race or group of people I could find that was doing the Cannonball. And after I came in third, Ed, I remember, we're in the parking lot of the Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach. And he's like, man, he's like, we saw your car and we thought for sure, there's no chance that you're gonna do anything with this piece of junk. Because he had brought a bunch of, one buddy had an A8 and then they had some sort of C430 Mercedes. There was a bunch of Autobahn type cars.

Just German killers, yeah.

And 2015 was the first time that Cannonball was back, when it was a real race. Because they had run the race in 07 and 09. And people are going 38 hours. No one's going fast. But 2015 is a pivotal moment in Cannonball, because all of a sudden, we had six cars out of whatever 12 that was in there, that were really gunning for it. And that ran between 32 and 34 hours. And we were at the speeds of the late 70s and early 80s in these junk cars. And that was a turning point. But yeah, I still got the P71 Black Turd in 2017. I ran the car in the last 2904 race, set the fastest time ever in that race. And we all said that that year we ran to San Francisco. So I hold the record from New York to San Francisco still in that car. We averaged 92 miles an hour in a $500 Crown Vic across the country.

The whole cop car theme seems to be... Is that kind of a thing that you stick to? That's like a strategy that you have that seems to be kind of unique to you? What's your theory behind that?

I love police cars and municipal vehicles. Like, I have an ambulance that I'm a Duramax powered...

I was going to say, let me guess, a Chevy Express.

Yeah, exactly. But my love of police cars comes from the movie, The Blues Brothers. So I grew up in Mount Prospect. And if you know the movie, Elwood says, I got this car at a Mount Prospect police auction. They were practically giving them away. And I remember seeing that movie as a kid. And like, that's my hometown, you know? And here's this like magical Dodge Monaco old police car that's just like outrunning the police and jumping. And like, I just became obsessed with like police cars. But yeah, it's like, obviously the fraud Taurus. I made my current, the current Cannonball record car. That looks like a Ford Taurus police interceptor. My wife's daily driver is a 2020 Explorer police interceptor with an EcoBoost, it's modded, of course. And it's got a push bumper, electronic air horn, it's got antennas. I mean, it's like...

That's a cool platform, too.

Yeah, I don't know, there's something about a police car. It's like, I like them because it gets people out of the way. So like, when you're like...

So that's your theory behind it, kind of, right?

When you're hauling up the left lane in a, you know, what looks like a police car, people get out of your way. And like, I just...

We should do that for these road trips.

I know.

I think you read a stupid gulf.

I mean, that's the ultimate hack. My wife's Explorer moves... It's like parting the Red Sea. I feel like I'm Moses of the interstate. You know, you just fly up the left lane and it's just people just like, out of the way, out of the way.

I think that's my next car. I need to do that. I'm doing that for sure. What's your... Do you have any, I guess, movie cars or anything that you want next? Or do you have, you kind of acquired it all?

I mean, I've done a lot of like, theme cars. Like I turned the old AMS van into the A-Team van. Yep. I've still got my Blues Mobile kind of doing a whole resto mod type build on that thing right now, yeah.

Like a pro touring sort of set up?

Sort of, but I'm doing it as if the Blues Brothers did it. So what I did was we took a P71 Crown Vic and I cut 18 inches of the frame out that holds the rack and pinion control arms, all that. And we welded it into the stub frame of the Monaco. So it now has rack and pinion and control arms instead of the torsion bars and a, you know, old steering gear box. And I'm doing a 8.8 Ford rear end, converting it to a four Lincoln back. So it's kind of like a poor man's a resto mod.

Cause I was going to have the four six two velvet at that from the.

No, I, so my blues mobile, I have an LS engine in it already. I swapped it in 2016 because there's another Cannonball race called the C2C express. That's for old. It's basically like a period correct Cannonball. So for that race, I swapped in a stock five three and me and Ed Bowie and I had become friends with Ed from racing with him in 2015, but we, he came with me on that run. We dressed as the blues brothers and ran and won the C2C Express in that car. So it's already got an LS motor, but now it's got P71 drivetrain or sorry, running gear. So now it actually has, if you remember from the movie, it's got cop shocks, cop brakes. Now it's official.

Yeah.

But the car is kind of like a it's kind of like a mess because the Mopar people are very serious about Mopar stuff.

Oh, yeah.

So I got like when I I keep the hood closed, like I don't even tell people it's got an LS, you know, because I don't want to get hung, you know. But but now I announced that I'm doing this like Ford Kronviks like, oh, you should take it out of a charger. Like, what are you doing? You're ruining it. Like, once you see the final product, like, I guarantee you, like if I took the car to a car show and people saw it, they wouldn't even know that anything has changed. It's coming out so nice and so it's like it's like seamless. Like, it's crazy how like everything has just like fit together, like dimensions of everything, like just really have been working out. So I'm really excited for that project. I'm debating now because I this this five three I've got in there is got three hundred thousand plus miles. I was going to turbo it like, man, the motor's tired. I'm like, man, maybe maybe a hellcat swap. OK, you know, like, sure, maybe go back on brand, like get to redeem myself so the Mopar guys will, you know, take me off the to kill list.

Well, that shouldn't be too, I can't imagine being too insane of a project to accomplish.

When I did the original swap, the problem was I'm doing it for this, like, period correct Cannonball that sort of had, like, some rules about purchase price. And like, I didn't want to, like, spend a million dollars on this swap. I wanted to, like, remain within the spirit of the event. And at the time, in like 2016, doing a Hemi swap was like, like, literally 10 times what an LS was. But now they have, like, now they have, you know, all sorts of, like, aftermarket ECUs and, like, trans controllers. Yeah, right. Right, yes. And you can get used drivetrains way cheaper. Like, there's actually, like, support for this now. So it makes a little more sense. So I'm really contemplating maybe just go to a Hellcat with the eight-speed transmission. I think it'd just be, it'd be nice to be back on brand. And I feel like it would make, you know, add value to the car. Although I do like, you know, ruffling some feathers though. So maybe I'll put like a K20 in it or something.

Or throw like an LT in there even.

Really ruffle some feathers. Do you have like the big freaking blow horn thing?

Oh yeah, no, I've got it. I've got a replica speaker for the roof that I usually drive with. And what's funny is people are like, oh wow, like how did, man, you must have fabricated all this stuff. It's actually two plastic flower pots. They're screwed together. And I painted them with cast iron paint. I mean, it's pretty good. People get there, they start looking at it closer, like, oh my gosh, I see it now. But most people can't tell.

That's hilarious.

Yeah, it's pretty funny.

So it seems like you do some things at such an absurdly high quality. And then other things, you're like, oh, just Jerry Rigsley-ing together. So let's talk about that little, what was it? I think it was Jacksonville. Well, what is it? Is that Southern route you were talking about earlier?

Oh, so well, they call it the Southern route or the Southern Trail or the Spanish Trail. So it's like the Cannonball. It's a point to point race. The shortest distance between the Atlantic and the Pacific is Jacksonville, Florida to San Diego. And that's 2,365 miles. You go from Jacksonville Beach to Dog Beach. And we ran that in 2018 in my Mercedes E63 AMG. So I had this Alpha 9 E63 AMG that I was going to eventually use to do the Cannonball. Well, I wanted to test the car and the team. And there's, you know, this lesser known route. And I think the record at that time was like 26 hours and 20 minutes. I'm like, here's some low hanging fruit. I'm like, we could easily beat this, but I wanted to see like, how is the car going to hold up? How is the set? Like, what can we learn from a run? So on Christmas Day in 2018, my wife is a saint, by the way, because I left my family to go race across the country. I went out and tested the car and found out like how good that car was. We broke the record 24 hours flat.

Cool.

Got pulled over three times.

Holy s***. And yeah, broke the record.

Yeah. Still and still broke the record. That record actually just got beaten. Oh, OK. Six months ago. So yeah, so it held for a long time. It was it was far from a perfect run. There was a there's a lot on the table on that run, but it gave me the confidence and it gave me the experience, too. I learned a lot about like there were some tweaks to be made to the car that I think that if we would have taken the car as it sat and tried the Cannonball record, like we may not have gotten it on our first try.

What kind of tweaks did you have to make?

We talked about the pulled over thing real quick. Did you get a ticket every time or are you just like, hurry up, man?

Here's the funny story. We got pinched on the Florida Panhandle. Doug was driving. He got pulled over allegedly at 117 miles an hour in a 70. So get pulled over. He gets a ticket for that. Surprisingly, didn't get arrested, thankfully. And so we went up the road. I switched into the driver's seat and hammered across Louisiana. I think I averaged a little over 100 miles an hour. Doug switches back in Texas, gets pulled over again. 116 and a 75. Gets another ticket eight hours later. And then our other driver on that run, Dave Simpson, he also got pulled over in Texas, but he's an Army veteran. And he played, he's such a southerner. He grew up in Georgia and he gets pulled over. And the cop's like, I got you going pretty fast. He's like, man, he's like, have you ever driven one of these? He's like, this is a fancy man's car. Like it's just so smooth down the road. And shows him his government ID, his old Army ID. Just like totally sweet talked his way out of a ticket. But obviously that cost us a lot. But you asked, what did we learn? So the the fuel cell in that car had I only had one inlet. And the angle of it was bad. Like it was end of spinning fuel out. And like so we had some fueling problems. So I learned a lot about that. We modified that system. I don't know, just fortified a few things. We knew I knew then like I had a good team because that's the other like finding a co-driver or someone that you're comfortable like driving really fast while you're like trying to rest or you know how it is like, would you jump in a car with your buddy and go 150 miles with any of your buddies and go 150 miles an hour? Like, yeah, it's like you want to know you can trust this guy and trust his driving style and he's not going to be some like lunatic.

You know, it depends on the car with Dan, like I him driving my car. Currently, I'm like, I wouldn't like we locked up the other day. I was like, yeah, don't do that with this car. But I'm like, very near GT 500. Go one seventy to always see if I care. You know what I mean?

Right.

So I think you have to trust the vehicle to though, right? What was your most unreliable vehicle? Do you have any on for a cannonball for a cannonball?

Well, I guess that would be my Honda Insight. We did. So for the 50th anniversary of the Cannonball. So on the exact day, November 15th in 2021, 50 days. For our 50 years to the day, we raced in this thing called the Musket Ball. So we left the Good Wife Shopping Center, which was the the start point of the 1979 Cannonball in this race called the Musket Ball. So John Ficara, who did the 2904, the cheap car cannonball, he wanted to commemorate this 50th anniversary of the first cannonball. So he devised a race where the only rule was 100 wheel horsepower. And when I heard that, I called them, I said, John, are there any other rules? This is the only rule. He's like, that's the only rule. Thank you. I'm like, I'm gonna find the lightest, most aerodynamic car, early, the first Honda Insight. I'm gonna swap a Volkswagen TDI motor in it, because he didn't say anything about torque. Oh yeah. I was like, I'm just gonna detune this car to 100 wheel horsepower. It's gonna make whatever torque it makes. I put a European six-speed in this car, and we set out for this 100 wheel horsepower Cannonball. And he said, if anyone cheats, there's gonna be stiff penalties. So, and honestly, like, I like these Cannonballs where there's rules. I like the rule set. Like, unlimited is like, okay, that's cool. But I like to like use my brain and think, and strategize, you know? So I built this car well within the rules. Actually, we tuned it here on my dyno, which is a four-wheel drive dyno, and I always leave them linked. And we tuned it to 100 wheel horsepower.

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Well, when I got to the start, they picked the top 10 cars they thought were cheating, and mine was one of them. And on a two wheel drive dyno jet, the car only made 86 wheel horsepower. I'm like, oh, my gosh, like, why didn't I think to disconnect the rollers and like? So you could have a little more. Yeah, so I could have I could have got more. But then there was a guy that was making one hundred twenty four wheel horsepower on this this diesel Passat. And the the organizer, I guess, underestimated his penalties. So it's one of his penalties was you had to build a puzzle the night before and glue it to your hood, which obviously is going to take some time and you're not going to be as well rested. But the other the other penalty was ten pounds per horsepower over the limit. So the guy had 124 wheel horsepower. I had to take 240 extra pounds. It's like, well, maybe in a quarter mile, that would affect something. But 2800, that wouldn't. So I was already outgunned. So now I have a car that is like could have had some more horsepower. I'm racing against some guys who were cheating, who like the penalties really didn't matter. So, man, we were in a heated battle. There was like me and two other guys who had cars that had too much horsepower in this heated battle on this on this run. My belt tensioner broke in Denver on that car. So it didn't end up winning that one. So I would say that was a, you know, a unreliable car, but the worst car that I ever ran was Doug's Monte Carlo. My co-driver Doug had this pro touring built 77 Monte Carlo. We raced that in the C2C Express in 2019. And this car, he raced it. That was the third run it ever made. It broke down on every single Cannonball. And again, in Denver, fuel pump locked up.

Oh no.

That car was a nightmare. Oh my gosh. Yeah, he was happy to see that thing go. And the guy he sold it to is actually John Ficarra, who had the 2904 race. He flew out to Ohio, picked it up, and it broke down, I think in Nebraska or Colorado also, so transmission, this car is cursed, completely cursed. There's no way to fix this thing. It's still giving even the new owner problems today.

So where do you, when you say race, right? Let's say I want to do the C2C, is there like a time, they're like, hey, we're doing it on this day, and everybody takes off, where do you find this stuff? Do you have to already be in the Cannonball Club?

At this point, you have to be in the community, because honestly, the community, if you ask me, has gotten too big. This whole thing, just like the 70s, man, that's when Brock Yates called it. After the 79 Cannonball, he goes, this is just too much, too many people know about it, too many people are interested in it. I think we're back at that again, where there's too much interest, too many people doing it, it's getting too much public attention. I think that that needs to stop, and the organizers of some of these cheap car cannonballs and old car cannonballs, there is no organized, unlimited cannonball, that just does not exist. There are a couple of these events that have rules for older cars and horsepower limitations and stuff like that, but at this point, if you guys wanted to get in, it would be next to impossible, because all these organizers have just capped it to people who have made runs, people we've raced with before in some of these other events.

Which makes sense.

Because there's too much to lose. You get some Yahoo out there that decides, I'm going to pass on the shoulder or do some crazy stuff, because the Cannonball was always about good cars and good drivers driving fast safely. That was like the under... It wasn't like who could go the fastest. It was always proving that it could be done safely. So all it takes is you get some idiot out there, like these guys that are doing that swimming thing. I guess people have graduated from sideshows and now they're doing the swimming thing where they're zipping in and out of New York traffic, nearly missing people. You get some of these idiots out there. They're going to ruin it for everybody. As soon as that happens, anybody who's ever run a Cannonball, you're going to go from a hero to a zero.

Public enemy number one.

Exactly. So the Cannonball community is very, very serious about safety. And at this point, they're not allowing really anybody and anybody into it.

That's because you could tell you're a narc.

Yeah, yeah. No, we run a lot of rallies and you've been on a fair share of them, too. So there's always, you know, there's that that guy or a couple of guys where you're like, this fricking a******.

Yeah, you run into that with exotic car rallies, you know, just because you have an exotic car does not mean you're a good driver.

Yes.

And yeah, I've seen a couple of scary things, you know, and obviously we've had some tragedies. I lost a friend on Crown Rally.

Were you on that rally?

I was not on that rally. But coincidentally, actually, me and Ed Bullion were we passed through the day before. It was like the High Plains of Colorado. We were on Gold Rush and we passed through the same area the day before Crown Rally. Basically, Crown Rally was coming out of Denver and we were heading into it. And it was the next day that my buddy Larry was on a desolate road, you know, two lane highway, you know, I think shooting for 200 miles an hour or something crazy, hit a bump and, you know, car lost control and he was killed. And that's what's scary about these. I like the interstates better. Like if you're going to try to go for a top speed or something like, I mean, I don't condone this. But, you know, the interstates, you know, flat and straight and made for high speed, like some of these two lane roads, you know, I know Crown Rally and these other rallies, like they scout these routes, but they don't scout them at 200 miles an hour. Like, you know, like you got to be careful in these two lane roads. Like I've been on a lot of rallies and you know, it's like you run into some like drive within your limits. You know, like I would not be going too fast on these, on these roads you've never driven on. So you just don't know.

Right.

Well, yeah, the road conditions can change too. I've been on rallies too, where they're like, this is the route and then the road's missing. They're like, oh, we didn't know they were going to tear it up and re-friggin do it.

I'm sorry.

No, it's happened on several rallies. No, I'm not.

It's happened though. Yeah, but for rallies, what I tell people is like, this isn't a race, no one's tying anything. It's like, sure, you're driving outside of the law.

Observe the speed limit.

But just enjoy it responsibly. It's like you can enjoy driving at 8 tenths.

Yeah.

You know, you don't have to be driving at 11 tenths to enjoy yourself.

You know, and for the most part, like you can do some spirited driving and still accomplish your goal without being an asshat. Some people think like you need to take every opportunity to get ahead. And like you may have passed that car in a left lane and then four minutes later, they exit. You know what I mean? And then you have wide open. It's, it's you do, there's no need to be impatient or push it because your opportunity will come.

Right. Yeah. What I, what I've heard is some of these rallies that let in some of these other, like besides exotics, it can get dicey with these bigger groups because you have a young kid who has maybe got a GTI and he gets on this rally and he thinks the way to impress people is like driving super dangerously and doing crazy stuff. It's like you're going to ruin it for everybody.

Yeah.

You know, like the, you know, the testosterone starts flying and, you know, next thing you know, people are doing sketchy stuff, passing on the shoulder. Like, you know, I'll be honest with you. Like my favorite rallying I do now is my buddy has this app called URR Ultimate Road Rally. He started out doing rallies and developed this app to help organize it. And now he's shifted away kind of from doing the actual rallies to like just helping other rallies.

Oh, cool.

Like organize and stuff around when I was running rallies. Oh, it's it's a URR dot app. It's phenomenal. He spent like the last eight years and he is like psychotic about making it the best experience. But Gold Rush used it last year. So it's getting adopted by a lot of a lot of these rallies. But for him, when he was doing a lot of these rallies, we would go out to the Smoky Mountains. We've been out west. I would lead the rally. So I would leave 10 minutes before everybody and kind of just like pave the way, you know, let people know about traffic, sure police. And I was able to communicate with them through the app, you know, kind of like what they're, what's up ahead. And so for them, they were able to like, enjoy the, enjoy more knowing this, like someone's ahead and like, they could, you know, enjoy their car.

And I had a voice space to communication.

Both as a walkie talkie function. Okay. And, and a function, you know, like a group chat, and it has warnings, like ways.

So it has a map feature too. Yeah.

And it has weather. I mean, that's cool. He has thought of everything.

Like, is that GPS as well tracking in there too?

Yeah, GPS tracking. You can see where everybody is. So like, I can monitor how fast they're going behind me. So I can kind of like adjust my speed to, to kind of like the pace of them. It's phenomenal. It's like, you've been on a lot of rallies, you know, they're using WhatsApp, Facebook groups, Google map links. Like, it molds all that together in one cohesive thing.

I was going to say, Joiner was one of my, I was a Joiner? Joiner was one of my favorite ones.

Joiner was our favorite because of those features. They had stuff like that. It didn't-

Everything except for voice.

This is like Joiner on steroids.

That's what it sounds like to me.

Plus 10. Yeah. Like, I viewed Joiner too on Gold Rush. They were using it, you know, years back, which, you know, it worked, but still you still got separate chats. And I mean, this, he's put everything together and it's phenomenal. It's really like, it's really taking off now. A lot of rallies are using it.

What's the one that everybody uses now? It's just basically a walkie talkie app. Zello. Zello.

I was never a fan of that one. I found out. Yeah, I use that.

It's like, there's a lot of noise going on all the time on it.

It's like, yeah, everybody has a comment.

But this app, so you just stay in this app and has the route. And what's cool about it, too, is like when I'm when I'm leading this thing, like if I get to like when you said the road's closed or whatever, I can adjust the route for everyone behind me on the fly. I can warn them. I can send out like a global message just like, hey, when you get to this intersection, you can't go right. You gotta go straight. You know, like I can communicate these kind of things with these people. But honestly, that's been the most fun for me with these rallies is just out there, the lone wolf driving by myself. I don't have to worry about what is going on back there. I don't want to know what's going on back there. Like I just, I like to worry about myself. And I think that's why I like Cannonball. It's just, it's nice to just be out there and not have a bunch of noise around me.

Do you do anything competition based whatsoever with any of your cars? Or is it, you just like the cross country stuff more?

I used to drag race. I used to road race long, long time ago. I used to autocross, but since I did my first Cannonball, I haven't drag raced, road raced. Like if it's not like illegal, like I just don't, it doesn't interest me anymore. It's, I mean, it's addicting. Like once, once you've done your first Cannonball, like you're screwed. Like there is no other form of motor sports compares.

What about like, cause we talked a little bit about the early street racing days and the Galant and all that stuff. Did you guys do a lot of stuff like with the Evos and stuff on the street as well back in the day?

Once the Evos came out, like we were starting to step away from street racing because I remember it was like 05. Well, yeah, I mean, plus with the Evo, it's like we were trying to get on the world stage, not just like take over Chicago. But the early days of AMS, like we want to make a name for ourselves. We want to be big in Chicago. And once we did that and then the Evo came out, we're like, well, here's a clean slate, like in the United States, cause in Japan they're not trying to make a thousand horsepower. Like their culture is different. You know, us Americans, it's just like make a bunch of power and then figure out the rest on the way. Just backtrack to figure out how to keep the drivetrain and how to stop the thing. But when the Evo came out, like we kind of like fixed our eyes on the world stage. So it made more sense to go to the drag strip because we can't go out. What are we gonna do? Like post on Evolution M forum, like, hey, we went out and beat this pro-charged Mustang. It's like, no, we want to say like, hey, we went out and ran the first 11 second quarter mile in Evo. So our mind had already changed and shifted over to like, legitimate racing.

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But you know, like our personal cars, we were still street racing in like 2004, 2005.

What was your personal car back then?

My wife had a 400 wheel horsepower Eagle Talon. We used to street race that. And like all of my employees would have cars, we would street race that. But it was like 05 is when you started to see some like near misses. Like we, you know, one time we saw we're running a race and you're like near the quarter mile, like a guy decides to pull out of the parking lot. Oh, like during a race. And it was just like at that point, we're like, like we need to just distance ourselves completely from street racing because, you know, we're starting to get a, you know, a name around the country, around the world. It's like and it's just getting too dangerous. And like, I don't want to be around that, you know, it's sketchy.

You start compromising the business sort of deal.

Exactly. And, you know, street racing, I guess, is still happening. Like, I was actually pretty surprised to hear because I just like, I'm so outside that world. But recently I've heard like, oh, yeah, people are still doing it. But it sounds like now the way they do it is like it's a small group of cars.

You have to.

They get in, they get out. You know, like it's back to like people who know what they're doing. But like in the early Fast and Furious days, like when I street raced in the 90s, like everybody who was there understood what they were doing and the dangers about it. And honestly, when I was in high school, I would go to the street races like I wasn't cool because I went to street races. I was kind of like this weirdo who was in the cars. You know, like that wasn't cool. But when the Fast and Furious came out, next thing you know, it's the coolest thing ever. So you got people come in their mom's minivan, like trying to do burnouts and park. Like it ruined the scene. Sure, that was like the start, but it was also like the start of the end. Yeah. For me, like for the scene, you know, for the like the hardcore, like real street racing scene. But I think we've come back to where it's serious people who understand the risks. But we're also at a point where cars are ridiculously fast. I mean, you know, a thousand horsepower is nothing now. But back when we were racing, if you had 500 wheel horsepower, you were like the king of the street. Your cars are ridiculously fast, man. I have no interest in drag racing on the street. It's just too much, man.

Yeah, like eight second hits on the street. And yeah, it's kind of nuts.

Yeah.

Well, do you think it should be at this point for that sort of stuff? Like, let's say a thousand horsepower G80s, right? Doesn't take as much to get there at this point or Supras or whatever. Do you think it should just be an eighth mile at this point instead of running out of a whole quarter on the street?

Yeah, I mean, I mean, that's that's really where it takes the talent, right, is getting the car out of the hole. That's why I like this no prep stuff. It's not like I follow it like super closely, but that's interesting to me. It's like you really have to you're like trying. You're getting back to like using your head, you know, testing and strategizing and that kind of thing.

It's street racing on the track.

Yeah, like this this role racing stuff with these thousand horsepower BMW is just kind of like, where's the talent? I mean, you know, it's like, what are you really building? All you're doing is putting some mods on like that anybody could do. Like I, it just doesn't interest me.

Sure. It's not a driver's race. It's a car race at that point.

Right. Exactly. But, you know, you bring up the safety, like, you know, shutting it down to 8th mile. You know, we used to race when it was one standing mile racing, you know, back in 2009, 10, 11. And then that got too fast. I remember Alpha Omega, which is our big shop car at AMS. And I remember Ivan hit a bump at the Texas mile in the shutdown. There was like a serious transition. It was a bump. And he just happened to hit the parachute at the same time as he went over this bump. It lifted the back of the car and he did a 233 mile an hour drift. And he held it like the in car is awesome. It's just him. He's just like, all of a sudden, the car's going sideways. He's just like this, like turning and looking where he's going, gets it straightened out. But it was at that point when they started like, you started to see like mile stuff like was shutting down. They started going a half mile. And now you got cars going 260 and a half mile. I almost like, do we need to make this a third mile? Cars are just getting too fast. Like realistically, after we went sevens in the GTR, like I just started losing interest because like it's too easy.

Yeah.

Like I grew up at a time where it's like, man, if you can go tens, like wow, like getting to tens and like getting to nines. And like to me, we're at the point where, I remember when we went sevens in the GTR at AMS, I'm like, we're never gonna go sixes. Of course, GTRs did end up going sixes. Now, it's a record six five or something like, how much faster can you go? There's like no milestones anymore.

Yeah.

And it's just, you're getting to the point where cars are just so fast and making so much power. You're at the mercy of traction at this point. Like that's making the power doesn't seem to be a problem. It's the traction, but like there's nowhere else to go. If there's not like this far distant goal, it doesn't interest me anymore.

Okay, that's fair. Well, it's like at one point, people start passing out in cars, right? Like when you start having like pro mods on streets, you know, again.

Yeah, that's so for me, for like acceleration type racing, like I just it's not for me. I got it. It doesn't interest me. It's great.

What about other countries? Cannonball, like is there anything like, for example, like, I don't know, Moscow to Isle of Man or something, you know what I mean? Like, is there any appeal in doing that, like globally?

Yeah, there there is. My friend Tommy Davies set the record across the UK. OK, funny story about that. He went out and he's inspired by like Alex Roy and Ed Bolian and that kind of thing. He goes out and he races across the whole country. It's nine hundred something miles and he did it. And I don't know whatever the record was, 10 hours or whatever it was. So he simply announced that he did it. He had no public proof at all. Like he just said, hey, I did this thing. He had proof, but he didn't publicly like put it out there. There was no like information. And he started going on a couple of podcasts. They came and arrested him.

Oh, my gosh.

Simply for saying he did it.

That sounds like the UK.

Yeah.

Well, I was thinking that of other countries. That's where it began.

Then they confiscated like his car for three years. And he actually represented himself and got out of it because all the traffic cameras for some reason didn't see him. So they started like saying like, you hack the system. Like it was it was totally ridiculous. But yes, there are people out there that do these kind of things. I I I oversaw a run across Europe. I forget where Bulgaria to somewhere. It's similar, similar distance to the Cannonball. And I they they wanted to like set this record. And I watched their Glimpse Feed, which is a GPS app that we use to like remotely monitor someone who's like making an attempt. Like if you guys decided right now, like, hey, I want to go break the Cannonball record. You know, we there's like there's not a sanctioning body for Cannonball. Yeah, but there is. It's like an unofficial official sanctioning body.

It's like the Illuminati. They exist, but they don't.

Right, exactly. It's like it's like the Illuminati of illegal racing. But you would contact like me or Ed Bullion.

It would get indoctrinated by the members, right? Yes, it makes sense.

Exactly. So what we say like, OK, well, you know, we would kind of give you an overview, like third party GPS tracker. You know, you want witnesses at the front and the back. And then just send us your glimpse feed, which is this GPS tracking thing. And we'll watch like there's like 10 of us that will watch you leave Manhattan. And we have a spreadsheet. So it's like, you know, Ed, my check in is like, oh, OK, I saw him in Allentown, Pennsylvania at 11 a.m. You know, just I sign off on it and I'll check in like, oh, they're they're in Springfield, Illinois at this time. So we kind of like remotely monitor it.

Yeah.

And it's just another layer of proof because that's become a thing because there is a guy who basically didn't have any proof, kind of faked his time and sure that that happened once. And we don't want that to happen again.

Yeah.

So then basically when someone's going for a run, a handful of you guys are in the know.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I've oversaw. So like motorcycle attempts and, you know, even attempts at my own record, I've, you know, I've, I've oversaw. And then there's, there's been a thing lately of people doing coast to coast to coast, like a double Cannonball. It's like you get to the, you get to the part of, you know, turn around and go back to the red ball.

That's insane. What's the record for that?

It is 64 hours.

Okay.

So is that include a nap or what?

No, that's like, I mean, you get there and turn around.

Yeah.

You're napping in the car. That's a whole, that becomes, I mean, running a Cannonball is like a marathon, but like running a double Cannonball, that's like an ultra marathon. It's like a whole other set of like, kind of like strategy, because you have strategy in reverse now too, right? Yes, exactly. It's like, I mean, you're doubling the distance. And when you're doubling, that doesn't mean it's twice as hard. To me, that's like 10 times as hard, because you're already beat tired once you get to the Portofino in 30 hours, you know, like to turn around and do it again. Geez.

Is there a record for the reverse route or is anybody?

If that's been brought up before, and it's actually easier to do that because you're not racing into the sun. You get more time during the dark. So like if you guys like if some guy went out and did it in reverse and said like and they broke my record, the community would reject it.

Sure.

Because it's actually easier and like that, like running west to east is not not accepted.

Okay.

It has to be it has to be run east to west. Red ball, the Portofino.

Okay. So there's just no there's no time out there. That's even nobody really cares about it.

In probably about 15 years ago, a guy did it for the first time like that and on a motorcycle.

Oh my God.

And I mean, it's sort of counted, I guess, but he like, I think the next year he went and did it, you know, east to west. Cause he lived out in California. I think he just wanted to kind of like see what it was about.

Sure.

See if you don't have a code driver, I suppose when you're doing that on a motorcycle.

No.

What's the motorcycle record? Any idea?

32, I think it's under 32, 30.

That's insane.

No, that's, yeah, I oversaw that one too. Like, and watch it all unfold. That is next level crazy.

So it's not just a solo, but it's also a solo exposed to the elements and.

Can you imagine how brutal that would be? Yeah.

Yeah.

Like it's bad enough doing it inside of a car. Like, yeah, that's, they're just built different, man. Like that's to me the most impressive Cannonball period.

How, how many subcategories are there? Is there just one, like, whatever, is there like a truck one, a car one, a blue car with white wheels?

Just like, just like, just like Nissan GTRs with the factory turbo stock engine record.

Yeah.

You know, uh, Tuesday, uh, Tuesday evening record that it's gotten to that, because I mean, you know, it's like everybody, if they're going to do a Cannonball, they want it to mean something. So there's a, there's a diesel record that people have claimed. Um, there's, you know, a truck record, you know, there's an EV record, there's a nonstop, you know, like no stops, there's solo record. So yeah, there are some, you know, like subcategories of things like micro records, as you call them. And it is getting a little bit out of hand.

It's micro, but it's such on a macro scale. I kind of like, like, uh, last episode you were talking about the EVs. It's a testament to how much EVs have evolved when you're, yeah, the EV, I don't like EVs all that much.

You have a light thing, right? No, I've got a RST, Silverado RST EV.

That's what it was.

Because yeah, our power company had a $30,000 rebate. They basically gave it to me almost free. So I took it.

Uh, I bought an EV after talking to you.

Oh, you did?

I got one from my wife. Your appliance metaphor is what got me interested, right? Cause I wanted, I was changing the oil on her car. I was paying $400 or $500 a month to, for her and gas. She's driving an hour to work. Like I'm like, the fact that you can just set it and forget it, it cost me $20 a month to charge it at home. Like she plugs in when she gets home, she goes to work. I never f****** think about it again.

Right. Exactly. Like I, I didn't want to like it and everybody who I've loaned, like Jordan who runs Cannonball Garage, like he hates EVs. And I remember I'd just gotten this RST and he's like, am I going to just drive it? I just want to drive it. And I'm like, well, I'm going out of town, like take, take it for the week. I came back and he's like, I can't believe I'm going to say this. He's like, I get it. It's so nice to just get in a vehicle. I don't have to worry about warming it up. I don't have to work, care about anything. Like oil change, nothing. Like I couldn't get it back from him. I remember it was like I had come back on Monday and I go outside and I've got a few cars here at the shop. And I'm like, where's the truck? Like he took it again. Like he didn't want to, he didn't want to give it back. And every time I'm out of town, he's like, so mind if I take the truck?

You know?

And he was like the biggest hater of EVs. But like once I drove it, like I get it.

Yeah.

You know, as I'm still a huge car enthusiast or whatever, but it is nice to have a vehicle that I don't have to worry about changing the oil. You're never going to change the brakes because, you know, regenerative braking, you're going to replace tires. Really that, that's it. And it's a total appliance. I don't even wash the thing. Like to me, it's not, it's like, it's not even a vehicle. It's an appliance. You don't wash your fridge. It's there to serve me. Like I am not there to, like all my other cars, I am there to serve it.

Yes.

This one, like it's there to serve me.

Yeah, so that, your thing broke me and it works really well.

And they have all these rebates and stuff like, you know, and will electric vehicles ever be viable? Probably, you know, over time. I could see it happening, as battery technology gets better. We've seen that with the Cannonball, the record. It used to be 58 hours. Now it's, it might even be 39 hours or something, like in the course of 10 years. So you can see like the charging infrastructure has gotten better. The speed of charging, the battery capacity, like everything is getting better. The Silverado RST that I've got, it's got a 440 mile range and they actually just broke the record. Lucid, I think had the record like 750 miles on a single charge. My RST, GM just set the record. Now, they're cooking the books a little bit. They drove 30 miles an hour around Detroit basically. They went 1,067 miles on a single charge on the same, basically, it was the work truck version of my RST. But this thing has got a range like you wouldn't believe. I don't think I would want like a Tesla with a 250 mile range. Like what did you end up buying?

We got a Mach-E.

Oh, okay, what's the range?

So 320, but for her, for work purposes, like we well, then if you use stuff like a better route planner, so I was like, we're going to use it for a road trip at some point. I want to try it, right? But it tells you where, you know, there's apps that will be like, you stop here, you charge for this long and you don't go to 100%. Like you start off at 100%, but then you just charge to 70.

Just enough to get to your destination.

It's minimizing your time sitting, right? So it's like you go and then you drive another two hours and you stop here and you do it for another 20 minutes. It's trying to get you to not sit for an hour, plus charging from 80% to 100% takes as long from zero to 80.

Right.

So.

Yeah, no, it's, I mean, for me, it's been fun. It's like another thing to figure out, you know? It's like, how do you do this? Now, would I want to like take it on? If like, if I had to go to like Orlando right now, like would I take my Duramax Man or the RST EV? Like, I would take the Duramax Man all day long, you know, all day long. But it is kind of fun to kind of like figure out something new and I can't believe I say that I like it, but man, I really do. And for towing, oh, get out of town, man. Instant torque, oh gosh, it's fantastic. I've yet to go through a winter. I'm happy with the range. I'm happy with everything. I hear that in the winter it cuts it down quite a bit. But you know, with a 440 mile range, if it cuts it down, it's still usable. Yeah, I don't know. I'll report back in the spring what I think of it, but we're not gonna have the monies.

I'll be like, I sold it, I hated it.

There's enough of a buffer there for me so that if the range takes a hit, it's whatever. So, and I don't, what do you charge to? Do you charge to 80, 90? Like, what do you go to?

Honestly, it's a lease, so I just...

Right to 100?

Right to 100. I mean, I don't always do that, but I don't have it like limited. Like, you can go in the settings, like limit it to 80. I just leave it at 100. But I don't always, I don't charge it all the way up, unless I'm like going somewhere or I have to tow something. But it's been good for towing. Like, I'm comfortable going about maybe like a little over 100 miles out one way and getting back, like, you know, with a buffer.

Yeah.

So it suits my needs, most of my needs. And, you know, like, it's funny that I never have driven nice vehicles as a daily. Like, I have nice vehicles. Like, I have my dream cars, my E63 AMG wagon, and all my guys like, why don't you ever drive? And I'm like, man, it's like tires are expensive. Brakes are expensive. Everything's expensive. Like, I would just rather drive a beater. But this is the first time since like it's essentially beater money is what I paid for as a one time, one time pay lease. I paid $6,000 to have it for three years and 36,000 miles.

Holy s***.

Yeah. Oh, like I said, I got one from my business partner. I wasn't even gonna get one for myself. I'm like, what do I need this for? Like, I don't, but like I'm doing the math. I'm like, this is essentially free. You know, like whenever, when am I ever gonna try EVs? So I dove in, but this thing is really nice. I'm kind of spoiled. Like I've got, when I got back in, like the Vandit, I'm just like, huh, this is really isn't that good.

Well, even ours, we didn't qualify for most of the rebate stuff, but I paid 34 for basically a brand new car with bumper to bumper warranty, all of a sudden it was one year old. And that's like a base Ford Escape, you know.

Yeah, why would you do that? Yeah, and especially if you're a wife, because she doesn't care.

No, and it has nice leather interior and the big screen and all the bells and whistles and Bluetooth and heated and cooled everything.

And it's like, yeah, when I have to turn this thing in, like I don't, I'm hoping that there's still some like deals out there, because like it's sort of ruined me. Yeah, I've always like not been like really high maintenance with cars, like I drive any beater, I don't care.

Yeah.

But now I'm just like, oh, I don't know.

There's like zero effort for her to like, she's kind of got a lead foot and she goes on a single lane road a lot of the ways of her deal. So sometimes she wants to pass.

Oh, yeah. And it's like you just the instant power. Yeah. No, for like if you have a commute, like if if I lived in LA., I would 100 percent have a Tesla with with autonomous drive. Like you'd have to you'd be ridiculous not to. But yeah, I mean, if you've got to commute, having having one, like I don't think you could just have is your only vehicle, an EV like that. I don't think that's really viable, at least not for me. But as as a vehicle that's in the fleet is like your main vehicle for most of what you need. Like it covers all the bases and does it well.

Yeah, I think there are a lot of these people are starting to ditch the program. And I think they're putting a little less effort into EVs now. And I think some of us car guys are kind of coming on board because you're not the only one I've talked to that's also kind of been like, eh, I didn't mind it. So that'll be funny. We'll finally like it and then they'll stop doing it.

Right. Just our luck.

Yeah. Was the plan to always call it Cannonball Garage?

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah. So yeah, I figured because after AMS, like basically at the tail end of my tenure at AMS is when I got into the Cannonball like scene.

Okay.

And I, you know, I came in, I came in third place the first time I did it. I won the next year. I won the next year. So I'm like, like I started getting notoriety with Cannonball. So I always knew I wanted to like attach myself. I wanted people to like when they hear the name, like think like they know me, you know, or like I have that attachment. Because if I just called it something, you know, McLaren specialist, like you would never even like put two and two together. Yeah. But I think that's a lot of the success of of Cannonball Garage is like I'm I don't want to say an influencer, like a public figure, but it's like but people know me in the automotive community. So and you know, you like follow people online. It's like you feel like you know them because you see their day to day life. You know what they like. And I wanted people to feel comfortable, like bringing their, you know, three, four or five hundred thousand dollar car to some new shop. Well, I've been around for five years now. But when you first start out, it's like, I think that really helps. Yeah.

People felt like I was doing an experiment real quick.

Let's see.

Do you have a Wikipedia page or anything?

No, I do not.

I'm curious.

I don't think so.

Well, Google's gotten really good with their AI recently. So whenever you check this out. So who is Arne Toman? In the industry, Cannonball Garage was founded by Arne Toman, two time and current Cannonball record holder, co-founder of AMS. So it's yeah, it knows you.

Oh, right away.

Look at that.

I guess that's when you really make it when you have a Wikipedia page.

Yeah, that's what I'm trying. Somebody somebody's going to make one. No, it's but no, that wasn't like the AI answer. I think it just gave me like the about us page. But it's like the other day I was looking up some guests and it's like, just gives it like AI is trying to know us.

Oh, man, I tell you, AI, it's any of that in your any of your businesses yet or not quite? No, I mean, you know, we use it for stuff, you know, just like stuff just probably like you do. Like, you know, I probably scratch the surface of what you can actually actually do with it. But man, AI scares me, especially like these like pictures and videos like you could just like, oh, make me a movie about this. They're like, where are we going to be in five years? Like, what's going to happen to Hollywood? I mean, which, you know, if Hollywood just disappeared, I could care less. Hollywood could burn in hell for all I care about. But like, what is like entertainment going to look like? Like, and I think about like these writers and like, what are they going to do? What are a lot of people going to do? A lot of people are going to lose their jobs over this, man. It's it's scary. So it's kind of like you should really adopt it. But it's like you should kind of like reject it in the same token. Like, oh, I don't know.

The problem is you can't reject it because like it's constant. Like this whole like unit, the US put all these laws in. Everybody else is going to follow those laws. They're going to be like, oh, we're going to slam dunk on the US now.

You know, so it's like, yeah, it's going to it's I mean, I guess like any other technology is like, you guess you just got to keep with it. And well, all of these are your head in the sand.

All of these plumbers and electricians and guys have been breaking their backs for years, told all of their kids to go get college degrees and that stuff. And now the trades are the only thing that's not the next millionaires are plumbers, electricians.

Yeah, like all, you know, I have a teenage daughter and like what I always give advice to these people is like find a trade. Yeah, I honestly, I think probably about a quarter of the people that go to college really need it. Yeah, you know, honestly, like, like I went to, you know, I got a two year degree. Like I would, I'd probably be farther along in my life if I wouldn't have bothered, you know, I would have hit the ground running, you know, a few years earlier if it wasn't the case of, you know, focusing on school.

If you weren't doing this, what else would you be doing? Oh, boy, or if you wanted to just get out of the McLaren game, the machining game, what else would I do?

Well, I mean, I really, I think of the money is really in making your own products. And I actually have like so it's something we haven't talked about is actually me and my business partner Drew with the machine shop. We also have a company called Seven Supply. So we hold three gym, three patents on a gym bag that hangs in a commercial gym locker. So like a lifetime fitness or planet fitness, you know, you bring your duffel bag and you operate out of the off the bench. And then when you're done, it's like kind of like put your shoes and everything in there and you take this bag and scrunch it up and like shove it in there. And then when you're done, you come out, you pull it out, your wallet falls on the ground. Oh yeah, this is a big mess. So my business partner, he was into like bodybuilding fitness types things. And he's an engineer, he's an inventor. And he's like, why doesn't anyone make a hanging gym bag? And so he's like, I'm just gonna make one. Like, you wanna start a company? I'm like, let's go. So he bought a commercial sewing machine and builds the first prototype himself. Because you give him the time and the tools, he'll build anything. And yeah, so we ended up making this bag, getting them made. I handed all the patents and stuff. So I have a patent on the way it hangs.

So is it basically like you zip, okay, it's a rectangle like this. You zip it up and then is it like a hook on like the bottom left?

There's a hook at the top. So you hook it into the gym locker and then it's got two compartments that open this way.

Oh, okay.

It's called Seven Supply or Seven Dot Supply is the website.

Are you guys actively selling them?

Sort of. So we have a website. We're really good at doing everything, getting to like 95% of the way done. But then when it comes to sales, neither of us are really like sales, like sales people have a sales background. So it's just been kind of like hanging around. And we want to focus on it. But we're like our aerospace client is blowing up. Right. You know, that's two points in a row, by the way. Right. And then I yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Literally, it is rare.

Yeah. So yeah, that's it. So, you know, so I've got a patent on the way it hangs. It's got this it's got this cool why we're getting way off on an automobile.

That's fine. A lot of crossover.

Yeah. So I've got a patent on the magnetic handle. So because like I hate Velcro and so does Drew. Like I showed you before with our room, like everything's magnets, you know. So we got a patent on that. And also it's got this hamper system. So the main compartment, you you'll hang it up. You open up the main compartment, you take out your your clean clothes. When you're done, you unzip the top of it. And it has this like antimicrobial bag that falls into the same space. And you put your dirty clothes in there. So your dirty clothes will never be in, they occupy the same space, but they'll never like touch. Cause you know, it's like, if you go to the gym, it's like, oh, you're bringing your old, you know, grocery bag to throw your clothes in. So you don't make your bag grow. Like, so this solves all these problems. And you know, we went to a couple of trade shows, the things started taking off, but then our machine shop just like exploded. And you know, we've, you know, seven years ago, it was me, Drew and three machines. Now we've got 30 employees run 24 hours a day. There's, there is like two people in this building, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Holy s***.

So it's like the ultimate security system, right?

Yeah.

So, so that's related. So like, we've been trying to keep that thing on the rails. And then I started Cannonball Garage. I had no intention of it getting this big, this quickly. You know, I really wanted to focus on that because honestly, where you make the most money is having your own product.

Yeah.

You know, it's like our machine shop, it does really well, you know, but at the end of the day, like, we're making a bunch of firearm parts for our client who's selling it. It's like, you know, that's where you make the money. It's like when you, if you can make your own product and sell it, like, that's the way to go.

Yeah, they're getting that direct to consumer part. You're not, you're going to, you're wholesaling it basically at that point.

Yeah, so right now I'm looking for like, some sort of like fitness influencer type that can do media and kind of like get this gym bag thing to like retake off. Because it took off, we sold like a thousand bags a few years ago.

Do you have somebody that can make them? Or do you make them in house or?

No, no, we don't make them in house. We have them made.

Okay.

But I've got like 700 sitting on the shelf right now. Like, I just need, I need some sort of like fitness media type person to like, kind of like take it. Because what I found in business is if you don't have like one person in the business whose sole focus is that business, like it's never going to go anywhere. I've got, I've got a clothing brand called Crook County because we, we live in Cook County, which is the most crooked, corrupt county in the country. So we, we trademark the name Crook County because in, in this area, it's like, oh, it's like, oh, where do you live? Oh, Crook County. Haha. You know, it's always this big joke, right? So it turned out like, oh, we should check if that's trademarked. Oh, surely someone's trademarked that name. Nope. So, so we trademarked the name Crook County.

And you go to town hall meetings or anything?

Yeah. So, so we call it the most successful, unsuccessful clothing brand that's ever been made because every time I wear it or my buddies wear it, I'll be in Miami, LA and be like, oh, Crook County. I know, like I used to live in Crook County. Like, oh, that's awesome. Like sales, like nothing. Everyone loves it. Nobody buys it. But also it's like it's again, it's just kind of exists. I have the website. I have the clothing here. I don't have the brain power, the mental capacity to sit there like, oh, got to post on Instagram about this. Oh, got to come up with a different design. Like no one's steering the ship. It is a ship without a rudder. And same thing with my gym bag company. It's just like it's all there. Ready for somebody to take it. But I can't even spend enough time to think about like who to take it over, like to lead them to it. But man, I'll tell you, like especially my gym bag company, if I found the right person, like I'm willing to give shares of this thing to like, it's all there. It's all done. All the hard work is done. It just needs like, and now it needs the grind.

Is this somebody like, is this something that like has to be somebody like within the local area or just somebody like even nationally, like just an influencer to push it or?

Even nationally, like you don't have to be here. Like I can ship the bags and you can make the content. And I'm just not in that world. As you can tell, I'm not in the fitness world. Maybe I need to, maybe I should look into that.

I'm just, dude, please take up bodybuilding because you're going to be Arne Arnold, you know. Actually, is Arne short for something or is it just Arne?

So my dad, I was, there were two name choices. So my, I'm Scandinavian, well, I'm half Czechoslovakian than the other half, like a lot of Scandinavian, like Norwegian, Swedish. And my mom is like very serious about her Scandinavian heritage. So I had to have a Scandinavian name. So the options were Stein, which thank goodness, I was, I would have been nicknamed Frankenstein or something. And then Arne, or Arna is a Norwegian name. And at the time, my dad's a big into golf. So he's like, well, Arne, Arne Palmer. So thankfully we went with Arne.

Sure. Okay.

My grandma was a hundred percent off the boat Norwegian.

Okay.

Yeah.

So They're very serious about their heritage. I think my mom is really like 25%, but you think she's 150.

Yeah. No, my, my son's name is Gunnar AR. So it's, we tried to pay a little tribute to it. It's, I kind of see, so they're very stubborn and kind of like driven people too. So maybe that, maybe that's, you get a little bit of that from that too.

Yeah. I don't know. My mom, she's like, my parents, like, growing up, we didn't go anywhere. Like, we never went on vacations. My mom tells me just recently, she's like, you just never want, you always just want to be playing with your friends. Like, so we just never pressed it. But like, I went to Door County twice and Wisconsin Dells once. Like, that was like my whole, like, adventure. And now, I mean, I travel the world. I've been everywhere on these rallies. You know how the rally thing is. Like, I've seen every nook and cranny of this country. And my mom's like, I don't know where this came from.

Well, you've seen every nook and cranny of this country for 15 minutes and then back in the car, right? Exactly.

And honestly, that's what I like about rallies. It's like, I don't like to, like, you go to the Grand Canyon, like, I'm going to sit and observe this for 12 hours and then come back the next day to look at, like, it's kind of like, okay, it's a big hole. Take a selfie, like, just move on. Like, there's a lot to see in this world. I don't have no reason to stay here for multiple days.

Yeah.

What do you do at the end, right? You get to California. Do you stay for a day? Do you go check out some new food place?

Well, I don't really like California.

Okay, check.

I don't really vibe with a lot of the crowd there. So usually I like to get the hell out of there. Same thing like getting it. Yeah, it's like, I don't like New York. To me, it's just like, there's too many people, man. It's too much. Like, that's why I tell people like, oh, why do you drive so fast to LA? It's like, I just want to get the hell out of New York.

Well, I've only been to California once. I went to go pick up a Noble out there. And I did like the food out there, but the energy was just weird. Like, this was like just past peak COVID. Like, it started in March or whatever that year. We went there in December, right? So like, it was still like ghost town over there.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, it was a weird energy over that.

When we broke the, you know, it was May of 2020 is when we broke the Cannonball record. When I took the record back and the police came, we're sort of, I mean, celebrating at the Portofino Hotel, like outside at the sign outside of the hotel. And the police came and like, you can't be here. In public, like, it's May of 2020. Like, this wasn't even like peak COVID, you know? This is kind of like things were really tailing off. And like, we got kicked out because we had to social distance. I mean, yeah, what a weird time, man. Yeah. I tell you. But yeah, California in general, like, is very superficial, like, for the most part. I'm not talking about car people, because car community is the car community. Like, if you're in the cars, like, it doesn't matter where you're at. And you find that out, like, Woodward Dream Cruise. Like, we go up to Pontiac, man. It is hood as hell up there, man. Barbecuing, having the greatest time, do a burnout. Like, I take a McLaren set up there, feel totally safe, because, you know, they're in the cars, I'm in the cars, we're cool. You know, but yeah, just like California, very superficial. You see all those, like, plastic surgery signs, you know, billboards and stuff. New York, it's just like, no one will even look at you. You know, it's like, I don't know.

It's weird for us Midwesterners, right?

Yeah, it's hard. It's hard for me to understand. Like, maybe that's like totally normal and doesn't bother them at all. But yeah, being from the Midwest, you know, like, yes, I live outside of Chicago. But for the most part, like people like will hold the door. People are nice here.

You'll accidentally talk to somebody for an hour. You don't even know.

You're like, oh, it's a Midwest thing. It's like, I guess other people don't understand. I don't know.

This guy at the mall yesterday, like I went back to the car to like, you know, just prepare for the podcast or whatever. And then like he's, you know, shopping for his wife and his girls. Like, is that a turbo on the back of your shirt? And he kicks out like, well, it was at least a 20 minute conversation.

Oh yeah.

We talked for at least 20, 30 minutes.

I'm like, where the hell is this guy? He's like, oh, it's about this random girl whatever she's doing.

We talked about her boyfriend's car and the car meets and the car scene and how everybody's awesome in the car scene. Like literally the same conversation you just had.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was kind of funny.

Yeah. I love the car world. And you know, I think it is getting smaller. We don't really realize it. It's not as universal as anymore. But like if you're in a car's man, like it's, it's, you're good people. You know, you're in good company.

What's your favorite part of the country you've been to?

Oh gosh. I'm really, I've really taken a liking to, I used to like be really big, like Appalachia, like, you know, the Smoky Mountains and that kind of stuff. But I've been, my buddy lives in Spearfish, South Dakota. Actually, I just got back from there two weeks ago. Me and my family stayed out there and went out to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Like my favorite state used to be my least favorite state. The first time I drove through Wyoming, I went across on I-80 and it was on one of these 2904, like races. And I'm like, this is literally the worst state in the country. It's so windy on I-80 and it's just like this high desert. There's nothing there. But man, when I went on Gold Rush Rally in 2020, we ended in Jackson Hole and I drove home from there because like, why am I going to ship my car 1300 miles? It's ridiculous, right? So I ended up driving like all the back roads of Wyoming and I saw every type of terrain that the world has to offer. High plains, snow-capped mountains, canyons. Wyoming is the most beautiful state. And honestly, my favorite place now. OK, like I love it. We just did the Beartooth Highway, which is in the northern Wyoming goes to into Montana. That is an epic drive. And it's also on the URR app. There's also like all these scenic drives and stuff. So you don't even need to use that app. I always go back to this app. It's phenomenal.

I've been looking for something like this. Yes.

So all the like, you know, the Blue Ridge Parkway and all the, you know, tail the dragon. Well, you know, the most overplayed road in the country. Yeah. You know, all these roads are on that app. And so I used it to do the Beartooth Highway. Best road in the country I've ever been on. It reminded me of Switzerland.

Oh, really?

Before, like, the best roads I've ever been on was like mountain passes in Switzerland.

Okay.

Like, this is very comparable to that. And you see every, like, canyons, you know, high plains, mountains. We're, it goes up to 11,000 something feet. So we were like in and above the clouds. It's a phenomenal road, man.

Wow.

I'd get out there and check it out.

How'd you get out to Switzerland? What was that for?

So I did Super Speeders Rob. He's the, even before YouTube, he was making DVDs, you know, of him in his, you know, rally shenanigans and stuff. But he is the best like trip planner ever. So he does this like quote unquote rally called Adventure Drive. It's basically an automotive vacation. And what he'll do is every other year, he'll do one in Europe. So I, in 2017, I just sold my shares of AMS and I was kind of like in between things. The machine shop was going, no Cannonball Garage wasn't existent. I was sort of taking care of my aunt, my dad whose health was failing. So I had like all this time. So I decided I'm gonna do this European rally with my buddy Jebo from Gold Rush Rally. And actually that year, the owner of Gold Rush was actually on this rally too. So it was Germany, Austria, Italy and Switzerland over the course of eight days. We all rented cars out there. I rented a 2017 Carrera convertible. And man, we went, it was an automotive vacation. We saw all these sites and it was my first time in Europe. And we spent half of the time was in Switzerland. And these mountain roads in Switzerland, Switzerland is the most beautiful place I've ever been. I remember pulling off on these scenic views and I'm looking at it. I'm like, this doesn't even look real. It looks like a beautiful, picturesque, like, you know, like photo. Like it doesn't even, it's so beautiful. It doesn't even appear real in person. The most beautiful scenery I've seen in the world is in Switzerland.

So we talk about perfect scenes. What's the most perfect vehicle you've driven? Is there one or are they all just hunks of his truck?

His truck is perfect.

Yes. The most perfect vehicle is my electric pickup truck. It's pretty good. To me, like I'm not really, you know, I specialize in McLaren's. I love McLaren's. Don't get me wrong. Best bang for the, I like a bang for the buck, right? My favorite car would have to be an E63 AMG station wagon. It's so versatile, so practical, performs so well. I can't tell you if I prefer the W212 chassis, like the 2014, 2016, or my new W213 chassis. I go back and forth because to me, like the last real AMG feel is the earlier one with the 5.5 biturbo. It's very torquey. It just feels like an AMG. Now my 2020, my W213 chassis, it's got the four liter. It on paper and in the real world performs better in every single way, but the car is longer. The car is like 300 pounds heavier. It just dries bigger. It outperforms the earlier ones, but it just doesn't feel the same. I like it for what it is. I like it a lot, but I go back and forth. I'm considering selling it and going back to the earlier model because I just like the way it dries better.

What year is your W213?

2020.

2020? Okay. I'm going through the same thing again, different scale, but I got this Mark A GTI compared to my Mark 7, and I'm like, I miss the Mark 7. It just, this one's 200 pounds heavier, all the extra nannies. And it's like, you know, you just feel it.

It just doesn't feel the same. Just the same thing when the Evo 10 came out. Evo 10 is a phenomenal car. For drag racing, not that great. But if you want to make like 700 wheel horsepower, the engine is way more efficient, everything, but the car was heavier. If you say, what's the last Evo? I would say it's the Evo 9. To me, an Evo 10 is really not, it took away so much of what an Evo is. A phenomenal car in its own right. I still like it a lot, but it just doesn't, to me, I'd prefer an Evo 9.

If you look at the line up, it's just so different.

Yeah, it's just like went too far. Just kind of like the R35 GTR. Like the R34 is really the GTR. Like the R35, I mean, phenomenal performance vehicle. Like I can't argue, I don't like the way it looks or drives. I don't know why they made it so big, but like you can't argue with the performance. Like there is one of the best cars. I mean, it'll road race, drag race. Like I respect the heck out of an R35 GTR. It's just, I don't know. I prefer an R34.

Just get a big and bubbly.

Would you say the nine is the best Evo out of all of the generations?

I would say if I, if you said build your ultimate Evo to like drive daily, I would build an Evo 6, but left hand drive there. They are out there, but like to me, like that is the best Evo because it's smaller than the Evo 8 and 9. So more nimble. You know, I think like my perfect Evo would be like a 450 to 500 wheel horsepower Evo 6.

Okay.

Okay.

I think that would be the most fun that you could ever have in an Evo.

What's the story with that one back there, by the way? Because it's a 6, but all the other stuff you listed off, I had no idea about.

Oh, so it's the Tommy Mackinnon Edition Evo 6.5.

Okay.

It's touted to be like the most desirable, rarest, best Evo, it's just like styling-wise. And it's just like, it's the most collectible special Evo.

And is it for sale?

And it's available at 5252motors.com.

That's where I was going to go with it.

Oh, it's a fan. So it's actually, it was a buddy of mine's. He bought it because he wanted to do like the ultimate Evo 6 build. So he found this really nice Evo 6 and a half, Tommy Mackinnon, he wanted to build a Tommy Mackinnon. He got it and it's so nice. He's like, I can't do it. So he sold it. I did that with an Eagle Talon. I wanted to recreate my wife's, my wife had a 94 Eagle Talon, like I said, it was 400 wheel horsepower. I wanted to recreate that. So I went out searching. I found a 55,000 mile original owner, exact car. And I got it. And it was the same thing. I was like, it's too nice. Like, how can I butcher this thing? I ended up selling it to a DSM collector. And I had to be like, I didn't even care what money I got for it. I had to make sure it didn't fall into the hands of evil. Some kid, some like rich kid that's just gonna chop it up. Like, oh my gosh, like, I don't know. To me, like cars have souls.

No, I've had to do before I picked up a 95 S351 Celine. And this guy was a GM guy, got it in some divorce thing from a friend of his and he bought it from him. And he was like, well, you know, this is kind of it. And I was like sending pictures of my collection. I was like, dude, it's going right here in the, on the lift next to this one. Like you're, you're good. And he's like, all right, cool. Same thing with the 93 Cobra I got. That was supposed to be a project that was going to get chopped up. And the guy's like, this is too nice. So I ended up swiping it from him.

Yeah.

And then you got two others.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's, it's weird, right? Like we search, we like search out the cleanest example and then we get it. We're like, oh s***.

Yeah.

I can't, what am I going to do with this? Put it in Smithsonian, you know?

I appreciate that though. They got to have people that appreciate the rarity of some cars to not just, cause some people also don't give a s***. There's like, screwed. I'm going to chop it up and do what I want.

But yeah. Cars are only original ones. Like even I have a 77 Trans Am. I don't know if we covered this last time, but my parents' neighbor bought a brand new. He had it for 40 years. He wasn't a super car guy, so he never like modified it or anything. So I have a bone stock survivor 77 Trans Am. That's the one I went out and raced the Southern Classic.

Oh yeah, that's right.

The race between Atlanta and Texarkana, 675 miles out, 675 back. I raced it in that, came in second somehow in an all original car, ran the thing flat out. The car is Magical Powers, by the way. But the car is only original once. People are like, oh, are you going to restore it? Because it's rusty and I mechanically maintained it. You know, it's got new brake lines and shocks and brakes and that kind of thing. But people are going to restore it. I'm like, it'll never be the same. It's held up so well. I mean, it's got factory air conditioning and cruise control still attached. I mean, my idiot self back when I was 20, would have got that car and ripped all that stuff out trying to make it a hot rod. Like, I mean, it belongs in the Smithsonian. You just can't. I can't modify it. It's survived this long. Same thing with that tail. I'm like, how am I going to chop this car up, you know, 30 years later? Like, really? Like, I can't morally. I can't do it.

Yeah. Just because it's going back and forth in my head. So who is Tommy Mackinnon? What's the do you know?

He's a famous rally driver.

OK, gotcha. OK, so I was just curious on that. Yeah, there's just so much to this automotive world. There's like every time I.

Oh, there's all these like little subsets, you know, like, yeah.

Well, that's what I love to show, right? Like by far, bar none. Streetcar drag racing does the best on this channel. Like there it's not even close. It blows everything out of the water. But I like talking to everybody from rally drivers. We've had monster truck people on the show before. Like, it's like it's just so many different ways to do the same hobby. It's just so weird. Yeah.

There's a lot of facets to it, that's for sure.

Are all of those EVOs, are they all white, that edition of it?

No.

Okay.

No, there's red and...

Sure.

Yeah, I'm not super well versed on all the idiosyncrasies and history, but no, they're not all white.

Yeah, okay. All right, well then, should we pop the usual three?

Yeah, I think so.

I think so, I think it's a good point.

We're popping the three. Uh-oh, here we go.

I know you just did it not that long ago. And I think there was a little crossover there, but I think it was a little bit.

It actually wasn't that bad. The crossover is always tricky. Like we've had a lot of repeat guests and it's like sometimes it just works out fine.

It's like a whole other show. Yeah, like not everybody watches every episode, right?

Yeah. You'd be surprised, man. I have people that are like, yeah, man, I'm I just started watching a few months ago on Episode 70. Now I'm like, how? It's like crazy.

Happens fast.

Yeah, but respect to those people. But yeah, rip the usual three and then we'll do a Minnesota goodbye because I'm sure something will come up.

OK, anyway. All right. At the end of every episode, we like to ask our guests to pick three cars. I need a track car, a daily driver and a show car. You got an unlimited budget.

Oh, gosh. OK, yes, we did this. We did this before. I forgot what my answer was. Even better. I've got a I've got a few. I think I might have said the Callaway Sledgehammer Corvette is my ultimate car. I really like that car a lot. I'll change it up this time to a Koenig Special Twin Turbo Testerosa. That would be like my ultimate. I guess let's call it the show car show car. OK, like that's that's like, oh, man. That's a car that like did things to me emotionally as a kid. You know, like, man, like, what a what a car. Holy cow. Race car. Huh. Is there a specific kind of racing or just any kind of racing? You know, I'm very nostalgic, man. I think I'd probably go Ferrari F40, which was a groundbreaking car back then. Now it's I mean, honestly, I've driven in one. It's terrible, but it's just really the heritage and like being the first like carbon fiber monocoque car. I believe I think it was at least as far as like a mainstream manufacturer. That was groundbreaking. And then daily driver. Oh, gosh. Silverado RSTV. I can't do that. That's terrible. I probably said E63 AMG wagon.

I'm pretty sure you did.

I mean, like I just if you had to give me one car for the rest of my life, I always default to that. Yeah, like that. That is the ultimate.

That was a question my dad had said we should start asking people, too, is if you can only drive one car for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Oh, that's right.

Yeah.

Well, that's my answer.

If anybody wants to... I should pull the audience. Should we change up the question 160 episodes later? Do we change it up? All right. Which drove better? The Crown Vic or the F40? Which one would you... Right?

Oh, gosh. Drove better.

Because you say you drove that 40, right?

I drove in it. I did not drive it.

Sure.

Sure.

At the time I drove in it, it was worth a couple million dollars. I think even if you would have let me drive it, I don't think I would have wanted to. Sure. Gosh, the turbo lag is just so terrible. I mean, the car is a brilliant car. It's just that you realize when you drive these old turbo cars, like what they call the Porsche 930 turbo, the widow maker, whatever they call it, it would be like nothing, nothing, nothing, everything. Yeah. There's gosh, turbo technologies moved along. I guess if I had to drive a car across country, I would prefer the Crown Vic. As far as a more compliance car on the road, I suppose.

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

I'm probably most active on TikTok and Instagram. It's Arne's Antics. That's spelled abnormally. A-R-N-E-S. Antics. Sure. I've got a website where I kind of do some blogging and that kind of stuff. Don't do too much on YouTube. I'm not like a social media influencer. I just kind of post on Instagram, TikTok, like things that catch my eye, which is funny. It's like, you know, I do some McLaren content on there, falls dead. Like anything like exotic car-wise doesn't really do that well.

It's not that relatable.

I guess it isn't. But man, the Vandit? Oh, forget it. I got videos of the Vandit with 5 million plus views on it.

Oh yeah.

It's funny what will take off on my social media outlets.

What's something that's recently caught your eye?

Recently caught my eye? I guess electric vehicles.

Okay, just in general.

I mean, it's not like I'm like, a couple of my buddies are like, oh, you're a big EV guy now. So I use the hashtag big EV guy.

Gotta get the shirt, man.

It's kind of changed my thoughts on daily commuting and electric vehicles. And it's been fun to get into something different and figure it out. So that's kind of been something that's caught my eye lately.

Okay. Dan?

You can find us at Gunna Garage, everything, two ends or MrGunnaGarage on Facebook. It's probably your best bet.

Awesome. Well, Arne, thank you very much for coming on for round two. This is a blast. Yeah, heck yeah. Dan, thanks for existing and we'll see y'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 and see y'all next time.