187. Cooper Bogetti on Why Drag Racing Is Hard To Watch, The 2JZ Camaro, and Heavyweight Racecars

This episode is brought to you by 6XD Gearbox. More on them later. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide Podcast. I'm your host, Harris, AKA Minnoxide, man of many automotive aspirations. I'm here with my Ford-loving co-host, Dan. We're in Florida, we finally made Florida. We've been saying this for two years, we're gonna come to Florida, and we're finally here.

Yeah, it's warm here.

It's really nice. And we are finally here with Mr. Cooper Bogetti. I was trying to figure it out with Dan when I discovered you, it was a handful of years ago, but I genuinely cannot remember how I found you. I was just like, oh, there's other people doing this car podcast thing, and then I listened to a few, particularly the one with Aaron Miller, like, you know, in preparation for my episode with him. But kind of tell us a little bit about yourself, and we'll just kind of go from there.

The people that have been around for a long time know me from my early days when I was with Cleetus McFarland, little known Bradenton YouTuber as well. He pokes around in like some track ownership stuff and things like that. But I was with him when it was zero subscribers. You know, it was like a new channel and then up to, I don't know, about a million subscribers before it was like, OK, like this relationship has gone long enough. And then I started doing my own thing and been doing that since 2019 now, I think, on fully solo, which has been nice because I don't I got two kids and I also don't like to go places like you've already learned that about me because I think we talked, you're like, Hey, you're going to be at TX2K and I was like, no, you're going to be at PRI. I was like, no. And then there was probably a couple other things that I was like, no. Even the other day, I got this email from Dodge that was like, Hey, we're doing our Daytona 500 thing for the truck series. We're going to show our new Dodges. And I was like, I don't want people to think I'm a Dodge guy. And that's like two hours away. And I was still like, no, no, no, no. But I just try not to really do anything like that, because I did it for so many years and it gets so repetitive. So that's kind of the short, long answer of what I who I am, I guess, where I don't like to do things.

Sure. What were you doing on his team? Were you racing? You're just working on cars? And what was the aspect of what you were doing over there?

Everything, because it was it was two of us. And the jobs that needed to be done were fulfilling merchandise, driving trailers and RVs, working on race cars, filming. I mean, like so much as, you know, somebody has to go to the grocery store before the racetrack, like basically just anything, because we would look at each other and be like, well, this is the things that need to be done. If you don't do them, I have to do them. If I don't do them, you have to do them. If neither of us do them, nothing happens. So it was just kind of the everyday of like, OK, well, I guess we just have to do it. And there was so much by the end that it was just it was exhausting. Yeah, like it was awesome to see it grow to that. But it got to be like overwhelming. But now he's at a point where he can actually hire people. When I left, it was at the point where hiring people was still a little too expensive, which it grew. And then hiring people was too expensive. So you kind of like we're in this difficult spot of like, OK, well, I guess it's 14 hour days now. Not to complain about 14 hour days, but, you know, eight of them were fulfilling merchandise. Sure. So it wasn't as glamorous as people think.

Yeah.

Gets a little boring.

Yeah, we realized that to being on this side of things now, where it's everybody sees all of the videos and everything and thinks it is some kind of glamorous thing, and you're making tons of money and it's not always the case.

It was like three months where I was like, I'm doing it. I'm doing it. And then everything's just like leveled out. Last year, I'm like, OK, it's not as glamorous as it seems.

Well, because, you know, you've probably not. How long or many years are you doing?

I've been monetized three years. OK, so like not too terribly long.

But there's a there's a cycle of monetization like towards the end of the year when businesses are ramping up for their advertising for, you know, holiday season when everybody's, you know, going into debt and all that kind of stuff because they need to get their cousin, I don't know, a Nintendo that they're not going to use. Like that's when they all ramp up their their everything and everybody's all fired up. People are buying cars and then January, February comes and the sky is falling. The tax season's coming and everybody's panicking. That's a creator. It's the constant ebb and flow of it. And it's it's not fun to be in.

Sure.

Because you think it's going to go forever because we're kind of how we're wired.

I feel like by the way, I do the sure thing. You f****** smack me, by the way. So I started having people comments is like, man, this guy says sure a lot or whatever. And I kept seeing the comment like so many times during the PRI ones. And I was like, OK, I need to stop saying sure.

You have to keep saying it if they're going to comment.

Now, my brother is like, you know, you just start like messing with you and say, go on.

Well, there's like a trick that if you don't say anything, they'll just keep talking. And it's really hard to do as an interviewer to let. To let like a moment kind of to sit a little bit, it is the most difficult thing to learn. Like that dead eye air is so scary.

Yeah.

But you just have to kind of bite your tongue a little bit, especially if somebody is going to keep talking. And I even have a sign in my studio that says shut up and listen. And sometimes the guests actually think it's for them, which would be silly. But for me, it's my reminder. Yeah.

Was it behind like the guests for like you to see?

No, it's kind of in the center.

I saw it. It's in the middle there.

Yeah.

It's just for my reminder. Because I get too caught up in my own listening to my voice.

So when did... Okay. So you get to this point where you're working a lot, these 14 hour days. Did you have a particular vision in mind? It's like, I'm going to go do my own thing. I'm going to go work at O'Reilly's. Like, how did we get to this point?

No. I mean, I was just kind of going with the flow. I was I mean, this was 2019. I was like 24 years old ish, 25 years old. I just bought a house. I was working on my own project cars. Everything was good. I was just like there was just so many hours of of work. And my project cars were kind of getting on the back burner. And it was it was upsetting in a lot of ways because I was like, damn, like, I want to work on my s***. I want to I need to work on my own cars here because I'm not getting any younger. And thankfully, it worked out timing wise because now I have kids and now I don't want to do that as much. And in the beginning, when I first left, I was able to go to, you know, TX 2K a bunch of times to race FL 2K a bunch of times to race. I've done sick week now three times. Like, I really hit the events hard. And then after about the third time of going to TX 2K and racing the same people, I was like, OK, I think I've got my fill. I'll race the same people again next year if I come back. And nothing against the event. It's just like it gets repetitive after a while. Unfortunately, as much as I love drag racing, it's like it's kind of the same song and dance unless you have like a you have to have a bit of a screw loose to really just keep pushing all in and like really continually progress. I'm sure you guys have seen that too. If like there's some people that just have that screw loose that just will just move hell and high water to make it happen, which is great. We need those people in drag racing, but maybe not with a two year old. Maybe once I have like a five year old.

It's kind of like those walls, right? It's like, you know, you go 950 and go 850 and it's like, at what point do you just say uncle and just tap out, right? And like, you just can't keep on. I think you were talking about like your limitation. I was listening to one of your episodes. It's like you're talking about the cage being the limitation for you. Do you still find yourself having an itch to go compete or where are you at nowadays? I mean, with the kids, I'm sure you're busy.

I want to compete really badly. But now that I have a two year old son that's really into into cars, I'm almost like trying to hold on until he's a little bit older so we can like race together and like he can like be part of the racing instead of just kind of like stuck in the stands, not really a part of it. And it's kind of like it almost feels less exciting to me knowing that he's not going to be able to get those memories. So I'm like. I'm sure once he's more eager to go here, probably in the next like year or two, I'll be in a completely different mindset of like, OK, we got to get this thing in the track. He can help me do tire pressures and all those kind of fun things. That's probably where my head's at is like, you know, life has seasons and this season is making sure that they don't, you know. For lack of a better word, die on my watch. Yeah, and starve, you know. So I've just been kind of doing that.

And it's like, oh, you know, I'm kind of getting a vibe that you listen to a lot of other podcasts. I hear you quote thing. Is that a Hormozi quote there, like the seasons thing by chance?

I've read his books, actually. They're very interesting.

They're good. And then I think you've kind of like your solos. I'm guessing you've watched Huberman as well, then I used to like Lex Friedman.

I used to watch both of them more, but they both seem to have sold out to be shills.

Yeah, it does seem kind of like that a little bit, doesn't it?

Yeah, I think the second that, I hope you don't have any sponsors.

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But I think the second that Huberman started pushing AG1, I realized he was just a shill.

AG1 is kind of like the... Dude, I'm just saying, I always tell people, the second you see DraftKings as a sponsor on here, you know I made it.

It's just like because there's those few people that sponsor and I don't know, like it just, to me, I was like, he could have legitimate real sponsors. He's got millions of... And then he goes for like a company that everybody has been proven to just be like a marketing company that sells supplements.

Green powder.

Yeah, like it's not a powder company that has to do marketing. They're a marketing company that found a product. And I was like, come on, man, like you could be for any, I don't know, that kind of stuff.

He did have a cool few sponsors. I remember him always talking about, what was it called? I think it was like Maui Nui or whatever. It was like Deere from Hawaii or whatever. I'm like, oh, that's a company I've never heard of.

Yeah, great.

But then he started getting into the AG1s and stuff and all that. But no, I was just curious because I would sometimes tailor my interview style to like, depending, like you could kind of hear it in my voice based off of who I'm watching at the time, right? Sometimes I'll watch your episode and be like, oh, that sounds very Rogan-esque or whatever, you know?

Yeah, I mean, the, the who, I mean, who do I really consume much of? Not, I don't know. Sometimes I, it, my topics get a little bit more doom and gloom depending on what my algorithm is showing me. It's all algorithm dependent, you know, tomorrow YouTube homepage might look different than today's. Yeah. And tomorrow I might be talking, I might be like brain full of financial collapse. And then the next day, nuclear war.

Yeah.

You know, Roman Empire, who knows? It's kind of you're definitely not in control of your own thoughts fully because you deal with an algorithm every day.

Oh, for sure.

Which is kind of a weird thing to think about that, like, you know, you are fed that and I see people comment on some of my videos and post all the time. And, you know, I'm not I'm not a rage baiter. That's not my goal. And people are like, oh, but you're damn good at it. The problem is people are like, oh, you know, Facebook monetizes. And it's like, if you guys were here five years ago, I was doing that before Facebook monetized. This was just like how I interacted with people. And, you know, it happened to be controversial. But like, I see the same people that will interact angrily. And I start to like, I'm like, should I just block this person? Not because I don't want them to, not because like, oh, man, I can't handle this person interacting with me, like their hate, all that. I don't care about that for them. For them, should I block them? Because I'm raising their blood pressure, not them raising mine.

I'm like, you're so thoughtful.

I'm like, maybe I should block this person as like a gift to them so they don't have to consume my stuff anymore because they leave angry comments. And I'm fine with that. I don't care. Like, I sleep fine at night with you disliking me. But like, you know, I don't want to I don't want to hurt I don't want to ruin this guy's day. This guy's probably got a wife and kids and now he's going to take his anger out on them. I'd rather him take it out on my comments. But like if maybe he wasn't angry at all, the best.

Yeah. Well, good luck with that. You've seen the human race lately. It's it's rough out there.

Yeah, it's again, it's algorithm based. You know, people are like even the Super Bowl going on right now with Bad Bunny. I heard somebody say like, I think it's just rage bait. I was like, oh, yeah, it's probably just rage bait. They're just smart. They just know that it's going to get people mad.

Yeah, I was talking about that to Dan at the was at the airport. Now we were eating tacos or whatever. And I'm like, people just like to be mad, but it's never ending. Well, I don't know about you, but like last January, I think I had 15,000 comments, right? And I'm just like, I could never get through all of that. Yeah, but that's turned into a whole podcast or seminar. But but nonetheless, so how do you get here then? So you leave to kind of do your own thing. You already had the house at that point, so you kind of already were established at that point. Like you were like, did you have?

Did you feel that you have to get a day job?

No, like, were you able to just full send it or were you nervous for a while?

I mean, I'm nervous every day of my life.

Yeah. You know, like the algorithm.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, at any point. They could always all slow down or take a turn, and I've dealt with that in different things of like, oh, this style isn't working. You got to do that and pivot. And that's the only thing that's kept me able to be, you know, solo creator for so long is the ability to pivot. And I think that that's that's kind of what I have to tell myself is like, if things change, if YouTube monetization cuts in half tomorrow, which would panic probably, you know, a couple hundred thousand, a couple million people, not just me, if Facebook monetization disappeared, like, you have to be prepared to pivot in a way. So, yeah, I've I never had to get a day job. I've never looked into getting a day job and I really thought about that much. And contrary to what some people think is, I don't have any money coming from anywhere else. I don't have, like, daddy's money or parents' money. I think people have that concept, even though I don't see it much. I've, like, kind of seen the rumblings of it, which is actually probably more of, like, a compliment, if anything. But so every day, I mean, it's kind of like the fight of it. YouTube's a 21-day cycle, basically, and every 21 days, you have to figure out how to make the money that will last the next 21 days.

Right.

For the most part. You know, obviously, savings and cars that could be sold and refinances, and I try to keep myself very minimal. You know, I don't have a car payment. I don't, well, like, my wife has a car payment, but, like, I don't have a truck payment. I don't have a car payment. I own all my s*** outright, besides my house. My house is in a good situation where I'm not upside down on it yet. Maybe someday. I mean, I don't know.

You don't have a variable, whatever, APR or whatever, right?

No, yeah. Maybe 2028, housing market crash will take me out, but you can't even prepare for that, you know what I mean?

Right, yeah.

There's that doom and gloom again.

Yeah, well, I assume 2028 because it's like, it connects to like the 20 year cycle, you know, of like 2008, 2006. It'd be like right there in line. I don't know. I mean, like you just kind of hold on for the ride. It's like riding a bull, basically. It's like, if I get bucked off, then I'll have to figure it out from there. But I've been doing it for six years now and I've had ups and downs. So it's like, yeah, maybe it'll keep working. Maybe I need to believe in myself a little bit more, but it's stressful. I mean, you do it, too. You're like, s***.

I was doing it full-time up until two months ago, and not because I couldn't handle it anymore, just because the right opportunity came and I was like, so long story short, I do marketing for a Subaru aftermarket company. So, well, technically two companies. And I was like, all right, well, this seems to tick all my boxes and I can still keep doing my thing. That's why I'm here right now. It just allows me to do cool stuff. But I was like, I'm just gonna keep going until the wheels fall off on this thing and just somehow managed to do that next 21 day cycle. You know, so no, I get it.

And I've always thought about that, too. It's like I have, you know, a couple hundred thousand followers across different platforms. If I needed to do something else in the automotive world, I don't think the opportunity would be extremely hard to struggle at all. Yeah, maybe because I've I've only s*** on companies for the most part. You know, I'm a lot of. I told my wife this a couple of years ago, and she was actually she wasn't really on board with it. I thought she was like, how do you kind of like want to remember yourself? And I was like, I want to be the guy that will say things that other people are thinking, but won't say. She's like, that seems like a really hard, s***** spot to be in. I'm like, yeah, well, you know, somebody's got to do it. So maybe that would be difficult to stay in the auto industry if I don't even know collapse of some sort of media collapse. But if media collapse anyways, I think we're in a we're in a. Post what I mean, you would call it like a Mad Max style. Yeah, yeah, society at that point. So I wouldn't be worried. I'd be digging up the gold in the backyard.

So there's gold in the backyard, then?

Yeah, not my backyard. OK, I think the neighbors back. Yeah, I'd be like melting down the cast off of my turbo to forge weaponry. Yeah, you see, the doom and gloom is always right there. It's always one sentence away.

Yeah.

I got a quick question about drag racing. Then you said it kind of gets monotonous. What are your thoughts on the rise of this Dragon Drive stuff? Is that something you prefer? Does that kind of help break it up a little bit when you're doing something like that or?

It's awesome. Dragon drives are the best. But I did Sick Week last year in February. And after Sick Week, I was like, man, I got my fill of drag racing like for a while. You know what I mean? Like I just had drag race for the last seven days. I was like, pretty content right now. Yeah, you know, I just spent a bunch of money, just stayed at hotels for seven days in a row. I was thrashing on the car for like a full month before that. I got to race with my friends for a full week. And then I ended up winning. So I was like, I checked all the boxes and then I didn't do it this year because people are like, Oh, you're going to do it again? I'm like, I did it. I won. I got the helmet. What do I need? A second helmet? I only got one head. I just keep doing it. Do I just need a garage full of helmets? Like, you don't win money. You only spend it. There's no pay for six week, which isn't a bad thing. It is what it is. But it's just like, again, like it gets it gets that repetitiveness. It's mostly the same cars. It's mostly the same people. I don't know how you change repetitiveness, but I think that's part of my ADHD is like the next thing. And that's probably why drag racing gets boring. And even like every other motor sport, people usually say drag racing is boring. Like road course guys always say it. Drifters always say it. Even people at car meets say it. Imagine being a car meet. Imagine sitting at a car meet and saying, drag racing is boring with stanced wheels that couldn't even get over the speed bump. You had to pick it up from parking spot. Like those people say it, which is crazy. They have loans on their stance wheels.

Affirm, paying for.

That's what I mean. Like most people have a firm on their cars, which is really crazy. When you start to realize that you see all these people at the drag strip and you're like, Oh man, they're all so rich. It's like a lot of them are still paying monthly on that exhaust pipe. Yeah, they're in debt on an exhaust pipe. And that's something I tried to avoid as much as possible is high interest debt to build a car.

Have you ever gone down that road, though?

Yes.

How bad did it get?

It wasn't crazy, but I started to realize what was going to happen. And I started to realize I was I was kind of doing it to, you know, continually drag race and live my dream by, you know, paying a bank to do it. Like the bank was just getting rich and I was just like sweating my a** off to put together a car. And I was like, Damn, this is really dumb. And that's probably part of my doom and gloom of like, I'm not going to let this bank make money off of my drag racing. That's crazy. And I've been lucky enough to win some money and continually race that way.

So that's well, not if you don't catch these checks that you keep getting, man. You hang them on the wall.

Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, that one is a split five grand win. Me and my buddy split in the finals. Twenty five hundred is all I got. And then the audacity. They send you a ten ninety nine in the mail.

Oh, yeah.

You get home. And then a couple of months later, money's already well spent.

Yeah.

And that ten ninety nine shows up. Damn. What did I do to deserve this?

You can't even win money without the government getting their hands in it. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's like, it wasn't like I won a lottery. Like, I spent money to do this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's crazy.

You certainly didn't win enough to justify what you've built, though. I imagine nobody ever.

Yeah, no, no one ever does. Unless you're like RC drag racing, those guys are actually really smart because the RC cars are like, you know, three, four grand all in and their pots are like 10 grand.

Holy s***.

And I'm like, damn, they're actually pretty smart because they spend the same amount buy in, you know, like us, like four or five hundred dollar buy in is not crazy. But then when the pot is that big relative to what you've spent, it sounds pretty nice. Yeah, they're actually way smarter than us. It's the same thing I say about like YouTube video game players, way smarter than guys that are trying to build race cars with YouTube. It just they have like a computer, like a 10 year old Alienware computer. And they're, you know, running circles around us. And they still stays 24 7.

The market of wanting to watch somebody else play video games is something. And maybe it's just the old guy in me. But yeah, I'm like, my son will be doing like why you could be playing the same game. Like, what are you doing?

I used to enjoy watching the pros. I don't know. Like, you're not much older than me. So it's like I used to be big into Counter-Strike. And I would love watching the pros. All right. I like learn something from the videos to just zone out, watching it while doing this other. It was like the original podcast for me was watching other gamers.

We had to flip through a book to learn how to do the things that we needed to do in the video game.

I've had quite a few books for video games, too, but they were just Pokemon when I was a kid.

Yeah.

When I was like 10, 11 years old, because like the Internet wasn't really what it was. Like the the first time I was ever on the Internet was on a PlayStation portable. Oh, it's like I found like a Wi-Fi. And that was the first time I was ever surfing the Internet. And I'm not even that old. I'm 31 years old. And how else were you going to complete the Pokemon game when you were stuck at a level? And those games are very complex. Even to this day, you can hand one to somebody. And I don't think they would complete it without the use of the Internet. I think they would get stuck somewhere. You get stuck behind the Snorlax or something like that. And you'd be you'd be stuck. You'd have to find a book like a legitimate encyclopedia. And that was the first time that I ever like really had to had to do that. But that was before YouTube was mainstream enough to coach me through it.

Yeah.

But those are games. Those games are the best. I still have one. I brought one to the birth of my child. Never came out of the backpack, but it was just in case. Just in case it took really long. Yeah. She was pretty quick, though. She got that thing right out.

Yeah.

I didn't even get a chance to play.

It's going to be crazy seeing like a I like scraping all these like websites now to like the old forums like it's discovering the forums. And I was like, actually, like, I don't know if you often you're on ChatGPT, but it's like, it's like, oh, yeah, I found this from this forum 25 years ago.

But users say like, yeah, it's it's sourcing just like Reddit all the time. It's like, oh, great. The exact person I wanted to talk to. I wish it would act more like a like a forum user, though. That would be fun. Like if you were like, you know, because I'll ask it stuff about the cars all the time. It actually helped me diagnose pretty well on my golf cart. I was like I was shown at the video. I was like the golf cart won't move. And it was like, oh, you need to hook this orange wire to here. And it like nailed it right away. But I wish it was a little meaner, like a like a forum user, you know, like a racial slur, why it was while it was helping me. You know, that would make me feel like a forum still.

I think you can do that. I mean, you could do a little bit with Chad. But I think Rock was the most unhinged one. I use Grok for like a month. And I was like, I'm done with this.

Grok is very unhinged compared to Chad GBT. But then they toned it down. It had some problems.

Oh, did it?

Yeah, it had some real problems where it started to spiral out of control. It was on the wrong side of the internet. Or I mean, I guess that's more personal preference.

It was really in the 4chan stuff and all that. Exactly. Yeah. So then nowadays, then, I mean, obviously again, I see what you do on like Facebook and stuff. But like, are you do you find yourself wanting to kind of change gears, go into road course? Do you want to do any car stuff at all at this point, like yourself or?

Yeah, so I actually just started putting back together my first gen CTSV, which is my OG car. I've had it for the longest amount of time, 10 years now. Just started putting that together because it's sad because it's a four door car, heavy Cadillac. I wanted to keep it stick shift and I was so focused on drag racing. I was like, what am I going to build this for? I'm going to build a heavy four door car, be one of those idiots. And then the problem with those guys is they complain about it every time. Like they'll build a full size pickup truck and then every time they race it, they're like, oh, well, I'm in a full size pickup truck. It's like, brother, we all had every choice. Fox bodies were for sale for you, too. 4JZ Camaro were for sale for you, too. You didn't have to build a Cadillac with IRS. I don't want to hear you complain about it. You chose this. Were you forced? Could you not get out? They always use it as a crutch. People love to build their own crutch. They make sure that they have it. Whether it's like, I've been in the CTSV community for a long time, they'll be like, oh, it's just a 1.9 blower. It's like, every option is available for you. Turbos are sold every day. I don't want to hear you use this as a crutch. You can use it as to brag about, oh, we were able to do it with this, but don't use it as a reason for me to feel bad for you. We all have the same choices. And I had that car for a long time. And the only reason I built this car was because I took all the parts out of that car and put them in this car because I was like, I'm not going to be one of those guys that builds a car that's 1500 pounds heavier than every other car I'm racing and you know, expect rules to change for me or people to feel bad for me or like anything like that. It's like, no. And this car is a 2J. I'm not going to be like, oh, you know, I only have 180 cubic inch. Like, it's like, no, that was my choice. It's like you deal with the Subaru guys. It's like, I don't want to hear you.

They're a special bunch. Yeah.

Yeah. EVOs were available for you too.

Yep.

Yeah.

That's also a s***** thing to do, but like, you know, they were available. It's a little better than a flat four.

Yeah. Just to clarify, I don't have a Subaru yet, but like.

But you deal with them.

Yeah. No, I'm get, well, you've seen my podcast.

We rub elbows.

Yeah.

I've talked to like every, like me and Dan have talked to like every type of enthusiast at this point. I don't think we've missed anything.

No.

There's got to be. Well, we haven't talked to many dirt racing people yet. We still have to go down that road, but it's like every single one sucks in its own way and is awesome in its own way. It's kind of what we've noticed. Like I will go, I want a hot guy Subaru, but then I also want an Evo 8, like at the same time.

Yeah.

Like I'm that type of sick. So if I ever get the Powerball.

The Subaru people are like, they're fully aware of their own punishment though. We did a big shop, Subaru shop, and I was asking them questions, and they still couldn't sell me on why I should get one. I mean, it was like.

They're all like, it's a horrible idea.

Yeah. So I don't know. They like punishment.

And I like STIs. It's just people try to do something that they shouldn't.

Right.

Right.

And it's the same thing. They'll have full carbon fiber, big single turbo, billet engines, and they're still breaking them. And then they'll also use that as a crutch. Like, oh, but it's just a flat four Subaru engine. It's like, yeah, I get it. But like, we don't care. Like, no one, no one cares about your handicap. You know, like, this is just how it is. Like, we're all in the same playing field. It's the same track for everyone. You just choose what, you know, what punishment you're willing to take. And, you know, it doesn't even become to a money thing at that point, because you have a billet block. You have the same turbo as me. You have a billet case on your trans. If anything, you have more into that than somebody has in a car like this. And that's the whole, literally the whole reason I built this. I didn't even like 4th Gen Camaro's. I just felt so dumb building a car that was four thousand probably. It was probably forty five hundred pounds the way that it sat. And I was like, I could either go down this rabbit hole of cutting the whole floor out, building a full race car out of a heavy car. Or I just go pick up. This was nine hundred and fifty dollars on Facebook Marketplace. Put a cage in it. Cut it out.

Six car. Then to start with. Yeah.

V6 Sticks of car. It had. Three hundred and twenty thousand miles on it.

Holy s***.

Unbelievable that somebody drove a car of V6 Sticks of 4th Gen Camaro. Many miles. How miserable. Cloth seats, crank windows. Like the least ideal car to drive that many miles. Yeah. I just don't understand it. No, but he was putting seventy five miles on it a day, he said.

Oh, my God.

He did have a C5 Z06. So he's like, this is like my commuter car. But I'm like, I'm glad I'm getting this from you, because you need to stop. Someone needs to stop this. So I was able to stop. I was able to break the cycle of this car just being a commuter forever. And the only I didn't care what color it was. The only reason I bought this car was crank windows, hardtop. Didn't care about any other option. Nothing. Didn't care about a V8. Didn't care about anything. It still has a clutch pedal kind of in there that's like cutting out of the way. But yeah, that's that's why the Camaro ended up. I wasn't even a Camaro guy. I'm still not. This thing is even still heavy. I'm still even the idiot because I didn't buy a Fox body. Yeah, I'm still like there's still, you know, room for me to improve my IQ by not run racing a 2J at this level and also having a Fox body.

It's got a Fox body for you.

Yeah, we'll talk. You got a Fox chassis sitting outside there.

Yeah, the SN95 is great. How many Foxes do you have?

I don't know, 15, 16.

Nobody has one. Yeah, nobody has one 240. Yeah, one 240. What are you crazy? Like 240 guys have three, four 240s. Like at least I had to get rid of mine because I only had the one. It was lonely. Yeah, I get it on to somebody else. Well, I had to for a little bit and then I got rid of both of them.

Well, you could buy the parts separately or you could just get a parts car. Like it's pretty easy to I mean, it seems like car math to me.

I have a second Camaro.

I saw it out there.

Yeah, second V6 car out there just because when I wanted it up and put it into the wall, I needed a bumper hood, headlight fenders. And it was like, oh, I could either buy all these in the brackets or for fifteen hundred bucks, freaking inflation. It was a non running car for fifteen hundred bucks. This one was running for nine hundred four years before that.

But there to be fair, there should have been no reason this car was still running at that many miles. So to be fair, you have some sort of an anomaly here.

I do kind of feel bad that I never really like did anything while it was a V6 car. I didn't even try. I didn't even take it around the block. I just rolled it in here and took the engine out. I didn't even like attempted like wheel hop, a burnout and break the rear end like nothing. I didn't like literally nothing. I didn't drive it a single time. I just drove like winched it on to the trailer, didn't even drive it and just rolled it out into the shop and then gutted it.

Where did the engine go? You're probably going to need to ship your car soon or know somebody that will. And as someone who used to work in freight logistics, I understand the difficulties of finding reliable transport, especially when trying to make it to rallies, racetracks or the warehouse to hydro Corvette, because you're going through a messy divorce and when she says everything, she means everything. Anywho, Nick Shearer is the proud owner of SureThing Logistics. Having traveled much of the country with every type of vehicle you can imagine, he's got the experience and reliability that you want to ensure a safe journey for your pride and joy. If you want to find out what it takes to ship your vehicle, go to surethinglogistics.net, fill out the intake form and be sure to let him know I sent you. Let's get back to the show.

Is it laying around here somewhere?

I'm just curious how far it would have gone. You know what I mean?

So my neighbor actually took it because he was able to get a core exchange on an LS from the junkyard by using that engine and I was like, oh, perfect, a ton deal. Take it out of my life. You have it. Yeah. I'm all for that because the neighbors, he's got a Fox body and a couple other project cars and stuff too, which enticed me to get this house and pulled up and I was like, oh, the guy next door has got a bunch of project cars and stuff. His Fox body hasn't ran in a little while because I think he's got a. What did he have on there? It was like a like a fitech software or something on the on the stock engine or something that was just like nobody wanted to tune it. Nobody wants to tune it. Nobody wants to touch it. He's got a nitrous kit on there, but it hasn't touched it in like 20 years. Got four kids, so it just kind of sits, but it's a decent Fox by a little convertible with a roll bar. So we're amongst good company. Yes, you know, like he's got parts that I can use and tools and stuff. So it it works out a neighborhood with car people in it is very, very important. Oh, yeah. That is like the key.

My neighbor next to me has like the most beautiful yard in mine. I am mow it and stuff, but I don't worry about like crabgrass s*** like that. I just once a week, I'm good. And I've got cars sitting out back and I have another neighbor back there who's complained about my stuff. And so I bought shipping containers and put them back there instead. So now he gets a look at those. But now my neighbor next door with the nice yard has two cars sitting in the back kind of by the back of my shop in his yard. So they're they're just starting to they're like, if you can't beat them, join them at this point.

I do worry about being the guy with like the perpetual project car, like the car that's sitting there. And it's like, I'll get to it eventually. Like, I do fear that because I don't want to be that guy.

I am that guy. And it is horrible. Like in the back of your mind, it's always like, f***, I got 10 of them on the block. I need to. Yeah.

And they're depreciating, not in like the financial side of things, like they're getting worse every year.

Yes.

Like they're getting more of a project car every year that they sit because the interior is, you know, degrading the underside is getting more rusty or like something like that. So every year, they're just getting worse and worse. So I was like, man, really should not be this guy because it's it's such a silly path to go down. That I'll get to it eventually.

Yeah.

Mentality. And yeah. So I got rid of a couple of cars that were sitting for that reason because, you know, I had a 240 here. That was kind of the same thing. It was taking up indoor space. That's a 95 probably could go, but I don't really have a whole lot into it. I would I wouldn't sell. I don't want to sell a running car to anyone because I don't want to I don't want to hear from them. I don't want to. Yeah. I don't want them to ask me why. Why was the wiring like this or that? It's part of it out. It's going for parts for sure. Like that's the same way I sold the 240. I was I didn't even think about selling it running. I was like, no, I don't want to hear anything from somebody. You put your own engine in and wad it up. It wasn't my engine or my build that got wadded up. It was yours. Same thing would happen with that car. And even like if I ever got rid of this one, which is unlikely, but it is just a it's just a Camaro. They're not really that valuable.

Was the Cadillac your first? Like, where did this all come from? And you just start with Cleetus or you had to have you had this disease going before all of this, right? Like, where did it all start from?

So I was more of an SUV guy because, you know, I grew up in New York on Long Island and it was cold in winters up there, so I never really like cars weren't really a thing. Like everybody had like SUVs, at least where I was, or trucks and trucks were pretty expensive. So I was like, OK, well, I'll get an SUV. I always had SUVs, had a couple GMT eight hundreds. Those were always nice couple GMT nine hundreds. After that, I've had I've had quite a few of them. And then I finally was like, OK, I'm going to get rid of the SUV and get the Cadillac, the CTSV. It was like one hundred and thirty thousand mile first gen CTSV. Very questionable thing for a 22 year old to get. Very questionable. I did not have the money to work on this thing. If the clutch went out, I didn't even know what I would have done at the time. You know what I mean? I was like, it was street parking at, you know, the house that I shared with four guys. I like I would have been pretty cooked. Honestly, I got kind of lucky that it didn't happen. But I drove that car for maybe three years as a daily driver. Great daily driver. The thing was really did not in New York. No, or that was in Florida. OK, that was that was once I moved to.

OK, understood.

I was like, OK, I'll get out of the SUV. I'm in Florida. I don't really need something like that, which is also probably not incorrect, because I probably needed the SUV more in Florida, because like hurricanes and stuff like I ended up taking that thing through some decently high water at times. And the ECU is actually like down here. Oh, that's just how they design them. It's a funny thing. Actually, side note, those cars have an ECU issue where the bracket that they made is like this plastic two piece bracket and like it closes on the top. There is hundreds of people in those same cars that have ran over their ECU and ripped all the wires out because they will just fall out right under the front tire. That's literally right there under the front tire. You can see like photo after photo of people that have just ran over their ECU and ripped every wire out. It's just such a funny design flaw that there is a fix in the V1 Facebook group of how to keep your ECU from getting ran over. Mine had a zip tie around it, like a big zip tie. To the frame to keep it from falling out. And like when I went and checked it, I was like, damn, this thing was kind of ready to fall out like, what an insane thing to be a reality. And from the factory, they had like a guard and like a belly pan ish. So after 10 years, they didn't really have that anymore. Most people were gone or lost or something. But yeah, running over your ECU is a common thing. So I had that car for a while. Garrett was a mutual friend of a friend. He had a Subaru STI 2012. Really cool. It had really nice wheel tire fitment, R888. It had an external blow off valve. And this was in like it was a 2012 STI in maybe 2013 or 14. So it was like a cool car for it was like super, super nice. For I don't know what was he 22 years old probably at that point. So I was like, oh dang, this is a cool car. Like I still had an SUV like we used to drive around in his car all the time. We used to go to events for when we both worked with 1320 video at the time. I only started working with them. This story feels like all over the place, but I started working with them because of him. And we were their social media manager is back then when they weren't really like Kyle wasn't that big on social media at the time, as weird as that sounds, because his bread and butter was YouTube.

Yeah.

So like Facebook and Instagram.

He still has DVDs for sale too, by the way.

Yeah. But like then to them, Facebook and Instagram was kind of like an afterthought almost like, no, no, no, like this is what we do. Those are kind of just like details. Now it's like that's almost like the bigger side of things is the social media, because I don't really consider YouTube social media. It's not really social.

I agree.

It's like content that you consume. It's not nobody interacts like trying to like talk to somebody in a YouTube comment section isn't really like a thing.

It isn't really efficient, even like I use YouTube Studio. It's not very efficient. But you know, you know how you really give your hours like spent on your phone, like on your iPhone, like your breakdown. It's like, oh, you got Facebook, Instagram. I don't even count my YouTube hours like I really don't consider it social media at all.

Yeah, no, it's not. It's really not like you're not social with anybody like Facebook, Instagram. Instagram kind of sucks, honestly. But like Facebook, at least like people are social on people actually interact.

Right.

I don't know. Comment section on YouTube is like the the death spiral. You know what I mean? It's like like reading the comments on like YouTube videos is so weird compared to like a comment thread on like Facebook or anything like that. But yeah, so we were doing that for a while. And then I got into the first gen CTSV because I wanted something four door stick shift LS. Those really doesn't give you much option there.

Kind of narrowed it down.

Yeah. I didn't even realize that at the time. You know, like I discovered the V1. Like kind of by accident, because they only made like 3000 of them. There wasn't a whole lot of them. They came in like black and silver and red for the first two years. There was only four years of them. So that car just immediately became like honed in on because the Subaru was cool. But I was like, I can't afford a freaking Subaru like that. And that probably would have been more of a nightmare to own an older one at the time. So that car kind of just fell into my lap because I needed something for door. And I wanted to drive a stick shift car. And you don't really have many options if those are your two criteria.

Yeah. What year did you get it roughly?

I've had it for 10 years.

So OK.

Yeah.

It's like 16.

Yeah.

OK.

So it's like the and even then the options were way lower. I would have loved to get a V2. But in 2016, those were still fairly new. I mean, they only ended in 2013. They're still like pretty new cars.

Yeah.

It's like, oh, I guess I'll have to settle for this. And then I got to learn that car. But even now, like I wanted to before I started building that, I was looking at another stick shift four door car that could be fun to drive. And I was like, well, what am I going to get? Because I wanted something that my kids could ride in and make cool turbo noises or make cool noises or sound fun. But I don't want a two door car because I don't want to have to flip a seat and put it in the back. So I was like, where are my options? What, like a BMW of some kind? I don't know. German cars. I honestly I have very low concept of German cars.

Do you know what's a sick German car does probably? I don't know if it's a direct competitor to the Cadillac, but the, you know, the S55 that Jamie had on the rally, it was making like seven, 800 wheels, like supercharged. It's like an AMG from like 2008 or whatever.

That was a five liter supercharged.

Dude, that was the sickest. I love like old supercharged German cars. They're literally just Americans that talk funny.

Like the compressor or whatever it says.

Compressor. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, yeah, like I never really paid attention to Mercedes and BMW stuff growing up. So like now trying to relearn that would be like kind of a nightmare. And it seems like a real hassle to own an old Mercedes or an old like old. Beginning 2000s old. If you go older than that, it seems a little easier. If you go newer, then you have new car stuff. But right like that 2000 to 2008, buying one of those seems like a hassle.

They were like just figuring some stuff out.

And everything now is dry rotted and needs to be replaced. All the bushings are probably going. They need like a big service. So that seems like a really questionable time to buy a car.

Well, when it comes to that luxury stuff too, everything is more expensive. Like, yes, it is on the Cadillac and Lincoln stuff. So I'm a Ford guy, so I like Lincoln stuff. But there's a lot of crossover stuff that you can get that is the same as any other GM or Ford car that will not be as expensive. I feel like on a Mercedes or BMW, it doesn't matter what you're buying, that's gonna be expensive.

Yeah, and then you have to like find like a guy that knows what he's doing, like a specialist, to even just ask the questions to, because like again, I don't know who knows this stuff, like this is like weird, very niche stuff, like at least like that car is an LS in it. So like, yeah, all the other stuff around it might be complex, but like at least the base of it is simple, you know, like 30% of the car is so simple and straightforward. The rest of it is all kind of details. Even when I took that car out, it has two modules. It has the ECU and then it has like a headlight, taillight module and then it has like an interior module. Like it has two. That's about as far as I want to go. Yeah. Because I got a second gen also in the garage. And if I took that apart, I bet you'd have like 25 modules. And now they have like 50 modules. Like once you start to add modules, it's just like, that's the complex factor of it. Everything has to... Now with CAN bus, I don't even want to think about it.

Oh yeah. Because you can't even take a cigarette lighter out without taking the whole car down.

Yeah. I'm out. Like that's too far for me. Like that car is 04 and I was honestly like, I don't know if I'd really want to have to deal with a car much newer for like a real build. It's fine for like the bolt on stuff, stock ECU, but like the real build stuff seems, I don't know. It seems like a lot to me. Even like some of those guys that are like, there's those guys in the industry that are always on the new platform. And I get that they have to do it for their business. Like the S58 BMW stuff or like B58 guys, like they always have to be on the cutting edge. That seems horrible. That seems like it sucks.

It's a miserable lifestyle from everybody we've talked to.

Yeah, like to have to be that guy that's like, oh, like the new C8 came out. Like, I got to figure out how Global B works. And I have to be able to sell people parts. And it's like, yeah, we had to take the transmission out again because nobody knows. And like this part that's not supposed to break, this basket on the C8, like turns out it does break. And they're only made in Australia. And it takes six months to get. And it's like, sorry, like somebody has to do it. But like, it sucks to have to do it.

Yeah, we were talking to, again, we were talking about Dave Steck before this show.

And I'm sure that's where my mind went wrong.

I know who's going to comment on this, who's going to shoot me a text afterwards. I know you're listening to. But anyways, what's it called? He's like, I don't even like the C8, but he has to push the platform where he's like, it's a dumb tractor of the sounding car. He just hates it. He's like, yeah, but like, and he said it in our podcast, so it's public knowledge. But yeah, but he's like, yeah, just, I hate the car. He's like, C7 was like peak, leave it at that.

And they're so cheap now, which is crazy. C7s are so much car for the money. Like they're in like the 40s. You're talking about like Stingrays or something? Yeah. Yeah. For like a C7 Stingray in the 40s, like stick shift car, those are so good that like, and maybe I have a little bit of a like for that car because it was the first Corvette I was ever around. Like I actually, I drove Garrett to pick up his, I don't know, back in 2014 or something, 2015. He picked up his new off the lot white C7 and I was like, this thing's fricking cool. And it was a stick shift car again. And like, but that is so much car for that amount of money. Like, I don't know if you get much more. It makes a C6 seem a lot more unreasonable because they're so cheap. And even the C6s have honestly kind of hit their bottom and started to come back up even like a base model C6. And I kind of like that the drift guys have started to ruin them. Yeah, it's like a fun reality that the drift guys have started to buy a boomer C6s and just ruin them. And I hope they kind of do it to the C7s too. I'm sure they will.

My first time drifting in a car was in a C7. Actually, I went to one of those like Vegas things and you get like a drift ride along. I think I don't know if it was a Stinger or a Z06, but yeah, that was my first drift ride along.

Yeah, you see, I want them to ruin those too. Yeah, I like even even the other day, I was looking at some interior parts for my CTSP and I messaged this guy and I was like, how's the interior of this car? Because I was going to buy another car as one does. Yeah, just as a parts car because I needed like a couple of parts and I was like, well, you know, it's easier to buy a whole car.

Sure.

And he was like mad that I was going to take it for parts. He's like, oh, it's a really nice car. But like, he led it with like, I can't drive because of child support and all this stuff. And I have a message to anybody else because I realized that buying a $800 CTS base model Cadillac on Facebook Marketplace was probably going to be a nightmare. That car specifically, you know what I mean? I was just like, yeah, I'm out. I think this is going to be a bad idea. Like buying the Camaro wasn't too bad, the parts car. But like, there's just some cars that you know were going to be a nightmare to purchase.

Right.

Yeah. And I've even lowballed a couple of people on some Subarus that were blown up. Yeah, I was trying to find one the other day. I've literally lowballed this guy. I was like, I'll come pick it up right now. He was like, motors blown up. It was I think it was a 14 Subaru WRX that had some nice parts on it. And he he had listed for like six grand, super clean interior, really nice car. I was like, I'll come pick it up right now.

Was it a hatch or no? No, it wasn't a hatch.

It was not a hatch. Yeah, which kind of look cool.

Yeah, you're drifting away on me, by the way. Just a little bit here again.

Yeah, I kind of like the non hatch. You know, like I'm a wagon guy. I have a wagon, but they're not really wagons. I don't know. I probably piss off the wagon community calling a Subaru WRX hatchback a wagon.

Do you have like an affinity for Subarus then? I mean, this is the second time I've heard you mention of this episode.

I think I have I have a like for four door cars. OK, for four doors, performance cars. So that narrows down my my desires a lot and kind of forces me almost to like them. And I do like them. I like the sounds that they make. I think that they have like cool stuff to them. I think that in almost stock form, they're not like so fast that you're going to get in trouble all the time, which I think is kind of silly, honestly, for a lot of street cars, that they're they're so like. I like that we're in that world, but it's like. They don't need to be that fast. I wanted to make some cool sounds, turbo noises, blow off valves and stuff like that. And, you know, have fun. Like, I don't need a car that can go to five on the street. Yeah, it just doesn't. It doesn't do anything for me. I don't need that. So. I kind of fall into liking those to be. You know, I have no problem with them. I mean, it's like it's like a S197 Mustangs, you know, it's like the cars are cool, the community have kind of ruined them, but like. But like, again, like, I don't care to look into one of those because I'm a four door car guy. I prefer a four door over a two door for just like a street car. That's why I don't I don't really like Corvettes either. That's never really been a Corvette guy. They've always felt just like they're missing something like two doors. And that's why most of my vehicles are two doors besides just the race or four doors besides just the race car.

Right.

Because, yeah, I don't know. Like, it just doesn't do anything for me. It's just not an it's just not like enough. I don't like sitting on the ground like that. I like kind of sitting like I'm in more of an SUV or like a truck, a little bit more visibility. As much as I think Corvettes are cool and like I think the C7 ZR1 is possibly the best car Chevy's ever made. It just it just doesn't do it. They just don't do enough for me.

You don't care about the C8 ZR1. I mean, I say what you will. It is a it is a sick car.

Yeah, I mean, I just like that. I think I'm glad that Chevy upgraded the interior. I'm glad about that. They ditch that wall of buttons.

And did I hate it so much? Have you been passenger in one of those?

Yeah, so I was actually I was in Vegas for the press launch of the C8. Oh, me and Garrett went there for it. And it was I I don't like press launches. They're very I don't like listening to like corporate people try to hype up a car. I don't like I really don't like sitting with journalists. They are the most pompous, like like written word journalists are excruciating to deal with and listen to because they they think that the words that they're saying are like, oh, man, this this moves the world. This turns the industry. And it's like, no, brother, no one gives a s***. Yeah. And it's like and it's not even just that. It's like me and Garrett weren't like, oh, well, our video moves where we were. Just like we're just here to make a video and see the C8. But they think that they're like doing this huge service. And all they do is is take, like for the most part, a lot of them. I've I've read some of the stuff that they did even on the C8. They'll just take the stats and put them into sentences. And it's like I'd rather see the bullet points. I don't want to hear you add your English literature degree into this. Like you just you just made something that could be read in 20 seconds read in five minutes because you had to sprinkle them in so that we understood that you have a great grasp of the English language. Their jobs should 100 percent be taken by AI.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Like it's just and most of them agree. The problem is because a lot of them were. Want to be writers and then became car journalists, not car people that became car journalists, because you have to start with that base level of like. Want to be a writer, and a lot of them were based in California, so that kind of brings up like that style of writer. But yeah, this is just car journalist dislike that I have, and they know who they are.

I will say, when it comes to, and we've been to Detroit a handful, we went four times within a year to do some podcasts over there. We met some really cool people, but there's a certain, there's like a different energy there, especially when you start talking to like some corporate folks. Like, I don't know how to describe it. It just feels uptight.

That's another one of those things where it seems glamorous. You're like, oh man, you get to work for the auto makers and all that stuff, but then you get kind of inside the circle and you're like, this kind of isn't what I thought. Like, people don't really have a passion for.

It's a job.

Yeah, exactly. They'll bounce from Ford to Chevy to whoever.

And it's granted, the guys that we've had on the show were actual enthusiasts.

There are some handfuls of them that are like that, but for the most part, they don't they could give a s*** less.

Well, they worked to squash that person.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like the machine that that person is in is constantly working to crush that person's spirit. And that is the goal. GM is so bad in so many ways. And every time that a new Corvette comes out, it feels like it slipped through the cracks. Like it feels like it's snuck by the goalpost in a way. Like they're trying to block it. I mean, they cut the Camaro, which granted that segment is dead anyways. Nobody's buying two-door sports cars. The Mustang is probably going to go in the next year or so.

You think so?

Yeah. They sold like the least amount of Mustang all time. They sold more Mach E's in the last year than they sold actual Mustangs.

What do you think it is that's causing that?

Nobody has money. They're too expensive. And most people don't care about two-door cars anymore. Like most people aren't buying a new two-door sports car that they're clientele because they're building these cars to now, like, be not 911 competitors, but like the people that would buy them are also people that could buy a 911. And I bet you a lot of them would rather buy a 911 because we're in what I see as like a K shape buying market is the people that have a lot of money to buy cars, have a lot of money to buy cars, and the people that don't have a lot of money to buy cars have no money to buy cars. So that middle segment that used to be Camaro, Hellcat, Mustang is like think about the Mustang sales being way down with the Camaro being gone with the Hellcat being gone. They're not just down in a competitive market with those two. Like they're down with no competition and they're still down. There's nobody else. You can't buy another American VA besides the Mustang if you want like a car. You know, you can buy the Corvette, which a lot of people hate when you say Corvette is a Mustang competitor. But even Jim Farley said it was, you know, as he's got his faults. But I think that he's a better CEO than Mary Barra of GM. And they're still not buying it. And they're still Chevy and Dodge are still reluctant to make a sport truck. More people are buying the sport truck from Ford, it seems like, than the freaking Mustang.

Yeah, to be fair, Dodge is about to drop that. They're actually so my brother and my dad went to Vegas last week and Tim Koniski spoke over there and do they got some sick stuff to bring to Dakota back, which is going to be awesome.

Yeah.

But then they also some sort of sport truck. I don't know if it's going to be a single cab, but a few announcements remain. I'm not sure how public that is yet.

But my prediction is it won't be a single cab because probably not. They're not that smart. That's that is my nihilistic view of it, is they aren't smart enough to bring the single cab sport truck like that.

You know what my argument is? I think it's because Ford and Chevy are so good at doing these like municipality deals like, you know, like, I don't know. Every time we go around the fleet service, yeah, it's like, I don't think I remember ever seeing anything new in like a 2008 Ram and that municipality sort of set up how and just think about GM's foolishness that they were like, you know, we're really good at these like, you know, trucks for the working man.

Let's make our $80,000 electric Silverado a base model for the working man.

It's like, what?

What? Why would you put steely wheels on that thing and make it cheap? Like, why was that car designed for working? Like, you think a lawn service guy is going to use that thing? Like, it's like 70,000, $60,000. So GM just has so many faults right now going for them. And the Corvette just keeps sneaking by. But eventually, I think the Corvette, it won't. But it could spin off into its own thing. I think it would ruin almost all GM dealers if they were even able to go direct to factory. I mean, why can't like if Corvette could just be sold direct from that factory to the people, the dealers would be half half useless. Yeah, because most people just want to go like, we'll call up Bowling Green Kentucky and order their Corvette if they could. They would love that. That's how they should do it.

But they already do that where you can you go there and pick it up from the deal, and that's a lot of people skip the step.

Yeah, you have to go through your dealer, but that's because there's a lot of state laws that force that and like Tesla has gotten around it. And even like Volkswagen is trying to kind of do the same thing using Scout where they're like, oh, you will skip the dealer network. And it's like, well, you know, you're kind of screwing your dealers because you keep giving them s*** products and then suddenly you're going to roll out a good one and go around the dealers. Wow. Yeah, really nice of you, Volkswagen. So I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen there. But I think the sports car market in the US is is pretty cooked. I don't think we're going to see much. I don't think the Camaro is going to suddenly come back unless it's like an SUV or some weird hybrid thing, front wheel drive or something like they did to the trailblazer.

If I was in OEM, I'd be very uncertain on where to go. When we saw the uncertainty, here's my other conspiracy theory. I think all these, your head did a twitch. When I say conspiracy theory, you're like, oh. You're like, yes. I think manufacturers are spending double on development during the electric era. It's like you're doing a program for ice and then you're also doing a program for-

They're going to have to make up some money on the billions of dollars they spent on that b*******.

What if Ford lose like 4 billion or lose?

We call it investment in write-off, but they've all roading off like 20 billion between them. And well, even like that, like that was my main gripe when the Daytona was announced was the Dodge. Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that designing a car that is electric but also could receive a gas engine seems so backwards to me because you have to compromise so much on both sides.

Look how heavy it is. That's why it's heavy. It's what is that 40s? No, 5200 pounds, 4800 pounds.

It's heavier than a Hellcat because it's not like the Silverado where it's like, Oh, well, it can be a diesel or a gas. It's like, no, no, no. Like these need to be very different cars. Like there's so much compromise between a gas and an electric vehicle to try to make it mixed platform. It was destined to fail because of that. And it was because of them just being cheap. And it's just like, of course, that's going to happen. Of course, it's going to fail. I mean, they're like 30,000 under MSRP for new ones right now.

We bought a Mach-E for my wife to commute because they were basically giving them away. I saw your post about the Dodge stuff the other day. You're like, it comes down a little bit further. They want to give you one. You'd be all for it. Yeah.

They make everything make sense in a number.

Yeah, like they're. Yeah.

It's like with real estate, when houses aren't moving, it's because it's the wrong price. Yeah, it's nothing like there's a price that it will move at. But unfortunately, they are too reluctant to get to that point. And they're just filled with lot rot. And there's going to be 100 plus. I mean, there's going to be like 300 plus days of cars sitting on lots that nobody's buying. Oh, yeah. And I don't think that Dodge putting a hellcat in them is going to help their current supply. Imagine being a dealer right now, trying to sell one that they hyped up for months and months and months like, oh, this thing's so great. And then they come out with a better one. It means the Dodge story all over again, where the end of the hellcat ended six times. And how many additions did they do? The final or the end or like the like where people thought that this is the last one that they're going to be able to get.

My favorite is when like you go on their website and it's not just one line, but there's like another like a subtitle. Like it was just such a long name. But I will give you some insight into that is dealers aren't sitting on them because dealers aren't accepting them either. Like there's a lot of push back to Detroit on those. I think that's why they're trying to change it. But it's like, what do you do now? And I have a chassis that's a thousand pounds heavier. So yeah, let's say you bring the Hellcat back. It's a pig.

Yeah, but how much of that is battery? But you take that out and you have this giant.

You would think it's a battery. No, if you look at like the.

The gas ones, how heavy they are.

The six pack one, I think is like 4,600 pounds still. Now, mind you, I think it's 4,600 might be more than that. But I do remember the Hellcats, the charger was 4,500 pounds, 4,400 pounds. Now, the other thing to throw in there is because of the way that it was built is it also is a little more top heavy. So you have way more body roll, because again, it's literally just like a platform, right? Yeah.

Because they didn't build it like it was only going to be an EV.

Yeah, or just a gasser, right? So it's like now, let's say you throw the Hellcat engine back in there, it's going to be top heavy. Now you have to give it another 200 horsepower to have the same zero to 60. It's just, it's a big flub.

And how many years are we all going to be excited about the same platform? Like I was asking a friend that's a big coyote guy. It's like, OK, but like the coyote's got to end at some point, right? Like it's been going on for like 10 years now.

Like, yeah, but technically it's just a reworked for six. I mean, it's that modular engine platform they've had.

Yeah, but there's got to be something next, right? I mean, like what are they just going to keep coming out with a new gen and people be so happy? I mean, what is Dodge going to come out with a gen four Hemi that just still has lifter tic and still is the same architecture? Yeah, I get some point like as enthusiasts are like, OK, are you guys going to come out with something new? I mean, Chevy came out with the LT5, which is the dual overhead cam deal, but it's only going to be in such an obscure small number of cars that for the enthusiast is not going to matter. It doesn't matter to me, like unless that car came in trucks all of a sudden and the aftermarket is going to really get a hold of it and really have fun with it and like be swapped into things, it doesn't matter. Coyote is only cool because it came in, you know, 500,000 cars and people are swapping them and they were in trucks and they were in this and that. Like, that's what makes them interesting. LS same deal. It was just so readily available. But the LT five isn't going to be it's too expensive. It's too obscure. So at some point, as enthusiasts, you're going to have to get mad. It's like you're going to have to be like, OK, well, you guys have just sold us out. But there's no where else to turn BMW. The new M5 is what as much as 600 pounds or whatever it was.

Yeah, I was listening to you talk about it. It's huge.

Yeah, it's like it's not even just heavy. It's like physically big when you're near it.

Actually, we saw one come pulling into your neighborhood, the green one. I don't know if you've seen it around here. Literally a green M5 wagon or whatever, the hybrid one. It's a big bastard of a car.

They keep showing them in green because they're trying to do that. Like go away green, I think, where it's like, you know, Disney hides things with green and like camo and stuff. So they try to like, oh, maybe, you know, downplay a little bit by painting them all green. They're just heavy cars, and it sucks that they're that heavy. And cars are going to perpetually get that heavy, too, because of a safety factor.

Safety is the next big thing that is a concern in Detroit. Like they've got the EPA stuff pretty much locked up. Like that's no biggie. They know how to deal with it. Safety is a big concern that we kept hearing over there.

Well, it's the arms race, too, of like if that guy has an 8,000 pound car and he hits into my car, that's only 6,000 pounds, we lose. So it's like you're in this arms race of like who can be the heaviest.

Could you imagine getting T-boned by a Hummer? Like it is insane. I fear for my life when I see those Hummers, because they're so big. But it's like it's like getting hit by a semi almost. Yeah, like it's insanity.

The Hummer was the first time I ever felt like when the first when like the the H2 came out, that big unit, that was like the first time I ever felt like a like an environmental push in my life. I don't know if you guys remember when that came out, because it was like the same time as the Prius. So there was almost like this like there was like this head to head battle of like, no, I buy the Hummer because I support the war in Iraq. And it was like, no, no, no. I buy the Prius because like it was like an actual battle. Like I know South Park makes fun of it. But like when you think back on that time, like it was like, oh man, that was actually like real beef there. Like I remember my teachers would look down on like the parents that would show up on the line with the Hummer. And it didn't occur to me until like recently that like, damn, like they were subtly trying to like push me to hate that thing. And most people did kind of had like a stigma to it. Oh, yeah. Even though it was really just like a Tahoe with some heavier body panels, which is so silly to think about now. I'm like, wait, it was just kind of a Tahoe. Why was everybody so mad about it? People are mad. They still are.

To kind of go back to you, though.

So, well, I got to talk about future of stuff. Well, do you see more of this inline six platform with the new Hurricane? Do you think that that might be a speaking of engine architecture? Do you think we move more into that kind of realm?

When you throw B58 in this?

No, no, no, no BMW engines. I first off, I hate the sound of direct injection cars. Yeah, they like tick a lot and they make a lot of like stupid noises. But I don't think the Hurricane engine will take off very much because everybody that I have talked to, the tuning is going to make them undesirable because yeah, I because the direct injection runs out of steam. And if they, the ones that I know of with port injections are on standalone MoTek.

Yep.

And that's a huge barrier to entry.

Yeah, that's a different ballgame.

But Subaru people do it, right? That's their only option is MoTek.

Yeah, but how many Subaru people do it? Like, you know what I mean?

Like there's- Yeah, it's not like the ultimate. Yeah. Not a lot of thousand horsepower Supers.

It's gonna turn people away.

Okay.

Knowing that there's like this 700 cap of horsepower.

I see what you're saying.

Before you have to go MoTek standalone. And then once you do go that, you have to like have somebody deal with the transmission connectivity with the motor. It's just it's a barrier of entry that most people aren't gonna want to go down. Like Hellcat stuff right now, you can stock ECU, take them to the moon. Like they make 1500 horsepower.

They didn't take a while to get going too. I think it was like right around what, 2020, 2021, they finally started like regularly being over like a thousand horsepower. Cause I think for a while, like it was just hard. From my understanding, it was hard to get a lot of builds out of those.

Yeah. But now they're starting to, and the transmissions are strong and people have them figured out. But I think that'll be the barrier and entry on the hurricane.

Well, I've heard in the Dodge side of things, their CAN bus is the biggest nightmare out of all the automakers. So we've heard some stories of people scrapping entire projects, trying to do some swap stuff and they were like, you can't get anything to work. Yeah. Exactly.

Who are you thinking about? I'm blanking on it.

Was that dude in blue had a project?

Oh, that's right. Yeah.

Poor David.

I know.

He got so screwed by that deal.

Yeah, he did. Yeah.

He really did. Just at every turn.

Yeah.

Dodge just screwed him like he was a car owner. Like, they really gave him the Dodge experience. I always joke that they would never give me one of those swap deals. And think about how much that sucked when they were like, like, hey, like, you're our guy this year. We're going to send you everything you need for a build. Yeah. And then like a couple of weeks later, they're like, it's a hurricane. You're the first of the hurricane builds. And everybody else before you got freaking Hellcat engines. Imagine what a kick in the nuts that would.

Right.

And like the people that have them are publicly happy.

Yeah.

Privately, I don't know. Publicly, they're happy.

We got a little bit of my next episode I'm airing next week is actually with I'm sure you've seen her on social media. She's done Dragon Drives Morgan Evans. She's in that truck with the hurricane or whatever. So we talked to her about that at length.

So she's still at that 7, 800 horsepower mark, though I think that's where they're kind of right.

They've been 890 with that, though, right?

Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, also like the truck weighs nothing, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's a cool deal for sure. Absolutely.

You'll never see that out of the Daytona's or whatever the chargers because they're so f****** heavy.

The only the only thing that will make them somewhat desirable is that the all wheel drive was involved.

Yeah. I will say the interior is awesome. I got to drive one of the EV ones. Awesome interior. It was actually pretty sweet.

That's not very dodging them.

No. You know, a lot of people like the dog on Dodge's interior. But if you look, if you go back to 2016, 2017, like I've been in Hellcats that have like that nice nappa leather, whatever it's called. It's a nice interior. Like it's like, what are you like? You cannot compare a 2024 interior to 2016. You know what I mean?

Yeah. I guess it just it was one of those things that they felt like they wouldn't. I mean, all the auto industry, all the auto industry was just been dragging out cars for longer and longer.

And, oh, absolutely.

Like Nissan just wouldn't let the GTR die or the hurricane. They finally did. Yeah, the hurricane.

They went forever. Had they had so many limited editions. Like I think it goes like when it comes to limited editions, it goes Dodge, Huracan. Like there's so many.

They're dragging out cars longer and longer.

And even we got the king over here with the Mustangs, right? Like you like they was at the Fox body like it went into the essay.

They changed it up. What Dodge will beat a platform to death like they will. Like what was that? I don't remember what Jen that 90s Dodge Ram, that thing that rounded nose like that went on for decades.

But even Mustang doesn't change that much. Like there's like their suspension style has been like the same forever. I mean, like front suspension, at least like rear suspension. They've changed it from four link to three link just out of being cheap. I think, yeah, because they wanted to be. They were like, oh, you know, we can we can take a link away from these guys.

The S550 was pretty new with the independent rear suspension, all that stuff. I got a facelift, the S650. Like you said, they I think they dropped the ball on that. And then you couldn't you couldn't tune anything. And people that are buying those cars want to tune them up and do stuff in it. Yeah, I think it was a huge miss.

Yeah, but it's a good car, but people aren't going to buy it. Yeah, they're just not they're not buying them. It's expensive to not be buying.

Like I personally will probably not be shopping for a new car for the foreseeable future. It is so expensive. Like, I'm kind of like, I mean, my demographics pretty big, right? I'm 26, right? It's like, you know, I'm the demographic that's technically starting to get into that part of life where they're getting houses, getting cars, getting a salary at some point. I cannot see myself getting a $60,000 sports car.

Yeah, and you think that they're building Mustangs for 50 year old guys that can buy cars? Like, they're not, they're just like, that's not the style of car that it is. Like, you start it up and it has to like, and then idle back down. It's like horrendous. Any Mustang with an exhaust is usually horrendous to begin with. Even Coyote guys will be like, I hate straight pipe Coyotes.

Here's a question for you, Dan. One of my friends, or actually, no, Mary texted me. One of her friends just got an allocation for the new, whatever the new 500 replacement is. What is it called again?

Oh, the dark horse. SC.

Yeah. Do you want the allocation?

No.

He's the demographic. Doesn't f****** want it.

Because I have a GT 500. I have that same car already.

I got into an argument with Caleb the other day.

And I have it for half the money.

Dude, he's like, why is it? Why are the prices on GT 500 not dropping? They're like stuck at 70. I'm like, because it limited production. They really didn't make that many.

It's RC7. It's the last of the great before they got in.

It is such a great car. Like, it's genuinely like you got a supercar for 70 grand.

Yeah, you know, I spent a lot of time in one of those, and I actually learned this from listening to Doug DiMiro. All of his special cars are stick shift, and he has a really good point about that, because as good as that transmission is, and as much faster as it is being auto, it's like it'd just be a better car stick shift. It'd just be a more enjoyable car to drive stick shift.

I would agree with that if I didn't have other, like plenty of other cars, like fast cars that are stick shift.

But if you don't, if you're just that guy that has that one car.

I love that car for what it is because of the DCT, like when it does things that my other cars don't do, and it feels very super car ish. But I would agree with if I didn't have other cars to bang gears in, I would be pissed off.

Yeah, like my second gen isn't stick shift, and that's probably why I don't drive it that much. I thought, and I do like the auto in that car. It's a big, heavy car. Yeah, but I feel like if it was stick shift, I would drive it more. And I think that that's the that's the ticket to these fun, enjoyable cars. Is they they got to be stick shift because it's just I mean, personally, for me, like this car is auto. It scratches my itch of going fast. It has I don't I don't need it to I don't need an auto car to scratch my itch on the street, mostly because, like, I don't even want to go that fast on the street. It's so dumb to have a car that can go that fast on the street to me because I only want a car that can go fast, like zero to 60 fun. Like, you know, a couple shifts in there now, that's why I'm building that car. So I'm fricking spending thousands of dollars to build fricking four door stick shift car because I know that that will likely scratch the itch of wanting a stick shift car.

You don't want to get yourself a 2015 Autobahn Golf GTI with a manual. I was looking at one on Facebook Marketplace. It was like eight thousand dollars, three hundred.

I was like, it does sound cool. No, it really does. Like when I was looking at four door stick shift cars, like I thought about something like that, because again, like the stick shift scratches an itch that I don't think that just a GT 500 alone would do. I think a GT three fifty would honestly scratch the itch better.

Yeah.

Even though it's not as fast and especially if you put a blower on it, then you have a arguably a cooler car. As much as I like the GT 500, and I got to spend a week on drag week on Rocky Mountain Race Week, I got to drive one as much fun as it was. It just it doesn't it doesn't scratch that itch.

It doesn't give you the raw driver connection that anyway, it feels very refined in some spots where it doesn't give you that itch.

The 350 is awesome. Kenny's R was sick.

But when I can drive around and I can eat an ice cream cone at the same time, that's kind of nice.

Yeah, but like, it's not like you had an ice cream cone.

It's been a while.

Yeah, but that's kind of the whole point. Like, you know, that that's what makes it not the special car as as you would think it would like. Think about Porsche. Every time they offer a 911 with a stick shift, it's like 300 grand. Great. And everybody loves it.

Yeah.

And they say every time they do it, it's their last one. Every time.

What a gullible market.

It's still good every time they do it. Yeah.

That'd kill it.

I also am a road course guy, so it does on the road course. It absolutely is a monster.

But so like, think about, you know, the Honda NSX. Great car. Stick shift.

Depends who you ask.

Nobody wants the auto. Imagine they came out with the newest one with a rare manual option, even like the new Supra, when they finally put a stick in it. Oh, we're excited. Yeah, because again, I wouldn't buy one of those cars to go as fast on the drag strip as possible. It seems silly. I would buy one to like floor and bang gears a little bit because that's kind of the whole purpose. And I think that's what a lot of the auto industry has lost. A lot is like that special car.

Well, you talked about that, where you said that the vet seems like it sneaks by every time, right? After our time in Detroit and talking to these engineers, people that work there, a lot of it is that. They're doing skunk work type stuff. They're doing so much s*** under the table just to get stuff passed, just to prove a point or whatever. I mean, to get some of that stuff out there, it actually does happen that way. It's like how the GTO was born. It's like, I'm just going to do it and worry about it later.

Well, as soon as GM finds out about other side projects, they usually try to kill it. Yeah, the Grand National, they did everything in their power to make sure that the GNX was limited production, really expensive. Don't say it's faster than the Corvette. Don't market it like that. They'll do anything in their power to make sure that nothing competes with the Corvette, too, to a fault. Yeah. The Corvette should have internal competition. What's wrong with that?

It's often a business case is one of the things we learned from one of the off-camera conversations we had. It comes down to if you can craft a really smart business case and potentially risk your job, you can get something really cool, and that is the result of one really cool four-door out there still. But it's just a lot of stuff is underground, too. We've been in a test mule before. Let's put it that way. It's like you hope it comes to light. It probably won't. But if you think about it, if there's just a handful of those guys out there and only one comes to fruition, that's a cool car, that's a win.

Well, even the Dark Horse, or not the Dark Horse, the Blackwing, that almost seemed like it was not pre-planned, but in response because they came out with both of the V generation in V6s and it didn't have a good response. So they were like, they almost had a knee jerk reaction of like, oh no. So they had to do a Blackwing because like I don't really like that. I don't I think that it was dumb that they were like, this is our top of the line CTSV. And then they were like, oh no, we actually have a better one.

You know what breaks my heart? No, it's not the 2% female demographic. It's the fact that 80% of you guys are not subscribed and following the show. So go ahead, hit subscribe or follow. And of course, if you're on YouTube, hit that bell so you were notified when we drop a new episode. Let's get back to the show.

It was a knee jerk reaction to the market being unresponsive and they end up hurting their brand reputation in the long run for it. I talked to. I went to the press launch at Daytona of the the sixth gen ZL11 LE either track edition. That was really cool car when that came out and they were like, it was still stick shift. You could get it in like that car is a really good car. I think that car will hold value and like be a special car for a long time to come. And I was talking to some of the engineers and they were like, what do you guys think of the you know, the Cadillac ATSV? He was like, I got to work on that project. I was like, I think it sounds like s***. And he was like, he was like, yeah, I actually lost that argument. Like I lost on that side of things. Like he was like pushing because he was like, doesn't sound good. It doesn't sound like that was that was probably him on the back burner because he side as soon as I said it, he was like, yeah. And that's that's how the ATSV is like has fallen on on the wayside because like it just didn't didn't do it for people. And that car was almost right. It was stick shift. It's four door. But then it had just this lackluster V6 that nobody cares to modify anymore.

And they've just there is a little bit of a tiny market for those. But it's such a infant is always going to be.

I mean, there's market for modifying like a Mazda CX 90. You know what I mean? There's always going to be some people, but it's it's not anything worth noting, really. It's like, you know, ZZP performance is like it. Anything else is like, OK, well, and even them, it's like they know that that market's completely flatlined.

I'm sure it's it's weird. It's like I think it's like you can pick one up for like 25 grand or 30 grand. Now, and it's like you can like do some small mods to it and make like 500 wheel. But at that point, it's like, what else can you get for like 30 grand? Like there's a lot of options at that point.

And like to modify 500 wheels cool in a frickin Miata, right? Like this is a full bodied car. This is a full size luxury car. 500 wheels not going to feel as exciting. You know, we're talking about like you go get a Hellcat for that 700 wheel at the same ish weight. It's just feels silly. It's like horsepower is not everything, but it's like it kind of is like when we're talking about weight and horsepower together, like I don't want to hear like, oh, it's a momentum car. It's like, no, you're just an idiot. Like horsepower is important because not pretend it's not. Yeah, because all cars are about the same weight now. Hellcat was just early on being heavy. Now they're all caught up. Yeah, even the new C8 is not that light. But yeah, the new car market, I think, is the worst it's been in a long time. Like 2005 to nine has the coolest cars, even though they have their faults. But now we're just on this like I think is a pretty thing is going to be a steep downhill. I don't think any politician or any thing is going to save it. I don't think it's like, oh, well, Trump's going to turn it around because he's going to gut the EPA and gut the National Highway Transit Safety Administration. It's like, okay, cool. But like, there's still not going to have money to buy them.

The problem is the ball's already rolling, right? Like these things have been what we're going to see launch next year has been in development for the last three or four years.

Right.

That's just the reality of it.

Yeah. Even they've got some new diesel engines coming out. They're all going to have death, even though that's technically going to be maybe going by the wayside here.

So because nobody can commit to anything.

Yeah.

Nobody can commit to not having DF. Like that's crazy because you don't know what's going to happen by the time the car is done in development. There's been three law changes.

Yeah.

And development takes so long, even half of the engineers on these OEMs are compliance engineers. They're not even like making the cars better. They're just making sure that they're compliant with laws.

Yeah.

That's just like a it's just the death of the market and not to go full circle into our doom and gloom. But yeah, I think most people can feel that like most people walk into a dealership and they just see a bunch of mid size and full size SUVs. They don't see anything cool from any of the companies. Even like when Kia came out with the Stinger, that was like an attempt of cool that has faded into nothing. They didn't follow that up with like more cool. They just were like, OK. I mean, even sedans in general have gone away.

Yeah, sedans are a fading market as well.

You can't even like Tesla is getting rid of the S.

Are they?

Yeah, I didn't know that. And the X this year. So like sedans are like if you want an American sedan, you have to go to Cadillac. Can't go to Ford.

They're going to build a Chevy.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

They're just going to build humanized robots. Yeah.

Where do you go to get a sedan? Germany.

Yeah.

Maybe Japan. Like it's that kind of is like Kia's. I don't know, maybe because I like sedans, but I like unique ones, not commuter sedans. Yeah, I don't care about, you know, the eighth gen, 11th gen, 15th gen Honda Civic. I can't believe they're that far into that.

Well, how many gens of the F-150 do they have? Is it like 14 now or something?

Maybe. I don't even know.

You should know this f****** full.

I know.

I think it's like 12 or 13 for Honda, right? Yeah.

Well, I can go on about the market all day. I don't know if there's any more you want to get from me on that because there's, you know, I do this on my podcast, too, where we talk about things that aren't super relevant to the guest. And I kind of am like, I missed things that are more relevant to that person. And I talked about things that are not as relevant to them and more relevant to.

No, this is one of those like casual, more casual. Like, and this happens that everyone's on our show is like more casual, more specific. It really.

Oh, we go way off the wall sometimes. Yeah.

Oh, it's insane. This is more like a no to necessary kind of feel. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. We've only done six of those now. Seven, maybe. I don't know. We're due for one. We're supposed to do one right after World Cup. That never happened.

Yeah.

Yeah. Then I went and got a f****** job.

Oh, freaking corporate guy over here.

Speaking of World Cup, what's your favorite event out of all of the ones you've done?

I've I've not personally raced at World Cup, but I've been part of teams racing at World Cup when I was at Garrett. That one's really fun. Super grueling, though. You know, it's a lot of it's a lot of event. I like FL2K, but I'm biased because I live I can sleep in my own bed.

Yeah.

So that's there's some bias there for sure. TX2K was really fun when it was in Houston, I think. I haven't been in Dallas, so I can't really speak on that. But Houston was always really nice.

I liked Houston a couple of years.

I want Houston's cool. I mean, I guess it's kind of Houston. It's a bay town. Just kind of close enough. But favorite, you know, like my last TX2K in Houston was probably my favorite race I was at just because it was like the weather was right. The racing was right. The spectators, like everything kind of was good. Like that was really fun. Like there's there's some races that are better than others, even of the same race. Like some World Cups are better than other World Cups. This World Cup didn't seem as good as last year's. Maybe because, you know, this one got rained out and they didn't get to the finals. Last year's was probably a better World Cup. So it's almost even like. That changes it as well, but I like sick weeks. I'd probably I'd probably say if I could only do one race, it would be a drag and drive. Like if you're like, hey, you can only do one race a year. I'd probably pick a sick week.

That makes sense.

It's even the same amount of time. You're at the World Cup for seven days. You might as well do a sick week. Like some people are there for even longer than that. It's so long, so crazy that they people are there Monday to Monday.

It's kind of crazy when you think about it, right? Like you look at like even like a Formula One weekend is only three days long. And then you look at drag racing. It's like, man, this is like, could you imagine watching every single basketball game in a week? It's like it's insanity. It's an all day to like really, there's nothing like it.

It's not good for live feeds.

Yeah, I will die on that hill. Yeah.

Drag racing is tough to watch live. You have to really like it. You have to really like it.

And that is that, too, with all the downtime in between stuff, sometimes it's yeah, it can be a bit much.

It's tough. It's like it's a it's a lot. You're watching a lot of nothing and no live stream really explains what's going on. No, nobody's ever like shown you a ladder on a live stream. No one. No live stream like they don't even explain what class is coming up and why this class is different than that class. Yeah, I don't know. I just saw a blue car with radial tires. Why couldn't you race that other green car with radial tires? Like they don't even explain it. They just suck at live streaming most drag races.

Do you think that would help it a lot? Like get more popular as a sport is if you just had better commentary?

Yeah. I just I wish that like you are a guy.

You are a guy. You go in there and explain to us. Old blue versus little Betty White.

Well, like, you know, you watch a football game, right? They will cut to a couple of guys at a desk actually telling you what's going on.

Yeah.

And it's insane because you have more downtime at a drag race and they still don't cut to a guy that's telling you what's going on.

We go walk the pits and we have a good time with that. We know people there. We go. We chit chat. If you had another reporter walking around interviewing people in between.

They do that really good on Freedom Plus. They do really good live interviews, but that's still a far cry from actually explaining what is happening and why this next pass is significant. Oh, the sun's been out all day. You know, the track temps, this like you could really explain a lot of things that just. You just watching tractors, no one trying to no one trying to make this experience more immersive. No one. I'm just going to sit here and twiddle my thumbs or go watch.

So it sounds like you got a six figure deal doing this full time. I'm just saying, go do some commentary. I don't know. You got the you got the face for radio. You got the radio voice and you got the knowledge. Go over there and talk about the blue car.

I'll happily. I will happily. I will happily do it if they if they have a title, you need me.

Yes, send the email.

It will happen eventually. Someone will eventually do it.

Right.

And everybody will be like, wow, why did it take so long?

Yeah.

Why you because this formula exists. You can watch the Olympics right now. You can watch basketball, baseball, any sport. And the formula is the same until you watch drag racing and maybe NHRA. Someone has the formula, right? I would never know. No one would know because nobody watches. Yeah.

OK. Indulge me here. If you were to do this, like let's say you were the guy. You would obviously need a co-host to commentate. Who would you co-host be if you did something like that?

Well, you already have an announcer there. OK, so you already have one guy. You make it like even World Cup has multiple announcers. OK, you would just have to design it better to where you can. The announcers wouldn't the co-hosting, the announcers wouldn't even be as important as the stats guy. There's stats guys at all of these big networks that are feeding them information after information by AWS. Yeah, exactly like there's there's actual stats. People as full time like feeding these guys information of like every player, everything. And it just seems simple to me. But I don't know. Maybe that's because there's not enough money in live streaming races to justify it. And there's probably not enough money in it because not enough people watch it and not enough people watch it because it's boring.

It's an endless cycle. It's like you look at Nitro or Nitro Circus, Nitro Cross, like that got shut down. You know why? Because it's on f****** rumble. Why are we live streaming on rumble? Live and free. It's like, are you kidding me? Like, go to YouTube. Sorry, Dana White. That's a miss. That's a mist.

It's just the the drag racing is too tough to watch. It is. It's just as much as I love the sport, you have to be like a real fan to watch it. And that's that's what bums me out is they just like they they put these live feeds out for the assumed big fan, not the assumed like anybody will watch it.

Yeah.

And you can't just keep targeting the same people that already enjoy it because it just windows away every year. And maybe that'll happen anyways. Maybe drag racing is a dying sport. It might be for all I know. Most people don't have any disposable income anyways. So it's like it is a dying sport. I mean, you go to World Cup and it's pretty packed.

So yeah, because they don't have enough stands. Of course, it's going to be packed. If I go to a Walgreens and put 9,000 people in there too, or do you guys have Walgreens on your CVS? Sorry, that's my gripe with it. Yeah, that was my gripe. This is my first World Cup.

You won't have Walgreens for long, but yeah, anyway.

Yeah. No, me and Dan went to World Cup. It was our first time this year. For years, we've been hearing it's the best event, best event. And from a racing perspective, absolutely. It's f****** awesome. But as a spectator, it was, and that was our problem. We only talked to racers. We didn't talk to spectators. Like there was like nowhere. We had to watch it from like a quarter mile down the beams. It's just as a spectator wasn't great because we didn't have we didn't have anybody that had a pit against the wall or whatever. Like at Texas 2K, we got an RV back it right up against the fence. F****** golden.

And I don't do good as a spectator to begin with.

I guess that might be that too.

I get I get bored like this. I need to like do something like I can't sit still for that long.

We spend a lot of time walking through the pits and just talking to people.

That's still. Yeah. And granted, I was hobbling the whole time to walk that piss me the f*** off.

You see, like even even that, like you guys are the same way. It's hard. It's hard to watch drag racing. I don't watch any sport, though. I mean, like, you know, I don't want to watch baseball either.

I don't really care. I went to my first baseball game this summer. I'm like, f*** this. Like, I know America's pastime, like y'all need to find something better.

I went to a hockey game. That's nice. That's kind of short and sweet. Yeah. No, I like I've only been here for like an hour and 15 minutes. Hell, yeah. Let's go. I love.

I went to only one hockey game ever. And I'm like, this is awesome. Everybody's like the crowd erupts every day. There's just that's why I enjoy basketball over. I can't watch football. I can't.

Me and my son went to Monster Jam. Even that we're like 45 minutes in.

We're like, OK, we got the gist.

Think we got it. I think we're good. Even he was bored. He's two years old. He was like, yeah, I think we're good. Like, I think we're topped out.

How long is it? Monster Jam? I haven't been to one like 20 years. I don't know.

I like a 90 minute thing. I think it's also it's not crazy.

It shouldn't be. I mean, they kind of did the same thing back to back to back. And just we're also in a small arena, too. So that probably made it less exciting. We're in a hockey arena. Oh, pretty small. It was like it was tightly like they didn't have much room. I was like, wow, this is pretty cool. Like you go to a they do it in the football stadiums and they got some room there. But yeah, they do a good job, though, because that the whole thing is 90 minutes. Yeah, 90 minutes the show. Drag racing is even the top tier class, like Pro Mod is a full day event. It ends it. Sometimes they're not even like, you don't even know the winner.

That's only if everything goes like it's supposed to.

Even out the best World Cup, the winner, like the last race happens at midnight a lot of the time. The what everybody wants to see in drag racing happens at midnight.

Yeah, that's kind of tough when you think put it that way.

That's insane. And it's not like Formula One where it's like, yeah, it happens at midnight, but it's in Dubai. And I'm watching it like, you know what I mean? Like that happens. But. You're telling me to watch the full deal. I had to start at 8 a.m. and finish at midnight.

When you put it that way, it's a really difficult case.

Yeah.

Are you enough one guy, then you watch F1 or no?

I like a little bit. I just like Max Verstappen.

That's fair.

Yeah, I'm not. I'll I'm man enough to admit that, you know, a lot of people are like, I'm a big Formula One guy, but they really only care about watching Max.

Yeah, that's fair.

I like watching Max win. I don't really care about Indycar.

I want to get to that. I don't know if I can. You can't keep track of it all.

Like we try to, but I try to know it all at least a little bit. Like understand it a little bit and keep up. But I can't like watch it. Really, I get I get bored of it all. Even even NASCAR, we are we went to Daytona last year for the Arca race to watch Garrett. That was cool. But then once he was out, I was like, OK, yeah, I don't really have anybody else in it. I don't really have any dog in this fight anymore. Like whoever wins is kind of lost on me.

So that's your dog. That's your dog, Garrett.

Yeah, I wanted to see him win.

Yeah.

And once he was crashed by the chick, I was just like, OK, I've gotten my fill. Let's go home. Let's leave now before everybody leaves.

Yeah, that's what I like to do. Because getting out of those places is a nightmare, too.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's crazy that it's you'd rather leave.

Yeah.

And see the finish just because of the traffic.

Yeah.

I don't know. I mean, I think the best race of the year is Garrett's Christmas Tree Race. Yeah. Qualifying one day. It all ends in that same day. It's over by like eight o'clock at night. And it's pretty casual and fun. The racing isn't quite as serious. They turn cars around quicker because they're like, too bad. Come back up. Yeah. So it ends sooner, which, you know, you want to try it. Like that's that's the sport. It needs to be condensed as much as possible. At least the finals.

Do you think it's just going to be too big schedule wise? Like should just be like a Friday, Saturday, Sunday thing and leave it there?

Shouldn't end on Sunday. Should be a Friday, Saturday thing. Drag races shouldn't happen on Sunday. Yeah, I think that's silly. I think Sunday night at midnight racing ending is silly. OK, it should end on Saturday night.

If it's going to go that late, that is.

It just in general, like I don't see any reason why like a TX2K needs to end on Sunday. You've had people here for the last five days. Are you just trying to have one more day of charging spectators? Is that your goal? Is that like you could tell us where adults is the goal to get three days of charging spectators? Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Yeah. Or is the goal to give people the best show possible for two days? Friday, Saturday. And even with qualifying, like if you can't get it figured out in three qualifying passes, pack it up. That's plenty. You don't need more than three.

Doesn't isn't or aren't most of these events like five rounds of qualifying?

Yeah, a lot of them will.

Yeah. I think that's the beginning of the week is all qualifying. It's yeah.

Yeah. It's kind of intense.

It's a lot. And people wear their car out. And then suddenly Q1 comes or round one comes and they're frigging blown their s*** up after five rounds of qualifying. It's like you could have ran the whole race and not blown your s*** up. It's like you could have made it to the finals. I don't know. I just have some gripes with the sport, but it's only because I love it. If I didn't love it, I wouldn't care. Like, I don't I don't critique baseball because I don't care.

Right. Yeah. Nobody nobody critiques you more than your own family.

Exactly. It's only because I like the sport is why I critique.

Yeah.

I I guess that's not fully true because I critique Dodge and I don't like them. That's more that's for the love of the game. It's too fun.

Well, speaking of things blowing up, did you go direct to the 2J in this or was there any thoughts of going LS or anything?

It had an LS for three weeks. OK, I did a full LS swap and I made one pass in it. And I was like, nah, I took the LS out. It went like a 960 with an LSA supercharger on a 5.7, like super bare bones, basic stuff, horrible suspension. Like it went really like for the LSA stuff. It actually is a pretty respectable pass, and I probably could have gone way faster. And I just like didn't care to push it. People were like, oh, you know, you could have done this that like for like, you know, records or whatever. I was just like, nah, didn't really bother me to try that. But it was LS for a little while. And then it went to the 2JZ.

What inspired that? Like, I don't know any of this history.

So what inspired the 2JZ? Yeah, I was building a Mark 3 Supra. I had I had the engine built and a trans built to put it in a Mark 3 Supra that I had MK3 Mark 3 Supra. And it was going to be a cool streetcar, like 900 horsepower. And at that time, I was just like, why do I need a 900 horsepower automatic streetcar? What am I going to do with this? I could at least build something and actually go race it. So I had this b***** engine built that was better. That was more b***** than my 2J that I had. They had everything to put this car together. So I was like, well, I'll just combine two projects into one instead of spread myself thin on one project. On two projects, I'll just really kill myself on one. So I decided to put the 2J in this car because it all fit well. And I already had the engine. It was one of those things. I already had it.

So what did you do to the Mark III, then?

I sold it.

Just roller.

I was going to ask where that went.

Yeah, it was a cool car. But again, at that time, I just didn't care for streetcars. Even still, I don't really care that much for a high-power streetcar.

You don't have a draggy in this thing.

I have a draggy right here.

Let's go make some hits, dog.

And it broke and I never used it again.

That's hilarious.

Yeah, it stopped working. It was like I even had some good drags on the on the leaderboards on it for this car. Like I have some I have some decent draggy hits and I've I've made some pulls on the street. I've made a few pulls on the street. There's one with Fred from 1320 and the nitrous wasn't on. So like the turbo took a while to spool, but it was pretty terrifying once the turbo hit. Like it was it was on kill. Like the CO2 was on. It was making, I don't know, 68 pounds of boost. It was probably making 1500 horsepower in second gear. And we were like we were rolling into it. I was like, damn, this is a pretty bad idea. And I knew that that was a bad idea, too, because I was I did what I. What when I was with 1320, always told people not to do was don't do something you wouldn't do if I wasn't in the car like. And I did that. I was I don't make street hits in this car, and I made a street hit with with Fred and I was just not. I didn't really get into it that much, but like I definitely was more aggressive than I've been in that car. But I would love to. I mean, even there was a guy with a Bugatti local that I like, was kind of talking to a little bit, trying to roll race him on the highway with it just because I have no desire to roll race anybody on the highway. But like if I could roll race a Bugatti on the highway, like a Veyron, that's like childhood dream right there. And that would have been the coolest freaking video. I 75 roll racing a Bugatti in my s*** box, 2JZ Camaro. So I tried. It didn't happen. But I just don't care for street stuff, really. It just it just does not.

Is it the risk or just what is it that kills it for you?

It's the risk to others. Yeah, my life is one thing.

But like, but even if you were like middle of the night, like clear highway.

Yeah, and I mean, that's that's not as risky, but also like I'm 32 years old and have two kids. I'm not going out at 2 a.m. to frickin middle of the night.

But it seems like even 10 years ago, this wasn't kind of your jam or five years ago.

No, no, I used to all the time. I used to take that car out on. We have bridges in Florida and bridges in the Tampa area are street race spots because cops can't sit on them.

Yep. So as long as you're glue them to out here.

Yeah, pretty much.

That's what I heard.

You talked to Sisio. That's where a lot of their like good hits have happened. We're on, you know, on the highway, on the on the bridges. And people always get mad when you're like, you're talking about the bridges.

It's like, oh, how far is Sisio from here? Not that far, right?

Yeah, he's like 30 minutes. They're like 30 minutes.

I forgot they're out here in Clearwater. Yeah, because I know they had the Georgia spot and now here.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah, they're they're close, but people are always mad. And I'm talking about the bridges. And it's like, it's been the same for 30 years. This is not breaking news to any cop. Like, come on, they've always been the spot to to do hits on. And they're they're concrete and they're flat and they're good spots. And we used to go out there all the time Friday nights. Me and Garrett would go out there to make hits and race because. Of course, I mean, I was.

Yeah.

You're not convinced me.

Yeah.

And that car was 650 horsepower at the time. Supercharged stick shift LSA car like it was really fun to make hits in. I think the last time I made a hit was when I lost to Jeremy from Otto's Miata and I hadn't made a hit again on the on the bridge after that LS. Miata beat me. It was it was over. I was done. They retired me. But but again, it's just there's just not much joy out of that. It's like. I don't know. Maybe eventually it'll come back around like things do, but. I don't know, maybe because I've drag raced so much on a drag strip with like true safety and like actually been like really fast that it's gotten me to not be interested in that because this car has been 760 at 181. So it's like. That's enough that on a drag strip, I'd like to go faster, but like I don't want to go faster on a street. It's too unpredictable. Yeah, it's unpredictable enough on a drag.

People crash. Yeah, exactly. They crash there. Like, what's the I mean? Look what just happened to Kyle. I mean, he and I was at PRI with him. We were chatting just about that same situation. I asked him if he'd ever been anything hairy and then.

Yeah, you f****** jinxed him three weeks later.

I was like, oh, s***.

Freaking 2J guys. Yeah, yeah. They're the worst. Yeah, trust them. You know, why did that thing up with Kyle in the passenger seat?

Yeah.

Yeah, I guess he's fine, though, which is nice.

Yeah, it looks like from what I saw in the comments, it was like dislocated shoulder or something like that.

And it's only a matter of time, really.

Right.

It's not if or when. That's what I've always heard. Yeah. So like, well, you bang this. How many times have you whacked this into the wall?

Just the ones.

Just once. Just the ones.

I've had some.

He's got it close, though.

Yeah, mostly.

Yeah.

There's a bandaid, and it's been on there long enough to be faded. But it's like it's a lot to fix that, and it's not really that bad. Like, yeah, you know, it is what it is. It's a beat up car.

It's a $900 Camaro, right?

Exactly. It'll always be a $900 Camaro to me, even though it's got $50,000 in chassis work. Yeah, probably not quite as much chassis work. The chassis is really the only part of these cars that's hard to replace, like, you know, because the engine and everything like that, if I did wad up the car, all of that stuff comes out. The wiring harness, engine, like, that stuff's all reusable, but the chassis are the part that is the tricky part. And chassis shops are not fun to deal with. There's no hate on chassis guys. They're just, they take forever. Yeah, because they do good work. And that stuff's rough.

So then ultimately, as we kind of start to wind down here, what's next for you? What's the next year to look like? Obviously you have the newborn, but.

I'm going to put this car back together and bring it to some races.

Locally or?

Probably both. I try not to venture too far, mostly because I don't really have to. Bradenton has such good racing that it's allowed me to not have to venture far. And a lot of people that do race all over the country, race the same people in different states, which is a very funny thing. It's like, I've noticed that it's like, wait, you're you're five minutes from that guy. But like all those guys in Texas, and you just traveled to Kentucky to race all of those same guys.

What are you guys doing? A lot of people never really like thought about it, but you're 100% correct.

It's all the same guys chasing each other around the country.

Yeah.

And maybe you could say that's for different spectators, but it's like, oh, they don't get paid to, you know, to entertain those spectators.

Yeah.

So I'm going to continue to do that. I mean, I have everything to put it together. It just has to I just have to do it. It's just like a couple of hours where the work.

Yeah.

Go race that. Finish putting the first gen together. And then. I don't know, maybe buy something else. I have like a third spot like in my mind, I have like a. Like maybe a fourth spot, maybe a fifth spot, I don't know how many. There's like another spot open, I feel like in my garage of like what else to add.

What's the budget? I can help you nail the car.

It depends on the car.

If you took out your phone right now and you went through your Facebook Marketplace, what's your algorithm look like? What are the first three cars are going to come up?

The problem is I would love another drag car, but they are the most expensive to build because of the safety aspect. It's really easy to build a street car. You can build any street car for half the cost of a drag car because you don't have the cage work and you don't have the safety aspect. But then you end up in the YouTube scenario of like, what do you do with it? Like these guys, these YouTubers that build these Billy b***** street cars, these thousand horsepower street cars, like, what do you really do with it? You really use it as much as you think. Maybe if you live somewhere near mountains and you can like go on some curvy roads every now and then. But most of them don't. Most of them, they park their cars and they sit. They do all this work. They build them. All the sponsors get on board. And unless it's like a true purpose built car, they just kind of sit and that sucks. Like Taylor Ray is a good example of like he always says, I have a car that's useless. I get rid of it. And a lot of YouTubers have useless cars. Yeah, it just happens because you you have to build. You have to keep building in automotive YouTube. Yeah, you have to be like whether you want to or not. Your next project, you need a next project. And a lot of them just end up building useless stuff and you either sell it or it burns to the ground and you're done with it. It's not really much other way out of like a project if you have like a fan base, too, for a lot of these YouTubers.

How do you mitigate? So, OK, again, not not to pry too much, but like, so what is what is your job nowadays? Like, do you mostly just kind of do like the Bogetti stuff like on Facebook or are you doing the project cars? Like, where where do you land nowadays? What is it that you care to do?

Um, I've designed it in a way where. I was afraid of the project car thing I did, like my bread and butter was project cars for a long time, and that actually scared me. So I started doing stuff where I would just sit in front of a camera and talk because I knew that I could do that no matter what, whether it was rainy out, whether it was too hot to go drag racing, whether I was waiting on parts. So I diversified in a way where I could do both, talk to a camera with zero need of like, to do a project car, you have to first spend $30,000.

Yeah.

Then you can finally start making money off of it. So I was like, oh, that seems like a zero sum game. So I diversified to be able to do both. And thankfully, that worked over the long run. What will work next year? Who knows? That's kind of the fun part of it in a way. Like I was even saying earlier, like you got to be able to pivot well enough to to do it. And I think that established YouTube channels don't have to. But now YouTube is even more competitive than ever post covid because there's more creators and there's less people watching. And short form has become so, so strong. Yeah, that unless you're really established, you're kind of for lack of a better word, a bottom feeder.

And that's that's most of reality, though. Yeah.

Yeah. And most people, whether they accept it or not, you kind of kind of the only it's only really like two levels.

Bottom feeder or at the top is that case shape that you brought. Yeah, and that was the post-COVID thing, because the boom, it was a boom of people watching creators and then people creating, and then it follows by a bust. And it's a little bit of a bust, and I think, unfortunately, I feel that I don't think that advertisers are gonna be spending quite as much this coming year as they spent last year. And that is what all YouTubers, all creators depend heavily on, is hoping that these brands think that your audience will buy s***. And if your audience isn't buying s***, you're gonna have a bad year. Whether they're, you know, I don't do ads, whether they're direct ads like that or they're just the ads that turn on automatically.

I was gonna say, the ones that turn on automatically were f****** brutal today listening to it on the way here. Because it's like slightly louder than your episode. And it's like, oh, here's another Culver's ad. God damn it.

Yeah, you see, I don't even have control over that. I crank my volume up as much as I can.

Yeah.

And then it's just, YouTube does their own thing. It happens on my TV.

Yeah.

When I'm watching cable, the advertisements are louder.

It's so inconsistent sometimes. Yeah.

Yeah.

I try to get my episodes like level and then it's like, all right, please YouTube, don't f*** me. But no, we're listening to it on Spotify on the way out here. It was just slightly like it was just.

Yeah. Spotify ones are louder.

Yeah. Yeah. Who's your who do you host through again?

I haven't even put the last like eight on.

On any audio platform, you just go direct to like Spotify.

No, I just put it right on YouTube. Oh, they haven't even been on audio platforms like Spotify, Apple, nothing. Oh, God, because I've really come to dislike their user interfaces.

It's bad. It's really bad.

So bad. And the pay is so bad.

Yeah.

Yeah. But for me, I do like you say, I put in my buds and I work. So I like listening to YouTube premium.

I love YouTube premium.

No, come on.

If there's one thing to own, it's YouTube.

Yeah, I know. I grew up having direct TV, all that s***. When we finally cut the cable, I'm like, no, no shot. I'm not doing it.

I'll cut all of them before YouTube premium.

Really?

I think so, too. Actually, I would probably I'll get rid of Spotify premium because I can like, yeah, everybody is. Everybody puts their podcast on YouTube anyway.

Yeah.

All the music is on YouTube premiums.

Great.

I watch too many videos on my Spotify. Thanks, Cooper.

Yeah, that's all you need.

Just save me 20 bucks.

YouTube premiums better. Anyways, I wonder what uses less data. Probably Spotify. You can't really download them. But I don't know.

Spotify is video heavy now, too, though. Like a lot of the podcasters are starting to do video on there.

Yeah, which is silly to me.

It's the Rogan effect. What can you do?

Yeah, I think he kind of forced that. It's just silly.

Yeah. I was listening to a recent... I don't listen to Rogan too much, but I was listening to a recent episode. He's like, honestly, I was kind of hoping that Spotify would kill. Like he was like hoping to like have like 10% of the followers or whatever. Like apparently, like when they like transferred from YouTube to Spotify, Jamie like freaked out. He's like, man, we lost like over half our audience. And Rogan's like, good. Now we could be less famous.

Yeah, because he I mean, he doesn't care because he got a hundred million dollar deal.

That's what I'm saying.

He's not dependent on but that that just goes to show you that their ad revenue actually sucks. Like they don't have a good infrastructure. None of them. Spotify, Apple, like they're just for the most part, taking advantage of the podcasters.

Oh yeah, like I remember talking with this somebody in the past is like they're trying to make monetization on one of the apps they were building and they're like, yeah, we're going to pay like quadruple what Facebook does because like the amount that they keep is insane. Yeah. Yeah. But then we're not working out.

But I was going to say, well, that's the other flip side.

But there's another reason for it.

Facebook goes up and down with their ads, too. And then the unfortunate thing with Facebook is they've, you know, because it's monetization monetized on Facebook, it's created this shock and awe economy on Facebook, which has gotten a little rough for the consumers. I think that they should put on Facebook posts, this is monetized. I think it should be like on the top next to the names.

I think you could just start scrolling past it.

Well, then you know that there's that the real incentive.

Yeah. That's a good idea. I think it's getting better. But I have one last question before Dan's last question. So obviously you've built a pretty good thing, you know, with everything that you've done over the last few years. What are you most proud of?

Definitely my family. I've built, I'm most proud that I've built a life where I get to spend a lot of time with them. I mean, I get to wake my kid up in the morning, both of them, and then put them down at night and not have to report to a boss besides my wife. So I'm definitely proud of that. I mean, that's that's that's all I wanted. I wanted to be able to create my own schedule and be my own boss in that way and not have to worry about, you know, oh, man, like the boss is going to be pissed. Like that. That's great to me. I'm all for that. That's all I needed. And I'd rather, you know, struggle through. Not that I like struggle, but I'd rather fight through the day to day and the struggles of being my own boss than have to worry about, you know, leaving at 6 a.m. every morning before my kids wake up and then getting home when it's dark. That that to me seems the worst. But I grew up my both my parents owned small businesses.

So it kind of makes sense.

I have a small business and I feel like I would much rather just go to O'Reilly's and clock in nine to five sometimes.

Wait till you clock in nine to five.

If I worked at O'Reilly's, I would be the smartest car guy there. I'm just telling you that 14 year old kid that worked there would be shocked at all the s*** I knew about cars. I send my 15 year old daughter in there sometimes and they're like, she's like, I just need this. Shut the f*** up and give it to me. Yeah.

Well, there's also the difference of being a small business owner versus creating your own job, which I definitely have done. I don't consider myself a small business owner. I'm more of a I created my own job, you know, which kind of. The created your own job difference is if you took a week off, is their income coming in?

Right.

That's that's the difference. And yeah, like I can't just take time off. I don't have like other people that will fill in like if I once I turn off the lights in here, there's nobody that's going to work on that car or film a video. So creating your own job is definitely something that I'd like to work my way out of and have a business that could be running like of some sort. But I also don't want to sell anything because selling things isn't that fun either.

Yeah.

I'm dealing with that stuff.

Yeah. No, that's fair.

It's very, I don't want to be in sales in that way. It's not that, it's just not what I want.

Dealing with vendors and s***. Oh man, it's insanity. Yeah. Yeah. You report to someone at the end of the day. Might be one boss or a million consumers.

Yeah. Then they're all your boss.

Yeah.

And YouTube, my audience is my boss in a way, but not in the same way as that.

And you've built it off of what you like to do. That's the thing, dude. I've had people with this podcast be like, oh, this guy would just have anybody on the show, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, yeah, because I want to. It's like, I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing this for me. And then putting it out there and some people resonate. My last episode I posted was a road course episode. You remember back in the early 2000s, there was like the diesel Audi that won Le Mans and all that. Like this guy was the engineer for that team. One of my worst performing episodes on my own care. Yeah. It's like, it's a cool f****** episode.

Yeah, I think about it the same way. Like, I'm not, I'm not. If I was just trying to get the biggest guest on at all times, that would be a horrible, that would be miserable.

Be a stressful existence.

Yeah, I'd be just talking to a bunch of YouTubers every day. I don't want to talk to a bunch of YouTubers.

I enjoyed the one you had your doctor neighbor on.

Yeah, he's really cool.

Yeah. Yeah.

He's been a blessing to have next door.

I bet.

Having a doctor.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's the same way. I'll have people. I was talking. I had a phone call the other day with Adam, who was the guy that was carrying the podium on January 6th.

Oh, no.

About coming on.

You had him on the show.

I was just talking to him about coming on. He's running for our local commissioner. So, OK.

Oh, really?

Like, how would I not have him on?

Yeah.

He's going to be the guy that helps us save the track.

Oh, yeah.

But also it's hilarious because he was the guy that spent 75 days in jail for Gary and Nancy Pelosi's podium.

Or her insane.

They don't call it a podium. They call it something else. I can't remember. It's like it's the desk. It's something. But yeah, like those kind of people are fun.

Yeah, I've thought about branching out from automotive a few times. I say or starting something separate. I don't know, because I genuinely have like a thirst for knowledge, you know. So it's like, I don't know. We'll see what happens with that. I do appreciate that you're able to do it successfully.

Sometimes not successfully, but you just have to do it. And so, you know, it is what it is. Yeah, it's the same deal with starting this podcast like that you started. Like you had to just deal with eating s*** for a little while. And maybe it works out. Maybe it doesn't.

That's kind of how it did sometimes. Like I look at it. I'm like, how did we get there? And it's like, oh, yeah, that's right. Lots of like so taking on his day job. I've actually been able to like be less stressed. Like imagine a world where like a normal job is less stressful. Like it's like I was like, all right, cool. I could breathe. I'm like, holy s***. I actually just did that for three years.

Well, you guys do it in the most commendable way possible. You and like two of, you know, yeah. What is it?

Street street?

Oh, yeah.

I thought about talking to him as well on this trip, but he's he's on the complete opposite side. He is three hours f****** east.

But you guys travel. Yeah, I built a studio. I don't want to travel.

I was like, yeah, I couldn't get people to come to me.

Yeah.

We're in f****** Minnesota. You're you're you're braver. You got the track. What?

I know.

It's from here.

That's it was out of like laziness in a way where I was like, I'll just build a studio so I can have a studio for about 50 episodes. Yeah.

And then we're like, and then I saw what Tukes is doing. And I always I always like to give my I give him his flowers, dude. Like, yeah, I started like a little before him. But like, honestly, that dude has inspired me to like do a lot of the things that I've done with this show. And I'm like, I'm like, we got to f****** travel, dude. Like, Minnesota is cool. We still try to have like one or two guests a month or whatever from Minnesota. But I'm like, we got to see the world. And then one of our first trips was Detroit. Was it the first one?

No, it was Chicago, I think, was the first one.

Yeah. And then just like it was September of 24. Right. We just started traveling. I'm like, all right. We just never stopped. It's like once a month. Go load up on four episodes.

So who do you think your biggest get would be on this podcast? Who do you in what are you like pushing for that you think is like an attainable one?

Oh, it's like to get someone on the show.

Yeah. Not not like a media like a social media guy, because like, you know, there's there's obviously those ones like the the YouTubers and stuff.

Maybe like a you know, the Garrett would be a big get.

He would be.

Yeah, he would be in one particular way. But like, I'm curious, like, what's what's your exact?

I don't know. Maybe like a like a Jim Farley or like somebody like that.

I want to Jim Farley in the worst way. And I still kind of do. Tim Kaniscus would be another one. Here's the crazy part, though, is like if I put my title and my whatever, you know, like do my thumbnail, Tim Kaniscus, it probably won't get crazy views. Like, let's be honest, like, you know, if you were to get someone like Cleetus, crazy views, but Tim Kaniscus.

But that's what I mean by like your personal, like, wow, this was a really big get. Like, that's kind of how I see it. Because like, yeah, Garrett is a great views and he is a big get. But it's a little, it's a little different than like maybe like your personal, like.

It really depends, like, for example, I'm really excited to have Jay on, right? Like, you know, ever since I started following his stuff a couple years ago, like I love talking to guys that are 20, 30 years ahead of me because I think there's just so much knowledge there. Like, I would never have a 26 year old on the podcast. Like, that's just kind of like one rule I have for myself. I don't care unless you're like, you know, a Formula One driver. That's a different story. But like, I don't know if there's any specific guest bucket list. I think it's just I just want to talk to cool people who do cool s***. It still kind of comes back to that. Yeah, like we've had some OEM guys on the show that don't have Facebook profiles. Like, those are pretty awesome gits. Like, they're really f****** sweet episodes. So I think it comes down to, like you mentioned, you don't want to talk to a bunch of YouTubers. I've had people connect me with like, you know, like, oh, this guy's got this many TikTok followers. I'm like, I don't give a f***. We went to a SEMA party this year, and there was probably like two or three. Huh?

You guys are brave.

Well, it was a content creator party, too, on top of it.

Yeah, it f****** sucked.

It was boring.

There was like 300 influencers there. I didn't know anybody. I don't know any of these people.

Just out on the Catskins Elvis suite party to go to that.

He doesn't know what that is.

He might.

Well, you guys leave. You do it longer, and you get there, and you realize like, damn, it's all kind of stupid.

It's all kind of sucks.

Because there's like some car guy celebrities, too, that are interesting. Even like there's like a Leno or something like that is like somewhat interesting, but they've done it so many times.

They've done so many interviews, that's the thing is like, I kind of like the guys that haven't done a mountain of interviews, but are known. Like for example, like, Blank hands, is this Shawn? Whatever the f***, from Street Outlaws? No, it's not Shawn. The f*** can't, Big Chief. Like that'd be one I'd love to have on the show. Like, cause I also binge watched Street Outlaws earlier this year, cause I never watched it as a kid, right? So I was like, I watched all 14 seasons in two months. But anyways.

I still feel like Jay Leno would be awesome.

Absolutely.

I still think that, I don't know, I feel like him and I have a little bit of a different style. And I think you kind of do the same thing. We get off on these tangents like this. And we come in here with, no, there's no notes. We don't have anything. I think if you just get down to where it's just car guys b***********, it's just one of those deals where he's talked so much. Yeah.

He's done so many of them that it's almost like it makes it less impactful because there's so much out there. I mean, even like standard YouTube video is 25 minutes.

Yeah.

He's just done a lot. And there's nothing against him. It's just like, there's people out there that are more, I guess, diamonds in the rough a little bit.

Who's your big GAN?

I would love to have some higher politicians on would be interesting.

It's not automotive then.

Yeah, I like to try to talk to ones in the automotive, like, say, Lee Zeldin, head of the EPA, love to try to delve into that side of things, because I like to bridge the politics with automotive. I think that kind of stuff would be really interesting. Like, that brings the two perspectives into it, the automotive side with what's going on in the government that they normally don't get fielded questions for.

That's a big GAN. Yeah, you think you could get it?

Probably if I pressed harder on it, you know, it'd be one of those things I could have to really do some legwork.

Sure.

And then the other side of things like then I got a leg deal with giving them. I guess they don't have to get editing rights if they're politician. They're kind of kind of pinned in there. I normally don't give anybody editing anything. You were saying you send people stuff.

Yeah, I mean, it goes in. So a little insight into my process for the listeners as well, if they're made it this far into the episode. What I'll do is I'll be like, hey, well, three steps after the episode. Hey, good. Anything you want to cut immediately. And then I'll just like just before airing it like two, three days ahead, I'll be like, anything come to mind. Are you sure? When you call that guy, I'm just going to censor this. But then if they say, yeah, I'd like to hear it, I just give them f****** black video. I'm like, hey, play it a 4X speed. Let me know by this day, or I'm just airing it as is. So that's kind of what my process has been.

One thing that I had to edit out, which I found really interesting, was I talked to the owner of Tile Wastegates, and they asked me to edit out the part where we were talking about Chinese wastegates.

I had the China thing edited a few times in recent episodes.

And like, I mean, who's been copied more than Tile on a wastegate? There's almost more fake one. Like seeing a real one felt rare for a while. And like, dude was super smart, really awesome conversation. But like, yeah, that was an interesting one. I was that we took out. And then I ended up posting it as its own clip because I convinced them. I was like, come on, you got to talk about the Chinese wastegates. Yeah, they were just mad that he didn't say like they were bad quality.

Yeah, that makes sense.

They were like the media guy was like, I was yelling at the screen, like, save their s***, say that they are s***, say that the Chinese ones suck. And he just wasn't. And I don't think that was because they're good. It was just because he didn't think about it. You know, it goes without saying type of thing.

We're in a weird climate right now with the whole China thing. Like me and Dan talk about this, especially after, you know, talking to quite a few people that source from China. And it's like seeing stuff, it's like, it's actually a lot of times better than the United States stuff, which is insane. Like I, no offense, but it's like, it's like, it's crazy. Like my whole perspective on China has changed in the last six months, I'd say, probably for you too as well. Like, I love American made and if we could have more American made, f*** yeah. But we have a long way to go. But a lot of people on the show, not a lot, but a handful of people on the show is like, they'll source stuff overseas, but like they don't exactly like, it's kind of like, I sourced it overseas. You know, like, you know, they're not like trying to advertise it too much, but like, we all know.

I mean, it's just silly to be like, oh, it needs to be all made in America. Cause like, well, guess what? You're going to have to consume less s***. You're going to have to buy less stuff if you want it all made in the US. Because we don't have the capacity to manufacture all that. Even when you listen to like Mike Rowe talk about it, he's like, there's 200,000 manufacturing jobs open right now that aren't filled. So it's like we don't even have the capacity for what we got now. They can't even build submarines in the US or warships because there's not enough employees. So it's like, what kind of we think that we're going to suddenly start building, you want me to make that fuel jug in the US out of pure just like pride? It's like, I'd rather than build up something more important. Let's try to triage here a little bit, like important stuff maybe in the US. Unimportant stuff that if push came to shove, we could stop ordering and buying made overseas. That's where I think it's a little silly. It's like, I just don't think the capacity is there. So I don't have this like rose colored lenses of like, it all needs to be American made, get all of it. It's like, it's not possible.

No, not even close.

Yeah, it'd be awesome. But I guess overseas has a 20 year head start on us.

But there's like a billion and a half people in China. Yeah, they just have more capacity than us. So it's like, we just have to kind of accept that.

Well, I've also, I was, I can't remember who I was listening to, but they talked about, they have more like tooling experts. So for all of the engineers and tooling stuff that we have here, they have that hands down better than we do.

Yeah. And like, that's a little sad.

Yeah.

But they've also spent more money in promoting engineering and stuff like that.

There's also subs. So I can't remember. I need to f****** fact check to somewhere where I heard this or found this. But literally, like when it comes down to it is like, apparently, we as a nation subsidized China in the early 2000s, that basically got them to be this huge manufacturing mandate. It was supposed to be like a temporary thing, and we just never stopped subsidizing it. So that's why there's this massive head start.

Yeah, it sounds similar to like NAFTA, you know, Bill Clinton type of stuff, where it was North American Free Trade Agreement that everybody really gets up in arms about because we allowed the free trade between Canada and Mexico. And that's when all the cars started being made in Canada and Mexico. And that's why, I mean, half of the cars that Americans buy, they're Chevy or Canada or Mexico. I mean, this car came from Canada because it was 99 was built in Canada. Yeah, like I was laughing at somebody and they were like, Oh, Crown Vic, most American made. It's like they're all made in Canada, like almost American car. They were like, it's just like, it's just such an American car. It's like, it's a Canadian car.

Wasn't the Tesla the most American car up until recently too?

I think it was. Yeah, or Honda was for a long time, I think. Yeah.

And was it the Toyota Tundra was the most American made truck? Yeah. And I always laugh at Toyota because they got that 1781 edition truck or something stupid. It's like their Tundra is a 1781 edition. It's so pandering to Americans to want that. And it's just the year that the factory that they're on was the land was purchased by some person before them was purchased in like 1781. So they used that year. I'm like, it's so pandering. Yeah, there's no reason that year should be on there. Besides, like Americans think that it sounds cool. But it's just the funniest thing. Because like I asked somebody with a toy. I'm like, why is there a 1781 or whatever it is on the side of it? And he's like, I don't know. It's literally just to market it. It's just the lamest marketing. Yeah, but it works. People eat it up.

You want to rip the usual three?

Yeah, this will be fun after that conversation. So 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 have an limited budget? You can put a 2JZ in anything you want.

Do I have to maintain them? Are they reliable? Like, you know what I mean?

Ooh, I've never been asked that question.

You know what, it blows my mind, right?

Like, you were saying, yeah.

Cause like, there's like pie in the sky, like, oh, it would be so cool to own that. But it's like-

Let's pretend you took your limited budget.

Like, I love a Bugatti Veyron, but it's like, I can't own a Bugatti Veyron. Even if it was given to me. But even if it was given to me, I couldn't afford to own a Bugatti Veyron.

Let's pretend part of the unlimited budget is you set aside a million dollars to maintain it. Okay. Okay.

So like, perfect show car, it'd probably be a Veyron, just because everybody that talks about it, they're like, they're the best cars to drive. They're just enjoyable. Maybe a McLaren F1, but that seems like not even as cool of a car to own.

What? You don't want a piece of s*** Koenigsegg? But Steve Hamilton said so many nice things about it.

Yeah. But there's just something special about that.

I know.

Or maybe like, maybe go back to the Doug DeMiro and do like a Carrera GT, stick shift, 9,000 RPM red line. Okay. So we'll go Carrera GT is like the show car. Track car, I'm going to assume drag racing.

Whatever you want to do. Yeah.

We're going to go for a, we'll go for a, like a probably end up being like a C7X275 car, just because C7 body race cars look sick. And then daily driver probably end up being like the newest and nicest Denali pick up truck. I think it's only 500, you know, diesel then. Yeah.

Yeah.

It's just like, it just works. It's just as nice to drive. Like, it's just nice to daily drive like a big, like I drive a 2500. It's just nice. Like it fit and finish is good. You could tow your house down if you want to. I always park it near my house during like hurricanes and stuff too, because we've had to ride out a few. And it's nice to know that like I'm in a truck that could push other cars out of the way. Yeah, if you really hit the fan.

My F-250 was hit by a garbage truck and it's still going. So yeah.

Well, like imagine like hurricane season. Power lines are falling down. There's no gas available anywhere. Floods are like floodwaters are rising. You want something that could both go through the floodwaters and push a, you know, regular commuter car out of the way if need be, because I got two kids and I will push your car out of the way if it is in mine.

Well, you're from the Northeast, so I don't know if you've gotten it as bad as we can get in the Minnesota, Wisconsin area. But like, would you say that's worse than your worst blizzard you've ever been through?

Yeah, because we never really had much big blizzards on Long Island. Okay, we're too close to the ocean on either side and it keeps it from getting too blizzardy. We would get a lot of wind, but never like a lot of standings now.

Sure.

Okay.

So that'd probably be the three.

Well on that note, where can everybody find you?

Here on my property, because I don't like corporate events. But Cooper Bogetti anywhere, really easy to find. Anywhere you search it, you will find me by the thousand, because there's, you know, you put it into Google and there's everything under the sun because it's easy to... I was lucky with a simple name on both, simple to find and also unique enough. So it...

Yeah, mine's not an easy one to type in any way. So it's like, that's why we just do Minnoxide.

Yeah, that works. Yeah, Bogetti, search that anywhere. And I'm probably the only one that comes up.

Well, sweet Dan, how do we usually do these intros? It's been a minute since I've done an intro. Thanks for existing.

Well, you can ask for people to find me. It's at Gunna Garage.

Gunna Garage, yeah.

We're trying to post more content, but my content lady just broke her legs. So she should be making all kinds of content from her bed right now.

That's what I've been doing for three years. Yeah. Awesome. Well, Cooper, thank you so much for coming on the show. Yeah, thanks for having us, man. This is pretty sweet. Dan, thanks for existing and we'll see y'all next time.