191. Tom Taschner Moving to US to Drag Race, Drag & Drive Builds, and Starting Lucky 8 Performance

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, and I'm here with my Ford loving co-host, Dan, Mr. Gunnar Garage, for the last podcast of our PRI trip. I'm exhausted.

Are you getting tired of saying that yet?

I'm going to pass out during this episode. But nonetheless, shout out to Mr. Michael Narc, of Drag Drive Repeat, because he got me hooked up with you, Mr. Tom Taschner. Yes sir. Of Lucky 8 Performance. So why don't you go ahead, give us a little bit of a background of who it is, who you are, and honestly, we'll just go from there.

See, my name is Tom Thomas, but nicknamed Tom Taschner. I'm the owner and founder of Lucky 8 Performance. And I started my whole adventure, actually, with Lucky 8 and still living in Europe. So I'm originally from Austria. So you will hear a lot of eh and mmm and mmm and accents and all kinds of weird words probably, but I'm trying to do my best. And me and my wife and my kid, we packed all our stuff in 23 and moved to the States and started from scratch with a shop and trying to live the dream here. And we do that so far. So, yeah, we started. I started to travel in, I think, 2016 to my first, no, 2017 to my first reg week. And I was in contact with Dennis Taylor a lot about through Facebook and Messenger. And we talked nearly every day for like two or three years. Sure. And then finally made up my mind and said, okay, well, you know what? I will pack my stuff and fly to Chicago and meet you guys in Cordova for the first reg week. And yeah, and the rest is history. I was hooked about drag and drive stuff and all these people. And I can call them basically family. And they helped us a lot with the whole project. And now we're here and enjoying life.

So at that point, did you have a car at that point? Did you shift over here or how did that work?

Well, I had a shop over there.

Beside my main job, I worked for the Federal Railways as a technician for bridges and tunnels and stuff. So nothing car related at all. And I had my own little performance shop on the side. And we did a lot of drag racing, kind of drag racing. We don't have any official track. So we went to different countries, Hungary, Croatia, Germany, everywhere to find airports to drag race where they had little events and stuff. But yeah, that was pretty funny all the time. And then I built a car and I had a shop for American cars. So I worked on American cars. I fixed them for people just to get a positive inspection. It's a pretty hard thing over there to get a positive inspection for anything that's kind of modified or older. Because if there's a drop full somewhere, no chance. Because if there's a little bitty, tiny piece of rust somewhere, no chance.

Sure, really.

So yeah, it's terrible.

Really?

That was one of the biggest reasons why we moved. I mean, can you imagine you want to put two 45s instead of two 35s on your car and that's illegal? And you have to go through the government to get approved for having different tires on your car? And it's just the bottom of everything. It's like wild. I can tell you hours of stories and laws, but that's not why we're here.

Well, we got a couple of hours.

Anyway, I had an 06 Duramax and I had my 78 Caprice that I started to... I actually planned to just do some things over the winter and drive it in season 2020 just as a road car.

This is over in Austria still?

That was still over in Austria. That was in 2019. I traded it for a Cadillac, a 63 Cadillac I had. I just traded it for work. I found that Caprice in Facebook somewhere and texted a guy. I saw he had four, five, six Cadillacs and I had this one to restore actually. I called him and said, hey, you want interesting trading for something? I have some vehicles in the shop. He came by and we did a one-to-one trade. I got that Caprice that one of my ex-girlfriends owned before and one of my friends owned before, so I have a long history with that car. Then COVID hit us in 2020 and everything was closed. We couldn't do anything, so over there, it was terrible. So I just took the whole car apart to the bare body, basically, started to rewire everything. Found a crashed C6 Corvette and pulled that LS2 out of there, had 15,000 miles on there and put a TH400 in there, painless wiring kit and rebuilt the 10 bolt in the back. It wasn't the best idea in the end. I shipped those two cars. When we planned all this stuff, I drove across Europe to Belgium and brought these two cars to the port and picked them up in Galveston. And we drove to Arkansas, still on Austrian license plates and stuff. So that was pretty funny on gas stations. People were like, what the heck is that?

This is going to be weird for me, because you have people here that are into European cars, right?

Yeah.

But to be over there and being into American cars, is there a pretty decent culture or is it?

Well, actually, yeah. So you have very, very cool and rare cars over there. I have a good friend over there that has a hot rod museum. And if you as an American or like a hot rod lover, you walk through there, you would cry. That dude has parts. People would kill over here for that stuff. Really? It's crazy. He's doing trips every year for two, three weeks just buying vehicles and fill them up with parts. And he had an old farmhouse and he built a museum out of it. So there's like a first floor with hot rods and dragsters and all kinds of cool s***. And then you have the old basements. It was like the old wine basements and stuff. And you walk through each of them. And this is just one is filled with flathead parts. One is filled with gauges. One is filled with hammies and superchargers and all kinds of stuff you can't find anywhere anymore, you know? So yeah, it's a pretty decent scene. It's a pretty weird scene in some kind of, but yeah, it's pretty big.

So kind of go through your first drag and drive experience. Actually, hold on. How did you even find out about drag and drive?

Well, through Dennis, through Dennis Taylor and Alex.

Okay. So you're just watching them on YouTube at this point or?

Mostly Facebook.

Facebook.

So I met Dennis in Facebook. I can't even tell you what year. And then we started to talk a lot about the differences in cultures and car scenes. And I told him the stories about all ridiculous laws. And he told me the stories about their b***** cars they have and what they can do over here. And then in 2017, I saw my first drag week and I was like, wow. You mean where I'm from? I told you, if you have the wrong tires on you're done. If they pull you over, they take away your license plates and you're stranded, you know? And seeing her bad marrow back in the days in 2017, running eights there and driving from track to track is what's like totally insane for us, you know?

Sure.

Yeah.

Well, so when you were in Austria, so you were only able to, like, was there actual drag strips anywhere? Or?

No, no.

Okay.

There is one drag strip in Italy, but that's still just an airport. There is, I think, one. The only professional drag strip we have is in Germany once a year.

Okay.

That's the finals. That's the Nitrolympics. They call that. But that's like a 2000 mile trip, you know, for us and ship the car over to the UK. Then we have some tracks in Sweden and one in Malta down there. So that's basically it. So we had some prep tracks, but that's old Russian airports from World War II, you know, and pretty decent. We had tracks like old airports, people ran 624s, you know, but every couple of weeks, maybe four or five times a year, you were able to race there. But yeah.

So is it not a very big scene because it's so hard to...

I mean, if you go to the Nitros, you have everybody from every country in Europe coming to that one event to race there. So you have like 400 to 500 teams. But if you go to smaller events, there's a lot of import. I mean, over there, it's domestic. Volkswagen stuff is big. And yeah, you have to go to another country. So from my shop that I had, we had like 25 minutes to Hungary, we have 18 minutes to Czech Republic, we have two hours or three hours to Croatia. So we drove through multiple countries just to drag race for a weekend somewhere.

So then, when did you end up meeting Narx, Michael Narx?

I met Mike, I think on sick week.

Sick week, okay.

Yeah, my first sick week was in 22. That was actually, I guess, the first sick week. And yeah, I just packed my stuff and took a flight into Tulsa, took a rental car and enjoyed the first sick week. And that's where I met Tom Bailey. And, and Dave Schroeder and all these people were pretty good with them. I'm very happy to know so many people. And they're great guys, great people. And they helped us a lot to go to the races. And yeah, just really cool. And I think I met Mike on, was it drag week 22 or 23? I can't remember. Yeah. Actually, it was over a friend that he's from, I met him, he races sick week and some other events in the Volkswagen.

Oh, sure.

And I saw him at sick week and said, man, that's so cool. It's like a Volkswagen. That's the stuff I know from over there doing racing. So I just started to talk with him and he is also from Arkansas and he's pretty good with Mike. And I think I met Mike through him.

Okay.

That's Brandon with a Volkswagen MK7.

Yep. So what did racing look like? Were you doing several events throughout the year or just the one event or...?

Well, you mean overseas?

No, over here. Once you got here.

Well, we never raced any Dragon Drive. We took the car to Sikwart and we took the car to LS Fest and different things and finally ready to convert the car to be a Dragon Drive car. So I have to build a cage or build a 4A twin turbo motor for it. And I have to do a lot of work on a car to make it compatible. Compatible. Is that the right word? For what? To make it work good.

Yeah.

Compatible?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Sometimes I need help.

No, that's all right.

English is my second language, too.

Your love for drag racing has to be pretty big then. If you're over there, you're going against the grain, driving all over the place, just to drag.

Yeah.

And then you move all the way over here. I mean, was that basically your main motivation for moving over here?

To be able to do more and do more drag racing and...

Be able to modify your car as you want and all that stuff. OK.

My biggest motivation was to be able to open my own shop and work on like really cool stuff, not just fixing normal cars and stock cars for inspection. No, I never worked on these. I had a lot of older cars from the 50s, 60s, a lot of trucks. I built a lot of lifted trucks because that's something that's kind of possible. But then still, if you have a lifted Duramax with 37s and bumpers, and the standard truck from here, you need another five to six grand just in paperwork to make it street legal somehow. Holy s***. So that's wild.

They still run like def fluid systems and stuff like that over there too?

It's the same. It's called AdBlue where we are. So it's basically the def system. But I never had one with a def system.

All right. I know. I took mine off and threw it in the garbage.

Yeah. I would never ever do that because that's illegal.

Yeah. Well, you know what? Yeah.

Allegedly, Dan. Allegedly, we're getting big time now. The EPA is listening.

Come get me. Me as a business owner, I can't afford to do anything illegal.

Exactly. You still have to play by some rules over here too.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Sure.

Absolutely. So tell us a little bit about this car then. So you only have the one project or do you have a variety of cars or?

Well, I have a pure drag car that I built over four or five years, and that was my biggest and most expensive and wildest project I ever built. The car is still overseas locked in my friend's storage room, a storage shop behind his business. Now I would love to bring that car over and I found an old, I found a Fuel Altra Dragster in the Netherlands somewhere. The owner died, the driver is too old and the widow sold it, and I found it on a motorsports marketplace that we have over there in Europe, on the home page is that, man, that thing is so cool. Let me go back a little bit. So I started doing drag racing, I had a Caprice station wagon, and I had a K5 Blazer, that was the K5 Blazer. I bought that thing when I was like 18, and that was my first contact with American cars. I went to my local gas station in my little town where I'm from, and I had a Honda or a Hyundai or whatever, and I stopped at the pump, and they had a little shop and a car wash and stuff, and I saw something in that shop, just a huge massive grill, and I said, wow, what is that? So I talked to the guy, he said, oh yeah, that's like 89 K5 Blazer, and it's a piece of crap, and the fuel tank is leaking, and I would love to sell it. Give me $2,500, and you can keep it. You can have it, he said. I drove home to my dad and said, hey dad, can you give me $2,500? I have to buy a car. He said, what the hell? You have a car. What kind of car you need? I said, well, I want to buy an American car. And he said, you're stupid, you're crazy. Like gas is $7 to $9 a gallon, you know where we're from. You're crazy, you can't afford that, you can't buy that. But then finally I reminded my dad, hey, I mean, I know all your stories about Volkswagen with Porsche motors and all that stuff. So he was like, yeah, well, there you have. So I bought my first Blazer and then I started to modify it. I made a picket out of it, put a bottle lift in there. Then I met a cool dude. He was the main guy for American motors and Corvettes and stuff in Austria, two hours away from my hometown. So I contacted him and said, hey, so I have an idea. I had no clue what I'm doing. I started to pull the transmission. I had a thousand questions. Then after one or two years, he started to build me a 355 small block with a 144 Whine Supercharger on it and a TH400. That's when we started to do the first performance things. It was a slow turn still. But it was funny, it was loud, it was totally legal over there.

You probably got a lot of attention too.

You're over here now, don't worry.

From the wrong people.

Say you're over here now, they're not coming for you, don't worry.

I'm not so sure. Next time I visit my mom, they're like, no, that was a long time ago. I just got 40, so that was when I was like 18, 19, 20 in that area. And then I sold that Blazer and I bought my first, that was when I started to work on other people's cars. I had a little bit of experience and then people came like, oh, he can modify a car, so I will bring them my Caprice. And the guy had a crash and the tire was like crooked as hell. And so he brought me that Caprice, called me two days later. Hey, I can afford to buy it, to fix it. Like give me 1500 bucks and you can keep it. So that's when I started to have my first Caprice. It was an 85 station wagon. And I planned to put that motor in there. And then the guy that built the 355 for me, he was big in drag racing. He had a 68 Camaro with a... No, he started out with a CJ7 with a big block, like a 572 big block, totally crazy car. And then he had a 68 Camaro that he bought from Sweden with a 632, with a 1471 little field blower, like a brutal methanol car. And so I started to help him out, went to races with him and he showed me a lot of stuff and teach me a lot of things. And I ended up buying that motor later on, but I will come to that a little bit later. And so I went to drag races, so I was hooked. I have to do something. So I put that 355 in my station wagon.

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But then, I thought about that a lot, and if you want to do anything drag racing related and be compatible at the track, there's no reason to drive on the street anymore. If you want to be street legal, you don't have to drive on the track. It's stupid. So, I found that Fuel Ultra Dragster based on an old funny car chassis from the 80s in the Netherlands. So, I sold the Caprice, the station wagon as a roller, and dropped it off somewhere in Germany on the way to pick up that dragster, and then I raced that thing. I dropped it, brought that thing down. We had to cut off the cage, and because the guy that drove the car was basically your size.

Yeah.

So, it was kind of tight, but the cage ended like here on my shoulder height.

Sure. You're so cute, Dan. You're a little guy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, we cut up that and a local fabrication shop, they're building construction stuff. Nothing race car related, nothing. They bent me and welded me a weird looking cage. Looked like a Darth Vader helmet from the back because he made the cage, and then he made hoops around my shoulder. So, from the back, that car looks like Darth Vader. Darth Vader car is here to track. It was a flip-up body, so I cut up the front and we narrowed the whole body, so it looked like a weird hot rod. Sure. And then I said, okay, so that thing ran like nine ones on 355 with a little bit shot of nitrous, ran like nine ones, nine zeros flat. Sure. Then I said, okay, I need more, you know how it is, you know? I need more. That's the max. I can get out of that car. So I took the whole car apart and I found a chassis guy that rebuilt me the cage part, like professionally from all the good, how it should be. Then I started to rebuild the car with my buddy's motor, with that 632 and 34 Ford fiberglass body, a BT Power Glide and all the good stuff. I was deep in that stuff that time. The car is basically ready to go. We started it end of 19, we brought it to the track. I rolled around on the local airport a little bit to test it and then COVID came. Then I started to build that Caprice. Okay. That dragster is still like it is in my buddy's storage.

Okay.

But I would love to continue that project and bring it over and really do a pass with it.

Sure.

Then you started building the Caprice at that time frame. What's that build?

Well, right now, it started out as a stock 78 Caprice with a 350 small block with different heads and cam. That's when I traded it for that Cadillac. Then I think we came to PRI in 19 and I bought a Holley Terminator kit, like the TBI fuel injection kit. Then I just collected some parts and found that Crash C6, bought the LS2 with 15,000 miles. It's a full aluminum, it's an LS2, it was a Holley TBI, it didn't work out too good with that big cam, so I went to a multi-port injection. It's a Holley HP TH400. Now there is a 49-inch in there and a Holley dash, KERKY seats, a lot of UMI parts suspension-wise. We went to, I think, Drag Week 2019, the last one before COVID, and that started somewhere around Pennsylvania. So I just texted UMI, I said, hey, so I'm close, I would love to buy some parts, can I swing by? And that guy, Remy, texted me back, yeah, you can come by. So we ended up there, talking for five, six hours there. They showed us everything, the production, the race cars, and we became friends, and I'm meeting these guys every year, and it's pretty cool, and they made me a good deal on a bunch of parts. We just talked about getting front suspension from them too.

Okay.

And yeah, so now I built a 4WD stroker with twin turbos. Got a great Iski Cam and lifters for that car. Have to upgrade the transmission and starting, trying to start to build my own cage. You know, I bought a bunch of sticks of chromoly and JD Bender last year, and we'll see how that works out, you know.

So go for it.

What are you doing? So now you're over here, you're working on his car.

Yeah.

And so you have a performance shop then, are you building some other cars then?

Yeah, well, we, my plan was to start a performance shop like Lucky 8 Performance, but I started, we came over in January 23, and then it took me a couple of months to build up the shop. I basically started with an empty shop, empty hall, like building. Yeah. Also special thanks to Dennis Taylor for it, because he, they did fiberglass bodies and stuff for a long time, and they stopped doing that some time ago, and so he had that fiberglass building just using as a storage. So he and so we together, we moved everything in the back half, we put a wall up, and the front part is my own shop now. I started to do basically everything. I had my lifts in there, I had my tools, like a lot of basic stuff, and I started to work on customer stuff, like everything. Basic maintenance, oil changes, brakes, a lot of rewiring stuff, because that's a terrible thing down there, I guess. And then I started to have the first cooler stuff, the first older stuff, and some exhausts, and some wiring, and then it snowballed from there. I hired my first guy in August 24, and I told him it's like first time. He's a young boy, was like 23, fresh from school, worked two years in a maintenance shop. And that's also a pretty funny story. I put out an ad in Facebook that I'm looking for to hire somebody, and five, six people came by, and yeah, nothing interesting, and kind of weird people. And then a guy sent me an email, I said, hey, so I saw your ad, and you're still looking for somebody? I said, yeah, I'm still looking for somebody. He came by, his name is Max, and he was cool dude. He's knowing stuff, he has his own tools. He did a lot of projects, and he's very, very good with maintenance and diagnostics and stuff. So, and I asked him, hey, how do you find my ad? Because you sent me an email, nobody sent me an email. Most many people just texted me on Facebook. He said, well, they had an exchange student from Germany in his school, and they're still in contact. And she knows me from Instagram, so she saw the ad and texted him, hey, there is a guy like 25 minutes away from you, a performance shop looking for somebody. And I said, that's actually pretty cool. So the girl in Germany texted him to text me, to send me an email. So yeah, and he started the first, I told him it will be part-time probably till end of the year. We'll see how everything works out. Then it took a month. I had to hire him full-time because they flooded us with stuff. And then my wife is working for Nick Taylor. She's running Nick Taylor shop, Nicky Bobby Inc. So we got some customer through him building twin turbo Camaros, fixing drag cars and stuff. So yeah, I would say it's 50-50 right now. I would love to go like 100% performance and more fabrication. Bought my first CNC plasma cutter. Oh cool, those are fun. To do brackets and learn to do anything on a computer because I never used any CAD programs before. But that works out pretty good too. And yeah, we're excited about all the opportunities we have over here and all the cool people we met over here. And yeah.

I would keep your general maintenance around as long as you can. It's that whole performance, most of those guys get burnt out on it after a while. You know, it's not as your customer base starts to grow, then so do your problems sometimes.

Yeah.

No, my plan is to let that whole operation grow anyway, but I will never ditch that maintenance part.

Right.

So even if I ever build my own shop or whatever, like bigger own property or future plans, I want to have like a 50-50 thing. I just bought my first dyno used from a guy in around next town. So I want to do the dyno stuff.

What kind of dyno?

It's a dynojet. Yeah, I used one. It's like 20 years old.

Sure.

But he just upgraded the software and all the sensors, and so it's basically like everything is brand new, except the drum itself.

Right.

Yeah. And yeah, I want to let the operation grow. I mean, I have to because we're here on something that's called E2 Visa. So that's a self-employment entrepreneur visa, basically. So you have to create jobs, serve the community, you know. So I have to create jobs for US citizens and all that stuff. So my plan is to let everything grow anyway and hire more people. And we'll see how far we can get everything, you know.

How did you decide on and, sorry, where are you at?

In Boonville, Arkansas.

Okay. What made you decide to settle in there?

Well, Taylor's are good friends and business partners since year. So and they helped us a lot with organizing stuff, organizing things, paperwork. So a thousand thanks to everybody that was involved for that, that gave us a chance to, hey, come over here. We have a location for you. They, David Taylor's mom rented us our first house here for the first three years, you know. So we owe them everything basically that they gave us a chance to be here and do what we love.

Yeah. That's awesome.

So how does that work then? So is there for the E2, is there a timeline?

Yeah, it's five years.

Five years you have a?

So the visa is five years. The visa is just to enter the United States at a port, like an airport. And as soon as you enter a two year status, like a immigration status starts to run. So every two years before that status expires, we have to leave and come back. So basically just one week vacation for Christmas, overseas, come back, another two years.

Okay. So that's the only kind of like check in almost.

Basically. Just to be, hey, you're still here, you know.

Right.

Okay. You obviously had the opportunity then to get full citizenship at some point in time. You guys plan on pursuing that?

Never through that visa. That's called a non-immigrant visa. So you can renew that till you die, you know, as long as you still have your business and everything is still operational and working.

Okay.

Okay.

Not a problem. And especially if you hire people and if it's a good operational business, you make a lot of revenue every year, a little bit more, you let everything grow. There's really not a problem to renew it. But the biggest problem is we have a three and a half year old daughter. She was seven months when we came over with her.

Okay.

She will lose the visa when she's 21 through us, you know. So that's kind of sucks.

Not if she takes over dad's business, maybe.

Then I will lose my business.

Oh, yeah.

Then I will lose my visa.

Okay. So she needs to start another one then.

It's kind of weird. Yeah, she can do that. She can meet a guy and get married. Yeah, sure. My ultimate goal is to be able to stay here. So we have no intention to continue our life overseas.

Right.

But yeah, we will see how everything works out. We have some more years to sure find the way that we say it like this.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Are you able to attend a lot of events? Are you always working? How often are you able to get out to the track?

Well, we have a little local eight-mile track, like 40 minutes from the shop. So we have a test and tune every other week. So you can drive there for 20 bucks for a couple of hours. So that's what we do a lot of times with customer cars, with own cars, or just hang out with friends. And then we go to Tulsa. That's two and a half hours to some events. And LS Fest in Dallas is like four and a half hour trip. So it's not too bad. But stuff like Sick Week, everybody's asking me, you're going to Sick Week, doing Sick Ward and stuff. That's an 18 hour drive and a week of not working in a shop. So that's tough. I don't know if I want to do that.

Sure.

Because I want to finish my car. And my goal, my deadline is the circuit, my Minnox event. So I want to have my first rollout and test the car there to see if I can do stuff like Sick Summer, Drag Week, or whatever.

OK, sure.

Yeah, I think we're going to try and actually make it to that one this year. So we know it got canceled last time.

To Sick Week?

Yeah, no, the circuit.

Oh, the circuit. Yeah, that's sounds like a great event. I planned to do it last year, at least just with my Caprice like it is.

Yeah. Rolls got canceled too this year. Are you talking about last year or are you talking about earlier this year? Because this year we were driving down to a tent.

No, it was last year.

OK, sure.

I planned to do to be at least be there. He said, hey, you can come by. I mean, you don't have to be like stupid fast. I said, yeah, I mean, car is runs 1150s now like it is.

Sure. You and I might have been in the same in the same class.

With you?

Yeah. My car probably run 11s, low 11s maybe.

Yeah, I'm actually surprised because that thing is a boat. It's like Caprice is a full size.

Yeah.

3600 pounds car.

Mine weighs 4300. Really? Yeah. But it's got 760 horsepower. So it's a DCT transmission.

Mine made like 508 on a Dyno. So it's just a cam valve spring, Holley intake thing. It's not a big build. But with the new 4WD stroker and a lot of good parts, hopefully 850s would be my goal because I still want to have like a pure street car and not a funny car cage.

Is it 850 horsepower or?

No, 850s on the quarter mile is my goal because I don't want to do a funny car cage and all that stuff, at least for now.

Yeah, that makes sense. So how often are you doing customer builds? Do you have a lot of people coming in right now? I guess, what are you?

That started to be way more this year. So we just talked to a guy two weeks ago that got screwed by another shop and we have to, we agreed to build him to finish his project. Basically, it's a fully forged 5.3. He is on a pro charger now, but we probably switched turbo. It's a stick shift car. It's an, I think an 03 Cadillac truck. So that's some big builds. I met a guy, one day a guy came in and said, Hey, I have an 03 GMC truck and that's another project we did. And well, I want you guys to build me a cool truck out of it. You know, I said, yeah, okay, I mean, yeah, why not? That didn't take him serious, you know, a lot of people come in, I wanted this, I wanted that. So I thought it's, yeah, another dude from around town that, yeah, talks crap. But like a month later, that dude came in and like, a stack of money is out here, like start a project and was like, you know, well, this guy's serious. So yeah, we took the whole truck apart, we put in a fully forged 6.2, a little Vortec Pro charger, fully built B&M, 480 transmission, a quick performance nine inch. We tried to build our own harness, so that was very interesting for my employee, because he never did, he did like wire nuts and you know, stuff like that. Get it in and out of the shop really quick, so I said, hey, that's how I like it, that's how I want to do it, and so please learn to do it. So, and he, he's enjoying wiring now, so he built the whole wiring harness for that twin turbo, third gen we built for a guy, and he's really proud of like doing everything loomed and like soldered and like really nice bulkhead connectors, so he's really enjoying that wiring part now.

That's rare, man.

Yeah, he's really enjoying that. And I said, man, that's, I mean, I will do it like this. It looks great. It's really crawly work. And I forgot what I wanted to tell you.

Trucks are a big thing down there. Are you getting people wanting to go through with lifted trucks?

Yeah, that truck. No, not a lot of lifted trucks.

It's lowering. Do they want the squatted trucks?

Yeah, no.

You get those customers?

I had two or three guys like, hey. I said, no, hell no.

Nice.

The guy came by with ones that just to get a tune and whatever. I said, no, just please leave.

Yeah.

I don't want to work on it. I don't want to see it and nothing.

That's good. I'm glad that you're from another country and you still don't like it.

It's terrible.

All right.

It was funny. There is an Arkansas group for terrible cars and trucks and squatted things and just people like post pictures, hey, there's another one, hey, there's another one. On my way to work, there is a blazer. I think it's an S10 or whatever. It's terribly squatted. It's literally like this. It's terrible. I snapped a picture on my way to work and posted it in that group. I never saw that car again. They have a shop behind the house, so when I drive by, see it's all the way back there hidden because it was right on the main road there before. One day, I went to the local gas station in the morning and grabbed a Red Bull and trying to pay and that lady there, hey, why you don't like my son's truck? I was like, what truck? And she said, well, the one that's so low in the bag. I said, oh, now I remember that truck. Yeah, the guys roast him in online now. I said, yeah, I'm very sorry, but that truck is just stupid.

I wouldn't be sorry. He deserves it for that one.

Yeah, I was just surprised because it was his mom.

Yeah, so random.

Why do you like my son's truck? I said, oh, I'm sorry.

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, race tracks 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.

Because it sucks.

Yeah, I didn't say that, but yeah, it sucks.

Wait till she sees this again.

It's terrible. And especially down there, they made it illegal this year.

Oh, did they?

So if you have a difference from four inches between front and back bumper, it's like a thousand bucks ticket and they can revoke your license and stuff. So they're pretty serious down there right now. That's good. Yeah. I told one of my customer, you should be careful now because your gasser has more than four inches. And I said, the cop said, I don't care about a gasser. That's cool, you know? But these trucks are just, yeah. Stupid.

Did you send your truck over here, too?

Yeah. I have an 06 Duramax truck. And that was one of the biggest and most lifted trucks in the country for a period of time. It has an 8.5-inch McAuthy lift. It was a 39, so custom-built bumper and all kinds of stuff. Oh, really? The first one I built was an 03 Cummins Ram. That was in the 6.5 on 37s. And I built, that's a cool story. I built big a** stacks in the back, like 6-inch black chrome angle cut stacks. And I started to do that and people said, man, you crazy, you could never drive that on the road here. People never saw it on a pickup truck in that country. And so I went to the state draft and they're like, what the heck, but then I discussed. So the pickup truck over there is basically the same like a semi truck. It's just a different weight class and license. But it's considered as a truck. So you have the same rules, the same laws, the same inspections, the same taxes. So you pay just a capped tax thing because we have horsepower related tax there. Oh, and so for one of these things, you would pay a s*** ton of money a year. So but these are capped with like 864 bucks or whatever a year, no matter if it's 150 horsepower or 900. So and I went to the guy and said, yeah, we can't get that exhaust straight. I said, why? Yeah, because we can't do it. I said, no, I want to know why. No, because we can't do it. I want to know, like, show me why. Because that Mercedes semi truck has it. All these cab overs we have. That Scania has it. That Volvo has it. So there is no difference. This is a class one truck. This is a class two truck. So where's the difference? So then finally, they put it in my paperwork as a modified tailpipe. Okay, because the muffler was still stock. I just moved the muffler a little bit more forward and just went through the bed and made a big stainless Y-pipe and put 16 stacks on there. So that was the first basically pick up truck stack exhaust that was really legal there. Some people followed because now they knew it's kind of working. So I sent them copies of my title because in our titles, every modification, bolt, noise, emissions, everything is in your title. So if you get pulled over, a cop can check everything. Every modification, wheel, the first thing they check is what kind of tires you have because it's easy to check. And then they have dimensions from the center of your wheel to the fender lip. So they can measure if the car is too low, too high, too whatever. And so I sent copies to a bunch of people and they were able to make it street legal then too. And then I sold that thing and then I said, okay, I have to build something crazier now. But the Dodge was basically on the limit. So I bought that Duramax and put an 8.5 inch lift in, 37's, custom bumpers, all kinds of stuff. And I was able to make that street legal too. So that was one of the biggest trucks over there.

How did you get away with the lift and all that stuff? Was that an issue?

You just have to find the right words, you know?

Sure.

Because if you read the law, it tells you, you're not allowed to put bigger tires. I think you can 8% bigger in diameter. No, not in diameter.

Circum.

Diameter would be like how wide the circumference is. Circumference.

Yeah, that works. So you're allowed to do 8% bigger. But 8% bigger of the biggest version they ever built from factory.

Okay.

So apparently they built a Duramax Power Wagon with 35s.

Oh, that works.

They probably never did, but they don't know that, you know. So yeah, we made paperwork for that. So is it, oh yeah, it's like 6%. So from 35s to 37s. So you're good. Okay, cool. Yeah. And then 20 centimeters lift. I have no idea what's that in inches from stock height. So apparently that Power Wagon was lifted from factory. So you have to find the right arguments with these people. They're sticking to their laws, but they have no clue about the outside world. You know, if you bring them a Volkswagen, they know every freaking bolt. If you bring them a Duramax, they have, okay.

It's a whole different world.

Yeah. It's some kind of American car.

That makes sense.

Yeah. And I spent so much money and time in that truck that I said, you know what, I take it with me. People ask me if I'm crazy. You take your Duramax, you spend money to ship that truck over there. You can buy like on every corner, you can buy a new one. I said, yeah, but I can't buy mine.

Sure. Yeah.

That's the thing. And it's 220,000 miles, still strong. We drive it every day, drive it in the snow, pull my Caprice to Florida all the way, getting six miles to the gala. And it's great.

Yeah.

It's on 39s now, so. What did you say? It's on 39 inch tires now.

OK.

Yeah. Yeah. Because we don't have that rule.

Yeah.

We don't have that rule on the percentage.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The first thing I did is I cut off my exhaust and put a five inch straight pipe exhaust on there. My buddy was, why do you spend money to modify your car to make it louder? I said, because I can now, you know, it's like I don't have to do it, but I kind of have to do it now because it's just cool and nobody nobody cares. And it took me over a year to make up my mind a little bit that when I worked on something or when I talked about a project or did some stuff on my car, I thought way too much about things, you know, and then friends of mine, hey, don't think too much. You're here now. Half of your brain is still, should it? Can I do that? Yeah, you can, you know, because it's legal. So it took it some time to click, you know.

What's your favorite, I guess, whether it's customers or personally, what's your favorite brand to work on?

Is it GM stuff?

GM stuff, Chevy's, trucks, cars, full size cars, older stuff.

Sure, sorry to hear that.

Actually, if you go in my shop right now, it's, you would think I'm a Ford guy, because I have a 68 Pro Touring Mustang from a customer in the shop now to do some suspension work and adjust the clutch. I have a 57 Ford Phalanen with a 4WD stroker and coalovers and stuff in the shop from a guy that bought the car in the state, shipped it to Germany, built it there, used it there for some years, and he moved to Texas 14 months ago. So he came up and, German dude came up and brought the Austrian dude the car to work on. It's pretty cool. That I don't know anybody, I don't trust anybody, I bring you the car. So yeah, I mean, whatever, yeah. And a 22 Mustang with a supercharger kit and stuff. We had it on the dyno a couple weeks ago, made 900 crank or so, Toyota Power. Sure.

Are you doing any tuning then, or are you tuning GM stuff?

Well, I have two or three people work together. I don't do my own tuning. I do my tuning stuff on Holley and on my own things, but I'm not comfortable with that HP tuner stuff. So I have two or three people working remotely for that and that works out pretty good. I want to learn more to be able to do this stuff by myself, especially buying a dyno now. But yeah, we have a good dude, like two hours away. He's doing a lot of work for friends of mine. And so a friend of mine has a shop there in Russellville, Arkansas. And he gave me the context, he's tuning all our cars and a guy in Dallas is tuning all our HP tuner stuff. So that works out pretty good so far.

Sure. OK.

Never had a problem.

So what are your plans then for the next like two or three years? I just try to expand as rapidly as possible or?

Well, I'm trying to keep everything kind of like it is for now because we have to renew the first time the Visa deal in twenty seven. So the thing is everything is it's pretty risky because if the last word is a USCS officer in the embassy in Vienna like an officer from the States and here's the last word when we do the the renew interview. So if you don't like your face, you can say no.

Sure.

Then you lose everything. You can't even come back to sell your stuff, pay you like gravy boxer shorts from the house. You know, you're hard. So even I would love to grow as fast as possible, but still have in mind I have a family, I have a kid and we can lose everything over here. Sure. Things are not working out for us. But that's a risk. It is what it is, you know, and I told my wife, I want to do that if I want to sit, even if we don't make it, we that was the biggest adventure of our life. You know, I can sit with 70, 80 said, man, we had some great years not sitting there. Man, I wish I did it, you know.

Right.

Yeah, that's the thing.

And we basically left everything behind, like family, friends.

Sure.

Just started from scratch.

What do they all think about you coming to the United States and just building American cars all day long, diesel trucks?

Well, 90 percent of my friends like, are you stupid? You're crazy. You have some other friends, mechanics of, oh, you will never make it over there because they're like better people than you. I said, yeah, they're probably a s*** ton of better people than me. But I do my best and that's hopefully good enough, you know?

Yeah, sure.

How did you get into working on cars? What was the first car you worked on?

The first car I had was. A 2009 Kia Sportage that my dad gave me when I made my license with Ateez. Here, my dad was a hunter and he had a Volkswagen, like an old rabbit, a forward drive. That was his hunting vehicle.

Like a MK2 or what?

MK2, yeah. And I was too big for it to drive around.

Yeah, I'm a big boy. I don't fit in one either.

So my dad bought that Kia Sportage and we shared it. And I drove a little bit and he drove it to go hunting and stuff. Then we blew up the motor and then we found a Yandai Lantera GT, whatever. It was a weird deal because a local Dodge dealership, we don't have Dodge dealerships anymore, but that guy had Ferrari, Fiat, Dodge and Jeep and stuff. And he had that car in the lot and it looked kind of weird. I never saw that version. It had body kits, had a big exhaust pipe. And I drove it. It was kind of red and loud. And so what's the deal behind that? He said, oh, well, there was a Lantera GT challenge. So we bought 19 cars, modified it for the rulebook and stuff, raced it after one year to cancel the whole deal. And said, we have 19 of these cars around, so we kind of put the stock interior back in and try to sell it. So that was one of my first cars I started to wrench on. And my dad was big in cars, big BMW fan. So he sadly passed away in 21, but he left me the car that he bought a year before I was born. So I still have that car. Oh, wow.

Okay.

And yeah. So my dad was into cars, but mostly Volkswagen and Porsches. And then he converted cars to LPG, like liquefied powered gas or whatever, because gas was so expensive and a lot of import cars were just like gas guzzlers. And so he drove most American cars you can imagine from the 60s and 70s when they got imported, they converted them and then they brought it to customers. So he drove chargers, at least just down the road, all kinds of stuff what they converted back in the days. So yeah, that's something I got from him, I guess.

Do you have any interest in like road course, anything with turns or not really?

Yeah, that was fun. I did stuff like that a little bit when I had my Audi time because I had a five cylinder turbo Audis, two or three, I still missed the last one I sold. And that was the time where that stuff was dirt cheap. I bought my first S4 and S6 for like 3,500 bucks. I drove them for a couple of years and then I sold it for 6,500. I said, man, I made a profit. That's so cool.

Are they like B5s or?

No, C4s.

C4s, okay.

The first S models they had, the Audi 100s. Yeah, it's like 91 to 96, I think.

Yeah, okay.

And I love these cars, big boats, five cylinder turbo, great sound, AE-N motor, that engine code, super cool stuff. And I was happy that I sold it for 6,500 bucks. I made a profit, bought a 77 Caprice instead. And a couple of years later, I thought, man, I miss these cars. They're handling so good, so good. It's comfortable to travel. Twenty grand. Sure. No chance to buy anything cheaper now. So wow. So I'm still trying to buy one over here because the market is still kind of OK. I would love to have one.

That's kind of like Sam's, Sam Moraine's car, I believe.

Oh, really?

He has the S4 making about almost a thousand horsepower.

Yeah.

Yeah. But it's a lot of custom s*** on that one.

That Kelly guy we did the rally with, he had one too, an S4, if I remember. Or maybe that's an older, you're talking an older one, though, right?

It's like a C4 or like the B5 models.

C4. Sam's is a 91?

Yeah. That's a C4. Yeah. So they built a C4 in two models. They had the Audi 100 C4. That was the first one they built. And then they had the facelift, the Audi A6 slash S6. That was basically the same platform, just like facelifted.

Yeah. Here I got it right here. It's a 1992 URS 4.

Yeah, that's a URS 4, the URS 4. And that's what I had. And then they had the facelift at the URS 6.

Okay.

Yeah, a lot of these cars.

That's a fun platform. Do they have them more figured out in Europe? Like, are they making a big power on those?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I know a bunch of people. They're big in Audi and Volkswagen scenes, and they build crazy cars out of these things. One of my good friends owns the fastest Audi in the world right now, so.

Oh, yeah?

And yeah, same deal. He won everything in Europe than you can imagine, and so he shipped a car to the States last year. I think it was last year. No, it wasn't 23, because his dream was to race at the World Cup finals, you know?

Oh, yeah, yep.

So he did.

Which car is that?

It's a black Audi TT.

Audi TT. Oh, it's a... What's the name of the...

HST.

HST?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the fastest TT you said?

Yes, it's right... I'm not sure. It was the fastest forward drive Audi in the world for a little bit. There's a guy from Serbia that... beat his time this year.

Okay.

But he is coming back stronger for next year with like, instead of an 88-mil turbo, like a promo 98 turbo and...

Yeah, and that's the Daza platform too, right? In that one?

No, that one is a VR6.

The HST one?

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

So, Hubi designed a billet VR6 in-house. So, he's the first shop that can sell you a billet VR6.

Wow, okay.

So, he designed it in-house, he milled it down the road in a local machine shop, and that thing made like 2,041 wheel at FuelTech on the dyno last year.

Oh my god.

And ran 6.74s, I think. Still all-wheel drive.

That is insane.

And the setup is so crazy. It's a billet VR6, I think it's a 5-speed Liberty, Nissan GT-R transfer case, Ford 9-inch rear, and a Porsche Cayenne SUV front end.

Okay.

And it's a tube-frame car, so it's a total zombie.

How come you never wanted to go into that VW-Audi route? It just never appealed to you, huh?

Well, the only VW-domestic stuff I had is these two Audis. And I had one car. That was my first, the first pretty new car I bought was a Seat Leon. It's basically an MK4.

Okay, sure.

Made in Spain.

Okay.

It's the same platform, same everything. They just put another body on there.

Sure.

And it kind of looks more sporty and a little bit more different. But it's the same motor, it's the same 190i, same everything underneath, same interior. Just looks different from the outside.

Sure. I don't even know why you're asking that. This guy screams American muscle. Yeah.

No, and then that was my only like accidents and cars.

Yeah. Yeah.

I'm excited for you, man. You're as American as the rest of us. Thank you.

Appreciate that. I'm trying to.

I'm just trying to convince your visa officer like, hey, he's an American.

Yeah. We need character witness. We got to.

Man, I can show him my back. I have American flag on the back and the Chevy's bow tie and all kinds of stuff.

Yeah.

My tattoo guy said, well, that's the first American flag I ever tattooed on anybody. I said, yeah, appreciate that.

So was there anything else you wanted to touch on before we kind of start, I guess, finishing PRI?

I got another quick question. Yeah. You got any plans for any other builds?

The what?

You got aspirations for any other builds, any other builds you want to do or cars you're looking for? Are you calling them marketplace all the time still or what?

Yeah. So the next thing I want to do just on the side is, I have a 94 OBS truck that I found in the front yard on Facebook marketplace.

Okay.

Was like 1500 bucks, looked terrible. So I drove over there 25 minutes. That guy parked it there. He said, yeah, the fuel pump died, I parked it in the front yard, and just let it sit there for two years. But he's moving now, he lived in the trailer, and he's moving now for like two hours away from work. And I said, yeah, well, what about 900 bucks? He said, oh, whatever. So that's a pretty good deal for a nice one. I pulled the relay for the fuel pump, and just cleared the contacts, and put it back in, drove it in the trailer.

It's crazy how simple those aspects can be.

And that guy was like, what the f***?

It's not rusty, is it?

Not at all. It looks terrible. It's a white one, so GM white paint, you know, it looks terrible.

Does it have that red interior in it too?

No, it's blue. It's really nice.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Normally on the white trucks, they put that red interior.

That's what my 77 Caprice had. It was silver with like the porn interior.

Yeah.

Terrible.

No, it's actually blue. It's nice. The seats are cool. So then I figured out I swapped in a new fuel pump, put in a fuel pump in, and then I drove it and I figured out, okay, it's first gear, second gear, no gear. Is that great?

Yeah, it sounds like a DM power, yeah. They got extra neutrals in them.

So I found a transmission like 15 minutes away from a Blazer. It was exactly the one I need. I bought it for 250 bucks, put it in there, and I still drive it. I drove it to Little Rock. I drive it around as a shop truck. My goal is with this thing on the side, when I pull the LS2 out of my Caprice, I want to put it in the OBS truck. I want to put an 871 on there. Just cut the hood, have a blower and an ATM carb on top, and make the thing with an 8HP transmission to make a really nice drivable street truck so I can travel.

Is it a single cab?

It's a single cab, it's a single cab long bed.

Yeah, I don't even think they made a single cab short box in those years.

I have no idea.

It's a single cab long bed and it's slow as hell. Like really slow as hell.

But yeah, it works good. Cruise control works, kind of. There's some weird bugs in there. AC works great. So I use it as a shop truck and just driving around. Because driving the truck on 39s every day to work is kind of intense. And park it somewhere is not good. And like parking garages are way too small. So I drive that thing. I don't care if somebody smashes the door in there. So we took it to the airport when we fly outside of the States and visit mom or we just park it a week in the airport and I don't care. They can break it or so. Yeah, that's something I want to do. Put an 8HP transmission there, make it good travel. LS with a blower, 8 speed truck, that would be great. That's something I would love to do.

That's cool.

Awesome.

And my, talking with my wife yesterday, actually we talked some time and like multiple times. She would love to start drag racing by herself. So maybe looking into buying some kind of cheap roller, you know, and she made a pet. So Alex Taylor asked me, he said, hey, we're renting the Tulsa track to test the 55. I said, yeah, cool. She said, you want to bring the Caprice? You can drive there like the whole day. I said, well, appreciate it. That's cool. So we drove up there and I have to say, after I built my Caprice, we put it on my buddy's hub dyno, fourth pull, it blew up the drive shaft, wiped out transmission, floor, cross member, exhaust, everything I just built. So I was kind of nervous. I never raced a car. I rebuilt everything, put a bigger drive shaft, like a dump steel drive shaft, three inch in there, and I'm still driving it, but I never raced it since then because I was kind of nervous. So I told Alex, yeah, cool, I will come up to Tulsa and make some passes. So I eased into the passes, not too fast, don't destroy it, at least don't blow up the drive shaft. And then Alex had the idea, hey, let your wife drive it. She never made a pass and it's not like a wild car. She can just taste how it is. And then so Alex and Dennis tried to convince her for like 30 minutes. And then finally she was sitting in my 20 inch Kyrgyz seat and we stuffed shirts and we stuffed all kinds of stuff behind there so she can reach the pedals. Yeah, because it's mounted without sliders. It's built for me. Yeah, so and Alex gave her the helmet here, like put the helmet on her head and she didn't care about my car, you know, she was like, I was on the passenger seat and she was just stomping the loud pedal and she made a faster pass than I did. So everybody was like, ooh, you should let your wife drive. She's way faster than you.

I had my wife gets better times than I do. I've only been on the drag strip like a couple of times and we went in her car and yeah, she was able to get faster time.

Yeah, it was a very funny situation. She didn't think about blowing up the drive shaft or whatever. She just pedaled to the metal, you know. I had, she said, honey, please shift, you know, it's a full manual shifter. So she said, can you do that? I said, yeah. So she just stomped the pedal and I used the shifter and yeah, it was like an 1146 or whatever. That man, it's the fastest pass for that car ever. I ever did. So then I had to make another one and they didn't film it. So if you watch Alex Taylor's YouTube video, she has the fastest pass in that whole video and everybody was like, oh, nice. But she said, it was cool. I like it. I would love to do more. But I said, it's hard if I build my car, I build it for my size. So the cage will be for my size, the seat, the steering wheel, all these things.

She can get a bigger wife.

No, I love my wife. Just buy a bigger wife.

Yeah, it seems like a logical solution here.

No, I just build another car. All the people say, hey, you should lose weight. I said, no, I just build a new motor. It's better.

It's easier.

Lose some weight, you're faster. Well, I just buy a bigger turbo, it's better. That's the solution. We just make more power.

Throw her in a FoxBody with an LS.

I actually thought about something like this, but I can't do a FoxBody. I can't do a Ford now.

You just don't like Ford that much.

Well, I don't hate them, but I'm just not a fan.

Yeah, I'm in the same.

I don't like GM, so yeah.

Well, don't get me wrong, like cars like the Snartrock and stuff. I mean, wow, you know? And that Mustang we tuned on the Dyno with a stock Coyote making over 900, like wow. But yeah, I'm more to like GM and LS things and big blocks.

Sure.

Who did the tuning on the Mustang?

Mead Motorsports out of Fayetteville, Arkansas. So he did a great job. He did the motor transmission tune, everything.

So really cool.

Very cool. And he did another car for a friend of mine. It's a four something LS with a big pro charger on it. And on the 85 with a four speed Lenco transmission. Pretty cool car. That thing made like 1140 on the dyno last week or so. So pretty cool, dude. He's racing a BMW with an LS turbo. Pretty, pretty, pretty fast car. And yeah, I want to do something. Buy a cheap roller. Maybe I buy a Fox body. I don't know if the price is right. Maybe at least it must be an LS.

Right. Yeah, maybe I need to give him a Fox body. I just love to give away Fox bodies to GM guys.

I had a Fox body.

Did you?

Yeah. I bought it dirt cheap. I found a Ford Mustang Cobra.

Oh yeah?

That four-cylinder turbo deal.

Oh yeah, so an 80s one.

Yeah, with a four-speed manual.

I have one of those laying around.

A random dealership had it in their yard and I drove by and said, what is that? Oh yeah, somebody like traded it for something and it's here, we have no idea what to do with it. You want to buy it for 1500 bucks?

It had the snake on the hood?

Yeah, I said, I'd buy it for 1500 bucks, not a problem. And he said, yeah.

This is in Austria?

Yeah, that was in Austria. And he said, yeah, it's kind of tuned. There's a weird box on the glove box. And I don't know, there was some kind of turbo guard that somebody installed. There was a box like this big on the glove box and it had the turbo light. So as soon as you hit boost, it was like turbo. And that was the best part about that. It was slow as hell.

Was it the black and green combination?

No, it was silver, black with the orange thing on the hood. And I drove it for a little bit, but it was way too small for me. It was a pain. I drove it around a little bit. It was cool. I built an exhaust, so you can hear the turbo. It was that 2.5 liter.

Yeah, 2.3.

2.3, yeah, 2.3 with that carburetor that is before the turbo. So it pulled, I don't know if that's the thing over here, but that had the turbo and the carburetor was before the turbo. So it sucked the whole mixture through the turbo into the motor. It was kind of weird. I popped the hood and said, yeah, well, that's weird.

You had the carburetor, you had the turbo and said, yeah, it was the 70s and 80s. We didn't know what we were doing just yet.

Yeah, but I mean, it worked good.

They're not bad. I mean, to be honest, really sad as they were making. So they didn't have the 302 then. It was like a 255 V8 back then.

I thought you had the 5 liter in there.

What's that?

I thought they had the 5 liter in these models too.

No, not till 82 GT, they brought the 5. It was government stuff, right? They couldn't have that displacement. So I think the V8 and that 23 Turbo made like the same horsepower.

Okay.

Which is sad.

That's crazy. That thing was, I mean, it was fun to drive. It was way too small for me. I'm 6'5, you know?

Yeah.

But it was fun to drive and yeah, I had a Mustang at one point in my life.

It just seems an LS.

Yeah. Well, no, I will do Fox Body for her.

It's probably a good car to start.

Do you need a title or doors or any of that stuff? If you're just going to do just a race car, do you want to street it too or no?

No, I want to street it. Okay. I would love to bring her into the drag and drive stuff too, but now I have to bring her to the track and be consistent, have more seat time, you know, be comfortable with the vehicle and then we just go from there. We will see what we can do.

Well, if you decide you want a shell, I got a shell, I'll give you, it's clean. That's good to know.

That's good to know. There's so much stuff around where we from in Boonville. I know. There is so much stuff. My buddy drove all the way from Chicago and some other friends and he said it's incredible. They're building a 57 Lincoln right now as a drag and drive car. It's one of the biggest car I ever saw. Yeah. It's only 2400 pounds when it's done. So everything is fiberglass. It's a chromoly dual frame rail chassis. And he came to Booneville because you know, Nicky Bobby, Nicky Bobby, Nick Taylor, and the uncle Sam Camero.

I'm not too familiar.

So he bought the whole drive train from Nick Taylor's car. And they pull it out. We put it in a pallet. I ship it all the way to Austria. He will finish the car and then he will ship the whole car back to the states to do drag and drive. So that's pretty cool. And they drove down all the way from Chicago to Arkansas. I said, man, there's so much stuff around. And I literally found a 58 Lincoln in a front yard and we stopped there. He sent me the location, everything. He said, please, Tom, try to contact that guy. I need a bunch of parts and trim and all kinds of stuff from that stuff. It's just rotting in the field, you know? And that's still amazing that you can find stuff like that just somewhere.

I'll drive through, like when we go to Texas or something like that, I try and get off the beaten path when I'm driving up through the southern states. And especially some of those rural areas, you know, Arkansas, Kansas, just to see what you get to see on the side of the road.

Especially we're from a country where you can't even watch your own car in the driveway, that's illegal, you know?

Oh, really?

And yeah, you can't store a bunch of stuff in your yard or backyard or wherever.

Especially, damn, you'd be in prison for life.

A friend of mine went to vacation, he came back home, had a letter on his house that he has to remove his. He did drifting with BMWs, like old E30s and stuff, and they sent him a letter that he has to remove the cars because of the contamination of ground and stuff. And he said, well, there's no motor in there. But they said, yeah, there is a rear end in there, there's fluid in there and there's brake lines and there's this. So he had to remove all the cars from the yard that he saved to fix his drift car, you know?

Yeah.

That's stupid. If you have anything else than a car and four tires in your garage, they find the s*** out of you.

Wow. Really?

So yeah, I can talk an hour about regulations. It's just miserable and makes you mad. And then you talk to a lot of people overseas and they hate America and this and that and all the current situation with Trump and everything is so bad. They would never travel. And I said, well, they don't need you over there anyway. If you think like that.

That's fine. Bye.

I would never go to the States. I said, yeah, well, then don't go to the States. We don't need you here. I love it here. And I love the people. I love this freedom that we can do whatever we want. And yeah, hell yeah.

That's what's up.

Yep.

That's a good note to end on.

Yeah.

Do you want to pop the usual three?

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

Daily driver, probably an Escalade. That was one of my favorite cars ever. I tried to buy one when we moved, then I bought a Yukon, but put Escalade tail lights in there. So I kind of built my own one. Yeah.

Okay.

So that's a daily driver.

Track car, like drag race or whatever track you want, man.

That's hard. Track car for drag racing, probably my car with a very good drive train because I'm just a fan of a Caprice, like a box Chevy is how I thought as a kid, a car looks like square and four wheels.

Yeah.

Okay.

And what was the third one?

Show car.

Show car.

Or show truck.

That's very hard to say. That's very hard. Show car. I'm still a fan of a Grand National. Yeah. Like Grand National was one of my dream cars. Then we imported one for a customer to the shop, and I had to do some work on it and I drove it. And I said, it's still a great looking car, but I hated how that thing drove and it was kind of weird. So I said, okay, I'm done. Also, H1 Hummer was one of my dream cars. Then I drove one. It was the worst experience ever. It was a civilian version, stupid expensive. And the guy brought it to the shop to do some paperwork stuff. And I drove it and it was just terrible. I said, nope, not on my list anymore. So yeah, probably a Grand National with a proper motor on the drivetrain.

I do. So again, I'm not a GM guy, but again, I like cars and I can appreciate everything, but I would buy a Grand National for sure.

It's a good looking car.

The way they put that car together looks good, but...

Yeah, I can't think of any Ford that I would like.

That's okay. He got some time to think.

I shared and now he won't share.

No, don't get me wrong. Like something like that 57 Fairlane that the guy brought. That's just a b***** car. I would daily drive that thing with a proper drivetrain.

Okay. What's a proper drivetrain?

Not a Ford motor probably.

I put an LS in that too, of course.

Yeah. Something modern like a modern fuel-injected.

Like an LT then?

LT, 8-speed, 10-speed transmission, just like a really modern drivetrain.

Sure.

Because the car itself, it just looks so great and it's so comfortable.

Cool.

Customer told me, yeah, you can drive it at the Christmas parade that we had in our town and it's sitting on your couch driving a cool car. It sounds great and that's something I would love to have.

Yeah. Well, awesome, man. Where can everybody find you?

We're in Boonville, Arkansas. It's hard to find us because it's Boonville, Arkansas. No. We're everywhere. We try to go to a lot of events and races and stuff. But yeah, we're in Boonville, Arkansas, and right down the road from Alex Taylor's shop and Dennis Taylor's shop.

Any website or anything, Instagram, anything?

Yeah, we have Instagram, Lucky 8 Performance, LLC, Facebook too. I do a lot of TikTok, but that's in German, so that's probably not interesting for a lot of people over here. And I started a YouTube channel when we moved over here. I would say first year and a half, I did YouTube in German.

Sure.

I used to speak some German a little bit.

You?

Yeah. So my parents met in Germany. They were army brats. So they met there both. My grandparents, they were stationed over there. So they met there. And I remember growing up, they would speak German at the dinner table, all that stuff. So I took German one and two, and my teacher thought I had a good accent. I enunciated well because listening to it growing up, but I've lost all that now.

I would say your teacher is a liar.

Yeah.

Well, it's interesting. Our daughter, like I said, she came over here when she was seven, and we started to talk with her in English since she was born. So my mom was an English teacher before, so she started to talk English with her since she was born, too, because we had the plan. We had everything lined out so far, so we know she had to learn English. So now she's in pre-K and she has friends, and so we started to speak German with her again so she can learn. She understands both languages, like not a problem, I can tell her everything in English or German. She will answer mostly in English, but she's mixing in a lot of German words and her pronunciation, her accent, like somebody said the other day, she speaks fluid cornbread. Yeah, she's like southern, like 100%.

Yeah.

Like, hey y'all, you know? It's so hard, it's so funny. We just talked to her on the phone, my mom is with her back in the house, and she said, hey, so how are you? I said, hey, bye bye, we'll see you tomorrow. And she was like, love y'all, you know?

Like, 100%.

That's funny.

Yeah.

So that's pretty cool.

That's cool. Well, awesome, man. Well, thank you very much for coming on the show. We hope to have you again. I'm excited to see where your journey goes.

See what else I usually say to you. Yeah, if you want to see, sorry to interrupt, if you want to see more stuff, I switched my YouTube channel to English. So the last videos are in English, and you can understand that. I'm trying to make videos about the Caprice project, some other stuff. The project we have for my employee, he bought an El Camino that Dennis had 20 years behind his shop. So we call it the Trash Camino because it was a trash can for him, for scrap metal. So yeah, I would love to gain more followers and do more YouTube.

I'm excited to see how your journey goes, man.

Yeah, I'm excited too. We are, everybody's excited, like my wife, my friends and stuff.

Yeah, can't wait to see how this goes.

We're so thankful for everything we can do over here.

Yeah, man. We'll keep on keeping on. Dan, thanks for existing and we'll see you next time.

Well, appreciate it. Thank you.