194. Justin Starkey on Building VMP Performance, Whipple Superchargers, R&D & Building a Legacy

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.

Yeah, which works very well in this situation.

Yeah, not a single Chevy in here.

No, I like it.

No, Dan's leaving on a high note out of here today, so you're very excited. Nonetheless, today we are here with Justin Starkey of VMP Performance. And yeah, just tell us a little bit about yourself, how we got here today, and we'll just go from there. We talked a lot before we started the episode, so we'll get into all that.

Yeah, so we've been doing this for 25 years. Our 25th anniversary is actually like coming up in April. So I'm sorry, it's coming up in May. Okay. And I graduated high school. I met my wife at the drag strip and I gave the business a name. I had been selling computer parts on eBay and then car parts when I saved up enough money to buy a Mustang. And then I graduated high school and I'm like, I gotta give this thing a name, start a website, not just sell on eBay and the forums. And here we are today, 25 years later.

What does the VMP stand for? I'm sorry if that's out there somewhere and I don't know it.

It was on a test at one point to enter a contest. So, you know, but like it's out there, but not really. So, this is kind of dumb.

Yeah.

Velocity Mustang Performance.

Okay.

Okay.

So, you know.

That's not that dumb.

VMP Performance. So there's technically two performances. Yeah.

It's a good place to call map, map performance. Yeah. Back in Minnesota.

It's like really easy to do if you're in this space, I guess.

Right. Yeah.

You got your first Mustang then. So what year or which generation would that be?

It was a New Edge.

Okay.

We didn't call them New Edges back then.

Yeah.

They've still in SN95. But it was a 2000 Bright Atlantic Blue V6 Mustang. I was the coolest kid on the block.

Yeah.

One wheel peel, you know.

Yeah.

Ran 16s. Like it was not that cool other than it was a Mustang.

Yeah.

So this drove me to make it faster. Peer pressure, right?

Yeah.

And so I did all the stuff you could do from like the JC. Whitney and the Summit Catalog and made my own cold air, put an MSD on it, put plug wires on it. Yeah.

So at this point, are you surrounded by other car enthusiasts? Are you the only car enthusiast here or?

We had a group of buddies in high school that had like Mustangs and Camaros and like the hot Hondas and stuff of the day.

So. Why a Mustang then? Cause you had the F body stuff was pretty popular back then, all that kind of stuff. What drove you to that?

Well, this is kind of embarrassing.

Yeah.

The Chevy dealer did not have any Camaros.

Oh, that's all right. They don't now either. I guess it was a good choice correctly.

It was a good choice.

Yeah. So then, OK, so you start modifying things. When did you start tinkering with your new edge then?

Like pretty much right after I got it, I ordered it because I needed time to save up more money and I wanted a color and, you know, just a certain combination of parts. You order a car, you save money, you get what you want, whatever, so yeah, so I think it was like, I got it in like August, September of 99 as a 2000 model year and...

I was a month old, by the way. Just for context.

Sorry, I'm cursed.

No, don't worry about that.

And I think like, I'm trying, like this is a little bit fuzzy, is that it's an excellent question. I'm like, PVC call there, pretty easy to make at Home Depot. I probably saw that on like corral.net. Does anybody remember that?

Oh, I do. Yep. Yep.

Yeah. And, you know, went to the track with my friends. And like, there was all kinds of like drama around this. Like my neighbor told my mom that I shouldn't go to the track because people just get drunk and fight in the staging lanes and stuff. I'm like, I don't drink and like, I don't fight with people. So why is it a big deal to go to the track?

Did you see any of that stuff?

No.

Okay, yeah. It depends on the track too though.

Yeah, maybe if it was yellow belly, but you know.

So Casey, you started attending the track then. So how do you and the business eventually progress? What does the next few years look like?

So, trying to make this concise because I can talk a lot. I started making accessories for the car and I started selling them on eBay because that was my outlet. And eBay was a new thing then. We were still like having people mail us money orders because PayPal like just came out in 2000. And of course we switched to PayPal. And I wanted to go faster. So it's like, man, what? And I like to make things. So I eventually like, the holy grail for any 2000s kid, right, was like a Vortex Supercharger. And I never actually got one. I got a Powerdyne instead. That's another story. But intercooling the Supercharger, I made like an intercooler kit for Vortex Supercharger V6 because there was none. And like I learned to weld and everything else and fabbed all this stuff up. And was selling it to fellow enthusiasts. Like I only sold a couple of them. But I think that was my first, going outside of like the accessory stuff was fog lights. And I was buying takeoffs from Celine, making a wiring harness and selling it to the V6 people, put fog lights, GT fog lights on your V6. So yeah, switch gears, performance. And I really kind of needed to like some time to mature in the space and like meet some people. So, and like learn and stuff. So that was like the early phase and like graduating high school, meeting my wife at the racetrack and doing stuff with both of our cars. And then like a couple of years before things really got off and running. And like what that looked like is I built this car. I needed it tuned. So I met one of the ended up meeting one of the founders, godfathers of Ford Performance and tuning, Mr. Jerry Robleski and having him tune my car at a Dino Day. And you know, he was like, hey, why don't you learn to tune? I'm like, well, s***, I didn't think of that. I couldn't even drink legally yet. And he saw this car that I built and he was like, hey, why don't you get involved? And he's like, I'm starting a company. And ultimately I went on to work for SCT for a little under a year.

So, okay, and at this point, so you met your wife at this point. What does she have?

She's got a 95 V6 Mustang. So we were both nerding it out in our V6s.

Was the original, was it VMP at this point too? Like your Facebook or your Facebook, your eBay page, was that what it was then too or?

No, no, yeah, it was just like whatever your handle was.

Right, okay.

And like it could have been CPU coolers, it could be in Chiven, have been something.

Okay, because I was born in 82. So I was there for the induction of eBay and PayPal. And I still have my original eBay account and PayPal account from then. So yeah, nice.

Do you ever sell anything on the eBay account? You have a lot of stuff to sell.

I probably should.

I'll help list some stuff. I think commission. Okay, so then you start working for SCT at this point. And then how do things progress from there?

So I remember this, this is kind of a crazy story. And like we're past the statute of limitations and everything, right?

So we can talk about this.

Yeah. They said, work for work for free for the first week and we'll give you the software. Because at the time it was like a five or ten thousand dollar package of all their software. And it was the first of its kind in the industry, like full end to end software with a chip solution to install it on the vehicle. And it was well documented and it had a value file system, like a template system. So it was repeatable. And so I got that and I was learning the stuff and selling it and supporting it at the same time. And so once I worked, I ended up working for free for two weeks because I'm like, I'm not going to say anything about this. This is a really good deal. Yeah. And then they started paying me in chips because I was tuning in the evenings and selling chips on the forums to my fellow V6 brethren. Yeah. And I remember Chris Johnson was one of the founders. He's still really prominent in the industry. And I would email him because texting wasn't a thing back then. I'd email him, be like, hey, I left a thousand bucks in your desk, and I took ten more chips or whatever. Because I was selling more chips than I could earn.

Right.

And this is all V6 stuff at this point, pretty much?

Yeah. And you had your oddball stuff. I remember the first car I dyno tuned was a ZX3 Escort, because some local guy wanted his car dyno tuned.

Yeah.

Four-cylinder, 140-year-old horsepower. And you know what? That was the first time I got to kind of see more of the performance world. I rented a dyno at some Corvette shop. I think it was Corvette Masters in Longwood. I don't know if they're still around.

So you rented the shop from a Corvette place? You showed up with a ZX3?

Yeah. I mean, I had a V6, no shame. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Didn't let it stop me at least.

Yeah.

So, and the, yeah, I probably need a clip here to keep going. So ask me more questions.

Yeah, no, you're good. So, okay. So you start, you go, you take the ZX3 there. So at what time frame is that roughly at this one, like 2005, six-ish or?

It's probably 03 still.

03, okay.

Yeah.

So then, okay, at that point though, now we got terminators coming on the scene. Did you start dabbling with those at some point?

I did. I was a little bit more mature in my career. So, you know, I mentioned earlier, I worked for SCT for less than a year. It was like eight months. It was a rapidly growing company. And there really wasn't a place for an employee that was being paid in chips and working on the side. You know, realistically, you know, understandable. And they really supported me through my journey after I left the company. So that's all good. But that whole time I had been working at SCT, earning a paycheck, making money on the side, I had been saving money. I bought my first house and I bought my first dino in late 2003. Wow.

Okay.

So. But you can't put a dino in your house. So I built a trailer for it in my two car garage. I'm like, man, this would be perfect. I don't want to, like, set the dino up in some shop that I'm paying rent to or whatever and be stuck there. Let me just put it on a trailer. I can go wherever I want. And I bought some books. I talked to a guy named Dan Dezio that built his own dino trailer. And I'm like, I can I can picture this. I can weld fabricate, whatever. Cool. So I did it. And you know, the dino was really that pivotal point where I had my own equipment I could tune on as long as I wanted to. My cars, customer cars, whatever. And really start to learn like the real like, you know, craft of tuning.

When you say learn, what does learning look like at this point?

Really making changes and understanding why they happen. You know, you're on a dyno to look at horsepower and you have, that's your main measure of success. So, but you're also, you're also data logging. You're also measuring air fuel. You're measuring boost and you're changing things, getting the right set of components for the car to perform like, you know, optimally in every possible way.

Are you getting some good gains out of stuff at this point? I mean, as things are going pretty good and customer base is starting to kind of fall in line, I suppose.

Yeah.

I'm not saying that you sucked at it or anything, when I've just, you must have been pretty decent at it at that point.

I didn't blow up cars. Yeah. Which, you know, I wasn't real early in the game with the 0304 Cobra stuff. I was like, 0506 is when I really started tuning a lot. But I say the thing about blowing up cars, because there were a lot of lightnings blown up and warrantied by Ford dealers. There were a few 0304 Cobras as well. So you can't run 29 degrees of spark in a boosted car. I mean, you can, but I don't recommend it. It's a good story. So you like I was careful. I was crept up. I crept up on things. I had some great mentors in the tuning space. So they helped me understand the theory of it. And I was able to apply that.

Any to mention?

Really, Jerry Robleski, you know, and I'm trying to think. And then, you know, the racetrack that teaches you things.

Oh yeah.

For better or for worse.

I just know we have a mutual friend, Greg Banish. So I didn't know if you had met him later on then or.

He came to my shop in about 06 and did a tuning class. And we've been friends since.

Okay.

And he's an incredible friend and mentor as well. But yeah, he was a little bit later. And I didn't know back then, but I would need him for much more difficult stuff in the future. We'll get to that later.

When do you first coin the website domain for VMP? I'm just curious.

Oh gosh. It's got to be 01 when we, when I registered the name. So I found the paper and it's in my office at home. I'm going to frame it, but it's the fictitious name registration for Velocity Mustang Performance.

I didn't catch this earlier. Did you go to school or anything? Or do you have a degree in anything?

No, I never learned to read. That didn't hit quite the way I wanted it to.

It sounds like you got out of high school and started a business right away and went right from there.

I was kind of a failure in high school. I did really good as a freshman, and then I got distracted by making money on the internet. I had my freshman Earth Sciences teacher tell me, Justin, you totally aced the class. You could be valedictorian of your class. And I go, okay, cool, I'll keep working at this. But the focus required to go through school, I was easily distracted by cars, girls and money.

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A lot of late nights on eBay. A lot of weight lifting was my first class my senior year, and that was a real easy one to skip, and they'd still give you a D because they didn't want to keep you behind, which I love weight lifting now. It's probably better that I'm finding it later in life when I'm more disciplined and can stick to it. And yeah, so I went to college for like six months or a year, and I did some classes and just kind of the business and the family just kind of took off.

So yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah. So when you're doing some fog like kits at whatever, when do we start seeing parts? So you're doing some tuning and where are you?

So that came later and about, oh wait, and I'll tell you how I got there. Okay. Wait, there was one part before I fabricated my own turbo kit and I needed a mass air solution for the factory ECU. Like, and this is back in, this is back in, you know, oh one, oh two, maybe oh three. Like you didn't put standalones in street cars. Right. It's like, you don't understand the world that we're living in now. It's just amazing. But so you had to keep the mass air. So I had a customer who had, and I was a customer yet. He was a machine shop. He had a local buddy with a machine shop. He's like, I can make that part for you. So I made them and I sold them, people on forms and websites, a mass air flange, to put the factory sensor directly in a tube. Okay. And that actually started up. Big part of our business is the mass air housing, sensors, harnesses, etc. So that was the first part, but it really, I don't know, I don't count it as really significant. I had to spend some time in the tuning market and just kind of watch everything go on. And by 2006, there was a hot new Mustang on the scene that was factory supercharged. Anybody remember that one? Yeah.

Yeah.

And like local guy had one of these cars and sought me out on the forums. This is a 07 GT 500.

Yeah.

You know, we hadn't been, yeah, since 04 Cobra was the last factory supercharged car, we had the new generation in 05, but no supercharged Mustang.

So yeah, this is Shelby's back in the picture now too.

Yeah.

Yep.

And like I had been tuning three valves with turbos and blowers and nitrous and everything. And, you know, staying busy doing that, doing two valve stuff was still hot back then. So I was seasoned as a tuner, you know, had my AFM 1000 wide bands, you know, in my dyno and getting, you know, doing all the data acquisition you needed to do to be successful as a tuner. Cause yeah, if you don't have the basics, then you're just, you're just effing around. So 07 Shelby GT 500. And I am the second person in the country to tune one. John Lund beat me by a week. So we ended up picking up 60 rear wheel horsepower on this 07 GT 500, taking it from like 420 at the wheels to 480. And I remember I posted on no less than 30 forums, an article with my dyno results. And like, there were some like weird ball forums I posted on, but I'm just like, I'm just gonna get the recognition. Yeah. So now where this goes into the parts side of things is, I'm like, I need to buy my own car cause this looks, this is fricking awesome and I can use it for R&D. So of course these cars were super hard to get back then. Everybody was paying 15 to 25,000 over sticker.

Oh damn. Oh wow.

Okay.

And you know, this was late 06, early 07. So the economy was about to melt down, but haven't yet. It's always the hottest right at the end, right? So like one dealership had a car of every color you could pick, but they wanted 25,000 over. I was like, oh no way. I'm doing that. So finally in May of 07, I found a car, a red with white stripe car at a little tiny dealership in Paducah, Kentucky. No, it wasn't Paducah. It was, that's the big city in Western Kentucky. It was a smaller city. It was like an OG Ford dealer with a showroom that held two cars, max. And so anyways, a guy had, it was a lot, it was a, the dealership had won the lottery and they had sold the car to one of their good customers. And I show up there and I'm like, okay, write a check for the car and then write a check to this guy because he's selling you his allocation basically. I'm like, okay, cool. So for $51,000, I walked away with my 07 GT 500 and started messing in with tuning it before I even got home. And of course on a supercharged car, first thing you do is you tune it and then you change the pulley. And then you do, you know, back then they had an air box still, so we had to change the air intake. So I found a local machine shop and I actually was at a party with the owner's son over the weekend. They, they made, we designed a pulley and they made it for me. And my claim to fame back then was the stock look, but smaller, because all these guys wanted to keep their warranty. I take my car into the dealership for oil changes. I don't want to, you know, don't want them to see any mods. So, and like, in retrospect now, like we went to one size and then I'm like, let's go smaller. Okay, what are the material properties? How thin can we make this? How can we optimize every single element of the design to get as much as possible out of it? And yeah, so I consider that my first, like in 08, 09, we started doing pulleys for the Shelby's.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, you had an R and D car at that time. So that makes sense. Yeah.

I had the dyno set up in a shop. I was tuning there at the shop two or three days a week. And then I was doing email tunes the other two or three days a week.

Okay. All right. So then how do we get into superchargers now? Because that's not a small feat in itself either.

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Yeah. So, I kind of played around with the Shelby as much as I could. Had a good friend who was like, hey, I think we can make a bigger throttle body for this thing. So I did the throttle body, I did the elbow, the tuning, the pulley. We didn't know yet how bad they overheated. We didn't know what other parts of the system could be optimized. So we just did kind of what you could see and feel. And you could get a real quick, a good gain on the dyno pretty quickly. I maintained drivability, durability, all those things that customers want. Because you can't blow up cars. People got to be able to enjoy their cars when they're modified. Right. So we did all that. And I get wind of a new supercharger coming out from Ford Performance. And contacted one of my long time buddies I had met through tuning. He's still in the industry today. Great guy. Dan from Dynojet. I know a lot of tuners and stuff know Dan. Yeah. Okay, do you know anybody at Ford? He's like, yeah, I've sent you a couple of email addresses. And I wrote up a sponsorship proposal. Now, I'm going to caveat this with this is going to kind of this is kind of funny. Paths cross. I also wrote up a sponsorship proposal. The sponsorship proposal I wrote up and I said, hey, I've got this car. It's going to be on display at the PRI show because I always have my dyno at the PRI show and then you need a demonstrator car on the dyno. And, you know, these deliverables will run it on the dyno. People will see your product on my car. We'll do a plaque with the modification list and everything. And obviously on a dyno, they'll see the horsepower result. You know, and I'm a good tuner, so it will produce good horsepower. Sent this sponsorship proposal to Ford Performance, Whipple Superchargers and Kenny Bell.

Okay.

And Ford Performance was pretty easy because I had the emails of the guys, but I remember I messaged Kenny Bell on SVT Performance and they didn't get back to me for a while and they had questions and stuff. And like I asked Jared to ask Dustin, you know, about this and they were busy and didn't get back to me real quick. Ford Performance got back to me within like 24 hours and they told me what I needed to do. They wanted some other parts on the car that they were coming out with, some valve covers and some coil covers. And I'm like, okay, this is pretty straightforward. Let's do it. And that started our first jump into Supercharged World.

Okay.

So of course, they gave me the original Ford Racing TVS upgrade for the 07 GT500. It was like they sold it as a package with calibration that was rated at like 650 horsepower. And I remember when Shelby was building all the Super Snakes of that generation, they were putting it on the convertibles because that was the limit of the convertible chassis. And the coupe cars got like a Kenny Bell 800 horsepower package. So like, you know, Kenny Bell and Whipple were both in this space at the same time, and they had options, but they weren't like fully flushed out. They had drop motor mounts, they had trimming of this and that, you know, just, they got it done. You know, and which is impressive to begin with, right? But the Ford Performance Solution was a little more of an OEM integrated approach with this new 2.3 liter TVS rotor pack. And we're like, okay, hey, you know, we'll try this, this deal out, it's new technology, see how it performs. So, do you want me to keep talking about this?

No, no, keep going. Yeah, no. All right. Nice trip down the history lane.

Yeah. So just like the factory supercharger on the GT 500s, we, you know, applied all of our tweaking to this one and learned, you know, a lot of what was different as far as like, all right, just remember this to the day that the pulley is an eighth of an inch difference. We had to make a different line of pulleys for those. And it was really, it was, it was meant to go on a factory car with everything factory. So same throttle bodies, air intakes, elbows, all that stuff applied, you know, and that's when we started to get into like bigger injectors, more fuel flow, cause now we really could move more air. So we need more fuel.

Okay.

Yeah. And I, I remember posting on the forums, I think I made 666 real world horsepower and everybody was real impressed by that. Yeah. And this is a car that made 420 stock, you know, 520 to 550 with bolt-ons. So yeah.

It's a big jump at this point.

Yeah.

What time frame is this at this point as well?

This would have been mid 08. Wow.

Okay.

No, I'm sorry. It would have been mid 09.

Okay.

Okay. You know, and we had, we had come out of the 03 Cobra heyday, all those cars made 600 of the wheels and you had the more extreme ones that may be made 650, 700.

Right.

But the lightning's never made that unless they were really heavily modified with this, with the, with the cylinder head that finally came out for the two valve and stuff.

And I was going to say, because the lightning was still a two valve too, which is kind of disappointing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And like the turbo, the turbo three valve and two valve stuff, like nobody was popping out a thousand or a horse, rear wheel horsepower numbers left and right like they are now.

Yeah.

Like that really only happened over like the last 10 years. Yeah. So yeah, it was impressive. And I continued to modify that car into 2010. You know, long tube headers, camshafts. I remember doing a camshaft install article for 5.0 Magazine with Mark Christ. And I ended up making like 800 rear wheel horsepower on a stock bottom end, just with, you know, two, three supercharger with all the upgrades and cams.

Now these, I always forget that those five fours, those don't have variable cam timing either in them, right? So they can, okay, yeah, now you're getting close and you got the Coyote coming down the pipe now here.

So, yeah, so a lot of things happened really freaking quick in 2010. And I actually need to write this down, you know, the, in the background, my life, my wife, I met her at the drag drag strip. She, we built several cars for her. She would drag race them when she could. She would help with the business when she could, but she was also going to school for her micro molecular biology degree and having our first kid in 07 and our second kid in 09.

So a lot going on at this point.

Yeah. And the blessing of us being both really hardworking and really determined is like she would be working at, on schoolwork until like 2 a.m. And I would be sending out emails and tunes till like 2 a.m. Okay. So.

What cars is she racing at this point? Cause now we're talking, this is years later past the V6 engine.

Yeah. So we kind of retired the V6. We got her an 06 Mustang daily driver. And like back in 06, we were still pretty hardcore V6 people. And you got to remember the GTs weren't that great. Yeah. Two valve made 220 to the tires. The three valve made 280 to the tire, but a fricking LS1 Camaro made 300 to the tire and responded well to bolt ons. So we're just like, hey, let's get a V6 and throw a supercharger on it. That's kind of our jam back then. So she had this V6 manual. We did a lot of stuff to that car, Vortech at 15 pounds. We did a TR6060 swap. Actually remember somebody that helped me out with some parts, they custom one-off parts they made. And I was seeking out people like Paul Saviniky from Paul's High Performance and Bowen, who actually passed away last year, Mike Bowen. Hey, how did you do this? And this and that. And, you know, I'm just some annoying kid, right? It's how I look at myself. And they were, you know, they would help me and give me tips and stuff like that. And we'd go and do it. So we built this 450-rho horsepower supercharged V6 for her. That was her daily driver. She actually had two kids in the back of it at one point when we had our second son. And my wife's five, three, so like she sits all the way forward. So car seats and Mustangs go together. It's great for her. Especially, yeah, so that's what else we were doing.

So let's talk parts again here. So you're doing like long tube headers and all this stuff. Where are you producing all this stuff at this point? Are you designing all this yourself as well as somebody helping you?

No, we're drawing on other companies. And ultimately, we really only get into a part or component if we can add significant value above and beyond what the rest of the industry does. Everything we do, it's gotta be a better mousetrap. So yeah, I'm happy to use... I remember I called up McLeod and talked to Red McLeod about a clutch for one of her cars. And he's like, yeah, we can make that. And I was using headers from my buddies at Afco, you know, the now defunct Dynatech brand. And yeah, so just whoever was out there. At that point, you know, I was a go-to tuner. So I had a pretty big network of like people I could call. Okay.

So then now we're finally getting into like the 2010 plus era. How are things progressing at this point? Do you have employees at this point?

So, sort of.

Okay.

And all right, let me get you up to speed on this. I had my brother working for me. He was still like a teenager or something in the mid 2000s, making wiring harnesses and answering emails and shipping stuff. I had my buddy, Brett, working for me. And then like something happened and it was just like, my brother moved on, Brett moved on. And we're like, you know what? I'm just going to do. We're just going to do all this ourselves. And, you know, I remember I had to set up in my living room because I was like remodeling the room in my house that was my office. And then. So from like 08 to 10 or 11, I had no full time employees. I just had helpers at Dino Days. I know, by the way, this mobile dino that that I built in my two car garage, we were taking it to every car show in the area we could find because we would show up and we dino about 10% of the show. Oh really? And it was just cash in your pocket. And it was the marketing exposure for the business. So like Rebecca would sign them up. Me and the helper would strap them down and run them, give them their printout. Hey, you're making this much horsepower. And, and we do that 10 or 15 times a year.

And are you doing a lot of tuning at this time too?

Yes.

Yeah. Okay.

Day in, day out, living and breathing it, you know. I don't even know what the numbers are. Like technically I have all the files from back then. Yeah. But it was easily, I mean, between updates and new tunes, I could have been slinging 20, 20, 30 tunes a day by myself. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Quite a bit at that point. Yeah.

Yeah. So 2010, let's talk about that year, because that was the year the Coyote was introduced. That was the year we had been doing a lot of these Ford Racing Supercharger installs and a lot of tuning. And, you know, I would get them and I'd modify them for people. And I'm like, man, why can't I just buy them already modified to my specifications? And I had been talking to the Eaton Supercharger world is a pretty big world. It crosses OEM and aftermarket and their new 2.3 TVS rotor. It was a competitor of the traditional screw rotors from Whipple and Kenny Bell. Even though it was smaller, it was very efficient. So I've been talking to Harrop, Edelbrock, Roush. And it was really hard to get into these big companies if you didn't have an existing relationship. So, this is silly. This is really silly. My caller ID lights up with Roush Industries. Somebody calls me from Roush and says, hey, I think we should be talking because there's this new Coyote coming out and we have a supercharger system designed for us. And I say, you know, by the way, I've been trying to get a hold of you guys because I heard you made XXX parts for Ford Performance, which was a supercharger that was I got sponsored with. And I actually want to do my own version. Like, oh, yeah, they said that that program's kind of run its course, but we have some leftover inventory. We should talk. I think, OK, great. Yeah. So that was the start of having our own supercharger line. Oh, and then there's the whole other thing. I said, oh, yeah, by the way, I want to put these 2.3 TVSs on an 0304 Cobrooks. I think it would be a good technology for that car, too. And I actually hand-built and fabricated a couple of prototypes with generic housings that you could buy from the supercharger companies at the time. So we had a working prototype, and it performed well, as expected, because it had all the data from the 5.4 GT500. So yeah, a lot of stuff happened in 2010. That kicked off. So we kicked off our own design and our own tooling for the superchargers for first Cobra, and we modified existing tooling for GT500. And then we partnered with Roush on the Coyote.

Okay. Yeah. So you're bait, you're partnering with them as in they're setting them to your specs or you're rebranding on to buying them from them and selling them to your stuff.

So we have, we, they started, first they started machining them to our specifications so they could take a bigger inlet and a smaller pulley. And then later on, we invested in our own design and tooling.

Okay.

Yeah.

So I guess we can jump right ahead then because this kind of works. So this whole deal that you've got going with Whipple now is not anything new to you. This is something that you guys have worked on deals like this before. And how did that come about then? Did you?

There's a, I've told the story privately quite a bit. Yeah. You know, we had been, let me give a little more history, because I know everybody wants to hear how did we start working with Whipple. Right. Because we had been, you know, bitter competitors in the space for the better part of a decade. And, you know, with the GT500 stuff, Whipple, like, let's go back to the GT500, because that was, like, our initial delve into really supercharging and modifying cars, you know, above and beyond just tuning. Like, I'd get a customer car in, it'd be spec'd out, and I'm like, hey, these parts of components work good together. We tune it, we get them a result. So I always had that data, but I wasn't changing things, like, real time. Whereas with my own cars and my superchargers I spent a lot of time on, I was intimately knowing everything I could about them. And I had been, you know, I'd been tuning a lot of Whipple cars. I had worked from Jared, with Jared from Lethal early on. He was very close with Whipple and tuned a lot of his cars. And, you know, I actually have, I've had Dustin Whipple's cell phone in my number of my phone for like 15 years. And I had called him once about something in 2010, we'd exchanged some emails or something. And I actually found this email and sent it to him. Like he said, Justin, we should get a Whipple on that car. And, but yeah, through the teens, the industry got really competitive for better, for worse. Like I played a part in that. And we had been really pushing the TVS technology and Eaton had had a good thing with the 2.3. They continued it with the 2.6.5 and they even tried to continue it further with a 3.3, which ended up morphing into a 3.1. And we went through several versions of the 3.1. And, you know, Eaton's a great company. They produce a great product, but they've got their own little box they live in. We all, you know, we all have to frame stuff, realities that we can deal with and write, like their downsides are they're traditionally a high-volume OEM manufacturer, they're cost-constrained, and, you know, in the racing world, if you want to make more power, like cost just can't be an option at some point.

Right.

The magic of being successful in the market is hitting that balance of cost and performance. And Eaton had it for a long time, and we ran with them exclusively through the teens and even into the early, you know, 20s. So, and where I'm going with this is like we had tested the new 3.1 extensively. I think I showed you one on the floor over there. And ultimately, the 3.1 is not successful, was not, and I don't believe we'll ever be successful in this space. The manufacturing limitations that Eaton has are just gonna keep it, keep the 3.1 liter TVS from really being able to perform on like this car and that Shelby behind you. It's not a high pressure supercharger. It is a high volume supercharger. And on all of these late model cars, there's small blocks, five twos, five fours. If you want to make a killer number, you need 30 pounds of boost. You need 25 to 30 pounds. And I actually don't recommend running superchargers higher than that. So the TVS loses its edge at those higher pressures and a bigger one, a larger displacement TVS doesn't fix that. You know, Eden's technology would probably be great on a boat, a steady state application. You know, we found through extensive testing, it was better in like the three to four thousand RPM range on some of the Shelby applications we tested. OK. And I, you know, we're going to get this about the TVS stuff. It wasn't torqueier. It, it traded off. It just had a lot of trade-offs. It had honestly a narrower operating window than any supercharger I've seen, that the three one did. The two three and the two six five are great. Yeah. And actually, you know, two six five, I think is the best. People say a lot about the two three being torqueier and this and that. I'm like, yeah, it's torquey and then it chokes. And, you know, all of us want to go faster as the RPMs go higher and the two six five does that for you. So enough about TVS stuff. You know, but that was important. We had really worked on and loved the TVS stuff, but it really it had hit the end of the line. And there were a lot of back in 2023, there were a lot of things going on. Whipple was rolling out new product constantly and hitting the market. And they were being successful, but they were having some failures. And, you know, we've obviously had our own trials and tribulations in the aftermarket space. You know, when you're on the cutting edge, that happens. And I see Dustin getting beat up on the internet. And I just, I pull up in the driveway at home. I just pick up the phone and I say, Hey, you're doing good. Your responses are good. You're not arguing with people. You're doing great, man. And he's like, you know, thank you. I'm just, you know, I'm just trying to do the best I can. And we ended up talking for an hour. And, you know, I just kind of ended the call with like, Hey, you know, if you ever need anything, I'm here. And that had been after a long course of, you know, arguing on the internet with your competitors, saying some things I'm not real proud of.

Well, I remember all through that S550 stuff, it was like Odin or Whipple. And it was like, those were your options, you know? So yeah, it was going back and forth.

So, you know, that phone call was really early in 2023. And it didn't really go anywhere. But I think it laid the foundation for, you know, hey, we're just people, you know, doing what we're passionate about. And at the end of the days, there's probably more commonalities than there are differences. So, we get going towards the end of 23. And one of our former employees that, you know, we're still friends with actually gets a job at Whipple. And it's Chuck Carter. And, you know, things had further developed with the new Mustang, more details were coming out. And our relationship with Magnuson, had really been going through a lot of trials and tribulations because of the the 3.1 failures, frankly. And there were certain things they wanted that we didn't agree with. And, you know, they wanted to go a different direction. So we started talking to Whipple and, you know, found out there was a lot of mutual respect there. And you know, from an engineering perspective and, you know, providing the best possible product to our customers, found out Whipple was working on a lot of new stuff. Found out they had addressed their quality and durability issues. And with the Gen 6, found out they also had a better mousetrap. So we were really keen to that. And, you know, we had always clung to the TVS stuff because of the broad power band of the 2.3 and then especially of the 2.65. It was torquey and it could flow the air and make the power. And Whipple had always been able to hit, you know, part of that, but have some trade-offs. Well, you know, they're new. And like this is something that's not really talked about in the Whipple space because it's the same displacement, but a three liter Gen 5 versus a three liter Gen 6, totally different animal. And that's what really sold me on partnering with Whipple.

When you say different animal, do you have any specific reasons?

Yeah. So they changed the rotor profile on the Gen 6.

It's kind of like, so I have a Gen 4 on my car, right? So that was technically a Gen 3, but it had a different rotor pack, I think is what it was. So it's a kind of a similar situation, I would assume.

Yeah. And like, I'm gonna say that, and I don't think Whipple's ever come out and say this, but I know all the design and engineering attributes because we design superchargers here. Right. The Gen 6 is actually a longer rotor pack by 20 millimeters because they worked out the length over diameter. And that's one of the critical factors you manipulate to make a supercharger efficient in the range you need it to be. You know, you've got air coming in and you can either blow air and just pump it, or you can compress air at a high adiabatic efficiency to do it without a lot of drive losses. And I can get more into that later because I don't know if that really made sense. But where I'm going with this, is it like your two nines? I think like a Gen 2 through a Gen 4 2.9 liter, I think they'll all fit in the same case.

Yeah.

The Gen 6 is actually a new case, improved durability due to case structure, and greatly improved adiabatic efficiency due to the rotor design. Okay. And you know what this means for the average Coyote person is the boost comes on hard. It hits hard. I actually think that the 3L Gen 6 is well matched to the Coyote's airflow requirements. It makes more torque than a 265 at the same boost and the same RPM. And you will hear all the TVS proponents talk about this stuff, about how torquey they are, how hard they hit. First of all, I don't care about anything below 2000 RPM. You're not really using an engine at that point. 3000 on up, up to the Coyote's 7, 8, 9,000 RPM rev limiter, that's what you're using. So the Whipple stuff comes on, it's solid, it makes good power, and it carries it all the way to the end. And I know from all the testing and development work we've done, that you have to hit the right profile and you have to avoid expending too much energy to drive the supercharger. So yeah, when we started doing, first of all Whipple told us the results of the Gen 6, and then we started doing our own testing. And really that's what's on this car. That whole design compounds everything from the inlet, the intercooler set up, the rotors, they all work harmoniously together to make a lot of power. And at this point we're, if you can make 30 to 60 more horsepower at the same boost level, without having to change fuels, without being harder on the engine, that's a win.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, Coyotes are already making the most power per pound of boost for compared to every other Dodge and Chevy out there. And then on the upper end of things, you know, we were pushing the TVSs to like 1,000, 1,100, 1,200. We had some really crazy builds make like 1,300.

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.

The Whipple Gen 6 stuff can do that and a little bit more. It can do it without overdrive balancers. Because it takes so little power to drive, it can get there. It can get farther with a 6-rib belt before having to go to 8-10 rib and stuff.

Okay.

So, yeah, that's the engineering side of it. I don't know if I answered your question.

Well, what I got from that is you were working with Eaton, and you basically just switched suppliers is what you did.

Yeah.

So, I mean, it's not a new thing in this industry where people are putting their own spin on stuff and whatever, and Eaton is a giant corporation. They make manufacturing equipment and all kinds of stuff. So, yeah, they specialize in superchargers. So, I think.

Yeah, it was like a natural evolution for our goals, for the goals, for our customers, for our racing programs, for performance. You know, and people love their car so much. When you come out with something better, they'll buy the next generation of it.

Yeah.

And, you know, I think it's important to be able to continuously disrupt your own market, essentially.

But OK, so let's go into because what you guys do do, I think very well, is all the stuff around it as well. So you're you're very big. We talked about cooling, things like that. Walk us through the R&D of some of the stuff that you guys see that are lacking and where we go from there.

So, you know, the whole thing about engineers at big companies are arrogant. Yeah. When the 3.1 TVS, the first version, didn't work. We were told that, well, something else is wrong with your system. You know, your throttle body is too small, your pressure drop across your intercooler is too high, you know, you're, you're whatever. You've got a cork somewhere. So that I had already started to dabble in that, and that led to the partnership with PWR to develop better intercoolers. And, you know, the first one was for your Shelby. Yeah. Your, your new generation 2020 Shelby. So we developed an incredible test rig on our chassis dyno that rivals some engine dynos for supercharger testing and evaluation, like pressure drops, temperature, pulley speeds, everything. So we could test intercooler designs. And, you know, you're, you're working day to day, right? But, you know, if you don't make time for R&D, then you have no future. Right. So in retrospect, I'm looking at like, why did this take so long? But yeah, so the, the TVS stuff and the feedback from Eaton drove us to, you know, we were already good on the throttle body side, but it pushed us further. But the intercooler is something that, you know, all these Cobras and the older GT 500, we supercharged, we just never touched the intercooler. And if I recall, there were very few people in the, there was maybe one or two in each market segment that had an aftermarket intercooler and nobody really knew what it did or if it was better or anything else. And that's really where I forced myself to learn about the intercooler and how to make it better. It's an integral component of the supercharger system. If your intercooler flows too much air and you can see through it very clearly, it's not going to pull any heat out. And then conversely, if it's too restrictive, the pressure drop across it is too high and your supercharger is working that much harder. And every pound of boost from a supercharger takes 10 or 20 horsepower to drive it. So, you want it to have to do as little work as possible. So, we ended up developing intercooler upgrades for the Shelby and the older GT500 first. And those technologies work a little bit differently and we're actually homogenizing that with some new parts and new offerings that are going to happen this year. But I first did cores, then I did lids. And the lid thing took me way longer, late to the game with that, but we've been very successful since. I think you have one for your car.

Yeah, you must have sold a lot of Apex Predator lids though, because I feel like I see them everywhere. There's a lot of people that have them.

Yeah. I just ordered another 200 and I think we're about 450 in at this point.

Yeah.

In the field plus whatever we're going to sell this year.

Yeah.

So yeah, that's pretty cool that your creations are adopted by the market.

Yeah. Well, when I switched out my intercooler core, I saw your videos and then you put the two next to each other and you're like, holy crap, it is a huge difference.

And yeah, and it's funny because things ultimately develop a life of their own. Our competitors said it was too restrictive, it had higher pressure drops. And I'm like, wait, it's engineered for lower pressure drops and the data says that's how it works. Oh, you're just talking s***. Yeah.

Well, welcome to the internet. Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, one of the things that we got to get a little bit insight on, so hopefully by the time this episode airs, I'll drop our tour with AMS Performance. But we went over there and when we were talking to Martin, like they censored the s*** out of their car. Like they, I think it's like, they get like a Motec, whatever the thing. And I think every time they switch cars, it's like 19 sensors and they're measuring all these pressure drops and all that. Like it's a crazy setup. And it's like, same thing you're talking about. It's like, oh, well, these people are saying it's worse. Well, when you have a consistent way of testing the data, it's like, oh, this is a significantly better product. So I'm curious, what do you guys do for testing here to make claims like that?

So, you know, on that lid and intercooler development cycle, we were using spacers as thin as a millimeter and a half to, and we had to do three pulls back to back and have them in the same weather conditions and have them repeat. So that meant setting the car up for a morning of testing and, you know, being able to do it like all in a morning before the afternoon heat came in, because you can correct for weather changes, but it's really not a good idea. So, yeah, very minute changes and that ultimately proved out the technology and the lids, which we're now, we've applied for a patent on it. So, yeah, and essentially pressure is the big thing, and then horsepower is how we proved out that system.

Okay. And yeah, if you have a GT500 and you don't have it yet, it was a very easy, like it wasn't affordable, like I'm surprised that more people aren't just doing it, because it really wasn't, the price point was good, and it was a super easy install.

Yeah, and that's like one of our goals, right? Is we did a second generation lid recently to use some space that I had originally ignored, but there was a ton of 3D printing installation trials to make sure that, like the space can be there, but if you can't install the part, because there's something you have to work around, then it's no good. So, yeah. And I feel like there was something I was missing on that.

Well, also, so you said you work with PWR. I talked to them at, was it PRI or probably PRI, and I think they make Palm Beach Dino's heat exchanger, and they supply for the OEMs. Basically, if you have an intercooler or something other, they probably make it for about everybody and anybody.

Yeah, yeah, they're a very premium supplier. I think CFS.

Oh, maybe it was CFS. That's who I talked to.

Yeah.

Sorry.

Yeah. And like, I developed a special relationship with PWR very early on. One of the engineers there, we really connected and were able to iterate a lot to get to the best design. Yeah. And they make everything right there in Indiana. That'd be another good one to meet with their current head of engineering, Hayden.

So, yeah, I don't know what to develop and build things like that. That has to be pretty, that seems intense. There's a lot going on there.

And the crazy thing is when we first started working with them, they were flying the parts in from Australia and they eventually brought all the manufacturing stateside. Oh, really? They're saying, gosh, right? With all the tariff drama over the past couple of years. And they do batch brazing in these specially designed furnaces, like, I think with anything, there's a lot to make and stuff and figure it all out. You know, the only downside is they're a very premium product. So, you know, I made the decision to offer a street line of intercooler cores that are more affordable and then a race line for people that want all out performance.

Yeah, I didn't, I'm just, if there's a bigger one, I'm going to get that one.

Yeah. And actually, like, the, we have, we actually have Carbios on some of our intercoolers as well. And we'll get them for all of our intercooler cores eventually because they don't negatively impact emissions, but we just, we have it on some of the original ones because we were doing a batch of Carbios.

Well, let's talk about that for a second then too, because you're an active member with SEMA, right? So you, you kind of, I mean, you have a part in helping with the lobbying and all that stuff for that.

Yes. Okay. You know, they have been gracious enough to listen to me and take my opinions and put me in front of Congress people and officials and, you know, talk about like what's really going on in the industry. And the truth is, like over the past five, ten years, we've seen a lot of disruptions that if not handled, could very easily put people out of business, right? You know, it's shops and small manufacturers, they can't afford to have, you know, mistakes or overnight legislative changes that hurt their business. So I've, that's kind of like that. I think I was talking about before we started, you know, the mentoring and the protecting the industry and kind of trying to look out for the future that my wife and I have become really involved in.

So what does that look like throughout the year?

So I volunteer on a SEMA network called ETTN, and I also interface with everybody else at SEMA from, you know, their president to their DC lobbying organization. And I say their president, their CEO, Mike Spagnola, various board members. You know, what SEMA like, it's easy to look at SEMA and just see the big flashy show and all the money and the dues and all these things and say, what do they do for me? But you know, it's my opinion, you really need somebody like SEMA in the space to, you know, take the concerns of the industry and lobby for, you know, better stuff. Lobby did not get crushed by the, you know, fricking whatever DC is trying to do that minute. Cause like, listen, it just changes from the administration to administration. And we were able to reverse some of the stuff that the last administration did, which was great. Rebecca and I, you know, flew to DC early last year. And the SEMA staff, right, they're lobbyists. So they walk into a senator representative's office, you know, hey, I know we do the same thing. You know, you could be sitting in my position next week if you get a job over here. So they bring people like us who are really on the ground working in the industry every day. And like we can talk about the issues that affect us and how, you know, this legislation may hurt us, how there need to be some changes. So, you know, it improves the situation for us, or at least maintains a status quo. I think all the car guys would just prefer to have the status quo, keep doing what we're doing, let us do this. But the world gets all kinds of crazy ideas and thinks they need to do something about it.

Yeah. We talked a little about the electric car thing, too. So, yeah, I mean, look what they did. I mean, those companies are big enough to probably take the hit. But, you know, a lot of them invest in billions of dollars into these EV programs. And then it was like, oh, never mind, our bad.

Yeah, product people didn't really want just being shoved down their throat.

Right.

And we should have let that happen. You know, I don't know. I don't want to talk in absolutes. You know, like, I'm OK with technology. Yeah, I like I started out in computers and then I became I was a computer nerd. And then I became a car nerd is what I say. New technology is good, but just don't force it down people's throat.

We've talked to a lot of you tuners. You guys are all nerds. It's fine.

Thanks for being so accepting.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, that's the thing is like, you know, like Dan mentions, like the big companies can take the hit. They can just write it off over 10 years. And you know, they got all this money coming in. But like when you're talking about guys that got to pay rent today, it's a very different story. And you know, we're not talking about small, like, five, 10 man shops. But like when you get to look kind of like around your size or, you know, when you're putting out a ton of products, like where you're kind of more visible at this point, right? Especially with all the EPA stuff and all that, like, you know, especially in the last 10 years, it's been so crazy. Is there anything that you've kind of seen that that has been prevented, for example, like, oh man, that was a close one.

Like, you know, people are very critical of SEMA. And I think, I, I always think there's room for improvement, but I think we have to look at the good things SEMA's done. You know, they, they first uncovered some rulemaking by EPA back in 2015, some rules and regs that were snuck in there. And you know, the way this works is there's a law, but the different areas of the government still have to decide how they're going to carry out that law. And they have a lot of liberty to decide that. And SEMA's given the EPA a ton of pushback. And you know, we're seeing that come full circle to where, like when we got the advanced clean cars 2 thing crushed by the EPA, like the EPA did not approve it. SEMA's leadership actually got invited to the signing ceremony at the White House. You know, we've got a favorable administration, obviously, to business. Republicans are favorable to business, you know? And like they're supposedly less favorable to the environment, but it really shouldn't be looked at that way. Like we're all still for the environment. You know, we're just being reasonable about how we get there. And so I think SEMA's work in DC has just continued to accelerate and we're going to have more and more successes there.

Do you have examples of people being critical? Like everyone, like, I feel like if you're not involved in the no, it's very easy to make an outside judgment. But do you have something that, an example of anybody being critical?

You know, there was a lot of disappointment the RPM Act wasn't passed.

And what was that specifically?

Recognition and Protection of Motorsports Act. SEMA created this, you know, bill and then worked with different legislators to get it, you know, passed. And ultimately they did not get it passed, but I think it really set the tone that our industry was willing to fight. We were not just going to take, you know, EPA oversight, you know, lying down. And I mean, for those that don't know, EPA was coming into mom and pop businesses saying, what are you doing? Give us all your records. We believe you have violated the Clean Air Act. You owe us this much money. We might negotiate it down if you have an ability to pay, if you only have an ability to pay so much, but it was very heavy handed. It was not in the spirit of like working together. EPA is supposed to provide compliance assistance, not only enforcement. And I think just trying to enforce against mom and pop shops is just ridiculous.

Well, so rather than doing just kind of like a slap on the wrist, like, hey, stop doing that. It was just like, all right, now you're in trouble sort of deal.

Now you're in trouble. You owe us a million and a half dollars.

Okay.

So what happened to our Texas buddies? Remember?

Sorry, I'm trying to think which Texas buddies.

GM, MoTec. I could say it, I guess. No, no, it's fine.

Anyways, I think I know who you're talking about.

They're probably API Settlements or Public Record.

Okay.

But one of the things I heard in a podcast, we did probably a year and a half now at this point, was one of the things you mentioned is basically like, okay, right now, this administration is a little more friendly towards car guys and whatever business and such. One of the things I heard and maybe you can give some insight into it is, under the 2016 to 2020 administration, from my understanding is they pulled funding from the EPA and as a result, they had to get their own, basically started going around finding everybody to get themselves paid. Have you heard that before? Is there any merits to it?

There was a, they pulled funding and there was a sect, there was a group of the EPA that was very much like, well, we're going to go after whoever we can go after. I don't, I honestly don't think it's profitable for the EPA. The most recent settlements they had early last year were the first big ones I've seen in years. Okay. But, you know, during the first Trump administration, yeah, the EPA was just angry and a lot of things had happened leading up to that. Okay. And somehow the administration did not keep a good eye on them. And I think Trump's trying to make up for that now, frankly. But, and listen, I'm just some guy who's been watching this for 25 years and has gotten a little bit involved. Yeah.

And that's why I wanted your opinion on it. Because again, we talked to a lot of people around the country. I'm involved in a lot of the forums. I'm just curious, because again, you're on the forefront in actually talking with these people and being involved with SEMA. It's not, you're not a regular guest to us in that sense, I suppose.

Yeah. And listen, my association with SEMA as a volunteer, as a consultant, they can tell me to get the f*** out of here at any point. Sorry.

Oh, don't worry about it.

But I guess I can talk about our accomplishments and why they're significant. Yeah. We got contacted by the EPA in August of 2015. Okay.

How long have you been a volunteer, working with SEMA by the way?

You'll find out here in a second. Okay. So they knocked on our front door, talked to my wife who was holding one of our young children at the time, asked if her dad was home. She tells a story way better than me. But then they thought Justin was her dad because they were looking at corporate documents and website addresses and s*** like that. So I ended up coming over from the shop, which at the time was next to our house, didn't look like the house or anything like that, talking to them for an hour. And just in circles, they wanted to know what this SCT tuning software I used was, and if I was trained properly on it, and all this other s***. So that really started their major crackdown in August of 2015. And we were tuning gas engines at that point, we were supercharging them. And of course, I'm scared s*******. Federal government walks into a business, it's five employees and two to three million a year. This is not something we normally do. If you're ExxonMobil or whatever, you have a whole team of attorneys that deal with government regulation. Yeah. We did it. So, turns out three other shops in Central Florida were hit that same week. You know, we talked, we hired attorneys. I regret that we did not work together more.

Worked together as in the shops or EPA or?

The shops.

The shops, okay.

You know, they quickly developed a stigma of who was doing worse s***.

Okay.

But, you know, and that's something that I regret now. We should all, you know, we should all act like adults and decide the stuff we're going to do and not going to do. You know, there's, like, you can have performance and compliance together. But it was just a very, yeah. So what I'll get into the SEMA stuff is, is that we had been growing to a point where we were like, okay, we should be doing emissions testing. We should be doing car BOs. Let's figure this out. I had actually engaged a lab in California in 2014 to start doing some engineering and testing for me.

You're talking about Diamond Bar?

This was a private lab. I forget the name of the guy that runs it, but yeah. So fast forward to the end of 2015, I said, a couple of people said, hey, you should call SEMA. So I call SEMA. I get on the phone with their attorney and their compliance guy. They're like, hey, we've just opened a lab in Diamond Bar, California. And, you know, then I said, okay, well, I want to test one of our supercharger kits and calibrations. And like, this is the thing. You put like a cold air on a car, like you're adding like 10 or 15 horsepower. You put a supercharger on a car, you're adding two, 300 horsepower, and you're doing this dance of making the car run right with this much more boost, this much more power. You're usually doing bigger injectors, you're doing bigger air induction, bigger throttle body. You know, at this point, extremely skilled in calibration had been doing this for 13 years, 12 years since 2003. And wanted to try my hand at emissions calibration. So we ended up going to Cima Garage with a 2012 or 2013 Shelby GT 500, with at the time, our latest generation was our Gen 2R Supercharger. And proving that we could modify this car, make more horsepower and keep the emissions within the standard that the vehicle is originally certified for. You'll hear me talk about that with emissions compliance because the the government grants the vehicle manufacturer a VIN number and a certificate of conformancy to basically allowing them to sell that car. But they have to meet certain rules and regulations. And there's different tiers and bins that cars get grouped into. So like the Shelby behind you, you know, started being sold in 2020. It was actually really clean from the factory, but it was in a pretty, it had a lot of room where it could still fit into the category it was originally sold for. So, you know, you actually had a lot of room for variability and just different things. Like it asserts it like 66% of the standard. You want to be within 90% of the standard. Why you can't be within 99% of the standard, I don't know. That's another problem with California. Like the government has taken their rules and said, well, you know, you need to have some buffer room. Well, why wasn't the rule that to begin with? But we'll get into California here in a minute. So, yeah, we got contacted by the EPA within, I don't know, three to six months, we proved we could modify a vehicle without increasing the emissions on a very high level. And the EPA did not give a f***. They said, we are investigating you for tuners, not for superchargers. I have that email and I would use that later. But at the time, it's just like, how do I make these people happy? You know, right? There's a game, there's rules, you're willing to play within the rules and it's still not right. And, you know, I think that EPA was still feeling out. So this is how they learn, is they investigate people, get records in, look at connections. You know, it's like feeding AI data. And they were really upset with SCT for selling all these tuners, often to people deleting emissions components on diesels. Like, we talk about the biggest way to make a horsepower increase or an impact on a gasoline car. Well, the biggest way to make a negative impact on diesel emissions is to remove all the equipment that recently became government mandated, you know, as recently as 08, 07, 08. So, they're investigating that. And like, ultimately, they strung out our investigation for four years, because they want, I think they wanted to settle with SCT if they settle with us, which is another huge problem. We should have been looked at on our own. You know, yes, we sold SCT tuners. You know, that's what it is, what it is. And, but we were willing to, we prove we could, you know, take certain steps to comply.

So. There was a shop that I dealt with down here. So I have diesel trucks as well. And I don't know if you're familiar with Vivian from Quick Tricks. They, from what I understand, they raked her through the coals pretty bad for that. I think they took her in front of judge and all kinds of stuff. So yeah, that was, that was kind of sad.

I've heard stories and stuff. And yeah, I've heard it was pretty bad.

Yeah.

And, you know, we didn't, we didn't have that happen to us, right?

Yeah.

So I don't want to downplay, you know, yeah. But yeah, it was pretty bad thing to do to the industry. And, you know, I think SEMA really had to learn how to respond. And even like, they helped, you know, they helped us by having an emissions lab that was friendly to the aftermarket, being, making testing available at a reasonable cost, all this other stuff. And like the EPA still didn't care. So like, I guess that's where like one of the things where like, you can't blame SEMA for that. Now they have figured out how to talk to the legislators and say, hey, we have a process for the aftermarket to comply. We want you to recognize that, that process. And that's like the next thing on the table.

When did that process start coming on board?

SEMA certified came about in, over the past like three to four years.

Okay.

So, you know, there's some, some regulatory hurdles and like, I can't talk too much about this, but there are, SEMA's got a lot of good long-term goals of making compliance solutions available to the aftermarket. I don't believe they're the end all be all. You know, like we were talking outside, the impact that the performance aftermarket makes, a lot of these cars don't get driven much. You know, I'm still interested in protecting things like drag and drives and just like the ability, the right to modify your vehicle.

Yeah, that's what I always think about. I was like, yeah, the drag and drive guys, sure. Like, yeah, they're doing, it's not exactly a Prius, but they're doing what? Maybe a thousand miles a year?

Yeah.

Maximum.

Yeah.

Like that's a strong maximum.

Yeah. You know, and the government's considering useful life of a vehicle and its emissions components, like 80,000 to 150,000 miles. Yeah. So they, they, they have all the data as to how much they pollute and, you know, a drag and drive car driving a thousand miles. Yeah. Yeah. And that's probably the most that car will be driven all year.

Yeah. You think about a car that exclusively just runs on the drag strip too. That's significantly less than that.

And, you know, I don't have all the answers. You know, there are. Like we have been able to make 900 real horsepower on the Shelby GT500, and we've been able to go through the emissions lab and pass and then go on the chassis dyno and make over 900 real horsepower, like compliance and performance. You know, they can live together, like technology exists. And I think for, you know, big companies, mass production, you know, those, and a group, a group ourselves into that area, because we do a lot of volume in certain categories, right? We'll sell hundreds per year, sometimes millions thousand per year. So we need to have, you know, strong compliance. Yeah, the technology exists, you know, I think it's something we should be mindful of. But, you know, for the small shop, building a couple cars a year for customers, they also need to be able to do what they love and do what people want. And I think compliance is not one size fits all. I think it needs to be, you know, appropriate for the person compliant. It doesn't need to be a burden, right, as what I'm saying.

That makes sense. On another note, I kind of want to talk a little bit about product development more so on the sourcing side, right, because like right now, a hot topic, again, if we look at this administration as a whole, we're talking about tariffs, we're talking about China versus American made and all that. Where does VMP as a whole kind of settle into that? Are you sourcing internationally, locally? What does that look like?

We're sourcing as much locally and nationally as we can. And I mean, that's a really is a really difficult topic. It's near and dear to my heart because I've developed a lot of friends in the industry and a lot of a lot of our suppliers I have become friends with. They're my colleagues, you know, we'll trade business advice on everything. You know, hey, what are you doing for hiring and employee benefits? You know, hey, what do you see going on with this and that? So it's, you know, it's a very heated topic. And I think that, first of all, we need more. We need more like we need to make manufacturing in America great again. And that starts with people to run the machines. Yeah, like we need more getting young people into skilled trades. Everything from, you know, working on cars to running on running CNC machines. I mean, Rick, I mean, when you were a kid, you would love doing that.

Oh, absolutely.

I'd like and learning it and being good at it. It pays very well, you know, and we're just not seeing that happen. So that's another thing I'm involved with bringing engineering students into the industry, specifically engineering students and technicians, bringing them into our industry and like showing them how like, hey, you don't have to go work for like, you know, Lockheed Martin and look at a single part of an airplane for your whole career. Right. You can actually make parts that people really love. So, yeah, it starts with more people in America willing to do the jobs. I think the tariff thing has just skyrocketed prices for everything. I hear from all my suppliers, you know, materials going up and of course everything else, labor, health care is going up. Yeah, so the administration just screwed up on that. Like, I'm a big fan of deregulation. They'll let business, you know, do what business does.

Right.

That's a tricky one, too, though, right? Because like if you fully deregulate, and let's imagine full deregulation, right? It's like, you're going to go where the cheapest thing is. Where's the cheapest thing? China. You know, it's like, and the crazy thing is, and I've seen it firsthand and I've talked to people on this podcast, which unfortunately, some things have been edited out. But I can say that a lot of times some of the stuff overseas is better, too. Like, it depends on the product and you know, whatever, the sourcing and the vendors and all that. But it's like, obviously we could talk, in election cycles and all that stuff. But how do we act locally? How does the average 5, 10, 20 man shop? How do we make stuff here? Is it possible for a smaller scale?

I don't know. That's a really tough question. You know, I mean, I got a local machine shop I use. He's two, three employees. I got another one I use that's, you know, five, six employees. Like those are the local decisions I can make. Right.

Exactly.

And sometimes he's not the best guy for the job.

I think it starts with, like you were saying, that we just got to get some more people into it earlier on, right? We're not going to be able to, right now we don't have the workforce to do stuff like that.

It'd be so much richer if I got into machining out of high school.

Well, they don't. So even when my daughter goes to the same high school I went to, and she's taking a CAD class, she's in metals, she's doing all this stuff. I mean, they had metals, but they didn't have, it's totally different than when I went to school. It's we didn't have a CAD. I mean, we learned typing on computers, but that was about it.

You know, that's like it's like a general generational problem. Like we've been outsourcing manufacturing for 20 to 40 years. And, you know, you look at the biggest companies in the space. They use that to grow, you know? And, you know, I don't want to name any names or anything. Yeah. Yeah.

How about on the engineering developments? We talked about this before the episode a little bit. You have a long to-do list and a lot of ideas and, you know, more ideas and time and all that. How do you decide what you're going to pursue and how does your team help you?

Oh, man. Self-control. I want to make things better. And like I see that like we still, you know, I'll be real. We have got like 15 employees. We do about $8 million a year in sales. And it's been all over the place since COVID. But, you know, the first thing is like, we've got a website where we sell parts and services. We still work on cars here. They're all lined up behind you in different bays because it really keeps us in touch with the consumer and the vehicles and what they want and what they're doing. You know, if we want to design a new part for a 2018 Mustang, there's probably going to be one here for an install, you know, in the next month or two. Now, and I say design a new part, maybe update an existing part. So, you know, I have a philosophy. It's like disrupt your own market because everybody copies everybody. It happens eventually. And but you can keep improving your part if you, you know, make the right investments in the right places. It's not that hard to do. And if you care. So, you know, our engineering, our product design and engineering workload is really spread across updating existing parts and doing new parts and components. And like we have a small team. It's about three or four people usually. And, you know, we release, I don't know, I don't even really know, 10 to 15 new parts a year. Some of those parts are really small. It might be a pulley or something. It might be a whole big assembly. But we're also updating existing parts. And, you know, we do that through a very organized process of, you know, scope of work, an idea, all the documentation to go with that idea, and then actual, an actual design task. And then I'm guilty of taking too long for things because I like to just look at stuff and think about it. And sometimes it's just sleeping on it. Sometimes it's letting it simmer for a couple of weeks or a month. Yeah. I'll talk to different people, be like, what design considerations do you think? I don't really call them that because, you know, hey, Bob, what design considerations do you think? Or, you know, I should take into account with this part. No, it's like, hey, what are you seeing with this? What's it doing? You know, what problems are you having? And, you know, like we recently found some part we released doesn't fit some Ford Performance oil separator. It's like, well, if that person wants to run our part, we want to be able to sell it to you. Hey, let's make some really nice ABS 3D printed spacers to lift that part up and clear the other component. And that's like a minor design task. You know, and I'm having still probably four to eight hours in it. But I delegate that to my son who, you know, he's not. He's pretty cheap labor at this point.

Yeah. What's OK? What's been this is going to be two part one. All right. What is your favorite? Like what what part did you design that got you the most excited? You were like, this is going to be awesome. And then the second one, what is your number one selling product?

I mean, the supercharging stuff is near and dear to my heart. And like, I don't talk about it nearly enough. But it's a big fricking deal. There's a lot of testing. There's a lot of failures that nobody ever sees. Yeah, there's a lot of improvements that just get rolled in, you know, through the course of time. So, like, the GEN3R Supercharger for the GT500s, the older GT500s and older Coyotes, that was like, you know, that was a big one. We really put a lot into that, and I think it was very successful. The, and you kind of, you kind of, I know, I know what you're thinking, because I kind of answered this for you already. The, I always got pissed off at the degassed bottle working on the race cars at the track. And like you said, unbolt it and lay it off to the side.

Right.

And like, it's kind of f****** ugly. Yeah. It's really effing ugly under the hood.

Yeah.

I guess coming from the older cars, they at least had the black textured top, but the newer ones are just all clear.

Right.

So we made one of those last year and we took our time with the design, did a lot of test fitting. Like anytime I make something for the first time, I'm like really cautious because I'm like, what do I just not know yet?

Right.

And the same thing with tuning. So it took us a good six to eight months to bring that one to market. And it fricking was a hit.

Yeah.

So, and then I'm like, crap. We were, I think we released it in August. We sold a bunch of them. We got more in, thankfully, shipped a bunch of them before the end of the year. But in that process, I'm like, I gotta design these for other cars. So the S197, the F150, and then those are basically lot, the tooling's paid for, parts are on order. And then we just have to finish the design for this one. And this will be the most complicated because it's gonna have a supercharger reservoir too. So we're in the degas bottle business. And I justify it because it's under the hood and you can change your supercharger pulley easier or work on your car more easily with our parts installed. It's got a functional and a cosmetic benefit.

Go for it.

No, yeah, I did see it. It looks really good.

So, yeah, touch on the trucks a little bit. We were talking about that for the show as well.

So, yeah, I'd like to think we're an early adopter in the truck racing space. We got a 16 F-150 back in 16 and supercharged it. And that's when we were working a lot with Roush still. And it was a hoot. And then what you fast forward to the turbo short bed, supercharger and turbocharger short bed thing that's going on right now with the Gen 3s and Gen 4s. I think they just got better with the 10R80s.

Are you guys seeing any issues with the 10R80? Cause I get mixed reviews. People love them or they hate them. And I feel like you either get one that works well or you get one that doesn't work well.

I think that's appropriate.

Yeah, okay.

I mean, the clutches came out of this thing looking smoked and probably wouldn't have lasted much longer, right? But we only had a couple of track passes in the low nines.

Right.

So we upgraded it and it's kind of a b****. There's been, it's come out once already to have something reworked and it's still kind of finicky, but it mostly works. So we drive it. Okay. S***'s getting more complicated.

Oh, yeah.

This is harder than ever to do and more competitive than ever. So think about that when visiting your local performance shop. You know, one of the best things that I think a customer can do is realize it's a journey. And and by that, you know, we're still going to deliver. We're going to deliver you what you want. But realize that a seven, eight hundred real horsepower Mustang with a supercharger bolted on is good as a daily driver. If you walk in and say, I want a thousand or a horsepower car and you think you're going to like daily drive that, never pop the hood, you know, then you're like living in a dream world. Just have like realistic expectations. And I want that customer to come in, you know, start out, do some bolt ons, intakes, tuning, enjoy the car, step up to a supercharger. And then, you know, kind of go on the journey of going further and further. They just don't try to fast forward to the front. There's things you need to learn. Yeah. Number one, how to drive, you know, number two, how to listen to the car. And then how to do like, you know, minor maintenance of the car. You got a thousand-year-old horsepower car. It's going to need plugs more often. The fuel, fuel really, really matters. Yeah. You know, super.

Real quick, we're just losing you over here.

Oh yeah.

Just a little closer.

Yeah.

You just slid away on me.

Yeah. Fuel, quality belts, you know, regular maintenance like plugs, you know, and you're, you're going to probably run on the stock motor for a while at that power level, but you're going to want to build a motor in the future.

And how, okay. So things are more competitive than ever. They're harder to do than ever. This is a two-part question. Are you on the cutting edge, the, you know, front lines? And two, how do you stay there, if you are?

Oh, man.

So.

Like, yes, we are. And I guess if I don't, I don't know, I don't want to just talk about myself. If anything, I want to provide a little bit of value and give some advice. So, you know, do the things, right? Modify the cars. So we have shop cars for every new major generation, 24 Mustang sitting here, you know, 2020 Shelby sitting out there, and F150s and other generations of Mustangs scattered all over between employees and shop cars. And then there's, like, I guess what I've learned, right, is you can't just be in your own little world. And I'm going to plug SEMA here again, because, you know, I think they do a lot of things well. I'm going to talk about ADOS and some of the upcoming stuff. You know, we've been seeing this for, I don't want to say a good five years now. You know, on the GM side, you got Global B, which was locked for a really long time. You know, and even the Ford MG1 was locked for, and, you know, the new Mustang was locked for, gosh, what, a year and a half? And the trucks were sort of unlocked, sort of locked since 21, but there were ways around it, but there were really a lot of holes in support. We're in a space right now here in early 2026, where a lot of stuff is unlocked, and we can do a lot with these cars, but there are hurdles, and the best way to see those hurdles is look at government legislation, government rules. So one of the things SEMA's working on is these various forms of ADAS that are being mandated for 2029, and the big one is automatic emergency braking. It's required to be there. I just heard you. And you rode course too, so I know, you know, tell me what you know about this.

Well, it's good to turn off if you're going to cut in and out of traffic a little bit, because when it comes on, it can throw you for, yeah, it's definitely shocking.

It got me good the other day. I was cutting up a little bit on my way. I was running late to somewhere or whatever. And yeah, as I was passing a semi, it's like, oh, and break. I'm like, I forgot to turn that off.

I wish it was a way, like, I understand it. And for your average, well, first of all, we're just going to end up with people that don't know how to drive too. That's going to be a problem, right? So like you guys have a lot of them down here. Yeah. Yeah. We've been driving in Florida for a while. We've, we've, yeah, we thought it was bad back home, but it's pretty bad. Anyway, I wish we just make it away to where you could turn it off and just leave it off, you know, having to turn it off each time or, or make it to where you got to have it on all, you know, or maybe not even let you turn it off. That's going to be a problem.

I mean, right? Like individual choice is a huge thing. And, you know, we wanted choice whether we had an ice car or an electric car and electric cars were forced on upon us and look where that went.

Yeah.

You know, and same thing with that. Yeah. And like there's very real world use cases. The first thing is emergency vehicles. And really, if there's an emergency and you're trying to do something with your vehicle, you know, it could be plow snow so you could leave your house. And, you know, and then I say that like being able to have transportation if there's an emergency and you go to the hospital, something like that is important. And like, there's currently no provision in the law for basic things like snow plows and s***.

Right. Yeah, that's crazy thing. I didn't even think about snow plows.

And so SEMA has been on the front lines of talking about that, studying it, talking about it. And like, you know, first of all, they make an ADOS calibration lab available to the aftermarket in Detroit. And all you have to do is book time for it.

We've had them on the show.

We've had Ben, what's his name?

Oh, Ben Kaminsky.

Yeah, that's a very impressive facility.

Yeah.

So 113, I think.

Any SEMA member company can go and use that facility. So there's that, but like clearly the law needs to be amended with some, you know, exclusions for emergency use, racing use. And these new cars are coming out of the factory. Incredible machines. The new Dark Horse SC, the new Ford GTD. And like as much as the GTD is a low production, like race car, it's still certified as a on-road vehicle. Right.

It's insane. Yeah, we were talking about that yesterday with Kelly Aiken. It's like, it's kind of incredible that that's street legal.

Yeah. But, you know, in 2029, all those vehicles have got to come with automatic emergency braking. So how do you, you know, follow somebody into a corner? Right. At Road Atlanta or Sebring at a racetrack. Right. And that has to be figured out. And I, you know, the automakers, we've seen them succumb to the government before with the electric vehicle mandates. So I don't trust them. They're, they're good at producing cars and making money and making their shareholders happy.

What? Jim Farley loves making your shareholders happy?

That's crazy.

And eating cams too, apparently.

Yeah. That's, yeah, we made a comparison to him to Trump the other day. It was like, dude, just let's stop with the talking so much.

Yeah. But hey, we need, we need those people doing those things. Yeah. You know. But yeah, so that's where SEMA is looking out for the aftermarket's interest with this ADAS, AEB mess.

Well, I got a question for you on the, on the tuning side of things. When they cracked the tuning on these cars here, how did that, so I watched the video with Jared and Rob Shoemaker, they had made an announcement or whatever. When SET does something like, do they reach out to all of you guys or do they, how does that just, certain people get to work with them and then they get access to it first or do they just hand it out after that?

There's various levels of secrecy at these different tuning companies. I mean, having the relationship with the engineers and your rep and like, it's really kind of a small industry. We've all been doing this. There's the OGs that have been doing this forever and like, I can't believe, but I am one now. And yeah, I mean, they need people providing, you know, engineering feedback and stuff. That particular one was super top secret till like a week or two before it hit. Oh, really? Wow. Yeah. And, you know, some of this stuff needs to be, you know, not everybody thinks you should modify your vehicle or be able to modify your vehicle, but craziness. Yeah. Yeah. I think we need to do it responsibly, but, you know, we need to be able to do it.

OK.

What about this generation? Right. Because like this is kind of like we were talking about this yesterday. It's like the S550 V2, right? Like, is there anything remarkable or special about this? Because this is the Gen 4 Coyote in these two, right?

Yeah. And really, the Gen 4 Coyote didn't change as much as it did, you know, when F150 went Gen 4. Same cylinder head surface, same stuff bolts on. You know, for better or for worse, Ford's been trying to appeal more and more to the wine and cheese crowd, you know, whether it be German, the market would buy a German car normally.

Right.

You know, I'm going to say they did a good job at, you know, making it a nicer car. It's quieter, it's smoother, handles good, you know, the quality of the engine and drivetrain. I mean, we're making 900 wheel horsepower on a stock bottom end. Yeah. A lot of refinement from what, you know, 15 years in the Coyote game.

Right.

So.

Are you impressed with what they're, I heard you mention the SC with the GTD. I'm not, like, I think it's all cool. I'm not overly impressed with how things are going. Do you have any thoughts on that or?

I, yeah, I mean, I hate the name.

Yeah.

You know, I wrote up a Facebook post about it. I love the technology, love the performance, you know, love that, I mean, it should be around $100,000, right?

Yeah.

Love that it's accessible. I mean, it's expensive, but it's accessible. You know, we're gonna modify and tune them. What are your thoughts on the new Dark Horse?

I think that is mostly, the name is a thing. Like, there's some cooler things. There's some things I wish they'd bring back, you know, they had some, like, I don't like the Maverick truck. Like, that was a weird deal. Not that I don't like the truck, I don't like the naming. It was, you know.

Oh, but it's such a Maverick.

I know. The Mach-E could have been something different. I don't know, they could bring back the Torino. I mean, there's things that they could do, and maybe they have some of those things in the works.

You know what, I don't hate them. Like, granted, the Mach-E, Shrint had probably been called a Mustang, but I don't exactly hate it as much. The SC, like, I was like, well, that's kind of stupid, but I don't hate it the more it sits on me. Like, I don't know. I mean, there's definitely, like, way cooler names they could have used.

But I'm not saying that I hate it. I'm just not wowed, I guess, maybe.

Do you think you're just getting old?

That could be. It's old and bitter.

Yeah, it's like his first time seeing a GTD. He's like, well, I'm not impressed. Like, I'm impressed, but not really.

I wasn't because for that price point, I was expecting something like the Ford GT, right? Like, I grew up idolizing that car. So when the GTD comes out and it looks like an S650 Mustang, I mean, it's not, it's very impressive in person. But it's got, you know, when I sat inside and it felt like an S650 and I look at the mirrors in the S650 mirrors and things like that are just, it was whatever.

Well, it wasn't a challenger mirror, at least, because I know how much you f****** love those.

I don't like Dodge mirrors at all.

So side note, did you also count how many extra teens you'd have to sell to afford the payment on a Ford GT?

Yes, I have. And it's not uncommon knowledge. I actually have an allocation. I don't know that I am going to fulfill it. I don't really know. I've had them push it out, but...

Hold on, we could get a million subscribers this year and I'll get you one for Christmas.

Yeah, one of the reasons I pushed out. We'll see what happens. Yeah, it's very expensive.

A GTD.

Yeah.

Cool, awesome.

I'd almost rather get an 0506 for GT, which again, I know they don't perform as well as that. I just...

They got up there. I think they're wanting to five, 600,000s now?

Yeah.

Jesus.

I think we're all spoiled because we know what we can do with these cars, just bolting on parts from the aftermarket.

Right.

And you look at the kits that are coming out from Whipple now and stuff like that, and the amount of premium features and content that are in there. 10, 15 years ago, it wasn't like that, right? It was the kit installs, really 20 years ago, the kit installs with a factory throttle body. It uses a tiny little heat exchanger, a tiny little pump. And then we all started really competing with each other. And it's like, well, mine's going to come with a dual fan heat exchanger and mine's going to come with a bigger throttle body. And like, yeah, the amount of engineering and content in a supercharger kit today is pretty insane.

Yeah.

And the results speak for that. They make more than Dark Horse SC on a GT. Yeah.

Well, then you also get the, what is it, the Shelby's, basically it's just a 5.0 with a Whipple and they're selling them for like 200 grand or whatever it is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I was just at RTR last week and they've got an RTR spec five that fits right in that segment.

Dude, those things are so cool. Like honestly, like again, if we're looking at, if I had money to blow, if I was looking at Shelby versus RTR, RTRs, I would go all day long. Personally.

I think you're out of the Shelby demographic.

I'm dude, I'm saying like the Shelby demographic is-

You make fun of me for being old. I'm also probably out of the Shelby demographic, although I own one, but I got that car for what it was.

That was the last true Shelby. Like, yeah, hopefully-

That was a Ford production car. That was-

I don't know. Hopefully I'm not cock-hining on anything you're affiliated with or whatever, but it's just like, I don't know, man. Like the Super Snake is awesome, but it's a $220,000 car or whatever it is. Like that's- that's saying attainable.

And like I know that's what a lot of people go back to is like attainable performance. And I think that's important. But I also think the halo cars, like the fact that Shelby built that car, it's probably to some degree inspired RTR to build that car.

Oh, I'm sure.

And how many other Hennesseys and, you know, and then all the other smaller car builders below that. Yeah. And I can even, like, so I don't know. I think competition is good. I think ideas are good. The money thing, you know, this s***'s, I don't know, stuff's expensive. It sucks.

Oh yeah.

I think it goes in tiers for me, right? Like, for example, like the GTD, like people are gonna clown the price. I think it's amazing what they've done with that car. So that's like, even though it's expensive, I'm like, all right, cool. Same thing with the GT 500. Whenever people are like, oh, I'm not paying 100,000 for a Mustang. I'm like, dude, that is a super car in a Mustang body.

Yeah.

Like when it came out, we had one, we had one of the first ones in the country to join us on a road rally. Drove it across the country. You just break in miles on the rally and he's over there, you know, driving on the track with McLarens and stuff. I'm like, that's wicked.

Like, it's cool. DCT and a Mustang, frickin radial-pinned rotors, all the tech that comes in those things. MagnaRide.

My GT500 is one of my favorite cars I've ever had. That thing is...

If you had a Lamborghini body on top of that car, with all the technology it is and the cushiness of the seats and everything, that'd be a $400,000 Lamborghini, but it's a $100,000 Mustang.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's what some of the stuff that Ford's good at putting a lot of engineering into vehicles and, you know, amortizing the costs out of that at scale, right? I mean, that's what the company was founded on. So, yeah, I got to give them props for doing that. And I think they have, I think Ford has the the best engineered American cars.

I would agree with that. Well, the CA and the ZR1 and all that stuff is pretty b*****.

We are seeing Chevy do some wicked stuff. Yeah.

I think if you had any of the engineers from either of those companies swap roles, I think they'd end up with really, in a really similar, you got so much talented engineering between the two.

So the question is, what are we going to do about Stellantis?

They're bringing SRT back, like officially. Like last week, I think it was announced that they're bringing SRT back, and we'll see what comes out of that.

So I saw the new TRX, and they upped the horsepower on that. And I heard they did that with just camshaft and tuning. It's the same supercharger, which is impressive.

I think they had some mismanagement there for a while, so let's see if they can recover from it.

Oh, they definitely did.

Yeah.

That guy was a clown.

They were on the wrong train, the electric car, small displacement, fuel-efficient train.

They need to bring back the Neon. No, seriously, like an SRT4. Like they need to bring, they need to, if they're gonna try to disrupt the markets, just stop. Okay. I'm gonna vent for a second here.

Oh yeah. Let's go.

Why are we doing a two-door electric coupe? Can you explain to me that? Why? You're fighting a market that doesn't exist. Nobody does a two-door electric coupe. You got the Audi e-tron, sure, but that's it. And those are half price right now.

And the electric cars are largely utilitarian. If you can get some performance out of them, cool, but...

Give me a four-door. By the way, they're releasing the four-door second. They went two-door, then four-door. Then they're doing... Dude, it is such a mismanaged... And I grew up Mopar. I'm a Mopar boy. That is a mismanaged cluster. And honestly, I test drove one of them. They're pretty cool, but that's not the market.

Yeah, right? I mean, create a segment where there is none. And I think that's really been Ford's success for years and years, as they've created that segment and stayed in it.

Yeah.

Well, any aspirations of branching out? And anything else?

Yeah, what's next for you?

We do a little bit of Dodge and Chevy stuff now.

Okay.

We're doing more of it, more and more of it. You know, it goes back to our... Anything we do, we want to add a lot of value, have a better mousetrap, better solution. And that comes in a lot of different forms. It can be engineering, it can be tuning, which really tuning is engineering, but it's really kind of talked about in its own way. It can be customer service, customer experience. So like when we build a car for a customer, we're upfront about what it costs and what you're going to get and we deliver on it. Yeah. So I guess what I'm saying is like there's space for, there's space for the basics, even in the other segments from a, from service standpoint. Okay.

Do you want to pop to usual three and then do a Minnesota goodbye?

Sure. 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 build what you want.

God. I got that thinking swivel going on. Yeah. It's the most you've seen me move. Track car, daily driver. And then what was the other one? Show car. Show car. That's right. Drink it. Shelby carbon fiber track pack because that will produce, impress people at the show. And a daily driver, four door supercharged F150, and then a track car, a supercharged Mustang.

Okay.

Which one? Is this straight? Any kind of track.

Any track you want.

I'm just going to say drag racing. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. Which like you're talking like one of these. Yeah. I like one of these.

Okay.

So you can beat a lot of people and have a lot of fun and just put tires on it. You know, right.

Do you ever get any? So is it mostly always single cabs? You ever get any extended cabs or crew cabs?

Because we do.

Okay. Because I, again, we talked about having bunches of kids. So when I do one, I'm probably going to do an extended cab because I want to be able to have a backseat.

Yeah. So, yeah. My original truck that erased a lot was a four door. And then one of the guys working for us at the time had a two door. So we were, you know, at the same power level, we had Gen 2 Coyotes, you know, making about 700 of the tire. Same power level. I mean, the regular cab was like a second faster. It was pretty sick.

Okay.

The mile per hour difference from less drag and less weight.

Yeah.

Pretty f****** sick. All right.

No, that's right. Well, sweet.

On that note, where can everybody find you? You can find me on our website. Well, no, you can find you. vmpperformance.com is our website. I'm on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, you know, regular social channels. Sure. So. Anything else that we missed before we wrap up? No, I think we had some good conversations. We'll be back for a round two.

Any, any cool parts coming down the pipe that you want to talk about at all, or? You don't have to.

We have, we have delved into the world of air to water supercharging for other power adders, mainly turbos. And you could use it with a centrifugal, but I would do a turbo. If you want a blower, I would do a positive displacement style blower. And if you're not going to do, then turbo is really the other option. So, yeah, we've got all this great technology and parts, and we brought it together in our Leviathan intake system. And we've actually got a lot of builds going on right now using that system. So it's our, it's essentially a supercharged lower intake. You can bolt a supercharger to it, but we make what I call turbo hat that allows you to put a throttle body on it, and then force feed it air from a turbo.

So could you do that with one of your blowers? Could you just pull the top off and slap that stuff on there?

Yeah, a couple people have done that, so the idea is not new.

Right, right.

And I say that, you could take the rotors out of that blower, but we made kind of a more compact system that does that job better.

Okay.

And we're gonna expand that offering. Currently it's only for Coyote. We're looking at a lot more offerings, and that's where some of the other brands may come in. Okay.

Interesting.

Okay. Yeah. Well, on that note, thank you very much for coming on the show. I'm glad we finally made this happen. Dan, thanks for existing, and we'll see y'all next time.