35. Flipping and Selling Fast Cars, Growing Eurocharged Minneapolis, W/ AJ Mehta AKA AJ’s Garage

All right, hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to the Minnoxide Podcast for, I think this is episode 35, Sean. We're cooking.

You know what episode it is.

I know what episode it is. We gotta kick it off with a little bit of spice. I'm your host, Harris AK. Minnoxide, photographer, videographer, man of many automotive ambitions. And I'm here with my co-host.

Co-host, my name is Sean. You can see me around town in a orange BMW or a blue Durango, which I seem to be very well known for.

Yeah, it's just a, you know, it's just a slow Durango.

Yeah.

Is that the fast one?

The Hellcat Durango with the welds. Yup, that's me.

That is a beautiful rig.

Thank you. I appreciate that. I love the color and so do a lot of other people. And this is the Minnoxide podcast where we take you beyond the me and kind of introduce you to some of the people in our community who drive it and create such a wonderful, you know, environment for all of us to get together.

It was so close to perfect.

It's still good.

Yeah, it's good enough. It's a work in progress. But today we have a fantastic guest, as we always do. But we got AJ, AJ Mehta. I think I said that correctly. From AJ's Garage, Eurocharged Minneapolis, man of many automotive ambitions. I mean, you are, I always tell people, when I introduce people or when I am like, hey, do you know AJ? And they're like, no. I'm like, dude, you need a car? Go to him. You got a big fleet right now. Oh, you also, you know, you're part of the drive-ify fleet. I think you have how many cars in drive-ify now?

I got six in drive-ify.

Six drive-ify. And they're fun cars. I've driven a number of them now. Yeah, I still gotta drive that Porsche at some point. That thing is fricking sick.

That is the epitome of sports cars.

Yeah, it's one of the best. So if you had to tally it off, and you probably don't even know this number, how many cars are in your fleet currently?

I think I got 14 right now.

14? Oh, so you like to do that.

There's 10 sports cars and then other stuff, so.

Yeah, yeah, so you're a little bit lighter because I, you've probably had.

No, this is the most I've had for a bit.

Because I know you have that second garage now, where you just store them all. Yeah, yeah, I mean.

Well, it was a Euro, it was my AJ's Garage overflow. And then it became a Eurocharged overflow. And that's it. And now I have to find places to park my cars.

It was so funny when I came to your open house for the brief time, I think it was last week.

Yeah, last week.

And it's like the entire Eurocharged just filled with your cars. And then it like, it's on a more for sale, right? Like that, the white GTS, that thing was pretty sweet. I love the arrow on that.

We just finished all that stuff like two days before.

Oh, you added some of that stuff? Cause what was on there before? Just that rear wing, right?

The rear wing was on there, but then the diffuser side skirts, front lip was actually on there.

But yeah, diffuser side skirt was really cool. I talked to my pops about getting one for our GTR and he's like, I don't know, man, like.

It's already so aggressive.

It's so aggressive and because it's so aggressive, you just keep going.

I remember like I was pulling into a car show and he's like, I don't know, like he was about to park in the back because like he's not very interested in just like looking where to park. And I'm like, I'll take the keys and park it. And then I hear a kid, he's like, oh my God, every time I see this thing, it has more carbon fiber. It's kind of like you and horsepower.

Yeah, well, you know, it's an addiction.

And you currently have that Calvo as well.

I've got a Calvo 1500 wheel horsepower car. It recently just got the cheeseburger makeover is what we call it. Oh, in the Viper community, yep.

Yeah.

That's actually something that I love is that cheeseburger, I think most people who are on the Viper page now understand and it's like an inside joke.

And Mr. Cheeseburger's here.

Yeah, I saw him, yep. So the cheeseburger, so for people that don't know, the cheeseburger Viper build is basically like a fake ACR. You take like a regular TA, GTS, whatever, a non-arrow car, you put on all the Viper arrow, and then he would, so where the cheeseburger started.

And the finishing touch is the ACR.

Is the ACR badge, yep.

Which would really frustrate a lot of people. They'd be like, why are you putting an ACR badge on a car that's not an ACR, which I get it. But at the same time, like it looks like an ACR, but then like he would kind of clap back at people, right?

Oh yeah.

And that's when he- Instead of saying the F word, he'd just say, go cheeseburger yourself.

Yeah, so that's-

That's the strangest comeback.

And it kind of stuck. So, and this is where I respect the guy a lot. It's like for a while he'd be upset, or he was like frustrated by it. Cause like people are being, you know, a******* with the internet. But then he kind of leaned into it. And now it's like, instead of like this whole like, like hostility, it's just like, oh, that's a cheeseburger, ha ha. So it kind of flipped. Like that's not doing it. It's crazy how quickly you could flip the narrative around. Cause like everybody loves a cheeseburger now. There's a few dorks out there that don't, but-

They actually sell. I mean, he makes money selling these cars. It boggles my mind at first. I was like, this is the dumbest thing ever. And then he's a local guy. He's a good friend of mine.

I didn't even know he was local until this year.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I mean, we do a lot of stuff together. I help him out. I mean, he just got this Lambo. I got him that Lambo. Which one? The orange Huracan.

I was just wondering, like, we were just like, hey, that's new here.

Yep. Just got it two days ago. I found it like last week. He flew out the next day, bought it right on spot. Here we go.

Is it stock?

No, it's got exhaust, lowered wheels, wing. He's gonna cheeseburger it.

Of course. Like a Perfomante cheeseburger.

He's gonna Perfomante, yeah. Ford's carbon.

I was gonna say, it's gonna cost a lot more to cheeseburger a Lambo.

Cause China has a whole lot of stuff for available for like nothing.

Really? Cause I know those Perfomante seats, I think they're like $10,000 a piece.

He doesn't do like-

Interior.

Performance or interior.

Just aesthetic.

Aesthetics, yeah.

Just aesthetic. So what would be like, what's the difference between a Perfomante and like a base Huracan for the exterior? Cause they're, it's subtle.

Yeah, wing, front bumper, lower skirts kind of deal. Rear bumper, rear wing.

Cheese, lettuce, tomato. Yeah, that's what it is. However, let's kind of just, we'll come back to the fun car. Yeah, to the cars and all that fun stuff. But so we kind of tell us a little bit how you ended up with Eurocharged, Flipps Cars, all that, AJ's Garage. Just give us kind of a story, like what got you into cars and then we'll get to where you're at today.

So I guess the story starts in 2002-ish. Going to college, my dad decided to move to Japan. So I was living at home, taking care of my family, my brother, my mom. My dad and I had, and my brother, we finished my dad's basement. And so instead of hiring it out, it could have cost 100 grand, I'm just throwing it out there. We did it for like 20 grand or something like that.

Significantly cheaper.

Way cheaper, obviously, you do it yourself, right? So as a thank you, he said, okay, I was just searching, I think it was like the forums at that time. This is way back, right? Forums are, I found a Corvette, it was a really b***** Corvette, 427 cubic inch motor, heavily built. I'm like, oh man, I really want that. And it was like 35 grand, which was cheap because like a stock car went for like 25 grand. And he's got like 50 grand into the thing. I'm like, dad, I really want this thing. He's like, all right, so thank you for staying home, finishing the basement, I'll buy you the car. So he bought me the car. So that was my couple of last years of college then. And I just started modifying it and racing it.

What year was the Corvette?

98.

98, so that's still C5?

C5, yep, C5. Convertible, and it was caged, and I mean, when I talk built, it was built. There was nothing stock left in the thing. And I just only got into racing at Brainerd, road coursing, drag racing. My car went 10.5s on motor back in mid-2000s.

That's kind of, that's nuts.

That's hauling a** back then. And then I put nitrous on it, and then it went in the high nines. And it was a rowdy car, it was very fun.

Dan, I remember that scene from Fast and Furious. Give me a 10-second car.

Yeah, yeah. It was a learning experience. I got into the sport. And then, I think it was like 07, 08, I was searching Craigslist, and there was a Maserati that got posted in Excelsior. Guy was moving. He said in the ad, I'm moving, I got to sell it. I got two weeks, so made him an offer. I think he was asking like 45.

And what did he post this?

Craigslist.

Craigslist, OK.

Yeah, that's what it was.

Craigslist?

Way back in the day.

There were illegal things on there. Continue.

So he posted it for 45. I offered him like 37. He's like, fine, I'll take it. I'm like, cool. So I go to buy it. Some other dude offers 40. So I'm out, right? He's like, oh, I got somebody else to be giving me more. Fine, cool. Two weeks goes by. It's two days before he's got to leave. He messages me. He's like, oh, the guy didn't pay for it. He's yanking my chain. 37, I'll take it. I'm like, no, no, no, no. We're at 30 now. He's negotiating. And he took it. And this was my dad. This was my dad saying, this is the Indian in us. Just beat him up. Worst case, he says, no, fine. Whatever, move on.

Yeah, but it's so true. Again, two days before he got to leave. That's the whole concept of like right now, one of my friends is doing wholesaling or whatever. It's like people gotta sell their house so they gotta get moving quickly. Like they'll take any number because they got whatever. It's like you're the one like, so there's kind of two perspectives on that. It's like, oh, you're beating them up. You're taking advantage of them. But what's the alternative? They're f*****. So it's like you're f***** or slightly less f*****. So I'm all for negotiating.

It's also a business.

Yes.

It wasn't a business for me back then, understand that. But it was like, this is it. Take it or leave it. My feelings aren't hurt. It is what it is.

I'll move on.

So he took it. I gave him 30 grand. My dad loaned me the money, so I was making payments to him. I think I put like 800 miles on it in October to November. Put it away for winter. In spring, I took it out, went to Maserati to get an oil change, and they're like, hey, it's a really nice car. Would you sell it? No, man, I just bought the thing. No. And actually, that car, I bought it to start a rental business, like Drive-A-Fi. My idea for that started back then. I was 25 or so. I could not get insurance to save my life. Nobody would give it to me. So everything kind of lined up when I went to the dealer, and they're like, we'll buy it from you. I'm like, how much are you going to pay me for it? We'll give you 35. No b*******. Went home, got the title, came back. They cut me a check for 35. It was as easy as that. Five grand made in six months of storage.

And then you also got to drive it and enjoy it and all that.

Drive it, yep. And that's kind of when the light bulb went off. And this is not anything rocket science. This is what dealers do. Buy low, sell high. Easy. But for me, that's when it kind of made sense. I could do this. I could just buy a car well, drive it for a little bit, turn around and sell it. So I would buy one, drive it a year or so, turn around and sell it. So then it went from one car at a time to two cars at a time to three cars at a time. And at a point, I got to the point where I was able to buy these in cash and just.

Right.

Buy them. So.

Because you're a cash buyer. You can also have a little more.

You have more flexibility. Yep. You have more. So. Yeah. And then then I started looking nationwide and, you know, you start talking to all these other dealers in town and I started getting to know people and yeah, it just kind of took off from there. Twenty sixteen or no, twenty seventeen. I bought five cars that year, paid the government twenty eight thousand dollars in taxes. Geez. So it was a Lambo, my first Lambo, actually.

The red one, right?

Nope. Black one. Manual black one. I bought a twin turbo R8, the blue one, the matte blue one. I had a Porsche and then a couple of other cars. I can't remember. But paying the government taxes and then the DMV sent me a letter and said, you can't buy any more cars for another year or get your dealer's license. Well, that's going to be the game plan. So I got my dealer's license. Very easy to do. My fixed cost for that is like $15,000 to $18,000 a year.

Which is if you move enough volume, it's negligible.

Exactly. So now it totally makes sense. Where in the last year, I did $2.5 million in sales, I mean, multiply that by 6.5%. That's a hefty tax. So it just kind of made sense. And that's where I started. And just slow and steady. The name of the game is always slow and steady.

So, and we'll get into you not being slow and steady here in a second. But what's it called? So the dealer's license, does that save you on tax and all that, too? Yep.

You don't pay, dealers don't pay taxes on vehicles you buy.

Okay. Okay.

You will pay taxes on the profit you make when you sell the car, but that's lesser than...

But typically, if you would have, before you had that, you would have to pay tax on the vehicle you purchased as well. Okay.

6.5%.

Yeah.

$100,000 car that's $6500 gone.

Yeah.

That's straight profit. You just gave it to the government.

And that's a flat fee as well?

It was $6500, now it's like $6.8.

The dealer license, I mean.

Yeah, pretty much. Fixed insurance costs, fixed rent, a couple license fees. That's it.

And what's the limit on how many cars you can do? I think I heard it was like four or five cars, like before.

Well, if you're a private party, yes, five cars a year. Dealers can do whatever.

Right, yeah.

Yeah.

I always wonder what the cutoff was, and I heard that was five, so that makes sense.

You know, and there's people that skirt that, they'll just not pay taxes. They won't title it, but that's dangerous.

It's a dangerous game.

Exactly.

It catches up to you, potentially.

Exactly. It will catch up, and it's not worth the headache.

Do you know what the headache looks like, or you've never had to experience it?

A friend of mine actually did that. He was floating a title, and he crashed a car. And the insurance was like, well, show me the title. He had the title, it wasn't in his name. It was a cheap car. It was like $10,000, but still, it was like $5,000 worth of damage. I mean, it was damn near done. He was kind of up a creek. Now imagine doing that on a $100,000 car or whatever. It's like, I wouldn't do it.

Yeah. I don't want to mess with that at all.

No.

Okay, so then you started buying cars.

Yep. So that was AJ's Garage, kind of the start of AJ's Garage. And then I was giving my cars to other shops in town, respected shops in town. And I still work with them, but like Emola and Eurotech and whatever, you know.

You got good relationships around town.

Yeah, I got great relationships, know all the guys. And one day I was approached to start Eurocharged, to start a franchise here. So Eurocharged has 10 locations in the nation, and we have a bunch of dealers across the world. So then I thought about it, I'm like, well, yeah, if I have my own shop here, I'll pay my guys to fix my cars. That's kind of out one hand and back in the other in my pocket.

Yeah, save.

Yeah. Hypothetically speaking, right?

You'd save a little bit while also starting a business taking care of your guys. But how did you get approached? How did that conversation happen?

Well, I'll just put it this way, that the guy is no longer with us, but he had the idea. He had been a customer of Eurocharged. And myself and my current business partner, we were the investors per se. And I thought, well, I mean, that makes sense. Like, I'm going to focus on AJ's Garage and I'll give this gentleman some money and have a shop and I can be a private, quiet owner, whatever. These guys fixed the cars and it goes from there. It didn't work out with him and he stepped away and I had to take over and my current business partner, Charlie, he doesn't want to be involved. He's got a whole other career. He's doing fantastic on his own. So this is more of like a passion project for him. But yeah, so I took over and what you see today is what I've done and with the collaboration of other shops in town and other members and social media stuff and of course my awesome employees, we couldn't be doing what we're doing today. So it's really cool. We went from a 3,000 square foot shop to now we're at 12,000 square feet. We've got 13 bays, alignment rack, we've got seven, eight, nine employees. It went from two of us to like nine.

It's a sizable business.

Exactly. And the really cool thing is really we started growing through COVID. COVID, you would have thought, would kill a lot of businesses and it did around us. We probably had like two dozen repair shops, and now there's only like six.

Really?

You know, like COVID killed all these shops.

Why do you think that is?

It's just the customers didn't go in, they didn't leave the house, they weren't driving. Yep.

Because you guys were technically unnecessary or what?

We were. It's essential.

Essential. They called everybody essential. Talk about pissing off a lot of people. It's like, oh, you're not essential.

Right. And it sucks. I feel bad for those people, and the PPP loans probably helped alleviate some of the pain, but not all the pain. But luckily for us, I mean, cars need to get fixed. At some point, I think people during COVID were like, ah, not sitting at home anymore. I need to go do something. I'm just going to go drive.

Yeah.

Or they had more time to think about it, like, oh, shoot, I need a wheel bearing done or I need this and that or whatever. And they would do it. You know, and we spent a lot of time and money and effort, like on Facebook, Google advertising, YouTube advertising, like just getting our name out there.

So you ramped it up during COVID?

Yeah.

Because it was kind of do or die.

Pretty much. And it kind of worked.

So do you think that's the key thing between you and the shops that didn't survive during that time is you just really hammered down on the advertising and stuff?

Yeah. So I did look on the market like all the other shops, like who's doing advertising? If I Google their name, they're like eighth, ninth, tenth on the list, if they even come up. But you Google our name, we're number one. There's a reason. It's like we pay for that Google Analytics, and if you're constantly updating your page or your website or whatever, the internet sees that and it throws you up top. So I looked at all these other shops and they weren't doing anything. I visited a few of the shops just as a customer and just trying to see like, hey, I need alignment and like, there's two guys sitting on the bench on their phones or dicking around. I'm like, hey, I need alignment. They're like, oh yeah, we're like two weeks out. I'm like, the dudes are literally just sitting right there. Why can't you just do it right now? Like I need to get this done. That's why they can potentially fail. There's no drive.

Yeah, and I mean, part of that comes down to just giving your employees that passion too. Because if you're a leader that they can't follow, they're not going to, like you want employees that are going to care for your business as much as you.

Exactly.

But that comes at a price or at a cost too. Yeah. And that's the thing, that you wouldn't have been in business. How long have you had Eurocharged now?

Five years now. Five and a half, yeah.

Five and a half years. And you wouldn't be in business anymore if people didn't care to follow you. So yeah, especially scaling at the level you are.

Right. And I think the other partial point or reason for the success is I've been in the community car community since like early 2000s. People know me. And it's whether they come to me or not, that's one thing. But if they can vouch for me and say, yeah, oh yeah, AJ will take care of you, no problem. That's huge. Like that makes a difference. And I think that's why people come to us. And now I got Alex Bowman, he's my shop manager. He's a huge staple in the Audi Volkswagen community locally. And so a lot of people follow him. And thankfully, he's a great guy. He's awesome.

He's legit. Yeah.

He's super legit. And because of him too, like we've grown big time.

So how long has he been there with me?

About two years.

Two years?

Maybe a little over two and a half. But yeah, he's awesome. Great guy. All my guys are great. Honestly, I can step away and not worry about it.

That's what I was gonna ask you next. Yeah, it's only step away at any point.

It's only this year where I kind of like, okay, I can like step back a little bit. I'm trying to do more of AJ's Garage to focus on that and build that. And you know, I can, I know the guys are going to crank, honestly, they will, you know, and if I ask them to stay or if I ask them to do anything, like they'll do it. No problem. So, but we're very fair with them. We pay them very well. Power crews like we went to power crews, kept them, you know, like we paid all their entries and fuel and food and some of them stayed at my place. And, you know, it was a really good time. But, like, we take care of my guys. So, that's the only way.

It's a good set up. We just had somebody on the other day. Well, you rats, we had him on the other day and, you know, he brought all his people down to Texas too. Like, that's the thing. It seems like all the successful shops, they do that with their people. It's like, hey, let's go do some fun car s***.

Yeah.

Because that's the other tough part about working on cars all day. You don't want to work on your own is what it seems to be the case for a lot of people. Detail your own or whatever. I've been dealing with this other car all day. I don't care. But being able to do fun car stuff, go to power cruises and all that, that's pretty sweet.

It is. It's a lot of fun. I mean, it is a dream job. I'm not going to lie. It comes with its stresses, you know? But it is a dream job. 100%.

Yeah. So naturally, you're always kind of trying to add on to the garage, get more fun stuff. Do you have any specific process for finding cars that you like? I mean, I'm sure you've figured it out over the years.

Yeah, so over the years, I know what sells and what doesn't. You know, Vipers are selling like hotcakes right now. I think I've done like six or seven this year. The Porsche cars have held value really well, so try to focus on those. I'm a huge Corvette fan as well, so I like to have one just kind of sitting around. So my one I have is a C8. It's a rental car.

Yeah, which one? The black one, right?

Black one.

The one I drove. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's a cool car. It's a quite... It's a great road car. I took it on rally. I was really impressed by it. It needs like 200 more horsepower and then I'd be happy, but otherwise I love the thing.

Are you doing the car community rally?

Are you?

Did you get your ticket and all that?

Did I get my what?

Did you get your ticket already?

You know, I need to do that. Yeah.

We just got our ticket last week. We were slacking too. Like some of our listeners got tickets before us, sorry guys. But yeah.

Daniel texted me, he's like, hey, you need to go on and do this. I'm like, yes. That was last week.

Yeah, well make sure you use code Minnoxide. That'll save you a little bit of money.

Well, I'm a sponsor.

Oh, you are?

Yeah.

Oh, nice.

Yeah, I've been sponsoring those events for a while now.

You know, I really believe in Daniel. I think he's doing a fantastic job of like getting the community together.

It's such a tough job.

Like, it is a thankless job.

It's so f****** thankless. There's a lot of like, listen, there's a number of people who are like, hey, I'm going to do this. Maybe that aren't fans of him, I get it, and they have their reasons and their respectable reasons as well. But when you think about it, who else is gonna do it? Who's gonna put on the shows? Let's have a genuine conversation about this. You go find a f****** parking lot, you get the conversations for this. Dude, when you realize how much money he spent to put on the Convention Center show, it's a lot. Now, is there things that could have been done better? Could there have been signage like, please don't touch the freaking cars? Like there was an old lady standing on someone's wheel one year. I'm not going to say it on air, but then I think like Katie over there, like somebody was like, I think either trying to get into Lambeau or leaning in and just disrespectful stuff, you know, or people modeling with cars when they shouldn't be. And it's difficult. And that's why some people like may look down on it.

But again, if Daniel doesn't do it, who's going to do it?

Yeah, we got modest and you know what, maybe one is enough, you know, and I'm really curious to see what Daniel does in the future. But, you know, say what you want. He is passionate about what he does. It's just it's difficult to please as many parties as he's trying to please.

It is right. You know, that in the midst of doing community, which takes a ton of time and money, we'll see what happens with that.

That's a tough one. A number of things, again, as somebody who lost a lot of money in their business ventures, a lot of money. He it's tough to run an app and to do it right and to do it. You know, is there things that he could have done differently along the way? We all know this. But as you may know it with your business, what's done is done. You know, the only way is forward. You got to figure out how do we, you know, whatever, flip this car, this car, whatever.

People make mistakes, but you only grow by learning from them. Right. I've made my mistakes. Trust me. I've cost me thousands and hundreds and not hundreds, but many thousands. Right. And it's just there's nothing you can do. Like I had an incident in July and I mean, it cost me 35 grand. And there's nothing I can do about it. I just it is what it is.

Yeah, that one was completely out of your control, but it was.

But you know, it sucks and it is what it is. Right.

But yeah.

But yeah, the community rally is going to be fun. We're sponsoring. Like I said, we're I sponsor Daniel. Like we try to help out and everything he does for years and years.

I've been seeing Eurocharged. I don't know if you've if you don't sponsored it as AJ's Garage before to us.

He just kind of throws it in for me. It's kind of freebie. But yeah, but yeah, we do it. And you know, I don't know if we really get any business per se, like directly from it, but it's just name branding. Yeah. Getting the name out there just letting people see it.

Yeah. Coke doesn't have to advertise. But you know what? If Pepsi advertises more than Coke, you may be like, oh, we'll try that Pepsi.

Exactly.

To be fair. So does a weird one because like Coke and Pepsi, like it's a cult. Like I'm a Pepsi guy. It is a little different. But nonetheless, like I tell this to some of my marketing clients, too. I'm like, dude, if you're not advertising the next guy that comes in town, he's gonna. That's how it goes.

It's oh and that's also the like the newest guy in town. Like everybody's like, oh, what's what's he all about? Yeah, because a new shop pops up and everybody's like, oh, we're going to him. You know, and they call us and they try to, you know, do a proposal invoice or not invoice, a bid estimate or whatever.

Yeah.

But this guy in town is going to do it for like a quarter of the price.

Right.

I'm like, you know what? Go ahead. We don't need that.

You know, you don't want that. And I remember you're the first person that told me about the blacklist. We talked about this the other day with the rat too. I remember it was like three or four years ago. He told me about the blacklist and I was asking about some guy. You're like, yeah, I talked to that guy already. We don't do business with him. So do you have a lot of people on the blacklist?

There's probably a good dozen. Yeah, so there's a list that goes around on a Facebook Messenger page of myself and all the other owners. And if the guy calls one shop, they're pretty much told to go somewhere else. So it's a very tight community.

You mess up, you piss off one shop.

And I'll be honest, man, we bend over backwards for people. We really, really do, hand to God, we do. And some of these people just completely take advantage. And if they keep doing it, it's like you can only bend so far. And at some point, we're just going to tell you, hey, man, our time is done.

Sometimes you got to cut ties, but the other aspect is there's nothing worse than a silent complainer too, like the people that never give you the opportunity to fix something. Because if I don't know what's wrong, how am I supposed to fix it?

Exactly.

Yeah. And then also like expectations up front and all that. I have to point out, Sean, you look low energy today.

You know what? I forgot to eat.

You need to put some of that drink down.

This isn't filling, but I do love Jocko and I did already pound one down, hoping that would be good enough for my breakfast.

I know a lot about poundings. This happened before, too, where he...

It happens. When we do these early morning podcasts, I'm sorry.

This is not early, dude. It was 10 o'clock.

No, this happened. We had a double header. I want to say it was two months ago. We had two podcasts back to back here, right? And this dude did not have breakfast in the morning and he's like, oh, I wonder why I'm so tired. Dude, eat a Snickers.

You're not you when you're hungry. Sorry, I'm in a rush in the morning.

I got two little kids.

Oh, I got one, so twins.

Yeah, but he's a half year old.

He's new to the game.

Okay. He's like, how old are they?

Mine's a one year old.

Okay. I'll give you that. The two of them running around.

I got a buddy who's got twins. And I'm like, I don't know how you do it. Like you do like even with like my wife, it's crazy. Like how stressful it is. And just having like to lose my mind.

Yeah. Well, it's it's difficult. Harris is like, I don't know what kids are about.

I'm about to piss everybody off. So we just got a puppy.

That's kind of a kid. Yeah.

I'm actually surprised. Like I remember there was a old Bill Burr joke about this. Like if you really want to piss off somebody who's got kids like, I got a dog. And they're gonna be like, it's not the same thing. But it kind of is, dude, this f***** is s***.

When it's in the beginning, yeah, it's the same thing.

Yeah. Your potty training though. But they learn a lot quicker than a baby.

Yeah. Right.

The old Bill Burr joke though is like, I'd argue that it's actually higher stakes with a dog because your kid bites somebody, he goes in time out. My kid bites somebody, he gets put down. It's one of my favorite. If you haven't seen Bill Burr talking about the pit bulls and dogs and all that, it's such a great bit.

Podcast or what?

It's a comedy show or whatever. So it's like, but that's like a particular bit. You can find it on YouTube. It's saying like Bill Burr Pit Bull.

Got it.

It's so funny because like the other one, I'm totally stealing this by the way, but he's like hates this dog at first because it's a stray they found by the river, like his girlfriend or whatever, his wife. And then he starts like, you know, he's like, I hate this dog for the first week. And then by the next week, he's like totally in love. They're just chilling on the couch. He's asking the dog for advice. He's like, how do you get these abs here? You know, best bit ever. Please take 10 minutes out of your day and watch it. Yeah, no, I will. But dogs, kids, okay, I'm surprised.

Yeah, it's a different level of busy.

So you got a lot going on. So you have the kids, obviously. You have AJ's Garage, you have Eurocharged. And Driveify probably keeps you busy, too.

Actually, Driveify, they're, they're, they handle it.

That's where the fees come in.

That's where the 40 cut comes in. No, they're doing a great job with that, but I don't really have to do much. We have to service the cars. You know, we're working on installing trackers on all the cars now. And we had a different tracking system. Now we have a really nice advanced system. But you know, the shop, we stay busy on that. And then I have my home rentals. So I've got a couple of properties. And like, you know, that takes time. Renter calls me, oh, the toilet's broken, or the heater's broken, or refrigerator, or the disposal. And here I am, Mr. Handyman, just going there, changing parts of it.

You also do a lot of it yourself too.

I do, yeah. I do all the work.

You don't do any property management, or I mean, you don't have a property management company.

Nope, nope, we do all of it. Me and my brother.

You don't get a Corvette for fixing those either.

No, no. So my brother handles all the paperwork stuff, and I handle all the physical stuff.

I'm a bit of a landlord too. I have a couple properties, and I'm just kinda, yeah, I've learned a lot from just getting calls from my tenants. It's like, okay, well if I can't fix it, which would save me a lot of money, I have a team of people that I can rely on, who aren't like these big companies, who charge service fees or are just showing up, and so.

$100 that just show up.

Yeah, I got guys that'll be like, yeah, I'll be there later today, and they'll basically just do it for at cost, or I'm just paying for labor, essentially, plus parts.

That's awesome to have, that's huge.

Yeah, so.

Saves you a ton of money.

Yeah, I love it, and I love having these properties. It keeps me busy on top of everything else, so I love it. What about you?

I used to love it.

Oh, really? How long have you been doing it for?

Oh, oh, six, I think.

Oh, six?

Yeah, the first house we bought, the U of M. It's a seven bedroom house, so it's seven students.

Was that the one you were telling me you had some people being stupid in?

Usually that would, yes.

A college, yeah.

Yeah, students.

I don't think I could ever deal with that.

Man, I mean, we just kind of walked into it, and we just did it, but it did really well for many years. It has done very well. And it's paying down the loan, obviously, the equity and the profit.

Yeah, it's your 401k when you cash out.

Exactly. Now we're looking at selling that place, and I've got a couple hundred grand worth of equity in it. We're gonna turn it into a commercial, looking for a commercial warehouse.

I was really hoping it'd say Viper, but.

Well, then it would be filled with Vipers.

That's even better.

Well, so it's a place to put all my cars and, you know, I have a couple ideas of what I want to do for a future business. Storage facility.

Yeah, I've heard that idea go around.

We need it here in town. There's no good storage facility.

Yeah, every year when winter rolls around, like, hey, like, where can I store my car?

Exactly.

Who's got a room in their garage?

Exactly. I get messages into like November, like, I need to store my car. Do you know somewhere? I'm like, why didn't you ask me in October?

People are reserving stuff right now, which is, you know, it's kind of wild when you think about it, that we have a storage problem because look where we're at. The motorplex here, we got 180 garages, like garage condominiums, and then we have Medina. That one's sold out. And then we have, you know, another one.

Big Lake, I think, is the other one.

Yeah. And then we have two more in the south or one, at least one more in the south. The one in Eagan. I can't think there's another one.

Yep. Yep, yep, yep, Watertown, I think, has another one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yep, so it's like you have all these, yeah, the Watertown one's nice, but you have all this, and we still don't have enough storage. It's kind of crazy to think about how many cars, like nice cars, are tucked away in Minnesota.

So many people own multiple cars, like you buy a garage condo here, and you're like, oh, now I gotta fill it.

Yep, you open the door, and there's like seven cars in there, it's like, holy, holy s***, you know?

Yeah, I'm using this space.

Exactly, right.

Yeah, AJ's keepin a light with 14 cars.

Man, some of them are outside in my neighbor's garage.

Yeah. Always a space issue. But that'd be a great model. And honestly, like, the other thing is, is even if you did get like, you know, 20 or 30 or whatever thousand foot facility for all these cars, there's still going to be enough for other people to do it because there's so much like demand for it right now.

Yep.

So that'd be a good one. I really would like to see that fruition.

So the thing you you got to consider is like, OK, winter storage, fine. Like you got that from October.

You got to pay bills in the summer.

Exactly. What are you going to do in the summer? So you got to like, try to think about what you're going to do in the summer.

Jet skis. Jet snowmobiles.

Yeah, snowmobiles and like winter equipment. Surprisingly, that's like a high demand storage thing. Yeah, because you're going to put your plows and your bobcats in the show like that.

Exactly. Like, my wife hates that I just leave my sleds out and it's like, she's like, get rid of them. Like either sell them or, you know, go store them somewhere. I'm like, oh, but I don't want to sell them. But if there was a place that I could store them, like the year prior, you know, that was perfect because they were out of sight, out of mind. She's not telling me get rid of them.

Exactly.

So yeah, that is a great idea for, you know, summer storage. It's for those winter toys.

Right.

Because you got to have both here.

You do.

Otherwise, you go insane.

I won't get into snowmobiles. I don't want another hobby. I just got into boats two years ago and now I'm like, now I want other. I want more boats. I'm like, this is stupid. Where are you going to put them?

Speaking of snowmobiles, and you may have seen this too. So Aaron Miller from Enthmodo actually pulled up with Juggernaut today. Apparently he's like getting really heavy into snowmobiles. Did you see those videos?

Aaron is? Yeah.

Yeah, I can't remember if he was riding it or building them or whatever. We're talking like drag racing snowmobiles, like high power snowmobiles.

I didn't know that.

Yeah, there's a video that he posted a few months ago, I think. I don't know if it had even been in the winter or whatever, but just freaking crazy. I don't know why that came to mind.

I might have to look into that.

Yeah, so there's another business here in town called Joyo. I'm not sure if you heard about it. It's actually kind of close to you. So they actually store the Jeep toppers, because some people will take it off for the whole season, and then they just store it, and then once it's time or whatever. So I know they kind of have that going on. I'm not sure how the business is doing, but yeah, nonetheless, that's kind of like another... You got to look at the niche things. If you can get a bunch of different aspects, like Bronco toppers, whatever. Just things that people need to store.

Yeah, I mean, I've done the numbers on it, but the numbers don't make sense unless you charge the person storing the car. And that number, to make sense, is like 300 bucks a month. And that's a lot.

That's about what we were paying for the AMG storage, too.

Right. And I would ask you, are you willing to pay 300 bucks a month for six months to store your car?

100 bucks a month?

Holiday long.

Yeah, because on top of that, they're still paying monthly payments, insurance, because you can't just take it off insurance.

Well, it's a lower... It's probably a comprehensive coverage, which is usually a third of what the normal policy is. But the person who owns a facility is not covering your car. Generally speaking, they're like, your insurance, you're on your own. Here you can store it here, but fine. But the landlord then has electricity costs, because you probably have a battery tender on the car. You got heating, because you want to keep it at 50, 55. And some of these exotic cars, they need to be in warmer weather. Otherwise gaskets and seals and whatever shrivel up and then you got a leak. And that can be many thousands. So as an owner of the landlord of whatever the unit, you got some heavy costs. And you have to pass that down to the guy, the storage guy, otherwise it doesn't make sense.

It's difficult. I'd love to see it happen.

That would be the coolest looking warehouse, though, with how many different cars it would look like.

The variety.

One of the sickest collections in the state.

Yep. Well, so do you remember what the heck was his name? In Burnsville that he did the drives with all the exotics? That's that one storage facility?

I can't think of it. Why?

Well, that's what he did. He did storage. But then I think he was doing some shammie stuff and got closed down, but yeah, that was the concept. And he always had some really sweet, sweet exotics in there. And you walk in, it was a really nice facility, like a pool table and a bar and a guys hangout thing, like a clubhouse.

Well, yeah, that's actually a really good idea. On top of that $300 a month, you can also show up. Maybe there's a little keypad.

Like a country club sort of thing?

It's a country club.

Yep.

Like a bar room, pool table, that'd be actually really cool.

You know, you want to watch the F1 races, you have a big screen or whatever and projector and guys hang out.

Yeah. Well, that just keeps adding on to the cost for the owner, but it gives the incentive of like, you know, you're paying for more than just storage.

Right.

You know, especially in the winter, like you're looking for a reason to get out of the house. Something fun like that would actually be interesting.

Yeah. You get all your buddies together, go look at your cars or whatever, hang out.

Yeah.

You can start small too, though, like enough for like 30 cars or whatever. Like it doesn't have to necessarily be like, oh, he could store a thousand cars or whatever.

Yeah, no, it would. Yeah. That's like I said, Sloan study is my kind of methodology and 50 cars or whatever.

Get a nice cigar lounge and stuff like that. That'd be kind of cool.

Hang out lounge. It's a country club per se.

Yeah. Kind of sort of throwing a golf simulator, all that stuff. Whatever, like Mark's Garage over at Medina. Have you seen Mark's Garage up there? Dude, when he got that golf simulator on there too, that's fricking gnarly. So you see the Lambos down there and the must things. But what's the card I got away for you? Do you have any cars? Because I know you listen, whenever you get in your car, you're like, I'm keeping this one. I might keep this one. I'm like, you're full of s***, AJ. But what?

You guys believe me? Yeah. Every single time.

Do you have any that just kind of like you kind of like miss? I mean, your head, you're probably like, I'll just keep it back. No.

So there was actually one. It was a 2009 Corvette Z06, had like 6,000 miles on it, and there was a gentleman in, I think it was like Buffalo or something. He would build these cars and take them to SEMA. So this car that he built was a SEMA show car in 2012. And it was a, I mean, there was nothing stock on that car. Like it was a wide body. It was a Z06 with a wide body on it. The rear wheels were 21 by 14, and it was 375 tires on it. I mean, massive.

I didn't even know you could get that size.

Pirelli makes them.

They're used to the smaller sizes.

It was a built 427, a TVS blower on it, like made like 850 horsepower, full custom ostrich interior. And it was like a gray car with like a bunch of yellow accents. I still have the hood. But that car, I was at power cruise in it. It caught on fire. So yeah, it burned down and that was the end of that.

Why did it catch on fire? Any idea?

So the shop it was at, I believe, I don't know. I think they were reinstalling fuel lines or something and the fuel line popped. And the fuel line popped right onto the header. And it was like instantaneous explosion of fire out of the hood. And I was going... I was probably going a buck forty.

By the time you slow down...

Yeah, I had vents in the hood and the flames were coming out of the vents. I'm like, oh s***, this is not good. It's like quickly pull over and get out. Everything is electronic on that car, right? So, like the doors open, luckily the doors open, got out. I was trying to pop the cable in the hood and the cable snapped because that's where the fire was. And so we couldn't open the hood. Fire crew came, ripped open the hood and I was there like next to it and my whole arm... The fire like as you open the hood, you throw oxygen in there. The fire just went up big time. It just singed my entire arm. All the hair was gone.

Are you hairless? No, it's back.

I'm good.

Like one of those hairless cats.

But yeah, no, that car got away from me. I couldn't do anything. Insurance totaled it. And she was gone.

The whole thing burned down?

It was engine bay fire. The chassis was good. The body was good. The motor was good because it was like firewall and back. And so all the electronics in the car, like it was then it became electrical fire. So all the electronics like under the dash and everything melted.

When did this happen? How long ago?

This was like 08, 07, 08.

I'm sorry.

No, this was like 14 or 15. Yeah.

I would love to see that car on Scrap Life Garage. Have you ever seen that channel?

So what happened was a recycling yard in like St. Louis, I traded him the twin turbo R8. So he had the twin turbo R8. It was a clean title or whatever. He wanted my vet. And then he had another vet there with a blown motor. Sorry, the body was damaged. So basically he had a guy from UAE who wanted my car, the body and everything, and the motor. And then he was going to transplant everything and make it one new clean car.

UAE as in United Arab Emirates?

Overseas, yeah.

Man, those guys out there, they got some money. They got some fast cars out there.

Sounds like you came up on that deal.

No, no, I lost a lot of money.

Really?

I lost a lot of money, yeah. Insurance didn't pay out nothing near. It was like track insurance, you know? But they didn't pay out. They deemed it as, oh, this car is worth 35 grand. That's what I got. But the car had 120 grand into it. I paid obviously way more than the market value of the car. Yeah, it is what it is. On the trade, I got a decent deal on the R8, but it's something I wanted. It was a twin turbo 2011 R8 V10. Really cool car. And that was my second exotic car. The one year where I paid all the crazy taxes. But yeah, that's the car that got away. Otherwise, like you said, yeah, I can sell it. I can probably buy it back. It's just a matter of money.

Have you had cars come back?

Yeah. I've had a couple cars come back.

Just reach out to somebody else or whatever.

Yeah, and then they come back in, they trade them into me, and I get something else and rinse and repeat.

I've got a few guys that do that. I'm so, so happy that Joe got that yellow Viper. I love that. I love that car. I didn't even realize it, so when he pulled up for the first time, I was like, that's yours?

At the Wednesday night thing?

And then I was like, oh, you got the cheeseburger. He's like, it's not a cheeseburger. Yeah, it isn't one, but that's one of the things when we were recording here. So today we're recording at the Cars and Caves here in Chanhassen, and sometimes people come up to the doors, and they're just like, oh, let's just walk in. What's going on in there?

No, luckily we haven't had anybody walk in yet. Usually they stop right before they're late.

Rev up those fryers, Krusty Krab. Yeah. So what would you say is one of the more fun cars you've had over the years? Because I know you're loving that Calvo right now.

Yeah, that Calvo car is insanity. 1,500 wheel.

Is it?

It's a 1,300 X package. The X meaning 1,500 wheel horsepower. So a built motor. So a CM 1,300 is a 1,300 wheel horsepower car. Stock motor. You throw the X on the end of that, it's a built motor car. Then you can throw more boost at it, it's 1,500 wheel. So that car, you throw bigger turbos on it, and you can go bigger. Interesting. It's still a standard 6-speed trans. It's got an Enthamoto clutch in it, so it handles power.

Yep.

You can throw a sequential in it, or an H pattern, and then go for some bigger power. But yeah, I mean, that car is set up to go bigger. Just change those.

Is that a 9-liter then? Nope, 8-4.

It's a handful. That car is a handful to drive. Oh yeah.

Does it have a Motec in there?

It's got a Motec.

That's the other thing. I had a friend building a crazy Corvette, and he's asking about, or he's not asking about, he's like, yeah, I think I might wait till next year to get like, you know, Motec, whatever, or something. And it's just, man, I remember when I went for a hit with Adam, or a Minneapolis Mopar in his Viper, like when we were driving past Enthamoto, he's like, hey, let's do a hit. Let's see if they can figure out which car it is. And we did a hit, and I think we're probably at about a buck, 20, buck 30. And we hit, I don't know, is it 30, whatever, car gets squirrely. And I'm like, huh, that's a field or a building, or it's the Amazon building. And then we're back. He stayed in it the whole time, by the way. That's the thing about that. That's the crazy thing about those like Motec systems. Like you just stay in a car, just let it do its technological magic. Like it doesn't matter, like it'll just correct it. Oh, dude, did you see the video that went viral? I think it was last week. It was a GTR that did a four second, zero to 130, or something like that. Dude, this video is the craziest video I've ever seen, or not ever seen, but it's nuts. Cause like, I think it had like a trans break or whatever. And then you just hear a pop, sends it, and then the car's squirrely all over like on his back. First of all, this street was prepped better than your average track. Like, you know those guys that come up the streets and they burn the pavement and all that. But dude, this car was all over the place.

Four seconds?

Something like, it was ridiculous. It was in the fours. Dude, it was fricking nuts.

Can you imagine the G-forces?

That's gotta hit like two G's at least.

More, it's gotta be more than that. I can't imagine.

You'd have to go through special training just to not pass out.

Pass out, yeah.

Yeah, like fighter jet.

Top gun, it was top gun.

Gotta force air into your brain.

You gotta wear the compression suit to keep all your blood in your body up here.

It's so crazy.

Yeah, that traction control system, like in my cowboy car, I took it to roll racing at Brainerd. The first couple of passes, like, yeah, it would step out, but you just stay in it, and it just gets itself straight and keeps going. It's just silly. It's unreal how the technology behind that stuff. And then you've seen my 98 GTS. That's an EnthMoto build.

That's right. You still got that one, right?

Got that one. That's a 1250 wheel.

Well, it's not an EnthMoto build. It's a bit of a mutt, but EnthMoto fixed it.

EnthMoto finished it. It's an EnthMoto motor, EnthFueling, EnthBelt tensioner stuff. The Trans, I think, was not an EnthTrans.

Yeah, they got the car working properly.

Right, yeah. They finished it, tuned it, MoTeC. But that car, we took it to the Battle of the Brands, and I could launch that thing, and you just flat foot the thing, and it just goes.

And it's like 1200 wheel, right?

1100 torque.

I'm curious, because that car is lighter than the Calvo, I'd imagine.

Yeah, but again, it's old. Old technology, right? The shifting is like old. It's a T56, right? But, I mean, that thing, s***** launch, like real s***** launch. I didn't want to mess anything up, so it was just kind of soft. But it did a 10.4 at 157. And the 157 is the speed, that's f****** moving. That's an easily low nine second car. But you can tell from my launch, it's garbage.

Yeah, your 60 foot probably was not good.

It was like a two. Yeah, it was horrible. But once you get into second gear, and you just like it hooks, it literally feels like you start looking at the clouds. Like it feels like it's lifting. And it pulls like a freight train. So, yeah, they've got their s*** figured out. Those cars are... There's a reason why they're breaking records right now. Who? Whether it's Calvo or Enth.

The Vipers.

You mean Enth? Well, Calvo's got some. Which ones? I don't know which ones. There's so many freaking cars out there.

Honestly, if somebody could... Because again, we got Juggernaut here. That's the world's fastest Viper, period. Kratos is the fastest fifth gen. So that's two records right there. That's why I'm always curious.

Well, no. What I'm saying is compare the Twin Turbo Huracans and R8s, which are really fast cars. UGR has a record right now.

You mean like Vipers as a whole?

Vipers as a whole.

Vipers as a whole.

Now you're putting a real-wheel-drive car with a Motec compared to an all-wheel-drive car with a Motec, and they're neck and neck. That's impressive.

It's crazy. Dude, the fastest real-wheel-drive pass ever by, I think it was Kratos, not this Texas 2K this year, but the previous year, hit 225 in a real-wheel-drive car.

Was that a drag event or was that the roll?

That was the roll, I believe, that they did that one on.

It was a roll, yeah.

Well, you didn't go the previous year.

No, but I saw the videos. It was going around.

So UGR just broke that record at...

They did. I think it was like 230 in the STO.

Yeah, because that's a real-wheel-drive car too, right?

No, I think that was a real-wheel-drive. They converted it to all-wheel-drive.

Oh, yeah, that's right. But it's crazy to think about it.

And at the half mile, they did like 256 or 253 or something like that.

Dude.

That's silly.

Did you see that one's on sale?

It is? Already?

Yeah. They want, I think, the yellow STO. It's on sale, no?

Oh, this was months ago. That one was on sale. This is a different one. I know like after Texas 2K, like that one was up for sale or whatever. The yellow one.

I think that guy, he's the one that has the cryptocurrency. He owns a cryptocurrency. I forget which one, but...

Interesting.

He's got like a TT, a Ventador, another TT, Pervomante, and obviously STO.

You run out of fingers.

What's like the next car that you really want? Like a UGR build or a SISIO? Like, is there anything? Yeah.

I've had a couple UGR cars.

Oh, you have?

I will say they do build them well. It's not rocket science to build these things, but they are fast, they work, they work great. I've had other brands, don't work right. So, I'll give them credit.

You got to tell me off camera on that one. I got a few ideas in my head, but...

One of them is a local customer.

Uh-huh. Yeah. I think I know. I think I know. But dude, say what you want. Like, it doesn't matter whether you go with like Enthmot or a Calvo, UGR or T1 or whoever. All these companies build ridiculously fast cars. I mean, regardless of all this electric crap going on right now, whatever your thoughts are on that, we are in the golden era of car enthusiasts. Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, all the OEMs are building insane cars. We've got Ford with the GTD. We got the C8 over here.

The Z06.

The Z06. I just shot my first one yesterday. Incredible car. If you think about it, the ZR1. Anything from 2015 and up to now, dude, we're in the golden era right now. We got a few Teslas, sure.

We need to have some fun.

Yeah, but now, like, dude, 2,000 horsepower was, like, creaming a crop, like, what, six, seven years ago. Now we're in the threes, and we're getting close to four. Like, I think Kratos is, like, 3500 wheel or whatever this year. God knows what that T1 GTR was with that glory run, 240 miles an hour.

Yeah, it's silly. I mean, I visited my friend in Vegas. I guess he owns Royalty Exotics Houston. Yeah, yeah. I've done a couple of deals with him, so we went to go catch up.

That dude's got some stories.

He's got some stories, yeah. But I walk in the shop, and there's a beautiful bill-machined Lamborghini engine. I'm like, what the F is that? He's like, oh, that's my 3500 horsepower, wheel horsepower STL. I'm like, where do you even drive that? He's like, just so I can have it. That's all. Just so I can have it.

Well, Will is the same way. The owner of Juggernaut, too. Him and his wife will go cruising with their twin turbo Vipers, with parachutes on the back and everything.

But they run. I mean, that's a testament to an Enth model car. They run daily driver. Even the Juggernaut runs daily driver. Granted, race car, but...

That's a full-blown race car.

My Calvo car, the dude who built it, had road tripped that car from, I think it was in North Carolina, up to the Indy Mile, drove it there, raced it all day, did 205 right off the bat, drove it home at the end of the thing. AC on, no hiccups, no nothing, no shenanigans. It's a testament to these cars that you can make silly power, but then drive them.

We gotta be glad that Antonio is still alive after that crash, too. We talked about this a few weeks ago, that crash at the Calvo. He crashed 220 miles an hour.

Shift sector, yep, Indy.

Dude, that roll cage did its freaking job. I don't know if you saw the after action that he did, but the cage was just slightly starting to bend.

It was like the passenger side, like it curved, as in a roll.

If you see the video of it rolling, it's like, oh my gosh, dude. I think that's what, a 2,600 horsepower car?

Something like that, yeah, 25, 26.

That was the rotten apple, right? Is that what it went by, or is that the other car?

I don't know, I'm not sure.

All these cars have their code names or whatever, but dude, that's a testament to like, when you're into that level of power, you got to have safety. Does your current car have a lot of safety in it?

I got cage and suppression. Oh, and suppression, okay.

And the cool thing about Vipers, I think the lower tier ones, like the GTS and all that too, they had that like halo or whatever it is too, or like the...

In the factory?

Yeah. Yep. Is that what it's called, halo?

Yeah.

What is it?

It would be up above. Yep.

Not all cars come with that.

No.

Not at all.

Yeah, it's, I mean, they designed them well. They knew, you know, like the saying is like 40% of Vipers made are wrecked.

Yeah.

That's the reason why. I mean, they didn't have traction control before, so. And I wrecked one. Like, I get it back, I think it was like 2015 or so. I wrecked an ACR.

Yeah.

Oh, wow. And it was, it was, yeah, it was bad. But luckily I, you know, I walked away or whatever, you know, something stupid. Somebody else caused it, caused me the action on the road, you know, but the car was made well.

What color was it?

Black. Black with a red driver's license.

If it was a striker purple, people would be so pissed.

No, this was a Gen 4 ACR.

Oh, Gen 4, okay.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Older one. But yeah, striker purple. I would shoo shoo in bed.

Dude, those are going for some serious dough. Like those limited edition colors, like.

Guy just pulled one up, has six miles on it. Delivery miles. It wants 400 grand.

What, what, what? Striker purple?

Striker purple.

Is it the one with the white stripes?

Yep.

I didn't realize it was six miles. Holy, wow.

Yeah, delivery miles, yeah. Everything's still in the wrapper.

Man, it's so crazy that some people just really didn't put any miles on these cars.

Well, some, so one of my friends here locally has one as well, striker purple. He did the museum delivery thing.

Matt?

Yeah, Matt. And he knew back then, like, this car is going to be worth money.

It's going to be special.

It's going to be special. And then his sticker was like 140 or whatever. I mean, my ACR, I think the sticker is like 133, and it's a black ACR. It's nothing special. But even today, I mean, yeah, the values went up. They just skyrocketed.

I wonder how much of that was because of the Enth Moto and Calvo just showing like these are four-digit like capable cars.

Yeah, once they tapped into that car. Yeah, because I think about it, Supras are going for 150k now. Like the Mark IV, the specialty one. That's crazy to me. But again, why is that platform special? The car itself, like looks wise, it looks good. But it's like the real specialty is in that motor. That was the ultimate car. Yeah, so like I remember Katie over here, she pulled up, her and Ike pulled up with their white Supra, great white or whatever they call it, over to the Enthomoto open house. Everybody flocks over. Why? And these are all Viper guys. Most of them twin turbo. And they're just like, they know, they know what's up.

Because you know what? That was a car during their prime that they wanted or maybe couldn't get or whatever reason. But that was the car that they idolized, you know? Or maybe Fast and Furious, that helped, too.

Yeah, that's a big part of it.

Orange one, so. I mean, I, my friend has one right now. He's my best friend. And it's stock, 98, five speed NA. And he wants to build them. I'm like, don't touch that car, just leave it alone. Like the value is, the value is there in a stock car. Yeah, so.

Keep it tight for the next guy.

Yeah, he won't ever sell it. And if he does, he sells it, it's going to me.

It's going to you, yeah. Yeah.

And I won't touch it.

Well, Sean, I think because it has been a nice long show. Should we do the usual three?

Yeah, we can ask. So if you haven't listened to the show before, this is the part where I ask you a question that kind of lets us know a little bit better about like your taste in vehicles. So you're just going to have to choose three cars. One's your daily, one's your track car, one's a show car.

Unlimited budget. The only thing that's limiting you is your imagination.

Whoa.

All right.

I think a Urus would be my daily.

Urus? No RS6, huh?

Well, I have an RS6.

So you're a Urus?

Dream car, right?

Yeah.

You said money, no option. I think I love Lamborghinis. I love Lamborghinis, like plain and simple. And I love my kids, and I love to take them in the car with me. And then you could do that in the Urus.

Would you do the Mansory one, or no?

Oh, it'd be fully modified. Yeah, because that'd be a thousand plus wheel. We'd build it. Mansory, wide body, full carbon fiber, everything.

Because like, I'm not a fan of Mansory. And I think a lot of people are not a fan of Mansory. But that black one that's going around, that's a good looking car.

Exactly. Right.

And their weave is amazing.

I think he's a ball player, football player.

Is he?

I think he's a Vikings player.

I think it was a small guy that jumped out of that car. It might have been a kicker.

I don't know.

Could be a kicker.

No, anyways, yeah, so I'd say a Urus track car, honestly, that ACR. I tracked my ACR once, maybe twice. They freaking knocked it out of the park. That was my top two. My GT3 RS was my first, maybe second. It's hard, but they're both kind of right there. The ACR would be number one track car.

Would you do like a nine liter build on one?

Oh, hell yeah. Yeah. I mean, there was a guy that did a nine liter.

Yeah, the red one.

No, not in town. Maybe it is a red one. Yeah.

Yeah.

And it makes like 800 wheel horsepower.

I think he crashed a few months ago.

It's just silly.

And it sounds ridiculous. The chop on a V10. It's like the chop of a VA, but just add like two more cylinders, and it just sounds insane.

More intense.

Yeah.

Like, you can probably mess up your heartbeat sitting in that car with the chop. Yeah.

Well, the Enth Moto cars are all cammed too, I think, right? So it's like when you hear Adam start up, dude, you feel it in your chest. Like, you could be standing 30 feet away and you feel it in your chest. Like, it's crazy.

My Calvo car, like, same. Yeah, same deal. The thing sounds, it doesn't sound normal. It just sounds like a freight train coming through, you know?

I can't wait to shoot that thing.

And then we do rolling anti-lag, and then you feel it in your chest, in your feet, in your butt. The turbos are like right there, so yeah, it's a lot of fun.

I mentioned Ford.

Well, you and me both. Last one, like the show car. You know, I went to the Pagani factory, and that is like, you can eat off the floor, how clean it was, like an operating room. And the detail and the designs and everything that goes into it, like those cars are probably that's a dream car. Yeah, I would definitely do one of those. And then of course, the story behind him, you know, he's from Lambert. He's originally designed, so the guts of it is Lambo. But now I think it's was an AMG motor.

Yeah, yeah.

I think they're just works of art. Oh, yeah. And I would, if I could modify it, I would, and I drive the piss out of it.

Well, what would you put on there? Some some rep wheels?

You know, Eurocharged tuning.

Buys a two million dollar car, puts some reps on it.

China baby.

Stancy Pagani.

Yeah, right. No, I think they're amazing. That would be that would probably be my dream garage. Yeah, those three.

That is an amazing show car. I think everybody would just stop and drop to see that.

Yeah. And you know, the other thing I enjoy doing is like, I'm at car shows and kids want to sit in the car or see the car or whatever or talk. I'll take the time to sit with them, talk with them, whatever. You're spreading the joy. You know, we went to a couple of shows. These little kids wanted to sit. I think it was my Viper a couple of years ago. And these kids are like, can I sit in it? Sure. Hop in. The mom's like, be careful. Don't touch anything. You know, I'm like, go ahead. Don't worry about it.

You know, what would be really cool is if you teach kids how to two step. Imagine like a four year old just inside your Viper. So frickin gnarly, dude.

That'd be all my kids are going to learn. Yeah. My kids love cars.

Yeah.

Like that's good cars.

So do you drive them in the Viper?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, dude, wait till you have you ever seen them put the car seats in?

I saw you do that last month and I was like, I took a picture so I should I could show my wife. Oh, like, hey, look, I can put the baby seat in the Viper. I can, you know, it's a family car.

Yeah. Sean, so my wife and I, like, I think so the kids were born in October, spring of the following year, 21. We attended shows. They were like six, seven months old. We were in the car seats. She was in her R8. I was in whatever we went to car shows. I don't care. She doesn't care. I mean, we're safe. Yeah, we're not like speeding on the road or whatever. Like we're a side. Just me and her.

You got precious cargo.

Exactly. Like we're not screwing around. And I don't screw around on the street.

It's so cool. And my first time seeing that was at Caffeine and Octane. You had the I think it was the yellow Superleggera.

Yes.

And then you had I think it was an R8 and then you just had baby seats in the front of both of them. It was just so cool, dude.

Two twin turbo cars rolling up with baby seats. Yeah, the kids love it.

That's goals.

You know what? The kids even now, like they walk in the garage, they see something different. Like today I brought the orange turbo and my one daughter, Myra, walks in the garage like, daddy, who cars that? Like, they know the cars that sit in the garage now, and they know what colors they know what they are. They see something different. They're like, is that ours? Is it daddy car? Daddy race car? You know, it's pretty cool.

Wait till they get to like middle school or like elementary school. They're gonna be like, my daddy has a hundred cars. It's like, no, daddy had a hundred cars. That's gonna be awesome.

I'm gonna have to teach them like daddy. Look, daddy's really poor. We have cars that nobody has. Okay. Don't tell people. I'm a little bit worried about that.

It's gonna be interesting, because that's gonna be part of it.

Yeah.

But at least you're prepared for it. It's not gonna be a surprise.

Right.

What are you gonna do when they get older and they get their permits?

Honestly, I can't wait for them to get their permits. So when we come to car shows and we roll four deep with freaking exotics, I want them to drive. As soon as, I don't know, you could probably start teaching them at 10 or 12. Just like, oh, let's go in the parking lot.

Get them on the simulator. Get a sim rig. That'd be cool.

So they already have the little toy cars thing, like the remote control ones. They already, like one of them figured out how to switch it off a remote and into the actual manual driving.

Yeah.

And she'll hit the gas and she'll f****** take off. I'm like, I'm sure running after her.

Dude, it's gonna be, dude, you can turn.

She's gonna be my problem child, I know that.

Turn them into race car drivers.

I would love to do that.

Yeah, you gotta start them early. Get a sim rig. Like everybody starts carding at like four. It'd be cool.

I think she'll love it.

Are they both daughters? I can't remember.

Yeah, two girls.

That's what I thought.

Twins, yep.

That's freaking awesome.

You'll never have a problem with like guys showing off because...

Dude, that's the other thing. I'm gonna have to have my best buddy come. We're gonna do the Will Smith and Martin Lawrence skit. I don't want any boys messing with my girls.

You're always gonna have a better car than them.

Well, no.

They're gonna be like, oh, I gotta be friends with this guy. I don't even want to date his daughter.

Yep, yep. I'm coming here to see your dad. No, it's a lot of fun. I'm super excited. I'm very pumped for them to grow up and get involved in the sport, hopefully. I don't want to push them.

Let them figure it out. Just be like, hey, try this. Or just even better, like sit at the simulator for like an hour or whatever. And be like, hey, you want to see if you can beat my time? Like get them competitive, put them against each other. That's going to start resentment.

That's a good point. Then they're going to compete with each other, hopefully.

You never know, man. I'm excited for you. And I'm glad that you're passing on the passion to your kids. I can't wait till his daughter gets old enough because she's probably going to be the same bug.

I hope so. I think that's what any father wants from their kids, is kind of to take after them. And, you know, it's really just you like paving the way and making sure to set the right examples. So yeah, like taking you taking your kids to car shows in the cars, like that's awesome. And like sharing sharing that. And I need to do that more often.

And it's tough.

I mean, I get the wife on board too, though. Yeah, it's part of definitely have to watch the team.

Yeah, well, I think my wife would be fine with me taking the daughter out to like a car show and like letting her just like have her have her time.

Yeah, that's important. Their their family is important. 100 percent. So they got a dog never to really start. Family. We got a dog too. I love her. This is just the same.

So where can people find you?

So your charge is in St. Louis Park. And we're right behind Methodist Hospital. Very easy. Google, search it online, Eurocharged minneapolis.com. And then AJ's Garage is AJ's Garage llc.com. And then of course Facebook. We got pages on Facebook. Same thing. Search the names. AJ's Garage and Eurocharged. Like our page. Follow us. I try to post more stuff. It's been very difficult these days with just how busy we are.

Driveify.

Driveify MN. I think it's Driveify mn.com. We've got, man, we got like 36 cars, I think, on there. Quite a few. Quite a few toys.

Yeah, rent something. I had a lot of fun driving that Supra of yours.

Yeah.

Are there any cars that you recommend?

The Supras.

The Supra.

Honestly, like I'm blown away with the Supra. That is such a fun car.

Harris told me about it, and it's like the first time I ever wanted to like rent a car.

Yeah. We built one when they first came out, and at stock, I was very underwhelmed. Then we just did a tune. I think we did Downpipe. I was like, holy s***, this is like a whole new animal. And then on mine, we did Downpipe and ethanol tuning, and it makes 500 wheel and 600 torque. We took it to Power Cruise. I couldn't believe how fast that thing is. It's just, and it's nice, it's BMW, but it's comfortable. It's not super loud. It just goes, does. So that's a really fun one. The Corvettes are fun. The R8's fun. What else we got?

A lot of fun stuff, just go to drivify.com.

Yeah, the Broncos are cool. The SUV's are cool if you need it for family stuff. The Focus ST, that's a lot of fun. Manual, it's built up too.

I have to do that one at some point.

Yeah, that one's a lot of fun stuff, yeah. Yeah, no, it's going.

And where can people find you, Mr. Sean?

Same place as always, on Instagram. You can follow me at 1mnmopar. You just see pictures of my cars.

Yeah, the ones that you don't post. I gave him so much crap for that the other day. As for me, everybody, if you guys actually enjoy the show, if you love the guests or us or everybody here in this room today, it would really help us if you shared the show. Obviously, if you made it to the end of the episode, you actually enjoy it. And a lot of people actually do get to the end, which is pretty cool. It's awesome to see all the support. So it takes two seconds, just share it, because the only way we grow is by people sharing it. So all the homies and all that stuff. Other than that, sign up for the newsletter for all fun Minnoxide Monday stuff, which I really should be pushing more. But other than that, thanks for watching. Thanks for coming on, AJ. It's much appreciated.

Thank you for having me.

Sean, thanks for existing, and see you all next time.

Hey, I woke up at the last half. You know, I was down in the first half, but I came back.

And goodbye.