36. Importing JDM Vehicles, Old Toyota’s w/ Tyler Falconer from Nen-Tek Garage

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide Podcast for episode 35. We are hooking on this, we're a third of the way.

Wrong, you're finally wrong.

No, I'm not.

It's episode 36.

Oh, it is 36, I can't.

Last week was 35.

I can't be wrong if I restarted. But anyways, welcome back.

No, keep that in.

I'm keeping it in, I'm keeping it in. Because I showcase my failures, because social media will see my failures. Anyways, welcome back to the Minnoxide Podcast. I'm your host, Harris AKA. Minnoxide, photographer, videographer, man of many automotive ambitions. And I'm here with my really saucy, spicy co-host today who's causing some trouble.

Yeah, I'm now Latino. Hola. 1M Mopar. I'm just your average car enthusiast. I love going to car shows. I love talking about my cars. And this is the Minnoxide Podcast, where we take you beyond the meat and kind of introduce you to some of the people that make our community so great.

Thank you, Tex Max. Today we have a fantastic guest. Tyler, how do you say your last name?

Falconer.

Falconer, that's what I thought.

Like the bird Falcon with an E-R on the tail.

Yeah, it's like, you know, just.

You'd be surprised how many people, by the way, don't know how to spell the word Falcon. After I tell them that's how you spell my name, and they try and throw a K in there. I'm like, no.

Oh, I was thinking P-H.

No, phallic.

So anyways, you are, the reason I want to have you on this podcast, cause you're a huge JDM guy. You're the one who corrected me on what JDM is many moons ago. Because a lot of people misconstrue what JDM actually is. You have the five speed Soarer is what we shot years ago. So a little, let's go a little bit back in time here. So a few years ago, we did a photo shoot of you driving backwards into a Culver's.

Yes, yes. They kicked me out of the drive up window. They wouldn't let me pay or get my food. I had to pull out a line.

Because you reversed?

Yeah, went through backwards. We did a shoot, because I had my car finally cleaned up and stuff, and I wanted some good pics, and I knew Harris knows some great areas. And when we were done, he's like, dude, if you're up for it, I think it would be cool. You want to go through a drive through backwards. And I had joked with my buddies about it. And you know, you have right hand drive car. Oh, yeah. And so I'm like, yeah, sure, let's do it. And it was hilarious because as I'm back, and it was like peak busy Culver's. It was like 5.30, six o'clock. And the lines wrapped around the building. And so I'm just like backing up. I'm like the eighth car in line. And the people behind me are laughing. And the son gets out and he's taking pictures of my car and stuff. And I'm like, oh man.

Dude, think about the people behind you because you're staring back at them.

Exactly. And my driver's side is their driver's side. So I'm making direct eye contact with the driver of the car behind me. And I order just fine. And then I get to the window. And they're like, no, it's not safe. You got to get out of line.

They probably have cameras in the drive-through. And they just saw you the entire time.

What do you mean? I can't reach across my car. So they were very nice about it. They're just whatever, pull out of line.

One of them was a little spicy with you, though.

Yeah, I came out. They grabbed my debit card, brought my food out, brought my debit card back. You know, it was all right. I get it. But that is still, by the way, my background picture on my Facebook profile, because I just love it. It's great.

Yeah, I sent you our Facebook page, Tim, because Sean doesn't know you. I didn't know you beforehand or whatever. So sometimes what we'll do is just send each other the upcoming guests profiles and all that stuff so you can creep on you.

Yeah, we study, not stock.

Ah!

What's stocking?

I don't know how I feel about that.

Stocking is just intense studying.

Intense studying.

So in Europe, Teslas only come in left-hand drive, and they drive on the right side. And so all the drive-throughs are made for right-hand drive cars. And so when you take your Tesla to go to the Mickey D's. Out there, you have to reach across the window. So Tesla says, we're not going to make right-hand drive cars. So they gave everybody that gets a Tesla in those countries that drive on the wrong side of the road, one of those extension arms, the grabber arms, the old man grabber. And they're like, here, it's like an official Tesla item. And they say, this is what you use to grab your bag, how you hand your car, your cash, whatever, to the people in the drive-through.

That is so strange.

And in true Tesla fashion, I bet it's not straight.

Yeah.

But it's so weird, because I understand some cars you can't convert from left to right-hand drive, because it messes with things. But the battery's on the ground.

There's no steering column. Yeah.

Elon, what are you doing?

They probably just don't have the facilities. Everything's so on a line just to make that separate line.

They're barely. I mean, my hot take, Tesla's barely hanging on. Yeah.

They're overvalued.

100%.

There's no way that they should be worth what they are.

Correct.

I'm going to chime in and say that I'm not nearly educated enough to talk about this topic and say whether they're valued or undervalued, because I don't care. We got better cars.

It's crazy, because if your owner makes a tweet, and that makes your stock price goes down, then it's more evaluation about the person.

It's an X now. What do they call it? They change the name.

Right. Okay, here's the deal, though.

The company formerly known as Twitter.

The whole tweet thing, though, it's uniquely special to Elon, because he's the only CEO that tweets.

Yep.

I don't even know who the McDonald CEO is.

There's so many CEOs on Twitter that use it, but they use it very poorly.

That's what I'm saying.

Well, you could argue who uses it poorly, right? I'm sure if you are a Tesla stockholder, or an ex-stockholder, Twitter, whatever, you would probably argue that Elon Musk uses it poorly, right, if he tweets something, then the value tanks. Whereas other, he's more candid, right? He's more open with people. He doesn't just say the professional, because you're right, there are other CEOs on there, but they say just you're very surface level, happy to great company, all this stuff. They don't say the stuff like Elon says.

Yeah, because if they show any sort of emotion, it can really plummet stock prices and they don't want that. They want stability.

I don't have a doubt that he's an incredibly smart man. I just think that when it comes to building cars, he's not building cars, right? He's selling technology, that I get. I mean, you gotta build a good car.

To be the smartest man would be to not buy Twitter for $50 billion and then crash it down to I think it's worth like $8 billion now.

It doesn't, no.

What do you mean it doesn't matter? What are you talking about?

It doesn't matter because it's not public, Sean. You can't put a value on something that's not public.

Okay, he spent $50 billion.

That's great.

He is hemorrhaging money. If he wanted to sell it.

It's not real money anyway.

It's not real money. All money's fake. The aliens are coming. It's all over.

Aliens are already here, bro. They announced it. Yeah, project Bluebeam. And nobody even blinked.

Anyway.

Aliens, cool. Anyway, it's $20 for a loaf of bread.

As much as, I wanna go down this. I really do.

You ever see that video? It was a, it's a skit and they're saying, it's the US government. They're saying, yeah, there's aliens. And they're, you know, been around for a long time. And then somebody in the crowd asked like, did we by chance find oil in a African country? And they're like, ah, you got us.

Speaking of oil, let's get back to what the show's actually about. Motor oil and not, I don't care about Elon. Like, listen, it's hilarious, but like it doesn't affect my day to day. You're affecting my day to day by being here right now. So let's talk about you.

Yeah.

So, you have the GR Corolla.

Yes.

You have the Toyota Soarer. Yeah. Tell us, okay, so how have you been enjoying the GR Corolla?

Oh, so.

Did you get sticker for it?

Actually, I got $1,000 off.

Oh.

So here's the deal. I will say this first and foremost. I am the most biased, I'm like a Vikings fan defending Kirk Cousins, except it's Toyota. Like, I'm delusional, right? And I think that they make the best cars. I was so excited for the GR Corolla, and I'm such like a, you know, I worked at Toyota dealerships for nine years. And when I, they leaked, I'll never forget it. It was September of 21, and they leaked a commercial, and it was for the GR86. And in the background was this Corolla hatchback that like looked not like a Corolla hatchback. And I'm like, what's that? And because I had been with Toyota for so long, I had relationships with some of the Chicago based corporate people. And so I texted one of them and I had a screenshot, and I was like, hey, I asked her, I'm like, what's this? Like in the background. And she's like, oh, I can't really tell you. I'm like, well, it looks like a really weird Corolla, Corolla hatch. And in my head, when they had came out with the GR Yaris and didn't bring it to the States, I'm like, you know, they could really just put that drivetrain in something, right? Like it's not that hard. And so then they start to leak more on it. And I haven't bought a new car in eight or nine years, which is a rarity when you're working at dealerships, right? Usually you buy new cars, that's what you should do. So I got that and I started with that and I started telling my sales managers, like I want this thing. I'm not just your average salesperson that wants to just buy it and flip it or whatever, right? Cause I've gotten in that, on some of the Facebook groups, like, oh, you're a Toyota salesman, no one. And I'm like, dude, like check my flipping resume.

Right.

Nobody like deserves this car. I mean, maybe, not more than me, but I'm certainly up there in terms of Toyota enthusiasts.

You're in the top 5%.

Who deserve it and appreciate it. So I kept telling my managers, this car's coming, this car's coming. And they kept saying, we haven't heard anything, we haven't heard anything. And then March 31st of 2022, Toyota leaked it, the day before April Fool's Day. And everybody's like, is this an April Fool's Day? And they're like, no, this is legit. And then the next day, literally, our dealership flooded with phone calls. And I went back into the manager's office, and I was like, OK, we've prepared for this. I've been telling you. And I knew it was going to be a super special car, and I knew a lot of people were going to want it, and I knew they weren't going to make a lot of them. So I mean, I didn't really, I was prepared to pay MSRP, because at the dealership I was working at, we were only selling cars for MSRP. Knew we weren't marking them up. And so I was prepared as an employee even. I don't care. I just want to buy it. I'm ready with my deposit. Let me know when you want it kind of thing. I didn't want black, but I also wanted all three packages, the performance, the technology, and the cold weather package.

And with Toyota, you're not able to choose your color, right?

No, you don't. You can't, anybody that says they ordered a Toyota either is misinformed or doesn't understand how it works. Toyota, because they are, you know, kind of the biggest manufacturer right now up there with Volkswagen and some other stuff, you don't order a car. You take what they give you.

Right, because Toyota is effectively the company that invented lean production.

Yeah, so Kaizen, their philosophy of continuous improvement, that's what that means. And so what's really interesting that a lot of people don't know is the domestic manufacturers, and I know you're a Mopar guy, Sean, so I'm sorry that I'm saying this, but they don't care about building good cars. They care about building a lot of cars, right? If you work at a automotive, a domestic, on a domestic production line, it's maybe once or twice a month that the production lines get shut down for maintenance and that sort of thing. The quality control issues, they just, they don't care about it, right?

You could be like a few hundred cars deep, and then you're like, oh, oops, that stitching is messed up.

Yep, which is why you have so many recalls with a lot of domestic brands, that sort of thing.

Well, speak for yourself. My Volkswagen just had a recall.

On the Toyota side of things, anybody that works on the manufacturing line is empowered to stop production due to a quality control issue. So they stop their lines, I mean dozens of times a month to address these issues right away. As a matter of fact, one of the best stories that I can explain, you have your times where you own somebody on the internet, right? And it's just glorious. One of the best times I ever owned somebody. So we're all familiar with the Pontiac Vibe slash Toyota Matrix, right? The Geo Prism slash Toyota Corolla. So in the late 80s, early 90s, GM said, hey, we want to build good cars. Who builds the best cars? Well, at that point, Toyota was having the most success. They were building great sports cars. They had the Celica. They had the MR2. They had the Supra. They had a bunch of really fun cars. And so Chevy goes, well, GM goes to Toyota and says, hey, we want to learn how you build cars so we can make good cars.

Correct.

And Toyota says, great, let's open up a plant together. So they opened up the plant. This is all true in Southern California. It's called the NUMI plant, N-U-M-M-I. And they started building cars together. And Toyota kept telling Chevy or GM, like, slap them on the wrist. Nope, that's not how you do it. Nope, that's not how you do it. Nope, that's not how. And they just kept saying, what do you mean? We have to build cars. And they're like, no, that's not it, right? So it got to the point where GM just said, you know what, that's it. We're not doing this. And they gave up. They walked away from that plant.

Yep, correct.

And the best onage I ever had on this guy was, I always tell people, you vote with your wallet. And I have a hard time giving money to manufacturers that so poorly manage their companies that US taxpayers had to give them billions of dollars for bailouts. And then they didn't even pay that money back. They just basically took it and said, hey, thanks, no thanks. And then they have the audacity to argue about paying union. You know, that's a whole nother tangent. But anyway, so-

GM people are screaming in the windshield.

So I made a point to say, hey, one of the reasons I buy Toyotas and I like Toyota is because they don't back out of things. They don't ever close plants. They've never closed a plant in the United States, Mexico or Canada. Right? Correct. Except for the new me plant, which GM backed out of and left them kind of hanging. And what's really interesting to bring things full circle kind of at the beginning of our conversation is Toyota actually didn't close that plant. They cut back their production and then eventually gave all the workers a big severance. And now to this day, actually lease part of that to Tesla.

Interesting. That's really honorable. So fun fact, actually, I learned about that in college because I was a supply chain operations manager. So you just brought back all these memories. Yeah, I couldn't tell you that story the way you did.

I saw your left eye twitching like it was a flashback.

It was, yeah.

I learned that story from Donut Media. They did a whole video about Toyota and what the Kaizen philosophy of building cars and-

Oh yeah, they did a video.

That's right.

A little bit of, both of us, yeah, it's incredible the learning and teachings that Toyota has given us.

And it's been stretched across the board. For example, you have to look back at Ford, the other company, I never got to bail out. They are the ones that invented the, what is it, the production line.

Right.

You know, however long ago.

The eight day work week.

But to your point, just because you were talking about plants getting shut down, Ford and I think NGM and whatever, they killed Detroit. Detroit was the richest city in the world up until, what was it, 70s, 80s, whatever it was.

Seven, well, you guys talked about this on a previous episode. I haven't been listening. When the oil crisis hit.

That's right.

And they really started to go backwards. So mid 70s, and then from then on, it's just gotten worse and worse and worse.

Yep, so like you pulled all those people out of there, all those people lost their jobs. And I've ranted about this before, like we're gonna see this in Minneapolis. Like, you know, you have companies that are wanting to just pull out of here, because we're hiking to Texas, all the rides. Like it's wild, man. But yeah, these aren't happy topics. Sorry, people, but.

Buzzkill. And I will say, full disclosure, all the GM and Ford and Dodge people, I know that Toyota has their problems, too. They had the unintended acceleration thing. Yeah. Right? They had that guy, I forget his name, but he was driving a Prius, and he killed somebody. I mean, there's a terrible tragedy. Killed, so he was mung. He killed somebody. And he tried to explain that, like, he didn't press the gas pedal. The car just wouldn't stop, right? And nobody threw language barrier. Maybe there was some skepticism of the fact that the guy is mung and he doesn't know. And so he went to prison for it, for killing somebody.

And then they found out.

And then this unintended acceleration, and he was exonerated. He got out. I think he had to spend three or four, I don't know how many years, behind bars before it happened. I mean, if I were him, I'd be going after Toyota, for sure. But trust me, Tacoma frames, I get it, they rust, you know? Sequoia frames, Tundra frames, but so do Chevy's, so do Ford's.

The rust thing for me, it's a weird one, because everything rusts, especially if you're like in Minnesota, or to rust belt.

So what's so interesting to me, is I think that shows the mindset of the buyer, right? Cause Ford's rust, Chevy's rust, Mopar, they all rust, right? Well, here in the US., there was a huge class action lawsuit that Toyota owners lodged against Toyota. That's why they do those frame replacements. It's not out of Toyota's goodwill, it's because they lost in court. But they did that because the Toyota owners expect their vehicles to last longer. The GM and the domestic people, they're like, oh, well, it's 100,000 miles, time to get a new one, that kind of thing, right? And I've worked at a Jeep dealership. I work not side by side with your dad, but I worked. And it was ridiculous to me. People would come in, and they'd have 85,000 miles on their Jeep, and it would need a transmission. And they're like, well, what's it worth on trade? I guess I'll get a new one. And in my head, I'm screaming. I'm like, you don't have to do this. There's another way. So yeah, so I get it, right? Trust me, I understand the faults. But in my mind, the drawbacks from a Toyota for a car. I mean, cars are appliances. I'm not talking about the enthusiast side of things, right?

But for the day-to-day people.

Durango, Hellcat, absolutely. I love Supercharger wine. Not as much as I love turbos, right? But it's awesome.

Well, that's why I got the BMW as well. I get the best of both worlds.

Exactly. But that's the stuff that's really cool to me. But just like your everyday, I mean, like I was having this conversation with my fiancee. I feel so pretentious when I say fiancee. Like, but that's what it is.

It's a really fancy word.

I know, right? I'm like, I want to just say girlfriend, but it's not. Whatever. Anyway, you know, we have this conversation where, like, if I were rich, there is this super mint 96 Camry.

OK.

V6 XLE. It was the dark green, matches my Soarer, and it had tan interior. And I'm like, god. Like, some guys buy GTRs. They buy AMG. They buy whatever, right? I would have, like, just 15, like, just 90s Japanese. Like, that's what I would do. I wouldn't buy one $50,000, $75,000 car. I would buy, like, eight, like, $5,000 to $10,000, just super nice, low-mileage Japanese cars.

Yeah, that's like when you drive by that one house in, like, you know, some, like, you know, maybe in your neighborhood, there's just one guy who just buys cars and fixes them up. And his niche is Toyotas. So he just buys 90s Toyotas, fixes them up. And he's like, oh, I don't want to get rid of it. Like, it's my baby now. Like, I fixed it up. It looks good.

Trust me, that's, I'm all about that. And that's right, it was like a $4,500. I won't forget it. It was beautiful. And I messaged my girlfriend. I was like, god, this is why I wish I were rich. And she's like, well, you don't have to be rich to afford a $4,500 car. And I said, well, no, trust me. It wouldn't stop at just one. Like, I'd want to have like $50,000, $60,000 that I could play with that was just completely. That's just like, you know. Just completely disposable income where I can be like, oh, beautiful 90s car, mine, ship it on, you know, that kind of thing, right?

Yeah, you see that a lot on like Bring a Trailer. And it's like these cars, they look really nice, but they're older and they're not like as collectible or collectors, you know, they're not sporty, but they sell for like less than 5K. And you're like, you know, that's not a bad car to own. Like it looks super cool. It's different and unique. Like I'd buy that.

One of the things that seems to be a popular saying on this podcast is that's a great segue. Anyway, we have to. So that's why I bought my Soarer, is I wanted something different. So I had a motorcycle for like two years. It was a Ninja EX650. So not like a crotch rocket, but not like a roadster, kind of like a sport bike type thing. You sit a little more upright. It only did like a buck 25, right? Initially, on a motorcycle, that's really fast.

That is really fast.

But once you get used to it, you're like, ah, god, I'm just sitting here wide open, 125, just like, it's boring, right? You lose the adrenaline. And I wanted to go faster. And I knew, being on a motorcycle, I had like three near-death experiences. My last one, I was leaving Walzer Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram. And I came a south on 169 and got on 494 East. And I was crossing three lanes of traffic, because that's what you do on a motorcycle, right? Drive like an idiot, right? I had it wide open and I go around this box truck. And in the middle of the road is a big chunk, probably like a two-foot chunk of a semi-tire tread that had fallen off. And I'm headed straight for it. And I'm like, this is it. Like, this is where I die, right? I was doing like 110 miles an hour. I'm gonna hit this thing. And that's all she wrote, right? All I could, I just leaned back a little bit off the front wheel, right? Just kind of leaned off the seat, tried to take a little pressure off. Fortunately drove right over it with no issues. But the adrenaline, even talking about it, my adrenaline is like spiked.

Just shoots right through you.

Pulled onto an overpass and just like had an absolute breakdown where I was like, oh god, dude, I was so scared, I was unbelievably scared. And after that, I'm like, yeah, it was like September, October. I'm like, I'm gonna put it away for the year, see how I feel in the spring. And this spring, I was like, ah, nah, that ain't for me. So then I started looking and I had this whole like journey, right? This was 2018, spring of 2018. So like cars were still cheap. Like I had a C5 Corvette.

Back in my day.

That's what I feel like, right? It's like everybody lived 15 years in the last five.

I could get a Miata for a nickel. Right? Yeah.

I had to walk uphill to the dealership both ways. You know, that kind of thing. But like I had this C5 Corvette that my cousin found for me out in Southern California. And the guy wanted like 13 grand for it.

Remember those days?

It was like Victory Red, Torch Red, whatever. Fixed roof, six speed, you know. And he had a twin turbo kit that had been on it, but he took it off. And so he was trying to sell them separately. I found them on like a Corvette for him. And he wanted like 17 grand for the whole setup. And I was like super, I was like ready to pull the trigger.

Twin turbo on that would have been what? Like 650, 750 wheel?

Yeah, that's about what he, he had some dyno, I don't remember exactly.

Well, that seems crazy, because what is the C5 base, like 300?

They're 380, 390, I think for the LS1.

Oh, for the LS1.

Yeah, you don't get a ton more power out of them. I mean, unless you really built it.

If you go to the Z06, it was like 405, I think. But that was a lot of suspension stuff and like titanium, like valve springs and all sorts of crap. I did my research on, I'm a research nerd. Once I find something, I like focusing on it. That's by side note.

You want to know what you're getting into?

People always ask me like, how do I get really good deals on vehicles? And how I get really good deals on vehicles is being educated and knowing when a good deal comes.

Yeah.

So I'm not the person that's like, God, I should have bought that one.

Yeah. You don't jump on the first one. You do.

You jump on the right one.

You do a lot of research on what happened in the past.

This doesn't apply to cars only, by the way.

And you see like-

That's why I'm engaged.

You see what's going on in the market currently and look at what's going on in the past. And then you can kind of like guess what's going to happen in the future. And you're like, okay, well, when that like price hits, then like, snap it up.

Speaking of the market, by the way, just a quick 10 second tangent here. I don't know if you saw this the other day, Sean, but I'll bring a trailer, a 2013 Viper just sold for 200K. A base model, basically.

Base model?

It's not like an aero car, nothing.

That doesn't strike me as that-

It should strike you because it's a striker color. That's why.

Is it an actual one of something, not like a Corvette guy?

It was the first color car off the production line.

I remember that.

Yeah, if you can document that, absolutely.

It's a striker red, beautiful car.

There's like zero miles on it.

Yeah, like 400 at the time.

I'm not a super, I really like the first gen Viper.

The death trap, yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

They're all death traps, but man, that one.

Is that like the, it's the convertible one?

The first gen?

No, the 2013, you said.

They didn't have any convertibles.

No, there are no convertibles, unless you took it to...

There was like an open top one?

There was...

What is Adam Smith?

The Targa top.

Adam Smith.

And you can only get that, it was a package from...

Prefix, yeah. It was like 25, but I think you're talking about the gen 3, gen 4. That's what Adam has. Yeah. With the convertible. Yeah.

OK. So not the same.

No, not the same. Gen 5, the last generation, is 2013 plus.

Well, gen 1 didn't even come with a roof. They were just open top.

Yeah, I know. That's what I'm saying.

It's like, here, take a tent.

But anyway, so yeah, I was looking at C5 Corvettes and I was like, and just the Toyota guy in me kept like, GM, I can't really do it. And I know you're shaking your head. Trust me, I get it. But I looked at like CTSVs and I looked at like G8 GXPs and Chevy S, you know, all the LS based stuff, because that's what I was kind of looking at. And then I was like, I can't do it. I got to do something Toyota. So I looked at Supras, left hand drive Supra, absolutely not. That was just not money that I wanted to spend.

You wish you spent it back then now.

I really wish I would have bought a right hand drive Supra, because they were still like, you could get the twin turbo V160 or 161 transmission, so the six speed. You could get those for like 30 grand. They were stupid cheap back then. Back then, people were like, 30? The pricing was as it was. Now they're like, wow, 30 grand for a 90s car?

That's crazy.

Now they're 50, 60, 70 grand for the right hand drive. And those are like the ones that started out NA Auto and have been swapped. Rollers are 30 grand. That kind of stuff. It's wild. So I realized I wanted something turbocharged. I found out 2JZ, and that's when I really learned about the 1JZ, which not a lot of people know is the predecessor to the 2J. It's a two and a half year.

Maybe you listen to it. We had Dylan Pride on here a few episodes ago. He has the 1JZ swapped, Cressida.

Oh, yeah. I love the C. Cressida, that's me. That's the stuff I love.

Totally you.

And so that's what I wanted. So I started looking at SC300s and 400s. And I really like the style. I love the look. I love the body of my car. The long hood, the short trunk, the grand touring style. That's why the AMGGG, I love those cars. I think they're beautiful. Jaguar XK8, that's like one of my secret wants, is one of those. I mean, they're not driver's cars, but they're beautiful, they're fun, that kind of thing.

Yeah, they're basically art pieces.

Exactly. So what I started looking at was those. And then I'm like, well, I have to swap in an engine or do a swap with a turbo and all sorts of stuff. And to get a clean SC300 or 400, those things have all been just beat to hell, right? So then I found out about the Soarer, and I made a contact with a great guy, Brian Janisch, with Top Rank out in California.

OK, yeah.

And I bought my Soarer. They shipped it to me. I think I paid like $12,000 for it. Completely stock, manual transmission.

Really clean car.

Yeah, I came with stock wheels and everything, right? And it was so much fun. The only thing that the AC didn't work, but whatever.

Open windows.

Don't care. Exactly.

Drive faster.

Yeah, 100%. So I've had that for five years. And I've done a lot of stuff. Wheels and tires, coilovers. The big problems, I guess, that I've had now is the ECU went bad, which is super common on those 90s Toyotas. The capacitors leak. So I had to replace the ECU. I just did another stock ECU. I did a single turbo conversion. Originally, I did the cheap way with a kit from Drift Motion. It's like $1,700. And I got a 6262 Chinese precision knockoff turbo. That blew out on me last summer. I had the clutch installed backwards by Rudy Luther Toyota. Yeah, it was a whole thing. So there was like, in the last three years, I've driven my car probably like 600 or 700 miles. And the lion's share of that is I went to Power Cruise two years ago with it and had a blast. And the clutch was starting to go out on my way home, which is why I put in the upgraded clutch. Because I already have an ECU for it. I already have injectors, fuel pump, fuel lines, fuel rail. I got everything ready to go for like E85 and make a bunch of power. And so that really set me back. But I finally got my new turbo on. I bought a Garrett G3660 from MAP. Those guys took really great care of me. I got an Artec manifold. So that's all done. It's up at a fabricator right now getting intercooler piping finished. And then my exhaust, my downpipe had to be redone because the manifold moved. It's just, you know, project cars.

Lots of things, yeah.

Yeah, and I, you know, you dump so much money into them. And even now with the prices going up, like on those things, now a clean one is 20, 25 grand, right? And so trust me, I know, I don't think they're worth that either, but people are paying that.

That's a big jump. That's double almost.

I know. Well, what's happening is they're tied to supra values. And as supra values go up, people are looking at these because what a lot of people don't realize is the SC300 shares a lot of the same components with the supra.

Correct.

Like twin turbo supra brakes, I put on my front brakes. The front, my suspension, my coilovers, all supra, that's supra coilovers. I've got a Mark IV aluminum radiator. I've got a Mark IV fan shroud. Like all this stuff that from the supra just bolts right up to my car. So that's as those get more expensive.

Yeah, it makes sense because people are like, oh, I can't afford this. So then the demand trickles down to that.

Yeah, exactly.

Economics. See, trickle down does work, kids.

Just not in the way you want it to. So yeah, so that's how I ended up with my Soarer. So it's been so much fun.

I love the color. The color is my favorite part. And then you have the brown wheels or whatever. What's the color?

Creamy Almond. Thank you very much.

You know, I drop some creamy almonds every day.

That's a color name? That's awesome.

It's a powder coat color. So I bought these Work Wheels Equipo 5s, like top three dream wheel, which I know you guys always talk about, like, you know, your three car garage. You should talk about like...

You already probably know your car's in.

Favorite wheels, right? So for me, Work Equipo 5s, number one, A1B, Advan SA3Rs, like the double tri-spoke wheels. They look kind of like the mid-90s Mustang wheels.

I think they put those mostly on like MR2s. Yep.

My buddy Shane has a b***** MR2. You guys have probably seen it. It's got the Toyota stripes on the back end. The orange, yellow, white.

He has the cars in caves. So it's like the traditional Toyota.

It's the super flaky red that he painted it. He's done so much. That's a car that's like, it's so beautiful. And that's what I love about the Minnesota car scene is you have so much stuff that you don't even realize is out there.

Did you see the new, somebody just got an MR2. It's beat to hell. It's like this red. It's got a huge body damage on it, but the guys swapped a K24 into it.

I have seen K24 swapped MR2s, but I haven't seen that one.

It was at Buck Hill, I think, about a week ago. And I saw it was tonight.

We would have been there, but yeah, podcast. Before you continue down this rabbit hole, what was wheel number three?

Probably the BBSLMs.

That's what I got down there.

They're so good. I don't know why. You can't explain it. They're like-

Multi-spoke. It's just absolutely amazing. What I originally wanted, gosh, I've already forgotten what they're called, but they're the classic, I think it's called the waffle or- No. I'm trying to remember what they're called, but it's the huge classic gold on polish that you see on the old 90s BMWs.

Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about.

I originally wanted those for my BMW just because I thought that would be the perfect classic.

Well, and they've made BBS wheels for BMWs.

Exactly.

That's what makes it so cool. I'm a huge OEM plus. I think that's perfect. The extravagant stuff is like, OK, it's cool. I can appreciate it. But my car is like, you look at it, and OK, you can tell it's lower than stock and it's got wheels and stuff. But I don't even have tint on the windows. I got tint on the headlights and the taillights because it looks cool.

But OEM plus, to your point, it's perfect. Like, year 1M, right? I honestly wouldn't change a thing. It just looks how it's supposed to.

But that's the disease, right? As car people, we just can't help ourselves. I'm amassing. I've got my work wheels, right? And I'm buying, slowly but surely, a set of Super Advans from Japan and having them shipped over so that I can get them rebuilt and everything. It's like, yeah, I know. You can't stop, man.

Yeah, I just don't. I love seeing other people push the envelope for exterior, cosmetics, wide body, big spoiler, hood, and all these aero bits. But for my cars, I just think it either looked goofy or it would just ruin the vehicle. And I know there's some OEM Plus stuff people put on, like 1M's. And that would be like an M spoiler that they put special on the safety car on a 1M back in 2011, 2012. And everybody wants it, but it's super hard to get. And then there's throwing on the M-style hood with the bulge, the power bulge.

You know a thing or two about bulges.

So let me flip the podcast here real quick.

Sure.

Either a part that you have or a part that you want. Like what's like the one, like god, I wish my car had that.

I wish I had the, I think they're the Recaro seats that they made for the 1M's.

That's a good one.

They're really hard to find. They're insane. And they would look so, so good.

Yeah.

And they're OEM. They would be OEM because they were an option back in, I think in Europe. I don't know if they were an option here in America.

Probably not. We never get cool stuff.

No. I mean, mine had almost every option ticked on it, though, because there are...

So it's a pretty high spec.

It is high spec because it did have not a lot of... Or there's an option for the cup holder. And if you... That's crazy to me because if there wasn't a cup holder, the only other one would be under the center console and you'd have to lift it up. And it's really flimsy. So if you got on the brakes, it would just come crushing down on your cup.

Yeah.

So I was like, that's crazy.

Can we take a moment and acknowledge how psychotic this is? Cause like you just mentioned that there's like, we don't get cool stuff in America. Like there's a lot of stuff we just don't get.

Right.

Did you see the guy down in Florida? I believe it was Fort Lauderdale maybe. He has the only M wagon, like the new G82, whatever.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, I see that.

Who the f*** did he bribe to get that car legal here in the States? Well...

Was it a show car?

Just because it's here doesn't mean it's legal. I mean, I know a thing or two about importing legal cars.

For a segue, cause that's the other thing. You are a part of a company that imports cars, correct?

Yeah, Nen-Tek Garage is the name.

So personally, like all I really know about is top rank, you know, Brian, I think, yeah, whatever. So tell us a little bit about where you're from or what you're doing over there.

Yeah, so Nen-Tek Garage was started by my friend Brandon. Brandon and I became friends because he had this beautiful Lexus SC300, NAT build to like 700 horsepower. Just, it was a gorgeous car. Absolutely. You talk about OEM Plus, like he had the Supra, the Supra wheels with big fat tires and the car, you know, except for like the seats and the ride height, again, pretty much looked stock, but it was T56, like twin disc clutch, just, it was a gorgeous car. He's an engineer and he was, he's just very precise. And that's, his cars reflect that. And this car was beautiful. So anyway, that's how we met. We both had green Z30 chassis cars. He also, like his middle name is Tyler. He has a son named Tyler. That's how we kind of bonded. Tyler people, we stick together, right?

Right.

Hey, I've never met a Tyler that's like not cool. Okay, for anybody else.

Oh no, I'll definitely disagree with that. I've met not cool Tyler's, but cool with each other. I don't know. I haven't seen a Tyler B for the only Tyler yet.

No, cause we know we're all cool.

Oh yeah. I mean, like if I met somebody that was named Sean, as long as it was the proper spelling.

S-H-A.

Wrong. Already, I hate that guy.

Wrong. The Irish version.

Yeah, S-E-A-N. So, we're homies, if we're S-E-A-N, cause we got that in common. We're like, oh, how do you spell it? And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we know when people go like, how do you spell that? S-H? And we're like, nope.

And you don't think people asking these questions is not a red flag that your name is spelled f****** wrong?

Yeah, maybe.

It's not that it's spelled wrong. There's just many different ways.

Well, the problem is-

They're all wrong besides how you spell mine.

The problem is like word association, right? Like when I think of Sean, I think of Sean White, right?

Right, yeah.

Like-

Flying Tomato.

Exactly. So automatically when I think of the name, or Sean Kemp, right? To go back into my day.

Hey, you lost me.

NBA Jams, oh dude, great game. Anyway, so you'll never meet a Tyler unless he goes by Ty. That's a huge red flag. If his name is Tyler-

Two guys that work for Jazz and Jessica by Ty. They're cool. I like them.

And what about you, Harris?

What do you mean?

You only have one R in your name.

My parents couldn't afford the other R. Leave me alone.

Do you ever have to make that specification? Yeah, like distinction. It's Harris with one R.

No, people are like, is it pronounced Horace? And I'm just like, and my math teacher, smoke show by the way, in seventh grade. No, I'm not even kidding.

What was his name?

That was one that was perfectly timed with- His name was Mystic, no kidding. No, yeah, but anyways, she would always, she would always be like, ask me as I pronounce Harris or Haris, like probably-

Whatever you want.

Exactly.

Yeah, legit, but like once a month or whatever. And then just proceeded to call me Haris for the rest of my entire school, academic failure of an academic career. So there's that. She was an Iowa gal. Anyways.

Big red flag there. I grew up in southeastern Minnesota, about 10 minutes from Iowa. Trust me, Iowa plates, get around them as soon as you can. Your life will be better for it.

Yeah, idiots on wheels ahead. I-O-W-A.

Idiots out wandering around.

Sure, I'll take. Same logic applies.

So, Nen-Tek Garage. Yeah, so Brandon started the business like three years ago. He started, he was in the marines, was in Okinawa, all these cool cars, kind of like me, he's similar to me in age, she's a little older, but we grew up playing Gran Turismo and racing Skylines and all that sort of stuff. So he started like putzing around with, hey, how hard is it to like import a car? And as I said, he likes to figure stuff out. So he figured out how to import vehicles legally, all the logistics of customs, brokering, everything to do with making sure they're legal when they get here. No issues, everything runs smoothly. And he's like, wow, I could really do this. And at three, four years ago, the profit margins were massive. I mean, you could buy R32 Skylines for 15, 20 grand and they're selling for 30, 40, 50 grand. Right. The prices have gone up on those things now, but they're selling for more. Right. That's how it works. So anyway, he's like, well, how do I get my dealer's license? Turns out it's not that hard. If you have a place that's zoned, it's okay. Disclaimer. If it's not zoned for a dealership, it's very, very difficult. For whatever reason, municipalities, city councils, all that stuff, they don't want new dealerships. They don't want to add dealerships to wherever they are. So we found a place up in St. Francis, yes, way up in St. Francis. He did, that was willing to rent space, was already zoned for a dealership, and basically has a bunch of offices. So it's a bunch of really small dealerships that all have their own office, and they all have a few parking spots kind of thing, and started the business. And at that point, when I sort of caught wind of it, I was like, dude, this is what I meant to do. I am an import guy, JDM import guy. Right? This is what I love. Let me help you. I want to get involved in this business. And he's like, eh. This is my baby. It's taken a lot to get it off the ground. I'm just going to handle it myself. OK, dude, if you ever need help, let me know.

And how long ago was this conversation again?

This was probably 2 and 1 half years ago. He had been doing it maybe for six, eight months at that point. OK, and I just said, let me know when you need me. I absolutely have the skill set, because I've done a bunch of things at car dealerships. I've been a used car manager. I've been a general sales manager. I've done the F&I stuff on the back end as well, in sales, obviously. So I'm like, this is what I do. Let me help you. And then probably another six months goes by. Their third child is now on the way. And he's like, yeah, I'm getting a little busy. The two older boys are football, hockey and baseball. So they're all over the place. And he's like, I just, I don't have the time. So he brought me in to be kind of the customer facing side of the business. So he handles the importing. We collaborate on what should we bring in, kind of bounce stuff back and forth off each other.

What's hot in the market and stuff.

Yeah, and what's unique and what's cool and that sort of thing.

Also, it's a delicate balance of like, hey, what's going to sell quick, but also what's cool.

Yeah, I mean, the cool part. So here's the thing. We've just recently, on Monday, actually, we sold this R33 GT-R V-Spec. And we had the thing, yeah.

I love R33s. That's one of my favorites.

I hear V-Spec and I just go, that's money.

It was a beautiful car, right? I'm not going to say what we sold it for. We had it listed for $70,000. And it was a beautiful car. Had Advan TC4 wheels, some Nismo Aero. He did a bunch of maintenance to it. We did new coil over it. We did a bunch of stuff, right? He owned it, well, the dealership owned it for probably like a year and a half and drove it because he really wanted the car. But it takes a lot to sell a $65,000, $70,000, $80,000 25-year-old car.

Right.

Right? Not everybody.

It's a niche market.

Exactly. And the people in sales, we always talk about your funnel, right? And as you get higher in price, your funnel gets narrower and narrower. And those people in your funnel have more buying power, and they have the ability to be choosy, right? So a lot of it comes down to this perfect crossroads of like someone who can buy your car, who wants to buy your car, and not somebody else's car, at the time your car is for sale, right? And so it's not as easy as you think, right? And fortunately, we found a local buyer. So the car is going to still be around here in the Twin Cities. Super excited to see it. Really nice guy. He let us take it to the M&I anniversary deal because we were sponsors for that. And the car actually won an award at one second place for Best Skyline. So he was super psyched to see that. So we're like, hey, sorry, we couldn't get first place for you, but here you, you know, that kind of thing. So yeah, so that stuff can be fun. We actually sell a lot of like four wheel drive SUVs. Okay. We sell a lot.

When you say a lot, how many cars is that?

Well, we've been doing this for three years. We're at about 130 cars.

For per year?

Total.

Okay. Total, okay, so yeah.

Correct.

That's actually pretty good still.

Yes.

That's really good.

Well, so you look at, you talk about economy of scale, right? It took us almost two years to sell the first 100.

Right.

And we've already sold the next 30 in the last eight months.

So you're on pace, well, year over year the same.

Correct.

Yeah, 50 average per year.

What we have is we've been able to secure a little more storage space where we're at so we can bring in a few more cars. It's funny, I was listening to your podcast. You got to let your guy Eric know the first ever car that he drove, that Mazda Familia. We have one coming to the States.

OK, I'm going to text him right now by the end of this podcast. We're going to have an answer.

If he wants to recapture it, because here's what I'll tell you. I don't know about you guys, but if I could have another one of my first car, right? And it's going to be cheap. It's going to be a four digit price.

It's the first one in the States?

You said? Oh, not the first. We're just bringing one in.

OK, gotcha. Gotcha, so Mazda Familia, right?

Yep. You can check out our website, nentekgarage.com.

We'll get a text from him. We'll make a deal on this podcast.

As soon as we buy these cars in Japan, we throw them right up on our website. And one of the things we do is we offer some nice discounts for local buyers, because we love to see people showing up at the MN&I meet. There were two of our cars there, a Cedric and a Gloria. And so it's so cool to see these. And the two guys at that bottom are like, they're both same age. They're sort of becoming friends, which is really cool to see, just guys meeting over cars. And that's how, right? I would know you if it wasn't for cars, right? And Sean, we've met, because I know Harris through cars. The best friends that I have right now, like Shane, the MR2 guy, is one of the best friends I have right now. Yeah, we met at the Minneapolis Mile five years ago. So yeah, that kind of stuff, right? But yeah, so we bring these cars in. We offer substantial discounts if you're willing to just buy it when it's on the boat. We ship it directly to your house. We give you a Minnesota title. The drawback is, if there's something wrong with it, that's your problem too, right? You get the benefit of saving a lot of money, but you also are rolling the dice that I can pretty much guarantee that the battery will probably be dead.

Nineties car.

Usually the tires are pretty much shot, that kind of thing. But you're going to save a few thousand bucks.

So take me through this. So when you say save a few thousand bucks, as opposed to what's the alternative?

We get it and we prep it for sale. We go through it, we have it inspected, we do maintenance. Maintenance, obviously, at a minimum, we do oil change and everything like that. But if the vehicle needs tires, we had a Hilux Surf, which is the 4Runner version in Japan that's needed suspension. We put new suspension on it, that kind of stuff. So yeah, and some of it, too, is just pulling out a bunch of the electronics. Because those things, it's crazy, the stuff you see them come with, like dash cams, backup cameras, these big DVD screens that get mounted to the dashboard, all this stuff. So we just kind of sort the car out, drive it.

I just got a response back from Eric. I never text during a podcast, but this is one of those exceptions. He's like, as nostalgic as that is, I don't miss that car.

Fair it up.

So deal or no deal, it is no deal today.

Got it. That's all right. Well, there's always tomorrow.

Well, and there's probably somebody else that's like, I want this. Yeah.

It's super cool. What's funny is.

I've never even heard of this car until Eric mentioned it.

What's funny is my sister, I have an older sister Valerie, who had a Mazda 323 growing up. And so when we bought that, I was like, oh, Mazda 323, right? And it's so cool. I mean, they're great on gas, little front wheel drive cars. Not something you'd want to drive in the snow. But they're fun. And the right hand drive side of it, that's what makes it such a good market, is I would argue that you're better off buying a right hand drive car than you are like a cheap car from the States. Because people in Japan take way better care of their stuff. And 99% of the time, we're getting these vehicles with no rust. They're in great shape.

And did they salt their roads over there? Because I'm sure they get snow.

So we don't buy cars from northern. So there's the main island, the four main islands, I believe. And the northmost two is where they get more snow. Down by Tokyo and everything like that, where the majority of our cars are sourced from, they don't get any snow. Which is weird, because we'll see SUVs that come over with snow tires. And they have no rust on them. So the only thing I can think is that snow tires are cheap, because they never use them over there. So somebody is looking to put cheap tires on their vehicles. So it's passing inspection.

Man, I freaking wonder. So I just had my family go over to your report over there. Like, yeah, BMWs and stuff are not cheaper over here like you would expect them to be. They are cheaper a little bit, but not like a lot. I wonder what it's like in Japan, right? Like, do you think Toyota, like maybe you know, are Toyotas way cheaper over there, because they don't have to get shipped on the boat?

Oh, yeah. Well, depends on the car, right? Obviously, any of the cars that we're importing, $3,000 to $5,000 gets added to the price of the vehicle.

No, I'm saying like brand new.

Oh, no, depends on the exchange rate. I mean, right now, they're less expensive, because of the strength of the dollar and the weakness of the Japanese yen, which I've been taking advantage of it by buying parts. That's one of the things I wait for, is I wait for the exchange rate to be favorable, and then I buy parts from Japan, because I get more for my money with that strength of the dollar.

Yeah, what is it, like every one USD is 10?

I know you move the decimal point two places from the end to convert from yen to dollars. So like 50,000 yen is like 500 bucks US, roughly. That's an oversimplification. Some genius with trans currency amounts is probably.

Comment section will be lit. Dude, you should see, I put out like one or two highlights from the ratified episode and people lost their minds. The internet geniuses are coming out again. And it's like, all right, let's have a check.

Let me guess. I bet one of them is where he's like, yeah, it's not that hard to make 1,000 horsepower. And then he goes on, and it's simple. So that's the thing, linguistically speaking, a lot of people don't realize, simple and easy are two entirely different things. It is a simple recipe, right?

It's simple for him, because he knows how to build it. Or for example, one of the guys is b******* and moaning about the R&D aspects. It's not simply R&D. It's like, yeah, you R&D the part. The research and the development's done now. Now it's simple.

Right.

Anyways, back to imports, because people...

Yeah, I'm not here to talk about German cars.

Oh, okay. Actually, before we get back on topic, another little side tangent, the Mustang video I made, you know which one I'm talking about, the one where I was ranting about it.

Yep, yeah. What's that thing, the B, I don't even remember the name of the new... Yes.

What does that mean?

I don't care. I don't know. It's a GT something. But nonetheless, the comment sections are lit. Like people are calling me all sorts of things, calling me like, oh my God, entitled millennial. First of all, I'm not even a millennial.

Right.

I'm too young to be a millennial.

I'm an elder millennial. Yes.

Were you born in 2000? No, 99.

99.

99.

Yeah, so you're right on the cusp.

No, well, he came after the cusp. So you are a Gen Z-er.

F*** you and f*** the cusp. I hate this generational thing, but it's so true, but it's weird. People that are five years younger than me, dude, even though it's not that much, it's crazy how different they are. It's ridiculous, because these are the kids that grew up with just iPads. Like I was getting introduced to it.

So you've talked to iPad kids?

I use dial-up internet.

Yeah, no, we had a little bit of that too.

I was right at the end of dial-up. I remember dial-up. I remember the noise. I remember my mom getting on the phone and I'd be pretty upset. But luckily, broadband came shortly after and it saved me. So I didn't have to live through too much of it.

We had to have an extra phone line just for the internet.

Dude, some, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

An extra landline just for the internet.

I didn't even think you could do that.

You can.

I used to fricking watch Thomas the Tank Engine on like the, what's the, not the, the big recorders, what are they called again? The V something.

VCR.

No, it was VCR, it was before VCR, the VHS.

Yeah, that's the same thing. VCR plays VHS.

I was a kid, I didn't study VHS's and DR's and all that, but yeah, no, like it's like, cause like, since my parents were immigrants, right? Like I was a few years behind like regular, or not regular, but like the middle class in America.

Yep.

It's like, you know, we were working our way up and you know, I didn't, as a kid, you don't know these things.

Right.

You never realized like, oh damn, that was a recession.

Yeah.

You know, but, but importing.

Yeah.

How do we keep getting away from this?

Because we keep talking about old stuff.

Well, you were like side tangent.

Well, we're talking about importing old cars. So it's on brand.

It is on brand. We're talking about old stuff. I think you were the one on the tangent last time.

No, you, GT, you, you talked about the GTD.

For the record, the people that hate on it, I would, I would argue and I would posit that they don't understand it because you have to look at it from a certain perspective. The people that look at it as I'm not spending 300 grand for a Mustang, don't understand that they are not buying a Mustang. They are buying a race car with a Mustang logo on the front.

It's not their only car in the garage.

That they can drive on the street and drive to the track. Now granted, most of the people buying these, they're not going to drive them on the street. They're going to put them in their enclosed trailer and tow them in their $70,000, $80,000, whatever $1,000 truck to the track, that kind of thing.

$80,000 truck, I remember those days.

But to buy a bespoke race car for $300,000 is actually a really good value.

That you can take to the car show.

I don't know, because when you compare it to what cars it's supposed to compete with, GT3s.

Smokes it.

Well, the only thing I don't know is I haven't seen any real world comparisons.

No, no, yeah, it's too new.

Yeah. So that's what I'm reserving. Now, granted, my opinion might change if they come out and it gets dusted by everything that it goes up against. Then what's the point?

Yeah. Well, and then it's like, will it depreciate like a Mustang?

No, because they're only making $5,000. So yeah, we'll take an initial depreciation.

That's what they say now.

Yeah.

Hellcat Durango.

Hellcat Durango's, the Dodge Demon. Yeah. There is no such thing as limited production anymore.

Well, and now they've just announced they're bringing the TRX to an end. Last $4,000 are going to be like $120,000 a pop sticker.

Someone will buy it.

Well, and apparently, they did the last call editions. They did a last call editions for the Dodge Durango.

They did like 15 last call editions.

They did it for the Durango for 2023. They're like, all right, Hellcats are gone. And then they just announced 2024. We're making more Durangos. So I can imagine how I felt when they announced 2023 Hellcat Durangos. That's how the 2023 last call people feel about the new 24 is coming out. They're like, what is going on?

Right.

South action lawsuit. Now, I want part of that 21 Dodge Durango Hellcat.

The multinational manufacturer that's solely dedicated to profitability in the bottom line is doing something more profitable against the best wishes of its customer base. Shocker. Right?

And I think because originally Dodge was like, we're only making 3000 Hellcats in 21. And then they all sold out like immediately. And they're like, whoa, like we didn't think this was going to happen, you know, cause you take a big heavy car and you just put a, you know, high horsepower engine and they're like, well, it's going to be slower than, you know, our other cars. But people were like, don't care. Like this is, this is America. We want SUVs that go faster than regular traffic. Like, and it's so glorious. And I hate it.

There's nothing better than like a big, fast SUV. So that's, you know, you talk about things that like you want, right? Like I've, I've always really loved the idea of like a TBSS. Or like I was at Power Cruise.

It's got the same LS engine that you can find in a Corvette and then you slap a twin turbo kit on it and you just.

And it's all wheel drive.

And it's just different. It's, you know, thinking outside of the box. And it's, I think that's like the whole like Texas mentality is like, you know, they like taking different stuff, you know, like, because, you know, there's a surplus of trucks and they're like, well, this has the same engine in the Mustang. Let's just boost it. Like you would in a Mustang.

I am a slut for a single cab short box truck.

That's what I'm talking about.

That's just so sexy. Like I saw it, I don't know where I saw it, but it was this, it was an F-150. Sorry, I got a gag a little when I say it looked good, but like it was a single cab short box, five-oh Coyote and, you know, engine like twin. Oh man, just, we were at Power Cruise. I got absolutely smoked by this white Sierra, single cab short box, like twin turbo. The thing was just, man. But yeah, and you see these like BMW X5Ms, and that's the one thing I will say that really bothers me in an annoying way with German vehicles is it's like, you bust out the laptop and you're adding 110 horsepower. Like, it's so annoying that that's the case, because everybody else has to do it like the hard way with like supporting mods and make stuff stronger. And they're just like, nope, control, I'll delete plus 110, you know, that kind of thing.

They're just shouting like, Klaus, give me a second, go down.

But like those fast SUVs, oh God, they're so great. They're so great.

It's fantastic.

I hate it because I'd much rather have a wagon.

Well, yeah. I mean, wagon is the most superior form of vehicle.

Yeah.

It's true.

He's just looking at me waiting for my hot take.

I know, I was waiting.

What's a hatchback other than a short wagon?

There's something missing there.

Yeah, like an extra foot of rear cargo space.

I don't feel like...

It's a proportion.

I love hatchbacks. I love the GR Corolla. And ever since it came out, I'm like, I want somebody to buy this. I don't want to buy it, but somebody around me, please buy it.

Yeah. Oh, I didn't buy mine. I leased it.

Leased it.

For the exact reason like with you and your Hellcat, because Toyota talked about a limited production, but who knows, right?

Well, and then they went back on that, because then they started making more.

I've got a built-in residual value, and if they hold their value, great. I can sell it in a couple of years and get into something different, because it's not going to be a forever car for me. It's really new.

Breaking my heart.

It's not my vibe, man. I drive old s***. I just like old cars. A 99 4Runner for me is perfect. I've had three of them, and they're amazing. That's the perfect car for me. It just needs a bigger fuel tank. But the new stuff is great. I love the wireless car play, and I love the push button start and all that. But I don't need it. And I've got my Soarer for a fast car, kind of fun car. Now, don't get me wrong. I love ripping that thing around, especially in the snow with the winter tires. And it's a blast, man. But yeah, I'm not going to be sad. But maybe I'll be a little sad when I get rid of it. But I'm not going to be like, oh, I can never. The Soarer is my, that's my, you know, that's my spirit animal thing. I'm not, that'll be my car forever. So yeah, but no, the GR Corolla is amazing. It's so much fun. I've got a, so I'm doing, helping map with product development on it. So I've had two different exhausts on there that they've tried. I've got their downpipe on there right now. So they did like a street exhaust and then like a track exhaust. The street exhaust is like mildly muffled. It's more aggressive than stock. It's only two exhaust outlets.

Oh, you're missing the third.

Yes, I know. Trust me. It was like, it was one of those trade-off things where I'm like, I love how it looks, but I like the sound of the street version of their exhaust better. Then they tried the track version on and I drove that around for a couple of months. And that is no mufflers. And it sounds like a tractor.

Is that one at least one center down the middle? No, no, no.

Just twin.

No but whole exhaust.

Nothing. So I tried that and then they did the downpipe. And the downpipe with the race exhaust, the track exhaust was just too loud. I can't, we just. So I have their street exhaust prototype on there now. And it's basically the way, Dalen at MAP explained it to me. It's basically going to be their production downpipe. It's just missing a bracket that they're going to adjust a little bit. But it, oh man, it definitely opened the car up and woke it up just a little bit. I mean, there's a little more torque with it being a little more free flowing. And it's just so fun. The car hates to go slow. I've never driven a car that just wants to go fast all the time.

I feel that in smaller, peppy cars, I get into too much trouble in the BMW, versus when I drive my Durango.

Do you get into trouble with the BMW? Is that 33 overticket a part of that assumption?

Hey, I'm not saying anything. I'm innocent until proving guilty in the court of law. That's smart. And then I'm driving the Durango, which is much more powerful and much faster. I don't feel like going that fast. I'm just content at either doing the speed limit or going like five over. I'm not trying to push it in it because honestly, it kind of scares me.

Right.

But where I feel so much more in control in the BMW, it's like, I was going that fast? I couldn't even tell you that I was going that fast.

That's how I feel in my car. I mean, it's not very fast. It's quick, but it's so engaging. That's what it's so fun to drive, right? It's like the Miata Principle Amplifier. Yeah. Those cars are slow. But there's so much fun because there's no limit, really, to their handling.

And that's what I've seen a lot in the reviews when it first came out. And that's why I was such a, I want this car to do good. Because this is everything that people were saying, oh, nobody's making really cool, enthusiast cars. Toyota's like, we got this. We can do it. Well, and then because they were like, only automatics and Supras. And then they're like, okay, you know what? Actually, we're gonna throw manual and Supra. And now it's over 50% of Toyota Supras are coming in manual. And they're like, so it's like the demand is there.

And that number is that way because they don't make more, if they made more manuals, they'd sell more, 100%.

Yeah. So I mean, like the manual and like making enthusiast cars, GR is doing incredible stuff. So I'm really happy with that. And I'm hoping a lot of other manufacturers are, you know, taking a page from Toyota's book and like making like a little bit more like dumber down cars, lighter weight.

I've been trying to say for the last like five or six years that like people weren't ready for how much Toyota was gonna change what they did. Cause I mean, when you work for Toyota, you get to see what's like up and coming and stuff like that, right? Like the new Tundra, super, my opinion, super b*****. The new Sequoia is gorgeous. I'm super excited for the new Land Cruiser. I can't wait to see what that thing does. I don't know about the new Tacoma, the new 4Runner, we'll see. I'm happy that they kept it a body on frame because that to me is like that sacrilege that you would change that. But that's one of the cool things is like, it's like one of the last body on frame SUVs you can really buy. Everybody else is unibody, right? Braco, unibody. I think the Wrangler is, I don't know, is the Wrangler unibody now? I don't remember.

I couldn't tell you. I don't really follow the specifications.

So many things to follow in the car world. You had to kind of choose like what you give a s*** about.

Yeah, no, I'm with you. But yeah, so importing cars, we do it.

Oh, the thing we were talking about a half hour ago. Sure, he's bringing it back.

We do it.

I was curious, do you guys have R34s?

We have one that will be here next month.

Is it already taken?

Were you guys like, so like three, two, one years ago, were you guys like, we need to start buying these?

No.

No? So what about like, you know, because everybody was like new about the restriction and that it was coming up and soon they'd be, you know, importable. So you know, there was a huge demand probably, you know, to like start scooping these up.

Absolutely. So going back to that conversation on the R33, that's just not what we're after. At this point, quite honestly, that's a lot of capital. And we would much rather buy for the price of one. I mean, if you want to buy an R34 GTR, right, which they're not going to be federally legal under the 25 year rule until next year, you're going to spend six figures, right?

Already.

Oh, yes.

Even in Japan.

I mean, if you bought one directly in Japan through a broker, you might be able to, depending on how rough it is. But if you want a clean driver example, you're spending six figures.

Yeah, that's what I've seen a lot. And there's so many different specs. And the color matters. It's crazy.

Imagine a Millennium Jade one.

Even in a V-Spec, you say six figures, but this could range from 200 to 500.

Yeah, depending on the right-hand side. So the Motorex cars, I don't know how familiar you guys are with all of this. So Motorex was a company in the mid-2000s that was bringing in R34 GTRs and R33 GTRs. The first thing they were doing is saying, well, the R33 and the R34 share a lot of architecture, and so we're going to crash test R33s and extend that to R34s. And they sold this bill of goods to customers who paid for these cars. They brought them in, and then the owner of the business just was doing a bunch of drugs and partying, didn't do what he was supposed to do. So the Fed stepped in and basically said, that's it. And the owners, they appealed to the federal government to say, hey, look, we paid for these cars. We didn't do anything wrong. We tried to do things the right way. So help us. And so I think there's 15 cars that were grandfathered in. And those cars, Paul Walker had, I think, one or two. But those cars routinely sell for between $600,000 to $900,000. Whoa.

What?

When they come up for sale.

Yeah.

Because of how special they are, right?

Yeah, when you're talking about one of 15. And I'm guessing there's probably not 15 anymore.

I'm not a huge Nissan. Again, I'm a Toyota guy. I know some of it. But yeah, those things bring crazy money. But yeah, I mean, I see them sell regularly $200,000, $300,000 for the right spec. So the Midnight Purple 2, which is a beautiful color. I don't know if you guys have watched TJ Hunt's series.

That and the Millennium Jade are like that color.

So that was the show and display car, legal, unlike somebody whose sticker you have on your PC or your laptop. He brought in a car that was not legal, but he lives in Florida. So Florida will basically put a title on anything.

God bless Florida.

There are ways to do it. There's a car here in the Twin Cities that's not federally legal, which I'm not going to say anything else about it.

But there are ways to do it.

We don't do that.

As long as they don't drive it, it's fine.

Oh, no.

No? They can't even have it?

If it is in the country, so it has to be 25 years from the month of production in 49 states, California is the exception. They're ridiculous. You got to pay an extra $10,000 to get it up to their emission standards in California. That's what I think top rank charges. If you want to make a car California legal, they charge an extra $10,000. Right, because it's a whole extra set of hoops you got to jump through. But as long as it's 25 years old from the month of production, by the time it makes it to the states, then it's exempt. It's legal. If it's not, it never will be. It's like the fruit of the poison tree they talk about in like law rooms, like courtrooms and stuff. It doesn't ever become legal. So anybody that says it does is wrong, or they're trying to lie to you to sell a car, that kind of thing. You want to see the import paperwork. So there's two forms that are really important. There's an NHTSA, Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, which basically says this vehicle with the VIN number was imported. It was built on this date, it's exempt. And then there's an EPA form as well, that says this vehicle was imported after this date. EPA is like 21 years. It's the NHTSA one that's, which is really lame. I don't know if you guys know the backstory about why we have these laws in place. Billionaires are the problem, once again.

Was it Bill Gates' fault for bringing the 959?

Yep, so they were bringing these cars in from Europe, like the 959, the Porsche 959, which is an amazing car. And these US dealers were saying, this is bogus. Like they should be buying cars from us, not from dealerships in Europe. So the manufacturers lobbied the federal government to put these barriers in place to prevent people from bringing in cars. And in classic like government example, they put this rule in place, and Uber rich people still bring in whatever they want. And regular folks have to wait 25 years, you know, that kind of thing. But that's, yes, that's why they put it in place. So yeah, so you gotta wait 25 years for it to hit the US. After that, it's fine, unless it falls under show and display, which is a extremely specific list of cars. If it's not on that list, down to color, not.

Even down to the color.

Oh, yes. That's why like Midnight Purple 2, because the production of Midnight Purple 2 for the R34 GTR-V spec was very limited. And-

But there's two versions of it?

There's actually, I think there's been three. Midnight Purple colors.

Man, for any of my CSGO people out there, I'm thinking about the Doppler Karambit right now. You know what I'm talking about, Sean. Yeah, because they have the phase one, phase two, phase three. Okay, whatever. Anyways, back to the car.

Sorry, nerd moment. And then there's like Millennium Jade. I think those are the two that are on there right now. But they have to be historically and technologically significant. And there's, I think there's a max, it's a maximum of like 400 produced, right? So there are some newer cars that are on there as well that qualify. If you ever look at the list, it's really neat. But yeah, so that's.

Where can you find this list?

It's on nhtsawebsite.gov.

It's probably like alligations, cars.

Just Google show and display list. And it literally pulls up a PDF. And it looks like it was printed on a typewriter.

Oh yeah, it's government font.

It's classic government font, right? But it's like, yeah, you know.

But all these cool cars.

Exactly, McLaren F1, you know, that kind of stuff, right? So all these things. So yeah, there's 25 years or show and display is the only way a car can be legal in the US. There's probably people that are going to claim there's other things you can do. And yes, you can skirt around it and fudge some things, I'm sure. There's ways where I've heard people that have airbag stuff. And there's so many restrictions. And there's some gray area and some one and two stuff. But that's not us. We want to be in business for the long run, and we want to grow that business. So we just bring in federally legal stuff. And the majority of stuff we sell is like $5,000 to $15,000, $20,000.

Right, the stuff that you can move quickly. Because it's harder to move, like you said, a $70,000 car, $100,000 car. It's going to sit for a while, potentially, for that right buyer. Whereas $5,000 to $20,000, like you're looking for the kids that are trying to get into drifting. Oh, I got a cool right-hand drive car.

We sell a bunch of guys' cars, a bunch of kids' cars. That's their first car, right? And again, like I said, I would take one of those cars over a US car.

I couldn't think of a worse idea, though, for a brand new 16-year-old. First of all, he just spent the last, or she, I don't care, the last six months of his life learning how to drive on a left-hand drive car, his mom's compass or something. And then all of a sudden just gets himself a right-hand drive, I don't know, give me a car.

President, Nissan President.

Nissan President. And that's going to be his daily, especially here in Minnesota or something. And it's going to be like forgetting to look for semis on the left. And it's a horrible, horrible idea. But you know what? I applaud them.

There's some adjustment, I'll admit. We also sell a ton of vehicles to rural postal carriers because they don't get vehicles, they don't get mail trucks, and they need to reach out the right side of the vehicle.

Really? Really?

Yeah.

How many of those have you sold?

Probably like 60% to 70% of our inventory.

And what kind of car do they usually take?

The Hilux Surf is really popular.

Really?

The Honda Odyssey is really popular.

These are right-hand drive cars?

That's all we sell.

Is this mostly local that you've sold these or?

Midwest, upper Midwest. I mean, we've sold cars all over the country. We've sold cars. We had a beautiful V12 Century that we sold to a guy out in Washington. We've sold a diesel Hilux Surf to a guy down in Texas. We've done Nebraska, Iowa a bunch of times, Wisconsin, the Dakotas, that kind of stuff.

So when somebody, so I guess who are you talking to when they're trying to buy these postal vehicles? Is it the real carrier?

The real carrier, no. The actual carrier. Yep.

And then do they typically?

They get a stipend.

So they basically are like, hey, you could spend this much money on a car or whatever. So then they're like, all right. I'm going to give me a right hand. Dude, can you imagine? I should get into the postal service now. I should give me a Soarer, a right-hand drive Soarer, and just deliver mail.

You could. It would be a pain in the butt, because packages, there's less room. That's why they like SUVs. They lay the back seats down. And here's one thing I will say. You want to talk about a hard job. Being a postal carrier, I work with these people. And we try to be super accommodating. I met one lady on a Saturday night at 9 o'clock one night, because that was the only time, because we can't do business on Sundays, right? I met her at a Saturday night at 9 o'clock, because that was the only time she could come down with her husband, because they have to bring a vehicle and drive a vehicle back, to do the paperwork and take the vehicle home. So for me, customer service is always really important. And I always want to take care of people. And the nicer we can be to our local customer base, the better. And we've had a ton of repeat business. It's been really great. We've got one guy over in Wisconsin, who has sent us like three or four different buyers, because he just loves his Hilux Surf. And he tells everybody to come to us.

It's a big referral business.

100%, 100%. But the other nice thing is like people just find us, because there's really not another game in town, so to speak. We're the only registered importer. Well, we're not a registered importer. That's a whole different thing. We're a dealership that imports right-hand drive vehicles. But we're the only one in Minnesota. So we get a lot of people, well, yeah, I was looking in Chicago, Tennessee, that kind of thing. You guys are way closer. And everybody always says, your prices are really good. And it's like, well, yeah, we're not trying to make millions of dollars here. We're trying to turn a profit, but also grow the business.

Right, enough for the owner of the business to live comfortably.

No. So we both do this part time.

Oh, really?

Yeah. Brandon still has a full time job. I still, well, not right now, I'm not working. But I still have a full time job while also doing this. So yeah, it's not something that we live on. It's a little extra income, which is nice. And at some point, maybe, we can make it an actual business. But what's really holding us back from that is finding property. If we could find a dealership for sale, a small lot for sale, that's already zoned properly, then we could have a better opportunity.

Why do you think that is, like something closer to the cities, you're saying?

Well, closer to the cities would be nice. That's not as important, but just the ability to have more inventory. We're kind of limited by space right now. Oh, OK, I see, I see. And if we have a nice lot for 15, 20 cars, yeah, we'd love to be able to have 15, 20 cars sitting there that people can come and check out. Because that's the hardest thing, is we get people, like right now, if somebody wanted to come buy a car from us, I could sell them a wide body, 96 FD RX-7, or I could sell them a 95 Mitsubishi Mini Cab K truck.

That's you have in inventory right now?

Those are the only two vehicles we have.

Is it in stock, like on US soil?

Yep, oh yeah. The RX-7, we've got for sale. I've got it listed on Facebook Marketplace.

I've seen it.

It's on eBay, too. Yeah, it's such a fun car. Interesting.

Is it a right-hand drive? And manual?

Oh, yeah.

I've never driven a right-hand drive car. It's something that I really want to do.

The hardest thing, well, when I get my Soarer back, you can drive that.

Oh, no test drives?

Right, no test drives. On that car, some of that stuff, it's like, OK. If you want to buy it, we'll let you know. That kind of thing. The Joyride, especially on cars like that, people get really weird about them.

What about the little key truck?

The K truck? Yeah, you can drive that. But you can't drive it on the road. It's not street legal. Yeah, Minnesota doesn't allow. So that's the other thing with K trucks. First of all, I would not drive one on the street, OK?

What does it have, like a 400 cc engine?

It's a 660, 660 cc engine.

Tiny.

Yes, but they're not for, in Japan, they're just for moving around the city at low speeds. They can hold 1,500 pounds in the bed, which is super nice. Four-wheel drive, manual, but they're like the front, the firewall is your foot, like that's the front of the cab. Yeah, and that's where your feet are.

Cab over.

Right. And so if you hit a sapling at 20 miles an hour, it would probably split that thing in half. Most of the guys that, the people that buy them from us, buy them because they've got property. And if you live out in the country, I mean, even here in this neighborhood, you could use it to shoot around the neighborhood, right? You could register it as like an ATV or like a side by side.

How much are they? They're probably like what?

Four or five grand.

Oh, really? OK, so that's like a really nice golf cart.

Yeah. Or a really cheap side by side.

Yeah.

Because there's a huge market. Like people do lifts, they do big wheels and tires, they do all sorts of stuff.

Yeah, I got a couple of ruckuses downstairs. They'd be perfect to just sit in the bed of them.

100%. Yeah, they're so fun and kind of weird. That's the stuff that, like I said, that's the stuff I like. I have this, my spicy take is being an auto enthusiast has nothing to do with how much your car is worth. It's how you approach your attitude towards cars. Like I always say, if I didn't have my GR, if I didn't have my Soarer, I wouldn't really consider myself like a car enthusiast. I think the guy that buys the, I don't know, unless you go to the dealership and you buy a brand new C8, or you buy a brand new GTR, that doesn't make you a car enthusiast. No. Right? But-

It's putting in the effort and showing up.

Yeah. And modifying, having that car. The people that jump from car to car to car to car constantly, that's not really, that's just somebody who likes different cars. I just have, I'm, you know, to me, like I, that's why I like my Soarer, right? Because I've put so much time and energy into it.

You really enjoy it.

Yeah. And that's what I like to see. I like to see cars that people have put a ton of time and energy into, right? Like-

Trauma bonded.

100%. Yeah. Right? The pain of trying to take a manifold off a 1JZ, people that have experienced that.

I'm not even just working on the cars. For example, with this Golf, I've just like, and it's a little hooptie. I've had so many experiences in the last two years. The two most brokest times in my life have been in that car. That includes being five years old. It's like, there's just so many things that are attached to this car. And even though it's a hooptie, would I get rid of it in a heartbeat? Probably, but at the same time, it's like, dude, best bang for buck ever down there. Like, I don't know, for brokeies, but besides civics, but.

Yeah, no, they're.

Tangent.

No, but that's a really fun car, right? That's a cool, it's lightweight. Here's a manual or a DCT.

It's the DCT.

Yeah, which is still, I mean, those are a blast too. You know, your standard automatic transmission, okay, sure, maybe if you're in like a V12 Lambo or something like that, where it actually has like the character, that kind of thing.

Imagine if they had Aventador's in manuals.

Uh-huh.

Because the Mercy's, they came in manuals.

Right, yeah, that's, I don't know. When you get to that car, people buy it anyway, right?

Yeah.

It's like with the Supra, going back to your point, like people bought it anyway. There are a lot of people that, like, God, I wish it were a manual, but I'm buying, you know, that kind of thing.

It's such an amazing car though.

Yeah, 100%.

When it first came out, like, I don't know, it was like a hidden secret. And then people were like, wait, we're onto something.

Well, the FT1 concept was gorgeous. So the original, like, Supra concept car was gorgeous. The actual production model is a little less gorgeous. I mean, it still looks good.

It grew on me.

Yes. It still looks good. It's not for me. I mean, I've tried sitting in that car. That's why I like my Soarer, because it's a GT car. And so it's got a bunch of space, right? It's got a back seat. I've got plenty of room in it. I really like it. It's not the car that I'm going to be out, you know, what's the auto crossing or anything like that. That's why I take it to power cruise, right? Because I'm not blazing around the track. That's why I really like that. Because it's comfy. It's smooth. It's nice and easy. Well, it's not really smooth. It's got some really stiff springs in it. But it's fun. That's why, you know. And again, you go to a meet and maybe there's one or two there, right? I mean, Jay-Z 30 cars. I think there's a couple other Soars in the Twin Cities too that I know of. But yeah, it's really, I like different stuff. That's why I like the right hand drive stuff that we just bring in all this cool stuff. And I'm like, God, that's so cool. I didn't know that existed.

It's a whole new world. When you discover right hand drive cars and stuff that you can import and all that stuff, it's really like, you're like, wait, we don't have this in the US? But we're the greatest country in the world, but we don't have this car?

Anytime somebody says the US is the greatest country. Have you ever watched Newsroom?

I don't care to subject myself to that torture.

It's a great, great show.

Anything with news today, I just don't f*** with.

It's not. So it's written by Aaron Sorkin, who did like the West Wing. He's the Mac of writing drama series. It's on HBO. It's Jeff Daniels, right? Like Dumb and Dumber Jeff Daniels, as this news anchor. And the show starts with, and anybody that's seen it, you've probably even seen the clip on social media.

Maybe.

Oh, why is America the greatest country in the world? And he's on this panel, and the two people are, you know, they give these BS reasons, like freedom and freedom. And he just goes on this like three minute diatribe of like, we're not the greatest country in the world. Like, we're number one in two categories. The number of adults incarcerated per capita, and the number of people that think angels are real. But everything else, we're, oh, and we're number one in infant, we're like number one in infant mortality, too.

I don't know how true that one would be.

Well, this was 15 years ago when the show came out. But, yeah.

I think I know what clip you're talking about.

Super, that's, every time somebody said, that's what I think. Yeah, yeah. It's fair. Yeah, OK. Well, other countries have freedom. Other countries have this. Other countries have that. That kind of thing. Anyway, tangent. But yes, we bring in a bunch of cool right hand drive stuff. It's a lot of fun. And we can broker in cars for people. So basically, if you want to bring in a right hand drive car for yourself, we charge 1,000 bucks. We do all the customs paperwork. We do everything. We do all the titling, the registration for you. The only drawback is you pay as you go. The benefit is a tremendous amount of savings. So basically, you tell us what you're looking for. We buy the car at auction. Within 2 or 3 days, the auction invoices us to pay for the car. We pay for the car, and then we give that receipt to you and say, hey, this is what we paid, pay us. And as long as you pay us, then OK, car's still yours. We get shipping set up. Hey, this is how much we just paid for shipping and transportation. Pay us. So you're buying a car that's in Japan. But again, the benefit there is thousands of dollars in savings.

Right.

Because it's your car, right? We're not buying it to make money off of it. We're buying it for you to bring it in for you specifically.

Right. So in this instance, you're basically just making money off of that $1,000 fee for the most part.

That's all it is.

Where are the other opportunities for you guys to actually be a business? Is it that dealership model in the future?

Yeah.

OK.

So what we really want to do and what I would like to see happen more is really lean into that postal worker space. So we're looking at some things to really take advantage of that, because it's a really large market. And there's a lot of people all over the country. There are postal carrier groups on Facebook with tens of thousands of people in them. And you get people posting all the time, I'm in Georgia. I'm looking for a right-hand drive. I'm in here. I'm looking for a right-hand drive, that kind of stuff. And so we see a lot of that from people. And yeah, we'd love to be able to be a bigger player in that space. But that's the one-day kind of dream, right? Be able to make it my full-time job. And man, I think it'd just be so fun. Because I love selling cars. It's so much fun, especially when you take out the frustrations of selling regular cars to regular people. That's where it gets frustrating. I've had so many people. I would invest dozens of hours of time with people. And they would buy a car at Inver Grove, Toyota because the guy offered them $200 below our price. And then the guy had the audacity. This is a true story that happened. The guy had the audacity to be like, well, don't worry. My wife needs a RAV4. When it's time for her, we'll come back to you. And I said, do me a favor. Go to Inver Grove first and take up days of that salesperson's time. And then come to me and let me beat their price by $200. I want to be on the other end of that. But that's the thing is people always think that dealerships make all this money. And your average car dealership, you're lucky if you're making, well, now with COVID, it threw everything off. But generally speaking, you're lucky if you make anywhere from $1,000 to $3,000 total profit on a car. That's the car. And then, of course, there's F&I stuff with financing and blah, blah, blah. By the way, don't take the dealership's financing unless it's from the manufacturer, like a special APR. Otherwise, just go through your local credit union or something. If you're a military member, USAA, Navy Fed, Navy Fed is phenomenal. Don't just take Wells Fargo auto finance from the dealership. It's not a good deal. I'll tell you that right now. And that's where they make a lot of their money. But yeah, it's a really frustrating experience.

Because people are going to be like, hold on. Before we continue, what are your thoughts on Carvana, then?

Oh, bro.

Because I've seen a lot of different arguments for it. I am in camp. F*** them. F*** them?

They f***** themselves. So here's the thing about Carvana. I think they have a great idea. But the problem is they don't have the experience to execute it. So I believe, in a perfect world, if I were Ichiro Toyota, which he's not even running Toyota anymore, I would take my business model and I would say, OK, dealerships, you're still going to get cars. This is your market advertised price. You can advertise them for less than this, online, whatever. But I'm also going to allow a direct to consumer model. And what I'm going to do for that is you're going to pay more as a customer. It's a convenience fee. It's the same reason why, if you go to Super America, you're going to pay $3.99 for a gallon of milk, when if you go and find a parking spot in Target and walk yourself all the way to the back, you're going to pay $1.99 for that same gallon of milk. Convenience is worth money to people. And people starting with my generation as they get younger, convenience is more and more important. That's why DoorDash and everything is getting more important. So what I would say is, OK, I'm going to buy a 4Runner. If I go to the dealership, I'm going to be able to buy this thing. Maybe it's incoming or whatever. They don't have what I want. I got to wait two or three months, but I'm going to spend $45,000. I'm going to get all of the experience of the salesperson. I'm going to be able to look at different options. I'm going to be able to ask questions, that kind of stuff. That's all valuable. Or you know what? I can spend $46,000, $47,000, and just have it shipped directly to my home. Sign all my paperwork digitally. I don't have to talk to anyone. I don't have to be hard sold on warranties. I don't have to talk about rust protection or any of that crap. Don't have to deal with it. That car is going to get shipped to the dealership. And then the dealership is going to have employees that are paid by Toyota, whatever, or they'll get a stipend and they get paid by the dealership. And then that car just gets delivered to my house, dropped off with the keys. There you go. No delivery, no review and options, no none of that. You want that, that's extra, a la carte. You want to pay for an informed delivery, call it that, that's an extra $500.

Right, to have BMW and their Brainiacs.

To have a product specialist come out and go over everything, Geek Squad type deal.

I think that's what Lamborghini does.

Yeah, and BMW, they have their, what are they called, the Brainiacs, whatever the f*** they're called. I was looking at potentially working there for a while.

Lexus has product specialists and whatnot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Once you get to those higher end brands, it's more.

Yeah, like white glove.

100%, yeah. But that would be my, that's the way I would get, and with used cars, it's so hard, because condition is so important. You can see a 2018 Camry with 30,000 miles, and you can see a 2018 Camry with 50,000 miles, and that 50,000 mile Camry is in better shape than the 30,000 mile one. That's where that Carvana model really falls short. I don't think you can sell used cars that way. I think you could sell new cars that way, and Tesla, that's one thing that they are doing right. But I think it would be really easy overall for a manufacturer to just say, hey, you can buy this car through us, skip the dealership process, but you're going to pay a premium for it.

Well, what you could do even is like, for example, when Carvana goes out of business, you can have all these fricking trucks.

They keep getting propped up. They're the Tesla of the used car business.

Yeah, whatever it is. But you get those trucks, give them to all the dealerships or whatever, right? Because you could be able to get them for pennies on the dollar. And then what you could do, like you said, you have that car coming in, goes to the dealership, gets its PPI done, or whatever it's called, throw it on the trailer. And then if you want, this is where you could get that additional service. You could throw in a sales guy or whatever, somebody to educate the consumer on the car when it gets to their house. There's a lot of different ways to go about it. I'm all for it. I just think, like you said, Carvana is so limited. But it's great for us car enthusiasts who are trying to offload a car that's modded.

Right. Oh, 100%.

It's amazing.

Yeah. Well, and that's the deal. People would come in. So one thing that I always couldn't stand, somebody comes in with their car, and they need help pairing their phone, doing this, doing that. They have questions about how their car works. Nine times out of ten, it's people that they found a cheaper car somewhere else, because they didn't buy it certified, right? They bought it used in a non-CPO car. It's less expensive than a CPO car, right? Well, they've got the, you know, Luther Mazda dealership plate on the back. And the salesperson at Luther Mazda says, yeah, I don't know these cars. You should take it to a Toyota dealership, right? And so then they pull up to this dealership, and I make exactly zero dollars from answering somebody's question. And, you know, the age-old like, oh, yeah, no, I'm going to send all my friends and family to you. That never happens, OK? It never happens.

You don't want to just do it out of the goodness of your heart?

No, I don't. I don't. Listen, if you buy a car from me, I will drop whatever I'm doing and my previous customers, I will help them as much as I can, whatever is within my power, right? And so that's another thing, too, that a lot of people don't realize is you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. So I have customers that will be so difficult to deal with. And then they always ask for special favors and they always ask for this and that. And it's like, no, man. But if you're nice and you're just a good person throughout the process, it way, way, way increases the chances of us wanting to help you. Because then you have me as a salesperson in that management office going to bat for you. If you're nice to me, I want to help you. And I'm going to fight for you. If you're a dick to me and you want to lie to me and try and play games and do this and do that, I have no interest in doing anything other than just selling you a car and letting you go on your way. That's not what I'm interested in. But yeah, it's wild how people walk into a dealership and feel like it gives them a license to lie. So many people have so much stuff that they just make up.

In any sales environment.

They read the how to buy a car online. Oh, it's so ridiculous. Or you get these people that like to come in and play Stump the Salesman where they do the research and they're really well informed on the car. And they come in and then they ask you questions that they know the answer to, to see if you know the answer. And it's just like all the games and stuff like that. It's so ridiculous. There are some really bad salespeople out there, which is why I always tell people like, look, if you're buying a car, let me know. I will put you in the hands of a capable, professional salesperson that's going to give you a great experience. You don't want to roll the dice, because I'm telling you every dealership you go to, there's great people, and then there's terrible people. I never want to buy a car from the top sales guy, because that guy's usually a dick.

Yeah, he's probably...

He usually runs over people. Doing some scummy s***. And steals deals, and steals customers, and doesn't care, and doesn't respect. Every dealership I've worked at, the top sales guy, has always been an absolute prima donna. Only cares about themselves, doesn't care about customers. They're able to turn it on. That's what makes them great. You feel cared about when you're right there. But as soon as you're gone, they're not thinking about you anymore. If you reach out to them in six months, they're not going to remember your name. They're not going to help you. You ready to buy another car? That kind of thing, right? So you want to find the mid-level salesperson. Which was me. I was never the top salespeople for the most part when I worked, right? But what I always told my customers is, hey, all I can tell you is nobody's going to work harder than me. But if you want the best salesperson, that's not me. I'm not born with all of those skills that make the best salesperson. Part of that is that killer instinct and that ruthless mentality that your top 1% performers have. I don't have that. I mean, I'm too nice of a person. I don't want to destroy relationships just to get ahead in a dealership.

If you were that top killer instinct guy right now, we could play that giga alpha chat music as you're talking about this. Yeah, it's killer be killed in the car sales world. I'm like, you want to buy another car? That alpha mindset.

But you're like, not that guy. So they call it lot dropping. We're literally salespeople. And I've seen this happen. They'll walk up to a customer, and they'll ask them, are you buying a car today? They're like, no, we're just looking. Oh, just head right inside to the front door. Ask for a salesperson. They'll take care of you. And that's how they sell a lot of cars, is they will strip. Because some people will be like, yeah, we need a car today. My car got totaled. My daughter needs whatever, blah, blah, blah. And there are people that are like, yeah, we're here to buy a car today. And that's who they wait for. And they just chew through the ups. Rather than talking to three or four people, they'll talk to 10. And they'll send the people who are not buying today inside to talk to a different salesperson. That 1,000% happens.

So the guy that comes out to greet me, that guy is probably like the top earner?

Sometimes.

It depends on a dealership, because at the same time, you kind of want people at the front door looking, to be right, because that's the thing. If you end up going to a dealership and there's nobody waiting for you at the front door, it's going to be a lackluster experience in the other way.

So I've heard it both ways. I've worked at dealerships where they say, hey, we want you guys up front. We want you greeting guests at the door. We don't want you pulling their door open as they're pulling into a parking spot. Be respectful, give them space. But then I've also had people that say, we don't want to be accosted at the front door. We don't want to feel like salespeople are trying to pounce on us. So I've seen both.

It varies, yeah.

Correct.

Some people just suck at it, because again, some people are pouncy. It depends on the person.

And if you're gentle about it and smooth about it, you can have a really effective approach, where you walk up to somebody out on the lot, hey, how's it going? My name's Tyler. What brings you in today? You know, that kind of thing. And just start that conversation. And the biggest thing that I always tell people about is always ask why. Because if you ask yes, no questions, right, it limits the information. But if you ask why, it gives you way more to talk about. Right? So that's what I always try to tell people.

That's right. And here's the deal. Like last year, I saw like a magazine. It said something like s*** talking on the cover about dealerships or whatever. Like, oh, here's your hacks to get through to dealerships.

Right.

Here's the deal. Like, especially in the internet era, it's like you don't have as much sleaziness because you get called out for it. But the thing is, is like, there's good and bad salesmen. You know, when you get into like the small local ones, that's where you start still seeing some of that sleazy stuff. But like the bigger dealerships, I've noticed you see a lot more, it's a lot more refined. Maybe, maybe I might be wrong in that regard. But it's like, that's the big thing in sales. And especially in the last 10 or 20 years, like the why. Because the yes and no, you're kind of steering them into this particular funnel. And the second they say no, guess what? They're leaving. Yeah. Whereas why you do a little bit more of like discovery of like who the person is. Why are they even there? There's a reason they're not in a lot. But we can talk about sales tactics all day long. Because we are coming up on a two hour episode here. Yeah. So I mean, I think we should probably do that. Pop the usual three.

Are you ready for this?

Because there's going to be a part two of this in the future.

No worries.

If you haven't listened to the podcast before, we like to kind of end the podcast with a question where I asked you about three cars that you're going to choose. One's for daily, one's for track, one's for show. Got it.

Unlimited budget.

That's your part to say.

No, no, no. It's always been your part. I just been picking up the slack. No. Yeah. About six episodes ago or five episodes ago, Sean's just like, yeah, you're poor. You can't afford these cars. No, it's an unlimited budget. The only thing that limits you is your imagination. The imagination thing was always your part, Sean. Get it together, man. Come on. These late night episodes are killing us.

No. The morning's way worse.

So my show car would be a Toyota 2000 GT, by far, the most amazing.

What would you do? What are your wheels that you're putting on there?

It's completely stock.

Oh, okay.

That was exciting.

That is a car you don't touch. That's one of those cars you take to the Concorde d'Elegance, and it's moving art.

You know, everything's moving art with enough mushrooms.

Yeah, I do know that. But this one, even without the mushrooms, it's a gorgeous car. Fun fact, the Mark V Supra, where it has that like bubble in the roof, that's a throwback to the 2000 GT. Yeah, they're gorgeous cars. There were not that many of them made. They go for a bunch of money. They're amazing. My track car would be an LFA. It has to be.

That's pretty sick. I was thinking about that earlier when you were kind of talking about, you know, the whole Toyota production and like just how perfect everything is and how that like went into...

They completely started that car over.

How they did it with the LFA and that's why it's so expensive, but also why it's so great.

It took like 12 years to make.

Can you remind us of the story on the LFA? I'm not familiar with this.

Yeah, so they started designing the car and they were using aluminum and what they realized when they got it built and started driving it and testing it is it didn't handle the way they wanted it to. So they scrapped it and started all over using magnesium. So yeah, they wanted it to be lighter.

Yeah. What was magnesium? The whole body?

A large portion of it. Oh, yeah.

I did not know there was a lot of magnesium in that car.

Yeah, it's the fastest revving, one of the fastest revving engines ever made, which is why they had to use a digital tach. Because it revved so fast, an analog tachometer could not keep up.

That's pretty freaking crazy.

Best sounding car ever, by the way.

Yeah.

Carrera GT people, don't at me, all right? Those are like the top two that people always say.

They got Yamaha to tune the exhaust.

Acoustics.

Yeah. Yeah. Not the dirt bike part division.

The piano division.

The piano.

Yeah.

Masters of music.

They also designed and did a lot of work on the 1JZ engine that's in my car. So.

Who? Yamaha?

Yep.

I think you actually told me about that when we shot however many years ago.

Right. Yeah. So yeah. So that would be that. Daily driver. God, that's a really tough one. Um, I would probably say, I mean, just this is the easy one. No, this is the tough one for me because there's so many great Toyotas that I would want to drive every day.

Naturally, it's a Toyota.

So all three, all three of your cars are Toyotas. Well, of course it is because you're that guy with just Toyotas littered in your yard.

Well, if I only have to pick three, then yes, it's Toyotas. Okay, right, if I like my one A car after an LFA would probably be like a 67 Ferrari California, like right, like the Ferris Bueller car, right? That would be, you know, that would be in there, that kind of stuff. Okay. But I honestly, this is going to sound really lame, but like a 200 series Land Cruiser. So like late, like a 2017, 2018, those things are phenomenal. They're tanks. You know, you shut the door and your ears pop. And they have such great, I mean, off road, if you want to do it, they're great. But like, yeah, it's, they're awesome.

This is one of, like a more unique selection of cars, I have to say. You really went, like, into the left field without Land Cruiser.

So I mean, if you've never driven, they're assembled by hand in Japan, the Land Cruiser is, right? It's Toyota's halo car. And so it always gets the best of the best. And it drives like nothing else. I mean, you sit in that vehicle and you feel invincible.

So we don't get those in the States?

We do, yeah. Not anymore. So they stopped selling them, 2020 or 21 was the last year. The problem is they kind of lost their, that's where I'm going to be a hypocrite. They lost their Land Cruiser way, right? Because the Land Cruiser started as like a two-door kind of Jeep style vehicle. Then it went four-door. Once it hit the 90s with the 100, well, the late 90s with the 100 series with the 47 V8 was where it turned into more of like a luxury SUV and less of like a rugged off-road SUV.

As all SUVs do.

Right. And then the 200 series is like kind of the pinnacle of that modern luxury, but still super capable vehicle. Like with their four-wheel drive system and all of that stuff, they're awesome. But now they're bringing it back as a five-passenger vehicle at a lower price point, right? Because if you go to like Australia, you can buy, I call it poverty pack, right? Like cloth seats, crank windows, like that's what people wish we got in the States. Again, we don't get anything cool in the US. You can go to Australia and get the truck platform.

Hold on, that just hit me. So you're saying, OK, poverty pack and cool in the same sentence. I mean, to be fair, I agree, like we should have lower specs. It would really help a lot of people in this country. But anyways, continue.

Dude, one of my first cars I had was an 87 Volkswagen Jetta coupe. Beautiful car. It had a crank open sunroof. And we called it the party starter, because we're like, let's open the sunroof. Get the party started, right? But that kind of stuff. And that makes cars lighter, which any people underestimate how important weight is in making a car fun to drive. Any car. If you take hundreds of pounds off any car, it's going to be more fun.

Just a little side tangent, because I did my first ever ruck a few days ago. Because I got lost 20 pounds in the last few months. I threw a 25 pound plate in a backpack. And I went for a three mile walk. And I was like, holy s***. Dude, I was walking around with that weight a year ago. It's like, dude, weight is so crazy.

And then you take it off, and you're like, dude, I'm so fast. My girlfriend and I were at the state fair. Fiance, it's recent. I'm still learning. We were at the state fair. And she had a backpack on for half the day. And I'm like, hey, she was feeling a little like, kind of, I'm like, let me take the backpack. And she's like, oh, and she's doing like jumping jacks. She's like, I got my second wind. Like, let's go. So, yeah. No, it's, but yeah, that would be late 2018, 2019 Land Cruiser. LFA, they only made it for one year. And then the 2000 GT would be my perfect three.

I think every collector should have like an LFA in there.

An LFA is a must, absolutely.

But I believe, by the way, there's still one that's still for sale. It was never sold.

Is it Brown, I think?

No way. It's never been titled.

That's freaking crazy.

Well, they'll probably never get titled then.

No, until it rolls through Mecham and somebody pays millions of dollars.

I'm guessing that's going to be maybe a seven-digit.

It's one of those dealership cars that they still have the MSO and everything.

Higher than seven-digit, I bet.

That'll be crazy, yeah. That's nuts. But nonetheless, Tyler, thank you so much for coming on. Yeah. Where can people find you?

Well, Instagram, 5SpeedSoarer. I got beautiful pictures of my GR and all my other Toyotas that I've owned. And some dog photos, I think. I don't know if I have photos of our dogs on there. But obviously, nentekgarage.com.

How do you spell that?

N-E-N-T-E-K, garage.com.

Place your orders.

Yeah, right? Like I said, we got an R34 GTT coming in next month. But beyond that, we just.

Any idea on price?

Mid-40s. It's got some cool Nismo Aero. It's a new clutch. It's higher kilometers, but it's white. It's a clean car.

What the hell is a kilometer? Seen, where can people find you?

How dare you? All the other Shawns will rise against this. I'm making a call of action to all the Shawns.

Make a call of action where people can find you, though.

Yeah. You contact me at 1MNMOPAR, and we'll get the rally started.

Speaking of rallies, that's a perfect segue. Guys, we're going to be on the car community rally in a few weeks here. If you want to join us, it's 100.

I heard about that.

It's going to be great. It's going to be a great event. I've been on two of the last three events that Balto's put on. They're great. It's going to be a little smaller, but it's also a higher tier rally than what he's previously done. So I'm very excited. It's the only rally I'm doing this year. If you want to save 100 bucks, use code Minnoxide. So Shawn and I will be bombing around into 1M, so that'll be pretty sweet. As for finding me, you're here at Minnoxide Everywhere, minnoxide.com. Please make sure you're signing up for the newsletter because every week we drop a newsletter, which again, a newsletter is basically free wallpapers, you know, my fantastic photos, which I still do hire me. Then also let you know the podcast is here. What else is there? Oh yeah, I'll be doing giveaways through there, so I'll be pretty sweet. I'll figure that out, slowly figuring life out.

What kind of giveaways?

I just said I'm slowly figuring it out.

Am I eligible?

You know, we'll see if you spell your name correctly. Just f****** around. I think all Sean names are spelled incorrectly. W's, really? Anyways guys, until next time, thanks for being our third two hour guest. That is impressive. You little chatterbox. Nonetheless, we will have you back in the future. This is a great conversation, and hopefully people hit you up to buy some cool cars, so I would love to see some more unique JDM stuff coming here.

Happy to help.

See you all next time.