42. The Man Of Many Mustangs, Road America, and the Carmmunity Rally w/ Gunnit Garage

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide Podcast. I know you all hate me because we missed an upload, but we were out doing some fun rally stuff and all that great stuff. But nonetheless, I'm your host, Harris, aka Minnoxide, man of many automotive aspirations. And I'm here with my Buc-Ease-Wearing co-host. Represent, dude.

I do like the shirt.

This is one of my favorite shirts. Buc-Ease, you made a killer t-shirt, but I am Sean. I have a BMW 1M that is orange, a blue Durango Hellcat. If you don't know your colors, there you go. You can look out for them. Find me, talk to me. Love talking about my cars. Yeah, the last weekend was insane. I'm still feeling it.

Oh yeah.

And then, well, actually, do you want to explain the show?

Yeah, so this is the Minnoxide podcast. If you didn't know, we like to take you beyond the meet and meet and introduce you to some of the people that make our community so great.

And today, we have the man of many Mustangs, Dan Deckard, GunnIt Garage, an old buddy of mine, of ours, who's been rallying with us for years. We wanted to get you on the podcast just because you do a lot of cool s***, dude. Like you just, you have a lot of cool cars. You're passionate about a very particular brand for very obvious reasons. So that's why I just wanted to get you on. So I guess kind of just, there's so many ways we can take this because we know Dan so well.

Well, I figure I'm gonna have to be a regular guest, I assume.

Yeah, not like we didn't just spend the entire weekend with him.

I know, that's the other tough part because we literally just spent like, what, four days partying across the country. So there's that, but let's just kick it off. Do you want to tell us about your latest acquisition first?

Yeah, so I think before this, if you haven't seen me around, I had a 2015 Mustang GT that my dad and I built together with help from local guys around the metro here. You know, you guys maybe don't run into them very often because they're all local Ford specialists, but we're hardcore Ford guys. And I would like to think I'm the other guy with the orange Mustang that's not Mike Johnson. But it had another engine failure this year on the way down to a Mustang show in Iowa. And I got kind of fed up with it. So I went on the hunt and I talked to my friend Harris here and he kind of pushed me towards a certain vehicle that I had been eyeing for a while.

So with your old Mustang, what basically, it was built, it was built to the gills, right?

Yeah, I was trying to build myself a 2020 Gt500 is what I was going for.

The Mustang Gt500 from Wish, which you actually somehow ended up with anyway.

Yes, a lot of parts. I will give people some advice. I try and go the cheap route sometimes on parts. I'm like, oh, these are like cheap, but highly rated, right? So you think, no big deal, I'm going to do this. And then, so now you've just spent that money. And then when those don't work out, you end up getting the stuff you should have gotten to begin with. So I started off doing that in the beginning and then realized that that wasn't the way to go. But that car was, I mean, suspension, BC Racing coilovers in the front, got rid of the rear ones because they blew out. So again, another option that's a little on the cheaper side. So now I have Viking double adjustable shocks in the rear, UPR lowering springs. It's, I don't think there's another bolt on the car I haven't touched. Four dual pump fuel system. It was a 5.2 block. Whipple Gen 4. I was assuming about 800 crank, but I haven't had it on a dyno really every time it was supposed to go on a dyno, it was broken.

Do you think, because you're going to be fixing that car up and you're going to be giving it to your dad, right? Is it going to still be in that power level?

No, I'm going to tune it back down. So not that my dad can't handle the power. He grew up drag racing, because that was the only thing he could do with the cars and the suspension they had back then, right? So he knows how to handle the power. And he's been wanting to go on rallies with me, but right now he drives a 99 Celine Cobra, which is one of, you know, I have it written down here. One of 12 made in 1999.

I love the notes, by the way, because it just shows how excited you are for this. And I guarantee, knowing him, they're going to be immaculate notes, like, important.

They're just bullet points here. But I didn't want to, you know, people listen to your podcast, you know, the four people that listen to it. So I thought that I would take some notes so I didn't have people screaming at the radio when I hear something that...

Oh, no, that's the best part. That's how you get all the, what's it called? The engagement, like when you say like one of, you know, 10, somebody's gonna go, no, actually that's 12.

Right.

The fact checking, especially on TikTok, is hilarious. Like we had somebody say that the S2000 was 2.4 liters, but don't quote me because like they were, you know, thinking about builds, which is stroked out and all that stuff. Not the two liters or whatever it is stock in the comment section is just raving. So it's just, some people love the accurate facts, but man, when you get them inaccurate, it's the funniest thing in the world.

That is true. It does get me kind of lit up when I hear it. So yeah, it gets you all going.

So remember that for GunnIt Garage, you know, you got to sprinkle some inaccuracies. Yeah. Also misspelling words, perfect. You know, using the wrong they are in it. Oh yeah. We're, you know, it gets people like, oh, spell it's the best grandma Nazis, man.

Yeah. Otherwise just actually have quality content that helps too. Yes. Which we have a little bit of a mix, but anyway, so you're going to detune. So is this still going to be supercharged for your dad or no?

Yes. So the Whipple is going back on. It's at my friend's shop. He's in Hammond, Wisconsin, Midwest Diesel and Automotive. Another guy I met through a Mustang group and he works on all my diesel trucks and then he'll do some of this stuff for me. So it's there right now. I had a engine out of a 2015 F250, and so that's a Gen 2 Coyote block. Only difference between the Mustang and the F150 of those years is the intake cams. So I had to happen to have a set of Mustang cams sitting on a shelf from the previous build. So it's going back to a basically stock 5.0 Coyote with oil pump gears. That's one of the weak spots on the 5.0 motor. So that will get rebuilt. The pulley that came from Whipple will go back on it, pushing probably around 8 or 9 pounds of boost. And it will be back in that 600-ish range, 700 maybe, and it will be plenty for that car.

What were you pushing before it blew?

Like I said, my guess is around 8. I did a dyno...

No, I mean like pounds of boost.

Oh, pounds of boost. Right now I'm hitting almost 16, 16 and a half maybe.

So yeah, definitely ramping it down a little bit.

Yeah, well I went to lower compression. So the block that's in there now is 9.5 to 1, which is what the Gt500 gets, I believe. Again, I don't know for sure. Don't kill me.

That's not in your fact checks?

Yeah, right. So the Coyote, the normal one that would be in the Gt of those years, I believe was 10 to 1. So a little bit, maybe even higher than that. Anyway, so when you lower the compression, the boost is lower as well. It doesn't push as much. It flows through the engine a little faster. I think, again, not a scientist or a pro by any means.

But if you would like to know more facts about boost, go back to our last episode with Kyle Larkin. That was such a great episode. He was just talking all about tuning. I'm actually doing the highlights for it right now. And just going, there's some smart people, dude.

Oh, I know.

Dude, tuners and engine builders, we've had a lot of smart people on this podcast. It's wild.

No, and then you're trying to keep up with the facts too. And you're like, there's no way I'm going to remember all of this. So you're grabbing bits and pieces from everybody.

Yeah, that's going to be sweet to see your dad in that then.

And then it gives you to see him on the rallies.

Yeah, right. It's pretty cool. He just turned 65 in May. But he still gets up. Him and I work together. I've had a great relationship with him for many, many years. He's probably my best friend. And we own a business together. So we see each other almost every day. People are always like, I always like to work with your dad. We have our moments where we have our little tiffs every now and again, but it seems to go pretty good.

I feel like that's any working relationship. For example, Sean and I, 95% of the time, it's the best episodes ever. But every once in a while, we're going to have each other start just talking s***. But I feel like that's any relationship ever.

95, I was thinking probably 75. I feel like a quarter of the time.

I've seen some little lovers quarrels going on between you two.

That's what's great about us because we get over it. We know it's all for fun. It's never serious.

I think you guys were doing something this weekend, and Mallory was like, are they being serious? I'm not really sure what's going on.

Probably my mental breakdown at the gas station, where I started screaming at the ceiling. I was just like, yeah, let's have some fun with this. Okay, so the Mustang blew up. You're going to get it to your pops. However, I love, love, love the story that you got for this Gt500. And you were asking me, what was it? In the winter, I think it was.

Yeah, I think it was right in the spring. This whole thing happened really fast.

That's right. Yeah, because you were asking me some hairdresser cars. Should I get a basic Porsche?

You started thinking about GTRs or GTSs from the AMGs. I had 30 grand sitting around and I was like, I want something, I just want to pay cash for it. I plan on rebuilding the car, but I had this rally coming up. I couldn't go all summer without a rally car. I knew this rebuild was going to take longer than I could get by with. So I was like, I was just going to go buy something kind of cheaper and go for it. So that's when I was messaging you. I mean, I was Googling. I had been in some fast Audis. I had been thinking of cars I had seen as were out. I had test drove that Porsche, the GT3 RS on the rally for bonus points there. Again, I didn't go very fast in it, but I thought, man, this thing's cool, but there's no way I had that kind of money. So I'm like, I'm looking at, what are they? The guy, I'm going to sound, so all you Porsche guys out there, I'm really sorry. But like, what does Massey have?

He's got a Boxster.

Boxster, okay.

I don't know if you're looking quite.

No, I was looking newer.

Carreras maybe?

Carrera, I think is what it was I was looking at. But then they're like, if you, you know, everybody wants you to have the 911 turbos and stuff like that. So I was like, man, I really don't know what to do. I was, then I was trying to stay true to my Ford deal. So I was looking at Focus RS's because you can pick them up for $30.

I was like, man, to see you in a Focus RS. Okay, let me preface this by saying it's a phenomenal, amazing car. But to go from what you were doing before, which is, you know, an 800 horsepower 5.0 to a hatchback that makes half the power. It just, it didn't make sense. It'd be like going backwards for you based off of what you enjoy. Now, granted, I would love to have a 400 horsepower Focus RS. That'd be a blast. But I was like, Dan, this isn't you.

Yeah. So I don't know. I was looking at whatever. I was Googling Audi's by their zero to 60 time. I mean, I was looking everywhere, all over the board. And then I had that conversation with you and I said, and you were like, you know what? I've been in Mark's car. This thing is amazing. This is what you're going to want. And then so then I so I'm a fix it guy. I buy stuff broken all the time. I've got I saw your little Yamaha TTR down there. I'm actually picking one up this weekend that has the carburetors off of it, stuff like that. I just like to buy broken stuff and then I fix it. And then I've got it at a cheaper price. I let my kids enjoy it. I enjoy it. And then I get rid of it later. So I said, I told you I was going to find a broken Gt500. And then I think you said you're crazy. And then that was where we left the conversation. And then I think the next time I talked to you was when I had told you that I had the car.

Yeah, yeah, because then you were also telling me like, don't tell people about it. But that Gt500 came in four colors.

Yeah, I think it was like white and cream, orange. I don't know if you go check out our Instagram and TikTok.

We had some blue on there.

You have some of the same blue that marks on Mark's car. Originally, though, so the car is a 2021 Gt500 carbon fiber trackpad car, what they would consider a golden ticket car. So it has, sorry, I'm going to silence this. Not that I'm super popular or anything, but...

The golden track pack.

Golden ticket carbon fiber track pack. It is a white car with painted stripes, which is a $10,000 option, which is insane to me. I don't know why anybody would want to do that. I'm sure that's just a flex thing for a Gt500 owner.

Big time.

Yeah, so it's basically the fully loaded, the biggest package you can get, and it had 1,249 miles on it. It still had, it never had the braking oil changed out of it. I mean, you got to go 1,000 miles on braking on those things. So it was the same oil that came from Ford. It was a brand new car. It had been run down a guardrail or something and just was body panels. No structural damage, no bags blown. I mean, it was, if you wanted a hit, that totaled a car out, it was probably about as light as you can get. And so, well, back up a little bit. I was looking for a wrecked Gt500. I was actually bidding on one with a friend of mine on Copart that went up to almost 60 grand. It had hit in the rear orange one, carbon fiber trackback car. And he told me, don't do it. You're going to have too much money in the car. So then he says, I know a guy. So he hooks me up with a guy named Rob Bowen who owns a parts farm down in Georgia. And what they do is they buy wrecked Mustangs and they part them out and sell all the parts. They do all kinds of stuff. They do Hellcat stuff. They can do all kinds of things. So I get ahold of him and he said, hey, I have this car. I was just about to list it. It's... I was building it to rally, which is exactly what I wanted. And he ended up getting an allocation on a new Z06 C8 at MSRP. So he's like, I got to do that. And he was going to use that to rally instead. So I basically picked up his project about 90% done. All the bodywork was done. Everything was ready to go. Just needed paint. So I... Original plan was a rocket just like how I showed you in the pictures. And again, if you go on our stuff, you can see it. My wife is very talented in making reels and things like that. So there's some transition things that she's done on there that's pretty cool. So anyway, I got it. I took it to our other rally friend, Jamie, down at Dipworks in Chippewa. And him and I worked on the car to... We were again racking my brain on what I was going to wrap the car with or do with. Originally, I was going to just leave it all busted up.

The harlequin look.

Yeah, exactly. But then I wanted to do this. And I thought if we're going to launch a social media thing, we're going to try and do it. I want to do it right. I want to draw some attention. Not that that wouldn't have. So we decided to wrap the car in Mystichrome, dip the car in Mystichrome with Jamie.

Yeah. So tell us a little bit about this, because this is a very, I shouldn't say new territory for me, because I've always known about Plastidip. You know, I Plastidip the wheels of my Charger way back in the day. It actually looks decent. Nobody knew, because actually, you know, here's the thing about Plastidip. If you put the effort in, it actually looks really good. But a lot of people don't know what they're doing. And I wasn't a pro. But so then I found out about this Autoflex thing, the Mystichrome, that's on your car. What's the difference between that and Plastidip? I know you're not the expert here, but what did you learn from Jamie about this process?

Sure. So I think the same thing that you did, right? Plastidip, you think like the rattle can, you can pick up at Fleet Farm, right? And you can hit stuff with. I've bought cars, so we buy, sell, trade. Well, I buy cars. I don't really get rid of them a lot. My wife gives me a hard time about that. But I've bought many of Mustangs with Plastidip on them, old Fox bodies and stuff. And it is a pain to get off. But after talking to Jamie, basically, Autoflex is automotive paint. It is paint that is peelable. So they put on something on the car first. There's a, like, a peelable primer that goes on it. So originally, he sent me a picture. The car was, like, all black. Then he sprays on the tinted Autoflex product on over that. And then he goes automotive clear over that. So this car actually has five coats of automotive clear over it. I believe he uses the Autoflex brand of clear, but he said you can use any automotive clear just to have to add a flex additive to it, which they do a lot of times when they're painting cars on, you know, like, your plastic parts and pieces because they tend to flex, and the paint will crack otherwise. So supposedly, in five years, this thing will be at its end of life, and I can just grab a corner and start peeling it all off in big sections.

Which is super cool. Like, there's, like, the chemical aspect of it, too, today. That makes sense. So I've always been a rap guy, and arguably I still am, just because you can do crazy prints and all that stuff. Like, I have a 5x8 print of a Lamborghini that I could probably just throw it on my golf, if we're being honest. But there's pros and cons to both, but when you do a quality job, I think, what did you pay, like, $4,000? For a sweet color flip that feels like paint. So that's actually what surprised me. I wasn't sold until I... Did you touch his car at all, Sean?

No, I would have never touched.

Yeah, I'm not a look, don't touch guy. But I literally went to go touch it when you were showing it to, I think it was Hamilton, or no, it was earlier in the rally. And I was like, dude, this feels like freaking paint. Like, it's smooth, whereas Plasti Dip, I expect it to be a little more rubbery. And I was just like, I'm sold. This is a legit option now. So yeah, thanks for telling us about that.

Yeah, I mean, you get the depth. So what other big seller on it is, I mean, I can, I'm presuming you can ceramic coat anything, but so like you can hit it with wax, you can buff it, you can wet sand it, you can do all that stuff like you would do with paint, and it does the same stuff. You get the depth. If you look at it, you just kind of see through the clear, you see into the paint. I get people all the time just freaking out over it. They're like, this is, what kind of paint is this? I was like, no, this is a dip, and they're like, no way. So yeah, it definitely has a different look to it than vinyl would.

Yeah, and that's one of the problems with vinyl. Granted, vinyl also across the industry has its pros and cons, and having worked with a lot of different wrap shops, I got to pick up a thing or two here and there. Some of them might have a lot of orange peel in them. So if you look at a certain light, it doesn't look HD. I don't know how to describe it really. But then some of the ones that look HD, they're super thick, or then they might fail or whatever. So it's hard to get a vinyl that has no orange peel, that lasts, that doesn't come back. And I think part of it comes down to installation too. If you have a total nobody installing dip, it's probably going to look rough too. So yeah, it's so weird. So many ways to customize cars nowadays. Dude, some of these dudes have been into the game for like 20 years. Like the tin pros guys, they've been doing it for 20 years. And it's like, I didn't even know that about rap until five years ago.

It was probably like one product back then and that was it.

Yeah, 3M, they didn't even have 1080 or anything like that. They just had 3M vinyl, like cricket cutter stuff. So before we continue on with the Gt500, was there anything in particular? Because I do want to make sure that we respect your timing. You have a bunch of notes. Do you have anything in particular you wanted to touch on?

No, I just, I was a little concerned about getting the car with the automatic. You know, there's a lot of people complaining about that. First of all, it's not an automatic. It's a manual transmission that shifts automatically. It's a DCT. So they, technically it has two clutches. You got gears on either side, and it shifts between the two. It goes back and forth, and one is engaged or not engaged. I don't know. There's a whole scientific thing to it. So it kind of acts like one, but with seamless shifts. So that part of it is very cool. I've never driven anything like that before. It's pretty neat to me. On the track this weekend, I use my manual a lot, downshifting into the corners, things like that, which I'm learning is not the way you're supposed to do it. We kind of rely on your brakes a little bit more as you come into corners, from what I understand. Although the car does everything it's supposed to do when I do that. But as far as that goes, driving here through the cities on the way here this morning, or this afternoon was kind of nice. You know, just kind of kicking back and not having to worry about shifting and doing any of that kind of stuff. That was nice. But that was really my only concern. Otherwise, I'm super impressed with the car.

Yeah, I tell this to people all the time. The latest Gt500 is one of the greatest cars I have ever driven. And I have a nice long list of cars that I've driven, thankfully, being a photographer and all that fun stuff. But when I got to drive Marks last year, which makes 1,014 to the wheels, what a great introduction, by the way. A souped up Gt500. I actually managed to hook that thing and stick it. I floored it at about 30 miles an hour. I think we're in second gear. And it didn't break loose. That car is so dummy proof. You can give the keys to anybody. Hi, that's me. And I will not wreck it. That is the anti-Mustang. Whereas your 5.0, it's the meme. You're going to hit a crowd. This was not like that. So when I drove Marks Mustang, that was the weekend we went to go pick up Chaz's Corvette, or not Corvette, his Porsche in Detroit. So I got to feel my first Porsche experience, which is cool. I think I was making 600, 700 wheel at the time.

The one he has now?

Correct, yes. And there wasn't enough meth in it. It was an interesting drive back. And then I got to rally Marks Mustang for two days. And I put on some serious miles. I hit very high three-figure speeds, or three-digit speeds. And then when we came back, my dad also bought the AMG GTR. So I got to drive that on that Monday. So I had all these cars to kind of compare the Mustang to. And I could best compare to my dad's GTR. That Mustang is so well built, unlike certain Chevy things that came out right away.

But don't get me started on GM. I can get drenched on that all day.

We have a lot of GM fans. I just had to make them scream at the windshield for a second. But when I got inside that Mustang, it actually felt almost like a European interior, which is luxury. It just felt like a $100,000 car. And a lot of people, especially when it came out, they're like, $100,000 for a Mustang? You are freaking crazy. That felt like a $100,000 car. You've put on some miles now. How do you feel about it?

It's great. I mean, it's... I would put it in a supercar category. I mean, it's one of your lower end ones. But it handles like one. It drives like one. Again, I haven't driven a lot of supercars. But if you look at Ford in general, they've been huge in the European markets. They've always been... You look at this GT40 thing with them and Ferrari, they've always played those games. They like to... They play in that same stuff where you guys and your German cars and your tuner cars and all that kind of stuff. They dabble in that market. I've heard they're coming back to F1 now. Yeah, 2026. I'd like to think they know what they're doing.

Well, that's kind of why I'm super excited with what Ford's doing, especially with the GTD. So a lot of the F1 manufacturers, they have cars that... I shouldn't say F1 manufacturers. I should say racing in general. If you're a manufacturer and you're doing racing, you're most likely building cars for enthusiasts, right? So I feel like that GTD is like, hey, let's get these enthusiasts coming over. That's going to be an insane car. And the fact that they're calling out Porsche, Lamborghini and Ferrari makes it all that much better.

Oh, for sure. Well, what are they... I didn't look at those specs, but what is it in the Nurburgring? It's like under seven minutes or something?

The GTD?

Yeah.

Well, that's what they're aiming for. I don't think they've done it yet.

Or they haven't done it yet?

Not from... I haven't heard anything about it, but it's going to be 800 horsepower, dude. That is crazy. The GT500 is already a bat out of hell, but it's going to be pretty much full carbon. I shouldn't really look at the specs again, but that's suspension work.

I'm pretty sure, yeah, it's the same drivetrain, I believe, that's in the GT500. So the same 5.2 supercharged V8, except they're splitting it. It's an eight-speed DCT, except they're splitting it up. So the transaxle or the transmission is going to be at the rear of the car. So it'll be like the, I think some old Corvettes have what they call a torque tube. So I think the trans axle is in the back and then the engine's in the front. So it's balanced them out a little bit more.

Do ZR1s have that?

I'm not sure.

I know the Scrap Life Garage guys, they were working on a ZR1 and it had one of those, you know, the torque tube or whatever it's called. So it's so interesting to see that. I don't know. I've never seen one of those until like, you know, in the last year. And I'm like, oh, that's different. But now I'm really, really excited for that car. I would love to see them put a V8 and a Ford GT. That one broke my heart.

It did. I have that on my list here for the questions at the end there. I'm assuming that it's a very capable track machine. I've never seen this current gen. I've seen a couple that I was at a Mecham auction and they had them there. I've never seen one on the street or...

Oh, you haven't seen the gray one we have here locally? It's always at Medina.

Is it really?

Yeah, he parks right in front of Mark's garage.

Oh, okay. Maybe I have seen that one.

Yeah, I almost hit him on accident the other day.

That'd be a really bad idea.

I was trying to do rollers while driving again. But that's a really wide car. Dude, that's a super wide car. Holy s***. If you look at the new Ford GT, it is super wide. Or at least it looks like it. So you kind of said you don't want to mod this GT500, at least for now.

So for people listening, I do all of this stuff. So I have four kids and my wife Mallory. My dad is involved. We've been car stuff, motor stuff, motor sports, go, go, go. We hardly are ever seeing one. That's why I only ever see you guys maybe once or twice a year when we're rallying. We're just going all the time. So my wife is great. She loves this stuff. She has her own car. We run rallies together. She's by my side all the time. My kids are starting to get into it. You met Rowan the other day. I promised her that I wouldn't. After two engines in the orange car, it was a hard sell for me to just be like, all right, now I'm going to pull the blower. I'm going to send it to Jokers. I'm going to do this. I'm going to turn it way up to 1200 horse. That was a thing I'm trying to shy away from right now.

Which is fair. So actually, I got a ride along with Gary Greco down in Chicago, who's also a big rally guy with us. And he's done a million Crown rallies, I'm pretty sure. And he took me for a ride in his, at the Atlanta Motorsport, Atlanta Motorsports Park track. And that was amazing. Even for a stock car, I shouldn't say even, because it's still 760 horsepower. I feel like it's hard to enjoy a sub four-figure car in this social media climate. I mean, do you feel like you're kind of always wanting to go up to a thousand with a Durango or not really?

No, not really. It's way too big to be pushing that kind of power.

Yeah, a truck like that, that would freak me out a little bit. There's all kinds of other factors. Now you're rolling over and hitting something. Yeah, that wouldn't, that would freak me out.

But I feel like nowadays, like it's with social media, I feel like some people find it hard to enjoy what they actually have. Like your Beamer is like 450-ish wheel.

Yeah, I'd say a little bit less than that probably.

That thing was a freaking blast. But then you look at Instagram, oh, this guy's doing 700 horsepower on an M2 or whatever. Stay tuned for the next SwapnKeys. But it's, I don't know. I feel like 760 is still a lot to handle.

And it depends on the car too, because some people find older cars just being just underpowered, not enough to do what they want on a track. But when you get usable power, like 760, you were probably doing, you got 10 seconds on me at Road America on the rally, and it's because you have more power, and you're just like, it's usable power, and it wasn't slowing you down or anything. And then Mark got what, another 10 seconds on you?

Yeah, so double the horsepower, and he's pulling 230 on Road America, and then I was getting 240.

Yeah, and I got a 255.

I thought Mark got 228, or was that what he was on track to do?

That might have been his theoretical time too.

He was so mad. If you took the best time from all his segments, then his theoretical best was like a 228.

Yeah, so my theoretical was a 237. So it would be on par, right? So it dropped a few seconds down from there.

I was talking to Caleb Eisenberger, who we are going to have on this podcast in the near future. Wait till you hear what he's doing with his Corvette builds. It's going to be ridiculous. But I was talking to him, because he has a lot of experience throughout America. He'd watch stuff there all the time. He almost got a GT3 or whatever. That didn't work out. He was just like, never mind, because the 0-1 is cooler. But anyways, I told him the times that Mark was putting down and what he was driving. He's like, holy s***, that dude can drive. Because I think he said the fastest front of the pack Cup cars are doing 207 or something like that. Yeah, I'll have to look at what he said. But it's like Mark can drive, dude. I'm surprised they put him in the beginner category.

Well, he's got 50 plus track days.

He did the math.

Oh, 60. And he's been doing it for years at several tracks. And with cars of similar levels, I think he's raced Ferraris. He's done his Mustang. And he's done other events.

He has a couple Lambos, too, that I never see come out of the garage.

He tracks the s*** out of that Perfomante, though. He told me about Sun of Times. He did on that. And yeah, it's impressive. So the fact that you were really close to your theoretical also speaks to your driving capability, too. I mean, you were, what did you say, 237?

237 on a theoretical, yeah.

And then what did you actually get?

240.54.

So to be only three seconds behind your theoretical, especially on your first time at Road America and not a ton of track days under your belt.

No, only while rallying.

And you got other people on the track where you got to get point buys and all this.

That's what I think mostly slows you down, and that might have been part of Mark's problem, although I'm pretty sure he got a few times where he was able to get out and kind of get ahead of the pack.

Yeah, he was close enough to his theoretical best where he was only slowed down a couple times. So if he didn't get those couple slowdowns, he would have hit sub-230s.

Right.

Yeah, which is just nuts. You were passing the new GT3s too, right?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

I was passing a lot of stuff. I would say, yeah, there was a lot of things. But again, you don't know what's driver skill either. So I would like to think that I love to drive. I've been behind the wheel ever since I turned. Well, before, even when I was 14, I actually crashed a minivan. But we can talk about it another time. Anyway, I like to think that I know what I'm doing. And for me, I was testing out stuff. So even with all the horsepower, braking is huge there, right? So if you're braking way too early, you're slowing yourself way down. One thing great about the Gt500 is 16.5-inch rotors on the front, giant Brembo brakes, two-piece rotors. Like, I'm coming in to corners and I'm braking at, you know, I'm not even, I'm getting real close to that front, going 140 miles an hour and braking down to 80 right away and then coming in around the corner and then trying to power out of the apex. And so much so that I'm testing my abilities where I went off the track in front of AJ. It felt like a real asshat doing that, but I'm sure he was like, who is this kid? First time I ever met him. I go into the grass, come back out, but I did not do that again. I was testing my braking.

You went into the grass?

Oh, yeah. I went over the Rumble Strip and into the grass, probably about a full car length. It was all still seamless, came back around and got back on the track, no problem. But it was right in front of him.

Yeah, that's OK. I know about going into the grass, too.

Yeah, I have a great photo on his first ever rally, which was back when I was...

Stance Out.

Team Stance Out back in the day, dude. It was a two day rally down to a drag strip. And I have a shot of him going into the track.

I was doing... They told me I could go do donuts on the track. So I'm like, it's a small track, too, you know, because it's just a... I think it was an eighth mile track.

Yeah, it's just two lanes.

Eight mile track, two lanes, real skinny. And I'm like, okay, well, I guess this is the best spot. So I just started doing donuts. And I think I just, like, on my last donut, I just dipped down into the grass and that was it. Then I'm like, okay, we're done. I don't need to end up in the ditch.

That's gotta be rough on a drag. Was it prepped surface, all that stuff, too?

Oh, I went down to where there was no problem.

Yeah, that was a really chill track. I think it was Hawkeye Downs, I think it was. Small little track, middle of nowhere. But any track we can get nowadays, man, because they're all shutting down. It's such a bummer. But yeah, speaking of going off, we had somebody go off on our rally. Somebody who ate six sandwiches.

Oh, we don't have to talk about that. What I actually want to know is because you went from a Gt to a Gt500, did some of that skill translate over? Did it feel like a Gt, or did it feel like a whole new car?

No, it's a totally different monster. And that's kind of what we talk about. Mark, his first, or one of his first track cars, was that 2005 Mustang he's got still in there. And that thing is, that's a solid rear axle. So you start off with some, so my orange car is way more raw. It's not nearly as refined as the Gt500 is. It just feels different. Suspension's different. If I hit it too much, it's spinning loose. I'm going all over the place. So I think maybe driving something like that helps you hone your skills a little bit. But if you start off with something that basically drives itself, it's hard to get that, learn what you can and can't do. So then maybe that's part of what helps Mark be great at what he's doing. That and I think seat time is a huge deal. I mean, just the more time you're there, the more things, like I said, I was testing things out. I was seeing, okay, I'm going to brake a little bit sooner next time so I don't end up in the grass. And so I don't know. It's just different. That one is a manual, too, so that's hard to compare because I'm having to work the clutch at the same time, know what gears to come out in, all that stuff. The Gt500 just does it for you. I thought about playing with the paddle shifters at all, but it's supposed to just know what it's doing. So...

Yeah, I had a totally different experience because I was driving manuals, so, you know, I'm thinking about what gear I need to be in, you know, for the straights and for the turns. And I was lucky enough to have an instructor who was driving a 2005 M3, so we were, you know, very similar cars. So he was like, you know, be in third here, be in fourth on the straight, you know, like, you know, shift here, like, brake now, like, you know, just really helpful tips. And it helped me get sub three minutes at Road America. I would love to drive an automatic. I've never driven like a performance automatic, like the 10-speed DCT that is built for the Gt500 for the purpose of tracking it.

No, it's an eight-speed in the Gt500, right?

Seven.

Oh, seven.

Yeah, eight in the GTD.

That's right. And then 10-speed in the five-ohs, the new five-ohs.

Yep, but those are a normal torque converter, automatic transmission. And I've heard, actually I've heard, if you want to track a Mustang of that caliber, you want, or you're going to turn up the power, you want a 6R80, so the previous generation of transmission. I've heard the 10s can get a little, once you start to turn up the horsepower, they can be a little unreliable.

Seems to work for Mike. Mike's enjoying it.

And then, so like, I break my car, right? I've done it twice now. And then I see Mike, he's got boost turn way up. He's hitting nitrous. Like, he's just beating the hell out of that car. I'm like, why is my car blowing up?

Do you think because you went the low route with, you know, your pricing and budgeting?

Well, I didn't. That was in the beginning. And it was never really on engine components. So the engine that was in there this last time, I sourced a short block from Dan Shonek, who's like the Ford GT guru in Minnesota, if not the entire United States. I mean, he helps guys restore their cars. If they've got wrecked ones, he'll fix them. He has like molds right from Ford to do parts for those cars. So he builds cars. He's been racing. He was on, I think, sponsored by Procharger at one point in time. So I had my short block came from him, fully built, built by MMR. I mean, it was great. I had help from Moe's putting it together. I had tuned by Casey Whitmer, if there's any Ford guys out there listening. He's like our local resident Ford tuner guy around here. So everything was great, but both times I was in Iowa, on my way to this event, and not just like in your city hotspots. This was down like in the middle of nowhere Iowa. And so I don't know if each time I got into some bad gas or what. If I just was trying to push it, and it was some nasty 91 or maybe people don't buy 91 down there ever. So it's like a water in it. I have no idea. That was both times that happened to me.

I think, do you think Ford just sold you a dud?

Oh, I don't think so. I will still back them through and through. I mean, I was pushing that car, doing some things that, although there's plenty of people out there running high horse power, not having any issues.

Well, I guess with you sticking with Ford, it just shows how much you trust them.

Yeah, all of my other stuff has been, I've had Silverado's, I've had Dodge's, I've had all this other stuff. And I will tell you that Chrysler is my next favorite. I will give Dodge a tip of the hat.

So no Chevy, no GM for you.

I just don't, I don't like anything that they're doing. I don't like their vehicles, the styling of them I don't enjoy. I had an Equinox for a little while and my wife drove. It was one of the biggest pieces of s*** I've ever had. I had a Silverado that the wheel came off. I mean, I've had F-150s where the hub bearing, the wheel bearing goes out, and it just winds for like three or four days until I can get it fixed, you know, and you never worry about it. My Silverado wheel came straight off. Just see you later. Wheel has left the chat.

That's so funny because GM, I feel like, is Ford's closest competitor with the ZL1 Camaros and the Corvettes. Like Dodge doesn't really do cornering and it's kind of like the meme, you know, the Hellcat can go straight. Line speeds, incredibly fast. And Dodge even knows that. And that's why they don't, you know, make lighter versions or sportier versions of the Hellcats or Chargers because Ford and Chevy already dominate that market.

It makes me so sad because the Hellcat motor is such a great motor. Put it in a car that can corner. Please just beat the Ford.

They do cram it in a lot of stuff, but not anything with like a nice independent rear or anything like that. They will put it in. There's always the joke, right? They're waiting for them to put it in a minivan, like a town and country.

That will never happen. That's one of the best April Fools jokes that they've probably released just because it gets recycled every year. And people will think like, oh, it's going to happen. It's going to happen. They would never. There's no way a minivan, I don't know how many people have driven a minivan. They're not meant to do what that motor can do.

Just imagine that though, like a front wheel drive minivan with a Hellcat motor. I mean, that'd be freaking sweet.

I mean, people do that with like a Honda Odyssey. They'll put like K20s, K24s, like front wheel drive it, and they'll do burnout. It's like, I can't remember the guy's name. He lives in California. I think he had one of the most infamous videos of a minivan doing a burnout.

Well, are you talking about like the thousand horsepower one, like the maroon one or whatever it was? I know who you're talking about. He was on a TV. Oh, he was on a, what was it? The TV show, Fastest Car.

Yeah, Netflix. Yeah, they went against like supercars or whatever.

Yeah.

Yeah, I saw that one with that guy. That was the one I was thinking of when you were saying all that. Yeah.

But like, could you imagine if you just could show up to Dodge and be like, I want that like off the showroom floor. Like that'd be insane.

Yeah.

It is a purpose-built machine.

What purpose?

To do burnouts in a minivan.

I guess that's fair. Get the kids. Yeah, just peel off.

Plus, it would be great because we have four kids, so we're always late to stuff. So it would be nice if we could throw them in the van and just go.

Durango.

Yeah, I know. She really, really likes her excursion. My wife drives a 7.3 diesel excursion and absolutely loves it. Yeah. I mean, it leaks oil. It smokes. It's loud. It goes to, we show up to Hudson where all the moms are driving, you know, brand new Tahoe's and she comes barreling in with her big pig and it's just smoking and loud. It's a lot of fun. I enjoy it.

You guys are legit car enthusiasts. Like I've ever since you guys ride with me, like you guys are freaking awesome because you guys also have a, your wife has a pro charged Mustang as well.

Yep.

And it's like, and then you got a barn full of awesome stuff. I mean, I think one of my favorite cars is that Ford McLaren that you have.

Yep.

Yeah.

So Bruce McLaren race for Ford, same family that's now doing the super cars, but they played around. So one of their more famous ones, there's an 80, again, I don't know this for sure, but I think it's a 1980. Yeah, I know. I don't have that one written down. 1980 McLaren Mustang that they made with a 2.3 turbo in it. This was right as they were developing the SVO. And from what I read is SVO didn't really want to share the spotlight with McLaren. So they kind of killed that car and then they developed their SVO. But he also did in... So I have an 86 ASC McLaren, so America Sunroof Company. They would take a Capri from Ford and they would send it to American Sunroof where they would do some modification to it. It got side skirts and some other stuff. And then McLaren would, I think they picked different springs and things like that. I heard that they have a cam in them, but I don't know for sure if that's ever been verified by anybody. But yeah, so they did a development with Ford for a few cars there for a little while. But yeah, so what I have is a 1986 AST McLaren Coupe. It is car number 007 of 115 made that year. So then if you figure in color, combination, all that kind of stuff, that brings that number down a little bit.

Yeah, and it's white and orange, right?

Yes, yeah.

Yeah, that was a freaking sweet car. He was just showing me around his place. I think it was like two years ago now. I'm just asking, what's under that cover? What's under that cover? And he's like, oh, I got a McLaren under there.

I love telling people, you want to check out my McLaren? And I show them this thing and they're like, that's a Fox Body Mustang. What are you talking about?

Yeah, that's got to be actually one of my favorite partnerships is the McLaren Fox Body.

Yes.

It's just so funny, so ridiculous.

Right?

A car with 200 horsepower.

Which is even crazier when you go like what fast forward like when did the F1 come out? Like 10, 15 years later, you get the McLaren F1, which was the fastest production car in the world at the time. And it's like, huh, look at that Fox Body.

Well, I'm sure it takes a few years of R&D to go from one step to the next.

Just goes to show how fast life moves if you are a car developer.

Although I do remember McLaren breaking down quite a bit this weekend, but you know.

Oh, yeah. Well, one of them, which surprisingly was the newer one, not the, you know, MP4. I feel like the MP4 is the one that gets so much s*** like for being, you know, the first model that McLaren put out that's like mass produced. So obviously comes with a lot of issues. But that one, that one made was pretty stout.

So under rally, there was two McLarens, the MP412. So that was actually the last year they were produced. So he had a 2013 one. So I would hope that they had all the kinks worked out by then. And that one was apparently making like 800 wheel is what he told me. However, the McLaren GT was with us, which we worked on in a hotel parking lot. That one was making 1100 on race gas because that McLaren GT is apparently, they have the 720S motor and they're not the 570, the 720S motor, which he had on stage three, which means upgraded turbos and all that friggin stuff. So it's like makes 850, 900 on pump gas. So, but yeah, I think the coil pack went out or something like that.

Yeah.

Which I mean, after a track day, it doesn't surprise me. Like he was beating on that car.

Oh yeah, it's a highly, it's a modified car problem, right? This is what I was trying to get away with my orange car. You got, you're taking something that came stock and when they, when Ford puts them out or whoever, when a company puts them out, they don't, they don't go, okay, what's the most I can squeeze out of this? It's what's the most I can squeeze out of this and make it reliable? They're like, sure, I could, they could put out five hours with a thousand horsepower. But then when everybody's coming back two months later going, hey, my car blew up, then it doesn't really, that doesn't work out for them. So that's, that's one of the things when you start playing with things, which is why we get back to that whole thing with my car. I'm going to try and leave it alone for a little while. A few little mods. I'm sure eventually I'll get there.

But you could do a lot of things before you even start dabbling with power, I'd imagine, though, right?

It's a well, then we're going to go back to, we'll circle back to where we talk about driver skill and all that stuff. You get, you get some people that just don't know what the hell they're doing. Like that's, that's going to happen. So, but I'll get in a car with even 800 horsepower and I drive it for a good day. And I'm like, all right, now I know how the car handles. I'm feeling it. I know where its limitations are. Now I'm like, it needs more. So I think that's where you get a lot of the problems. And maybe some people are seeing people on Instagram and say, wow, that guy's getting that much. I want more than that. For me, I just get bored. You know what I mean? You're getting to where you're like, okay, I've got this pedal crammed to the floor. It's time to crank it up a little bit.

I think we've talked about this too before. A lot of the times, we're not really pushing our vehicles to their limits. You know, on street driving, if you take it to Road America, you're going to find yourself coming up short. And then that's where you're like, I need more practice than more mods. And I think that's where people start asking like, you know, like, oh, how'd you get so good? Like, I'm making more power, but you're faster than me. That's like, you know, if you see Miata behind you, it's because they have way more seat time in half the horsepower, but they're gonna be able to stay on you the entire time because of practice, not because they threw more money at the car.

Okay, but let's get something clear. If you had a Miata on your a** at Road America, and you're in a fricking Gt500, I think you gotta sell the car and pick up a different hobby.

I'm gonna get a little pissed off for sure.

You're like, I need more money.

I don't care how much seat time.

Obviously, I can't get away from this Miata.

Well, did you see when they were telling us about that all on the track, they kept busting on the Miata and the Honda FITS, which there was a group of Honda FITS out there too, which was amazing.

They were cooking too. They were like, they would blow by me, and I'm like, that doesn't make sense.

Well, there's that kid that was in the red Gt500 that was there, and he was blown by me. I assumed that he had more horsepower when I got off the track, and I was like, hey man, is that stock? And he's like, yeah, absolutely. He was pulling same track times as Mark. And he was fricking hauling it.

Yeah, see, that's what I mean. I feel like a lot of people start building out their cars, and they're not really experiencing the full package. Take it to a track, take it to a drag strip, or a road course, autocross. You'll soon realize you have so much more to learn from your car.

It's crazy. And the other thing, was the other Gt500 on Cup 2 still though?

No, it was PS4s.

PS4s, really? So that's even crazier, because that's the other thing. When you switch from tire to tire, you could probably pick up on a big track like that, you probably could pick up a second or two.

Mark was thinking that every time you go up in tire, you should get about four seconds.

He was going through some of those corners twice the speed that I could go in the corners. He was doing them at 90 miles an hour, I was doing them at 45. Some of them he could even do like two and a half times the speed that I could throw at it.

And my PS4s were squealing when I was going through.

I was squealing too.

Yeah, they were definitely, I'm assuming those Cup 2Rs were just like glue.

They're basically slicks.

It was so hilarious when he got off the track, like the last session, we're looking at his tires, like his tires started folding in on themselves because they were toast, they were done, dude. So then when we were driving back through the rain, they were like, yeah, we're going to have to stop. We're going to stop in this city.

Well, we woke up the next morning too and it was still sprinkling, but they missed and made it out of there. I think they messed it up.

Well, that was a lot better than what we were driving through at the time.

Right.

Just a torrential downpour.

Were you getting any, I was getting some hydroplaning going on every now and again.

He said he could feel it, but I mean, like I'm the one driving. So I was like, I'm good.

Once or twice we hit like some standing water.

A huge puddle, yeah.

What are you running for tire size on the front rear?

Front is a two, I want to say 255.

Okay.

And then 265 in the rear.

Yes, that's almost Hellcat size tires.

Almost.

Almost. Yeah. So yeah, that was every single fricking time we come back from a rally. There's a torrential downpour in Wisconsin. Like last year I was with Chaz in the C7 Corvette. And like, he's like, yeah, we lost contact on all four tires a number of times.

Yep.

Yeah. And then me and Mark, we were in the Gt500 on Cup 2s on a rally last year too. Yeah. Lost contact on all fours. But I know some rallyers, what they'll do is they'll run something like extreme contacts up front. So like, you know, what's that? The equivalent of a PS4, I think. And then, you know, like a race tire in the back, like a Cup 2 or whatever, and that gets them by. So in case they do hit some rain, like at least you have your front control.

But well, I've that doesn't always work out either. I had a my 93 Cobra as I was cruising down one time, just barely sprinkling drag radials on the rear. And all of a sudden it just went shimmy a little bit shimmy again. I'm like, oh, that feels weird. Next thing I know, I'm spinning around on a road with my daughter in the passenger seat. Oh, yeah. Scared of living hell out of me. So I went home and those tires went right in the garbage.

So well, you were just like driving home.

Yeah.

As a daily.

Well, we went to a car show. Yeah, well, they were drag radials are meant to be on the street and then the strip. Right. That's what they're for.

They're barely DOT legal. They put like one line in it and they're like legal. You got rain protection in there.

They're what came on the car. So I had them on there and I was like, no big deal. We went, it was sunny. It was actually sunny while it was raining. It was one of those weird, just like gray cloud popped out of nowhere. And so that's where I got that. I was like, no, that's that's not going to work out.

Yeah, I did the all wheel drive in the Durango. I got drag radials. I would never if the road's wet, I would never. I had just picked up the car. It went to the dyno and we were coming back and we hit like the smallest bit of rain. And it felt like I was on ice. It's crazy. All wheel drive, even with all wheel drive, it felt like I was on ice.

It doesn't matter how much power or how many wheels you got spinning. When you get on top of the water, it's all like glass. It doesn't matter.

And I think my mechanic, he had borrowed it one time and it just started raining that night. And he had to pull off under a bridge and wait out the storm because he was literally like, I can't even go like 10 miles an hour down the road. It's so sketchy.

Yeah, dude. I was driving Eric's GTR. I want to say it was last year and he had Toyo RRs on the back, which again, same deal, like no tread. And I just barely touched the throttle and it was like lightly sprinkling and it just got squirrely. You know, all wheel drive GTR. It's like, are you freaking kidding me, dude? Yeah.

Tires are really important for what you're doing. I would never drive with them on anywhere just because of the tread wear rating. It's like 100. I get like 3000 miles with those tires and then they'd be donezo.

Yeah, what does Michelin say? You can get like 20 out of them or something. That's all bull. You're going to get 5000 miles on PS4s.

Oh, I've never hit 20,000.

I hit 30,000 in mine. You saw how bald they were though.

They were bald. I think you were about showing wires too.

I was just about it. I was through all the wear bars and then I also at one point, they were also over inflated.

Oh yeah.

That was the sketch. Dude, I am surprised that those tires weren't worse. Because by 30,000 miles out of those fricking things, I mean, I...

Well, your front wheel drive, so you don't really lose a whole lot of traction with the worst tire that it gets because all the weight is on the front and it just keeps the traction a lot better than rear wheel drive cars when they start running out of tire wear. Then you start noticing a really like decrease in performance. So you gotta change them after like 15,000, maybe even 10,000 if you're doing burnouts.

Well, yeah, if you drive it, yeah, doing that, like that track, I'm sure I took a lot of life off my tires this weekend, and they were brand new when we set out. So, yeah, I don't know, but I did a lot of like trying to figure out what was the best tire. There's the only one you're gonna get that's all around track and street tire in case you get caught in the rain is gonna be your Pilot Sport 4S.

I 100% agree with that. I love Pilot Sports.

They've got to be like the best tire right now. Like as an all around tire for performance vehicles, they've got to be probably one of the best. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about the rest of your collection though, because it's been a while since I've seen it, so give me a collection update.

Sure, it changes as I go. It's been a long time since I bought other than this car here. So I started off into cars when I was 16. My first car was an 86 Mercury Cougar, and then I've just kind of always been into cars. When I was in high school, my friends would wreck their cars or something. I bought several cars from my friends where they would hit them up and then their parents would get rid of them or whatever, so I bought a lot of $400 cars and switched out fenders and stuff. I had a lot of Rangers, Ford Rangers I could work on. I could pull engines out of them, transmissions, swap them around, no problem. And then I was really, really wanted a Fox Body Mustang, like bad, and I couldn't. That wasn't something that I was going to do. As a 16-year-old, I couldn't afford it. That was back when they were new-ish. So I have a Honda Accord. I have several of these cars to kind of get through. I get another Ranger. I'm going to work. Well, I finally get to where I can start collecting cars. So I buy myself a 90 GT that had a rebuilt title from a friend of mine. He had rebuilt the whole car. It was like, I think it was a theft recovery that somebody pulled the drivetrain out of or something. So he put a new drivetrain in. I got that car. I went to go put... Now, this is again, young, dumb kid. I'm a 90s kid going to put 12-inch subwoofers in the trunk of my Fox Body Mustang because I'm cool. I want to be Vanilla Ice, right? So I put the subs in there, and I'm going to through the main boot of where the wiring harness comes through. And I shouldn't even tell this story because people are going to be so pissed off at me. I grab my drill and a drill bit, and I just want to poke through the rubber. So I go to run the drill bit through, and it grabs and it runs right through the middle of like a 64-wire wiring harness, right down the center of it. So I had this car for maybe a week, and then it got parked. The car sat for 12 years until I was finally able to get it back up and going again. I swapped out the harness, I pulled the dash, I had to replace the tank because it was solid rust. Got the car back and going again, and that was my first real Fox Body car that I had. I still have that car. It's set up like a 93 Cobra. It has a lot of the same looks. That car will be for sale soon here. It's going to be hard to let it go. But since then, I started collecting more Fox Bodies. So I bought... I have 393 Cobras. One is a Teal car, which is the most sought after. That car is... My Teal car is one of 800 Teal cars made with gray leather. And then I have a red gray leather car, which is 1,007 cars made. And then I have a red car with black cloth, which was only 362 made. We have a 1999 Saleen Cobra that was 12 made. That's the car my dad drives a lot. So 12 in a convertible. There was 20 total made, but eight of them were coupes. I have a 1995 Saleen S351 convertible that was 126 total, 84 coupes and 42 convertibles. That is a... I don't know if you guys know what an S351 is, but that is a car that went to Saleen. He pulled out the 302. Actually, he might have started as V6 cars. But anyway, he put a 351 in it, which was pretty cool for back then, because the only thing you could get in a Mustang otherwise was the 302. I have my 86 McLaren. I've got a 69 Lincoln Continental Mark III that has a 429 in it. That's just a two-door. I didn't know you had that one. Yeah, I call it the shelf, because it's underneath on the lift, and it's back there, and it's got stuff piled on it. That one needs the power steering pumps out in it, so I don't drive it a lot, and those things are pretty notorious for the windows not working. It has some electrical things right now. I think I'm going to get rid of that car, too. My dad wants me to get rid of it, because he says it takes up the space of two more cars.

That's a big car. How long is that car?

I don't know. It's probably a good... It's as long as my truck. I would say 16, 17 feet. And that's only a two-door. The four-door one is even worse than that, which is what I want. I want a suicide Lincoln real bad. But then those went through the roof, too, so they're hard to get a hold of. I have another 90 Mustang that has a 347 stroker in it. That car is being worked on right now. It's got some brake issues, things like that. That one I'm probably going to get rid of, too. I got the taste of this new... So Fox Body guy, no cupholders. My other car seemed like it was always broken. I was having charging issues, things that would be on the way to car shows, and I'd have to pull over, and things were happening. So that's when I got my 2015. That was my first jump into a mod motor, newer Mustang. I actually put a post on the Fox Body page and said, hey, I finally got cupholders. It only cost me 25 grand. So then I haven't really looked back. So I have my Foxes that are what I would consider collector cars, some Salines, things like that. Those are kind of just investments at this point. I'd like to get them out to shows and stuff when I can, but I'm going to thin down the herd and kind of just go to this newer stuff is where I'm really enjoying. As I'm getting into more of this supercar territory and enjoying driving that stuff, I'd like to maybe unload the collection and get rid of, get a GTD when they come out.

Dude, I don't know. I was talking about this about the GTD to Mark as well, because Mark is in that category of people that could justify it. He could get on the list. He's a big Ford guy. He was the first person I thought about when the GTD came out. But I asked him, do you think this car is worth 300k? He's like, no. Maybe like 200, but 300k is a stretch for everything you get. I feel like there's a lot of people that are just waiting to see what happens, because if that thing does get some titles, some serious numbers under its belt, like ring times and all that, it might make sense. But they're only making like what, 5,000, I think, is what I heard.

Yeah, it's going to be limited. I went on the Ford website when I was looking at some stuff today, and you could apply to get on the list to maybe get one, so maybe they'll see what they have for interest in it before they finalize that number.

Yeah, it could be like the Hellcats where they were planning to make 10 or 15,000 and that's how many get stolen every year now. So, I don't know. So then, do we miss anything on your list?

No, I have some other projects in the works. I have an 89 or maybe it's a 90. I have a Bronco II that I really like. It's a two-wheel drive. I want to lower it, put a V8 in it, drive that around. I have a Turbo Coupe that runs and drives, but I don't have a title for it. You're a wonderful state over here. I've tried to go to the DMV. The guy who owns the car, he tried to apply for a lost title, but he has to have the registration card in order to do it. So I tried to go there. Him and I went there together. I'm begging them. I'm like, please, I just need a replacement title for this. And they were like, no, unless you have that little piece of paper that goes in the glove box that any mouse could eat or anybody could lose, you don't get to do that. So I said, well, I tell you what, if I put the plate on the car and I go rob a bank, I bet you'll be able to figure out who owns the car then. So they didn't think that was very funny.

Did you actually say that?

Yeah, I did. Right to the lady. Well, you know how wonderful the people at the DMV are.

I feel like it depends on the DMV.

It is true. They've gotten better now.

You can do everything online, too. Or like a lot of things online. Like some people are like, oh, I had to go wait at the DMV for three hours. They'll post it on Facebook. And then somebody will be like, dude, you could have done that online. What, it would have taken you 10 minutes. So it's kind of funny to see. They're finally catching up. They're finally becoming modern, thankfully. Some of them.

All those sad people without a job. Yeah. So anyway, I have this turbo coupe that I don't know what to do with. I would like to put a 2.3 EcoBoost set up in it just to keep it a 2.3 four cylinder. And I have a lot of parts cars. I started off, I mean, I have two shipping containers full of parts. I have a lot of stuff. If you're a Fox Body guy, get a hold of me. I can hook you up with what you need. And most of the local Mustang guys kind of know that. There's me and there's another guy on the other side of the city. He's Lee. He's got you covered in anything you need, Fox Body.

So what's the total number of like 80% or more complete cars? Because I'm sure you have a bunch of like weird stuff.

Yeah, so I was probably in that 10 to 13 range of cars that could potentially be on the road with a good few weekends of work. Yeah, I get made fun of a lot for all that stuff. I've had the city, my neighbors call on me. And, you know, because some of them sit outside, I have my parts cars there. So they called on me and I had the guy from the county call me and he said, hey, you got all these junk cars, you got these junk cars, you need to get these junk cars. He said about four times and I stopped him. I was like, hey, to you, they might be junk cars. To me, they're collectors, they're parts, they're worth money. I paid for them. I see a market, I think, that needs to be filled. I'm trying to do this. I'm saving these cars. And he goes, nope, no, you're right. I shouldn't be calling them junk cars. I apologize. And he said, you just, you can't have these unregistered vehicles. He switched it up after that. You could tell he didn't want to make the phone call, but he had to. And so I bought instead, I now have two giant shipping containers that say China shipping, and they're all rusty. So I have them sitting in my yard now where I keep a lot of cars and parts. I built a little box to keep everything in.

So this is your backyard, though, right? Yeah. So why is it you're not in an HOA either?

No, I have two acres kind of in the woods, sort of, but in town still. And I have just the I have just one backyard neighbor. I think that doesn't enjoy my collection, although he is an old Dodge truck out there now. So I haven't heard from him in a little while.

So maybe he gave up or you got to call the city on him.

No, I'm not that guy. Dude, you paid you pay your taxes. You bought that place. That's your you do what you want, man. I got my neighbor next door as a modus grass in like five or six years.

Yeah, but call the city on him.

It's such a dangerous game to play, though, because like if you start like it turns into this game of like chicken like right, they start nitpicking at each other. It's like you don't want to start that game. No, it's like mind your own business. This is something that's actually like really annoying. Like that's a genuine problem. But you're just car sitting on the lot. They don't like the stink. It's like he just started like a pig farm right next to you.

And by no means think that like I have a, it looks like when you drive past a really bad trailer park and there's just random shareware, I try and keep my stuff like in order in rows. It looks like a nice organized junkyard. You know, it's not bad. I keep them and I have these containers now set up and I do plan on taking the metal from my pole shed and encapsulating the one in there. It's just not high on my priority list. So it's fair, right? I mean, it's sort of, I just, I didn't have siding on my house for like two years. I pulled the siding off. This was right before COVID. And then I wrapped the whole house in home wrap and then the pandemic hit and all this stuff and all the siding went through the roof. I had a guy lined up and everything and then he was like, oh, the materials. And then he, everybody was locked down in their houses and then things got nuts. And I just said, screw it. So I sat and sat and sat and I'm sure my neighbors really liked that one. So I just got that fixed actually here a few months ago.

Yeah. I just love how much of a Ford guy. So, okay. So when did it, when did your, and this is probably should have been a beginning of podcast question, but when did your passion for cars start?

So my dad and I bought when I was probably, I've always liked cars. I liked four wheelers, anything with an engine. I'm a very mechanical person. I tinker with stuff. I take things apart. I do all kinds of, I don't always get them back together, but I do take a lot of things apart. We, I just always liked that kind of stuff. And then when we moved, I was in Southern Illinois for five years, which by the way, don't recommend, don't go to Southern Illinois. It's not great. We come back here. I used to live in Big Lake before we went there. So I come back to the Metro, and my dad's like, hey, we're going to get into, we're going to do this car thing. We had a friend of ours that had a 69 Mach 1 Mustang, and I think my dad really thought that was cool. So we went out. He was always a Chevy guy prior to that. So then we got these two Mustangs. We bought two 69 Mach 1 Mustangs. One was an R-Code 428 Cobra Jet car, which is like one of the holy grail ones. And then the other one was like a 302 H-Code. So we had these cars and we didn't restore them. It's like a good, any good car guy gets a project and sits on it for, you know, at least two decades before they actually do anything with it. So we ended up dropping the drivetrain in the one, the R-Code car, getting it pretty much complete and getting it to a point where it needs paint. And we paid five grand for that car. And while we're doing all this work, Gone In 60 Seconds comes out, the movie. So now everybody wants a fastback Mustang, whether it's Eleanor or whatever. And so we ended up selling the car, I believe, for 30 grand. My dad's like, this is, we're just going to get rid of it. We're never going to get a fix. So we did that. Then him and I got into Harley's. So we rode bikes for probably a good five, six years. And then I started having kids. Once I had kids, you can't put them on a motorcycle with you. Those got parked. I still have them because I don't get rid of anything. I'm sure they're all rotted and s*** by now. But so then I got back into cars. So I don't know. I've just kind of always been a gear head. I remember back when you had to actually read magazines and stuff doing like popular mechanics and like all the technology and the things that are coming and cool stuff like that. I don't know. I just, I like to go fast. I like to drive cars. Just kind of been, I don't know, I guess forever is the answer to your question.

That's pretty fair. Because like for me, like I remember like my earliest like moment has to be driving the CompCube Viper on Gran Turismo. Like I always had Hot Wheels as a kid or whatever, but that's like when it just kind of like when I got Gran Turismo and I learned what video games were, you know, years after other kids, I was like, whoa, this is awesome. Because up until then, it was like, you know, Nintendo 64 I was playing Mario and Mario doesn't drive a f****** Viper. So it's like or a Mustang or anything like that. So like, yeah, Gran Turismo is what pushed me over the edge. I never got into Forza until I got an Xbox. And then I remember driving like that one Nissan, like the crazy hypercar Nissan made back in the day, like a full blown race car. But that was a crowning moment, I suppose.

I always sucked at driving video games. I can't. And back in my day, to be fair, they were a lot different. I mean, I think Cruisin USA was like the one big hot one that you could play. And that was like pixelated.

Yeah, yeah.

NASCAR's or something.

It wasn't a big joystick guy.

Exactly.

Doesn't really translate to a steering wheel. No, dude. Okay. Here's one that I kind of realized this weekend. Steering wheels can be so wildly different.

Yes.

Like, so I'm in Mark's GT500, you know, probably the same thing as yours. And it's like it's a pretty thin steering wheel.

Yep.

And then compared to like the one in the Beamer, it's like you got a big grip on it. So it's like it's just so interesting. And then like the C8 has this weird hexagon shape wheel for whatever reason. Like, I don't know, I think we've kind of just thrown out the normal circle at this point.

Well, and they all have their different. So it's a gearbox anyway. You want to look at it no matter what the steering. So all that can change to in Ford, you can change it to comfort. You can have it to be, you know, sport or whatever. You can change your steering modes. I've noticed in the GT500, if I just like if you see me do something stupid in the car, sometimes I'm just like reaching for my phone or I'm trying to grab my cup to take a drink. It's very, very touchy. You breathe on that steering wheel, it goes like right wherever you touch it. So it's some of them. You got to get kind of used to that, I think, depending on what you're driving.

I think that's a part of it. But I think the biggest thing that would have made the GT500 difficult for me to drive last year was when the roads got really bumpy like around Duluth or whatever. And it was literally just going like this, like, and that's because of the cup, too, they grip where you were ever. However, it was really funny. So Bud Zubert, I think his Instagram is like Bud's auto life. I don't know if he's really posting as much, but he had a Hellcat Redeye. And he literally had to pull over because he thought he broke his car because the road was just gripping it so hard on those Cup 2s. And he also had some loosey goosey setting as well. So it's just, yeah, it was just ridiculous.

Yeah, it's rallying your car. And I want to touch back on the racetrack stuff too. I love rallying, but it is you go from roads that can be great and they've been brand new, paved, it's awesome. There was a dirt road on this one for a very short section. Well, Jay decided to take his R8 off-roading on that section.

He put that Quattro to work.

Yeah, he did. So you never really know what you're going to run into while you're rallying. And then later you're on a brand new, paved, nice Road America setup. So yeah, it's hard to get the right tire setup to do something like that. Race suspensions are real stiff and real low, but you never know what you're going to run into when you're doing this. My orange car is actually kind of high compared to what some S550s I've seen. And I do that kind of on purpose because I never know what kind of terrain. My orange car, I'll straight up jump that one if I want to. The Gt500, I was a little more scared about where I wanted to drive it. Actually, I stared at that gravel road for a little while before I drove down it. And then AJ came up behind me. He just looked and went, nope, he turned around and left.

Really?

Yeah, he wouldn't even drive on it.

Yeah, dude, AJ's got, he's skilled at driving too. I'll have to ask him, but he's got a lot of track days under his belt.

Oh, I'm sure.

Yeah, I mean, he's just been driving for years and years and years, but freaking crazy. I didn't want to touch back, I forgot. So the route, so one of the people actually reached out to me a few months ago or whatever when I was looking for sponsors or whatever. But there's a guy, I want to say he's not too far from where you're at. And he basically like builds routes. Like he's trying to build routes for across the country. I do like a coast to coast run here sometime soon. But yeah, he puts together a lot of the route for Carmmunity. And it was a really good route.

Yeah, I enjoyed it.

Outside of, so I don't know if it was his fault or Dan's fault or whose fault it was. But one thing that happens when you're rallying is you lose signal because you're in the middle of nowhere where these beautiful roads are. Why are the beautiful roads all in the middle of nowhere? I don't know. Let's get a few cell towers. It'll be fixed. But some of the checkpoints were like, you know, 200 feet off the road or whatever, just so you can keep the map point going. So that really like that is that messes things up because then you can't get the map back and all that fun stuff. But the overall route was freaking phenomenal. It's just Google Maps is touchy. We've had issues on my rallies in the past, but I can say we never ended up on a gravel road. So that's a crowning achievement.

Yeah. Well, did you scout your routes too? I know.

Yes. Well, I think Daniel scouted his routes as well. Like you have to scout your routes. It's super important. The only time people ended up on a gravel road on my rallies because they weren't following the directions.

Of course, I've been on like River Valley Road rally. One time we had a large section of road that was missing, but it was Gretchen that was putting that one together and she apologized, but when she had scouted it, it was paved. They must have decided they were going to resurface it in between when the rally actually launched. And so I drove it. A lot of cars didn't. But again, for me, rallying, you have to do the route. There's no skipping highways. Like if you really want to, you do the full route. Otherwise, it's not the same.

I actually remember when I went to Niagara, a lot of people skipped your route.

Yeah.

And they just drove on the highway. I'm like, what the? I'm behind. I'm like, everyone's way ahead of me. But that kind of worked out in my favor because I think I ended up with a trophy that, oh wait, no, I was teammates with Mark. So we lost.

You got second, right?

No. What are you talking about? We got knocked out of the running because somebody got to go drive a GT3 RS.

Yeah, so one of the things like, so there's some conversations about me being involved with rallies in the future. We'll see what happens there. But one of the things that got me back into rallies or that made me do whiplash when I shut down Venom with Doug was you, you winning that trophy. Like I've never seen somebody so excited to win a trophy because like what I would do or what we were doing that year is we started calling more audibles. Like, you know, like live points, like, all right, if you go do this, you will get an extra 100 points or whatever. And like, I feel like rallies, you have to go, you have to make it competitive somehow.

Yeah. And that's, and Dan, if you're listening, I think that's, this one was lacking a little bit in that. There was no like bonus pictures. There was no, and I'll do, I've done Survivor once with Ruth and Phil, and they, hers are like riddles. Like she doesn't even straight up like tell you where it is. It gives you a piece of paper and you have to like, I mean, you can always Google everything if you want to do it that way. But it's basically like a little riddle you got to figure out. And that's where you know where the picture is. And then you go there and get a picture. Then you have to show people when you get to the checkpoint or we get to the end and be like, here, I got these points. Which I think you did similar stuff like that too.

Yep, I think.

And you had like challenges too, like physical challenges where we showed up and it'd be like, okay, you got to kick a soccer ball into the net from the halfway mark or from wherever.

Yeah, Niagara, we had a couple really good ones and a couple weird ones like that one. Like I know a lot of people are like, soccer has nothing to do with cars. I'm like, all right, that's fair. We'll do car, bumper, bumper cars next year.

People are whining. It was a physical challenge.

It gets you out of your car for a second, man. I'm sore from driving this weekend.

Yeah, yesterday, my back was sore. I tried like hunching over and it was like, nope, I'm literally stuck in the seated position right now. I cannot move my shoulders. My arms were exhausted. Anytime I try to stretch them, it was just so...

Yeah, my body's cooked. I went to go deadlifts today just to start working out again because it's been a couple of weeks and I only did a plate because my knees were cooked. My back is cooked from just all the driving and sitting. I'm just like, let's ease into this before I tear something again. So it's just like, yeah. But no, back to the rally point. I think very few people did it as well as us. And this is not to toot my own horn. It's just that a lot of people enjoyed the structure that we did. We had a lot of varying ways of getting points, which is why I was a little bit disappointed with the rally this year because Dan's challenges were fricking phenomenal last year.

I heard great things about 10,000 Lakes for sure.

Yeah, so have I.

Yeah, so it was amazing. He had a great movie trivia one where everybody got mad at me because these were all movies that were made before I was born. I got a few of them right, thankfully. And they were car related movies too, I believe. But yeah, so he had that. Then he had some sort of physical challenge where me and Mark had to go around the park and collect stuff. And Mark was in a boot, by the way. I think he tore an ACL or something. He tore something in his leg. So he's hobbling around. We managed to get one of the volunteer trucks to drive us around. We were using everything to our advantage. So it was amazing when we won two trophies. Apparently one of them got pulled back though, because one guy was a tenth of a second quicker on autocross, which we found out later. I found out this weekend. I was upset about that. I gave the most k****** trophy reception speech. People were just like, this guy's a lunatic. You know how I talk. But anyways, challenges are so huge for rallies. Even the people who are like, I'm not gonna do a challenge, they end up doing a challenge because they get competitive.

Well, you've got the people that not... You can't base... Well, look how many trophies Mark got. You can't base it off of whoever has the fastest car. There has to be other things in between there. The audibles that you call are cool. Just pictures of certain things. Getting there can't be all speed based. Otherwise, nobody is going to be like, okay, these guys are going to win every single time. The very first rally I ever did, a really cool guy, won in a freaking... What the hell is that little crap car that Chevy makes that make an SS? Cobalt SS. He was the winner, yes. But the way that River Valley structures their rallies is if you're there too early, you lose points. They have like a timed thing where they're like, yeah, we did that too, remember?

We added the optimal time at some point. And people were always trying to figure it out, like hey, tell me what the optimal time is.

And they will not give out their secret. And they also don't tell you where you're going. And when you get to a checkpoint, you get a card and it says, here's the next checkpoint. You have no idea where you're gonna end up. They give you a general area for driving home and stuff, but you don't know where you're going until you show up that day.

I've had people try to get me drunk the night before. I'm like, hints for the following day, I won't say who. Or bribe me or whatever. It's like, dude, I will give you $20 right now. And then I'll get you this many drinks if you make it. Tell us so we can win tomorrow. And that was my favorite part. When people get so competitive, they're like, hey, here's like six beers, buddy.

It's so funny because I went from being on a team with Mark, super competitive, and then the next rally, I've got to put on a team with Reed. And he just straight up looked at me and said, I'm not doing the challenges. Like, I'm not doing the photos, not doing anything. I'm like, okay, cool. So this year I don't have to worry about like taking photos because with Mark, it was like we were constantly like texting each other, like, you know, like, oh, did we get a picture of this, that? And Reed was just like straight up, we're not doing them.

Yeah, you know who was also really fun to rally with? We had Chase, Chigs392, who had literally off-road tires on his 392 a couple of years ago. But dude, he gets so competitive, like they're just down to have a good time, dude. Like, I just love rallying with people who are down to have a good time. So that's kind of why I'm just itching to get back in the game, especially after this year, like, the community rally was pretty good, but I think there was a little bit of wanting.

Yeah, I think a lot of people would agree.

Yeah, but I, again, I've heard great things about 10,000 Lakes, and I know Dan knows how to put on a show, so, and I'm sure with the mile, and there's just been a lot of struggles this year, and his whole trying to get Carmmunity off the ground, and all that is, I'm sure, extra stress. But it's, yeah, if you want to keep people coming back, I'm going to go because I know the challenges of, I'm sure, what it is to throw a rally, so I'm not saying like, oh, that was horrible, I'm never doing that again.

No, it was pretty good, and I think he's very receptive to feedback, and the best, he's got a lot of people in his year, and based off of how things go the next few weeks for him, I cannot say any of this stuff on air, unfortunately, but based off of how things go for the next few weeks, things might go very well, so we'll just kind of see what happens, but whatever happens rally-wise, it will definitely be a big upgrade from this year, that I can for sure promise with him, and whether or not I work collaboratively or whatever with him, I'm just here to help everybody in the community, so we'll see what happens there. Can you tell that my voice is still gone from the rally, by the way?

Oh yeah, on the way here, I was thinking, man, I think I'm a little hoarse. I'm not sure if this is going to be like, but yeah, it was rough that when we got back, we probably shouldn't have barreled through. I got to Eau Claire and I was like, I'm dying right now. Mal had to take over.

We were great, dude. Really?

So we get back at one in the morning, and I stand up out of the car, and I'm like, oh my God, thank God I got home, because I'm dizzy. I'm so weak. I'm tired. I'm exhausted. And he's like, do you want to clean out the car? I'm like, I'm not doing this right now. I'm going to bed.

I grabbed what I needed and left.

His car is still full, dude. I was like, hey, all our podcast gear is in there.

I told him, don't worry about it. I'll take care of it. But yesterday too, because we got back Tuesday morning, one in the morning, right? Yep. So I wake up Tuesday. I think I slept in until like 10, 10. And I was still in bed. I'm like, I still feel absolutely trashed.

Yesterday I tried to do absolutely nothing.

And that's what I did too. I didn't really do anything. I didn't leave the house except for to get some food. And I think I went to go shoot some guns with some friends. And that was it. And I went home. And I was like, even during that time, I was like telling my buddies, I'm so tired. I can't do it. I've never been so tired in my life. I'm just going home.

It was a big weekend. I mean, lots of the back road driving was exhausting. We did a lot of driving on day one. Road America was fricking incredible for you. I mean, you got three big sessions in. I'm just trying to piss out of the 1M, you with the Gt500. And then the third day was, I mean, it was still fairly exhausting. I mean, that Chicago traffic. I mean, especially if you're not used to it.

That's not what was the issue. I think with day three with six hours of planned driving and everybody had just tracked all day at Road America. So we were like, we're pretty good on driving. You know, I think we got our fair share of driving that weekend.

We just ditched the rally and went to Topgolf.

Exactly, like that next day should have just been like a relaxation day. Honestly, especially with how late we were getting into the hotels each night.

Getting in and out of that city is absolutely awesome either. It's no matter what time of day you run into some traffic.

Well, one thing that I brought up to Balto, and maybe I want to see if you guys agree with me here, but I kind of like a rally ending in the early afternoon.

Yes.

It gives you time to run home. You do your trophies at breakfast. I think that was one of the best, outside of some of the logistical issues I had on Niagara Falls with timing on the first two days, with the third day doing the trophies in the morning and then going to go autocross and then wrapping up the rally there. I think that was actually pretty legit. Do you guys agree?

Now that I think about the award ceremony, why didn't he just do that in the morning? There were no points to be made on Monday.

Well, he had paid for that fancy dinner rooftop. If you do that, then a lot of people are going to be like, and then they're going to skip it. Then it's going to be four of us up there.

He could have done like, we were at a really nice hotel and we could have woke up, had another at the event hall or wherever, and just finished it up right there. People could have decided, we talked about just going, well, I guess he wanted to do the Hamilton collection. He could have done the award ceremony at Hamilton.

I think that would have been a great finish at the Hamilton collection. Just do some trophies.

And then from there, set out. We talked about, oh, let's go to Topgolf. There was, I don't think...

And we would have been happy and he would have saved some coin not having to do that last dinner there. Which we could have used in the beginning hotel instead of that last dinner that we did.

Yeah, because as soon as he handed out the trophies, we were like, we're out of here.

Yeah, no, everybody was like...

We didn't stick around.

The second the trophies hit the last hands, I literally got up. All right, let's go. Like, it was super funny. But you know what the best part about rallies is though? It's the parking lot parties.

Oh yeah.

The car rallies need to have parking lot parties. Like, don't plan anything after eight. Let people do their own thing. Let's go hit the parking lot.

They can't end. Even on a big rally day, they need to end at latest seven o'clock. Like, you need to be at your hotel at seven p.m. If not, a little bit earlier. So like, my wife likes to take a shower before we go back out and like hang out. Stuff like that. So yeah, we need our time to talk about the roads of the day. B******* with each other. It's been a year since we've seen each other in some cases. We meet new people. This is the most I've ever hung out with Jay, other than that cruise we did. Jay and Matt, awesome.

They are freaking awesome.

They are in my best friends list now. They are lumberjack material. They were great.

Yeah, I really got to get to know Matt. This year, Matt Coon's photography. I actually got to know him a little bit more because last year, he was just kind of in my vicinity. This year, him and Jay, they were just a blast to be with. But here's the deal. When you have those rally dinners, you only have the six people you're sitting with at this table round. But when you have a parking lot party and everybody's around the cars or whatever or fixing McLarens in the parking lot or honking at people that are falling asleep in the parking lot corral, when you have this ability, everybody kind of has these different groups, and you can walk from group to group. Like, hey, I'm going to go talk to these guys over here. Yeah. These guys drove a freaking Pantera. It's like, I want to go get to know these guys. It's like, this guy had a single gab truck. I'm like, I don't know who that is.

Yeah, otherwise, you're driving all the time. You don't really get a chance to talk to people when you're driving.

Yeah.

So it's like that downtime is really important for interacting with the other participants.

Well, those guys are driving Fords, so I talk to them.

Yeah, you talk to them funny. But it's like, if you end up at a dinner table, you're probably going to sit with your people that you know.

Right.

We sat together. Who else? You and Sean. Yeah. Again.

We also went to other tables.

Oh, yeah, eventually. But that's because also that's like we've been rallying for years. But for a newbie, like they might not be as open to doing that.

Yeah.

And I think there's something to be said about making rallies friendly for newbs. Like the thing about Crown Rally was in the last year or two is, I think 50% of the participants were new. Not because the old participants, they don't want to go, but because they wanted to filter in some new people. And whatever pricing change and all that. There's a lot of things that go into it, but you want to have a bunch of newbs coming in. It's just more people.

Yeah, I think that this price point we were at here, this is where I like to be. I've never went on Crown. I hear amazing stories. I wanted to at some someday.

Although it's worth every penny. Yeah, I've heard that.

I just don't... So to me, if I can save... Let's say a rally is too grand. That's where I like to be. And if you think about what you get... So Jay was real sceptic. We talked to him on that cruise. I had to pay to go cruise with my friends. I'm like, yeah, but you don't... The rally coordinator provides a level of planning, accommodations, track day I take into that. That's a $500, $600 bill, a full track day, if you were going to go do that by yourself. And that's only signing up. And then you're going to be out there with a lot of other a** hats or other people you never really know. This wasn't a private event, but it was smaller groups. It really wasn't that bad.

It was a legit group, too. I think a lot of the people on the track...

Had we been there on Saturday, it would have been disappointing, I believe. They had twice the people and the rain. That would have been a nightmare.

Yeah, so it worked out in that regard. I think it rained every day except for the track day. You guys had perfect weather on the track.

And that's why I never spring for... I usually don't VIP because I'm like, that's usually another 1,000 to 1,200 extra. And I'm like, man, that buys carbon fiber parts. The way I think about it in my head, I was like, that's a set of injectors or that's this. That's how I always plan it out. And I was like, I'm still going to have a good time whether my car's getting wiped down at night or whether I get on the track for something like that. Again, if Harris has a rally in the future, you should definitely get VIP because I'm sure it's worth it. I just don't.

So here's the question, because Sean, you've done VIP on a number of my rallies. What are your thoughts? I mean, do you think there's...

Well, I really like the value. There has to be the value, right? You know, I think with yours, I got custom libraries and multiple options to choose from. Color-wise, like additional colors to choose from versus like base colors like black, white, gray. I don't know what other colors you were doing.

Which we never really ended up adhering to anyway.

Yeah, but it was just nice to know like that I could get those special colors if I really wanted to. And you know, you had a detailer that came out and he was wiping down the cars like full on like wash. Like he had a pressure washer and his own like...

A DIY pressure washer at that.

Like a 200 gallon fuel or like water tank. Like he's legit washing the cars every night. You know, you get some of those special benefits launching first.

First on track.

First on track. Yeah, there's some value.

Actually, from our perspective, because I actually was a participant this year, I never realized the full value of launching first until we left JWP. And the McLarens and Mark or whatever, they were miles ahead of us already.

I was in lead of everybody. When we stopped, we were doing rollers right out the gate. So I passed everybody right out front. I thought our launch from JWP was soft. Like that was... I'm used to like a rally goes, everybody's all adrenaline pumping. We're usually out just hauling. And I even kept being like, what's going on with Mark? Is there something wrong with him? I don't know what's going on. But he's like, I don't know.

Well, they immediately had the camera cars go out. And it's like, you know, for some people, this is the only time you're going to see them.

Yeah, that's true.

And so make sure you're getting, you know, your video, your photos, because otherwise like this is going to be the best memory like for later.

Yeah, but we would have the camera cars go out first for Venom and Whiplash as well. But after you passed the camera car, it was all hell breaking loose. I think it depends on the highway too though, because we used to launch them at Dyna Motorplex and the second you got on 494, dude, you were gone.

Yeah, I've heard, I've gone to that, out there, to that place quite a few times. I've always been told, behave yourself, so I've always tried to respect that out in that area.

Yes, basically, once you're past, once you're off 55, all hell breaks loose. So that was kind of, I don't know, man, a lot of ideas, I think we'll get a lot of feedback, and I talk to Balto a lot, we help each other, we got a good thing going, because we both had the best interests of the car community in mind, so it's really exciting to see you. 2024 is going to be a legit season. It's going to be awesome.

This year was really weird. I mean, there's a lot of weird stuff going on. It just is.

Yeah.

Cars in general, prices of things, interest rates, all of this is, yeah.

I think it's time to get all dialed in. I'm pretty stoked.

We'll see.

Shall we pop the usual three?

Yeah. So if you don't know, we like to ask our guests a few simple questions about what kind of cars they're into, and it just generally breaks down to what would you choose for a daily? A track car or a show car? Or an angel car?

With an unlimited budget.

Yeah. So I don't know. Again, I knew this question was coming, and I'm trying to prepare myself, and it's still really hard. So I got them written down here.

Our first person to have physical notes on the show, by the way.

Right, so there's a couple cars that I really, really like. So in track car, and this doesn't even make sense, but there's a Ford GT 1000 Hennessey, Ford GT out there, 1000 horsepower, twin turbo. That is like, as a car I want to drive and then see what I feel about having that as a track car or a show car. But that's like one of the ones that if I had unlimited money, it would definitely be in the collection.

So what model is that?

It's a Ford GT, so it would be like the 2006, 2005 generation of Ford GT and then Hennessey, which you guys are probably familiar with, they model all kinds of stuff. They take it and they put a twin turbo setup in it, and it makes 1000 horsepower.

So did those Ford GTs, did they come supercharged?

Those were a 5.4 supercharged, like what would have been in an F150 Lightning or something from those days, or the 2007 to 10 GT500s or 2009. But not exactly. So they were a 5.4 supercharged, but from what I understand, everything in the Ford GT is completely different. It comes off of a different shelf. It may be a 5.4, but the block is different, the heads are different, everything about them is different. Same thing with the newer one now, with the 3.5 EcoBoost, it's not like the one that's in the F-150, or the Explorer ST, it's not that. It's completely redesigned, all that stuff. Yeah, I don't know, that one just seems nasty. I've heard people drive it, and it's like, this is the car that's going to end me. So that one would be super cool.

So you're locking that in for a track car?

Nope, nope. I decided my track car is the 2020, the next gen, the latest gen of the Ford GT. I would imagine with all the, and again, I don't know what they make or what they do on the track, but I want to track a supercar, and I'm going to stay true to my Ford buddies, and I'm going to go with that. I mean, it's a million dollar car, so I don't think I'm going to have one at this point.

I thought it was $500.

When I looked up what they were selling for, like recent auction prices, they were in that $900 and up range.

Oh my god. I remember when they announced the MSRP being like $500. I'm like, that's insane.

Well, let's just pretend that MSRP even means anything these days.

Well, back in when did they announce the GT, the brand new model GT?

I think it was in 2016.

I think it first came out. You could buy it in 2017, I think. I think that's what it was, so they probably announced it a year before.

Yeah, like in 2017, $500,000 MSRP for a Ford GT. That seemed insane.

For a V6, too, a lot of people were pissed off.

There aren't a lot of cars. Yeah, I mean, Ford has been doing that a lot, but there weren't a lot of cars that have that price tag of $500,000 right off the shelf. Even Porsche's top of the line GT2s, those have $400,000, $500,000 demanding price tag. But for a Ford at the time was just crazy. But now they're at almost a mil around there.

I was looking at, it gave me like, you know how wonderful Google is. I started looking into stuff and they were giving me like the last, you know, like Meekam Auctions. One was sold on Bring It Trailer maybe. There might have been different cars I was looking at. But anyway, yeah, they were in that $900 range.

Yeah, and a big thing with those Ford GTs as well, when you bought them, I think it was like what? You had to hold on to them for like a year.

Yeah, John Cena tried to sell his like right off the bat.

Yeah, well, because he couldn't fit in it. That was basically like the thing that they were trying to get at. It's like, dude, he's a big wrestler. I think he's probably like 240, 250 pounds of lean fricking muscle. Can't see me. He just he had to sell it. And they were like, no, you're not allowed to. And I think part of that might have helped it retain value. Maybe. I don't know.

It definitely puts it in the in the news, right? People are talking about it.

Well, everybody who bought one, they know they knew was going to be a limited car.

Yeah.

You know, especially with that price tag, it's going to be limited. You know, it's like nobody especially like that was before the Vipers really took off too. But like nobody wants that to happen again, where you miss out on this collector's car.

It's not really collectors though, because they they're still making them.

Well, they'll be. But everything, even though you make it every year, they do. They're still. Everything is so mass produced. It's hard to get like these numbers. I was talking to you about here. You're not going to hardly see that again, ever again, unless they do something crazy. I mean, now you're talking about those cars are 500 when they come out. That's not for the one percenters, right? That's why they're the one percenters. There's not very many of them. So that's although now with YouTube and all these things, I think there's a lot of 16 year old kids. Yeah, they make a lot more money than I do. But yeah, you got it's got to be limited because you're not going to sell a crap ton of them anyway. But some of these I wish they would do that more like what they were supposed to do with your Durango. They need to do some more of that. Ford still does it every once in a while. When the 2015 Gt came out, they did a limited run of 1,964 GT 50 year cars. So they had special trim, all that stuff, and they only made under 2,000 of them.

Yeah, I don't hear a lot about Ford making limited production cars.

Yeah, well, I think that was one of the last ones. And then you take these GT500s into consideration. My car is, I think, less than 1,000 made of the carbon fiber track pack cars for 2021.

And then when you start talking about some of the more optioned out cars, then that's where you're kind of looking at it like there's only a limited number of these. But where the Durango is like, we're only making 3,000 of these. And it's like, well, that would have been nice if they kept that number to that low. But now they're going on for two more years. So, yeah, 2023, 2024, you can still get a Durango Hellcat.

Yep. And a class action lawsuit at that.

They should because some guys will buy that. So car collectors. And this is, like I said, I don't know the market. But for me, I'd like to think I know cars a little bit, especially stuff that's going to be rare. You go out, there's guys that will buy trucks like that. And they're going to sit with what we call or what I don't know. I'm assuming everybody calls that wrapper cars, right? They literally still have the plastic on the seat. They haven't been through dealer prep. They just came from, delivered to the dealer, to the garage and sat. Those are investments for some people. So they put that out there based off of what Dodge has told them they're going to do. And then they don't. So now you just got your investment. Not that they're still not worth what you paid for it or even over that at that point. But you go, hey, this thing's going to double, triple in value in the next 10 years. So you make that investment and now that's not going to happen.

Yeah, well, I would never put money down on a vehicle thinking like this is going to go up. Like this is an investment for me.

Some people do that though. Like there is that's a whole.

Oh, yeah. But it's like, I don't know, you are you are risky. You're better off just learning how to play poker and using that as an investment vehicle.

Which, by the way, in case you didn't hear Sean $170 in poker two weeks ago, we are sitting at a poker table. I just had to bring that up again. All right, so we got your track car.

Yep.

So what do you want to do next? Show car or daily?

I'll do show car.

Let's do daily.

Daily?

He said he wants to do show car.

Well, okay, so I'll do daily. And again, I know I'm only supposed to pick one, but I really am digging this Raptor R. It's got to be a truck for me as a daily. I collect cars. I pick up stuff. I'm towing a trailer almost constantly. Or like a newer F350 6.7 Powerstroke that's been lifted and all the cool crap added to it, all that stuff. It's got to be a truck for me, something with plenty of horsepower and torque. And I can still fit the kids in and tow a trailer. I got to take the boat to the lake. I got to do all that stuff.

Yeah, so do you think like a Raptor R is like a tow vehicle or is that more of a...

I think I'd do both. I mean, at the end of the day, it's still just the same thing that's in the GT500. It's a coyote motor with a supercharger on it. I've seen plenty of people with Gen 2 lightnings pulling things and hauling trailers and doing all that kind of stuff. And they were a performance truck, but they still, they got the same transmission in them. They've got plenty of torque and power. Should be no problem.

Okay.

All right, show car.

Show car. So I started off with 69 Mach 1 cars. I don't like cars that you see at all the car shows, and I feel like you see a lot of those. I'm getting really tired of seeing Chevelles and things like that a lot at car shows. I'm not, I like cars, but I can't get into like the 50s and all that old, old stuff that really just doesn't do it for me. But it would be, I've always liked, so a 71 Ford Torino, 429 Cobra Jet Cobra. Those are, you don't see them, they only made them for two years. I believe there was only two years, a 70 and 71 had that body style. I just like them. If it was going to be a show car, it would have to be like Concours, like every nut and bolt, you know, right. Just 100% perfectly restored or original. Something like that. Just something that's an old muscle car, but still different enough. And it's probably only going to turn to crank for Ford guys, you know. That's the other thing, too, when you get really into a niche. The Gt500 is great because it draws a lot of attention. No matter what, you go to car shows, people like The Wrap, all that kind of stuff. You have a chance to win awards. But unless you're at a Ford event with some of these other cars I have, nobody knows what the hell it is. So I know something like that.

There's somebody in your city that's building a very, very cool Ford Terino. I'll see if I... You might know who it is. Actually, you know who it is. I know who it is, yeah. Have you seen any videos?

No, I haven't. I've talked to him a handful of times. So I went to high school with his girlfriend, and her and I hung out a little bit back in the day. But I don't know him as well, except for now in the car community. But I did catch him in his Hummer EV the other day, which when I ran into him at the bar one time, he denied having, because I had talked to you about it once. Well, cat's out of the bag now. I know he's got it for sure.

Yeah, so that thing's been a project for a while, so I should probably see how it's doing.

But when you have your trackhawk stolen and your GTR is getting rebuilt.

Ah, that's the giveaway.

Yeah.

Well, sweet, man. Where can people find you?

So we are trying to launch a social media brand. Again, after talking with you, and I've got again stories for days of things, of collecting cars and picking them up in various conditions of disrepair, I've had a lot of cool stuff. I should have been videoing this stuff since for the last decade or so, but we're trying to maybe get a YouTube going. We've got Instagram and TikTok. Facebook page is GunnIt Garage with two Ns, G-U-N-N-I-T, Garage, all together. We're trying to get better at it. I've got a lot of kids that are trying to help me out with all the, you know, getting content going and all that stuff. So we switch from here. Now we're getting to the season where I switched to snowmobile content. So if you like that kind of stuff, if you're dying for horsepower content over the winter, we'll be trying to do plenty of that. We drive Fast Sleds. We like Yamahas and we do a lot of cool stuff doing that. I put 2,000 miles on my snowmobile last year. But if you want to check that stuff out, come check out our stuff.

Sweet. I'm really excited for that.

Yeah, the best part of having kids is that's free labor. You got a bunch of camera people.

I'm supposed to be the one saying out of pocket s***.

Well, they're really into it.

That's what kids are for. You get them to do chores. You pay them under minimum wage.

Mao Zedong has entered the f****** chat.

Holy s***. There's no labor laws or anything. If they're children, you own a business. They can work at any age. You don't have to pay a minimum wage. So he understands.

You've never gone through, thought about the whole purpose of having children.

I really hope your child isn't employed at her current age.

But to be fair, you're going to have put a lot of money into that child up to that point, right? So it should only be fair that they pitch back in a little bit. And that's a little bit of stuff that we've been... And my kids, they do... I mean, to do the things we do, they help out a lot. Otherwise, with all the stuff I have, I'd be working on crap constantly. So I'm like, hey, I need help doing this? Well, I get the boat ready or I do this. They're great at pitching in. My daughter's gonna be 14 in April. She's getting to the point now where... And I didn't let them have social media till as of recent, so we're trying to learn all of this together, but they're way better at it than I am. So that's the goal.

Yeah, real quick question before we introduce Sean's Instagram and all that stuff. I wanted to ask you this question like an hour ago. Given that you are a big manual guy up until this DCT Mustang that you got here, would you be disappointed if your kids in the future got automatic cars?

They will all learn how to drive on a manual transmission. I have, and again, GM guys, I'm sorry, but I do have one. I have a 96 Beretta Z26. It's a quad four with a five-speed. If I can ever get it back from my friend at his shop, but that is what I plan on teaching the kids how to drive on. It's, they're gonna learn on a manual. I don't care if you want to have an automatic later, but you will know how to drive anything and everything.

The manual education is a must then.

Yeah.

Okay.

Absolutely. There's, I like to pride myself in if it has an internal combustion engine in it, I can get in. I've driven tractors, skid loaders, front end loaders. I've driven all kinds of everything and anything. So back goes all that stuff. So I like to, you should know how to operate about anything. If you think about, if you ever got in a situation where you needed to get somewhere or get out of somewhere, let's pretend it's a Texas chainsaw massacre situation, something, you know what I mean? And you run and you get to this, you got to find a getaway car and you look down and you're like, son of a b****. No, you're going to learn how to drive. I think it makes you a better driver. You're more attentive. You learn how the engine works, how torque works, what RPMs, where they put you at, all those things. I just think it's a better way to learn. And then after that, do what you want.

I think there's a skid where you just described that perfectly where they're running from the killer. They get in the car, they go to start it up and they look down at the manual shifter. They're like, oh, f***, I'm dead.

I just want them to always be able to do, to drive anything and they get their hands on. So.

Yeah, cause you don't want to have those missed opportunities for sure. Like I've been, I pride myself on being able to just jump into anything now. You know, I might not be able to drive it well, a certain 1M, in a performance setting. But nonetheless, I could at least get into first. I didn't stall a single time this weekend, you know, outside of, you know, I forget to stop the car when we parked.

No, but being behind you guys, I could definitely tell when you were driving and when Sean was driving. But yeah, you're doing good.

I've learned, I'm out of practice. But anyways, speaking of 1Ms, where can people find you, Sean?

All right, everybody, you can find me on Instagram. Follow me there, that is at 1MN Mopar.

Yeah, I'm excited for all the California content we will see you doing in the future, but we will get that, we're not announcing nothing yet.

Oh, I was thinking, save Sean rally here next year, right? Like we gonna meet some, I was already looking like what's in between Salt Lake City, Utah, or are we all barreling out to California?

Yeah, Sean's visiting California. Yeah, that's all we're gonna announce at this moment. But nonetheless, make sure you go to minnoxide.com, sign up for the newsletter. If you want any of these Jockos, use code MINNOXIDE, save 10%. Actually, how did you like your job?

We did get it. So the sour apple is great. The watermelon hot from your car wasn't as awesome.

Yeah, personally, I'm not a fan. Actually, the watermelon is actually decent when it's cold. That sour apple is my favorite flavor. And then, I don't know, all these fun things over here. Black Cherry Vanilla is great, but I gotta plug it out here every once in a while because I like supporting brands that I like. I never wanna get to a point where I'm plugging something I don't care about. I don't really gamble, so I'm never gonna have DraftKings as a sponsor. But just something that's really cool. And they're not a sponsor, but nonetheless, worth checking out. Let's see. Follow me on Minnoxide Everything. Thank you very much for showing up, Dan.

Absolutely.

Sean, thanks for being the best co-host anybody could ask for. See y'all next time.