The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1443 - Jonathan Ward

00:00:00.000 Jonathan, you're the first man, not only the first man I've ever met who made his own leather jacket, but absolutely the first man who made his own leather jacket who's ever been on the podcast wearing that jacket.

00:00:10.000 Why, thank you so much. 0.95

00:00:11.000 It's a fucking sweet jacket, man. 0.98

00:00:13.000 I'd show you my g-string, but it's probably a little munch for this time of day. 0.99

00:00:16.000 Well, how are you functioning?

00:00:17.000 Is it like on the side?

00:00:19.000 How are you tying that one up?

00:00:20.000 Well, I prefer a center-rear yank.

00:00:22.000 So does my wife because she can just put the leash right on it and, you know, two for one. 1.00

00:00:27.000 When did you get into making leather stuff?

00:00:30.000 Is that a recent thing?

00:00:31.000 About three years ago.

00:00:33.000 But, I mean, Joe, my whole life I've just been a rampant fan of craftsmanship.

00:00:38.000 And I've done various deep dives throughout my life into, like, all sorts of different art forms.

00:00:42.000 In fact, the reason automotive design became my thing and turned into a business was because my hobbies of...

00:00:50.000 Painting and sculpting and finished carpentry, woodwork and all these different things.

00:00:55.000 If you think about it, transportation is like this incredibly communicable, extroverted combination of so many different art forms.

00:01:02.000 Yeah.

00:01:03.000 So I've been also in my travels in the last 10 years or so, or maybe five, I've really been focusing on Always have been focusing on like getting immersed in that local culture.

00:01:16.000 But now I've stepped that up a notch and I'm doing like these deep dive travels into different art forms of different cultures.

00:01:23.000 So leather craft, I've been visiting tanneries and studying for masters in the U.S. and in Morocco and Mexico.

00:01:31.000 I just got back last week from Mexico doing it.

00:01:34.000 Really?

00:01:35.000 Yeah, it's super fun.

00:01:36.000 And it's zen because for me now at this point, the scale of the shop is such that I'm actually doing a disservice if I'm out there actually building your car, right?

00:01:45.000 Because that's what I used to do.

00:01:46.000 I'd weld it and shape it and I was on the floor.

00:01:49.000 But at our size, I'm not. 0.98

00:01:51.000 And our fill rates, as you recall, suck.

00:01:54.000 It takes forever for us to finish anything.

00:01:56.000 And there's something about... 0.96

00:01:59.000 Just literally putting on your podcast, going in my spare bedroom at home, because my son's off at college, so the second his ass was out of there, it was like, leather studio? 0.97

00:02:09.000 And I totally built that sucker out with really good audio and lighting and stuff.

00:02:13.000 So being able to come from sketch to a finished good within a matter of weeks, 100% myself, independent of everything, I needed that.

00:02:22.000 I really kind of felt I was losing that tactile craft connection at work.

00:02:27.000 Well, what you do is so unusual.

00:02:30.000 And there's other people that build cars.

00:02:33.000 There's other people that do innovative things with automobiles.

00:02:38.000 But what you're doing is at a level and with an obsessiveness that is, to me...

00:02:44.000 Deserves to be rewarded.

00:02:46.000 I love it. 0.99

00:02:47.000 I love the fact that you make these fucking... 0.98

00:02:50.000 I love the fact that you do those derelicts where you leave the patina on the cars, where you take these beautiful old cars that have, like, they're gorgeous because of the life that they've lived. 0.99

00:03:03.000 Totally.

00:03:03.000 I love them.

00:03:04.000 And you just redo the inside so that you can drive them really well.

00:03:08.000 And they don't smell bad.

00:03:10.000 You see it, and you're down with the romantic sort of rosy eyes of memory, and then you actually drive a vintage vehicle.

00:03:16.000 For most people in the modern world, after a couple miles, you're like, well, that sucks.

00:03:20.000 I have a very peculiar obsession with cars, but it's not wide.

00:03:25.000 I go from like 1965 to 1972, like with Broncos, maybe 72, and then that's it.

00:03:36.000 And then there's modern cars.

00:03:38.000 Like 90s cars I'm cool with.

00:03:39.000 I like 2000 cars. 1.00

00:03:40.000 But all those 70s and 80s cars can all eat shit. 1.00

00:03:44.000 It's because they suck, Joe. 1.00

00:03:44.000 I'm right there with you. 1.00

00:03:46.000 And people bring me all sorts of requests to do later model cars.

00:03:49.000 And I used to try and get my head around it.

00:03:51.000 In fact, we did a Caprice Classic.

00:03:54.000 I saw that thing. 1.00

00:03:55.000 What a shit show, man. 1.00

00:03:56.000 But what a ridiculously overbuilt car that thing was. 1.00

00:03:59.000 It was crazy.

00:04:00.000 But the reality was, at the end of the day, I was rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. 1.00

00:04:04.000 Because it was still a 90s piece of shit built poorly by people who didn't give a damn. 0.99

00:04:09.000 But that version of it was pretty fucking sporty. 0.99

00:04:12.000 Yeah, you know that video got like a half a million views in like half a day. 0.92

00:04:17.000 And the client just freaked out.

00:04:19.000 And he's like, dude, the whole point of this car is to be under the radar.

00:04:21.000 Could you please remove the video?

00:04:23.000 Oh, really?

00:04:23.000 Yes, we had to take everything down.

00:04:25.000 But for those that didn't see it, it was an ex-Miami Dade NARC undercover car.

00:04:31.000 And the client came to me with a pretty direct and simple mandate.

00:04:35.000 He goes, basically, I trust what you do and your instincts and design. 0.93

00:04:40.000 The whole purpose of the car, I want it to say, get the fuck out of my lane. 0.97

00:04:46.000 That was it. 0.95

00:04:46.000 That was my mandate for the build. 0.95

00:04:48.000 So I'm like, I can do that.

00:04:50.000 That's fun.

00:04:50.000 That's a fun challenge.

00:04:52.000 You guys had that thing for a long time.

00:04:54.000 Yeah, it was a long and arduous build for sure.

00:04:56.000 But the guy's brother passed away in a plane crash.

00:05:00.000 And ever since his passing, his brothers refused to get on an airplane.

00:05:05.000 But he has a ranch in one state and businesses in other states, and he does a lot of interstate high-speed travel.

00:05:13.000 So we set it up as a full-on mobile office, plus a bunch of James Bond hidden oddities and shit-ton of performance.

00:05:20.000 And I think people get out of his lane.

00:05:23.000 What kind of engine did the thing have?

00:05:24.000 If I recall, I think that one had an LS9, so dry, sump, intercooled.

00:05:27.000 Very similar to your LSA motor.

00:05:29.000 Yeah.

00:05:30.000 But same here, like the continuity and the design and the consideration.

00:05:34.000 But, you know, by the time you get into the 70s, even I'd argue late 60s, 70s, like the aesthetic is super sexy.

00:05:42.000 But then you get inside and the execution, the material choice and everything is just sucks.

00:05:48.000 Yeah, that's why I like restomods.

00:05:50.000 I don't know if you've seen it, my 1965 Corvette that I have out there.

00:05:54.000 Yeah, I was just walking it before I came in.

00:05:56.000 That's what I like.

00:05:57.000 I like cars that look like an old car on the outside, but that have disc brakes and modern suspension.

00:06:03.000 And it's a slippery slope, right?

00:06:05.000 Yes.

00:06:24.000 In that I want to honor the original design language of the era in which a vehicle was built.

00:06:29.000 Now I may want to elevate that and geek out on it and do unnecessarily cool shit that the production, you know, car company wouldn't have done.

00:06:36.000 But I'm trying to be super careful not to do something that like in 10 years is like, you know, some fuchsia graphics, 80s hot rod all smoothied out that just represents a brief moment in time.

00:06:48.000 Like a Gimbala Porsche.

00:06:49.000 Did you see the new one?

00:06:51.000 It looks like an RC car. 0.95

00:06:53.000 And I haven't decided in a fucked up bad way or in a fucked up really good way. 0.96

00:06:57.000 I'm not sure. 0.94

00:06:57.000 Yeah, it's one of those things where just some people have too much money. 0.94

00:07:01.000 You know, you're making a four-wheel drive off-road Porsche.

00:07:04.000 Although...

00:07:06.000 Matt Farah from The Smoking Tower.

00:07:08.000 You know Matt.

00:07:08.000 He has an off-road 1980s Porsche.

00:07:13.000 It's one of those...

00:07:14.000 You know the really nasty upholstery in that?

00:07:17.000 You can blame me for that.

00:07:18.000 Really?

00:07:19.000 Oh my god.

00:07:20.000 He loves it.

00:07:21.000 He's like, where can I get some really weird stuff?

00:07:23.000 I love all the weird sourcing you do.

00:07:25.000 I'm like, how weird do you want it to be?

00:07:27.000 It's so disgusting. 0.85

00:07:27.000 It is. 0.85

00:07:28.000 I don't know why he's into it.

00:07:29.000 It's almost like an Atlanta, you know, MARTA bus.

00:07:33.000 Yeah.

00:07:33.000 Like an 80s public transit bus.

00:07:36.000 Yeah, it's foul.

00:07:37.000 But it's a rally car, you know?

00:07:40.000 I mean, he has the rally car lights in the front.

00:07:42.000 I mean, it looks like a rally car, but it won't perform like a rally car.

00:07:45.000 It won't?

00:07:45.000 No.

00:07:46.000 No?

00:07:47.000 I don't think so.

00:07:47.000 I mean, it's like an amphibious car.

00:07:49.000 At the end of the day, you have a shitty car and a crappy boat. 0.99

00:07:51.000 You gotta pick your poison. 0.98

00:07:53.000 I thought it actually was like a car that you could rally.

00:07:57.000 Yeah.

00:07:58.000 No?

00:07:58.000 I mean, you know, it's got coilovers and a couple things here and there, but, you know, at the end of the day, it is what it is, and it wasn't built to do that.

00:08:06.000 I thought he had built it that way.

00:08:09.000 He did as many mods as could be done within those confines. 0.99

00:08:13.000 They do drive those fucking things on dirt roads. 0.99

00:08:15.000 It's really weird, those rallies, when you watch them online. 1.00

00:08:18.000 It's like, Jesus Christ, first of all, who are these assholes standing next to the road while these people are going sideways around corners? 0.99

00:08:24.000 Where are the lawyers? 0.99

00:08:25.000 Yeah.

00:08:27.000 Why are you trusting these people?

00:08:29.000 Have you ever seen anything of the old Paris to Peking race? 0.99

00:08:32.000 No, I haven't.

00:08:32.000 I'm so fascinated by that.

00:08:34.000 So I can't remember his name right now.

00:08:36.000 Luigi was the first name.

00:08:39.000 So it started in the turn of the early 1900s, I believe.

00:08:43.000 It was one of the first large international rallies.

00:08:46.000 And there's a wonderful biography written by the son of Count Luigi, whatever, who started it.

00:08:53.000 And it all started as a drunken dinnertime bet.

00:08:56.000 And the idea was, you know, I bet it can't be done.

00:08:59.000 He's like, of course it couldn't be done.

00:09:01.000 So the thing was, all right, whoever's going to go for it, let's go for it.

00:09:04.000 Whoever wins gets a magnum of champagne.

00:09:06.000 And it's like, you know, the race took months and months and months, but phenomenal.

00:09:09.000 Like, it's on my bucket list.

00:09:11.000 That would be such a phenomenal experience to do.

00:09:14.000 And can you imagine doing it in like 1917?

00:09:17.000 Jesus Christ.

00:09:17.000 They were going through villages that had never seen a round eye, not to mention a motor vehicle.

00:09:22.000 And all the photography and all the old data put into all the original diaries of the driver and the co-drivers.

00:09:30.000 It's just such an amazing experience.

00:09:31.000 Explain to people who don't know what we're talking about, what this race is.

00:09:33.000 So it's a race by land from Paris to Peking, and it goes through Mongolia and all sorts of middle-of-nowhere situations.

00:09:42.000 In fact, I believe it got canceled and rerouted several times due to different geopolitical dramas.

00:09:50.000 I didn't even know that Paris and Peking were connected like that.

00:09:53.000 Right?

00:09:53.000 Who would have thunk it?

00:09:55.000 I never really thought about it.

00:09:57.000 And I think it's like a three-month race, so it's a serious commitment.

00:10:01.000 But wouldn't that just be the adventure of a lifetime?

00:10:04.000 You know Andrew Picard, right?

00:10:06.000 No.

00:10:07.000 ACP, great race car driver, dear friend of mine.

00:10:10.000 You don't know him?

00:10:11.000 I would have thought he'd been on the show.

00:10:12.000 No, I don't know who he is.

00:10:13.000 So I've already been talking to him and a dear friend of mine.

00:10:17.000 You know my buddy with that DC-3 that you see me flying around in sometimes?

00:10:22.000 The DC-3?

00:10:23.000 DC-3 airplane 1944?

00:10:25.000 No. 1.00

00:10:26.000 Oh, so stupid, stupid, absurd hidden car collection in Central California. 1.00

00:10:31.000 So I've been slowly lobbying him and, you know, invited Andrew ACP to a dinner to start sort of planting that seed. 1.00

00:10:39.000 And they don't realize it.

00:10:40.000 I don't think either of them realize it yet.

00:10:42.000 They're going to realize now.

00:10:43.000 They're part of the team.

00:10:44.000 What are you doing? 0.99

00:10:45.000 I want to do damn Paris Peking. 0.99

00:10:46.000 No, you don't. 0.99

00:10:47.000 Hell yes, I do.

00:10:48.000 Three months.

00:10:48.000 Yep.

00:10:49.000 Oh, my God.

00:10:49.000 What's going on with you?

00:10:51.000 I didn't say I'm going to do it yet, but I want to do it.

00:10:55.000 Really?

00:10:55.000 So you're trying to put a team together?

00:10:57.000 Yeah, as a travel geek and as a car geek and as a culture geek, like, hello, why on earth would I not?

00:11:03.000 So would you use a modern car to do this?

00:11:05.000 Nope, you can't.

00:11:06.000 You can't?

00:11:07.000 No, very stringent, very vintage.

00:11:10.000 Oh, look at that Datsun.

00:11:11.000 Yeah, like all these photos, just nuts.

00:11:13.000 And that's an incredibly contemporary car for it.

00:11:15.000 Usually you're talking about like...

00:11:17.000 Three, five, sixes, like those?

00:11:18.000 Oh no, like rolls open touring cars. 1.00

00:11:22.000 Oh, those fucking things. 1.00

00:11:23.000 And Alvis's in like super weird early shit open wheel cars. 1.00

00:11:27.000 That's what those people do? 0.96

00:11:28.000 Yeah.

00:11:29.000 Oh my God.

00:11:30.000 So these are hundred year old cars.

00:11:32.000 Yeah.

00:11:32.000 And that car, in fact, in that image is a replica of the actual original car that started the entire race.

00:11:41.000 Oh my God.

00:11:41.000 Just super, super cool experience.

00:11:44.000 Especially after reading that book.

00:11:45.000 That's how you would want to do it?

00:11:47.000 Well, I don't know if I'd want to go brass-era batshit about it.

00:11:50.000 Well, where would you stop?

00:11:52.000 You wouldn't go 1979 Datsun?

00:11:54.000 You know, I think a Volvo Suga.

00:11:57.000 What's that?

00:11:58.000 A Suga.

00:11:58.000 It basically looks like if a 48 humpback Ford and a power wagon had a love child, it would be a Volvo S-H-U-G-G-A. I need to see this thing.

00:12:10.000 They're super trippy.

00:12:11.000 I think one of those all rallied out vintage would be super, super cool.

00:12:15.000 S-U-G-G-A. That's actually a cool looking car.

00:12:18.000 They're super funky.

00:12:19.000 That's beautiful.

00:12:20.000 Right? 0.93

00:12:20.000 In like the ugliest way. 0.93

00:12:22.000 What is that?

00:12:23.000 But is that an aftermarket setup?

00:12:24.000 No.

00:12:25.000 With the wheels and everything?

00:12:26.000 Dead factory other than those are more contemporary tires.

00:12:29.000 Go with that last image that you had, Jamie, with the crazy tires. 0.99

00:12:32.000 That thing is fucking cool. 0.88

00:12:34.000 Oh yeah, they're super new. 0.96

00:12:35.000 No, the last image.

00:12:36.000 Solid axles.

00:12:36.000 The one before that.

00:12:38.000 Yeah, but I want the other image.

00:12:39.000 That one right there.

00:12:40.000 Like, look at the wheels on that thing.

00:12:41.000 Yeah.

00:12:42.000 The tires and wheels.

00:12:43.000 That's crazy.

00:12:43.000 Usually they were command cars, commanding officer cars.

00:12:47.000 So the back area on the interior was generally kitted out, quarter sawn, dovetailed, fumed, white oak, with like a teletype machine and all their early correspondence gear.

00:12:59.000 They're such a freak of a car.

00:13:01.000 That is beautiful.

00:13:02.000 Yeah.

00:13:02.000 That's such a cool looking car.

00:13:04.000 I'd love to see that with like modern headlights.

00:13:06.000 I'd like to see that with, yeah, like on 40s, solid axles, Fox Racing coilovers, big power.

00:13:15.000 Hell yeah.

00:13:15.000 Has anyone done that?

00:13:17.000 No, there was one that made the rounds, I think it was last year I saw it at SEMA, that did more of a sort of conventional, contemporary hot rod, street rod build, but they kind of, not the way you and I are thinking.

00:13:32.000 That is so cool looking.

00:13:33.000 I've never seen that car before.

00:13:35.000 They're a super freak.

00:13:36.000 No one really knows about them.

00:13:37.000 They're one of those odd moments in automotive history.

00:13:39.000 What size are they?

00:13:41.000 There's nothing to compare it to there.

00:13:44.000 I mean, it's like a 48 humpback Tudor four-door. 0.78

00:13:47.000 I don't know if that means anything to you.

00:13:50.000 It's sort of not into post-World War II. So it's like a...

00:13:57.000 Mid-40s standard four-door sedan scale, other than its height, are pretty reasonable.

00:14:03.000 They're probably really hard to find, though, right? 0.99

00:14:05.000 Stupid hard to find. 0.99

00:14:06.000 I believe there's eight of them known in North America. 1.00

00:14:09.000 Oh, Jesus.

00:14:10.000 Whatever, you bring one over from Europe.

00:14:12.000 But then it'd be a shame to chew it up.

00:14:15.000 I'm over that.

00:14:17.000 I don't feel guilty anymore.

00:14:18.000 I'll tell you what, at the end of the day, what's actually getting used and enjoyed and creating more memories?

00:14:23.000 One of my vehicles that are hacked and ruined, as people like to say occasionally, or something sitting in some static collection gathering dust?

00:14:30.000 Do they say that about the derelicts when you redo the interiors?

00:14:33.000 Oh, sure. 1.00

00:14:34.000 Everyone likes to talk shit. 1.00

00:14:36.000 I kind of enjoy it. 1.00

00:14:37.000 What I was going to say about cars, I have this very narrow window.

00:14:40.000 So if I see like a really cool 55 Chevy, it's great.

00:14:44.000 I never want to own one.

00:14:45.000 Really?

00:14:45.000 I don't...

00:14:46.000 What about...

00:14:46.000 They don't do it for me.

00:14:47.000 How far back can I take you?

00:14:48.000 Like 65. Like 63 Corvettes.

00:14:51.000 It's those...

00:14:52.000 That year?

00:14:53.000 Like a bubble top 63 Pontiac or Chevy?

00:14:57.000 Or is it too early?

00:14:58.000 No.

00:14:58.000 No, it's like the second generation Corvette is as early as I go.

00:15:02.000 And then really I look to 67 Mustang.

00:15:05.000 What year were you born?

00:15:07.000 65, 66, 67. Okay, so that's the problem.

00:15:09.000 But it's not.

00:15:10.000 It's my high school years.

00:15:11.000 During my high school years in the 80s, those were the cool cars.

00:15:14.000 The cool cars were the 60s muscle cars.

00:15:16.000 No, that's what I mean.

00:15:16.000 We've identified the problem.

00:15:18.000 But it's not even a problem.

00:15:19.000 It's just like, to me, the quintessential shape is like a 69 Camaro. 0.92

00:15:24.000 There's something about a 69 Camaro, like, god damn, did they nail it. 0.78

00:15:28.000 It's a timeless classic. 0.94

00:15:30.000 It'll always be.

00:15:32.000 They've been crawling under my skin lately.

00:15:34.000 69 Camaros?

00:15:35.000 Yeah, I think it'll be interesting to do one because if you look back on the design history, they were...

00:15:41.000 The design team and executives at GM designed that car basically in reaction to trends in European touring cars and sports cars.

00:15:49.000 So there's a lot of Ferrari, direct Ferrari inspiration like 275s and stuff.

00:15:55.000 So I always thought it'd be interesting to do...

00:15:59.000 The elevated, more European perspective version of that Gen Camaro, like devoid of badges, not like all smoothied out like everyone does, but just like elevate the trim, like that kick-ass egg crate grill and all those details, but like do it more the way a small coach builder would have done it than production.

00:16:18.000 There's something to them for sure.

00:16:20.000 Yeah, when Matt was here last, he was showing me there's a company that takes an older Ferrari.

00:16:26.000 What was it?

00:16:27.000 Which model was it?

00:16:28.000 Do you remember, Jamie?

00:16:29.000 They took an older Ferrari and puts a much more modern Ferrari engine in it and completely redoes everything, but makes it so that...

00:16:39.000 Was it the Norwood P4 or was it GTO Engineering in LA and the UK? They do a lot of GTO builds, but they stay pretty true to the original form.

00:16:50.000 But Phil Norwood, who used to actually race for Ferrari...

00:16:56.000 I don't think he's doing them anymore, but he for a while in Texas, I believe, was doing what they called the P4 Norwood, and those are so badass. 1.00

00:17:04.000 So like Monaco, Superleggera, lightweight, and they were using modern, I think at the time they were, what are they taking, like Rectasterosas or something, some modern Ferrari powertrain.

00:17:16.000 But keeping the original race aesthetic? 0.92

00:17:19.000 I'm not sure what companies doing it, but what they were doing essentially was making everything that you could remove and put it back to the original stock form, including the engine, including the suspension, including the transmission, including the brakes.

00:17:33.000 But everything was aftermarket, so they weren't cutting anything.

00:17:36.000 They were sort of replacing stuff, but making this way better, way more high-performance version.

00:17:43.000 It might be GTO. And also, man, if you look at one of their recreation cars that are scratch built, and, you know, the value of the original GTOs is so nuts that now, like, a guy goes, oh, well, yeah, I'll leave that in the collection, and they'll call GTO and say, build me one that looks just like my car,

00:17:58.000 and I actually want to drive it.

00:17:59.000 And if you sit them side by side, the only difference is the GTO one has better fit and finish intolerances.

00:18:06.000 Otherwise, you cannot tell them apart, hands down.

00:18:08.000 So the new one has better fit and finishes?

00:18:11.000 Hell yeah.

00:18:12.000 There's a company called Revology that does that with Mustangs.

00:18:16.000 Tom Scarpello.

00:18:17.000 Yeah, they make some beautiful cars.

00:18:18.000 They do.

00:18:19.000 But I wonder, like, smogging them in California would probably be a nightmare. 0.54

00:18:24.000 Well, yes.

00:18:26.000 So right now, unfortunately, you know, there's that new law that Tom and myself and a lot of other builders in our space have been very active in trying to get passed that was for Ultra Low Volume Vehicular Manufacturers Act.

00:18:38.000 So if we made under 350 units a year, we'd be exempt from crash and many expensive regulatory limitations, but we had to be responsible for emissions.

00:18:51.000 I think?

00:19:18.000 When did he start doing that?

00:19:21.000 When did he start using LS3s?

00:19:23.000 Once the laws started getting a little sketchy.

00:19:25.000 Oh.

00:19:26.000 So, passed a percentage, and when Tom was doing the new bodies and new everything, he's going down that road.

00:19:32.000 Even all the Cobra guys in emissions-regulated states are putting LS3s in them.

00:19:36.000 Wow.

00:19:37.000 Because Ford does...

00:19:38.000 It's like...

00:19:39.000 I talked to execs and I'm like, are you guys cool with that?

00:19:42.000 That's so weird.

00:19:42.000 That's not good for branding.

00:19:44.000 They're such spreadsheet junkies.

00:19:46.000 I don't think that they see the value.

00:19:49.000 The struggle's real.

00:19:50.000 That seems like a bastardization.

00:19:53.000 I mean, there's something about combining Ford.

00:19:55.000 It's really gross when they combine Chevy and Mopar.

00:20:00.000 There's something about putting an LS engine in an old Cuda.

00:20:04.000 You're like, what are you doing?

00:20:06.000 I agree, but to a point, I think if we look forward, that's changing.

00:20:10.000 Because as it is today, your Bentley is your BMW, is your Kia.

00:20:14.000 Everyone's sharing the same pool of suppliers anyway.

00:20:17.000 And a lot of these cars are just badge cars nowadays anyway.

00:20:21.000 So I think there's a...

00:20:23.000 A wider acceptance as time passes to oddities.

00:20:28.000 But, I mean, look at that 49 electric Mercury I did.

00:20:32.000 We purposely, like, dressed the quote-unquote engine bay to look like an old speed-equipped V8, you know, vintage, thin, kind of Fenton header look, you know, cast.

00:20:44.000 To try and keep those old dudes engaged and not to look out and go, oh no, there's a room. 0.97

00:20:49.000 You ruined it.

00:20:49.000 You put an electric motor in it.

00:20:50.000 Pull up a video of that, Jamie.

00:20:51.000 It was a 49?

00:20:52.000 Is that what it was?

00:20:52.000 Yeah, 49. 49 Mercury Electric.

00:20:56.000 It's on the Jonathan Ward YouTube page. 0.95

00:20:58.000 You know what sucks? 0.51

00:20:59.000 That thing's amazing. 0.96

00:21:00.000 Guess where it is right now.

00:21:01.000 In the bottom of the lake?

00:21:02.000 Not that bad.

00:21:03.000 What?

00:21:04.000 It's stuck in Luxembourg.

00:21:06.000 Why?

00:21:07.000 Well, it's a long story, but we were honored that Goodyear invited us to have it be the feature vehicle on their large booth at the Geneva International Auto Show.

00:21:17.000 So we jumped through hoops.

00:21:18.000 We put it on an airplane.

00:21:19.000 We sent it over there.

00:21:21.000 Show got canceled.

00:21:22.000 Oh, no.

00:21:23.000 Now all the commercial, because we want it traveling by air, not by boat.

00:21:26.000 Now all the flights are canceled.

00:21:28.000 Now other cargo is getting prioritized.

00:21:30.000 So now we're transporting it to Frankfurt, and it's like stuck in limbo.

00:21:34.000 Oh, no.

00:21:35.000 Yeah.

00:21:36.000 Oh, the coronavirus transport.

00:21:38.000 Yep.

00:21:38.000 Yeah.

00:21:39.000 Shit, when are you going to get that back? 1.00

00:21:41.000 Fuck if I know, apparently. 1.00

00:21:41.000 And that's a client's car? 1.00

00:21:43.000 Yeah.

00:21:43.000 And so he said, yeah, go ahead, borrow it for a week or two.

00:21:46.000 Fortunately, the client is, like, one of the best humans we've ever worked with, and he's totally cool about it, but, you know, we're all nervous. 0.96

00:21:52.000 We want the darn car back.

00:21:54.000 Yeah, well, it's a one-of-a-kind thing. 0.98

00:21:56.000 There it is.

00:21:57.000 Now that is one of the things that I love that you do that I don't think anybody else is going to do. 0.89

00:22:01.000 I don't think anybody else would take that level of engineering and to rebuild something to that spectacular level of detail, but yet keep the fucked up paint. 0.68

00:22:12.000 Like, look at that thing. 0.73

00:22:14.000 If you saw that rolling down the street, you wouldn't have zero idea what that is.

00:22:19.000 Especially when that thing, because it has no transmission, so it's dual electric motors, just under 500 foot-pounds of torque, no shifts, so it moves like a freight train.

00:22:29.000 That thing is so fast.

00:22:31.000 Have you driven a Tesla?

00:22:32.000 Uh-huh.

00:22:32.000 The S? Yeah.

00:22:33.000 The P100D? Yeah.

00:22:35.000 It's a preposterous vehicle.

00:22:36.000 We put the 80 array in that with American racing motors and dual Reinhardt controllers and thermal management network that we engineered a whole bunch of stuff.

00:22:44.000 And when this guy charges us in, how many miles can he get?

00:22:48.000 200. That's not bad.

00:22:49.000 No, no, not bad at all.

00:22:50.000 That's the Porsche Taycan, essentially.

00:22:53.000 Yeah, well, supposedly, right?

00:22:55.000 Depending on who you ask.

00:22:56.000 I can't afford to do fancy misleading federal testing, so I literally just make sure my flatbed is at hand and just drive the piss out of it until it can't go, and then I go, okay, there you go, there's the rain.

00:23:06.000 Well, but the EPA or whoever is doing the tests on the Taycan, apparently they sold it way short.

00:23:12.000 And all these automotive journalists that have driven the car are saying, no, we've gotten, you know, 270, 280. They've gotten quite a bit more than, I think, whoever, the government rated it 201. Yeah, so it's quite a bit more than that.

00:23:28.000 But yeah, that whole derelict program, you know, was, like many things in my life, started just from a stupid, passionate idea. 0.97

00:23:37.000 Never considered a business model of doing it. 0.98

00:23:40.000 It was just, okay, I've got two young kids.

00:23:42.000 I've got two labs.

00:23:44.000 I like to do this.

00:23:45.000 I like to do that.

00:23:45.000 What do I want as my next car?

00:23:47.000 And I'm like, you know what? 0.98

00:23:47.000 I'm tired of over-restoring shit because that's like my OCD. Everything would be perfect, perfect. 0.98

00:23:53.000 And then the first time, you know, the kids nail it with a skateboard or I ding it with a surfboard or the dog takes a piss in it, whatever.

00:24:00.000 Like, I don't want to be that guy anymore.

00:24:01.000 So I was like, you know what? 0.98

00:24:03.000 I think I want to find something that's already fucked up. 0.99

00:24:06.000 I'm just going to leave it looking all fucked up. 0.99

00:24:08.000 I hate washing cars and I hate putting gas in them. 0.99

00:24:12.000 So with the derelicts, all you do is clean the windows and vacuum it at best and party on.

00:24:17.000 And then I just put a massive gas tank.

00:24:19.000 So my old 52 DeSoto station wagon was the first derelict. 0.93

00:24:24.000 That I built 100% myself nights and weekends just because I had this stupid idea in my head and I wanted to realize it. 0.99

00:24:30.000 It wasn't until it was done and it got like the cover of Hot Rod and won all these awards that my dumb ass went, oh, wait a minute. 0.99

00:24:37.000 We're onto something. 0.99

00:24:38.000 Yeah, we're onto something.

00:24:38.000 This still is, you know, it fits within how we define the Icon brand holistically about revisiting classic transportation design in a modern context.

00:24:48.000 It's just a different way of doing it.

00:24:50.000 So that was your first Derelict?

00:24:52.000 Yeah.

00:24:52.000 It wouldn't even call it Derelict until I was done.

00:24:54.000 And then we're like, okay, let's brand them.

00:24:56.000 And we started getting tons of requests.

00:24:58.000 We've built a pretty wild array of them.

00:25:01.000 It's pretty funny that your first one was for you.

00:25:03.000 Yeah.

00:25:04.000 But it speaks to how weird it is that you're doing that in the first place.

00:25:08.000 Because most people who are high-dollar restoration, air quote, resto mods or whatever you want to call them, Everyone wants them to be beautiful and pristine with handles that disappear.

00:25:21.000 I mean, everybody wants to shave everything down.

00:25:25.000 And they end up removing a lot of the original character of the design that they're supposed to be celebrating in the first place.

00:25:33.000 So that, compounded by Patina, which tells a more personal story of like, where's this car been?

00:25:39.000 How did he get that ding?

00:25:40.000 There's like romance and mystery all wrapped into one as far as the history behind all those finishes.

00:25:46.000 How big is the gas tank in this thing?

00:25:48.000 That one's got like a 42-gallon gas tank.

00:25:50.000 I was like, spare tire, gas tank, spare tire.

00:25:52.000 I'm like, screw it.

00:25:53.000 Three cans of Fix-A-Flat and a big-ass gas tank.

00:25:55.000 I hate stopping for gas.

00:25:57.000 Well, especially with something like that, it must get like four miles to the gallon.

00:26:00.000 That actually is a full-emissions-equipped modern SRT8 Hemi 6.1.

00:26:06.000 So it gets six?

00:26:07.000 You know what?

00:26:08.000 I don't understand why, but I've built several Hemi-based builds.

00:26:12.000 That is the fastest and most fuel-efficient of the Hemi build I've ever done.

00:26:16.000 I mean, that thing gets probably 15, 17?

00:26:20.000 Really?

00:26:20.000 Yeah.

00:26:21.000 With that much metal? 1.00

00:26:22.000 And I drive it like an ass. 0.99

00:26:23.000 I mean, I'm flogging that thing. 0.99

00:26:25.000 Granted, I'm on my third transmission, but...

00:26:28.000 Oh, really?

00:26:28.000 Yeah.

00:26:29.000 To the first two were Mopar trannies, which fellow builders avoid them. 1.00

00:26:33.000 They suck if you add even like five horsepower beyond the stock motor app.

00:26:37.000 They completely shut themselves. 0.85

00:26:39.000 So the third time I'm like, that's it.

00:26:41.000 I'm done.

00:26:42.000 Pull the bandaid off, throw that thing away and put a good old GM4LA5E in there.

00:26:47.000 So this thing has how many miles on it now?

00:26:51.000 I got about 38,000, 39,000 miles on it so far.

00:26:55.000 Wow!

00:26:55.000 I love the split windshield, too.

00:26:57.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:26:58.000 It's such a fun, fun, fun ride.

00:27:00.000 But, you know, going all the way back to the beginning of Icon, even further back to the beginning of the first brand TLC, they all started with personal cars.

00:27:08.000 Like the icon idea was just another dumb idea that was rattling in my head.

00:27:13.000 It was literally keeping me up at night and it got to the point that I need, and this happens to me often, like when I did my watch and then all the different products that I've designed, generally it'll start with something that gets to the point that I'll lose my remaining sanity if I don't actually create it.

00:27:31.000 So I had the concept for Icon.

00:27:33.000 I could see it clearly in my head.

00:27:34.000 I had like a full-on 3D detailed model in my head and like my version of jumping over sheeps at night in bed was like sitting there and zooming in on an element and changing that radius and scaling this and trying that.

00:27:48.000 And it literally got to the point, I told my wife, I'm like, I got to build it.

00:27:51.000 I just got to build it.

00:27:53.000 Well, your company, it's sort of symbiotic with social media, in a sense, particularly YouTube, because so many people on YouTube are interested in unique builds and interesting companies that are doing cool things like Revology.

00:28:08.000 But your company in particular, it's so perfect because you do all those videos and you drive around the cars with this incredible detail. 0.99

00:28:17.000 And that's one of the first things that got me very attracted to your company was the fact like, I go, look at this motherfucker. 1.00

00:28:22.000 He's so balls deep into this shit. 1.00

00:28:24.000 You're so into this. 1.00

00:28:26.000 And if I'm not, I won't take the job.

00:28:28.000 It's so contagious, though, when someone's really into something, particularly design and production and the details of things.

00:28:38.000 I totally agree.

00:28:38.000 And if you're not totally into it and you're not balls deep into it, then pull out and zip up and go home.

00:28:44.000 Shut up. 0.99

00:28:44.000 Do something else. 0.99

00:28:45.000 Yeah, do something else. 1.00

00:28:46.000 If you're not passionate about it, you suck at it. 0.99

00:28:49.000 Well, particularly in this world, right? 0.92

00:28:51.000 In the world that you're in, and your most classic models are your Bronco, your FJs. 0.93

00:28:59.000 Those get the most amount of attention, I think, online.

00:29:03.000 I mean, there's a lot of people making Broncos.

00:29:05.000 There's a lot of people making FJs.

00:29:07.000 Now there are.

00:29:07.000 Now there are, yeah.

00:29:09.000 Well, you know, you opened up a door.

00:29:10.000 There's a lot of people that are making the exact Bronco you make.

00:29:13.000 It's so close. 0.86

00:29:14.000 It's ridiculous. 0.62

00:29:15.000 They're redoing your grill. 0.97

00:29:17.000 It kind of irks me.

00:29:19.000 Some people are like, oh, you should be flattered.

00:29:21.000 I'm like, no, not really. 0.99

00:29:22.000 I'm flattered when I see an industry swell around my first dumb idea.

00:29:27.000 When you see the Revologies and the Singers and all these companies having viable businesses revisiting classic transportation design. 0.50

00:29:36.000 That I absolutely love.

00:29:38.000 What I absolutely despise is...

00:29:41.000 The sucker fish that just will go, oh, well, they have a two-year waiting list.

00:29:47.000 That doesn't look hard.

00:29:48.000 Let's make a company and let's make our business model that we're just like Icon but we're quicker and cheaper.

00:29:53.000 Like, that just irks the piss out of me.

00:29:55.000 But, you know, what are you going to do?

00:29:56.000 I can't say anything.

00:29:57.000 It's hard because some people just don't have the money, you know, but they want a Bronco.

00:30:03.000 I get it.

00:30:04.000 I see what you're saying, but I get it from their perspective.

00:30:07.000 No, but from a consumer perspective, I understand the appeal of not having to wait and not having to pay as much.

00:30:13.000 But at best in this industry, you get what you pay for, and frankly, even that is a rare equation.

00:30:19.000 What I'm more pissy about is companies that go, oh, now we can charge more for it and let's just deliver something that looks as close to that and copy as much of its trade dress and style and kick it out at a fat margin at what's deemed to be the most acceptable price point. 0.95

00:30:38.000 But with your wait list, why do you even fuck with that? 0.95

00:30:42.000 Why do you pay attention to those people? 0.99

00:30:43.000 Maybe I'm insecure and childish, or maybe I'm worried that, you know, past the point, it's going to erode our business one way or another.

00:30:52.000 Nah! 0.99

00:30:53.000 No, not your business.

00:30:55.000 I mean, it's cool, like Scouts, for example.

00:30:57.000 There's like three or four companies now doing Scouts their way, with their vision.

00:31:01.000 They're realizing their dream.

00:31:02.000 And I'm like, I'm here to support them, help them, cheer them on.

00:31:05.000 That's great.

00:31:07.000 It's when people come into a market because they just merely see a capital opportunity, but they have no passion or expertise in it.

00:31:15.000 That's where I get pissy.

00:31:16.000 I understand your perspective.

00:31:19.000 My perspective is always a bandwidth perspective.

00:31:22.000 Say if your bandwidth is 100, that's all of your attention that you have.

00:31:27.000 To even give 10 of that to some knuckleheads that are just copying you.

00:31:32.000 It's true.

00:31:33.000 Waste of energy.

00:31:34.000 It's all it does.

00:31:35.000 It just takes away from what you're doing, and what you're doing is amazing.

00:31:38.000 I think the last time I thought about it prior to just now bitching to you has been a good three or four months. 0.99

00:31:43.000 So I don't give it too much thought.

00:31:45.000 Just every now and then.

00:31:46.000 Every now and then it bubbles up.

00:31:48.000 And then keep moving.

00:31:50.000 You were doing a bunch of...

00:31:53.000 I mean, I don't know how much you could talk about this.

00:31:55.000 Can you talk about that little BMW? No.

00:31:58.000 That doesn't exist.

00:31:59.000 It doesn't exist.

00:32:00.000 Sorry I brought it up.

00:32:01.000 No, I mean, I guess now that we did talk about it, no, I have a couple...

00:32:05.000 Well, all we said is little BMW. I didn't say any models.

00:32:07.000 We have a couple R&D projects in the works that are, again, those odd projects that were keeping me up at night.

00:32:13.000 And one of them includes doing kind of a very progressive take on, you know, even beyond how we've been known to redesign classics.

00:32:25.000 Taking that up ten notches.

00:32:27.000 Yeah.

00:32:28.000 With an early classic iconic BMW. And meanwhile, it's killing me.

00:32:33.000 I'm hemorrhaging money in it.

00:32:35.000 I'm almost three quarters of a mil deep into that project.

00:32:39.000 Well, it's been going on for a long time.

00:32:41.000 Yeah, for a long time.

00:32:42.000 Like, before you built my Bronco, which took a year to build, and I've had for a year and a half.

00:32:51.000 Yeah, hopefully my wife doesn't listen. 1.00

00:32:53.000 Yeah, I think it's been about four years of work on it.

00:32:56.000 Wow.

00:32:57.000 But I'm super stoked.

00:32:59.000 Like, when it's done, it's something like nobody ever done seen before.

00:33:05.000 Well, I love the idea behind it.

00:33:07.000 You know, like, I'm a fan of those cars.

00:33:10.000 I'm a fan of the original one, and I'm a fan of, you know...

00:33:13.000 We're doing another one, too, that's, you know, again, sort of looking at how we've done what we do and, like, how else could we do it or how further could we evolve it?

00:33:24.000 Which, as you've seen and working with me, like, I'm doing that all the time in all the little things.

00:33:28.000 But, like, holistically, conceptually, how do you do it?

00:33:31.000 So we're doing an early C20. Yeah.

00:34:01.000 I'm like, screw it. 0.55

00:34:02.000 I'm going to the dealer. 0.58

00:34:03.000 So I just went and bought the WT, which people call the white trash edition, the WT series Chevy pickup. 0.90

00:34:12.000 So we bought a three-quarter ton, four-wheel drive, brand new Chevy truck off the dealer floor for like $36,000.

00:34:18.000 Took that apart.

00:34:20.000 And we're rebodying it with its grandfather's body.

00:34:23.000 So now, like ABS, Hill Hold, many of the perversions of modernity, everything is integrated.

00:34:30.000 And literally, the client could go to a Chevy dealer, although they'd probably cringe, and say, no, no, no, no, it's not a 70. You know, look, here's the ID tag.

00:34:39.000 This VIN from this 2019 truck.

00:34:43.000 That's what it is.

00:34:43.000 So just service, that's the service protocol.

00:34:46.000 And the interior?

00:34:47.000 Dead stock C20. Wow.

00:34:50.000 So the gauges, we're working with classic instruments to design an IP, an instrument panel that has the original design aesthetic, but then integrates the little 3x3 digital screen for all of the, you know, all your prompts and digital interface.

00:35:04.000 What about airbags?

00:35:06.000 Can't do that because the body's not designed to absorb energy, thereby it's not compliant with airbags.

00:35:11.000 Mm-hmm.

00:35:12.000 But we're keeping the entire, basically the entire truck minus the airbags and the HVAC system intact.

00:35:20.000 So how does someone register that?

00:35:21.000 What is that registered as?

00:35:22.000 Still as the original truck.

00:35:24.000 Because the client brought us the C20. So it's still a C20? Wow.

00:35:32.000 You pick which way you want to title it and party on.

00:35:34.000 And obviously most people want to stay the traffic of least resistance and they stick with an exempt year.

00:35:41.000 Yeah.

00:35:41.000 But it meets 2019 emissions and everything.

00:35:44.000 And cylinder deactivation and all sorts of cool stuff.

00:35:46.000 But that's why I asked you about the airbags because it wouldn't meet compliance.

00:35:51.000 Correct.

00:35:51.000 Yeah.

00:35:52.000 But that would be sick though.

00:35:53.000 Yeah, it would be neat.

00:35:54.000 You know, for a while, who was it?

00:35:56.000 Someone told me, I think it was Midas, was trying to think of ways to stay relevant.

00:36:00.000 And they were like knees deep in investment in retrofit airbag systems.

00:36:06.000 Really?

00:36:07.000 Yeah.

00:36:08.000 Did they ever get it off?

00:36:09.000 No. 0.97

00:36:09.000 I mean, it's an absolute engineering shit show because there's so many parameters you can't control. 0.97

00:36:13.000 It would just never work. 0.97

00:36:14.000 You were talking about retrofitting things with ABS. Did that ever come...

00:36:19.000 No, and I'm still dying to do it.

00:36:21.000 So the only way that it's come to fruition for me is like with your FCJ80 by maintaining the original ABS system, or such is the case with the C20, by keeping the entire modern vehicle active and just rebodying it.

00:36:38.000 But I mean, I'm dying for the aftermarket to come up with a standalone ABS module that's tunable.

00:36:44.000 I think it's such the missing link.

00:36:46.000 There's so many missing links, as I was bitching to you earlier.

00:36:48.000 The automotive aftermarket.

00:36:51.000 Quite frankly, my dear, it's an absolute whole house, in my opinion.

00:36:55.000 There's just so much garbage on the market, and it's like, where's the quality?

00:37:00.000 And the market's there.

00:37:02.000 I think consumers are ready for elevated consideration and execution.

00:37:06.000 Well, there's surely some companies that are making good aftermarket stuff. 0.97

00:37:10.000 It's so the minority, it's pathetic. 1.00

00:37:12.000 10%? 0.99

00:37:13.000 Not even.

00:37:14.000 Really?

00:37:14.000 Oh, yeah.

00:37:15.000 Good Lord. 1.00

00:37:17.000 But I'm a picky bitch. 1.00

00:37:18.000 You are. 1.00

00:37:20.000 I wouldn't say that word.

00:37:21.000 I might.

00:37:23.000 You say a lot of words, but you wouldn't say the B word?

00:37:25.000 I would. 1.00

00:37:26.000 I say the bitch word all the time. 1.00

00:37:27.000 But what about you? 1.00

00:37:28.000 I'm calling you a picky bitch. 1.00

00:37:29.000 It seems like I would say a picky fellow. 1.00

00:37:34.000 All right.

00:37:34.000 Yeah.

00:37:34.000 I'll take either one.

00:37:35.000 Clever bitch. 1.00

00:37:36.000 You're a clever bitch. 1.00

00:37:37.000 I would say that maybe. 1.00

00:37:38.000 But your whole place, like every time I go there, I feel like I want to give myself time.

00:37:46.000 Like if my appointment is at 1230, I'll show up at 12 and just start wandering around and say, what do you got?

00:37:51.000 What's going on here, man?

00:37:52.000 What are you doing?

00:37:53.000 It's Willy Wonka's factory.

00:37:54.000 Such odd diversity in there right now.

00:37:56.000 Did you notice in the DNR and the derelict and reformer section...

00:38:00.000 The range of projects, the diversity of those platforms right now.

00:38:04.000 Did you see the 70 Ford yellow and cream short bed?

00:38:08.000 No, I did not.

00:38:09.000 I didn't see that. 1.00

00:38:10.000 It's so stupid sexy. 1.00

00:38:12.000 I did see that blazer that someone's selling. 1.00

00:38:14.000 Yeah.

00:38:15.000 That's one of your older projects?

00:38:17.000 Yeah.

00:38:17.000 Guy never drove it.

00:38:18.000 I remember you were building two of them.

00:38:21.000 One that was more modern looking, kind of more over-engineered, or not more over-engineered, but more engineered.

00:38:27.000 And then this one, which is more of a...

00:38:29.000 It really looks like an older...

00:38:31.000 Yeah, and it had the same mechanical engineering integrated in it, but it was a much different style, more of what I call my old school style, where all my mods, like even the badging on it where it says icon, was CNC'd and stainless in the original typeface that Blazer was written in.

00:38:48.000 So...

00:38:48.000 If you don't know, you don't know, and it's like super under the radar, mellow colors, but really good leathers and materials.

00:38:55.000 It's a cool blue, too.

00:38:57.000 Yeah, I love that blue.

00:38:57.000 It's a 60s Fiat blue.

00:38:59.000 So the guy just never drove it?

00:39:00.000 No, it drives me crazy.

00:39:01.000 I hate that.

00:39:02.000 I love that you drive my car. 0.99

00:39:03.000 Oh, I drive the shit out of it. 0.98

00:39:04.000 People, I take it back, and it had like 400 more miles on it than when I delivered. 0.96

00:39:09.000 I'm like, dude, what's going on?

00:39:11.000 He's like, oh, it was too nice.

00:39:12.000 I was afraid to drive it.

00:39:13.000 I'm like, oh, come on.

00:39:14.000 I drive that Bronco everywhere.

00:39:16.000 Everywhere. 0.99

00:39:16.000 And every time I drive it, people are like, what in the fuck is that? 0.99

00:39:20.000 I'm like, yeah. 0.98

00:39:21.000 Exactly.

00:39:22.000 See ya.

00:39:22.000 Yeah.

00:39:23.000 It's such a mechanical thing when you drive that car.

00:39:27.000 That's what I love about it.

00:39:28.000 Sometimes if I don't drive it for a week or two, I kind of forget.

00:39:31.000 Then I get in and it's like...

00:39:33.000 Everything is like you feel everything. 0.98

00:39:35.000 It's like there's a thing about modern cars like I really do love my Tesla It's it the way I describe it it makes other cars seem stupid like they're stupid like this is how cars should drive like you hit the gas It's almost telepathic. 0.98

00:39:49.000 It just goes somewhere. 0.99

00:39:50.000 It just moves.

00:39:51.000 It's in the gigantic navigation screen everything about is amazing and I was supposed to be in Detroit right now for the Bronco launch, which they delayed because of Corona.

00:40:01.000 But the difference between that and, say, the Bronco is you don't feel it.

00:40:06.000 Like, the Bronco, it's a manual transmission, and you literally feel every gear.

00:40:12.000 There's all these moving parts that you kind of sync up with.

00:40:15.000 So there's all this sensation that's going into your brain through your hands.

00:40:19.000 It's visceral.

00:40:20.000 It's the reconnection of man and machine.

00:40:22.000 And I think there's a place for both, right?

00:40:25.000 But I think more and more as the world turns to autonomous vehicles, ride share, infrastructure, community development is even starting to go a different direction.

00:40:35.000 I used to be concerned about that in regards to the future of our company.

00:40:38.000 But now I realize, like, that's great.

00:40:40.000 Like, because the more that happens, the more there's going to be plenty of people who for the weekend, for the whatever, like, demand a manual tranny and a visceral man-machine relationship.

00:40:51.000 It feels different.

00:40:52.000 It feels different when you drive them.

00:40:54.000 There's a sweet spot somewhere.

00:40:56.000 I have a 2005 E46 M3. And I got it online off this dude.

00:41:01.000 It was only 15,000 original miles.

00:41:04.000 And that seems to me to be the sweet spot.

00:41:07.000 Because it's not the fastest car in the world.

00:41:08.000 And it's got a dine-in supercharger on it.

00:41:10.000 It doesn't handle the best in the world.

00:41:13.000 But man, is it a sweet...

00:41:14.000 It's like there's something about that car.

00:41:17.000 Like when you're driving it, it makes you smile.

00:41:19.000 Like there's something about the way it steers, the way you feel the hydraulic steering, not electric.

00:41:25.000 Yeah, like the new M3 is almost becoming, there's like too many nannies. 1.00

00:41:30.000 It's too technical in a manner that makes the stats improve, but not the connection to the driver feel more dynamic to me.

00:41:39.000 It's like I've got a 96 993 twin turbo, and that to me is one of the most perfectly engineered vehicles that was designed by a core group of people who had a singular focus on what its purpose was and what it should do,

00:41:56.000 what it should evoke, and what it shouldn't.

00:41:58.000 Do you have the same one that you had before?

00:42:00.000 Yeah, a black one. 1.00

00:42:00.000 Did you get an accident with that thing? 1.00

00:42:01.000 Yeah, it was minor.

00:42:02.000 Oh, okay.

00:42:03.000 Yeah, I love that car.

00:42:04.000 It's a great car.

00:42:05.000 I remember the cover of, it was Motor Trend or Road and Track, it said, sell your soul and buy this car when it came out.

00:42:11.000 Because when it came out, it was like, you know, early 90s.

00:42:14.000 It was when I first came to California and there was no way I was ever going to be able to afford one of those.

00:42:18.000 And I remember looking at it.

00:42:19.000 I had the poster as a kid.

00:42:21.000 When you see that, when you see a car like that, you start thinking, like, how much does that cost?

00:42:24.000 How much do I make?

00:42:25.000 How long do I have to save?

00:42:26.000 What do I have to do?

00:42:27.000 What if I work twice as much?

00:42:29.000 How do I make this happen?

00:42:30.000 I remember I had the Vector poster, I had the 993 Turbo, I had the Countach Periscopo, and I had a 550 Marinello poster.

00:42:42.000 For a little while as I approached, I just turned 50 last week, like my late 40s I started having to knock at that list.

00:42:49.000 Like, okay, what am I waiting for?

00:42:51.000 Right.

00:42:52.000 Bought a 550. It sucked. 0.99

00:42:55.000 The Marinello should have been left to the rosy eyes of memory. 1.00

00:42:58.000 It's a bucket of shit. 1.00

00:42:59.000 I get so annoyed at that car. 1.00

00:43:01.000 Can't afford the Vector.

00:43:03.000 Missed my chance to afford a Periscopo, but I've been watching Farah just piss money into his constantly.

00:43:08.000 I had that BMW M car, that Wedge one, the original Wedge. 0.99

00:43:13.000 What the fuck was that called? 0.98

00:43:14.000 M1, I believe. 0.99

00:43:15.000 M1, that's right.

00:43:17.000 Yeah, like the original BMW supercar.

00:43:19.000 I had one of those on my wall.

00:43:21.000 When I first came out to California in the 80s, I remember, and I think it was Newport or Manhattan Beach, there was like ex-BMW dealership looking space, but it was an independent BMW dealership and service center.

00:43:35.000 And they had one in the factory tricolor livery, and they had it for sale.

00:43:39.000 And I remember begging my mom to pull over in our crappy Dodge Area's rental car and going in and asking.

00:43:45.000 And it was for sale.

00:43:46.000 It was like 11 grand.

00:43:48.000 And the guy was like...

00:43:49.000 There it is.

00:43:50.000 Hoping and begging I was serious because they couldn't give them away back.

00:43:52.000 Look at that.

00:43:54.000 They're so nifty.

00:43:55.000 God, I love that thing.

00:43:56.000 And the wheels are so good.

00:43:57.000 I had a red one on my wall.

00:43:59.000 I remember thinking, God, only one day.

00:44:02.000 That's it! 1.00

00:44:03.000 That's the fucking car, Jamie! 1.00

00:44:05.000 Is that the poster you had? 1.00

00:44:06.000 Probably.

00:44:07.000 It's hard to remember.

00:44:08.000 But it looks exactly like that.

00:44:09.000 One of my photographers does a trick and now I've been using it.

00:44:13.000 So you'll get that mirrored effect if you take an iPhone that's off and put it right under the lens and hold it up and angle it just right.

00:44:21.000 It's super cool.

00:44:22.000 Interesting.

00:44:22.000 Yeah.

00:44:23.000 That's a beautiful car.

00:44:24.000 And back in the day, like what was that?

00:44:26.000 That had to be like early 80s, right?

00:44:29.000 What year was that?

00:44:30.000 Oh yeah, that was late 70s, I believe.

00:44:32.000 Was it?

00:44:32.000 Yeah, for launch.

00:44:33.000 That makes sense.

00:44:34.000 Because I was in high school, first year high school was 81. So that's when I had it on my wall.

00:44:40.000 I can't remember his real name, but on Instagram, Mr. Enthusiast.

00:44:45.000 I don't know what that is.

00:44:46.000 He's a designer and a really interesting cat.

00:44:49.000 He has, like, Lancia Delta.

00:44:51.000 He had a Stratos for a couple years. 0.99

00:44:53.000 Like, he's into, like, all the weird shit. 0.92

00:44:56.000 And I think he still owns one, but he rocked one of those before anyone was talking about him and, like, had it forever. 0.99

00:45:02.000 Drove the piss out of it.

00:45:03.000 I love those cars.

00:45:04.000 I have zero desire to own one now, and I have zero desire to own anything old that hasn't been redone.

00:45:11.000 Yeah.

00:45:11.000 I don't, like, there is Mr. Enthusiast.

00:45:14.000 Oh, there you go.

00:45:14.000 That's a beautiful car.

00:45:16.000 He's so funny, too, because, like, as you know, I'm a big watch geek, and he's, like, the antichrist in the watch culture because he's all about quartz, like vintage quartz.

00:45:26.000 So, like, for a short time, Patek made quartz watches.

00:45:30.000 And everyone shuns them, but now they're immensely collectible.

00:45:35.000 Why does everybody hate quartz?

00:45:37.000 Because they just want everything to be mechanical?

00:45:38.000 To me, that's why I won't touch a quartz watch.

00:45:41.000 But what about Grand Seiko, where they combine the two of them?

00:45:44.000 They use the quartz to sort of accentuate.

00:45:46.000 Well, even Ressence is one of my favorite of the weirdos of modern brands.

00:45:49.000 Is that your watch?

00:45:50.000 Yeah, not my design.

00:45:51.000 This is Ressence or Ressence is the brand.

00:45:53.000 These are super trippy, but they just came out with a smart watch where when you're on the plane and you're in a new time zone and you land, it'll reset itself.

00:46:01.000 What? 0.91

00:46:01.000 I have a thumb and an index finger that work pretty fucking good. 0.91

00:46:05.000 I can set my own watch. 0.95

00:46:06.000 How does it do that?

00:46:08.000 Oh, it's got a smart mechanical quartz combination.

00:46:12.000 Oh, wow.

00:46:13.000 But these are super trippy because the entire movement rotates as it tells the time.

00:46:18.000 What?

00:46:19.000 Let me see that.

00:46:19.000 That's crazy.

00:46:20.000 Super trippy brand.

00:46:21.000 Really interesting guys.

00:46:22.000 And they're oil-filled and all sorts of neat niftiness. 0.99

00:46:26.000 And talk about an industry and a shit show even before this sad virus situation. 0.99

00:46:31.000 Watches? 1.00

00:46:32.000 Luxury watch world.

00:46:33.000 This is crazy.

00:46:34.000 Bleeding.

00:46:34.000 Is it?

00:46:35.000 Why is that?

00:46:36.000 Why is the luxury watch world bleeding?

00:46:37.000 I think smartwatch put a bigger ding on it than they thought it would.

00:46:43.000 Oh, okay.

00:46:44.000 And they negated it originally.

00:46:45.000 Like, oh, there's nothing.

00:46:46.000 There's not a watch.

00:46:47.000 Like cameras and phones.

00:46:48.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:46:50.000 The arrogance of we're doing just fine.

00:46:52.000 And then, like, now they say there's so many manufacturing options for low-volume watches that the only growth segments...

00:47:01.000 And I read the big LVMH, like, annual report.

00:47:05.000 And the...

00:47:07.000 Like, what is it, $800 to $1,600 segment of watches?

00:47:12.000 Pumping, killing it, growing like crazy.

00:47:14.000 Otherwise, it's up, it's like 20 grand and more.

00:47:18.000 Independent watch brands are killing it.

00:47:20.000 Everyone in between is like hemorrhaging money.

00:47:24.000 Really?

00:47:24.000 That's interesting.

00:47:25.000 There's this new company on Bum, because when I went to the Geneva show, I was going to go meet with him, but David Rutan watches that are doing watches that are CNC'd out of a solid chunk of meteorite.

00:47:37.000 And not like some bullshit EDM meteorite dial on your 90s Daytona.

00:47:42.000 The entire watch case, the crown, and everything is meteorite. 0.98

00:47:45.000 Jesus Christ, how many meteorites are there?

00:47:48.000 There's actually a shit ton of meteorites. 0.52

00:47:51.000 Really?

00:47:51.000 Yeah, there's different grades of them and stuff, and it depends on the metallurgic content, if they can be machined, and they eat machine tooling left and right.

00:47:59.000 Wow.

00:48:00.000 Wow, look at that thing. 0.84

00:48:00.000 How funky, right? 0.84

00:48:01.000 How weird looking.

00:48:02.000 That's made out of a meteorite.

00:48:04.000 Yeah. 0.75

00:48:04.000 Goddammit, I need one. 0.75

00:48:05.000 You can see all the fracturing in it.

00:48:06.000 And his price point's pretty... 1.00

00:48:08.000 Son of a bitch. 1.00

00:48:08.000 He's doing like a pre-launch. 1.00

00:48:10.000 Oh, so he hasn't launched yet?

00:48:12.000 They just started doing deliveries like a week ago.

00:48:15.000 And like, I'd saved up my little side monopoly cash from selling off used parts and leather stuff.

00:48:22.000 And I was like ready to pull the trigger.

00:48:24.000 And I already had a meeting and lunch date set up with those cats.

00:48:26.000 And I'm like, aw.

00:48:28.000 And what happened?

00:48:29.000 Well, my trip got canceled because the Geneva show got canceled.

00:48:32.000 But anyway, the point of the story is guys like this and Ressence and Laurent Freire and all these different – Moser is another great brand.

00:48:42.000 If they have a very unique aesthetic and philosophy – They're killing it.

00:48:50.000 But it's the traditional big luxury, bling, bling, yo, look at me.

00:48:55.000 Those guys are just dying on the vine because I think more and more people aren't buying into what is considered luxury in a conventional sense.

00:49:04.000 People want more story.

00:49:05.000 Well, that also speaks to the kind of stuff that you do.

00:49:10.000 I mean, people like things that are crafted by artisans.

00:49:15.000 Yeah.

00:49:16.000 I love that.

00:49:17.000 Me too.

00:49:17.000 We're seeing that revival right in the last 10 years.

00:49:19.000 It's just growing and growing and growing.

00:49:21.000 It's so great.

00:49:22.000 Well, I feel like it's the world becomes more digital and people become more disconnected with each other.

00:49:26.000 There's something about, like, when I drive your Bronco, first of all, I really like you.

00:49:31.000 So I love the fact that I'm driving your truck.

00:49:34.000 And then two, I feel like it's a piece of art.

00:49:37.000 I feel like it's a functional piece of art.

00:49:40.000 That's so how I look at it.

00:49:40.000 Highly functioning sculpture.

00:49:41.000 I smile when I'm in it.

00:49:43.000 It makes me feel different. 0.97

00:49:44.000 When I'm in my Tesla, I'm like, this is a badass motherfucking piece of invention. 0.98

00:49:48.000 But you're still in your own head. 0.99

00:49:49.000 It's a piece of plastic.

00:49:51.000 It's plastic and glass and metal.

00:49:53.000 It's beautiful.

00:49:54.000 It's amazing.

00:49:55.000 It's spectacular.

00:49:56.000 But it will never be art.

00:49:59.000 What do you have, an S? I have the P100D. Have you ever sat in the backseat?

00:50:05.000 No.

00:50:06.000 Don't.

00:50:06.000 Why?

00:50:07.000 The noise coming out of that third-point shoulder seatbelt retractor is so unacceptable in modern car standards.

00:50:13.000 That's such a geek thing to say. 0.99

00:50:14.000 Literally, the shit's coming up through the plastic wheel well, and a noise and a cold breeze is hitting your outboard ear. 0.99

00:50:23.000 And I'm like, okay, how did this shit happen? 0.99

00:50:25.000 There's a damn draft that comes up through there, and you're hearing road noise through it. 0.99

00:50:29.000 You're hearing road noise through the seatbelt? 0.99

00:50:32.000 What?

00:50:32.000 Through the cavity through which the retractor spool sits.

00:50:37.000 And air gets in there?

00:50:39.000 Next time you're too stoned to drive, you sit in the backseat, let mama drive, and report back. 0.90

00:50:44.000 You send me a text.

00:50:45.000 It's that annoying, huh?

00:50:46.000 For guys like us, dare I go out on a limb and say us, yes, it'll annoy the piss out of you.

00:50:53.000 Interesting.

00:50:53.000 That car's so quiet.

00:50:54.000 It's a good thing you didn't have a call-in number when Elon was here. 0.99

00:50:56.000 I would have chewed his ass about that. 0.99

00:50:57.000 Would you? 1.00

00:50:58.000 That one thing?

00:50:59.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:51:00.000 Who the fuck is this asshole? 1.00

00:51:02.000 He already knows who this asshole is. 1.00

00:51:04.000 Years ago, I developed a concept that I called the Helios. 0.99

00:51:08.000 I don't know if you ever saw that.

00:51:09.000 So I love like design challenges.

00:51:11.000 I like framing things, right?

00:51:13.000 So I was like, all right.

00:51:14.000 Let's do a revisionist history approach to car design.

00:51:18.000 So, what if electric cars had remained predominant in the late 1800s, early 1900s?

00:51:25.000 What if we had taken inspiration from aircraft design a couple decades prior to when the industry actually did?

00:51:34.000 And then what if after he did the experimental plane, the H2 I think it was, what if Howard Hughes had sat down and like he couldn't get that last starlet to go out with him right before he lost his mind completely?

00:51:50.000 What if he, Buckminster Fuller and Gordon Bureig, sat down and did a napkin sketch after too many martinis?

00:51:56.000 What would that car look like? 0.98

00:51:58.000 So that was my stupid pile of questions around which I framed my design. 0.97

00:52:03.000 And I designed it to work on the, at the time, a P85 platform. 0.87

00:52:10.000 And, basically, I received a copy of a letter that's titled, like, Peanut Butter and Chocolate, that was written by Elon's core engineering team, begging him to allow them to support me to do the build.

00:52:24.000 And, like, since day one, my launch was, I don't need your money!

00:52:28.000 I'll go to the dealership. 1.00

00:52:30.000 I'll buy the damn car. 0.98

00:52:31.000 I need y'all's back-end support on the software because they're super shitty about any repurposed or pried Teslas and Elon never addressed it. 0.99

00:52:41.000 That gentleman right there with the glasses, the larger bobblehead, that's Rich Rebuild.

00:52:45.000 It's Rich Benoit.

00:52:46.000 I know, Rich.

00:52:46.000 We just did a speaking panel together in Texas recently.

00:52:49.000 That's his major beef with Tesla.

00:52:51.000 He's bought a couple of them and pieced them back together again.

00:52:55.000 And they cock-block them. 0.98

00:52:55.000 Yeah, they cock-block him left and right. 0.98

00:52:57.000 They won't let him supercharge.

00:52:58.000 But in the last two or three quarters, there have been major gains. 0.98

00:53:06.000 Honestly, I think due to Rich and due to the community that rose up around him, that shit's been hacked now. 0.98

00:53:13.000 Really? 0.99

00:53:13.000 Oh, yeah. 0.99

00:53:14.000 Now people can open source, hack the CAN data chain, and people are repurposing Tesla components.

00:53:21.000 Like, I use Tesla batteries, but I haven't been using their motors or planetaries or anything else because, again, what do I tell my client when the client needs an update or a part?

00:53:29.000 You go to the dealer, they're like, what's your VIN? And you're screwed.

00:53:33.000 You can't get in. 1.00

00:53:34.000 Come outside.

00:53:35.000 But yeah, like Stealth EV in fact has this new setup that they just started marketing where you literally take that IRS apart where the electric motor is built in, there's a little access door, you pull out a little circuit board, you put in another one and voila!

00:53:50.000 Is there a setup like crate engines where, you know, or do you envision a setup where, because, you know, you know that the new Hummer is now going to be an electric vehicle, which is really interesting.

00:54:02.000 Yeah.

00:54:02.000 And there's going to be a bunch of other electric vehicles that are coming out from Volkswagen that are really cheap and a bunch of different companies are jumping in.

00:54:09.000 Do you envision there being some sort of a crate engine option for people that want to...

00:54:15.000 I do.

00:54:16.000 And I think there should be.

00:54:17.000 Now...

00:54:18.000 Proof in the pudding to this point is that everyone's focusing on the do-it-yourself market, therefore also on the cheapest possible equation, which leaves a lot of, in my opinion, a lot of safety issues completely unaddressed and they can get downright nutty.

00:54:34.000 So the other issue is they're all for ease of installation and conversion.

00:54:39.000 Everyone's thinking about doing kits that literally are a spud plate and a short shaft to go where the engine used to be, put an electric motor to a bellhousing adapter to the stock transmission, which is stupid because electric cars going through manual transmissions,

00:54:54.000 there's a lot of scavenging of energy.

00:54:57.000 It's bad enough to go through a ring and pinion.

00:54:58.000 Doing a right angle gear displacement of power, you lose so much efficiency.

00:55:04.000 And the best EVs, in my opinion, are transmissionless or go through planetary set, you know, for gear reduction.

00:55:11.000 Like that the Merck is the, to my knowledge, the first sort of retrofit EV that, you know, being the goober that I am, like, I was like, okay, we've done a couple EV builds, but if we're going to keep doing them, like...

00:55:23.000 I want to do them our way.

00:55:24.000 Like, I want more safety.

00:55:26.000 I want more performance.

00:55:27.000 I want more range.

00:55:28.000 I want dedicated thermal management networks for the batteries, the controllers, the motors, and all that.

00:55:33.000 And none of it existed.

00:55:35.000 How long did that build take?

00:55:36.000 Oh, God.

00:55:38.000 Four...

00:55:38.000 Yeah, just a little bit over four years.

00:55:41.000 Oh, God.

00:55:41.000 And that the scale of technology shifts changing so quickly in the EV space that as we were building it, suppliers of key components came out with another generation that's infinitely better than the V1 or V3 I already had.

00:55:56.000 So even before we could finish that car, we were backing up and updating and updating and updating, which really, if you put sort of a marketeer hat on, I'm so proud of the value retention in my vehicles.

00:56:25.000 Am I, like, making iPhones all of a sudden?

00:56:28.000 So in two years, it's totally worthless because the tech is outdated?

00:56:32.000 That is the weird thing about tech, right?

00:56:34.000 Is that the exponential growth and improvement, it just makes...

00:56:37.000 Like, no one wants an iPhone 1. Right.

00:56:40.000 They're useless.

00:56:41.000 So look at, you know, internal combustion engine development cycles.

00:56:44.000 What I put in today is still relevant in a decade.

00:56:47.000 But with electric, it's a whole new space to consider.

00:57:17.000 But then again, being that it's part of this industry, you know, I go grill the dudes at their trade show booth and they're like, uh, well, it's something we're working on.

00:57:28.000 You know, just all these press releases and all that. 0.99

00:57:30.000 I'm like, sell me some shit. 0.99

00:57:34.000 They can't sell it to you. 1.00

00:57:35.000 I think I trust it will come out.

00:57:38.000 When you see Elon coming out with like that new Roadster is going to have a 600 mile range.

00:57:44.000 That is when things get really interesting.

00:57:46.000 And Volkswagen claimed with that vehicle that you noted earlier that they were going to make the platform shareable.

00:57:52.000 And they were going to make it available to many different manufacturers, large and small.

00:57:56.000 But I've heard stories like that over the years from, you name it, from Faraday was claiming the same thing. 0.99

00:58:02.000 And so much of it's bullshit. 0.97

00:58:04.000 Because now it's like, I don't want to say vaporware, but it's so much of that like... 0.99

00:58:10.000 VC money, don't worry, we'll be profitable one day and we're worth a billion multiple of nothing today, so buy in.

00:58:18.000 And then it's like so many of these EV startups and retrofit companies come to the scene looking for that elusive FedEx fleet contract that everyone thinks is going to be easy to get.

00:58:28.000 And none of them get it and then they all go belly up.

00:58:31.000 So I just think we're at that point in history where not only is the tech moving forward so quickly and not only that but the likes of predominantly only due to Tesla.

00:58:43.000 It's proven the viability in the market.

00:58:46.000 Now there's purists and traditionalists and everyone's starting to poke at it and I see exponential more interest.

00:58:52.000 So I think, you know, for the next five years or so, it's going to be a bit tumultuous, but I definitely think it's the future of hot rodding.

00:59:00.000 I imagine within five years, I imagine probably half of my client builds will be electric.

00:59:07.000 Wow, that's a big statement.

00:59:09.000 Well, and I'm totally pulling it out of my booty, but that's the vibe that I get.

00:59:14.000 Have you seen there's a 68 Porsche 911 that has a Tesla engine in it?

00:59:21.000 Yeah, is that the one EV West built?

00:59:24.000 I don't know who built it.

00:59:25.000 I was scanning through Instagram the other day and I saw it.

00:59:30.000 A green 68. That's very interesting when they do stuff like that to old cars.

00:59:37.000 And there's so many guys springing up out of the woodwork.

00:59:39.000 Yeah.

00:59:39.000 Like nationwide to various levels of price expectation, range expectation, etc.

00:59:45.000 But I think that's a really, it's a lovely community too.

00:59:49.000 I've noticed it's much more open than the conventional automotive community is about sharing information and suppliers and knowledge and helping one another.

00:59:59.000 And there's a really nice camaraderie within that community.

01:00:02.000 There's like Movement Motors and Austin's doing really nice retrofits and Oh, yeah?

01:00:07.000 EV West has been around forever.

01:00:09.000 They're really the granddaddies on the scene.

01:00:11.000 Movement Motors in Austin?

01:00:13.000 Mm-hmm.

01:00:13.000 Are they the ones that did that Mustang?

01:00:16.000 I think they've done a Mustang.

01:00:17.000 They just finished doing a 2002 BMW. They did an early GTV Alpha.

01:00:23.000 They've done all sorts of different, like, pretty cool, diverse range of platforms.

01:00:27.000 And then, of course...

01:00:30.000 Z Electric down in Orange County that started out doing just the bugs, now the bugs in the buses, and now 9-11s.

01:00:37.000 And it's like there's such a large and welcoming, kind, cool community of people in that space.

01:00:43.000 Now, when you charge a Tesla, it's easy.

01:00:46.000 You know, you look for the Tesla Superchargers.

01:00:48.000 They're all over the place.

01:00:49.000 You press a button on your screen.

01:00:50.000 It shows you where they are.

01:00:52.000 It'll navigate you to them.

01:00:53.000 When you try to get one of those, you can't charge a regular car at a Tesla Superstation, can you?

01:00:59.000 No.

01:01:00.000 And there's different – so there's the standard – I forget the anachron.

01:01:03.000 We could call it rich.

01:01:04.000 The J blah, blah, blah connector.

01:01:06.000 But there's a standard municipal connector.

01:01:08.000 And then there's also the new fast charge network.

01:01:11.000 But it depends on where you live.

01:01:12.000 But for example, around here, it's a joke.

01:01:15.000 They're everywhere.

01:01:15.000 So like I have an app when I'm driving that 49 Merc and I was – Speaking at Barrett-Jackson and had it there in town for while I was visiting.

01:01:24.000 And then you network the apps and you find it.

01:01:27.000 But we made that one supercharger compatible because the client's going to install one in his house and bunk the system.

01:01:33.000 Otherwise, you try and go to a public Tesla charger.

01:01:35.000 It has to do a handshake and it says, no.

01:01:38.000 Oh, is that what it is?

01:01:39.000 You may not charge here.

01:01:40.000 So you can have it supercharger compatible for like I have one on the wall back there for my car.

01:01:45.000 So it would work with that.

01:01:47.000 Yes, that's my understanding, but not a public installation.

01:01:51.000 Those have to go through a whole handshake protocol sending data back and forth.

01:01:55.000 Yeah, it's interesting that you decided to do it that way.

01:01:58.000 Well, it's fun.

01:01:59.000 We put one behind the front license plate.

01:02:02.000 So we do one of those old school articulating plates, like remember on the gas floors behind the plate?

01:02:06.000 So that has the one interface connector.

01:02:10.000 And then the other one, I machined this unnecessarily groovy sort of gas cap under the original fuel door on the Merc.

01:02:17.000 And then that's for the other style charger.

01:02:20.000 So do you, oh, so you could charge it with different ones?

01:02:24.000 The supercharger is one.

01:02:25.000 So depending on, to increase the versatility of it, you had a supercharger fast charge compatibility, and then you had the more widely distributed municipal format charger.

01:02:34.000 And then there's just two different pigtail adapters.

01:02:37.000 You can go either way with it.

01:02:38.000 Do you anticipate upping the range on that thing?

01:02:41.000 Do you think that someday you'll swap the batteries out?

01:02:43.000 Definitely.

01:02:44.000 I think the reality is any EV project I build, I have to...

01:02:47.000 Not only do I anticipate, but I've lost many clients because I'll be super...

01:02:53.000 Blunt about managing their expectations that, look, you're going to spend a lot of money to have me do this.

01:03:00.000 And trust, I will geek out and do the best of the state of the art that is available to us. 0.68

01:03:05.000 But in a year, that might all be garbage.

01:03:07.000 So you have to understand, either you're cool with this moment in time and the range in the performance and it is what it is, or you're a tech geek like most guys that are engaging in that.

01:03:17.000 And you're going to be hammering money then coming back every couple of years for us to upgrade and evolve as the sciences evolve.

01:03:23.000 Oh, you know, we build on a submodular, even like your Bronco is submodulally built.

01:03:27.000 So your powertrain, the electrical network for your powertrain goes to a two single Deutch Tech 26 pin connectors, aerospace connectors.

01:03:37.000 So one day when that powertrain is no longer relevant, but your truck still has good platform value, unplug that, yank it out and put in the hydrogen or the microcapacitor or whatever the hell's working at the time.

01:03:49.000 Do you remember the Bloom boxes?

01:03:51.000 No.

01:03:52.000 Really?

01:03:52.000 What is it?

01:03:53.000 I've been thinking about them lately.

01:03:55.000 I remember seeing them on 60 Minutes years ago and I think Google headquarters was powered by one.

01:04:00.000 There were these funky little black boxes that had some chemical process of creating energy.

01:04:06.000 And they were like early on massive news promising tech.

01:04:10.000 And they were super groovy little simple boxes.

01:04:12.000 And they originally did it for like campuses and military, like large...

01:04:19.000 Large installations for, you know, multiple complexes and stuff.

01:04:25.000 How'd they work?

01:04:25.000 But then they were also making them for automotive and they had a prototype.

01:04:28.000 I was so excited.

01:04:30.000 I don't remember, it's been years, but it was some sort of, I think it was a ionic transfer process that went through a series of elements within the shielded box to create the energy, but they were like self-sustaining and super groovy.

01:04:46.000 It's called a bloom box.

01:04:48.000 Anything?

01:04:50.000 Literally, it's just a big black box.

01:04:53.000 What's in there?

01:04:54.000 And I don't know what happened with them.

01:04:56.000 They went belly up.

01:04:59.000 So that was powering Google at one point?

01:05:02.000 Those things?

01:05:03.000 And what's inside?

01:05:04.000 And I think Stanford was getting into it.

01:05:07.000 I don't know.

01:05:07.000 Major mental flashback for me even that I'm remembering it.

01:05:10.000 It's just one of those things that seems so promising that then went bye-bye.

01:05:14.000 Same with like toroidal engines.

01:05:16.000 There was a great engineer up in Lodi that was revisiting toroidals and he had a Ford Focus.

01:05:23.000 That would do is like his daughter's old car with a blown up motor.

01:05:27.000 He had his own toroidal motor that he had developed that could run from the energy in the charged particles in the air.

01:05:35.000 What?

01:05:36.000 This thing did like 15 miles an hour on a flat test track.

01:05:40.000 Running on...

01:05:42.000 Air.

01:05:43.000 Charged particles in the air.

01:05:45.000 Yes.

01:05:45.000 Ionically charged particles in the air.

01:05:46.000 So conceivably, as the technology improved, that 15 miles an hour could be a real speed.

01:05:52.000 Yeah.

01:05:52.000 Wow.

01:05:53.000 Yeah.

01:05:54.000 And then that same guy, I saw him once at a trade show, and I was exhibiting at the show as well.

01:06:00.000 So I was there on setup day.

01:06:01.000 I was bored out of my gourd.

01:06:02.000 I was already set up in the Ford booth.

01:06:05.000 So I was just walking around, sort of sniffing around.

01:06:07.000 I see this trippy... 0.99

01:06:09.000 Scientist guy in his lab coat in this shitty little booth. 0.98

01:06:12.000 It was like, you know, six by 10 foot booth. 0.98

01:06:14.000 And, you know, at a show where people have like 200 by 60 foot boots.

01:06:18.000 And it's got this odd little toroidal thing and then a bigger toroidal thing and literally like a chalkboard.

01:06:24.000 So I'm like, dude, what's going on?

01:06:26.000 So I started talking to him about it.

01:06:27.000 He starts explaining the technology and what he was doing.

01:06:30.000 And like the smaller one had 300 foot-pounds of torque, the larger one had 2,000.

01:06:34.000 And he was looking to develop it for rail cars, for semis, for...

01:06:40.000 The car is like on and on and on.

01:06:41.000 He's like, yeah, the biggest problem is stopping it once it gets going.

01:06:45.000 Because the toroidal structure meant that the compression cycle from, you know, 12 to 2 of that first cylinder was such that when the combustion occurred and it propelled the next piston into the next combustion cycle and kept going.

01:06:58.000 So getting that power out of the central crank was a challenge.

01:07:02.000 And then how to stop the damn thing was like the bigger challenge. 0.99

01:07:05.000 But they'd run on like horse piss... 0.99

01:07:09.000 Ionic charged particles, diesel, gas.

01:07:13.000 They didn't even need spark plugs.

01:07:14.000 So I'm like blown away by this.

01:07:16.000 I go back the next day.

01:07:18.000 Where'd he go?

01:07:19.000 Booth gone.

01:07:20.000 Empty.

01:07:21.000 Done.

01:07:22.000 And I have the guy's info and I try to reach out to him.

01:07:25.000 Website gone.

01:07:26.000 Website I'd looked at the night before.

01:07:28.000 Gone.

01:07:29.000 Got gobbled up.

01:07:31.000 Five years later, I see him again at another trade show with another kick-ass design.

01:07:36.000 And man, was he a bitter man.

01:07:38.000 He's like, yeah, never again.

01:07:40.000 Because they bought it and they shelved it.

01:07:42.000 I'm never selling anything again. 1.00

01:07:43.000 Fuck them. 1.00

01:07:44.000 I'm licensing to specific channels of applications and that's it. 1.00

01:07:48.000 His new product...

01:07:49.000 So what do you think happened if you're a conspiracy theorist?

01:07:52.000 Do you think someone bought him out and just wanted to... 1.00

01:07:54.000 Oh, I'm a small independent business owner realist in that, hell yes, someone didn't like that and they shelved that shit. 0.99

01:08:02.000 So they bought it and then just shelved it? 1.00

01:08:03.000 Yep.

01:08:04.000 So his next product...

01:08:06.000 Who did that? 0.91

01:08:08.000 I don't know.

01:08:09.000 And he was very cagey about it.

01:08:11.000 Then he had another product where you would replace the alternator in your car with a generator and you had a small battery in the vehicle, right?

01:08:20.000 So this is a retrofit system.

01:08:22.000 The retail model was brilliant because you'd have like a pretty cheesy and expensive three-axis mill and A shit ton of CAD files and one product on the shelf.

01:08:33.000 So in a lightweight car, it was like an electric supercharger.

01:08:37.000 So you'd replace your alternator and it had a toothed cog for the pulley.

01:08:41.000 And then your crank pulley would add a toothed cog to it and then toothed belt.

01:08:46.000 So the idea was it would assist the internal combustion engine through its compression cycle.

01:08:51.000 It would negate the parasitic load of all the Fiat, all the front engine accessory drive mounted things, you know, your alternator, your smog pump or whatever.

01:08:59.000 By pushing the engine through the cycle with the captured electrical energy from the deceleration.

01:09:05.000 Whoa.

01:09:06.000 And then in bigger cars, it gave you like pass assist and range increase and did great things for MPG. And then the story I got on that one was BMW put them under a big contract for it to license it and use it.

01:09:20.000 And then the guy disappeared off the face planet again.

01:09:22.000 Jesus Christ, this guy. 1.00

01:09:25.000 Shit happens. 1.00

01:09:25.000 Do you remember there was a video that was circulating many years ago about a guy who created a car to run on air? 1.00

01:09:33.000 No, excuse me, water.

01:09:35.000 He created a car that runs on water and then this car that ran on water, I mean he apparently had a viable engine and it was really working and then he had a heart attack and as he was dying he was saying, they killed me,

01:09:51.000 they killed me, and then he died.

01:09:55.000 Nobody heard from the water engine again.

01:10:00.000 He's from Columbus.

01:10:01.000 He's from Columbus too? 0.97

01:10:03.000 See that shit happens and I don't even like the term conspiracy theory because I think that's something created by the machine to negate things that are disruptive and innovative so we can put them in a little box and call it a conspiracy theory or whatever and therefore it never happened. 0.97

01:10:19.000 Well anyone who doesn't believe in conspiracy theories I say look at Jeffrey Epstein. 0.99

01:10:23.000 It's real clear.

01:10:25.000 Meyer said that his invention could do what physicists say is impossible, turn water into hydrogen fuel efficiently enough to drive his dune buggy cross-country on 20 gallons straight from the tap.

01:10:36.000 He took a sip of cranberry juice, then he grabbed his neck, bolted out the door, dropped to his knees, and vomited violently.

01:10:41.000 I ran outside and asked him what's wrong.

01:10:43.000 His brother Stephen Meyer recalled, he said, they poisoned me.

01:10:47.000 That was his dying declaration. 1.00

01:10:50.000 That's fucked up. 1.00

01:10:51.000 That's fucked up. 1.00

01:10:52.000 I don't know if it's true. 1.00

01:10:53.000 He might have been nuts. 0.98

01:10:55.000 Or both. 0.99

01:10:56.000 Or both. 0.96

01:10:57.000 Or they might have killed him. 0.52

01:10:58.000 That's another thing. 0.99

01:10:58.000 We like to just call people nuts and write them off. 0.99

01:11:01.000 Some of the greatest innovators throughout the history of mankind have been a little off the rocker.

01:11:07.000 Nikola Tesla was in love with a pigeon.

01:11:09.000 Totally, yeah.

01:11:09.000 He was in love with a pigeon.

01:11:10.000 I love that story.

01:11:11.000 His final days, man, in that hotel.

01:11:13.000 Well, there's also a story that I read that I've tried to substantiate, that apparently he was...

01:11:17.000 He was so frustrated by sexual desires and a love affair that he had and the distraction that it presented that he, in quotes, destroyed his sexuality.

01:11:28.000 I do not know what that means.

01:11:29.000 You know what, I'd like to look into it. 0.99

01:11:31.000 I gotta say, man, I'm kind of tired of my penis still ruling my brain. 0.99

01:11:35.000 You know, at 50, it's like, I wouldn't mind to be able to take it off and leave it at home. 1.00

01:11:40.000 Jesus!

01:11:41.000 Well, no, I mean, just, like, enough already.

01:11:43.000 Enough already.

01:11:44.000 I get it.

01:11:45.000 Yeah.

01:11:46.000 I mean, I turn it on, turn it off as needed and when appropriate.

01:11:49.000 Maybe you can engineer something.

01:11:50.000 I don't want to be walking around like...

01:11:52.000 Maybe have a hip switch. 0.95

01:11:54.000 It's like something you could just set it aside and become a eunuch for a little bit.

01:11:58.000 Or at least make it useful.

01:12:00.000 Make it like a GoPro mount or something.

01:12:02.000 I don't know.

01:12:02.000 Yeah, I see what you're saying.

01:12:04.000 There's a lot of innovation that does sort of get swept aside that you wonder, like there's a documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car?

01:12:14.000 Yeah, Stephen, really interesting cat, the guy who produced and developed that.

01:12:20.000 Lovely guy.

01:12:21.000 Yeah, I don't know who he is.

01:12:22.000 But that is another example of, you know, that was an innovation that was a little bit ahead of its time. 1.00

01:12:28.000 And the powers that be were like, fuck you. 1.00

01:12:31.000 Yeah, they were not ready for it. 1.00

01:12:32.000 Yeah.

01:12:33.000 And that goes way back.

01:12:34.000 I mean, you know, have you heard of the Selden patent?

01:12:37.000 Very interesting piece of American transportation history.

01:12:41.000 This prick named Selden was one of the richest people in the country because he was like one of your early patent trolls who like sat back one day and went...

01:12:48.000 You know, we got these horse carriages and we got these new motor things. 0.93

01:12:52.000 And, you know, at some point there could be a horseless carriage. 0.94

01:12:55.000 So he like literally did like a chicken scratch bullshit drawing and filed it and got awarded the patent.

01:13:02.000 So Henry Ford and his first two companies, as well as the Dodge brothers, all the early pioneers in the transportation sector in the U.S. had to pay this prick a massive royalty to even produce the vehicle. 0.94

01:13:14.000 And it was Henry, after he went down and under and he was reborn and came back out with Ford Motor Company the second time, that he said, you know what? 1.00

01:13:23.000 Fuck him. 1.00

01:13:24.000 Fuck that. 1.00

01:13:25.000 I'm not paying this shit. 1.00

01:13:26.000 And it was like eight years of court battles to overrule it in the National Automotive Dealers Association. 1.00

01:13:34.000 Yeah.

01:13:57.000 The massive shift away from predominance of electric cars to internal combustion.

01:14:03.000 So when you flash forward and you look at Mr. Payne's film, Who Killed the Electric Car?

01:14:08.000 And you look at Firestone and who was it?

01:14:12.000 Pacific Oil, but it was an oil company, a tire company.

01:14:16.000 And they created that bus company and then they did all the lobbying to privatize municipal transport so that then they could slowly buy them all up.

01:14:24.000 And, you know, California had an incredibly successful electric trolley system through the west side.

01:14:29.000 It was brilliant.

01:14:30.000 It was pioneering.

01:14:31.000 It was ahead of everyone.

01:14:32.000 They're the ones that ended up stacked in the desert.

01:14:34.000 There's some of that footage in the film.

01:14:36.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:14:36.000 Because they were not going to sell tires or oil if this shit goes down. 0.99

01:14:40.000 So let's tank it. 0.99

01:14:41.000 Yeah, they do that.

01:14:42.000 Yeah, they will buy a company that's doing amazing innovation.

01:14:46.000 Happens every day.

01:14:46.000 Yeah, and they just put it on the shelf.

01:14:48.000 Do you remember that early Ford cars, the early Ford cars were made with hemp?

01:14:55.000 All of his fenders and everything were made with hemp.

01:14:57.000 And there's a video of him taking a hammer, like a sledge, and banging it off the fenders.

01:15:04.000 And it shows you the insane durability that hemp fibers have.

01:15:08.000 Have you ever seen that?

01:15:09.000 Yeah, but that never made it into production, right?

01:15:12.000 I don't know.

01:15:12.000 I think that was a wartime shortage R&D effort.

01:15:16.000 Same thing with stainless.

01:15:17.000 You ever seen any of the prototype?

01:15:18.000 A couple of them still exist.

01:15:20.000 Stainless?

01:15:21.000 Really?

01:15:25.000 It was a 61, maybe.

01:15:29.000 T-Bird was the newest.

01:15:31.000 And there was a third one that the entire body is made out of stainless.

01:15:35.000 And they're so badass.

01:15:37.000 That's pretty cool.

01:15:37.000 And then GM did one during World War II during the metal shortage time.

01:15:42.000 Entire plexiglass Buick sedan.

01:15:45.000 And it sold at an auction recently.

01:15:47.000 And I... Plexiglass, like, clear? 0.93

01:15:49.000 I was so fucking tempted, yeah. 0.76

01:15:51.000 So the entire body is clear. 0.97

01:15:52.000 Like, you see through the doors.

01:15:54.000 You see the window regulators, the lock solenoids, everything.

01:15:56.000 It is so badass.

01:15:58.000 And it sold for what didn't seem like an absurd—it was like $180,000, $200,000.

01:16:04.000 Wow.

01:16:05.000 Plexiglass.

01:16:05.000 So actually, can you Google that image?

01:16:08.000 It's a Plexiglass prototype Buick, I think it was.

01:16:13.000 Hopefully we'll find it.

01:16:14.000 Super, super nifty.

01:16:16.000 Wow.

01:16:17.000 I know that...

01:16:19.000 What is the company?

01:16:23.000 Lotus.

01:16:24.000 Lotus developed a hemp fiber car.

01:16:27.000 They did like an anniversary...

01:16:30.000 One of their...

01:16:33.000 What is it? 0.99

01:16:34.000 Estige or whatever the fuck it is? 0.99

01:16:35.000 There it is. 0.99

01:16:36.000 There it is.

01:16:36.000 To the left.

01:16:37.000 Wow.

01:16:39.000 One more.

01:16:40.000 One more over.

01:16:40.000 Yeah.

01:16:41.000 Look at that.

01:16:42.000 That's insane.

01:16:43.000 It's like, are you kidding me?

01:16:44.000 That was crazy. 0.97

01:16:46.000 That was so fucking cool. 0.92

01:16:46.000 That's crazy looking. 0.92

01:16:48.000 Apparently it cracked and proved not to be viable, so it never made it past it.

01:16:52.000 But just as like a sculpture to have here in your man cave, the thing is so badass.

01:16:57.000 Yeah, really cool.

01:16:58.000 I like, there's all the, is that safety bracing on the doors?

01:17:02.000 Structural bracing on the doors?

01:17:04.000 I also, for a while, like, I wanted to do, there was a Dow Corning and somebody else, there was a big consortium that was doing a bioderivative molded plastic concepts.

01:17:15.000 So, like, for your city trash cans and stuff, and the durability and the life cycles and everything were epic.

01:17:20.000 And I was thinking for a while, like, how badass would it be to invest all the money in the platform of the vehicular engineering and then make the body literally...

01:17:31.000 By design, almost disposable.

01:17:33.000 So when it's at the end of its life cycle, it literally could turn into mulch and go on the ground and be totally neutral.

01:17:40.000 Or, more interestingly, more liberating for a consumer and a designer.

01:17:44.000 Like, let's say that same platform you had, you could have, like, a dune buggy style.

01:17:50.000 Like, okay...

01:17:51.000 I'm going to take it out to the desert and we're going to go elk hunting or whatever the hell you're going to do that weekend, right?

01:17:57.000 And you want like a buggy-truggy style.

01:17:59.000 Or, you know, we're doing construction at the house and we're going to use it for, you know, hauling soil or whatever.

01:18:04.000 So you could have like modular bodies and different applications used on the same platform but all bioderivative materials.

01:18:11.000 I think that would be super cool.

01:18:13.000 Well, I've always wondered why someone didn't, besides Lotus, didn't make another hemp-bodied car.

01:18:18.000 Because, you know, Corvette still uses plexiglass or fiberglass for all their cars.

01:18:22.000 But hemp is far superior.

01:18:23.000 It is.

01:18:24.000 And it's another one of those things.

01:18:26.000 Like, why isn't that moving forward?

01:18:27.000 Who doesn't want that moving forward?

01:18:29.000 Maybe you should do it.

01:18:30.000 Maybe we should make like a 69 Corvette, but make all the panels, redo them in hemp fiber. 0.99

01:18:36.000 Hate to say it, but you're going up against the petrochemical industry, and I do not want to be that dude.

01:18:41.000 For you?

01:18:42.000 Sure.

01:18:42.000 I mean, all the petrochemical interests in plastics.

01:18:45.000 But if you're just rebuilding something, do you really think that it would be that big of a deal?

01:18:49.000 Like, they would come after you?

01:18:51.000 If you took all the body panels off...

01:18:53.000 And by the way, it would probably be so much stronger.

01:18:55.000 If you watch the video of...

01:18:57.000 See if you can find that video of Henry Ford banging the hammer off of...

01:19:00.000 I'm reading about it right now.

01:19:01.000 It might not have been what was like...

01:19:04.000 He lied?

01:19:05.000 He didn't lie.

01:19:06.000 The people that are putting out the video lied, I guess, is what this article says.

01:19:10.000 What does it say?

01:19:11.000 The angry historian wrote a big blog about it, dug through it.

01:19:14.000 That seems to be a prototype, as he was saying, and it was probably plastic.

01:19:18.000 It might have been some hemp in there, but it wasn't even 50%.

01:19:21.000 It's a binder, maybe?

01:19:23.000 It wasn't even 50% hemp?

01:19:24.000 Well, how does he know that?

01:19:26.000 They're digging through all the places that the information came from, from the 40s and all the places that they were talking about making.

01:19:32.000 The angry historian's pretty balls-out serious when he makes a statement.

01:19:36.000 He does his homework.

01:19:36.000 Interesting.

01:19:37.000 I had a friend who had a stalk of hemp, you know, one of those, the base of a hemp tree on his desk.

01:19:46.000 And he's like, pick that up.

01:19:47.000 And I picked it up and it looks like a piece of oak.

01:19:51.000 It looks like, and we feel it.

01:19:55.000 It's really hard, but it's really light.

01:19:57.000 It's the weirdest plant.

01:19:59.000 I don't know if you've ever held a piece of hemp, like a hemp stalk.

01:20:03.000 It's like an alien plant.

01:20:05.000 It doesn't seem to make any sense.

01:20:06.000 Yeah, and its properties and its structure is so unique, and there's so many benefits to it, for sure.

01:20:11.000 Yeah, I would think, I mean, see if you can find that Lotus, the hemp Lotus. 1.00

01:20:15.000 They had it where the front stripe down the center was clear coat.

01:20:20.000 So you could see the actual hemp fiber in the Lotus.

01:20:25.000 But no one's ever done anything.

01:20:26.000 I mean, they still make Corvettes out of plastic.

01:20:29.000 I'm still making them out of fiberglass.

01:20:30.000 I would think that that would be like a real straightforward approach, especially now that hemp is legalized and you can grow it in the United States and most states.

01:20:40.000 I think it's federally legal.

01:20:41.000 Yeah.

01:20:42.000 For my leather goods, this jacket is all hemp thread.

01:20:47.000 Really?

01:20:47.000 It's super strong.

01:20:48.000 It's better than anything.

01:20:50.000 So that stripe down the middle is all the clear coat natural hemp fiber.

01:20:54.000 So that whole car is made out of hemp.

01:20:57.000 What the hell is Lotus doing these days? 1.00

01:20:59.000 They keep coming out with all these concepts and prototypes, but then nothing ever seems to be actually happening or coming out.

01:21:06.000 I don't know.

01:21:07.000 They had that little car.

01:21:09.000 I guess it's that one.

01:21:10.000 Is that the one?

01:21:10.000 The really little one that they had?

01:21:12.000 Yeah, that's the Elise.

01:21:13.000 I drove it one day and I was like, what do you have? 0.99

01:21:16.000 A fucking pair of chipmunks running the engine with one of those hamster wheels? 0.99

01:21:21.000 But then even last year, the Quail... 1.00

01:21:24.000 We were up there showing a car.

01:21:26.000 They debuted a concept that was lovely.

01:21:28.000 It was kick-ass.

01:21:29.000 But from what I heard, what's his name?

01:21:30.000 Bahar. 0.99

01:21:31.000 They're making such a disgusting amount of money in licensing, like key chains and bullshit, that like the core, even the engineering, tier one engineering aspect of Lotus and then the production, they're like, fuck that. 0.99

01:21:45.000 That's complicated. 0.99

01:21:46.000 Wait a minute.

01:21:46.000 They make their money off...

01:21:48.000 Lotus keychains?

01:21:48.000 Yeah.

01:21:49.000 From what I've been told, that's what's kept Lotus in business over the last 10 years.

01:21:53.000 Lotus keychains?

01:21:55.000 Just merch.

01:21:56.000 Just whatever.

01:21:56.000 Watches, mercs, bags, whatever.

01:22:00.000 Shit that anyone wants to put the Lotus name on. 0.99

01:22:03.000 Really? 0.99

01:22:03.000 They're selling licenses left and right. 0.99

01:22:05.000 But they're not selling cars.

01:22:06.000 I don't think they have anything in production right now, do they?

01:22:08.000 That's so weird.

01:22:09.000 And they've shown more concepts than multinational car companies.

01:22:13.000 Well, I know Matt Farah reviewed that rear engine or the mid-engine one that they have and said it was awesome.

01:22:21.000 It's a beautiful car.

01:22:22.000 But you don't see them.

01:22:23.000 You never see them.

01:22:25.000 Yeah, I think they're one of those interesting companies that like...

01:22:29.000 Kind of like a Malcolm Bricklin situation of like...

01:22:32.000 Who's that?

01:22:33.000 Malcolm Bricklin.

01:22:34.000 So one of the best car books ever.

01:22:38.000 You know Johnny Lieberman, right?

01:22:39.000 Johnny's a dear friend.

01:22:40.000 Johnny had recommended.

01:22:41.000 It's called The Worst Car Ever Built.

01:22:43.000 And it's the story of the Yugo.

01:22:47.000 Oh, the Hugo.

01:22:49.000 It's a fast read. 1.00

01:22:49.000 It is absolutely hysterical, the shenanigans and shit show around that car. 1.00

01:22:54.000 And behind all of it was Malcolm Bricklin, who's like the P.T. Barnum of the automotive industry. 0.99

01:23:00.000 The amount of stories and stuff this guy has lived through and caused and gotten away with is insane.

01:23:06.000 But like, the Hugo, the cars were like late and they were going to debut at the LA Auto Show.

01:23:10.000 And they realized like, oh shit, we don't have booth models or...

01:23:14.000 What are we going to do? 0.99

01:23:15.000 So Malcolm Bricklin in the story goes that he drove around downtown LA and just, where are the prostitutes? 0.99

01:23:21.000 Where do the whores hang out around here? 1.00

01:23:23.000 Went over and like hired a bunch of the girls to, like, could you put on something a little more tame and like be here at this time for these days? 0.98

01:23:30.000 And just like run the show and be their booth models and rep the cars.

01:23:34.000 But like the cars as they came out of the container had disassembled themselves in transit.

01:23:40.000 Yeah.

01:23:40.000 And just on and on and on.

01:23:43.000 The shenanigans.

01:23:45.000 Just hysterical. 0.97

01:23:46.000 But that book is so fucking funny. 0.90

01:23:48.000 I've never heard of that before. 0.75

01:23:49.000 That's interesting.

01:23:51.000 I would think that for a guy like you, who's building cars the way you're building them, the real challenge would be staff.

01:23:59.000 I think that would be the real challenge, is finding people that understand what you're doing, finding fellow artisans that also understand how to build cars, that really get what you're doing.

01:24:11.000 I love the state of California, but they do not want me here.

01:24:14.000 How so?

01:24:15.000 They don't want me in business.

01:24:17.000 They don't want anyone in California making anything except maybe solar-assisted bicycles.

01:24:23.000 The business climate in the state of California and the associated HR costs and insurance and workman's comp and liabilities, like every couple weeks there's another absurd ruling that we get an update on that like, Wait, what? 0.98

01:24:38.000 It's like, you mean to tell me if I catch a dude smoking crack while on the clock stealing my inventory, I can't fire his ass on the spot? 0.99

01:24:46.000 Nope. 1.00

01:24:47.000 What?

01:24:48.000 Oh yeah.

01:24:48.000 Now if you do, you have to give him a week's pay at the time of letting him go, and you can't make him sign anything that indemnifies nor protects you.

01:24:58.000 You have to put them on probation and offer therapy and resources.

01:25:03.000 No, you don't.

01:25:03.000 Really?

01:25:04.000 You catch someone stealing merchandise and smoking crack.

01:25:08.000 Like, literally the most vagrant disrespect of safety, of policy, of company goods.

01:25:16.000 It has gotten so bad.

01:25:18.000 And like, we just got a letter from the building inspector came by and he's like, yeah, you know those automotive lifts in your building?

01:25:27.000 We're like, yeah.

01:25:28.000 He goes, yeah, you have 30 days to remove all those.

01:25:31.000 What?

01:25:32.000 Thank you.

01:25:33.000 That was pretty much my response verbatim.

01:25:35.000 He goes, yeah, you're not zoned for automotive.

01:25:37.000 I'm like, you see this plaque on the wall, the congressman, councilman, and the mayor?

01:25:41.000 You see this picture of me and the mayor when he did the ribbon cutting?

01:25:44.000 Here's the email record showing the mayor's aide personally delivered me all my occupancy permits.

01:25:49.000 He goes, yeah, not my problem.

01:25:51.000 I'm like, what about the last nine years of inspectors coming in all the time and saying, you guys have the cleanest, most professional, above-board shop, kick-ass, well done, thank you so much for making my life good. 0.99

01:26:00.000 He goes, yeah, they're idiots, I'm the new inspector. 0.99

01:26:02.000 So the new inspector says you're not licensed. 1.00

01:26:06.000 I'm not zoned appropriately to be in business where I'm at, despite having permits and everything for it.

01:26:13.000 Did they change the zoning?

01:26:15.000 No. 0.98

01:26:32.000 I don't know Should be going to my employees, not to insurance companies and all this bullshit that gets tagged on top.

01:26:42.000 It's like for every dollar you pay someone now, there's another 32 cents that should be going to them that's going to sucker fish in industry insurance.

01:26:50.000 I don't understand what they want you to do.

01:26:51.000 How do they expect you to work in these cars?

01:26:53.000 Is this something you can fight?

01:26:55.000 I had to lawyer up and we're fighting it.

01:26:58.000 But I mean, literally, I honestly think they'd rather have a commercial weed facility in that building kicking out a hell of a lot more tax revenue than us.

01:27:07.000 Really?

01:27:07.000 Yeah.

01:27:08.000 Do you think that's what they're doing?

01:27:09.000 Yes.

01:27:10.000 So you really think they're trying to make it challenging for you to do business so that you quit?

01:27:14.000 Yes.

01:27:14.000 And just about any small business owner I know in the state of California, the challenges we're facing are getting to the point of making us We wonder about our own intellect for staying in the state.

01:27:26.000 I don't want to move.

01:27:26.000 I don't want to go anywhere.

01:27:27.000 I don't want to.

01:27:27.000 I love it here.

01:27:28.000 So what would you do if you lose this?

01:27:31.000 You know, if it gets to the point that we have to...

01:27:34.000 Oh, you mean this building situation?

01:27:36.000 Yeah.

01:27:36.000 I'll fight it or I'll move and I'll deal.

01:27:38.000 I've been through this shit for a while. 0.99

01:27:39.000 So you find some place where you are zoned for lifts? 1.00

01:27:41.000 Yeah, you just keep partying on.

01:27:42.000 But I know I'm zoned fine where I'm at.

01:27:44.000 I'm just going to have to, you know, instead of running a business, I have to now become a lobbyist and, you know...

01:27:50.000 Knock on doors and ring phones and dig through my black book to find people with the clout to get the city to go.

01:27:56.000 So is this guy just flexing?

01:27:58.000 Like, what is this?

01:27:59.000 I think so.

01:27:59.000 And at first he seemed like he chilled out when we went above him.

01:28:02.000 And then everything was good.

01:28:04.000 And then a week later it bubbled back up again and we got another notice.

01:28:07.000 So we're in the middle of it right now.

01:28:09.000 You went above his head and you got approval?

01:28:12.000 Verbal.

01:28:13.000 Verbal.

01:28:13.000 Yeah.

01:28:14.000 And I said, yeah, I don't know what he's talking about.

01:28:15.000 You're fine.

01:28:16.000 You're good to go.

01:28:17.000 And then you go back again.

01:28:19.000 And now it's a problem again. 1.00

01:28:20.000 And you say, what in the fuck? 1.00

01:28:21.000 That's crazy. 0.99

01:28:22.000 But look, at the end of the day, the reality is also, I'm going against what trade schools are telling young kids that are going into the field.

01:28:30.000 What are they telling kids?

01:28:31.000 They're telling kids that, here, if you run this scan tool, you'll make 150 grand a year as a lead tech at a BMW dealership.

01:28:39.000 What they're not telling these kids, while sucking all their money out of them with crazy student loans and stuff, Yeah, that's like the kids in the street in Brazil all wanting to grow up to be Pele. 0.62

01:28:50.000 There's not that many Pele's. 1.00

01:28:51.000 So there's plenty of dudes at that dealership that are making minimum wage or thereabouts or dealing with the politics of flag hours or whatever.

01:28:59.000 But what I'm having a hard time with is we charge $100 an hour for our labor.

01:29:06.000 I can't just keep charging more and more and more at the level of what we do with projects that can run thousands of hours per job.

01:29:14.000 The math is, it almost doesn't make sense.

01:29:18.000 Like I honestly have guys that I think should be, I should be paying them 70, 80, 90, 100 grand a year to do what they do because they're artists and they deserve it. 0.57

01:29:27.000 The bullshit of running a business in California and all of the exponential costs that are added on top, they even de-incentivize overtime now.

01:29:35.000 If I give a dude overtime, it ups his tax rate and they take even more out of the overtime. 0.89

01:29:42.000 Well, whatever happened to GDP and employment and productivity and keeping everything rolling, they're de-incentivizing us even to offer our employees more money with more hours.

01:29:53.000 It's tragic.

01:29:54.000 And I've lost several guys now that have gone to do jobs that they hate.

01:30:01.000 But like the Department of Water and Power, I've lost several employees at DWP because they get a pension, they get killer health care, they get 90 grand a year to pick their nose and watch other people work.

01:30:12.000 Ugh.

01:30:13.000 Sucks. 0.99

01:30:14.000 What is this? 0.99

01:30:14.000 Is this a Democrat thing? 0.99

01:30:18.000 I think it might be the uber-green side of democratic because I think the whole two-party system is a shit show as it is anyway. 0.96

01:30:28.000 I don't think it's about which party so much as I think we've empowered attorneys to such an extent that it's downright sinful because it's hindering industry. 0.97

01:30:39.000 It's hindering innovation.

01:30:43.000 There's just so many constrictions because everyone has their hand out.

01:30:46.000 No one's self-accountable, but everyone's liable.

01:30:50.000 So then you need a policy for that.

01:30:54.000 We had an employee once sue us.

01:30:56.000 He jumped in a dumpster to stomp on everything to compress it in the dumpster.

01:31:01.000 It started moving across the ramped parking lot, and he jumped out of it, clipped his leg on the way down, and shattered his arm in four spots.

01:31:11.000 Well, he sued me.

01:31:11.000 It's like, well, it's not in your job description.

01:31:13.000 Did someone tell you to jump in the dumpster and stomp on it?

01:31:16.000 No.

01:31:17.000 And then we discover the guy had embrittled bones due to chemical agent exposure in the military.

01:31:22.000 But it's my problem?

01:31:24.000 Like, what?

01:31:26.000 People, whatever happened to, like, be proud of what you do, be respected, be well-paid, everyone's content, everyone's, like, inspired and engaged. 0.94

01:31:36.000 And I just feel like more and more there's just so much noise and Lawyers and policies, all this crap.

01:31:42.000 It's like, we're just here to do something we love and get rewarded and pay people.

01:31:48.000 I mean, I'm stoked that we support directly 58 families, plus all our sublets and everything else.

01:31:54.000 But it's hard to retain people when we know we can't pay them what they're worth in this business environment.

01:32:03.000 I have a really hard time with the whole crack thing.

01:32:05.000 Catching someone stealing smoke and crack and you can't fire them.

01:32:09.000 That seems so strange.

01:32:10.000 You have to give him a week's worth of money.

01:32:13.000 On the spot.

01:32:14.000 On the spot.

01:32:15.000 So you have to cut him a check. 1.00

01:32:16.000 This is getting so stupid. 1.00

01:32:18.000 That seems insane. 1.00

01:32:19.000 And you have to offer him therapy?

01:32:23.000 I mean, to be clear, I didn't catch a guy doing that.

01:32:26.000 I know what you're saying.

01:32:27.000 It's just a general thing. 0.97

01:32:29.000 But I tell you, man, more and more, a surf shack with my own little garden out back and my little leather studio and sell shit on Instagram, simplify life. 0.96

01:32:38.000 Me, my wife, and my dogs. 0.98

01:32:40.000 I know what you're saying.

01:32:41.000 My own one-bay garage.

01:32:42.000 You can move to Montana.

01:32:43.000 You can get away with anything.

01:32:44.000 We've been dealing with cancer.

01:32:46.000 My wife got diagnosed with cancer last year, and we've been in the throes of...

01:32:54.000 Yeah.

01:33:10.000 So that kind of reinvigorated but also refreshed my perspective to remind myself that someone's panties are in there not because their icon's been in storage for six months.

01:33:22.000 They didn't plug it into the tender and the battery's dead and they want to call and yell at me about it.

01:33:27.000 Really?

01:33:28.000 Like, give me your bank info.

01:33:30.000 I'll send you your money back.

01:33:32.000 Oh, well, no.

01:33:33.000 Why are we interfacing like this?

01:33:36.000 You have a dead battery.

01:33:38.000 You haven't been there for six months.

01:33:39.000 Dude.

01:33:40.000 That's what happens.

01:33:41.000 Pick your battery.

01:33:42.000 Well, that's why the icon has a real easy way to remove the battery posts.

01:33:46.000 Right. 0.98

01:33:46.000 And an integrated tender if you click that box on the fucking configurator. 0.98

01:33:50.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:33:52.000 Well, there's a lot of silly people out there for sure, but it's just weird when they're empowered by the government. 0.98

01:33:56.000 When you don't have a common sense approach to knuckleheads. 0.98

01:34:02.000 If you've got a guy smoking crack and stealing things, you're not supposed to reward that kind of behavior with a week's paycheck.

01:34:09.000 And it's like the, you know, the homeless challenge that we're facing. 0.91

01:34:13.000 And, you know, when we try and address that, in my opinion, when that's addressed on a state level, it's going to fucking fail because then you're going to overburden that state.

01:34:20.000 Even if they're innovative and brilliant in their solution, then the whole country tilts to that state and they all come a sliding over. 0.69

01:34:27.000 Yeah.

01:34:27.000 And then the one in Venice that is like super nasty, low occupancy level because the homeless are like, wait a minute.

01:34:34.000 There's a curfew and there's drug tests. 0.97

01:34:37.000 Screw you. 0.98

01:34:37.000 I want to do whatever I want. 0.98

01:34:38.000 I want to smoke what I want to smoke and do it.

01:34:40.000 It's like, no.

01:34:42.000 So, Joe, I'm running for office.

01:34:44.000 Oh.

01:34:44.000 This is my platform.

01:34:45.000 I'm announcing right here.

01:34:48.000 Catalina. 1.00

01:34:49.000 Catalina kind of sucks. 1.00

01:34:50.000 Have you been there? 1.00

01:34:51.000 It's not the best place.

01:34:52.000 Okay, so how about this?

01:34:53.000 Move the homeless people to Catalina?

01:34:55.000 Yes!

01:34:55.000 They don't want to live there, though.

01:34:57.000 They can't beg for money in Catalina.

01:34:58.000 No, no, no.

01:34:58.000 I'm not asking.

01:34:58.000 No, you go there.

01:34:59.000 You're not asking.

01:35:00.000 No, I'm not asking.

01:35:01.000 Were you a Republican?

01:35:03.000 I'm nothing.

01:35:04.000 But you go there.

01:35:06.000 You contribute to that social system.

01:35:10.000 We'll give you seed money and development.

01:35:13.000 Free internet for all.

01:35:14.000 Free internet?

01:35:15.000 You actually start... 0.99

01:35:17.000 Producing something of value to society and get your shit together. 0.99

01:35:20.000 And come back home? 0.99

01:35:21.000 Then we'll send the ferry over and we'll bring you back over.

01:35:23.000 So it's prison for homeless people?

01:35:24.000 Yeah.

01:35:25.000 What do you think?

01:35:25.000 How are they going to get food?

01:35:28.000 Airdrop?

01:35:28.000 I don't know.

01:35:29.000 Grow your shit. 1.00

01:35:30.000 There's enough bison to feed them for a couple of years. 1.00

01:35:34.000 It's not going to work. 0.99

01:35:35.000 That idea sucks. 0.95

01:35:37.000 My other platform would be you cannot evoke the law in your defense in the process of breaking the law. 0.98

01:35:44.000 When you hear stories like a friend of mine, NFL player, called a dude breaking into his car.

01:35:50.000 He's in the gym and looking out the window and sees legs hanging out the passenger window of his BMW. He's like, motherfucker. 1.00

01:35:56.000 He runs down there. 1.00

01:35:58.000 He literally grabs a dude by the ankles and yanks him out of the car, blows the guy's jaw out, knocks his teeth out, on and on and on.

01:36:05.000 My friend ended up getting sued for that and ended up liable and owing this prick a bunch of money. 0.70

01:36:11.000 Really?

01:36:11.000 But he was in the middle of breaking the law and stealing the guy's property.

01:36:14.000 Is that a California thing? 1.00

01:36:17.000 Texas, they don't give a fuck. 1.00

01:36:18.000 That was California, yeah. 1.00

01:36:20.000 You should go to Texas.

01:36:21.000 Yeah, Austin's looking better and better.

01:36:23.000 Austin looks pretty good.

01:36:24.000 I had some buddies with some shops in Austin and barbecue.

01:36:27.000 My friends at La Barbecue have a kick-ass barbecue place.

01:36:30.000 Yeah, it's a great place. 0.99

01:36:31.000 If someone's breaking your car, you can just shoot them. 0.99

01:36:33.000 Sweet. 0.99

01:36:34.000 Sign me up. 0.97

01:36:34.000 I mean, I don't think you should shoot them, but you could. 0.97

01:36:37.000 I'm not advocating shooting people for breaking into your car. 1.00

01:36:40.000 Well, shoot them in the foot and then run over them. 1.00

01:36:41.000 Would you feel better with that? 1.00

01:36:42.000 Well, I feel like if you break into a former NFL player's BMW, and he catches you, you should get your fucking ass kicked. 1.00

01:36:51.000 Yeah, totally. 1.00

01:36:51.000 By a big giant man. 1.00

01:36:54.000 I mean, that's how you learn to not break into someone's car.

01:36:57.000 But see, that's going back to this lack of accountability.

01:36:59.000 Yes.

01:37:00.000 Well, that's the problem with Democrats.

01:37:02.000 That's the problem with this country.

01:37:03.000 And then there's a problem with particularly the state.

01:37:05.000 The state is so progressive-minded.

01:37:08.000 And I'm a progressive.

01:37:10.000 I'm a very open-minded person.

01:37:11.000 But you can't...

01:37:14.000 You can't remove responsibility.

01:37:16.000 You can't remove the consequences for actions.

01:37:20.000 You can't do those things.

01:37:21.000 You can't give people participation trophies, and that's what you're doing.

01:37:24.000 Yeah, I agree.

01:37:25.000 And that attitude that people have, by thinking they're being open-minded and kind and nice, you are just enabling people to keep fucking up their life by not— Just get an award by showing up.

01:37:36.000 They have no consequences.

01:37:37.000 And, you know, you can't litter, right? 1.00

01:37:39.000 So how come you can put a fucking tent filled with shit and just park it under the overpass? 0.99

01:37:44.000 But if I throw a can of Diet Coke out my window into that same spot, I will get a fine. 1.00

01:37:51.000 And I will get arrested.

01:37:52.000 Rightly so. 1.00

01:37:53.000 But why can this asshole park his fucking tent filled with crack there? 1.00

01:37:58.000 How come you can have cardboard boxes just scattered out all over the place that you sleep on? 1.00

01:38:02.000 I don't know what to tell that guy and how to change his life once he's got a tent, once you camp down under the overpass.

01:38:09.000 There's a lot of things that have gone wrong to get you to that position. 0.99

01:38:12.000 But what I do know is you shouldn't be allowed to have a fucking tent. 0.99

01:38:16.000 You shouldn't be allowed to have these tent villages. 1.00

01:38:18.000 Downtown, man.

01:38:19.000 We've spent much time lately in downtown.

01:38:21.000 Yes, but how about Venice?

01:38:22.000 I went to dinner the other night in Venice, one of the last times I could go to dinner for the next couple months, I think, in a restaurant.

01:38:27.000 But when we went down there, there's a nice house, like a beautiful house in Venice.

01:38:31.000 Across the street, there was 50 tents. 0.97

01:38:34.000 Just filled with shit, broken bike parts and garbage and just things piled up. 0.98

01:38:40.000 And you're like, this is the problem with being open-minded. 0.99

01:38:43.000 This is the problem. 0.98

01:38:44.000 And this is why people like when Rudy Giuliani cleaned up New York City with this totalitarian approach, like, the people that live in New York City that weren't homeless were like, fuck yeah, finally. 0.98

01:38:56.000 Take these homeless people off the street. 0.98

01:38:58.000 Do this.

01:38:59.000 Fix that.

01:38:59.000 Make it harder to be a criminal.

01:39:01.000 Make it more difficult.

01:39:03.000 You know, and the downside of it, a lot of people got arrested that probably shouldn't have.

01:39:08.000 A lot of people got frisked that probably shouldn't have.

01:39:10.000 A lot of people got harassed that probably shouldn't have.

01:39:12.000 But on the plus side, you've got to crack a few eggs if you want to make an omelet.

01:39:15.000 And they cleaned up New York City.

01:39:17.000 And they cleaned up the homeless problem that they have there.

01:39:19.000 I think that's like probably our most vexing modern social challenge.

01:39:24.000 Yes.

01:39:25.000 It's really how far it's gotten.

01:39:27.000 It's a health care challenge.

01:39:28.000 It's crazy.

01:39:29.000 A mental health care challenge.

01:39:30.000 The bottom line is how did you get to that position?

01:39:32.000 Like there's many things that have to go wrong.

01:39:34.000 Via federal negligence.

01:39:35.000 There's that.

01:39:36.000 You know, the original problem when they changed what it constitutes to be mentally incapacitated.

01:39:43.000 Was that the Carter administration?

01:39:44.000 I believe it was the Reagan administration.

01:39:45.000 The Reagan administration, yeah.

01:39:47.000 Yeah, I mean...

01:39:47.000 Gave them a bus ticket and send them to L.A. Well, that's what they're doing.

01:39:50.000 They send people all over the country.

01:39:52.000 Everybody likes to do that.

01:39:53.000 They send them to Palm Springs, get out of here.

01:39:55.000 Get out! 0.98

01:39:55.000 What? 0.98

01:39:55.000 The desert! 0.98

01:39:56.000 What am I doing?

01:39:57.000 I'm with you, though, man.

01:39:58.000 Like, the restoration of personal accountability.

01:40:00.000 Like, to me, my word is everything to me. 0.99

01:40:03.000 And I'll lose my ass to honor my word. 0.97

01:40:05.000 If I told you I'm going to do something to whatever extent I have to go, I'm going to do it. 0.99

01:40:10.000 Because my generation, whatever, my dad, I was raised where that meant everything above all other things.

01:40:17.000 But more and more, like, corporations have no conscience, and that's been encouraged more and more and more, right? 0.99

01:40:23.000 So people, there's a lack of accountability there, all the way through to if your kid even shows up to school, he gets a fucking award. 0.96

01:40:31.000 Like, no, we need to celebrate the leaders and I think? 0.97

01:40:52.000 And it's like, no, that's not how it really works.

01:40:54.000 It's never how it works.

01:40:55.000 It's never been how it works, and it can't be how it works.

01:40:57.000 It's the whole reason why it's difficult to get out of bed, because there's a reward for accomplishing that.

01:41:03.000 It's difficult to show up at work.

01:41:04.000 There's a reward for accomplishing that.

01:41:06.000 It's difficult to exercise.

01:41:08.000 Do you think we could segment aspects of...

01:41:11.000 Our culture, our society, meaning, do you think it would ever be viable? 0.86

01:41:15.000 And I'm so politically ignorant, so maybe you're just going to laugh me out of the room.

01:41:19.000 Could you socialize, legal defense, education, and healthcare?

01:41:24.000 Like, do you think that would be viable as a hybrid where it's a democracy, it's a capitalist-driven system, but you take the money, therefore the corruption that takes us, like the business of medicine versus the art of medicine are completely different things.

01:41:40.000 You know, now...

01:41:41.000 Give you a pill so you can live and then we'll give you another pill to deal with the ramifications of the side effects of the pill we gave you versus the cure got fucking shelved, you know, because there wasn't a rev model behind it.

01:41:52.000 Yeah.

01:41:52.000 Do you think we could ever – would that ever work?

01:41:55.000 I think education and healthcare for sure can be socialized.

01:41:58.000 The question is would you get the same education, the same healthcare if it wasn't socialized?

01:42:02.000 I think as long as you had private options, you would.

01:42:05.000 And then the problem is, well, how much funds go towards these public education solutions?

01:42:14.000 Versus the private options that have the access.

01:42:16.000 Yeah, that's always going to be the issue.

01:42:18.000 And that's because when people want...

01:42:21.000 Look, if someone is excelling at something, whatever that is, whether it's teaching or being an orthopedic surgeon, they want to be rewarded for their efforts.

01:42:30.000 Plus, they've probably acquired a massive amount of debt.

01:42:36.000 If you're an orthopedic surgeon, you've gone through medical school, there's a strong chance that you're deeply in debt by the time you start cutting people.

01:42:44.000 And that's a real problem.

01:42:46.000 It's a real problem because that also incentivizes them to perform surgeries that are unnecessary.

01:42:51.000 And you hear about that all the time.

01:42:53.000 I mean, there's a lot of doctors that just want to start cutting people, you know, and they don't have proactive solutions.

01:42:59.000 Like, listen, this might take a long time, but let's try to rehabilitate this first, particularly with, like, back issues.

01:43:05.000 Oh, it's all gone.

01:43:06.000 Yeah, I remember when I first started having my health issues, you know, I'm epileptic.

01:43:10.000 And when I first started looking into that, and they were throwing darts at the wall for a decade, like, I don't know, could be this, could be that, endocrinologist, cardiologist, all these different specialists.

01:43:19.000 And literally, the cardiologist sits me down and is like, okay, so here's what life with a pacemaker is like.

01:43:25.000 We're going to do this.

01:43:26.000 I'm like, whoa, back... 1.00

01:43:28.000 The fuck up. 0.99

01:43:29.000 Like, show me the math. 0.99

01:43:31.000 Like, I'm far from a doctor, but I'm kind of an engineering guy.

01:43:34.000 So, like, show me the math.

01:43:35.000 Like, this is a result of that, which causes that as indicated by this.

01:43:39.000 Therefore, we're going to do this.

01:43:40.000 Couldn't.

01:43:41.000 It's like, well, we just figure, you know, it's probably a safe measure.

01:43:43.000 And like, so you haven't even seen anything that clearly defines that that's even the issue. 1.00

01:43:49.000 And you're going to fuck you. 1.00

01:43:50.000 I'm out of here. 1.00

01:43:51.000 Like, Well, he's dealing with 15 people a day.

01:43:53.000 He's probably exhausted.

01:43:55.000 And he's got a big note and a big loan.

01:43:58.000 And also a little desensitized.

01:44:00.000 They get desensitized to people's struggle.

01:44:03.000 You and I talked about this, but did you look into ketogenic diets?

01:44:08.000 Did you ever look into the idea of ketogenic diets and how it benefits epilepsy?

01:44:13.000 I did just to the extent of doing some Google research promptly after our discussion.

01:44:19.000 And I also was looking into medical marijuana approaches to it.

01:44:24.000 But again, the beautiful state of California is such that I lose my license if I don't take the chemicals that big pharma promote because they do biannual blood tests.

01:44:33.000 They test you for those chemicals? 1.00

01:44:36.000 Oh, they do blood tests to make sure you're on the shit. 1.00

01:44:38.000 But is that just assuming there's no way to cure epilepsy? 1.00

01:44:43.000 Correct.

01:44:44.000 That seems insane.

01:44:45.000 Yes, it does.

01:44:46.000 Especially with all the proof in CBD solutions, right?

01:44:51.000 And it's been medically verified, but the state won't acknowledge it.

01:44:55.000 So if you choose to go that route, not only obviously your insurance company won't pay for it, but you lose your license and everything else related to its regulations.

01:45:03.000 But what if you go through all that and you have no issues?

01:45:07.000 Like what if you can prove that your epilepsy is in remission?

01:45:11.000 Then that can work, but it takes a year or longer to be able to prove that.

01:45:18.000 Jesus Christ.

01:45:20.000 So you have to take medication.

01:45:22.000 Unfortunately, I haven't had a seizure in years, so I'm stoked.

01:45:26.000 Yeah, I have a friend.

01:45:27.000 But I hate taking anything.

01:45:28.000 His son has issues, his epilepsy, and he got him on CBD and it stopped.

01:45:33.000 Dead in his tracks.

01:45:33.000 Young boy, too.

01:45:34.000 He's like three years old.

01:45:35.000 Yeah, stopped dead in his tracks.

01:45:39.000 Yeah, CBD is an issue or a solution for some people, some people with epilepsy.

01:45:45.000 Ketogenic diets are another one.

01:45:47.000 They actually started using those on certain team members that were using rebreathers.

01:45:53.000 Certain seals and team members that were using these rebreathers, some of them would have seizures for some reason.

01:46:02.000 You know, rebreathers are, it's not a scuba gear, it's a different sort of setup.

01:46:07.000 And one of the ways they found to mitigate that was putting them on ketogenic diets.

01:46:12.000 There's something about your body burning fat as opposed to carbohydrates that lends itself to stopping these sort of seizures.

01:46:19.000 They don't completely understand why or whether or not it works on everybody.

01:46:23.000 A lot of research, too, in the cancer field in regards to diet impacts.

01:46:28.000 It's pretty phenomenal data out there.

01:46:30.000 Yeah, it is.

01:46:31.000 Yeah.

01:46:31.000 Yeah, one of the things that I'm hoping out of this coronavirus scare is that people start taking their health more seriously.

01:46:38.000 You know, and your immune system and just...

01:46:41.000 If something hits you and you're in a compromised state, you're so much worse off than if you're in a healthy state.

01:46:49.000 I mean, it literally is like having insurance on your body being able to defend itself from an outside attack.

01:46:56.000 Yeah.

01:46:57.000 Because that's what a virus is.

01:46:58.000 Stop.

01:46:58.000 Listen to it, honor it, chill, stop your roll, get better.

01:47:02.000 Keep your defense up.

01:47:04.000 Keep your strength up.

01:47:06.000 I mean, that is literally the benefit of a healthy diet and exercise, is your body functions better and it can ward off attacks.

01:47:14.000 And that's what people have to think about when the flu comes around or anything comes around.

01:47:18.000 That's an attack.

01:47:19.000 It's an attack by a viral entity. 1.00

01:47:22.000 And if you have weak defense, if you have a poor immune system, if your body is already compromised because of tobacco use and drugs and all these various things that can wreck your system and you don't exercise, and you're gonna get around to it, but you never do, and you eat like shit, 0.99

01:47:37.000 well, guess what, man? 1.00

01:47:38.000 You have no fucking tools. 0.99

01:47:40.000 You have no weapons to defend yourself against this entity. 1.00

01:47:43.000 I'm worried about Jamie right now.

01:47:45.000 Like, I'm not letting her fill her car up with gas.

01:47:48.000 Go to the bank, anywhere.

01:47:49.000 Like, me and my younger son, Quinn, who's still at home, like, let us handle everything.

01:47:54.000 Because your immune system is severely challenged right now.

01:47:57.000 Just finished chemo, like, lockdown.

01:48:00.000 But you need to go to work and bill people because we've got to meet payroll.

01:48:03.000 But other than that, like, let's stay low.

01:48:07.000 Let's keep our heads down.

01:48:09.000 It's such a trying time.

01:48:11.000 I'm just really hoping that it's a wake-up call for some people, that they really understand how important it is.

01:48:16.000 There's so many intelligent people that I know that treat exercise and diet and just your own physical well-being as if it's a frivolous pursuit of shallow-minded people.

01:48:29.000 That want to, you know, the egotistical vain people that want to have nice bodies. 1.00

01:48:37.000 And it's for fools. 0.99

01:48:38.000 You know, the intelligent person concentrates on the mind. 0.99

01:48:41.000 But I think that's a really, that is in itself, it's an unintelligent way to approach it.

01:48:48.000 It's not holistic.

01:48:49.000 You should treat your mind as if it's a part of your body.

01:48:53.000 Right.

01:48:53.000 But again, it's more of that polarization that unfortunately we're seeing in the last 10 years that's just growing exponentially.

01:49:00.000 So that's one thing I hope out of this is that us amongst ourselves as Americans and as a larger family of people who only have one globe to live on, I hope there's more...

01:49:13.000 I hope to see this create more cohesion, more of a unification amongst all mankind.

01:49:19.000 To realize we all are dealing to different extents with the same challenges, the same potentials, the same liabilities, and get people back...

01:49:32.000 Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

01:49:34.000 And I think that sometimes it takes a real outside challenge to bring us together.

01:49:40.000 Or a scare.

01:49:40.000 Yeah, a scare.

01:49:41.000 I think this is a scare.

01:49:42.000 I mean, it's a challenge.

01:49:43.000 And it's such a reminder, because I've always felt this.

01:49:47.000 It's all so fragile, right?

01:50:06.000 Our kind of hand-to-mouth, give or take a couple months.

01:50:08.000 Yes.

01:50:09.000 Right?

01:50:09.000 Then you look at our distribution systems, our infrastructure, all of it.

01:50:14.000 It's all so fragile. 0.99

01:50:17.000 So any arrogance because of convenience or wealth or resources or connections that we all have, it's pretty quick that none of that shit matters. 0.99

01:50:28.000 Yeah. 0.98

01:50:28.000 And, like, it's all so fragile. 0.98

01:50:30.000 But I hope, again, that there's a positive spin to that where people can... 0.98

01:50:34.000 Understand and acknowledge that and therefore learn and connect and have greater consideration for our neighbors, ourselves, our own bodies, our mind, our spirit, but like get people more connected and like face out of their fucking phones.

01:50:49.000 Yeah, I'm really interested to see what happens coming out of San Francisco because they're the first ones to impose a real lockdown.

01:50:58.000 You're not even supposed to go to work.

01:50:59.000 I don't know how they can say that.

01:51:01.000 I don't know how they can do that.

01:51:02.000 And I don't know what's going to come out of that. 0.68

01:51:05.000 But again, they're still dealing with medieval diseases on the street because people are shitting everywhere.

01:51:11.000 So you're really concerned with health care.

01:51:13.000 Portland should have been first.

01:51:14.000 Well, I mean, you're really concerned with people's health, and you've got people literally diarrhea-ing on people's cars all over Haight-Ashbury. 0.99

01:51:22.000 I mean, it's fucking nuts. 0.97

01:51:23.000 San Francisco is—there's apps where you can see the human waste scattered out throughout the city. 1.00

01:51:29.000 So you can—people, when they see human shit, they enter it into the app. 1.00

01:51:33.000 And it's spectacularly disgusting when you look at the map of San Francisco and human shit. 1.00

01:51:39.000 It's all over the place. 1.00

01:51:40.000 And they don't do a goddamn thing about it. 0.94

01:51:42.000 And they seem to think that these people need help and these people need... 0.98

01:51:47.000 But it's like if those people were murdering people or assaulting people, if all homeless people assaulted people, would they treat it the same way?

01:51:56.000 You know, they would say, well, these people are breaking the law.

01:51:58.000 Now we're going to arrest them.

01:51:59.000 Well, they're breaking the law.

01:52:00.000 They should be breaking the law if they're camping out and throwing garbage everywhere, too.

01:52:03.000 I'm not saying you should arrest all of them, but you need to do something.

01:52:06.000 You can't just look at it like it's not a gigantic public health crisis.

01:52:10.000 Such a vexing, vexing issue, man.

01:52:12.000 The diversity of situations and stories that lead people to be into that situation is so complicated.

01:52:19.000 It is, and you're going to see more of it if you force people to be out of work for three weeks. 0.99

01:52:36.000 Fuck, that's a tough one. 0.99

01:52:38.000 I don't even understand how you'd even approach that. 1.00

01:52:40.000 It's gotten so far gone.

01:52:42.000 I mean, it should have been nipped in the bud.

01:52:44.000 They should have figured out a way to stop it as it was happening and put a considerable amount of resources toward that.

01:52:49.000 But all these other problems seem to be more on the forefront and more on people's mind when it comes to elections.

01:52:56.000 And so they just sort of let it happen.

01:52:58.000 I think, like you said, back with Reagan, they're not being a forcible...

01:53:07.000 Yeah.

01:53:27.000 Three weeks ago in downtown LA and, like, just trying to drive down his street to get in his parking lot, it was like a circus, man.

01:53:37.000 And, like, they've not only taken over the curb in the street, they're walking down the middle of the street with an attitude like, I shouldn't be driving on the street.

01:53:44.000 And, like, half the businesses on the block literally gave up and closed down. 0.99

01:53:48.000 And they can't even, like, my friend wanted to move his company and the realtor's like, you're fucking dreaming. 0.50

01:53:53.000 Like, I'm never going to sell this building right now. 0.51

01:53:56.000 Like, look at this neighborhood.

01:53:57.000 And there's nothing they're doing.

01:53:59.000 I don't know.

01:54:00.000 It just keeps getting worse.

01:54:02.000 When I was filming Fear Factor down there in the early 2000s, it was bad.

01:54:06.000 I mean, I was like, does everyone know about Skid Row?

01:54:08.000 Like, this is crazy. 0.99

01:54:09.000 You drive down Skid Row and you go, what in the fuck is this? 1.00

01:54:12.000 This is a zombie movie. 0.99

01:54:13.000 And it is tenfold worse now.

01:54:15.000 There's 70,000 homeless people in Los Angeles.

01:54:18.000 I mean, that's an enormous amount of people.

01:54:22.000 The way I describe it is it's basically almost the size of Boulder, Colorado, but homeless.

01:54:27.000 The entire city of Boulder, homeless.

01:54:30.000 That's what it's like.

01:54:30.000 It's crazy how many people there are.

01:54:33.000 And that's just documented.

01:54:34.000 They don't really know how many there are.

01:54:35.000 I mean, it's an enormous number.

01:54:37.000 It's just a rough estimate.

01:54:39.000 That's like all these COVID estimates.

01:54:41.000 Wait a minute.

01:54:42.000 Two minutes ago, you were saying no one can get the test. 0.99

01:54:44.000 So how are we supposed to trust any fucking thing you're telling us? 0.96

01:54:47.000 Yeah, no one has any idea. 0.99

01:54:48.000 And also the fact that so many people are asymptomatic, so they're wandering around with it.

01:54:53.000 And the real issue is the immune compromised folks.

01:54:56.000 And then I'm worried as a business owner, because at some point, am I disrespecting my employees, my culture, by staying open?

01:55:05.000 Right. 0.99

01:55:06.000 Like, should I be closing or am I breathing into – it's like I'm torn between this is social media gone wrong, too much hype and too much bullshit versus speaking to friends, a friend who's a scientist in the viral field and what she's telling me and friends who are doctors and a friend who's a doctor in Milan and the shit show he's dealing with. 0.73

01:55:26.000 It's like – Okay, no, it's not just like, but it's very interesting trying to, I think all of us in all of our lives right now, picking our paths, picking our priorities, how do we address this? 0.90

01:55:36.000 But then as a business owner, again, in California, there's liabilities to how you address or don't address it.

01:55:43.000 Yeah.

01:55:44.000 So it's very interesting.

01:55:46.000 Do you think you'd move to Texas?

01:55:50.000 No, couldn't do it?

01:55:51.000 Frankly, if it got that bad, I'd rather sell the company to someone who thinks they're smarter than me and they can do it and scale it and go there.

01:56:01.000 I just stay in my happy space.

01:56:03.000 And just make leather jackets?

01:56:05.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:56:06.000 Just make shit, travel the world, spend time with craftsmen, spend time with my family. 0.99

01:56:10.000 When you're, I mean, you've made this very, very successful business and very, I hesitate to use the word iconic, but it is. 0.99

01:56:20.000 Do you have goals outside of what you've already done or do you just do what you enjoy doing?

01:56:26.000 I do what I enjoy doing.

01:56:28.000 Having said that, I need to listen to the capitalist pig on my right shoulder versus the creative geek on my left shoulder in that we've been quite successful as a company.

01:56:40.000 I'm honored how many people know the brand.

01:56:42.000 But I haven't like amassed some, you know, great personal wealth. 0.99

01:56:47.000 If the shit blows up tomorrow... 0.99

01:56:50.000 You know, I'm looking for a job, you know? 0.99

01:56:54.000 So I need to figure out how to cash in, so to speak, on the equity the brand has created in ways that don't step on the brand's wee-wee.

01:57:05.000 So, like...

01:57:07.000 I'm dying to get into all different aspects of industrial design.

01:57:11.000 I'd love to do that on my own or through collaborations, but I think my goal would be to diversify my product line, to keep revisiting classic design in a modern context, but in many different ways and many different product segments.

01:57:28.000 So, like, I am right now, and part of the trip to Mexico and to Morocco, Those trips were – and the last three years of practice and building prototype wallets and sort of side hustle on Instagram and stuff is really getting granular with it because I do want to start a leather goods brand.

01:57:47.000 Dude, make a jacket like that.

01:57:49.000 I'll buy it.

01:57:50.000 Yeah.

01:57:50.000 That jacket looks sweet.

01:57:51.000 Yeah, wallets and belts and jackets and stuff.

01:57:53.000 Do you make them for chimps?

01:57:54.000 Dude, I literally, like, this jacket is, like, hand-cut, hand-stitched, not a single machine used, like, shitshow commercially inviolable.

01:58:05.000 But I'm working with Horween Leathers in Chicago and a friend's brand called Black Bear, and we're, like, studying different patterns and prototyping.

01:58:13.000 So I think I'm pretty soon, I'm going to launch, like...

01:58:17.000 A limited run kick-ass jacket that's like layers of story down to why that leather and who made it and how and on and on and on.

01:58:26.000 I'm in.

01:58:27.000 Tell me when.

01:58:28.000 I'm in.

01:58:29.000 Start exploring. 0.94

01:58:29.000 Well, I was like ready to go and now I'm thinking I'm an idiot to start a new brand right now so I might chill for a bit. 0.94

01:58:35.000 Yeah, who knows what the fuck is going to happen to this economy. 0.97

01:58:38.000 And like I said, I'm really interested to see what happens out of San Francisco because I think they've imposed a three-week mandatory lockdown. 0.97

01:58:45.000 I think it's three weeks.

01:58:46.000 That is a long time to go without income.

01:58:48.000 A long, long time.

01:58:50.000 Especially the burn rate of a company of my size.

01:58:53.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:58:54.000 Yeah, that's what people don't understand.

01:58:57.000 I mean, when someone looks at something that you create, like an Icon Bronco, and they look at the expense of that thing, and how, boy, it must be nice.

01:59:07.000 Like, that's crazy.

01:59:07.000 Like, this guy must be making money hand over foot.

01:59:09.000 I could build that for 30 grand!

01:59:10.000 Yeah.

01:59:12.000 I mean, I went to visit the car when you were making it. 0.97

01:59:15.000 The level of detail is off the charts, from the polyurea coating of every fucking component under... 0.60

01:59:21.000 The undercarriage of the car to the media blasting this, and they're replacing all the bolts and all the wiring, all of this. 0.61

01:59:27.000 You don't really understand what it's like to see a handmade car built from the ground up, unless you watch it being built from the ground up. 0.98

01:59:37.000 It's asinine. 1.00

01:59:37.000 It's the stupidest business. 1.00

01:59:39.000 The amount of money that costs to build one of those things is fucking crazy. 1.00

01:59:44.000 You know, when people think of a car, oh, but you can get an F-150 for 39 grand. 0.94

01:59:50.000 Which I look at and go, how is that possible?

01:59:53.000 Like, that's amazing you guys can do it.

01:59:55.000 I mean, pick it apart how we want, but that's amazing.

01:59:57.000 It is amazing.

01:59:58.000 Robots.

01:59:59.000 I mean, efficiency of the production, modern production lines.

02:00:03.000 Look, if it all blows up tomorrow, I've had...

02:00:06.000 Multiple lives and multiple careers that have all been amazing experiences.

02:00:11.000 I wouldn't change a single aspect of my life thus far other than my wife's cancer battle.

02:00:17.000 Like, it's just been an amazing ride. 0.97

02:00:19.000 And if this shit all blows up tomorrow and this is as far as it goes, I'm honestly, I'm stoked. 0.98

02:00:24.000 It's been amazing. 0.99

02:00:25.000 Perfect world, I'll keep pushing limits.

02:00:27.000 I'll keep trying new platforms.

02:00:29.000 I'll keep pushing tech.

02:00:30.000 And as long as I'm able to not have a real job, I am just super stoked.

02:00:35.000 Yeah, well, that's the goal.

02:00:38.000 The goal is to get through life without a real job.

02:00:40.000 Right, totally.

02:00:41.000 No, like, literally, we ranted about this, if anyone wants to listen to our first podcast when we first met, and just we geeked out for hours and hours, but like, the whole educational system alone, like, should be focused on helping our youth understand what they're passionate about.

02:00:57.000 If someone finds their passion and can make it their life, they're a happier individual and they're going to break new ground and be of great value versus trying to fit everyone into these bullshit social silos, most of which are broken and overflowing now.

02:01:12.000 Like the Watson computer is better than general counsel.

02:01:17.000 At a huge percentage difference, AI can outdo these lawyers in like coming out of school in six digits of debt and they can't get jobs.

02:01:26.000 That model doesn't even work anymore.

02:01:28.000 So let's get back to like honoring tinkerers and craftsmen and free thinkers and innovators.

02:01:33.000 Yes.

02:01:34.000 Yeah, encouraging people to think outside the box.

02:01:36.000 Totally.

02:01:37.000 Encouraging people to be creative.

02:01:38.000 And I think there's also an issue in teaching people at scale.

02:01:41.000 You know, I just, I don't, I think people need individual attention.

02:01:44.000 They need some sort of a mentor figure that can tell them, hey, I did what you're doing.

02:01:49.000 I went through what you've gone through.

02:01:51.000 How about just understanding that individual kid and understanding is, does he learn best by seeing?

02:01:57.000 Does he learn best by doing?

02:01:59.000 Does he learn, like, even understanding that interface?

02:02:01.000 Yeah.

02:02:02.000 It's a mess, you know?

02:02:04.000 And the only thing that gives me hope is now, because of the internet, there's so many other resources for kids.

02:02:11.000 There's so many YouTube videos they can watch, and so many articles they can read, and there's documentaries.

02:02:18.000 There's all these different stories of someone like them that also followed a dream. 0.98

02:02:23.000 And, you know, when I was a kid, there was none of that shit. 0.99

02:02:25.000 It's true. 0.99

02:02:26.000 Like, I didn't even know you could...

02:02:28.000 Being an industrial designer was a career path.

02:02:30.000 I was well beyond having the opportunity to have properly trained in it.

02:02:35.000 Well, there was no such thing as being a podcaster.

02:02:38.000 I mean, it didn't exist.

02:02:39.000 But now it exists and there's 900,000 podcasts, literally.

02:02:44.000 Really?

02:02:44.000 Oh, it's so crazy.

02:02:46.000 There's some crazy number, like it's one out of every 400 people in America has a podcast.

02:02:53.000 Is that a real number?

02:02:56.000 What is the number?

02:02:57.000 There's 330 million people.

02:02:58.000 Yeah, that's the number, right?

02:02:59.000 And there's a million podcasts.

02:03:01.000 Close to it.

02:03:02.000 One in 350. It's in the neighborhood.

02:03:05.000 It's in the neighborhood of one out of every 400 people.

02:03:07.000 But even you, right?

02:03:08.000 You had no idea.

02:03:09.000 I have no idea.

02:03:10.000 But I mean, you didn't know the magic carpet ride you were getting on.

02:03:13.000 No!

02:03:13.000 You did this as a passion play, right?

02:03:16.000 Yes.

02:03:16.000 You wanted to have interesting conversations and meet diverse people.

02:03:21.000 And you kind of needed a gig, right?

02:03:24.000 This sort of was, I don't want to say a hobby, but it grew very organically for you.

02:03:29.000 100% organic.

02:03:30.000 But you had no clue it was going to turn into this empire of craziness, right?

02:03:33.000 No, it costed money for most of the time.

02:03:35.000 It was just for fun.

02:03:36.000 It was 100% just for fun and an opportunity to get together with my friends.

02:03:40.000 One of the things that I figured out early on...

02:03:42.000 That's beautiful.

02:03:42.000 I love the honesty of that.

02:03:44.000 Yeah.

02:03:44.000 It is, yeah.

02:03:46.000 But one of the things I figured out early on is I spend the most time with my friends when we sit down and do podcasts because then there's no phones involved.

02:03:55.000 It's just three hours of just talking to each other.

02:03:58.000 Whereas, you know, if we go to a restaurant, we'll talk for a little bit, but we only do it once every now and then, and they're on the road, and I'm on the road, and so getting together was like a communal thing, and then it became like a clubhouse thing, and then we started doing it at the Ice House, so it was at a comedy club, so we'd coincide with shows,

02:04:15.000 and that was a lot of fun.

02:04:17.000 And then slowly but surely, the numbers started growing, and as the numbers started growing, then I started getting guests, and then as I started getting guests, I started understanding what I'm actually doing and getting better at talking to people.

02:04:30.000 And then realizing that what you're doing is linking up with one person.

02:04:34.000 The less distractions, the better. 0.99

02:04:36.000 The less bullshit, the better. 0.99

02:04:37.000 It's just you and a person talking. 0.99

02:04:39.000 And then I got better at that.

02:04:41.000 And then I started thinking about what I'm doing wrong, what I'm doing.

02:04:44.000 And then I realized, oh, this is a skill just like everything else is a skill.

02:04:49.000 Being annoying to listen to is a failure to do the job right.

02:04:54.000 It's not just that that's who you are.

02:04:56.000 That's not what it is.

02:04:57.000 It's just you are who you are because of a lack of attention.

02:05:01.000 I mean, I've done tons of interviews and tons of podcasts and tons of media over my various careers and stuff.

02:05:06.000 And I honestly, like, you know, our conversations and my last experience here and again talking with you today, I mean, I love it.

02:05:15.000 Like, there's such great conversations.

02:05:18.000 And I honestly, like, we were direct in eye contact.

02:05:21.000 It's been personal.

02:05:22.000 It's about whatever the hell we come up with that we end up just naturally flowing into.

02:05:28.000 Yeah.

02:05:28.000 And that's so, it's so rare.

02:05:44.000 So there's no one that's telling me who to talk to.

02:05:47.000 So when I reach out to you and I said, hey man, you want to do another one? 0.99

02:05:50.000 Yeah, fuck it, let's do it. 0.99

02:05:51.000 I'm like, all right, exciting. 1.00

02:05:52.000 So it's only people I'm interested in talking to.

02:05:55.000 So that makes it so much better for the listeners as well because you're getting genuine enthusiasm.

02:06:01.000 Just like me when clients call and want me to build something that sounds like it would suck and I'm not interested.

02:06:06.000 Yes, exactly.

02:06:07.000 So bless us, right?

02:06:08.000 While we have the power to say no and to control what we do, what we say yes to, and what we say no to, as long as the market allows both of us to do that, we'll stay in our little happy place.

02:06:20.000 For sure.

02:06:21.000 What I hope out of this coronavirus thing is other than people stay healthy, of course. 0.99

02:06:26.000 Is that people do revisit what they do with their lives as well and recognize the fact that all this shit can go away and even if you're a good boy and you show up at work every day for some fucking job that sucks and you feel like you're putting in your time and you're doing the right thing, they can take that shit away from you. 0.96

02:06:42.000 Ain't none of us getting out of here alive. 0.98

02:06:43.000 Exactly. 1.00

02:06:44.000 And you can jump off that fucking ship and I bet you can make it to the shore. 1.00

02:06:49.000 I bet you can. 1.00

02:06:50.000 But you have to do the due diligence.

02:06:52.000 You've got to do the work.

02:06:53.000 And you have to understand this is not going to be easy.

02:06:56.000 Nothing that's worth doing is easy.

02:06:58.000 But I think once someone understands the importance of being impassioned about Yes.

02:07:27.000 Once you make that first acceptance and understanding, the rest of it's a breeze.

02:07:31.000 It'll be such a happier world if people have that connection.

02:07:35.000 It will.

02:07:35.000 I'm with you.

02:07:36.000 I hope that grows from this.

02:07:38.000 One of the unintended positive side effects of podcasts is that they get to listen to people that have done that.

02:07:42.000 People like you and other people that have had on that are living their life the way that they chose to.

02:07:48.000 And they realize, like, this is...

02:07:49.000 And then you get to hear the story.

02:07:50.000 Like, oh, this isn't like...

02:07:51.000 They weren't handed this.

02:07:52.000 They didn't get a Willy Wonka golden ticket.

02:07:54.000 They had a passion.

02:07:55.000 And then they followed through. 1.00

02:07:56.000 Shit. 1.00

02:07:57.000 I had 10 grand, two piece of shit cars, and four credit cards. 1.00

02:08:01.000 That's how I started the company. 0.99

02:08:02.000 And I walked away from a lucrative career.

02:08:05.000 Yeah.

02:08:06.000 Just walked away.

02:08:07.000 There's a million stories like that.

02:08:08.000 And those are the fun ones.

02:08:09.000 Those are the fun stories.

02:08:11.000 I'm just happy there's people out there that are living that example.

02:08:16.000 And I really do hope that some people, I mean, it's not for everybody, but some people out there that are hearing this, That are in this situation like fuck like I did all the right things and my job is still gone now and my You know my pension 401k tank blah blah blah The real problem is people with families people with families and people with mortgages and they can't jump they have leases they have you know rent to pay and It's still argument nights and weekends stay up a little later nights and weekends nights and weekends Even if it just gives you the

02:08:46.000 creative creative juice Get that juju flowing.

02:08:50.000 And then you can dabble in, is there a rev model?

02:08:52.000 Is this a viable business?

02:08:54.000 Or where can it go? 0.99

02:08:55.000 But, man, nights and weekends, staying motivated and excited and thinking and stretching and trying versus just plugging in and watching the same shit being forced on our throat by media. 0.96

02:09:08.000 There's so much that can be done even just at that level. 0.97

02:09:11.000 The effort to push that car and then jump start it as it gets rolling.

02:09:15.000 It's really hard to push that car.

02:09:17.000 But if you can get it going enough and jump in and push the clutch in and throw it into first and then it's moving.

02:09:24.000 But it's that initial effort. 0.93

02:09:26.000 It's so fucking hard.

02:09:27.000 But once you do it, like this podcast is easy to do now. 0.87

02:09:30.000 It's easy to show up and do it.

02:09:32.000 It's easy.

02:09:33.000 But to do it from scratch, if someone had to start it tomorrow, if you think it's going to be easy, it's not.

02:09:40.000 I look back, actually.

02:09:41.000 Just today, I was going through an image catalog.

02:09:43.000 There's this update in the site, and I don't remember what it was. 0.96

02:09:46.000 It was some image I was editing for the site, and I was going, fuck, this is complicated.

02:09:52.000 Like, looking back, it seemed somewhat easy. 0.98

02:09:57.000 Like, there's so many aspects and so much complexity in this business that looking back at it, like, how the fuck did I pull that off? 0.95

02:10:06.000 Yeah.

02:10:07.000 It grew merely out of the passion.

02:10:10.000 It wasn't by focus groups or analysis or anything. 0.95

02:10:14.000 It was I just fucking jumped in and started doing it. 0.95

02:10:17.000 Made it work. 0.99

02:10:18.000 And you keep grinding.

02:10:19.000 That's the thing.

02:10:20.000 The grind is amazing because it does really achieve results.

02:10:24.000 You just keep doing it.

02:10:26.000 You keep doing it.

02:10:27.000 You keep working.

02:10:27.000 Keep showing up.

02:10:28.000 Keep pouring your passion into it. 1.00

02:10:29.000 And then you look back two years, three years, five years, and you go, holy shit. 0.99

02:10:33.000 Look at the distance. 0.99

02:10:35.000 Look at all the projects.

02:10:37.000 Look at all the stuff that's been done.

02:10:38.000 And I went through your, before we did this, I went through your YouTube channel.

02:10:42.000 And I started looking at some of the newer projects and some of the older projects. 0.86

02:10:45.000 And I'm like, look at the fucking amount of work that's come out of your shop. 0.97

02:10:50.000 It's really crazy. 0.99

02:10:51.000 Yeah, it's pretty nuts.

02:10:52.000 It's amazing!

02:10:53.000 330-some vehicles out of Icon and then a couple thousand out of the first brand out of TLC. And what is that, like a week out of GM? Not even, right?

02:11:04.000 How many days is that of making cars?

02:11:06.000 That's like a fart.

02:11:06.000 That's like a half day.

02:11:09.000 Probably, right?

02:11:10.000 Yeah.

02:11:10.000 It's cool, though.

02:11:11.000 I mean, it's a very unique field, the field of people making cars. 0.93

02:11:17.000 You know, I would hate to see the regulations and all the bullshit get down to you. 0.55

02:11:23.000 I love the fact that you're a 15 minute drive away and go check out the shop. 0.99

02:11:28.000 We'll beat them.

02:11:29.000 It just sucks that I have to convince them that I'm a valued member of California's... 0.97

02:11:34.000 It's crazy. 0.75

02:11:35.000 ...economy and society.

02:11:37.000 Especially the city.

02:11:38.000 The city should be so pumped that you're there.

02:11:40.000 I mean, I just don't get it. 0.99

02:11:41.000 I mean, Mayor Villagosa found me the damn building personally. 0.99

02:11:44.000 Like, they were great, but I don't know. 0.98

02:11:47.000 I think, you know, what a lot of people are telling me, and we're seeing this even at Bureau of Automotive Repair, California Resource Forces, there's a lot more regulation occurring now.

02:11:59.000 Because since California and the Trump administration have gotten pretty deep in this argument over does California have the right to create its own air quality control mandates or not, that it's sucking so much money out of the California system that they're having to scramble to come up with new rev models.

02:12:18.000 So like a lot of the aftermarket automotive like for off-road use only – We're good to go.

02:12:40.000 It's a real bummer, man.

02:12:42.000 It's a real bummer.

02:12:43.000 I mean, I understand the desire to keep air quality high, but I don't understand that you're using all these cars that are, you know, you're using these emission-compliant engines.

02:12:54.000 I mean, these LS engines that you're using, these crate engines.

02:12:57.000 Yeah, I'm putting cats and systems into cars that never had them.

02:13:01.000 Yeah. 0.97

02:13:02.000 All the vehicles that we create actually emit less being driven like an idiot than the stock one did sitting in a parking lot not even being driven. 0.97

02:13:10.000 If just by fact of the charcoal canister in the non-vended fuel system. 0.98

02:13:14.000 Really?

02:13:14.000 Just that alone.

02:13:15.000 So just sitting around the emit shit? 1.00

02:13:18.000 Oh yeah, because the tanks, it was vaporizing. 0.99

02:13:22.000 Fuel vaporized out and all those particulates go flying.

02:13:26.000 Well, it's no different than a modern car, was my point.

02:13:28.000 I mean, if you buy a modern F-150 or you buy one of your cars with a crate engine, it's the same.

02:13:34.000 It's the same as far as the amount that it releases into the industry.

02:13:38.000 Yeah, and we're exempt.

02:13:39.000 You know, all the platform mirrors are the vast majority of them that we work with.

02:13:43.000 Pre-75, right?

02:13:43.000 Yeah, pre-75.

02:13:45.000 But I'm just doing it because you'd be a dumbass not to. 0.98

02:13:48.000 It's the right thing to do. 0.99

02:13:49.000 Yeah, and it's not like the 90s where you're putting in EGR and smog pumps and five miles of vacuum tubes and shit that's not going to be reliable.

02:13:58.000 I mean, now it's all about wideband O2s, pre-cat, post-cat O2s, boom, boom, and a clean program.

02:14:03.000 Like, it's better.

02:14:05.000 It's a better experience.

02:14:06.000 What about hydrogen?

02:14:08.000 Has anybody come up with a viable method of, I mean, I know that there's people that have done some hydrogen systems in cars. 0.72

02:14:16.000 Have you ever fucked with that?

02:14:17.000 No, and I've been curious about it. 0.97

02:14:19.000 But from what I understood, the distribution of hydrogen was the big deal breaker in that the hydrogen that is readily distributed, if I recall correctly, was a lower grade that would not work in the systems required for hydrogen-powered automobiles.

02:14:38.000 So it was a complete infrastructure shitshow to get it to the point of viable.

02:14:42.000 Same with Capstone that was doing those micro-turbines out in Chatsworth, Canoga Park area.

02:14:49.000 I don't know what that is.

02:14:49.000 It seemed quite viable.

02:14:51.000 What was it?

02:14:52.000 Micro-turbines.

02:14:53.000 So turbo-chargers, but they were micro?

02:14:55.000 It's a full turbine.

02:14:57.000 So think industrial commercial application turbines, power sources, but for road-going vessels.

02:15:04.000 Oh, so that was the actual engine for the vehicle?

02:15:07.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:15:07.000 But apparently they burned pretty dirty.

02:15:09.000 Oh, okay.

02:15:11.000 I don't know what I'm talking about, but that's what I was told when I was starting to dive into it.

02:15:15.000 I remember there was an argument.

02:15:15.000 I just want a bloom box.

02:15:17.000 Yeah, whatever the fuck they are. 1.00

02:15:19.000 We don't even know what the fuck they are. 1.00

02:15:20.000 I don't give a shit. 1.00

02:15:21.000 That sounded cool. 0.99

02:15:23.000 Anything else?

02:15:24.000 Should we wrap this up?

02:15:25.000 Sure.

02:15:26.000 No, just I love being here and I really appreciate your time and your intellect and your diversity and thank you, my friend.

02:15:32.000 Thanks, man.

02:15:32.000 I appreciate what you do.

02:15:33.000 I really do.

02:15:33.000 I mean, I'm happy there's Jonathan Wards out there.

02:15:36.000 Keep on trucking.

02:15:37.000 All right.

02:15:38.000 Bye, everybody.

02:15:39.000 Stay safe.

02:15:39.000 Stay healthy.

02:15:40.000 Bye.

The Joe Rogan Experience - March 18, 2020

Joe Rogan Experience #1443 - Jonathan Ward

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript