In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, I sit down with the creator of the Venom F5, Ron Hennessey. We talk about his childhood, how he became a car guy, and how he built one of the most ridiculous cars I've ever been inside in my life. It's a fun episode and I hope you enjoy it! Tweet me if you have any questions or suggestions for the next episode! Timestamps: 3:00 - How Ron got into the car business 4:30 - How he built his first car 6:40 - When did he realize he wanted to build a truck? 7:15 - How much money does it take to make a truck 8:00 - How did Ron get into the truck business? ) 9:20 - What's the secret to Ron's success 11:00 -- How he got started in the trucking industry 12:30 How he's built so many cars 13:30 -- What kind of cars do you like to drive 14:40 -- What's your favorite thing to drive? 15:15 -- How do you feel about your kids' cars? 16:20 -- What is your favorite kind of car? 17:20 18:00 | What are you looking for? 19:30 | What do you think of your favorite car ? 22:40 | What is the best car you like about your kid s favorite car ? 21:30 // 22:00 // Is it a good enough? 26:40 27:10 | What would you want to drive a car that you're looking for 25:00 & 27:40 // How does it make you feel like you're having fun in a good place 26,000 | What s your favorite type of car you're going to drive in your garage? 27,000 28:00 / 28: Is there a car you think you like? 35:00 + 35,000 / 35,500 36,000/35,000? & 35,400 & 37,000 ? & 36,500? , 32,000 + 35, 33,000, & 40,000+ 37,500, + + + & 4,500?!
00:00:35.000So you got some power to weight ratio to work with there.
00:00:37.000That's like 700 more horsepower than a Tesla Plaid.
00:00:40.000Yeah, it's like taking a McLaren 765LT and adding 1,000 horsepower to it.
00:00:45.000Something nobody needs, but we've sold 36 of those, the Venom F5. What happened to you in your life that you needed to make these preposterous cars?
00:01:34.000I grew up in kind of an abusive situation and neglect, and now all of a sudden I've got all this motivation or I've had all this motivation for the last 40 years of my business career, so it's been good.
00:01:46.000It's funny, because you would never want that for your children.
00:01:49.000It's amazing how well it's worked out for people like you, or for me.
00:01:52.000Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't think everybody out there that has some level of success has not necessarily been abused and motivated by negativity, but I can definitely see with our five kids, with the...
00:02:32.000I mean, you know, to have an opportunity to build toys for people, you know, whether it's, you know, a 700,000 to 800,000 horsepower pickup truck or a Venom F5. You know, we were talking earlier about first-world problems, right?
00:03:33.000But does it take, like when you drive your Land Cruiser, you drive, you know, one of your older cars, does it take you back to that time either when you had that car, you aspired to have that car, you knew the guy or the girl that had that car kind of growing up and you wanted it back then but you didn't know how you were going to get it?
00:05:00.000Yeah, you know, I saw my wife for my 60th last year, my 60th birthday, she and the kids bought me a nice 69 Olds 442. So it's nice enough to where I'll drive it, but not so nice that I don't want to drive it.
00:05:14.000And I just, man, when I drive that thing, it's the slowest, least powerful thing in the fleet.
00:05:36.000Do you think you'll do something to the chassis?
00:05:39.000It would probably need that, but, you know, I like a scary ride.
00:05:42.000That kind of entertains me, you know, so maybe to some degree.
00:05:45.000I mean, we do want to have a balanced, safe car, but, you know, the old saying of Bob Lutz, who used to be the president of Chrysler back in the day when I first met him.
00:05:57.000He had a pretty fast motorcycle, and he's out tooling around Germany, and some dude just rips past him on the Autobahn, and he pulls into the gas station.
00:06:04.000It's this old guy, and Bob goes up looking at his bike, and he's like, is that a turbocharger on your bike?
00:06:08.000This dude, this is like the early 70s.
00:06:11.000And the German guy says, yeah, yes, young man, it has a turbocharger.
00:06:15.000Bob says, well, how much horsepower does that bike have?
00:06:17.000He says, well, probably 200 of the tire.
00:08:50.000I went to this Jesuit high school up in Kansas City called Rockhurst.
00:08:54.000I was a little guy and a total nobody.
00:08:56.000I was on the wrestling team, and I think I was in the 98-pound weight class when I was a freshman.
00:09:01.000Anyway, I was a total nobody, and then I bought a motorcycle from my dad when I was a sophomore.
00:09:06.000I remember the first time I rolled into school, I was late, and there was this quadrangle where I could pull right up to the door, and there's all these windows that are open.
00:09:14.000All these guys rushed to the window to hear what this loud motorcycle was.
00:09:38.000And he was going to buy this car from this body shop for like a couple hundred bucks.
00:09:41.000And he told me it was going to be my first car, blah, blah, blah.
00:09:44.000And like a month goes by, I'm like, hey, Dad, when did we get in that car?
00:09:47.000And he just kind of ignored me and just kind of blew me off.
00:09:49.000And the next thing I knew, the neighbor across the street had that car.
00:09:53.000So the tour trip, I didn't get the car, and now I got to go home every day on my motorcycle and look at the neighbor across the street who had the car.
00:10:00.000So when I had my motorcycle wreck, I had two bikes, so 16, and I'm trying to fix my bike, and the guy across the street worked at this Ford factory up in Kansas City, and he offered to help me with the bikes, and I ended up making a deal with him, and I sold him.
00:10:12.000I traded him the two bikes, and I paid him like 50 bucks a month for a year or something like that, and I bought the car back with my own money.
00:10:23.000When you first got into cars, what were the cars?
00:10:27.000Were you always into American cars or were you into a lot of foreign cars?
00:10:31.000You know, I mean, back in the back when, you know, mostly back in the growing up in the 70s and 80s, I mean, it was all muscle cars.
00:10:37.000So, you know, you see the guy with the Cheval or the Camaro, the 70 and a half, Z28. How old were you?
00:10:42.000I'm 60. Okay, so you're a little bit younger.
00:10:45.000I'm 65. Yeah, so I just grew up around muscle cars, and then fast forward, you know, went to college for a few years, dropped out, moved from Kansas City to Texas, and back then, like in the 80s, the German cars,
00:11:00.000or they had these rally cars over in Europe, and there was the Group B rally cars, and they call them the Killer Bs because they got so fast back in the mid to late 80s that We're good to go.
00:11:38.000And that's really kind of what got me.
00:11:40.000So I kind of, you know, shifted gears from American Muscle to now kind of this higher-tech German all-wheel-drive turbocharged stuff.
00:11:48.000And then kind of I started a small environmental cleanup like an asbestos abatement business back in the late 80s and made a little bit of money.
00:13:50.000So I learned the first rule in car racing.
00:13:52.000Well, the first rule, if you want to make a small fortune in the car racing business, you start with a larger fortune.
00:13:58.000And so I'm going and I'm doing these races, and I'm going to Pikes Peak, and I do these open road races in Nevada where you go out at night.
00:14:07.000They still have it called the Silver State Classic.
00:14:10.000They take Highway 318, just south of Ely, so about four hours north of Vegas, and they shut the whole highway down.
00:14:18.000And they let these cars go out on a Sunday morning and go out and haul ass.
00:14:21.000And so the first time I did it, my average speed for 90 miles was 164 miles an hour.
00:14:27.000I did 90 miles in 34 minutes in that car.
00:14:57.000Come home from the honeymoon, and I look at the bank balance, and I'm like, man, I used to have some money in the bank before I got engaged and bought a race car and raced all over the place, and I thought, you know, I really like doing this car thing.
00:15:10.000Maybe other people would pay me to modify their cars, like Carroll Shelby, like Alois Roof with Porsches, Reeves Callaway.
00:15:18.000And so October of 1991, we opened up Hennessy Motorsports, and I hired a mechanic and got a toolbox, and And off we went.
00:15:28.000And that kind of led into the JDM market.
00:15:30.000What kind of cars are you modifying back then?
00:15:32.000So yeah, dude, anything that would roll in the door.
00:15:35.000And I kind of had a little bit of notoriety from the Silver State race.
00:15:38.000So, you know, it was JDM, so it was Supra's, 300ZX Twin Turbo, you know, so Grand So the Mark IV Supra, you know, the Cyclone, the Typhoon.
00:15:54.000Yeah, that had a little 3.8 liter single turbo V6. And so then a guy calls me up in early 93, and he said, hey, I've got one of the first Dodge Vipers coming.
00:16:06.000It was actually a model year 92, but they had some production delays, so the car didn't come out to the spring of...
00:16:14.000I bought a Viper and I want to take it to the Silver State race.
00:16:18.000Can you help me put the safety equipment and help it pass tech?
00:16:28.000I said, I won't even charge you to do it.
00:16:29.000I said, the only thing I'll ask in return, I'll take you out to the race, I'll support you, I'll bring my mechanic, we'll look after your car.
00:16:36.000After the race, if you'll, again, my buddy Joe Jacuzzi was with Mitsubishi at the time, said, hey, I'll take you around LA and I'll introduce you to the editor at Motor Trend and Hot Rod and Car Craft.
00:17:41.000So we bumped it to at least 500 horsepower.
00:17:44.000Then we started doing cams and stroker motors and eventually turbos.
00:17:48.000And basically from 93 through for the next 10 years into the early 2000s, I would say we were on the covers of 30, 40 magazines, including all the major buff books.
00:18:00.000Isn't it crazy when you think about the progression of cars and power that if you go back to the original Viper, it wasn't really that fast.
00:19:47.000And the other thing is, when I'm driving my older cars, I've got a Cadillac CTS-V wagon manual, and I'm pulling out of a store, and some lady at Christmas a couple years ago runs into me because she didn't see me.
00:19:58.000So I do like driving something bigger like that because if they run into you, it's not going to do that much, and they generally see you and want to not run into you.
00:20:06.000My Land Cruiser, well, the TRX has steel bumpers, too.
00:20:10.000My Land Cruiser also has rock sliders on the side of it.
00:20:13.000And so because it's lifted, if someone's going to T-bone me, they're going right into the rock slider.
00:20:17.000Yeah, it's going to be worse for them than it is for you, for sure.
00:20:19.000It's just, there's so many fucking bad drivers out there.
00:20:23.000Well, yeah, we could talk at length about that, but I think a lot of that boils down to, like, if you look at Europe, you look at Germany, getting a driver's license in Germany is a serious deal.
00:20:36.000Getting your driver's license in Germany, Germans are so serious, and they're serious about their cars and about their driving and about the Autobahn, but getting the driver's license in Germany is similar to, like, getting a private pilot's license over here.
00:21:05.000I mean, I don't know if it's speed, but it's just paying attention.
00:21:09.000You know, I mean, our kids all just, you know, in the last 10 years all went through driver's ed, and I think they got, you know, some decent training.
00:21:15.000But, you know, to your point, like lane discipline, like, you know, if you're the slowest guy out there, get in the right lane.
00:21:20.000You know, if you're going a little bit faster, you go in the inside lane.
00:21:24.000That drives any serious driver crazy is when somebody's in the left lane going 49. That doesn't bother me.
00:21:31.000It does bother me, but it doesn't bother me not paying attention.
00:21:34.000The not paying attention thing is wild.
00:21:40.000I think the OEMs, to some degree, try to make the cars nannies, whether it's autopilot or adaptive steering.
00:21:47.000I think, I had a friend of mine's dad when I was in high school, I'll never forget, he said, hey kid, you know, if you want to stay alive, don't use, if you're driving at night, don't use your cruise control.
00:22:02.000So I think that, you know, I would almost say that to some degree that the nannies to try to protect drivers all of a sudden become, well, maybe I can crawl in the backseat and take a nap, you know?
00:22:12.000Here's a tip for anybody that might be driving and you're worried you're going to fall asleep.
00:22:17.000Bring a washcloth with you and ice cubes.
00:22:20.000Like, get a wet washcloth and then put ice cubes in that washcloth and just rub your face.
00:23:18.000Toss on the people's doorsteps and like on like a juicy day we might make like three dollars and twenty-five cents and so what we do we go we go to 7-eleven and we blow half the cash on frickin you know nasty burritos and big gulps and crap like that you know but that was just kind of what we did but that's I mean that's what we had to do to make you do your you're doing papers while you're doing stand-up yeah I was doing newspapers from the time I guess I was Probably like 17 or 18 when I first started it.
00:23:48.000Maybe it was a little, yeah, somewhere around that range.
00:23:52.000And I did it for the Boston Herald, I did it for the Boston Globe, and I did it for the New York Times.
00:25:13.000It was actually a pass-fail A, so it counted towards your GPA. So I would tell everybody, if you just try, you'll get an A. And it's a real A. So just try.
00:30:35.000So newspapers was your income source, but fighting was your passion and cost some money for travel or whatever.
00:30:41.000It was a good way, once I got out of high school, it was a good way to generate some money while I was doing this crazy thing where I was trying to make the Olympic team for Taekwondo.
00:30:52.000I won the Massachusetts State Championship like four years in a row, and I was competing in the Nationals, and I couldn't win the Nationals.
00:31:00.000I came close a couple of times and I got in the finals of the U.S. Cup with this guy, Kareem Jabbar, who was the national champion.
00:31:07.000It was a very disputed, close decision that I thought I could have got.
00:33:25.000Steve and this other guy, Ed Shorter, was a friend of mine too.
00:33:29.000He just said, you really should be Should do stand-up like you could do it.
00:33:33.000I'm like dude you think I'm funny because you know me I'm like other people gonna think I'm an asshole like my sense of humor is so fucked up But so then I went to an open mic night and when you go to open mic night one of the things that's good about open mic nights is like if you compare yourself to like a Bill Burr or Dave Chappelle.
00:34:12.000And then when I was at an open mic night the first time, a couple of real top-level pros stopped by and did sets, like this guy Teddy Bergeron, who did The Tonight Show back in the day, and he had some substance abuse problems, but I'm telling you,
00:41:35.000I loved doing it, but I could make more money doing a comedy club on the weekend than I could going- They weren't making any money, so how are they going to pay you any money, right?
00:42:03.000My first event was supposed to be in New York, but they banned it in New York right before they did the event, and they moved the event very quickly, like overnight, to Dothan, Alabama.
00:42:12.000Were the boxing promoters trying to shut it down?
00:43:45.000There's a fight with Keith Hackney and Joe Saan, and Keith Hackney is on top of Joe Saan, and Joe Saan's like cranking on his neck, and Keith Hackney's just punched him in the nuts.
00:45:17.000It was the Zufa, which was the Fertitta Brothers and Dana.
00:45:21.000They're the organization that bought it.
00:45:23.000So the Fertitta Brothers bought it, and then Dana was running it, and this was the very early stages.
00:45:27.000And this was, you know, there was no TV to speak of that was showing the UFC. They had to get this deal on Spike TV to put it on television.
00:46:58.000He was the real reason why the UFC became uber popular, because you would watch The Ultimate Fighter, it was a wild fight, a great fight, but then you need a destroyer.
00:47:53.000See if you get a video of Chuck Liddell knocking someone out and then celebrating, because it was like this iconic, primal rage celebration.
00:48:00.000You can only fight like that for so long.
00:48:03.000Here's the reality of physical damage on the body and the kind of sparring that you have to do to fight like that.
00:48:10.000But when he did it, my God, it was glorious.
00:48:13.000His fights, when he knocked out Tito Ortiz, like, oh my God, he was a monster.
00:48:39.000Bro, I'm telling you, when Chuck Liddell was in his prime, he was one of the most terrifying fucking human beings that's ever walked the face of the earth.
00:49:42.000He was the face of the company because he was the guy that like, if you, the casual fan, when you talk to him, like, have you seen the Chuck Liddell fight?
00:50:32.000And when you would do radio in the morning, like, the Opie and Anthony show in particular, you'd go there and you would hang out with comics.
00:50:38.000So it was all just us shooting the shit, having a great time.
00:50:41.000And when I would leave there, I'd go, God, that's so fun.
00:51:36.000So I thought, wow, maybe I should do something like that.
00:51:39.000There's something to doing something on the internet.
00:51:42.000Maybe a lot of people aren't going to see it, but it'll be fun.
00:51:45.000Yeah, sounds like your motivator was for fun, not trying to grow some big audience or make a bunch of money, at least to start with.
00:51:51.000I do it the exact same way now as I've always done it.
00:51:55.000I just do it all myself in terms of who I want to have on.
00:51:59.000I decide what day they're coming on and how to do it.
00:52:02.000And I only talk to people that I'm interested in talking to.
00:52:06.000I mean, the depth of what—like, you could have, like, your own Rogan encyclopedia books, but all these people that come on that a lot of people never heard of and have all these interesting facts and opinions, and I find it fascinating.
00:52:17.000Well, you definitely could learn some stuff.
00:52:18.000You know, you definitely—I mean, you could talk to some— I've had this, like, unexpected education where I get to talk to all these fascinating people and pick their brain.
00:52:27.000And, you know, it's like you don't really get a chance to talk to people just like this.
00:52:31.000Like, just you and me looking at each other eye to eye, no phones, no people around, just for a conversation.
00:52:45.000It just seems like it's your own personal curiosity on different things that you like or that you're interested in, whereas it seems like you flip on TV, the people that get interviewed, it's all by design to some degree.
00:52:59.000You've got the right PR firm, the right publicist.
00:53:01.000There's also with those things, the problem is, you know, just like with Fear Factor, like you have to hire somebody.
00:53:12.000And sometimes those people are annoying, you know, and sometimes they're not annoying when you hire them and then become annoying as they get more popular and famous.
00:53:21.000So like when you do this, you have to prep much, you get on the internet, you guys do a little bit of research for you, or you just fucking roll in and just start thinking and talking?
00:53:29.000Well, I do have a guy, my friend Matt Staggs, who does some research for me on some things.
00:53:33.000He'll send me some briefings or some videos or some stuff I should watch.
00:53:37.000And then, you know, with people that have books, I like to, especially if it's something like complicated, I like to listen to the book on audio.
00:53:43.000So I'll listen in the sauna, I'll listen when I'm driving, I'll get a sense of what they're doing.
00:53:49.000But, and then there's some subjects that I don't have, like with you, it's like, we're gonna talk cars, you know?
00:56:37.000I was like, I never thought I'd like a yellow car.
00:56:40.000Yeah, we actually just came out with a 700 horsepower supercharge package for the C8. We've only been working on it for almost three years, but just finished it up a few months ago.
00:56:47.000How much better is the handling on the Z06 with the wider body and the wider tires?
00:57:26.000If you drag race, of course, the Z06 is going to win by, you know, the quarter mile would probably win by five or six car lengths.
00:57:32.000But the problem with the Z06 now is they've been having supply chain issues.
00:57:36.000I've got an early one on order, but I think the car's been out for nine months, and there's less than 100 with the Z07 package on the road.
00:58:06.000Look, American OEMs can do whatever they want to do.
00:58:10.000I think what Chevrolet's magic has been with the Corvette is to deliver that much value and that nice of a car in the volumes that they do and at the price point that they do.
00:58:20.000When you think about how much that car costs and the capability of it, just the bone stock Stingray.
00:58:25.000Yeah, I mean, I'm sure the Z06 is out now.
00:58:29.000Likely the next iteration that comes from Chevy is the ZR1, probably 850 horsepower, twin turbo.
00:58:35.000So it's like a twin turbo version of the 5.5 liter dual overhead cam motor in this current Z06. That car is going to be $150,000, $170,000.
00:58:43.000So that car will be as fast or faster than a McLaren or Ferrari that costs two or three times the money.
00:58:48.000So they've Their trick is they know how to deliver great value.
00:58:51.000Now, we've got a neat niche where we can build our own car from the ground up.
00:59:39.000But I think I would like to see, you know, I'd like to have ultimately when we're all done with production, I'd love for each one of my five kids to have one if I'm able to do that.
00:59:47.000Anyway, I'd love to see our grandkids sell it at Barrett-Jack's or RM Auctions at some point down the road for 4 or 5X. Like a McLaren F1, it'd be $20 million someday.
00:59:58.000I respect that you can drive that on the street.
01:00:03.000You really should drive that only on track.
01:00:05.000I mean, it's like when you're in it, you're like, yeah.
01:00:07.000Yeah, well, even like when we're driving, if you still have your Tessa Platt, I drove mine up here, you know, the performance that other thing's capable of, you should not use on the street.
01:00:17.000You know, sometimes there might be a place where, you know, you could go out and just have fun with yourself or your buddy, but yeah, same thing.
01:01:07.000Now it's like our GT3 RS. It's a track-focused car, but it's still road legal, has AC and all the comforts that you would have as Apple CarPlay.
01:02:24.000You ever see the gifts where the guys have the telephone pole and they're busting somebody in the balls with it?
01:02:29.000I didn't know what I was biting off when I went down this road, but when I started in 2013, it was just kind of an idea and a sketch, and then I got interested in it, and then we built the design model.
01:03:09.000No journalist has ever asked me this question in the automotive world, so...
01:03:12.000We named it Fury because the car is designed to compete against the best from Europe.
01:03:21.000So Bugatti, Aston Martin, Ferrari, Gordon Murray.
01:03:25.000And so one time we were developing the engine and I think our target was 1,600 horsepower and we managed to get a little over 1,800 horsepower.
01:03:33.000And I'm watching reruns on TV with my wife.
01:04:22.000If somebody wants to buy it, I'll build it.
01:04:25.000But then the question becomes, we have to kind of go two directions.
01:04:28.000Do we want to just build a fun, like something, take it to the Cirque of the Americas that our customer can go out and have fun with?
01:04:33.000Or do you want to conform to race series?
01:04:35.000All of a sudden, if you're in race series, if you're in Le Mans, you know, something like a World Endurance Championship, you have to conform to all kinds of rules.
01:04:43.000I'd rather just kind of build my car, do I kick ass.
01:04:45.000But I think there is probably some demand to have a dedicated track car where you've got a full road cage, All the safety equipment, the Halon fire extinguishing system, and everything else that you would expect.
01:04:57.000But right now, like I said, we're building.
01:06:08.000And I got to see him go out and do his little celebrity lap around the truck.
01:06:12.000You know, if you're ever over there and you want to do a celebrity, the star and the reasonably priced car, I can connect you with those guys.
01:07:00.000So we had a Velociraptor truck that we were up in Canada with these guys.
01:07:07.000So this has been back into 2014. And so I'm working with the producers and they're like, you know, when you're around the talent, don't talk to them.
01:08:08.000Well, that producer, I won't say his name, but that producer that was being a massive dick, and maybe he was just doing his job, like two weeks later, they're somewhere else in there in England, and Jeremy gets a little bit of a temper, and these guys work long hours, and maybe they hadn't eaten, and the producer guy was fucking with him,
01:08:25.000and Jeremy fucking whacked the guy, and I'm like, I wanted to fucking punch that guy a couple times too.
01:08:31.000But I can't do that, and I don't want to get arrested in Canada.
01:08:49.000And then the other guy that's behind the scenes but just so talented, his name is Andy Willman.
01:08:54.000He was the producer when they were on BBC. Now he's the producer.
01:08:57.000But when Steven Tyler was being interviewed, you like this from your comedy part of your brain, when Steven was being interviewed by Jeremy, I noticed that the interview went on for like twice as long as it probably should have.
01:09:09.000I get claustrophobic, so I don't like being in tight crowds, so I'm kind of hanging towards the back of the crowd that they're filming all this live, and then they aired it later, but they're filming in front of a live audience, and here this guy that looks like he's a homeless dude, wearing a t-shirt, looks like he hadn't showered in about a week,
01:09:49.000And I don't know if that, you know, comedians or entertainers kind of, but, you know, you would think to some degree you want to improve your craft, but he's got a quick turnaround time, so, like, he's got another show he's got to do the following week, so he's just like, Jeremy's doing all this stuff, and sometimes they laugh and sometimes they wouldn't, but this guy was definitely paying attention.
01:10:39.000Tesla attempted to sue the BBC for libel in March of 2011. The courts ruled in favor of the BBC, saying that no viewer of the show would be likely to reasonably compare the Roadster's performance on the show with its performance in the real world.
01:14:33.000And people are like, they're calling the embassy.
01:14:35.000They're like, hey, you know, what can we do?
01:14:37.000The fucking locals are trying to get us.
01:14:40.000And so I guess the presenters, again, this is what I'm hearing from the crew when we were in Canada with our Velociraptor, is that, you know, the presenters got out.
01:14:51.000The crew were stuck fearing for their lives, like hiding out in places, trying to make it to the airport to get home.
01:14:58.000And then so when the whole shit hit the fan, the presenters in England felt bad for them, so they bought them all first-class tickets or business class for them.
01:15:35.000I don't know if they knew it was going to go as far, but it's kind of a shitty deal where they skated out of there, and their crew was literally afraid they were going to get fucking beat to death.
01:17:07.000He loves cars so much that it's so contagious.
01:17:10.000I don't know anybody that knows more about cars from A to Z, from steam cars to hyper cars to race cars, everything in between.
01:17:18.000Jay Leno is literally a walking automotive encyclopedia.
01:17:21.000Yeah, I don't understand the steam car.
01:17:25.000He's got ones that he drives around that aren't even supposed to have rubber tires, so he had to put rubber on these steel wheels so that it's legal to drive around.
01:17:34.000Well, did they ever tell you, so on a steam car, you're heating up this boiler, and the boiler's got water in it, and that turns into steam, and that's what makes it go.
01:17:42.000But when you run low on water, if you're not careful, it'll explode.
01:17:58.000You know, I'm over at, driving through Burbank and, you know, his start running out of water.
01:18:03.000So he's able to shut it down so the engine doesn't explode.
01:18:06.000And he goes up and knocks on some little old lady's front door and says, you know, ma'am, can I hook my spigot up to your, you know, my hose up to your spigot?
01:18:14.000I'm going to put some water in my steam car.
01:18:17.000Imagine Jay Leno showing up at your house, wanting to borrow water.
01:19:13.000Two days later, flowers and a card showed up to our house.
01:19:16.000And to this day, I do not know how Jay knew that we had a miscarriage or even knew my home address, but somehow he found out and sent flowers.
01:19:30.000You know, another thing I learned from Jay that's cool, so whether it's a $2.7 million Venomified Revolution or one of our Velociraptor Mammoth trucks, whenever I'm out in public with one of our vehicles or if I'm at like a Cars and Coffee car show, Jay taught me that.
01:19:47.000He says, well, when he was 12 years old, there was like maybe a 55 Jag parked out in front of a store and he was admiring it and the guy came up to the car and says, hey kid, you like the car?
01:20:47.000Just like you could have a conversation with him.
01:20:49.000He wasn't thinking about all the shit he had to do.
01:20:53.000And he's so much better at that show because it's so much what he's actually interested in instead of just the job of hosting The Tonight Show.
01:21:00.000And the mistake that I made growing up is like, you know, he would do comedy on The Tonight Show.
01:23:13.000Because if you're just talking to someone and you're talking to them for five minutes and then you're going to commercial, it's like you can only get so into the subject.
01:23:20.000And some subjects deserve more attention.
01:25:31.000He's like, I... He's like, I wasn't really big on going to movies, so if somebody's coming on the show, I'd go watch the movie just so I knew what to talk about.
01:25:39.000He's like, I'm really not into celebrities, and I don't go to the movies that much.
01:26:51.000And when you're on a television show, you're kind of depending upon people flipping through the channels or people that are accustomed to watching it at 11 p.m.
01:27:31.000Someone could be funny and have one clip about one subject that resonates with people, and they throw it up on their Instagram, and then it gets reposted and shared.
01:27:39.000They put it up on Twitter, it's on YouTube, and then bam, all of a sudden they're famous.
01:29:43.000So I got diagnosed as ADHD back in the late 90s.
01:29:48.000I'd been married for a while and we're having trouble.
01:29:51.000My counselor gives me this book and says, answer these 100 questions and if you're more than 80 of them, then you're ADHD. I was 98 out of 100. So I started taking Ritalin.
01:30:05.000So fast forward to a couple months ago, I go to my doctor, to the clinic, to go get my prescription refill because it's a controlled substance, like Adderall or opioids or whatever else.
01:30:17.000And look, for me, it just wakes me up in the morning.
01:31:44.000But it had been jacking me up for 25 years.
01:31:46.000And then friction I would have with employees.
01:31:48.000I would want to get into tussles on just stupid shit.
01:31:52.000And so this recent revelation is the clinic wanting to drug test me so I could get my Ritalin refill.
01:31:58.000Me not taking the Ritalin, I believe, my wife and kids at least tell me this, a few employees, that I'm just, you know, I don't have to take gummy bears to calm down at times, right?
01:32:09.000I'll take a gummy bear sometimes to go to sleep.
01:32:12.000But then I thought, okay, well, what can help kind of replace, kind of give me that kick in the ass in the morning, so kind of wake me up and get me going, and I'll go do an early workout, a boxing workout a couple times a week, but I'm like, I need something else.
01:32:24.000I've been seeing you and other people doing the cold plunge program.
01:32:27.000And that's like, and I had done it a few times before I got off the Ritalin, but I thought like, okay, the last time I did that, that like gave me like this boost of focus, like this mental focus and more calm through the day.
01:32:39.000So I bought a cold plunge tank and I got it about three weeks ago and cold plunge maybe five days a week in the morning.
01:32:47.000And I don't know, maybe it's just because it's a combination of, it's something that I really don't want to do and it's really hard to do.
01:32:52.000And when I say that to myself, I'm like, that's the very reason I need to go do it.
01:32:55.000And then secondarily, just like it shocks my system and all of a sudden it just wakes me up.
01:32:59.000So I'm like, you know, so if you're listening out there and you're on Ritalin, your kid's on Ritalin, you know, I'm not a doctor, I'm not telling you what to do, but I am saying that I got off of Ritalin and now I can kind of backfill that boost energy in the morning by doing a cold plunge.
01:33:14.000That's interesting that you were on it for 25 years and you're able to get off of it in 30 days.
01:33:28.000I never felt dependent on it, but I did feel lower energy.
01:33:33.000Especially probably the last 10 years.
01:33:35.000As I was getting older, I'm like, okay.
01:33:37.000You know, I've never really been a morning person.
01:33:39.000I used to, like, up until maybe 10 years ago, wouldn't go to bed until 2 or 3 in the morning, and then I'd wake up at, you know, 7 or 8 the next day.
01:33:46.000But anyway, so Ritalin just kind of gets me going, helps me focus, stay on task.
01:33:51.000But it probably starts wearing off kind of by mid-afternoon, but I just didn't...
01:33:56.000The thing about that kind of stuff to me is if you can function as good as you're functioning without it, I wonder, because we think of medications as being necessary.
01:34:04.000We think of things like that as being necessary, like this is what you need, it'll straighten you out.
01:34:09.000You know, I mean, is what we're missing, like at least with some people, is what they're missing physical activity and stressors, things like cold and heat, and things like a morning workout, like how many people are just going to a pill And not doing those other things to see if like maybe there's a more healthy way to approach this.
01:34:29.000Yeah, I mean, just how much time do I waste just glancing at my phone?
01:35:19.000It's like me being up in the mountains looking at the trees and just kind of being a peaceful moment without having to take a Ric Flair gummy bear.
01:35:26.000Well, it definitely makes you so happy when you get out of it.
01:35:43.000He's got two scoped knees, and so he thought he tweaked his knee playing pickleball the other day, and he did it and said no more pain.
01:35:51.000So, I mean, you as an athlete, I mean, and still probably training pretty hard, do you find like when your body's getting a little worn or your joints are a little sore, does the cold plunge help you too?
01:38:29.000But I think sometimes people need like a little bit of a wake-up call just to kind of straighten up your diet.
01:38:34.000And maybe it doesn't need to be keto, but maybe Maybe the benefit wasn't really from him doing keto, which may have been a benefit, but it also might have been when you're doing keto, you're not eating any bullshit.
01:42:58.000So when my heart rate, like when, you know, my resting, my heart rate after rounds, like I'll do like 10 rounds on the bag, and it's still beating fast when I go in.
01:43:07.000So, and then because of the heat, like it's a static form of cardio.
01:45:14.000Yeah, but like a really fast, like a track-focused go-kart, like for me, like that's something that will take my mind off of everything because maybe a little bit like boxing or something in that if I'm not focused on what I'm doing, I'm either going to fucking lose or get fucking hurt or both.
01:45:30.000And so anyway, skiing fast and go-karts are what take my mind off of everything.
01:45:36.000But without getting hurt, you could do that with pool.
01:45:45.000Yeah, there's a thing that's happening where it's so difficult to do that all you're thinking about is that thing, and it's very mind-cleansing.
01:45:56.000Fred Bear was like one of the original pioneers of bow hunting in this country.
01:46:00.000But pool, to me, is like one of the ultimate ones, because you could do it at any time you want.
01:46:06.000Anytime you have time, I can just go out there and set some drills up, or just run some balls, and it just frees my mind.
01:46:13.000Because you know, you're a good pool player.
01:46:15.000When you're making a long shot, especially a shot on that table, and you know you have to get pinpoint position on the next ball, there's like so much going on.
01:47:38.000We built 1,000 horsepower GT500 for Jim Farley, the CEO, and his son went out and drove around Monterey, California last August and had a blast with it.
01:47:46.000The fucking videos that you guys have of people sitting in the car and you're See the acceleration.