Slow Baja - Baja Is The Best Place On Earth With Bob Taylor

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

Welcome back to the Slow Baja Podcast. I'm your host, Michael Emery. Today, I get to sit down with a man who has spent more than fifty years turning raw wood into music and has found, along Baja's dusty roads and sparsely populated coastlines, a place that feeds his soul and quiets his mind.Bob Taylor is the co-founder and President of Taylor Guitars, recognized as one of the world’s most iconic acoustic guitar makers. He and his company have shaped the soundtracks of generations, their instruments resonating through countless legendary songs. Need proof of Taylor Guitars' artistry? Consider one of the most famous guitars on the planet: Taylor Swift’s electric blue acoustic, a showstopper adorned with Japanese koi fish by master craftsman Pete Davies Jr.But today, we're not talking about guitars, music, or Taylor Swift. Today, we're talking about Baja. When Bob ventures to Baja—his chosen sanctuary, he brings the same precision, creativity, and sense of craft from his half-century as a luthier. He didn’t just prepare for the journey; he masterminded it, personally acquiring and outfitting a fleet of 12 Toyota Land Cruiser FJ80s, not only for himself, but for his friends.Together, Bob's Baja crew roamed the peninsula in matching “school uniform” vehicles, exploring Baja the way it’s meant to be experienced. Paper maps, side-eyed drives down endless washes searching for ever elusive empty beaches. For the first seventeen years, Bob says they never checked into a hotel; instead, they slept under Baja’s endless stars, woke to the sound of the ocean, and, of course, to Bob making coffee. Yes, he’s a coffee fanatic, maybe even a coffee fiend, but that's a story for another day.Today, it’s all about the man behind the brand, and his passion for Baja. So settle in, you’re about to experience the kind of conversation that defines what Slow Baja is all about—curiosity, craft, and a real sense of place. Special thanks to Alberto Moreno, of Taylor Guitars, for recording this conversation.Need Baja Bound Insurance click hereSupport Slow Baja with a donation here.Join a Slow Baja Adventure here.

Well, people say, out of all the travels you've got in the world, what's your favorite place? Literally, you have all over the world multiple trips, multiple days a year. What keeps you coming back on your own time to Baja? It's the best place on there. Hey, this is Michael Emery. Thanks for tuning into the Slow Baja. This podcast is powered by Tequila Fortaleza, handmade in small batches and hands down my favorite tequila. been listening to me for a while. You know, I'm an absolute minimalist when it comes to Baja travel, but the one thing I never leave home without is a good old paper map. And my favorite is the

beautiful, and I mean beautiful Baja Road and Recreation Atlas by benchmark maps. It's an oversized 72-page book jam-packed with details, and now you can get it from me at slowbaha.com. That's right. you can get it in the slow Baja shop, and in fact, you better get two, one for your trip planning at home and one for your Baja rig. And if you love maps and you can't get enough of them like me, let me tell you about two sites I am absolutely obsessed with. Eastview MapLink and LongeitudeMaps.com, whatever you're looking for in maps, it's there. From the entire benchmark collection to Baja Wall Maps to custom maps, you'll find it all

at longitudemaps.com or EV maplink.com. You know I've long said it, ask your doctor if Baja's right for you. Well, if you've been hankering to get down to Slow Baja with me, you got to check out the Adventures tab at Slowbaha.com. All my trips are there, from my famed fall vintage extravaganza to my winter and summer expeditions, which are open to trucks of any age. You know, on a Slow Baja expedition, your meals are,

are always included, which really does take the sting out of camping. And when we get off the trail, let me tell you, we have the happiest of happy hours. If good dirt roads, private campsites, ranch stays, great food, and great people sounds like you're kind of fun, well, you've got to check out the Adventures tab at slowbaha.com. But don't delay. These trips are small, they're highly immersive, and they will sell out. And folks, just so you know, I am always here for you for your Baja trip planning questions. question, 100 questions. The easy way to get me is slowbaha.com slash contact. And if you'd like to go to

Baja and you don't want to go by yourself, you don't have a vintage vehicle, my winter trip doesn't work out for you, I am happy to talk to you about organizing and leading a private guided tour. I've done it. I've loved it. The pictures are over there at slowbaha.com slash adventures. And you can check them out. And if you've got some questions, let's talk. From the Shielman recording booth at Slow Baja Studios, thanks for tuning in to today's Slow Baja podcast. My heaping dose of gratitude goes out to Misty Tosh for connecting me with today's guest, Bob Taylor. Now, if you know that name, you probably know Bob as the founder of Taylor guitars. Way back in 1974, Bob was just out of high school, and he and his buddy Kurt,

working at a little guitar shop out in East County, San Diego, and they got together. They found, they had another partner, and they got together, and they bought the shop, and they created the brand Taylor guitars. And in the 51 years since then, they've grown Taylor into the leading global builder of premium acoustic guitars. Bob told me they build 700 guitars a day. They've got 1,200 some employees on both sides of the border. They've got operations in El Cajon, California, their headquarters.

That's where I met Bob and his amazing staff. And they filmed and recorded this podcast interview. And I'm so grateful to them for doing that. I wish I could record every podcast in the Taylor Studios. But they've got operations in Takati, and I can't wait to get down there and share what's happening with you here at Slow Baja. And anyways, well, that's enough. about guitars because today I'm here to tell you a little bit about the man behind the brand. We're going to learn about Bob. He's a tinker and a builder and creative genius, if you ask me.

He's been making stuff. He showed me a vice that he made that's extraordinary in its exquisite detail. And he did this in middle school. In high school, 11th grader, he built his first guitar. He built three of them in high school, blew two of them up with cherry bombs, but he still got that first one. But we're not talking about guitars. We're talking about Bob and his passion for Baja. And Bob ever so casually mentioned that he's been going to Baja for about 25 years, but it was 17 years before he ever stayed in a hotel. He's got a fleet of land cruisers that he's built for he and his buddies

so they can all go down there in the same kind of truck and concentrate, distill their knowledge of how to fix things into a single mark. And I just am amazed at that and the way his brain works. All right, without further ado, it's Bob Taylor today on the Slow Baja podcast. We're rolling, Bob. Yeah, we are. Well, I'm delighted to be here. I can't believe I'm in El Cajon, California, the home of Taylor Guitars.

And I'm here with Bob Taylor. I love it because usually we're talking about guitars, but today we get to talk about Baja. Do you know how little I know about guitars? You know how much I know about Baja? Well, you know a lot about Baja. And I often say I don't know anything about Baja, but I've got 42 years of experience. That's kind of how it is for me. You have been quite upfront with you don't know anything about guitars, but you've been making

them for a very long time. You've been a long time. And again, I'm very, very fascinated about that, but your story has been widely told. I've done my research. it's out there, podcasts, YouTube's, magazine articles. So folks, if you're listening to the Slow Baja today to hear how I built this, go to listen to Guy Raz, how I built this with Taylor Guitars, because it's a brilliant interview.

And there's an awful lot out there about the history. And you've got a 51 year history now? Yeah, 51 years. 51 years. Since we started. I built guitars a couple of years before that in high school wood shop. Yeah. So you have a real legacy, which is amazing.

And you gave me a brief drive-by tour, about a half mile long from the outside, didn't see a dang thing, but just briefly met your CEO who's also building guitars in his spare time to look like somebody's grandfather's hunting rifle. Yep, exactly. Amazing. Well, listen, I'm here because we're going to talk Baja, but I really do want to learn more about you because I'm absolutely fascinated about your early years. you built a guitar as a teenager. And, you know, in my mind, I'm going to say, honestly, only extreme poverty would have somebody taking a cigar box and stringing some strings on it and building a guitar. But you built a guitar because you wanted this experience.

I just need to know, like, how did that come? You were in middle school or something, or high school? I was in 11th grade high school. So you were in shop before. building things in middle school. Yeah, all through middle school and high school. So you had you had a background of working with your hands. I could make things, yeah. Yeah. It was a good time in there were good, there were good days back then in high school and junior high, shot classes. Right. And all of that sort of disappeared as my generation got out of school and

school change. Some of it's coming back a little bit, but mostly people are DIYing their way to craftsmanship. Or using YouTube to teach themselves. Yeah. YouTube's a shop teacher. So you're building something you showed me an astonishing small vice that you made as a middle school student. And after you made this vice, which is, I mean truly the detail quality craftsmanship is, I think probably a very good look at your mind. But you built that amazing machine at that age. Take me from that to I want a guitar.

I want a guitar and I'm going to build my own. Well, I built that vice in eighth grade or ninth grade. I can't remember which. I built a desk lamp out of sheet metal. I learned all kinds of sheet metal working tricks. That's what I'm one of my 13 and 15 during that time. And these are big machines that are using two fingers and it's breaking the thing? No, I'm rolling it on a pyramid roller press and, you know, where I had to, you know, form, you know,

roll stuff around the shape like the end of the hood was shaped like this but you had to roll the copper around. Teacher showed me how to do that. We make a little aluminum form and we put it down on top of it and we take a big junk, big thing of hard hard rubber, put it in just a press, a jack press, push it down and it would be all wrinkled. Then you melt some lead and pour it in a mold this long and make a strap and then you just sit there and flap, flat, flat, just that I just strap that thing with the lead and pretty soon it's smooth as could be. You know? And I learned that. I learned how to do that kind of stuff back then. And every one of those things was a skill you never forget or you use it later in life. And I certainly did.

And then, yeah, I took a few more years of metal shop. And when I wanted a guitar and it was, I couldn't afford to buy one. This was in the 11th grade. I was taking auto shop. And I thought, I think I'll make a guitar. guitar. And I'm assuming you're from San Diego. I'm assuming you came from a fairly middle class. My dad was in the Navy. Yeah. So my mom. They weren't missing meals. You're not scrounging through the garbage to build something out of a cigar box. You had an idea to build a guitar. I bought some wood at the lumber store. And you're going to figure it out. And you're going to figure it out. And make a guitar. Yeah. Insane. Amazing. So you know, people have done that in the world and I'm one of them. Yeah, but you're not carving it. You're forming it. You're forming your bending wood and you tell me how that first one came out and do you still have it

I built three in high school and I destroyed two of them just because I felt like it and it's fun to watch them go up with a cherry bomb but one of them survived and I still have it it's up in our display area yeah how does it rate well it's a awful guitar but it's 51 years old and you can still play it it was nice that's where I learned how to do my first inlay work, catching abalone offshore and grinding the pearl out of it and sawing it with the jeweler, sawing the shapes, and inlaying it and bending more wood and, you know, yeah. If someone makes it- Back up for a minute, Bob.

So did you go out on a super low tide and pull abalone off of a rock? Or did you dive down to get it? How did that abalone come into your hands? Snorkel gear fins and just go down where you could- Oloy Cove or something? Yeah, La Jolla Cove and Bird Rock. When you could go, just pop them off, you didn't even need a life. license for it. Just go pop them off. Just have your avaloni knife that had your marks on it.

Here's got to be this big for this color of avaloni. Have to learn them. Pop them up. Bring them home. Eat them. Pound them out and bread them up. And I just break the shells into some chunks and grind the inside flat and get down through the color into the pearly part and grind the back. Like a belt sander or whatever and saw them out. Yeah. This is what happens when kids had time. and they're just not scrolling social media endlessly. You figure stuff out. You use the tools that you had. Said, I want Abiloni and I'm gonna go get some.

I love doing it. I mean, it was, I loved doing it. I couldn't wait to have my moment in the day when I could work on that. Or, you know, I had friends that your parents would buy them a brand new bicycle and I'd like, I'm not getting a new bicycle. I got issued a bicycle, you know, when I was in second grade.

and that had to last meet all my driver's license. And so I would take it apart and re-spoke it and sand it down and repaint it. I'd make a new bicycle, you know, so I could be like them, you know. So you were, this tinkerer, this builder, this creator thing is inside you from your earliest days. Yeah. Did your dad was in the Navy?

Did he encourage these things? Did he discourage these things? Or was he just busy with life and you were able to... My dad made things too, so did my mom. Okay. an old couch, re-apulster it, make it a new couch, buy a car, redo the interior of a car, pulmonary, tuck and roll, you know, gna high, different colors, and they do that. My dad made most of the furniture in our house.

Wow. Yeah. He did it while he was in the Navy. He was always stationed on a tender, like a subring tender or a destroyer tender, and they had workshops, and if he'd go out to sea or whatever, he'd spend all of his time in the wood shop and in the foundry, in the machine shop, and he'd come home. home from a Westpac cruise and crane would come over the side and lower down motorcycles people bought in Japan and he'd lower down furniture than he made in Japan.

At sea or at the base. Mm-hmm. So that first vice or your first guitar was, what was a reaction at home? Did you get adulation or did your parents say, Bob, you've really done something astonishing here? I didn't blow their mind because they knew how to make things. They knew how to make things. just it was just normal yeah it was normal in your house yeah all right well so from high school I've done my research went off to local J.C no oh yeah I did standing in line

waiting to waiting to enroll and you said what the hell am I doing here well I didn't say what the hell because I was a good boy but I said I can never do this and so I I took five steps towards the front window and it's like I this is be the kiss of death. I don't even want to fill out that paperwork. I turned around, got on my motorcycle, and left. Decide, I got to make guitars. So, yes, interesting. I've got to make guitars. To have that, you've made three, you're saying, I've got to make guitars. Was there any concern at that time that you could still get drafted? I've excused my ignorance about it, but 1973? 73? Yep. So going to college would have been a way to stay home? It could have been, but

I wasn't thinking of it that way. It was right about, right about that exact same time that the war ended and they abolished the draft. All right. I mean, I'd already gone down for my physical. Okay. I'd already resigned myself to I might get called up. And obviously from San Diego, dad in the Navy, you know lots of kids who've already been called. We were just young enough.

If older guys. If I was three and a half years older, I was. I would have been drafted and a lot of other people. Right, but you knew older, older guys, older brothers, what have you. But us who were born in 1955 and who were in, you know, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th grade, when that was going on, you know, we missed it.

Right. Just by months. So how did you get a job at a guitar shop, building guitars? Well, when I was building these guitars. As a high school graduate 18 years old, it just blows my mind, because kids now don't really even mature. until they're in their late 20s, it seems like,

having two 27-year-olds and a 29-year-old. Not saying anything about you guys, kids. Well, somewhere in the middle of my second guitar, I found that there was a place out here in East County of San Diego called Lemon Grove. There was a little guitar shop, and I was able to go there and buy some material. Boy, I found out that you could buy little pieces of...

pearl that someone else had already processed into a flat shell so you could cut it and fret wire and the things that used to bind the guitar you know the trim that goes around the edge and that kind of thing and so i came out there and i just kept coming out there as a little hippie shop it wasn't like there was no receptionist and there was an owner but he was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and flip-lops and you can hang around as a kid i hang around and just i could hang around a little bit Then I would bring my guitar in that I'm working on and then when I finished my guitar brought it down and showed it to them. I was like, maybe I could work here or something after I graduate.

Yeah, come on down. So I did. I got out of high school. I took the summer and went on a little trip around the Western US states, came back and September I started working there. There's a bench. There's wood. We'll show you, yeah, we make guitars.

I made guitar and sold it, made a guitar and sold it, made a guitar and sold it. And how did that work? Were you paid as an employee a buck 25 an hour or whatever the prevailing wage was then? Or did you make a guitar at your own speed with your own cost of the materials? And then if you were able to sell it for more than you had into it, you recouped your cost, but you probably didn't recoup your time, I'm guessing. Well, the owner. had prices for guitars.

He provided the materials. He provided the space. And let's say a guitar cost, sold for $400. That was the base price. When it was all made, we would split the $400. I would get $200, he'd get $200. Now I had to work to get my $200, and he just had to sit back and watch.

But he had to pay the rent, and he had to buy the materials. Sure. You had to show me how. Sure. And then if someone said, well, I want a custom inlay on the peghead. How much that going to cost?

Well, that's going to cost $35. Okay, so anything else that you sold extra on the guitar, or that they ordered extra on the guitar, we didn't sell anything. You know, I mean, people just said, can you put a son with rays on it? You know, this type of thing. Then the builder would get all that money.

Okay. So the owner got half of the base price, and that's all they took. I have a guy talking to you right now because he was one of those people that came in and said, hey, can you make me a guitar? I was just thinking about it. I want a sun on the peghead, like a round ray with, you know, sun rays all the way around it, and seagulls on the fretboard.

So I made that. And then about, I don't know, 10 or more years ago from now, he came and had another guitar made with the same hilly on it. And then two weeks ago, he called it. and I want another guitar made with the same inlay. So I've been, you know, it's kind of fun to have a customer who's as old as I. He was just a kid at those days playing guitars in the local steakhouse bars, you know. Is there a master file someplace with all those guitars that you made?

No. Number 107, 109, 1959. It's really murky, those are the guitars. However, a year and a half ago on our 50th anniversary, we were able to purchase back the Taylor guitar serial number one. Wow. Well, the first guitar that we made with a serial number in it, okay? We didn't start with serial number one.

But we bought that back. A gentleman bought it. He was a kid. You know, then he wasn't a gentleman. We were nice kids, but he was good, I was a kid. He played it for 50 years. He was a good player. He passed away.

His family kept it. They came and sold it to me. On our 50th anniversary, we bought that guitar back. And then recently, another person got like the missing link guitar, you know, the one that we think might be the first guitar that we ever made at Taylor. Wow. That didn't have a serial number on us. We kind of before we called it Taylor, but it was probably the first guitar after me and my

partners start into business. He came in and was trying to think of what to do. Do we want to buy it? Well, I don't want to buy every first guitar I made. They need to be out there in the world living their own life. They won't become a collector's item or worth anything unless they're on some type of open market. But he ended up giving it a long-term loan at the NAM Museum of Making music which is our hundred year plus organization national association of music merchants and they have the music museum up there and he put it on loan there so that's really the first you know it's a tweener doesn't say tailor on it but has a tailor label that i filled out my hand on the inside it's clearly your product clearly from your hand

Yeah, clearly. Amazing. Amazing. So that's the oldest one we know of, and when we, you know, I remember, you know, when he talks about when he order is like, yeah, I remember that. How different is that guitar from one that's coming off of the assembly line today? Way, way, way different. Give me a couple minutes on that because I'm fascinating.

Well, they're pretty crude. Okay. Now our guitars are really refined. It's kind of like, you know, look back at a Harley that came out of their first shop. And like, how different is that to a brand new, you know, Evo 3, Harley Davidson? It's like that kind of a difference. Okay, gotcha. A Model T, it was a car.

All right. You know, it was a great car. But even 1950s cars, you get them all restored and it's like, you really shouldn't drive them down the freeway. You lose a tire, you're going to total it. You know, they're really good for a Sunday drive, but, you know, there's not very many cars that were made in the 40s or the 50s that you have any business driving on LA freeways right now. Sure, sure. Having driven a 50-year-old car a lot, my land cruiser, 10,000 miles a year in Baja.

Dirt roads are much safer than the pavement, just because I'm going a different speed. Well, we're going to talk about land cruisers. And if Series 80, 1997 is what I drive, and I just say, look, when that car runs good, it runs great. When it runs, it runs good. When it doesn't run at all, it still runs. And if I had to have one car, I'd have that car. Well, we're going to talk about that in just a second. We'll be right back with Bob Taylor after a quick break to talk to our friends, Baja Bound Insurance.

If you're going to Baja on your Land Cruiser FJ80 or like my Land Cruiser FJ80 that I just went to Baha in, you're going to need insurance, so we'll be right back. That's what I use, Baja Bound. We've said it right there. Yeah. Here at SLOBA, we can't wait to drive our old land cruiser south of the border. And when we go, we'll be going with Baja Bound insurance.

Their website's fast and easy to use, check them out at BajaBound.com. That's BajaBound.com, serving Mexico travelers since 1994. for. Hey, big thanks to those of you who've contributed to our Baja baseball project. You know, we launched our gear deliveries on my winter expedition. Michael and Matthew from Barbers for Baja. We're along for the ride and we got to deliver that critically needed baseball gear up and down the peninsula. It was really, truly amazing. All right, well, please help us continue this vital work. Make your tax deductible donation at the Barbers for Baja. Click barbers for Baja.com.

Org, click the Baseball in Baja link, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I really do. It is so amazingly gratifying to be able to give these kids this chance to keep playing this sport. Keep them on the field. Keep them out out of trouble. Please check it out. Baseball in Baja link at barbers for baha.org. Thank you.

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Slow Baja approved. We're back with Bob Taylor, and we're going to get on to Land Cruisers in Baja. You're from San Diego. How did you find Baja? Did your family ever go there? Did you go there as a high school kid? How did you decide I'm going next door?

Well, we had a group of neighbors when my... This was in my 40s, I guess. when my daughters were like this age. And there ended up being like a, it was like a block trip. There ended up being 15 families or so. Hey, let's go to San Felipe for, you know, a long weekend kind of thing.

Not necessarily a holiday weekend, but we would all go down there and take over, you know, rooms in the El Cortez Hotel down there. We drive our cars. and one thing led to another, and, you know, I ended up in 2001 or two. I bought a yellow Hummer, H2, and I drove it down there for that thing,

and then, gosh, I drove it on this beach sand. Let some air out of my tires and drove, and it's like, oh, who's been keeping this from me? Okay. You know, then I drove it on some dunes. Now, you've got to remember that we've been going to Glamis with this kind of similar group of people. Glamas or Gordon's Well or sand dunes driving, you know, quads and motorcycles and dune buggies now and then go out there and camp. And so driving in sand recreationally was fun.

And then, you know, I started doing that, you know, instead of just driving my quad. I'd drive that from where I supercharged it, so it had enough power to get itself up up. It was 500 horsepower. The tinkerer. The tinker. Yeah. And that's when I started hearing all of this. You know, everyone's like, well, that car is just a whatever, and this is the best car.

And here's what I think, really. I mean, I talked earlier about Toyota's or the car. But you see these reels where someone doesn't make it and someone else does make it. And then they decide it's because it's a Jeep that make it. Or it's because it's a whatever. I know what car I'm buying. Give me four wheels, four-wheel drive, a little bit of suspension, steering wheel and a motor, and they're all four-wheel drives, they can go where you want them to go.

Most of the time, that's quite true. Yeah, if they don't break, you know. If they don't break. If they don't break. You and I are in agreement that the Toyotas break a lot less than anything else. They really do, and they're comfortable too, you know, because being comfortable eventually is important. Yeah, I agree with you 100%. So at what point did you decide?

that you're going to have the Taylor collection of FJ80s because you rounded up all your friends and said, we are all going to get the same car now. Tell me the math that you did. You have a very interesting perspective because you had all of your friends driving different things. Yeah, we started going one year we went down to Baja to do this thing and different people had a four-wheel drive. We drove down the beach and we thought, let's come back just a thing. guys and let's do like a Baja Explanation camping trip first time. So we came in, we did that.

Man, I'll never forget that feeling of like exiting out of the south end of Bahia de Los Angeles and going on that road with a Cardone like this and a big, you know, vultures sitting on top with their wings spread out like this on a hot day. And black clouds, it's not raining, but it's got that beautiful color and you come around and see the big, white rocks in the you know the sea of Cortez and you it's the first time it's the first time you can't ever replace that first thing you come around you see you go to to you get in there and the next thing you know you're at Gonzaga Bay or you're well that's north of LA Bay but you you know you get in there and like geography

is failing me right this moment and then but you get down to San Rafael yeah San Franciscois Dost and El Baril all those places I see that for the very first time. It's like this feeling of freedom like I was a young person just out flying fancy free. And so we did that a few times, but we all had different cars. And then in 2004 I did this trip in Tunisia where my German friend who started coming out to the desert with me here. We bought a couple of land cruisers.

We went to Tunisia. That's a long story, but we need to talk about Baja. But I bought that. 2004, Toyota, FJ 105, Series 100 body, the undercarriages, a Series 80, 4.5 liter diesel motor, manual transmission. What a car. I drove that and it's like, now this is a car. Wow, this is a car is brand spanking new.

The light bulb went on. Yeah. I still have that car. It lives over in Munich and it doesn't have 30,000. 30,000 miles on it, you know, and it's all outfitted for expedition. Well, I came back and I just, I'm like the boss of the group because a lot of them, because they're just, you know, and a lot of them work here. And I just come back and go, I sent out an email and said, everybody sell your cars. We're buying landfaces. Bob says, right now. No, really? You know, my buddy Roger, he goes, well, I looked at Catherine and said, Bob says, Bob says, I'm buying a land cruiser, so I guess I am. You know, and I was telling you earlier that,

like who can buy another car, get it ready, get rid of, especially if they're driving that car. So I say, here's what I'll do. I'll buy the land cruisers. I'll shop. I'll get good at it. I'll buy some crummy ones, and then I'll get better at buying them. We'll buy 96 and 97, 94 if it's in really great shape,

but we really want 96 and 97. Bob knows. You know. There's a house to be something special. special about it because we wanted OBD to you know and so anyway because you can do so much more with that car like put a compressor under the hood sure you know sure anyway I did that I went out and I just started buying these things and at that point you could buy them you know reasonably you know six seven eight thousand

dollars sure I learned you got what you paid for someone knew they had a good one and they wanted 11 grand give them 11 grand And then I... There's another lesson for you, kids. Buy the best one you can find. And let me tell you something else. Don't ever say paint's cheap. I'm going to buy an ugly one with a good motor.

Paint is the most expensive thing you can ever buy on a car. And it's not really good when you're done painting it. So buy good paint, buy a good dashboard, buy good air conditioning knobs that work, and buy all of that stuff that's good. Buy a good body because you can build a remote, you can rebuild a motor cheap. And it'll come out better than the...

if you hadn't had done it. So rebuild motors, don't repaint. So Bob says. Oh for landing lessons from Bob. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I bought 15 of those cars easily and then I set up a shop and I hired a mechanic and a guy that had just gotten out of the army. It was a mechanic in the army. He was fast. He was efficient and we just started making those cars expedition ready. What do you mean by that? That water pump's coming up. Well, I don't know. It's still got no. We're not having your water pump break. On a trip. On a trip. In Baja. And we're replacing the little heater hose in the back that's going to crack. The pesky one. The pesky one. We're just going to, and silicone's going in there. And we're going to replace the wires and the hoses and the fan belt and the motor. We're

going to take the head off of this thing because they have 175,000 miles on. And some of those are going to blow out on the six cylinder, right in the middle of you minding your own business. Sure. And you've got to pull that car over right now and tell it back to wherever it is you live. and you might be starting at, you know, Magdalena Bay in Baja, right? So we did a valve job on them, which they didn't need. But preventive maintenance. Preventive maintenance. And we made them at the mindset and the means.

Yep, yep. So we did it all. We did it cheap. When everybody got that car run a ball and said, I'm going to take this one off of the lot, you know, this is a good one. They'd take that one. Then they sold the car they had and paid me the money that I spent buying that car. So it made it easy.

Now, there's another reason why I do it, which is why I'll put in a plug for private school uniforms. Because when you wear a uniform, you're all the same. There's no, you know, rich person, poor person. Look at me in my Land Rover. Look at me and my, yeah. I'm sorry. I bought two H-1s, one of them I spent $80,000 with. I don't want to be the rich guy.

I don't want to be the guy with that car down there. I don't want to be that guy. I want us all to be the same. And we're going to all drive the same car. Not only that, we have a bunch of really smart people. Some are better and worse mechanics. Some are remembering everything they ever learned. And some people have to be reminded.

But we all contribute. So we multiplied our knowledge base. Someone. Or concentrated it. We concentrated. Concentrated. Distilled it. So if somebody's car had a problem, we'd all just get on it.

You know, we knew how to fix it. Somebody had been through it before. So anyways, that worked out good and we've stuck with those Series 80 land cruisers for a long time. They haven't failed this. You said something quite casually to me as we were taking a look at your 80s over there and you've got a stunning conversion that you've hand-made for your 80 with wooden cabinetry and drawers and it's truly astonishing. But you said something to me quite casually about you were 17 years before I was

you were in a motel or a hotel room in Baja. Yeah. 17 years of camping only. Only camping. We went to camp. And we're allergic to pavement and people when we go down there. Right, right. And we don't want to go into town and look for a restaurant.

Look, we live in San Diego. We eat Mexican food all the time. I have a factory in Takadi. We go down there. I've had street tacos. So to go there to eat local food, it's kind of like, I'm not going to say it's yawn snore for us because every time we do, it's like,

this is the best taco I ever had, and the next one's the best taco I ever had. They're all good. You can't get enough tacos. Some are better. But we don't want to sit in a town with a bunch of people. Right. On a, we want to go find a beach that the trail that goes to it, you can only see with your peripheral vision. Because if you look at it, you can't really see it.

You know, that star up there. If I look at it, it disappears. You know, I can see it out of the, the side. of my eye and there are times when we're in washes just discovering where Baja is you know we we leave San Rafael we go down to Los Parancas then we take through the whole backcountry there to Los Corrales and I remember we spent four years looking for Los Corrales we just couldn't get there wow we didn't have GPS to tell us what was all the tools now you had paper maps yeah and we had And then one day you discover, because you end up in a wash, it's just rocky wash,

and you go into it and you're like, where do I get out? I don't see the out because it's all covered up. And then one day you're like, there it is. It's right over there. And you go up and you're on a road and you find Las Marangas or, you know, Bejia San Miguel. And then you're like, wow, look at this place. There's no tire tracks. You come back next year, you're like, I think those are our tire tracks.

because they're places that are hard to get to. Right. You've got 20-something years of doing this now. Yeah, I think our first trip was 2002. What keeps you coming back? Well, people say, out of all the travels you've done in the world, what's your favorite place? Literally, you have been all over the world, multiple trips, multiple days a year.

What keeps you coming back on your own time to Baja? It's the best place on Earth. I'd like to say we're going to leave it right there, folks. We've got a few more questions for Bob. No, it really is. I mean, my German friend, you know, after his fifth trip to Baja, he just says, I looked all over for the place that would do it for me, and this one is it. Yeah, I have a bumper sticker, it's a classic large bumper sticker that says,

ask your doctor if Baja is right for you. Yeah, exactly. Because it's not right for everyone. Yeah. But it seems like clearly that it's right for you. Well, yeah, and I mean, maybe if I had to, well, my buddy comes from Germany to go. Right. And Tunisia is close to him compared to that. And there's lots of sand there.

Can you just, I hate to put you on the spot, can you just humble brag of maybe where you've been in the last 12 months? Because I'm assuming you've been to Africa. You've been in Europe. You've got Japan. You've probably been a lot of places. And to just put it in perspective that FAA is deep in your heart. Yeah. Germany, Cameroon, Egypt, Spain, Mexico other than Baja.

Yeah, I mean, I put you on the spot. So yes, you've... Quebec. You've been around. Your passport is full of stamps. Yeah, they don't stamp them anymore. I know. It's tragic.

Tragic. Well, I don't like getting new passport, so I'm a fan. Let's roll it back a little bit. You're pretty well known for your kindness, quality, business, empathetic business approach, sustainability. What are some of the things that have defined your approach to business? What's the Taylor guitars? You're planting trees, you've got stuff going on.

What are you most proud of in the 51 years you've been doing this? What you've built? You've got over 1,000 employees. Operations on both sides of the border. Love to go see Takate some time. I love it. That is a beautiful factory. Isn't it out? Man, that's a beautiful factory.

Wow. Most proud is that we made it a nice place to work and that people can have careers here if they like that. And employee purchase now as well. Yeah, it's employee owned now. Yeah, you sold to your employees. Yeah. And I work. I'm not retired. I still work.

And they don't pay too well. I love it. This is where I love to be all the time. Yeah. It's quite clear. Yeah. And so I love that. I would say that's my first thing.

Why? Because when I first started making guitars, it was such an oddball thing to do. It wasn't even a thing. Did you know what a thing? Did you know that you were a luthier when you were a luthier? Had no idea. I didn't even know.

I didn't know. the other brands of guitars. I'd never heard a Martin Fender, Taylor, well, not Taylor, of course, but Gibson, I didn't know what they were. I made it. As far as I was concerned, I was the only person that ever lived that wanted to make a guitar for themselves. And when I did that, I had to pay the price of pure poverty and also trying to explain what I did. It was almost, it wasn't a, oh, I build guitars and I was able to buy a car. No, it was more like, yeah, I build guitars. It went rough, you know. And it went rough for a long time.

Really long time, really, really long time. And so I just thought, you know, what I want to do is I want to make this a job that you can be proud to say you do. And then when I start hiring people, I thought, I'd like to make this be a place where someone could come work and stay, stay and have a career here. and then it would pay them. And so that's what I'm most proud of. Now, what's the vehicle that we get there? By making good guitars, and everybody here is serious.

I like to say, we take our work seriously, but we don't take ourselves seriously. And we're not joking around because we're here to work. And we chose this to do a living, so we want to get good at it. Right. You know, and I like to say, we want to succeed on purpose,

not by accident. We want to make good guitars on purpose, not by accident. You can do a good job by accident, right? But if it goes wrong, you don't know what to do about it if it's accidental. So we're trying to be purposeful with all the things that we do. It sounds like your partner, Kurt, has been that side. You're seemingly very methodical on the engineering and the building and the making of the tools and the dyes and the jigs and the things to make it that somebody else can take what you had been doing. Somebody else can get trained to do that, and then somebody else can get trained, and you can make two guitars, and then four guitars, and then six guitars and all that.

700 a day right now. 700 a day right now. Something like that. Yeah, and we're going to take a quick transition and wrap things up. Tell me about the people who play your guitars. You must play guitar. I play a guitar, but... Who did you want to be when you were a kid at 16 strumming your first guitar?

John Denver, Gordon Lightfoot, John Poverty. Okay. I made my first. The Kings of the Era? Yeah, well, there was two sides to that coin. There was also the British rock and roll. Sure. And the American rock, you know, Jeff Stern Airplane and that type of thing.

I wasn't listening to a rock and roll radio. I was listening to. Well, what really blew my mind gave me the same feeling that my first drive down the road out of LA Bay, you know, was the first time in 1973 or two, I heard the Eagles take it easy come on the AM radio. And it's like, oh, this is a whole new, this is a whole new thing. I never heard music like this in my life. And so, you know, I'm a product of that era and it spoke to me. So I wasn't listening to Iron Butterfly and Cream and Jimmy Hendricks. I wasn't listening to that.

I was listening to Gordon Lightfoot, John Denver, the Eagles. So you weren't trying to build an electric guitar? No, but oddly enough, I made acoustic guitars that were easy to play and electric guitar players were our first customers for the first seven, eight years of our business. They bought them because they're like, man, we love acoustic guitars, but you make one we can plug in with a pickup and play it through an amp, and it's easy to play like our electrics are. It took a long time before the acoustic players were digging our guitars. Our difference in age is such that I grew up listening to, you know, Led Zeppelin and whatnot,

metal, rock and roll. What happened in your world after surviving disco and all the other things, things that kept people from playing acoustic guitars, when all of a sudden, MTV has Eric Clapton unplugged? Because I remember that as a college kid. Like, everybody bought that CD. Eric Clapton unplugged was a revelation. Yeah.

Acoustic guitars had dropped off the face of the planet. If you take a look at Martin guitars, who's eight years away from being 200 years old right now, family-owned. Great American brand. Yeah. Chris Martin's a great friend of mine. were the same age. He got into his family business the same age as I started Taylor guitars both same year and you know he says in 19 well let's just say

Saturday Night Fever yes sure 77 or something yeah the year that they did that Martin guitars had their record year ever because they were always a pretty small company and they'd made 20,000 guitars sold 20,000 guitars that that year. And the next year, they sold 3,000 guitars. And they had to survive that crash. And so we didn't feel it because we already weren't making any guitars. You can't kill a dead man, right? You had it all outside. Yeah. So what happened is we chipped away and they brought themselves back and he saved that company and kept it afloat. And they had great employees that you know, he got to be colleagues with, even though he was the new era parent of that.

And as it started coming up, we were ready, ready to expand. We've been, so it was those unplugged era years that really started to get acoustic guitar back in. And then it just grew and grew and grew and grew and grew and we were. I was ready. I was ready to make guitars. And my partner, Kurt, was excellent at building a brand. and doing sales, marketing, and he's excellent at finance, because it's a business. And if you have bad finance, if your financials are bad, you know. I need your mentoring on the financing.

Well, we, we, yeah, we franchise. Yeah, we bootstrapped up. We didn't take investors. We did it ourselves. We just knew we had to make profit margins. We had to get it all right. And Kurt was really good at that. People will ask me, I'll ask the question,

what's the secret to your success? My answer is always mine and Kurt's partnership. That's the secret. A good partner, that's the best thing in the world. That's great. We're going to leave it right there. Thanks, Bob. Really appreciate it.

You bet. It's really delight to get to know you a little bit. The man behind the brand and the man who's absolutely passionate about Baja, and you've got a couple of beautiful FJ. 80s and I'm a new convert to the 80. I've been driving one every day for three weeks and they're amazing so they're fantastic and I can't wait to get back down to Baja. It's we go every year and sometimes more than once and you're there a lot. I'm there a lot. I'll be looking for the Taylor collection the next time I'm there at the FJ 80 mob. All right well thanks. We did it and

thanks to your crew, your staff for doing all the film work. You're going to notice that this one sounds and looks a lot better. That's all on the Taylor staff. So thanks guys. for making this show look great and sound great. Thanks, Bob. You bet, Michael. All right, we did it. Frank, we did it. Yep, sure did. Well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Bob Taylor. What an amazing fellow, honestly and sincerely, and just deep and sincere thanks to his professional staff who recorded this. Alberto Moreno was in the studio on the camera, doing the film work, handling the sound, did the lighting, all that. But Chris was on the outside of the

the studio, probably keeping people from ripping on guitars or whatever they do around the Taylor offices. So the quality of this podcast, I hope I can match it coming up. Again, if you like it, if you like me being in people's place of work, in their homes where they are, that takes time, that takes resources. Time is money, they tell me. Money is tacos on Slow Baja. And if you got some tacos in your pocket, drop them in my tank. I really could use the help. The podcasts have gotten off to a very slow start this year. I hope to rectify that as we move forward. I've got Sam back in the saddle handling the editing and the assembling of these shows. So I hope to be able to bring you these podcasts at a more regular cadence. But as I said, that does take resources. And if you

some tacos, go to slowbaha.com slash donate, drop some tacos in the tank. I greatly appreciate that. And if you don't have tacos, you know, I get it. I get it. Oftentimes, I don't have the tacos. You can still help the show by dropping a five-star review saying a couple words about why you like the Slow Baja podcast. And that does help people find the show, which is in the abstract, very helpful. If you're at the Slowbaha.com, you can go over to the show. shop. You know, I've got some new stuff in there, some cool, new bold and gold oversized logo t-shirts. I don't know if they're even in the store yet, but I've got them and they're cool and you should get one. Summer's almost here. And I've got a big restock on the old school trucker hat, my most popular

hat. That one is back in stock and the canvas, deluxe canvas bags. You need a little beach bag. You need a travel bag. You need a bag for your gal. support the show, well, they're back in stock. So you can check that stuff out at slowbaha.com slash shop. And without bending your ear unnecessarily today, as I record, it's Steve McQueen's birthday. You know, Steve McQueen loved Baja, and he loved Mary McGee. And he got Mary McGee riding dirt bikes in Baja,

and she went on to be an off-road motorsports Hall of Famer. Mary McGee had such a good time interviewing her. two interviews in Slow Baja, go back and listen to them. But Steve, it's Steve's birthday today. And you know, Steve loved Baja and he said, Mary, Baja's life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting. You know, people always ask me, what's the best modification that I've ever made to Slow Baja? Without a doubt, it's my Shielman seats. You know, Toby at Shield Man USA could not be easier to work with. He recommended a Vario F for me and a Vero F XXL for my navigator, Ted. His Ted's kind of a big guy. And Toby was absolutely right. The seats are great and they fit both

of us perfectly. And let me tell you, after driving around Baja for over a year on these seats, I could not be happier. Shieldman, slow Baja approved, learn more and get yours at at shieldman.com. You know, I'm all about keeping things simple, travel and light, and finding the really good stuff. And that's why I've been wearing iron and resin for years. It's not just clothes. It's gear that holds up in the dust, the salt, the spilled tacos, and still looks good when you're rolling into town.

Made in small batches by folks who care, no flash, no fast fashion, just the kind of stuff that gets better, the more you wear. Check them out at iron and resin.com and pick up something that'll last the next thousand miles.