Slow Baja - Bruce Trenery Racing The Wild And Woolly La Carrera Panamericana

Episode Date: January 19, 2023

In today’s Slow Baja Podcast, we talk to Bruce Trenery about his experience racing the wild and wooly early days of the La Carrera Panamericana Classic. Bruce ran in the LCP Classics from 1987 to 1993. In its early “Baja” period, the race was a high-speed sprint from Ensenada to San Felipe. A few years later, the La Carrera moved to mainland Mexico and, at 2000 miles, officially became the world’s fastest, longest, (and most dangerous) vintage car race. Bruce raced it for three more years before moving on to less perilous racing pursuits. In 1987, I was a college kid on Spring Break in San Felipe and heard the snarl of a Ferrari V-12. I followed my ears to the finish line and marveled at the assembled cars. Rumors of mayhem and death swirled around the event. For decades I’ve wanted to talk to somebody who ran that crazy race and hear their account of it. Bruce Trenery owns Fantasy Junction, a classic car dealership in Emeryville, California. Over the last 30 years, he has built a reputation for quality and integrity worldwide. With his son Spencer, he has raced the NORRA Mexican 1000, among many other events. Spencer, a highly accomplished racer in his own right, now runs the day-to-day operations of Fantasy Junction, allowing his dad the occasional afternoon off to record a Slow Baja Podcast. Learn more about Fantasy Junction here. Follow Fantasy Junction on Instagram here. Follow Fantasy Junction on Facebook here.

This podcast is powered by Tequila Fortaleza, handmade in small batches and hands down my favorite tequila. Hey folks, you know I'm always telling you, ask your doctor if Baja is right for you. Well, I don't know what your doctor's going to say, but I want to let you know right now it's the open enrollment period for the 2023 Baja XL rally. That's right.

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Well, hello, thanks for tuning in. Appreciate you listening to the Slow Baja podcast. I'm going to do my best this week not to burst into tears while I'm doing the intro. So today's show is with Bruce Trennery, who is a very well-known guy in the world of vintage car racing and in the classic car trading, selling, buying, what have you world. He owns Fantasy Junction in Emeryville, California. It's right across, his showroom is right across the street from the Pixar Studios. And John Lasseter and those cool cats who brought you the movie Cars spent most of their time in Bruce's showroom,

checking out all the fabulous vintage Ferraris and Cobras and whatnot there, vintage race cars, etc., as they were trying to figure out how to make a movie where cars come to life. Well, the reason Bruce is on the show is I had this crazy experience as a college kid, a drunk as a skunk college kid camping in San Felipe at Kikis. And I was on the beach one day, and I just heard the sound of a Ferrari V-12 engine, which is a very unique sound, and I had spent a lot of time photographing vintage racing as a high school kid and a college kid, and that's just a sound that you don't hear. when you're in Baja. But I heard it and I followed my ears to the hotel that was down the beach

from our campground and found the finish line of the La Carrera Panamericana. And this race ran a couple of years in Baja and then it moved back to mainland Mexico and that's where I got involved with it. This is a race that originally ran from 1950 to 1954. It started off going from the border with Texas all the way down to the border with Central America. and that was in 1950 when herschel mcgriff won it and then in 51 they turned it around and they started off in chiapas and they ran north which was a lot better to have the whole thing finish uh in texas or on the border with texas and as i've mentioned in shows previously you know what happened in the la career pan americana bill strap and whatnot led to um led to the Baja races in the 1960s. Those guys who raced in mainland Mexico on the streets in 1950, 51, 2, 3, 4 found themselves in Baja in the 60s. There's a direct lineage.

Anyways, Bruce happened to be in the, happened to race in the early days of the La Carrera Pan American. And I just thought that was such a unique, crazy thing. I mean, had all sorts of highs and lows and tragedies. and whatnot, and we're going to get into all of that. But before we do, I want to send out my heaping dose of gratitude this week to the Overcrest podcast. You may know it as a pretty good podcast, but I happen to be on with Chris and Jake, and I just want to say, hey, thanks, guys.

And if you want to tune in to the Overcrest podcast, you can find that wherever you find your podcast. You can find it on my Instagram right now. And you can hear me talking to those guys about what I do in my podcast. Baja. So that was fun. Thanks, guys. And without further ado, Bruce Chenery, talking about La Carrera Panamericana, when it was in Baja and one it was in the mainland. And then his son, Spencer, who now runs Fantasy Junction, is a super fast racer in his own right. Spencer one day gave him a Toyota four-by-four racing truck. I don't know if it was Ivan Stewart's. I can't quite remember if it was Ivan Stewart's truck

or just a perfect replica of Ivan Stewart's truck. But anyways, Spencer gave it to his dad for Father's Day. That led to them racing Nora, which was a completely new thing for them getting off and going 80 miles an hour in the dirt. So you'll hear all of that. And without further ado, Bruce Chenery. Maybe you can tell me who you are and where we are and why I'm here. No, wait, that's my part. You tell me who you are. Michael, this is Bruce Trennery, and we're at Fantasy Junction in Emoryville, California, where we sell exotic old racing cars and street cars.

Yeah, we are. It's a spectacular spot, and I'm delighted to be here, and thanks for making some time for me, Bruce. I'm just going to get out and say it. Bruce Chenery, Fantasy Junction, you're a longtime leader in the classic car world, buying, selling, trading, racing. You know everybody around the world, if you ask me. My butcher strongly recommends you. I think from your butcher we bought a 275 GTB4 in about 1982. Do you know how many sausages that is and how many beef bones for my dog? But that was for $42,500, I remember specifically. He probably wishes he didn't sell it. Well, Ron is an awfully good guy and his son, Ron and his son Mike, traded Ferraris. and Mike gave

Dad the Dino and dad gave Mike the Daytona when Daytonas were $3.50. He sold the Daytona and bought a house which was part of the plan and then years later I think they just got rid of the Daytona or the Dino a couple years ago but enough about my butcher, Bruce.

Ron Spinelli. I was there today. I was there today seeing his son, Mike. We're here to talk about you. We're here to talk about a couple of things that really interest me. The early days, did they call it the La Carrera Classic then? Is that how they referred to it? Yeah, from Ensenada, San Felipe.

And was that 86, 87, 88? Do you remember specifically? I think it was 87, 88, and 89 were the years that I did it. Okay. So I was a college kid on spring break in San Felipe camping on the beach. And, you know, I had spent my high school years working for the PR director at Sears Point and really loved going to the vintage car races specifically. So had been at Monterey in 81. I'd seen Fongio drive the Mercedes.

I saw Sterling Moss, you know, when he was just a guy standing around, Carol Shelby, Phil Hill, these guys just driving cars that were 20-something years old, or maybe 30 years old, that they had been famous in it at one time. Sure. And I loved that. that more than sort of modern racing, even though the 80s, like the GTP car looking at this Porsche sitting here, those cars were pretty neat too. But I was very unaccustomed to hearing the snarl of a Ferrari 12-cylinder motor in San Felipe in Baja. So when I heard that, I went sort of terrassing from my beach drunken, you know, beach chair to the hotel that was the actual end of I guess it was the end of you'd stop the stage and then you spent the night there or something.

That's right. And had to go take a look at the cars. So tell me how it came about. Had you been to Baja at all before you did those events? Sure. My parents took me down there in 1957. Well, that's even better. Let's get on to that.

Let's start with you were born in 48. 48, baby boomer. Yeah. Anyway, so I used to go down there and actually get a pulse. you worked then in Tijuana when I was in high school and make it a weekend trip, drive down there and do it and come back. So I always like Mexico. You're driving down from Berkeley. From Berkeley. So that's a full, full days drive to Tijuana. It's about 600 miles. Yeah. I'll be doing it next week for a land cruiser. It's a long drive. It's a long ride. Yeah.

Okay. So you, you experienced Baja in the 50s? 50s, early 60s, yeah. I mean, but not, I didn't do the Baja 1,000 or anything. No, no, of course. Yeah. How did your parents, and what? That was, and you know, folks, we're in the showroom here at Fantasy Junction. We've got neat cars starting up. I think that's a Jaguar XK 120. Oh, 150. I can't see it from here, but beautiful car.

So we're going to have some car noise and some people stopping by to see these beautiful cars. There's a beautiful 427 cobra behind Bruce. And is that a $9.62. That's a million dollars? A million one. One one, yeah. All right. So back to 1957, why were your parents taking you to Baja? My dad was in the insurance business, and it was interesting because my mother had read all about trials and tribulations of people running around in Mexico and cars. So he left the car near San Diego, and we took the bus down to Tijuana, I mean from Tijuana to Ensenada.

Okay. And it was a night bus, and it broke down in the middle of the mountains. So we were sitting in the middle of a road, two-lane road, at night with no lights. in a broken bus. And I can remember my mother giving my father a pretty hard time about wanting to come to Mexico. But that was just the beginning. I mean, it just kept going from there. There's always some big story whenever you go to Mexico.

And did you just take a little beachfront bungalow in Ensonata there? Because, you know, those days, the beach was right at the downtown, right where the casino is. We stayed in a motel, and we were right on the beach. And Jack Dempsey had a gambling casino. that had gone bankrupt and was filling with sand from the beach. And there were a lot of dead sea lions that had floated up. And I found out why that was because we went deep sea fishing with my father. And when we hit a school of barracuda and they started to get caught,

the sea lions would come up behind the caught fish and just take one half of the fish away and one bite. And the deck hands would go and get a 30-30 and fire off the back of the boat. And that is probably why the poor things were floated up on the beach there. Yeah, that was before the Mexican Marine Mammal Protection Act, I'm sure. I think it was. They needed it. Wow.

And what were those early impressions? You nine years old? You're in a foreign country. You could buy rockets. We could fire rockets off at night. I like that. And firecrackers and stuff. And it was just pretty loose.

And then I think I went down there again with a church group. And we used our student body cards to rent. motorcycles when I was about 11 and I think somebody filled one up and forgot to put oil in with the gas and it seized. We had to walk that one back. But yeah, I went down several times before I started racing down there. Yeah, okay. Well that's I don't hold back Bruce. Have you got a got an early Baja story from the 50s and the 60s? Well I mean the other things we did was we took old when I was in graduate school, which was earlier 71. and a friend of mine had a red truck converted into a camper van and said, I'm going to Mexico and that was the end of graduate school.

And I remember we spent a lot of time in Guaymas, where they filmed Catch-22 out there camping on that cove. And we had a good time with an old truck. One of the things I remember about Mexico was that if you broke something, it wasn't really a big deal. You could always get whatever it was fixed for almost nothing. And I think we broke a rear spring in the truck and got that fixed. And then we decided to do a whole break job in the truck while we were at it.

And I think the whole bill was less than $100. Well, it's interesting now because, you know, it's largely that has not changed. The price structure has changed. There are auto parts stores now where there didn't used to be auto parts, you know. But from my college trips where literally a rancher was helping piece our car back together with some chewing gum and a flattened bottle cap and some electrical tape, there's a mechanic. There's a mechanic in every town.

And there's somebody, I don't particularly have any mechanical skills, but there's somebody in every town, every village, who can point you to somebody who's going to help you. Yep, that's right. And they're all happy to do that, it seems like. And I don't think that's changed one iota. I think that's very much still part of the culture, that there's a cultural, you know, default to help others.

I just think that's wired in. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it seemed like a good group, and it seemed to be the same during the, you know, the Nora 1000 and also the long career, the Pan Am. Yeah, the Pan Am. There was everybody, almost everybody, needed some help somewhere along the way. Yeah. Well, let's get on to when you started racing here in the States, and what brought that on? I always wanted to race sports cars.

And when I was in college, I started out with a Formula V and then went to a Formula C and then a Formula B. None of which I could afford, none of which were any good. And I didn't finish very many races and kind of ran out of money at the end of college. And then I didn't really race much until I was, I think, I went back to driver's school in 1979 and ran Formula Ford for a few years, which I could afford at the time then. And let's back up. You grew up in Berkeley. You're a baby boomer. Your dad's in the insurance.

Did he serve in World War II? No. He was in the shipyards in Richmond. Okay. So he was doing his part on the home front. Right. And did you have exposure to motorsports as a kid? Did your dad want to take you to the races?

His partner was AC, not what was the name? Freddie Agabashen, who was a indie driver. and ran the Cummings Diesel, which was kind of an interesting car. And he ran other Indy cars and finished second once or maybe even twice. But when Vukovic was killed in 55, he retired at that point and became an announcer. So we always listened to the Indy 500. That was one thing we did together. And then after I cajoled him enough, he would take me to the sports car races at the Oakland Airport

or Buchanan Field in Concord. something like that. And then my uncle had a dealership in Richmond where he had MG, Willie's, Jeeps, and Piper Cove airplanes. Wow. Nice mix. And they had a sprint car team and a midget team. So we used to go to watch the sprint car races once in a while. He didn't drive. He had professional drivers, but then they lost two in one 30-day period. And they kind of got out of the racing business after that. And did you have aspirations early on to get in a car and do that? before I was 10 years old for sure. Okay.

And in fact, by the time I was 10 or 11, I had talked my parents into a go-kart, and we went to Rolling Stone and go-kart track out in Pittsburgh, and I drove around there to my heart's content. Gotcha. Gotcha. And you've obviously extended that to Spencer, your son, who's quite an experienced professional racer.

Yeah, he's done a lot, and he also started in go-karts. Right. And then went to motorcycles and cars when he was 16. and yeah I'm very proud of him he he was the youngest pro champion at 17 when they allowed you to get a FIA license at 17 and then he was racing prototypes with me at Daytona on that 24 hour when he was in high school so that was cool astonishing I mean you remember I remember you telling me about the La Carrera when I was totally fixated on doing this and saying that I think I think Spencer was 13 when he was your navigator at 12 yeah yeah

And the last time I did it, he was a navigator. Yeah, and so he's signing autographs running 2,000 miles through mainland Mexico, and he's got to come back to sixth grade or something? Seventh grade, I think, yeah, yeah. Nobody believed him. And he was with all these beautiful women and spandex every night getting curfries. Because we won, I think, four of the legs in class during that one, yeah. That's hilarious.

That's amazing. All right, well, Bruce, let's get on to you've started some racing, and you're in this business. Now, I remember you first in Mill Valley when you had Fantasy Junction. Yeah, we bought the company over there. The fellow that managed it for Elmer Flagoff, who was the BMW dealer in San Rafael, who owned the company, was tired of losing money after nine months. And the fellow that managed it over there was Tom Renshaw. And he and I and another fellow bought the company from Elmer for $500. And that was the name?

Fantasy Junction. We thought that we'd keep the name, not because I really liked it that much, but because Elmer had spent. about $10,000 on advertising in the previous six months, and we thought it might have some recognition value. And that's the main reason we kept the name. And that was before internet pornography, so Fantasy Junction was totally a different thing. But, you know, if I want to get through to somebody, you know,

who's calling? Bruce Rennery from Fantasy Junction. And I tell Mr. So-and-So what it's about. And if I know who it is, I might say. It's about that massage bill, and then I go right through. Well, what possessed you to get into this business? Because I love cars. I love cars. And the good thing about being in the business is anything I did with racing, which was minimal as far as expense. I never spent what it really took to do it properly.

It was at least a business expense. So if you spent 10,000 a year, 5,000 of it was a business. You know, you could buy things at half price, basically. And then it went up from there. So do we need to jump onto your first car? No. I mean, you know, my first car was a 47 mercury, dead apples on top of it with the doors tied together because it had been broadsided for $10. And I brought my own battery, drove away at 14. Kids can't do that today. Not as well. 14-year-old kids get, they get to take Ubers, and then they get hand-me-down aunties Prius, and they've never had to fix a thing in their life, and that's what happens. So back to getting serious here, and I do want to get serious, how did this idea of doing a road race an over, you know, 100-something, 150 miles from Ensenada to Felipe?

I think it's 150 or 75 because you go up into the mountains down the other side over to San Felipe. I think that's about right. And there's a huge straightaway there, isn't there? At the end, yeah. Yeah, you really get going. People really get going. I remember, I've driven that road a few times. So unfortunately in like Volkswagen vans, Toyota Corolla's, Coronas,

um, nothing fast ever. Um, but how did that come to your attention? And why did you say yes? We were running vintage races up here, CSRG and HMSA stuff. And I was driving a launcher, a ralea convertible. And I'd read all about the millimilia and the quirapanam, uh, and I'm a real launcha fan. And launches did well in both of those races. Sure.

And so when we heard they were going to have this race, I entered a launcher really a B-24 in the first one. Do you have one over here? Yeah, we have one. We still have one that we own also in the next room. And those are half-million dollar cars? Less probably, a little three or four. And anyway, I entered that, and I talked to my friend Perry Larson,

who ended up later racing Ds and Cs and stuff to enter his... Those are Jaguar Ds and Cs, folks. Yeah, he entered his Arnold Bristol. which was named Wacky after Wacky Arnold who commissioned them being built. And so we had those two cars, and we ran in some class that was below 1960, I think, in over two liters. All right, so you've got a friend, and he's... Yeah, and there were other people that showed up. There was a guy with a 54 Lincoln, Capri, with no safety equipment at all, with a baby in his arms, his wife's arms.

You told me this story, I don't know, 15, 20 years ago. And, you know, he's rolling along... His wife's nursing a baby. Yeah, and he's rolling along at 120 miles an hour with no seatbelts or anything, I don't think. And I think I met that guy not all that long ago. I think he judges Rolls Royce, and he was judging the Presidio car show when I was over there. It's possible. I thought he was from Southern California someplace.

Tall fellow with a beard. Yeah, anyways, he told me about he and his family took the Lincoln in La Carrera. when it was in Baja, and I thought, could this be the same guy that Bruce had told me about how ridiculous it was that his wife was nursing? Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, there was a lot going on. It was fun. And at the end, the finish of that race, first you left, they took you outside of town,

so you didn't race to the city. And then they started the speed section, and you race to a town on the mountains, and that was the gas stop. So the motorhomes, everybody had been there. It left early, it was waiting with gas cans and stuff. And so you came to this town and then you slowed down and you drove gently through town, got your gas filled and left. And they may have been a thing like a time.

You had to be there 10 minutes or something. I don't know. And then after that, then you blast down out of the mountains onto this flatter area across the desert towards San Felipe. And at the end, having never done it before, you could see, the Lanci would go 115 miles an hour. So I held 115 miles an hour for 10 or 12 miles, 15 miles. And at the end, I could see that there was a group of cars parked where we were going.

I could just see it coming up in the road. And I thought, okay, you know, they're going to flag it, and then you're going to drive someplace and slow down and park. But basically, people just pulled over at the flag. At the flag. At the checkered flag. Yeah, so I got to the checkered flag at 115 miles an hour when there were people walking around between cars. Holy Toledo.

And then clamped on the brakes. And at the very moment I did that because it had been going flat for so long, it lost a head gasket. And it covered everybody in the whole area for about 150 feet in steam. Yes, yes. But we ended up winning the class. It was good. Well, I finished my first law career with a blown head gasket as well, trailing a nice. nice stream of steam from my little dots.

I'm assuming that the other thing you probably learned about that you had not experienced in racing previously was the dreaded Mexican Topé. Right. And those just seem to be there's one on each end of town, maybe two or three in the middle of town, and they just are not well marked. And they're very angular, hard speed bumps. And you're going to end up missing one and taking it at much faster than you should. somebody will anyways. Did you have any experience with tearing a front end apart?

The last car we did in the short career was a Jeannie Oles Can Am car. Of course. That makes perfect sense. And that one with the topays, my co-driver had to have two two-by-fours, or four two-by-fours, behind his seat. And so we'd pull up to the tope. He'd jump out, put out the two-by-fours. I'd drive it over the bank, over the two-by-fours. And he'd go collect the two-by-fours, put him behind the seat, and be strapping in as I took off. off. Luckily, most of the Tofeyes are in town, so you're not racing while he's playing around with seatbelts. But we had to carry two-by-fours with us to be able to run that car in the short race. And who thought that was the best way? Who thought that was the best car for that?

I happened to have it, and we were running it in finish racing. But it was interesting. The car had aluminum moles with four webers on it and a dry-sop system. But it'll go to 7,000, RPM, no problem. But when you're going fast for a long time, I had to watch, I had to drive it instead of with a tachometer with the oil temperature gauge. So as the oil temperature gauge started to reach towards 200, I would just modulate the throttle. So we only got to run at like 5,500 for top speed instead of 7,000, which I'd counted on. But it'd still go about at 135, I think. Um, not a very, uh, good subject to dwell on, but the things that I remember from being a college kid is a couple people had some horrific offs and I think there were some fatalities in that event, which probably led to its demise or, or to its move to mainland Mexico anyways. But, um, one of the, one of the, um, got a little road noise here. Um, one of the stories that I do remember,

I'm not sure if it was 87 or 88, but there was an accident, and I want to say it was an IROC, Camaro or Trans Am or something, but a race car, an actual racing Trans Am Camaro. And as I recall, there was a cobra, and part of the wrecked Camero came through the floor of the cobra and took off part of the navigator's foot. No recollection of that. I don't remember that. That wasn't the year I was here. I remember with the genie, there was a guy behind me in a Pantera with twin turbos or something and knock and nitrous and everything. And he was behaving, I would say, poorly, looking back on it.

And when we left the town in the mountains, I told my code writer, we keep an eye out for him, right? And then he went to him. Then he went blowing by us and we didn't see him anymore. And then as the support crews came through, he had gone off the road in the mountains and gone down a huge gully and was upside down and on fire and dead. And then towards the end of that race, there were two people, I think they were in Portia's, 9-11s, and they were taking pictures of each other, videos or something, and somebody swerved and I think two people got killed then too. Wow. So they lost, I think it was three or maybe

both people with the Porsche's, both cars got involved. It was either three or five people were killed on that one. And who was the San Diego BMW dealer who drove a L6, M6? And I believe he brought the TV weatherman with him on a lark as the navigator and set up a tripod with a video camera, VHS video camera, but there was a kind of an underground outlaw film of this Law Career thing that I saw in the late 80s. I know the guy you mean, but I can't think of his name off.

Yeah, and he was filming from sort of in between the seats with the tripod wedged into the back, and as I recall, the TV weatherman was absolutely howling with fear, squealing, as he was in 130 as I think, in that straightaway out to dead.

Yeah, that was a fast section. And if you were in a TR or something, you could be going 180 miles an hour or something. And can you define TR for the listening audience? Test Rosa. There's something strong and big. There was somebody that had some Camaro that was supposed to be able to go 200 miles an hour when I was doing it. And what were your takeaways from that? I had a good time. But, I mean, I thought, I did it three times, and I don't think I would have done it anymore.

It's a long way to go. it isn't the safest thing in the world. There's that. But it was fun. I mean, you know, the idea of any kind of a race where you can race across from point A to point B, and it's not on a racetrack, I think, is really interesting, just intrinsically. But, you know, it's just like the Pan Am. I did that six years.

And, you know, I don't think I'd do it again. And it's not because I'm afraid of doing it again. It's just I had a lot of fun. And after you're doing the same thing over. and over again, it starts to blend in and it's not as fresh or interesting. You've been there and you've done that. Yeah, that's right. And there's nothing wrong with it. It's just that, you know, you can only take so much of the same thing.

And in the meantime, let's jump around to some of the other places that you're getting invitations and you're going to the finest car events, the finest open road, the mil milillas, the Copa Italia's. Yeah, the Coppa Italia, I think, was maybe one of the best. Yeah, so, I mean, the same guy who's, Bruce from Berkeley, who's, you know, putzing around in Baja, is also in some of the finest cars in the world with some amazing people driving these. Yeah, yeah, I had some wonderful times. Just entertain me with a few of those stories, if you don't mind, Bruce. In 1986, I got a call from England from Peter Ag, and Peter Ag is a good friend of mine that we had done a bunch of rallies with and stuff over the years.

And he's the fellow that built the McLaren for 5,000 and Can Am stuff for Bruce McLaren, the customer cars. And he said, how would you like to do the mill of million? I said, oh, yeah, that'd be great. So he says, okay, fly to London. So I said, all right, but it's in Italy. Why don't I just fly to Italy to meet you there? And he said, no, no, I'll fly to London. So I fly to London.

And he's got this gigantic locomotive of a thing called a Bentley Speed 6 Van and Plau Tour. And so his son was going to do it with him. His son was going to do it with him. And his son decided that, He couldn't go. So he said, I would go. And he says, well, you have to drive the car from London. And I'll fly down on me in Brescia. Well, that's all the way across Europe.

You have to drive the car. I had to drive it. What years is in? In 1986, this is the weekend of Chernobyl. There is nobody going outside, and I'm driving this open Bentley across Europe. An open 1930s, Bentley. 1931, yeah. And I'm driving all the way across Europe.

Sorry, I'm laughing. Yeah, so we did the millimilia with it. It ran fine. and I think we were the top British team, which was pretty cool. And then Peter said, I'll see you in London and flew home. And so I got to drive it back across Europe. And again, the week that I drove it down there, nobody was going outside because of Chernobyl.

Kind of weird. And then with Peter, I did it two other times in an alpha Monza, eight-cylinder supercharged Monza. And in the 30s car. Yeah, 32. And then I got to do it once in a Jaguar SS-100. and then an X-KSS or D-type Jaguar. And then last time I did it, I did it in a pontoon Tesserosa, which was fantastic.

And the best thing about that was... And that's late 50s, 57, 58? 58. Really, it shouldn't have been allowed in, but it was before I Ticeroza. The Italians wanted it. But the neat thing there was, I think we were number like 293, and 292 was Sterling Moss in the 722 Mercedes that won 195. the fastest time ever.

Was Jenks with him? No, no, he had passed away. And so on the second day, we stopped for coffee with Sterling Moss and his co-driver, and then we realized we were late. And so we took off down the Adriatic, and I got to be on the bumper of that 722 Mercedes with a pontoon TR for like 20 minutes at about 115 miles an hour. It was fantastic.

It was one of my best memories of the whole thing. Yeah. And I hate to be garish. here. But this is your business. Put a number on those two cars today. Well, they just sold one of those Mercedes in a coupe form. Not that one. Not that one. Not the one that one that one. The lesser one that never raced. They had to sell that one for $142 million. 142 million. Yeah. Yeah. And the pontoon TR is probably $45 million at this point. And it was American colors. It was painted white with blue stripes because it was run by three young playboy types that bought it from Ferrari, had Ferrari

service it and ran it in the mill and we ran it in the Lamont in 1958 and stayed out of everybody's way, didn't cause any trouble and finish seventh overall. It's a pretty good result. So it was a cool car, yeah. Can we just diverge for a second and get, can you just give me your take on that drive, that Sterly Moss drive? And in the, not not with you on a his tail, but the real one, the real one. Is there ever been any other performance like that in a car, in an era where the car was so powerful, the tires were so crummy, the brakes were what they were? I mean, can you break down that achievement at that time, those sort of average speeds, the

three crashes, Jenks, you know, rolling on a, it was supposed to be toilet paper, but of course It was the early rolling. Well, he was a very accomplished motorcycle. Side hack. Side hack. And so he wasn't afraid of much. And so fearless, exactly. And so I think that he was a good guy to pair with Moss.

And I think Moss was, somebody told me one time that Moss could almost read a newspaper across a room. So he had an incredible eyesight. Incredible eyesight. So if something was on the road, you know, you could see oil or you could see, you know, water or whatever better. than almost anybody else. And he had fantastic reflexes, and he was at the absolute top of his game. Mercedes was probably the best vehicle to have

for that distance. It may not have been quite as fast in a 10-mile section as a Ferrari might be, but the chance that it would finish without any aggravation mechanically is much stronger probably in the Mercedes and the Ferrari. So it was a perfect combination. And I think, you know, the stars aligned right then

for it to happen. And, you know, somebody that was maybe trying to be the fastest guy ever might have gone off the road. Somebody that had to look at his notes and then look up and was afraid to look back at his notes might have lost his place, unlike Jenkinson, and where the car could have broken. And so none of those things happened. And it was a perfect run for those guys. And it's one of the all-time epic racing stories, period. I mean, there should be a documentary or a...

recreation or a CGI version of it. From what I read, Fongio gave him a little helper helper something, something to kind of keep him awake a little something. He didn't quite know what it was, but if Fongio took it, Amos said, I guess I should take it too.

I heard something about that, but I wasn't to know exactly what he ended up with. A little speed maybe. Yeah, a little speed. And I mean, he stayed up and he drove that, he drove all the way on to, I forget where, I mean, maybe to he drove it back to Germany.

Yeah, I think all the way back to Germany after the event. Yeah, yeah. So a thousand straight, plus probably didn't sleep the night before, plus, you know, right on back to Germany following the event. Yeah, yeah, incredible, incredible thing. And, I mean, that car, that particular car, I would think, is maybe the most valuable car in the world. Well, if the one that didn't race is $142 million. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm glad I didn't run into the back of it.

Things you think about, don't you? I didn't think about it at the time. We were worried leaving the Test Rosa out outside of hotels because somebody could steal it. And that was an interesting car because the fellow that owned it had traded a Swiss fellow. The Ferrari 375 plus,

the 1-2-3 car that Milioli had won the Mexican road race with, 1954, the last one, which was a pretty epic event in itself. And he traded him that car, and he had, quote, I have to take in this testeroza for like $2 million. So that's why we had the testeroza. It was already in Switzerland. And interesting story on that.

When we were driving it down, we were driving it down from Switzerland to Italy for the Milamalia. And it was Wednesday afternoon. And we were just about to the Italian border when the thing felt like it jumped out of gear. And I went, what the hell is this? And so we tried different gears. There was no connection to the back wheel. So we coasted off. towed it to a garage, jacked it up, and it had a broken axle on the right rear.

And so I thought, where am I going to get a TR axle on Wednesday, this Wednesday afternoon so we can have it in tomorrow morning. Excuse me for laughing. Yeah. So I thought I'd sold a tour de France, also in 1958, 250, to a friend of mine in Switzerland. So I didn't want to call him. So I jumped in the rental car, drove all the way back up to northern Switzerland, banged on his door and said, Brakey.

And he goes, hey, what are you doing here? And I said, where's your floor jack? And he goes, what? But was your floor check? I need an axle out of your car. And he goes, but, but, I mean, this is a lot of money. A million dollars for the car in 1980. Yeah, in those days for sure. And those are 10 plus million.

Yeah. Anyway, so he wasn't very excited about me taking the axle out, but I didn't really give him a lot of choice. And I banged the axle out in about 15 minutes, wiped it off with a towel and jumped in the rental car and left. And he was like sputtering all the way to the rental car going, you have to bring it back, you have to bring it back. And then we got down to the TR and I slid it in.

It wouldn't fit. It was too long. So I cut it off. And we finished the event, and we drove over to Monaco after the Millimilla and watched the Grand Prix races, and then drove back up to Switzerland and dropped the TR off. And I told him I'd buy them two new rear axles. Yeah. Well, I guess you know where to get them, and it's nice to have friends.

Yeah, well, yeah, Conyham makes him in DK engineering, and his was starting to twist where mine broke also. And so he got two new wins out of the deal. It wasn't a loss, but I wasn't going to go. My friend came from Australia, and when we came from California, I wasn't going to go home because I wasn't going to cut a half an inch off this axle. Right, right. Yeah, exactly. Do you think anybody today doing the Mill, Millia in these pre-1957 and older cars,

or in your case, a 58, Testerosa Ferrari that you said is maybe a 40-something million-dollar car today, that just boggles my mind. It just boggles my mind because you know there's you see that used to see them sitting up at the Fairmont for the California Millet when when uh Marvin swig was was running that and um who's the Tony and what's his wife's name? Tony wing he had that beautiful yellow one yeah he still has him I would take my son over there when he was in in high school and we'd always show up late the day that they all drove away he would I would drive him over there and let him see them all drive away hear them start up hear them take off because it's only a few blocks from our house and Tony's car was there. He wasn't there. It was, you know, whatever it was raining. He didn't come. He didn't bag. But the car was sitting there. And here's, you know, my son brand new learners permit. And he thought, well, I, you know, I can take it if you need me to. But it's a beautiful, beautiful car.

But I, I digress. Do you think that participants today in the melee are driving their cars down from Switzerland or England or wherever? or is it like Monterey and they just all show up in a transporter? I think most of the cars come from such a distance that they probably show up in a transfer. But I think that a lot of the Italians probably drive their cars there and I think probably a lot of the Swiss do too. You know, I mean it's... It's a good time out. Yeah. And if they did, they'd have more of a chance of finishing a race or the rally without a problem.

And that's because that so many of these people are so afraid to drive these cars, they don't test them. And if you don't test them, you know, the things that can go wrong in a thousand miles are a lot. Yeah, they're going to show up. Well, let's get on to the 1,000 miles through 2,000 miles through mainland Mexico and the La Carrera. From the Carrera Classic in Encinada, San Felipe, that eventually moved back to mainland Mexico to recreate the, to run the route from 1950 to 1954. The first time in 50, they went north to south, and then they realized what a disaster it was to have everybody on the border of Chiapas in Central America, you know, after this week-long road race. So next year, they started in Chiapas and went back, and that's the way I did it, and that's the way that you got to do it. But tell me about those six years that you ran that.

When I ran the, when I ran the, one of the races in Mexico, this must have been 1987. We heard that they were going to run the next year or that fall. I can't remember whether the classic was in the spring and then it was going to be the fall that they were going to run the long race. And I was told that the cars had to be made before 1955 to qualify. And so I had purchased when I was the, down in Mexico I met Chuck Tatum who built the Tatum special and he was going to try and run it with his son-in-law who helped him pay for the restoration of it and it wasn't ready so they were mad at each other and I bought the car and it was a 53 Tatum special with the GMC a big sports

racer I thought perfect I'll use this but then there was no trunk there was no place for anything and it was rough as a cob as far as how it sprung so it was really a track car and it was a that was wasn't going to happen. So I thought that the cars I had in high school that I loved were Hudson Hornets. And I remember that Hudson Hornets had been used in the Mexican Road Race. They'd also been used in NASCAR successfully during that period. So I went out and found a Hudson Hornet with a twin-h power, a 308 cubic inch flathead with two carburetors, and a three-speed with overdrive. And it was an absolute star. So I bought that. And then I had it fitted with a roll bar. seat belts the trip meter for the the rally meter and I put full metallic brakes on it and and a good

set of Michelin's and thought I was pretty well ready so that's what I took down the first year that that was the early days of the La Carreira before it became full NASCAR under some old sheet metal that's right yeah that's right where cars were we're doing 180 to 200 miles an hour that's right no this wasn't like that at that time um but it was it was good fun and um um I Unfortunately, you know, the organizers found a trucking company that was going to carry the cars from the American border at Mexicali, I think it was, to Chappas. And so Loyal Trusdale organized this, and a fellow gave him a 356 Porsche. There was a Morgan that was Dennis Glavis's car. There was my Hudson, Loyal's Hudson, and I think Doug Mock had a Lincoln.

And the truck flipped over near Guadalajara and destroyed a couple of the cars, but seriously damaged the Hudson's. And so that that race was way behind the eight ball to begin with. And so you flew into Mexico City and somehow made your way to the crash site or to wherever the vehicles ended up? They sent another truck to pick up the remains. And it was supposed to be there. And a funeral procession. Yeah, just about. And we flew into Mexico knowing nothing about this in New Mexico City for the driver's meeting and the press thing, because this was the first year, so nobody knew what to expect. And Eduardo Leon said, you must have heard about the accident. And I said, what accident? And he said, well, the truck tipped over and ha, ha, you're kidding. And he said, no, I'm not kidding.

And so we waited and waited and waited for them to deliver what they had left to Mexico City to the trucking yard to see if we could fix the stuff before we went to... Tuxela. And they didn't get there until the night before we left. Which is not near. It's not near Mexico City. It's got to be 1,500 miles south, right? Still quite a trip. So they did get the cars there. They did endeavor to beat them back into shape and get them going. But there was, you know, all the oil had dripped out of mine upside down. And the engine was moved in the chassis because the roof was smashed in and the glass was all broken. It had to climb through the window because the doors didn't open. It wasn't as pretty. Christine as I'd left it. And as I remember hearing the story the first time, which was many years ago, it was a pretty

nice car when it left your hands. It was a beautiful car. It was maybe the nicest Hudson you'd ever own for sure. Most of the Hudson's I'd had that cost me like $80 to $100 and I paid $10 grand for this one. Yeah. It was a really nice one. Yeah, a long time ago.

Very sad deal. Well, you did it six years in a row. Right. Can you take me through a couple of the highlights? You were there for the epic. Pink Floyd years. You were with your friends. I was with Peter Ag

Porsche, yeah. Yeah, you were there with your friends. And I think the feeling, at least in the La Carrera circles, is after, was it Mark Knopfler from Dyer Straits, went off in a sea replica? They had a couple... Broke's leg. Here at Slow Baja, we can't wait to

drive our old Land Cruiser south of the border. When we go, we'll be going with Baja Baja Baja Bound Insurance. The website's fast and easy to use, check them out at Bajaubound.com. That's Bajaubound.com, serving Mexico travelers since 1994. The word inside the La Carrera circles was because of the film that Pink Floyd made, which was like the only film for a decade or more, on the La Carrera. So if you were interested in doing this thing, there were so little information, and the Internet wasn't what it is.

And, you know, it was a word of mouth event. And then there was this video that, you know, that the guys from Pink Floyd did. Yeah, yeah. And they had fast cars and they knew what they were doing. And Alan DeCadne. Yeah, so the rest of soul just passed. Alan Decadne was the, what would you call him? I guess he was sort of like the host of this thing.

For the English guys. Yeah, did most of the talking. And I think they really scared a lot of people. scared them. Scared them. I think that such a well-prepared team with such phenomenal cars endured such difficulties that it really, they say, it always knocked down the entries from England. There were never more than one or two potentially from England.

And, you know, America might have 30, or Europe might have a half dozen or eight, you know, and Canada might have 15. I never felt that. I mean, I thought that that probably helped it more than anything else because it added the star power, you know, Nick Mason and all that. Yeah. And I think that to me, that brought it forth in everybody's consciousness, you know. I mean, we were talking about this the last time we talked, which was talking about Loyal Truesdale. What a great character.

What a character. One of the all-time characters I've met. in my life of 75 years is loyal Trousdale. I mean, unbelievable character. And he, you know, he was the liaison for the Americans, and he was loose as a goose. And so if he told you something was going to happen on Thursday, it might be Wednesday, it might be Friday,

but you can almost count on it not being Thursday. And, you know, but I loved him. I mean, he was really fun. He organized all the hotels and stuff for Edwark. to Lione and so he would do a calculation as to how many people would drop out on a given day. And he just subtract that many from the hotel roster so that he didn't have to pay for so many hotel rooms. So if you showed up late, your hotel room would be given away to somebody, right?

What a character, what a guy. And one time he missed the start because he was on some kind of motorcycle raid for BMW or something in Central America and the border got closed and he had to like ride through some area where they were fighting. to get back up to be the the American liaison like for the second day and on and so crazy stuff well you managed to make it through six 2,000 mile events from you know all the backroads the beautiful backroads of colonial mexico's it's truly a stunning thing I saw staying in wahaka staying in Zacatecas yeah I mean places that again I was in zakatecas when the race came through we were just talking about that and that's where I met Conrad Stevenson

his car was on the trailer already, and that's where I met Doug Mockett, and I said to Doug, who's, you know, he's professorial in his appearance, with kind of white, longish hair and spectacles, and I said, do you see any speed on this race? And he's driving a 53 Oldsmobile, and he said, I was doing 165 today coming in from Aguas Calientes. And I'm looking past him at his Oldsmobile, saying, you're doing 165 miles an hour in that. And then I think, well, maybe he's, he's pulling my leg or exaggerating. And he has just deadpan aft, no, 165.

So now I start to qualify. I'm like, well, what else do you race? Well, I have a vintage Formula One car that I keep in Europe, and then I have another vintage Formula One car that I keep here in the States. And so I said, well, how does the Law Carrera rate? He says, it's the best week in my life. Yeah, that's great fun. He said, I've been going through a horrific divorce.

This is the only time that I don't think about it, and I'm here, and I have, it's absolutely the best week of my life. And he said, whatever you have to do, whatever mountain you have to move, do it and get into this race. I think that there's a lot of events like that. I mean, the Copa de Italia was like that. I think that there's probably events in South America that are like that, you know, that are epic. And Mexico is certainly one of them. There's no question about that. The best builder, they built the cars that I have the most faith in was John Ward. Oh, yeah. He built an Woolseville fastback, I think, for the first. year that was so outrageously wonderful that one of the English guys just couldn't believe how

fast and wonderfully constructed it was and bought it and took it just to drive on the Kings Road in London and blow them all away and bought it from him, I think. And then he built all the Curtis, 500K Curtis's that I think some Bronno drove one. He won the race in 1989 with one. And then I bought that from him and I thought maybe with Spencer I'd try and win the race. race, right? Instead of just go along and have a good time. But my feet were too big. I couldn't, I couldn't. He had to wear like ballet slippers or something, and he's not as big as I am. There was no way I could drive the thing, you know, competently. And you moved that car a couple of times

here. Is it the 55 Curtis or 54 Curtis? 54 Curtis, but it didn't actually race in the race or something. I remember. No, no, no. It was built. It's a continuation car with the the blessing of Arlen Curtis, the son, Frank's son, and John Ward built him. And John Ward built, they were fantastically built. Yeah. You know, he won the race with his wife who never read him anything from a root book because she was afraid she'd make a mistake. She'd just sit there and knit, and he would drive the cars whatever he could see.

And he won the thing, and I know he said it went 180-some miles an hour. And so, folks, this is John Ward who builds cars for Hollywood, not John Ward who builds the Toyota Land Cruiser icon 4x, different John Ward. Yeah, this John Ward built the Knight Rider TV car. Yeah. But he also ran with Jerry Titus in the Daytona 24th, 1969, finished second overall in a Pontiac Trans Am. So when I was digging into doing the La Carrera in 2006 for my 40th birthday, a video, was circulating on the internet and it was Warden, I believe it was a studebaker, getting clocked at just over 200 miles an hour, but he had already had a fire and there wasn't a hood on the car

and he's doing, he's doing slightly over 200 miles an hour. Yeah, and in the no rear window either. And this is where I'm thinking, and I'm what, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do a hundred and five in my Dodson. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, the point is you'll miss the first beer at the end of the day, but that's about it. Everybody will have a good time. Yeah, yeah. And I was going to get to the finish line, which was the goal for me, just to participate and to do it. Hey, let's jump ahead to that Father's Day gift that Spencer gave you. Uh-huh. Toyota. And doing something completely different after, I don't know, were you 60-ish, 65 years old than that occurred? Yeah, that's about right. 65. Fairly interesting leap that you made, set it up for me. Well, we'd never done any kind of a

dirt race of any kind. I always kind of wanted to do the Mint 400. I watched the Dakar every year on TV. And Spencer was involved. Spencer raced the Dakar, yeah? He did, but that was later. But we always tried to watch a little of the Baja 1000.

But the idea of racing through the desert at night is a step too far for me, thinking about it. But this one, what happened was I came in on Father's Day and he said, a surprise for you and he had an Ivan Stewart truck, a replica Toyota. And so I was a little trepidacious to be honest with you because we'd never done that before.

And so I saw this thing and I said, man, he says, look, I've got it figured out. We're going to go do a prep on this in Baja. We found this group called White Open Baja that's put you in a buggy, which is basically indestructible. And they teach you how to deal with these big silt beds and going through rivers and going over jumps and sliding around corners and what to look for and this and that and the other thing. And so... And you've got 30-something-plus years already, 40-plus years of real racing experience.

Regular track racing. Track racing, yeah. And so we went down with Vic Rice, who Spencer did, and Vic did it with me too, the Daytona 24 hours in Seabring and all this stuff. and his son. And we had a hell of a good time. And I would recommend it to anybody. And you went down to Cabo. You went to Cabo for Wino, Cabo.

Yeah, three days, I think it was, or four days. And we came back. We knew what it felt like to slide around in the dirt and stuff and how to get through some of these big ruts and things like that. And so when we went down there, we thought we were absolutely ready. And at the start, you started out of Mexicali. And you started out of Mexicolli.

And you started out of Mexico. on this flat pan, a dried lake. And we were lost within 500 yards. We were on the wrong road. I couldn't believe it. Well, that's the problem, because there's tracks that go everywhere. Every which way. And sometimes they all meet up again.

Yeah. But if you're following tracks, I always say go for the freshest tire tracks. Yeah, that makes the way I always figured. Well, we were trying to follow somebody. When we were following a guy, and it turned out he made a mistake too. So that both of us turned around. We were only off the track for five minutes maybe, but if that. But it was shocking to see how quickly we could get lost.

And then going across the, I was driving the first day, and going across this flat, dried lake, we were roaring along, and we came up to this ditch, and I slowed down to the ditch, and went through it and came up the other side, and I got passed by one of the famous guys whose name escapes me right now in one of the big V8 trucks. And he was thrown out dust, and we both left, this ditch at the same time but I just couldn't see right so I kept going for

about 30 seconds across this lake bed but I just couldn't see anything and I can imagine what it's like on the Baja 1000 at night yeah following somebody but anyway I couldn't see so I slowed down I said the hell with it I'm gonna slow down and stop until the dust clear so I can see what's going on and when I stopped the truck in front of the truck within five feet in front of the truck was a steel pole buried in the sand straight up that I happened to stop In front of. Do you have a regular relationship with luck? Yeah. Yeah, I do. I mean later in that event, we were going down a We were going down a valley. We were on the left-hand side of the valley on the right-hand side it dropped straight down into a gully and the left-hand side was a hill and

We went down this valley as far as we could in high gear and then there was a quick left and a right along the side of the hill and as we got down there I hit the brakes and the brake pedal went to the floor And I didn't even have a chance to pump it before we slammed into the bank with the left front wheel in the left side of the car. And then I limped off with a flat tire and no brakes and parked the thing. But if it had broken a couple of seconds later when I hit the brakes, I would have just disappeared through thin air. Yeah. Over the side of a hill. Off the ravine.

I was lucky. Always been lucky. And you did that race again? We did it again. The first year, we actually, there was not much competition. There was a father and son group with a small, this is a small pickup, imported pickup class, whatever it was. And this guy had stuff a Chevy in it in his. And so it had a lot of zip where we just had a V6 so the thing came with.

And anyway, we were kind of complaining because he was in this small board class with this five-liter Chevrolet motor. Anyway, we came up against some town, and you probably know the name of it. But there's a jump in the middle of the town. It's a famous place for the off-road. to go through. And there was a crowd on both sides of the jump, getting people to go, yeah, jump as far as you can, jump as far as you can. Well, anyway, I just kind of went up and over the thing and drove out the other side.

Nobody even clapped, right? This father and son team trying to impress the locals, went flying over the top of it, and when they came down, it broke and it tore the rear end out of the bottom of the truck. And they had to, I have to hand them credit, though. They loaded what was left of it onto a trailer, drove back to San Diego and fixed it overnight and missed most of the next day, but caught up with the last day to go back to the end. Well, that is one of the neat things about these stage rallies now, and the difference between Nora and score,

where score just runs straight from the beginning to the end through the night, whatever. Nora stops and has dinner and a party and all that each night, and people do have a chance to sort of fix something. Fix things, yeah. Getting it back to San Diego seems ridiculous, but anyways, that puts you clearly in the winner's seat. Yeah, there was one other really... For a class win in your first event.

Yeah, we won the... class. The next year I think it was we had a really long speed section. I think it was something like 175 miles. And it was a washboard road and we drove on this washboard road forever and forever and we came to the finish of the washboard road and the guys marking your card happened to look under the car and said hey the rear end's leaking a ton of oil out of it. you better do something about it. So there was a village along this lake about a half a mile farther on. So we drove into this village.

There's nobody walking around or anything. And we found a guy that did welding in the town. And he came out with a glass of gasoline. Yeah. And clean the rear end without draining the oil out or anything. But cleaned the rear end with the gasoline and a rag while he smoked a cigarette. And then climbed underneath the truck. with the gasoline and the rag and the cigarette,

and welded the crack up, and then just reached around on the ground to pick up scraps of metal and made gussets out of it. And then we poured in a quart of 90 weight that we had, and the whole cost was about $30, and it was about 45 minutes that we were stopped, and we had the thing fixed and on the way. So no real loss of time.

And how do you explain that to your racing friend, who say, Mexico's too dangerous, off-roading's crazy. I mean, how do you break down that experience, Bruce? I think it can be really dangerous. I mean, I think that, you know, when I drove, I kind of tried to leave a little bit of a cushion in case something happened. So I do think it's dangerous.

I think you have to accept that it's dangerous, and I think you have to mitigate that as best you can. I think using, you know, good safety equipment, having a sat phone with you is a good idea. I think a lot of those things you can take care of. The fact that you can fix things that if I drove the car to a four-wheel drive place with a cracked rear end, they'd want to take it apart, replace the housing,

I have to order a housing, they'd have to get the right one, and they'd have to maybe change the axles, and while we have it apart, let's put the bushings in it, and the new bearings on the ring and pinion, and let's set the ring and pinion and everything, get all back together. And it'd be a three-month process, and it'd take $3,000.

But you could be on your way for 30 bucks in less than an hour in Mexico. And I just like that idea. I think it's great. Yeah. I've spent a lot of time in my life here saying, how would I fix this if I were in Mexico? Because you know there's another way to do it. That's just going to get you down the road and it's going to actually be probably fine. Yeah.

I mean, the thing is, if you try and do it right, well, no, but if you try and do it right, I've seen when you buy the new housing, you buy the new ring and pinion, you have the new ring and say it. Somebody doesn't do something right, like they don't set the ring and pinion up just right. Like the Toyota might have done when it was brand new. You know, the guy's only done 10 of them and this time he didn't torque it enough, over torqued it, made it too tight, too loose, whatever. And you can spend all the money and still not get the job done right by trying to do it right, if you understand what I mean. So yeah, I mean, Mexico is, it's all part of the experience. You just look at it as part of the vacation, you know, standing

around watching this guy underneath the thing welding away the cigarette in one hand and a gas covered rag in his pocket and did you have a full service crew that could have fixed that had you gotten it to where they were no so that's the same way i do it i'm just going to rely on who's who's in each village if i need something yeah that has its drawbacks you know that took us out of the race i mean i'm not a 1992 yeah i'm not a racer yeah it's i'm just getting through it has its drawbacks. But, you know, you're not paying a hotel bill, airfare, you know, wages and all these other things. Second vehicle insurance, trailer. Trailer, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we always had a trailer in the Nora race. We had a trailer. Oh, sure. And we also had, we lost one trailer in Mexico because of broken half because of the roads and then had to drive the car.

But generally, we had a trailer in the Lock Carrara, too. Yeah, of course. Yeah, I really would love to, to have a exhibition class vehicle with a modern fuel-injected V8 under the hood, 50s vehicle, air conditioning, music, everything. Never have to worry about if I'm going to, you know, beat this person or beat that person or where I am in the race, because when you're an exhibition category in the La Carrera, you're on the stage every day. They're only two or three people. They bring you up and they give you an award every day.

And I think it would be a lot of fun to actually drive a vehicle from here all the way down to Chiapas and back, but not a period correct racing vehicle. You can do it in a 356 pretty easy. If you had room to put it, put something in it. Yeah, but I mean, they carry enough, and a big person can sit them, they're comfortable, they don't have a radiator or water pump or anything like that to fail. There's not many moving parts. We found that five of the six times that I ran the long race was in a 356 portion.

The Hudson was, there was nothing left to the Hudson to do it again. But that was a really good vehicle. I mean, we finished, I think overall, usually there was about 130 entrance. And I think we got six, seventh, ninth, and twelfth. It's amazing. When Spencer and I did it, we broke a rocker arm on the second day. And so we ended up like 42nd overall. But we won four of the days during that time.

And that's a two-liter? Yeah, they're built a Volkswagen car. Yeah, they built a Volkswagen motor. Yeah, type 4 or whatever it is. You build a hot rod motor with fairly low compression to deal with a Mexican fuel. With the gas. Hey, Bruce, you've been super generous. Thanks for making some time for slow ball off.

Sure, that was fun. Rol reliving all of the Mexican adventures. Well, I really appreciate it. If folks want to see what you're doing here at Fantasy Junction, what's the best place? You're there, Fantasyjunction.com. Yeah, www. Fantasyjunction.com. That gives you the website, and you can see what we've sold, what we have for sale,

you know where we are and you can click over to your social media the instagram the facebook the whatever's i guess that's not my deal well you've run the business for a long time and now it's spencers and uh you've got a full showroom and man it looks like you look tan and rested you're yeah yeah it's good i mean when when you do what you want to do you never work a day in your life well that's what i that's what i'm practicing right now so thanks for spending a day you're well i'm not working you're welcome you're welcome Well, I hope you car nerds like that, and I hope you're non-car nerds, got to stick it out. To the end, Bruce is such a lovely, soft-spoken human being.

I don't know what he's like when he gets the visor down with a helmet on, fully strapped into a race car, but he has some lovely stories and is a beautiful human being. And anytime I'm over in Emoryville, I like to check out his showroom, and there's just a fabulous taco truck right around the corner as well. Those folks from Fresneo and Zacatecas with a very, very good Alpa store tacos. But I digress. If you like what I'm doing, well, hey, share the show. Hit that five star on Apple.

Leave a couple of nice words about why you listen week after week. And I really appreciate you doing that. And you can do that on Spotify now too. And I would appreciate it if you did it over there. It really does help people find the show. It really does. And also, every episode is over there at slowbaha.com, and that's where you can find my sponsors like Baja Bound. And if you're heading off to Mexico, you can click right through my site.

You can get your Baja insurance, your Mexico driving insurance, whether you're going to Baja or whether you're going to mainland Mexico. You can get that insurance right through my site, and this is what's called affiliate marketing. You get the same great price, you get the same service, and they drop a taco in my tank, which is really cool. and helps me bring you this show week after week after week. So if you're going to Mexico, Baja Bound through my site on the sponsor page, and while you're over there at slowbaha.com, get yourself some merch. Get yourself some merch. I've got modern trucker hats in stock.

Sorry, the classic trucker is sold out. The pink trucker is sold out. The snapback is sold out. I've got dad hats and I've got the modern trucker in all three flavors. although I think there's only one or two left on the gray one. So get them all you can. And t-shirts, sweatshirts, all that. They're still in stock.

Get them all you can. Got a Baja trip coming up. You know, I'm going to be broke. I'm not going to be able to have shirts and hats made for a long time, folks. So if you're eye in one, you better get it while you can. I got a lot of stickers, though. There's no chance of running out of those. So again, hey, thanks for listening.

And in the words of Mary McGee's paraphrasing, I'm paraphrasing here, folks. I'm paraphrasing Mary McGee's pal, Steve McQueen. Baja is life. Everything that happened before or after is just waiting.