The Iced Coffee Hour - Tavarish Reveals The Truth About His Income, Divorce, and $2,000,000 McLaren P1 Rebuild

Episode Date: September 2, 2024

NetSuite: Take advantage of NetSuite’s Flexible Financing Program: https://www.netsuite.com/ICED TubeMagic: Try Out TubeMagic For Free 👉 https://tubemagic.com/free-trial Range Rover Sport: Start designing your Range Rover Sport today at https://www.LandRoverUSA.com Follow and subscribe to  @tavarish  Add us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ24VfikOriqSdKtomh0w For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: [e-mail] For Podcast Inquiries, please DM @icedcoffeehour on Instagram! Timecodes 00:00 - Introduction 00:01:29 - What is the value of your car collection? 00:02:04 - Why Tavarish first got interested in cars 00:02:40 - Growing up in Russia and how he got his channel name 00:04:32 - Where does a man's obsession with cars come from? 00:06:15 - Why a nice car WON'T help you get the ladies 00:08:14 - When did he start fixing cars? 00:12:02 - Sponsor - Netsuite 00:13:12 - How did he get his start on YouTube? 00:14:26 - What was your first viral video? 00:15:37 - How did you afford an Aston Martin? 00:19:20 - When he started making money on YouTube 00:22:24 - Why he takes on such complex projects 00:25:50 - The "Pimp My Ride" van 00:29:41 - How donating cars to Petersen Museum works 00:31:51 - The most difficult repair process he has gone through 00:34:12 - Sponsor - Tube Magic 00:35:10 - The McLaren P1 00:40:49 - Most surprising thing about working on the P1 00:43:26 - When will the McLaren P1 be done? 00:46:47 - Do you worry about what comes next when you finish the P1? 00:47:39 - Jay Leno did THIS to Tavarish's McLaren 00:49:13 - You lend your cars out to your employees? 00:51:43 - Tavarish HATES replica cars 00:55:50 - Tavarish getting through a dark period in his life 01:10:36 - Sponsor - Range Rover 01:12:03 - What is your monthly overhead? 01:17:56 - Logistics of owning so many cars 01:19:18 - What car has he lost the most amount of money on? 01:20:41 - The car he would never own 01:22:36 - What are the red flags when purchasing a flipped car? 01:24:12 - Thoughts on the current used car market 01:26:45 - What's the best car to own? 01:28:51 - Why are hypercars brands releasing SUVs? 01:30:18 - Why Tesla is HATED by car fanatics 01:32:49 - Biggest car owner stereotypes that are true 01:34:52 - Most UNDERRATED and OVERRATED cars 01:37:55 - Thoughts on WhistlinDiesel 01:50:25 - What's his BIGGEST insecurity? 01:52:25 - Why he has ZERO investments *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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How's it going, guys? My name is DeVarish, and I have a proud. What started your obsession with cars? Honestly, I was just like a kid that loved to take stuff apart, put them back together. Welcome to another grand day. I just saw a land on. That was the first time I thought, okay, well, maybe I can replicate this. You don't have to go more extreme.

You just have to have a compelling story. Every red flag is a green flag for me. I looked at this P1 that was underwater, and I was like, we should do this. I do have something on the horizon that I think you guys are going to love and my most ambitious project ever. And I think I needed just to realign myself a little bit with that. Freddie, thank you so much for coming on the iced coffee hour. Oh, it's awesome. I've watched you guys for a very, very long time.

That is so cool. And thank you for showing us to your warehouse. So you've shown us over 30 cars that you own. I've been a huge fan of this P1 series. that you have going on? Well, right now it's like a P, like, 0.5 or something. Hopefully in the next month or so, we'll have an engine and a drive train

and hopefully we'll have it running. Yeah. What would you see the value of this collection is? Worthless. I honestly don't know. I think the VinWiki guys have put like a number on it. I think it was somewhere like 2 million or more than that. It's probably more than that

Because the P1 alone is, I mean, I paid $575 for it, but now, now it's, now it's famous, you know? So now it's probably worth $5.76. So that's what we call profit. Good ROI on that. It's really good ROI. It's been $5,000, and now you make $1,000. That's good. What started your obsession with cars?

Honestly, I was just like a kid that loved to take stuff apart, put them back together. I liked Legos as a kid. And I like cars, trains, planes, just anything that just moved. I love the engineering of it. I love the art about it when I became 18. I got a Nissan Maxima, which was just the fastest car on the planet because I had a V6 and 190 horsepower. Then I did a bunch of stuff to that. Learned a lot of stuff along the way.

You know, did a manual conversion, did an engine swap. It just kind of led from there. And Tavarish is not your born name. It's not your birth name. Where's that come from? And you have an interesting story of where you were born. Tavarish is a Russian word, and it means comrade or friend. And I came up with it when I was 12, and I couldn't think of anything more clever.

So I was originally born in Russia, essentially the Soviet Union. So I was born in 87. And I came over to the States in 1990 when everything started falling apart. Russian is my first language. It was just a part of my identity. And Tavarish was just a thing that I felt. I could carry as a moniker, but it's phonetically spelled incorrectly from what it would be like in Russian. So in Russian it would be T-O-V-A-R-I-S-C-H if you were to spell it phonetically.

But I wanted to put a little bit of a spin on it, sort of, you know, like an Americanized spin on it. How were they able to go from Russia to living in the United States? Was that a difficult process? No. So we, I believe, were refugees because we, we. when the Soviet Union came down, we could, we could apply for, you know, refugee status. We landed here and we lived in New Jersey. And my mom was, she became like a bank teller. And then my, my dad got any job that he could, which included like cleaning toilets and, you know,

basically making ends meet. So we essentially lived in a housing development, which I've said was like projects before. It's, let's say it's project adjacent. It was very, near as makes no different. the projects, and we lived there with my aunt and uncle, and we lived in a small room in their, in their apartment until we can get our own apartment, which wasn't really much better, like down the street. And then from there, my parents just worked and worked and worked and worked, and then they could afford their own house, which is where they live today. Where do you think men's obsession, generally speaking, comes from with cars? That's a good question. Are we on the philosophy coffee hour? I just, I just don't know, because I

feel like guys generally speaking aren't super aesthetics oriented. You know what I mean? But cars for a lot of guys, like they appreciate the beauty of it. They also like the mechanics and, you know, the engine and stuff like that. Where's that come from? Okay. So there are several things at play here. Number one, guys are absolutely about aesthetics because you have guys who are into watches and you guys are into clothes and all this other stuff. And because you want to attract a mate, you know, you want to attract people who are like-minded. You want to involve yourself into a club or show a certain status. I think cars do all of that in a very quick way. So if I drive up in a Honda Civic, that says one thing about me, but if I drive up in, let's say, a BMW M3, that says something else, you know?

And what that means to another person, that's up to them. But it definitely has a different statement. So you have socioeconomic status. You have style. You know, the car can be like, an interesting color, so that says something about you. So it's a bit like peacocking for for guys. Like, so a lot of guys have that. But then there's the, uh, the engineering aspect of it where you just appreciate a piece of engineering as art. You can look at a engine. You can be like, oh, well, that has independent throttle bodies and it has this much power to wait and blah, blah, blah. And this is really, really cool. And I love the way it sounds and, you know, it vibrates under your foot. And, you know, you can appreciate that. But most people, like, if you just

dumb it down. Most people, men and women, it's just about status. As far as the peacocking goes, a lot of people are under the impression that you get a car like a charger, like an American muscle, and you're attracting all of the attention from other guys. When you were single, would you say that driving around in a nicer car definitely helped you out a little bit in the dating marketplace? No. No, absolutely. Absolutely not. If you buy a car and you want to get women, you need to reevaluate your life choices because cars only attract dudes.

If you're into dudes, though, like, oh, my God. That is like a gold mine for dudes. Yeah. No wonder Graham has the 4GT. Exactly, exactly. No, listen, every car here attracts exactly zero women. I mean, you could get them into these cars and they'll have a good time, sure,

and maybe like pick them up on a date. When it's time to scale your business, it's time for Shopify. Get everything you need to grow the way you want. Like all the way. Stack more sales with the best converting checkout on the planet. Track your cha-chings from every channel, right in one spot, and turn real-time reporting into big-time opportunities. Take your business to a whole new level.

Switch to Shopify. Start your free trial today. And it'll be a nice date. but no woman has ever come up to me and said, oh my God, who's driving that car? It's always some dude who's like, oh, dude, how fast have you gone? How much does it cost and blah, blah, blah, and like more than I can afford, pal.

So that sort of thing is just, it's what people think will get you a date and laid, but it won't actually. I read an article that went over the most attractive cars for men to drive to attract women. And at the top of the list, I think was Porsche, just because it has that kind of status and classiness to it. But I was surprised to see a mini-Cooper was on there. And the Volkswagen, Beetle, believe it or not. Beetle?

Yes. Yes. Why? Because I think a lot of women want to drive that car like the car so that if they see a guy driving that car, that's the car that they themselves want. Same with a mini-cooper. Like a convertible mini-cooper would be it. The Porsches are also like very feminine-looking cars. So I think maybe that says something about the men, you know?

maybe just get in touch with your feminine side. Huh. Maybe it's not all about holding frame. Sometimes it's about what's in here, you know? When did you start fixing up cars? When they started breaking. This is my car trying to start. So honestly, when I had my Nissan Maxima, I wanted to modify it because I didn't have a lot of money.

And I wanted a nice car because I thought nice cars got you girls. And now I know that that's not true, but oh well. So I... Totally late now. Yeah, I was like, whoops, I'm too far into this. I thought, you know, I could get like a bigger stereo. So I went on Craigslist and found the cheapest, you know, two 12-inch Sony explode subwoofers that I could fit in my trunk and then, you know,

wired them up. And then I realized, hey, I don't want an automatic anymore. I want a manual. So I learned how to convert my car into a manual. And then I wanted a little bit more power. So I figured, hey, why don't I do an engine swap? So I swapped the engine with something a little bit bigger. And then from there, just kind of snowballed into, well, what other cars can I go into that are cheap? I can get them cheap and then maybe modify them a little bit and then enjoy them. At the time, I couldn't keep them. So I would just like sell them and try to do like a profit thing, like the show Wheeler Dealers. But I think I wasn't a good salesperson at all. So I would never really make any money doing it. And the price for all this awesome performance value is $1,000. So I ended up just breaking even, but I had a cool story.

So then basically what I took from that is I took the experiences that I had from modifying, fixing, and restoring these cars. And then I made that into a career because that got me into automotive journalism later. Where was the money coming from? This is me just saving up. This is, I mean, these cars were cheap. I used to get cars for like $500. So, yeah, I was, this is not a lot of money. How long does it take to learn how to repair a car?

I've always wondered because I, I was on a bit of a mission for a while to buy like an old kind of fun, sporty car, so I bought a Mazda Miata. Yeah, my Miatta's always the answer. It came with so many problems. And I started learning like the basics, like spark plugs and random stuff like that. But if the average person wants to know kind of the basics of, fixing up a car and maybe if it's not running, they can check a few things that do 85% of the solution.

How long would you say it takes to learn the basics? Learning the basics doesn't take long at all. I mean, anybody that has some sort of mechanical knowledge, like if you're coming in it from zero, maybe a few weeks. I'm coming in from zero. Yeah, Graham had a hard time replacing the wiper fluid. Oh, yeah. When we were together.

Yeah. Oh, that was tough. I went on, thankfully, it's all on YouTube, but I typed in the car. I think it was the Volvo at the time, 2006 Volvo. And I found somebody who like opened up the hood. It was one of those. And it was just some dude who's like, hey guys, Chris Fix here.

I'll say I'd replace this. And it was like a two minute video and got right to the point and just I gave it a like, did my part. And it was easy. But yeah, I'm not mechanically inclined at all. You know, my job is not for everybody to be mechanically inclined because I don't think that would be realistic. I think my job is just to entertain people and, and, and, you know, my job is just to entertain people and, and show them that there are insurmountable problems, like, from the outset, and then you can, you know, kind of like eating an elephant, just take it one bite at a time. So whether it's, you know,

putting fluid in a Volvo or, like, rebuilding a million-dollar hypercar, you can do it. You just have to figure out what the problems are and then solve them one by one. But you know what? Before we go into that, we got to ask ourselves, what does the future hold for business? Because if you ask nine different experts, you're going to get 10 different answers. Are it's going up? Are they going down? going to see a bear market, a bull market, anything in between, be really helpful if someone invented a crystal ball. Well, I guess until that happens, over 38,000 companies have already future proofed their business with her sponsor, NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP that brings accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one fluid platform. And guys, to have one whole

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Thank you so much, NetSuite for sponsoring today's episode. And now let's get back to the podcast. So how did you start your channel and start getting on this path of becoming Tavarish? So I became an automotive journalist. I wrote with a company called Jolopnik. And Jolopnik, for those people I don't know, is a, it's a car blog. I mean, it was one of the biggest car blogs on Earth. Now I think it's kind of a shell of its former self.

But we had a lot of people, we had Tyler Hoover, we had Doug Demer. So a lot of people that are prominent in the automotive space now started in Jalapnik. That gave me a really big jumping off point because not only did they pay me to, I mean, I wasn't paid a lot, but they paid me something to learn how audiences work and like big audiences. You know, I remember having an article do 100,000 views, and I'm like, oh my God. and you have comments there, so you have, like, instant feedback to what people actually think. And you can interact with people. And it was such a big, you know, like, eureka moment of like, okay, now I can command an audience. And then, you know, I want to see how people can actually digest my content without me having to guess.

What was the first video that you made on YouTube that really started taking off? Well, the first YouTube video was of the Aston Martin that I had. Actually, it's sitting right above you right there. And it was the Aston Martin that I bought from Doug DeMiro. And the video I had was the things in this Ashton Martin that weren't made by Aston Martin. So I had like the key fob that was like a leather wrap key fob. But I cut out the key fob and like the back of the key fob. And then you lift up the flap, it says Volvo.

And like they, it's just such a thinly veiled thing. Like they just put a piece of leather over it just so it doesn't say Volvo. But then it's like a bunch of other stuff in the car. It's like a part spin car. So you have parts from Jaguar Ford. and, you know, the stock is like from a Ford Taurus. It costs $20. You know, the mirrors are like from a Volvo S-60, you know, things like that.

And I think that video got like a million views. And I'm like, oh, my God, this was crazy. But that was the first time I thought, okay, well, maybe there's something in it for me that I can, you know, because I can replicate this. Because this was all my car, my take and my idea for, you know, making a video. So I'm like, maybe I have more ideas that can actually, you know, make sense like this. How did you afford an Aston Martin from Doug DeMiro? So that car was $36,000. And I saved up.

I have actually went to my parents' place. I was there yesterday in New Jersey. And in my room, my childhood room, was a board. On one side of it, it says, like, SEO strategy or whatever. So I was trying to do some, like, website SEO. stuff for a company that I was that I was working with. And then in one corner, it says Vantage by 2014. And I did that in 2010. And that was my goal for four years. And I was like, I don't care what I'm doing. I live with my parents, but I want an Aston Martin V8 Vantage in four years.

And I think I bought that in like 2015 or 2016. So I was like one or two years late, but whatever. So I bought that and I remember Doug buying that car and he bought it for like $40 something thousand dollars and it was his Doug car. And every Doug car that he had, I knew that in a year he would sell because he was like, okay, I'm going to tell you how much depreciated, how much money I lost. And I told him, you're going to be able to, you know, depreciate this and do whatever you need to do. I want to be the one that buys it off of you in a year.

And he says, okay, I had no idea how much I was, you know, how I was going to make that kind of money because I was making like no money. I was like, you know, I was doing automotive journalism. So you're making, you know, I was making $50 an article. But I, I, I scrimped and saved, and I got all the money together. And I, uh, I went to Philadelphia and I bought that car. So, I mean, that was one of the things that, like, I was laser focused on and I got it done. And it was like a very real, um, testament to like, if I work really hard, then maybe my dreams can control.

Did you buy it cash? Did you get a loan on that? Gosh. The only loan I've ever taken out on a car is for that P1. Wow. I've never had a loan on any other car. Was it hard to get a loan on a completely destroyed vehicle? No.

What rate did they give you? We could talk about rates. I don't want to say the rate. Maybe we should save the P1 talk. Yeah, yeah, we could save the P1 talk. But also the financial talk for the finance guy here. If I start talking rates, you're going to, your brain's going to explode. We'll talk about it a little later.

Sure. Keep people watching for the retention. Sure. As soon as you hit the like button and subscribe, by the way, we flew all the way out here to Florida. These episodes take a lot of time. We're just in Toronto. We mean the world to us. Just subscribe.

It's totally free. And check out our sponsors. They make it possible. They make it possible. So, okay, for this Aston Martin, you made that video. It got a million or so views. Yeah. That probably made you a few thousand bucks in AdSense then.

Oh, no. No, because I had no idea what a good AdSense strategy was. You weren't putting mid-rules or anything in? I had no idea what any of that was. So I think I was just letting YouTube do the thing. I think maybe I made like two or $300 or something like that. And then when that video did a million views, did you realize now you could have a career doing YouTube videos,

buying cars like this? I don't think, you know, it was like the thing that told me I can do this for a living. I always knew that I wanted to do something like this for work because I wanted into this industry. I wanted into this world. That's why I wanted to be an automotive journalist. And, you know, I wanted to go all around the world and see these cars that, you know, nobody ever sees. How do you get in front of like Christian von Koenigzegg and see his new cars?

Like, I don't know, but I know these people do. So why don't I talk to them and ask them? I did a lot of talking to people that have been doing things longer than me and then trying to learn as much as I trying to be a sponge for what they know. When would you say the money started coming in then? Because all these cars, I imagine it's not, you know, cheap to. to have. No, it's actually very incredibly expensive. So the money started coming in once I got my Lamborghini, which is, that sounds, you know, like there should be one before the other. Once I got my Lamborghini, that's when the, that sounds like a small loan of a million dollars. No, no, so I actually

had to sell my Aston Martin. I sold it for exactly what I bought it for, $36,000 to my friend Gregson at Shifting Lanes. And, because I had a little bit of money saved up. I put that money and my saved up money and bought a $64,000 Lamborghini Gallardo Spider. And once I started making videos on that, that was the first exotic car rebuild because it was a fire damage that wasn't running, and I got it running, like,

this was before I had a shop or anything like that. I did it all in my two-car garage about 10 minutes from here. And then people started watching, and my channel exploded. Like, it went from 150,000 subscribers to like 500,000 in like three months. And I know a lot of people were taking note of that. So I think that year and the year,

after a lot of other YouTubers were like, oh, I got this car from Copart, and I got this, and I got this. And like, it's all, all these exotic car rebuilds. And now all you see are people trying to one up each other and getting like the next crazy, crazy build. And like, this car hit a house and exploded. And, you know, it's on fire for 72 years. And, and then, you know, they try to rebuild stuff like that. I don't want to say I started it, but it was definitely one of the projects that that made that sort of more of a household name. Yeah. How did you afford a Lamborghini, though? I mean, 64 grand. Yeah, well, just with, I had some money saved up. Okay. And then, and then just with the 36 grand.

So that's, again, I don't spend any money on myself. I wear the same clothes that I always wear. I get cheap t-shirts. Don't really go. I mean, the only thing I spend money on now is cars and vacations. Back then, I couldn't afford vacations. And so it's like I spent all my money on cars. So if I would have went broke doing the car thing, then, you know, it's just a business thing anyway.

So I want to see, you know, worst case scenario, if I bought this car and it just didn't, like, I couldn't get it started or whatever, I can still make some money back selling it for parts. I can at least get what I've got out of it. Or if I, you know, lost $5,000 or $10,000, that's fine for the gamble. Yeah. So you were pretty calculated in terms of your purchase. Very slightly calculated. It's more of a like, I have a brain and I know how my brain works and I will fixate on something until I get something to work. And worse, and again, just worst case scenario, if I had to sell this car for parts, I could do it and make my money back. It wouldn't be great. It would be, you know, me having to tuck my tail between my legs, but I could do it and it's fine. There's a bet on yourself, essentially. Yes. Yeah. And where did the confidence come to allow you, where you thought I can buy a $62 or $64,000, burn down Lamborghini and make it run again?

Was that just after like years of working on cars? I was excited to see a problem that I hadn't seen before. I really like solving problems. I like solving problems that nobody has solved before because it allows me to be creative in solving those problems. That's one of the reasons why, you know, I got the P1. I got all these other cars because each one presents very specific, very novel problems. And that really excites me. It's not, it's not that like, oh, I really love Lamborghini.

It's like, I do. I like Lamborghinis. They're cool, you know, like, but you know what's better? Knowledge. So, yeah, there you go. Yeah, I think I found your channel. It was initially, I don't know what came first. I remember seeing the cheapest S class.

Yes. And you bought that for like, how much, like, three grand. Yeah, it was like three grand or something. And how much was that new? New? They were like 80 grand. And that was back in 2000. So, yeah, and then I bought it for three.

So it's like, I love depreciated cars. How does an $80,000 car get sold for $3,000? Because a lot of things happen. So that Mercedes, which is the W-220, is a 2000. It had so many electrical gremlins. Just for instance, the door locks were air power. So, yeah, like, so, so it doesn't make the clunk clunk, clunk, you know, like most normal cars make. So the S class, they wanted it to be more like, you know, so that was all air powered.

So the lumbar support was air powered. The headrests that come up, they were air powered. And all that stuff would always go wrong. So I bought this car and, of course, like nothing worked. But I figured that I could learn a little bit about how this car worked because I wanted a nice car. I didn't have a lot of money. So I bought an electronic ignition system with a key. Basically, it's just where you put the key.

It's like a little RFID key. And I knew that you had to pair that with the ECU and the shifter. So I ended up buying this from like a junkyard for like $300. I went out, I was living in New Jersey at the time. And I went out to like Clifton, New Jersey, which is like 45 minutes away from where we were, you know, living. and end up buying this, installing it in a weekend, and then I had a running car. So, like, I buy this car just kind of sight and scene for three grand. I had a toad, and then, you know, then I ended up getting a running car.

And I'm like, and this car had 90,000 miles on it. Like, other than this electrical issue, it was a totally fine running car. The engines are bulletproof. The transmissions are bulletproof. They're very, they're not quick, but they're not slow. It gets decent miles to the gallon. You can have five people in it very comfortably. The AC was great.

Like, it's a really, really cool car. So how much was that car worth when you were done fixing it up? So the S-class was probably worth, I don't. They weren't worth much. Really? I think I ended up selling it for maybe $10,000 or something. But I had done a lot of stuff to it. Like, I gave it an AMG body kit and some AMG wheels.

But it was just still the same car. So, yeah, I think around 10. is where I sold it. I think where I started really following your channel was when you bought the Pimp My Ride van. Yeah. That was an interesting one. How do you find that car to begin with?

It's such like a well-known kind of famous car selling for so cheap. It was, I believe you bought it for $800. So it's, I don't know, maybe it's kind of like the supermodel that's in a bar. You assume everybody's hitting on her, but nobody's hitting on her because everybody else thinks that, yeah. Even though it's not really a supermodel in a bar, it was a, old car in a junkyard. So you have this, this Pimp My Ride minivan that's

like pink and purple and whatever. And I saw this on a Craigslist ad. And it was up in Boston or Rhode Island or something like that. It was up for sale for $850. And this thing needed all the work in the world. But it said, this was on Pimp My Ride.

And I mean, I verified it. It's like that was the van. And I gave him a call and I said, hey, is this still available? They said, yeah, I can wire you money right now and I'll have a car, I have a truck come pick it up. If I just lost my money, that would have been fine, like, for the, for the story. If they would have just, like, taken my $850 bucks, I would have been okay with that, like, as just a transaction, just to make sure that I had that car, because when it came here, it was very clear that, like,

everything needed refurbishment, and that means that, you know, we could solve all these really, you know, kind of funky issues. So, over the the course of like a week or two, we got everything working back in that car. It had a disco floor, a nine screens, had three screens that went kind of like popped down from the ceiling. It had a bunch of subwifers in the back, had a jewelry making station, and the seats were made of denim. It had like a footrest that was also a giant monitor, but they didn't have like LCD screens. They had like plasma screens that were super heavy. So this thing needed like a big like actuator to move it. You know, that series on my channel did something like 22, 23 million views. So it was like number one on

trending and it was doing something like 400,000 views an hour. Yeah, it was great. I never ever thought. And it was like an $850 van. Best ROI car right there? Yeah, I'd say so. Yeah, yeah. I think that car, that van made me like 250 grand, like off those videos. It's half of a P1. Oh, yeah. Yeah, well, half of that P1. Yeah, yeah. Half of a salvage P1.

Yeah. Or a really, really nice house. Yeah. How much do you think they spent on Pimp My Ride to do that car back in the day? They did those cars in like a month or two. I would wager they probably put in 10 grand of, like, work. And they got all the stuff for free anyway. But labor-wise, I'd say probably like maybe 10 grand.

They got some crappy paint on there. The actual work that they did, credit where credit is due, was good. They wired everything properly. They did things where, you know, they had, like, if they had to split a signal, they would give it power. So it wouldn't degrade the signal because it was all RCA's back then. So, yeah, it was actually, you know, well-wired, but it just didn't stand the test of time. Yeah. Did you end up selling that?

No. So I ended up giving it to a museum as tax write-off. So, but the museum, I might be getting it back. I talked to the museum and we might be doing something with them. So it's a Peterson Automotive Museum in L.A. Are you serious? Yeah, it's over there now, but I might be getting it back as a package deal with something else that we might be working on. Wow. So yeah. So how does it work if you donate a car to the Peterson museum. Basically, they give you a gift of deed, or deed of gift or something like that. And you sign over the car and everything to them. Since they're a nonprofit organization, you can, you know, you can essentially just write it off like you were to give it to cars for kids or something. So, you know, I had an appraisal of this as a certain amount, like say, 100 grand or whatever.

So, like, you can write that, essentially write that off. Yeah. Interesting. How do they value a car They, it's like, pimp my ride. So they, they didn't do the appraisal. So I did the, I, I, I had somebody else do an appraisal. So you need, like, a third party to do an appraisal. But, uh, priceless. Yeah, it's priceless. But you can, it's, yeah, I mean, I could have said three million dollars.

Why not? You know, don't, just don't pay taxes. Yeah. I think, like, realistically with the show and with the, uh, the amount of YouTube views and all that stuff and the fact that we, you know, drove across country and we, it's been on other channels and whatever. And, like, you can make the case that this is worth. this amount of money just in terms of like sentimental value, you know? I agree with that.

What has been the most pain in the butt, random thing that's come up while you're fixing a car? I remember for my Mazda Miata, we had this one thing where we ran, we put a whole new sound system in the car, super nice. We spent half the value of the car just on the sound system alone. Right. And remember, we wired the whole thing. We took days and days on this whole thing. I had no idea what I was doing, so it took a long time and I had help of my roommate, which is very nice. But I remember, we wired everything. It was good. We tried to listen to the system and it wasn't working.

Five hours later, we learned because it's an SE, a 2000SE. That one has a hidden amp that's under the center console way down there. Yeah. And all of the wires were being routed through that. Yeah. And that made it so everything else. But no one's working on a 2000 SE. It's just like the normal Miata.

Yes. So no one was talking about it. And then finally after going deep dives on the forums, you learn there's a hidden amplifier that basically made all of our wiring useless, unless if we completely bypassed that amp. So what has been like some random thing that just gave you a headache for a long time? So the thing that happens when you deal with cars like this is that there's not really any forums that you can go to that have any solutions for you. So let's say if you're working on a P1, we didn't know how to take the clamshell off. And it's not like there's, there's, you know,

documentation on how to do that. So we're trying to find all these bolts. And all these bolts, they're well hidden because you don't want to see bolts on a car that's, you know, a million and half dollars. So we're like prying on this thing and we're just like saying like, all right, well, it seems like it's stuck here and we're like looking underneath the car. And it's always like one like stupid eight millimeter bolt. And I remember on this car when I was taking the dash apart. And the dash is this giant carbon piece. And I, like on video, you see me just, like, wrenching this thing. I'm trying to, I'm like, it's stuck on something.

I think it's the steering column, but I took the bolt out and it should be good to go. And it was like one tiny eight millimeter bolt that I forgot. And I went underneath, I go, oh, okay, click, click, click, and then it just comes right out. I'm like, oh my God. Oh, my. It's, it just, it's one of those like, well, there's your problem. But, like, you, I swear I looked under 10 times to look at this. And it was just like staring me in the face.

And I'm like, oh, that would explain it. So there's, there's plenty of those examples everywhere in cars. And, like, I don't know, when I was working on a Bentley Continental GT, I bought one of those cars for like 11 grand because it needed everything, needed basically an engine out. And those cars, you need, there's these vacuum hoses that are on top of the engine. The only way you get to those vacuum hoses, and they do crack, that's why you need to get to them. The only way to get to them is to take out the entire engine. And that is essentially like a freaking Bugatti Varon, where, you know, you have 12 cylinders and two turbos, and it's all-wheel drive, and it's a giant power unit they have to bring down, and everything has to be disconnected. and you have to take down the steering and the suspension and all that stuff,

and just to get to these little, like, 70-cent hoses. But you know what? Before we go on to that, not many people know that I have multiple YouTube channels. Like, I got the Graham-Steffin main channel, Graham-Steffin Show, Graham-Steffin After Hours, and even Jack has his own channel. You really got to post there more often, though. You know what? Maybe I will, Graham, because today's sponsored Tube Magic makes growing or just creating a channel easier than ever using the power of AI.

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Like you didn't know it would become as popular as it did. I mean, I started this project by seeing this car die like everybody else did on social media. So on Instagram and TikTok, you saw this car during. Hurricane Ian floating down the street because its owner looked at it, you know, was watching it from his door and, you know, float out of the garage and down the street into a tree and all that stuff. And eventually it got lodged on what some people say it's a toilet. I don't think it's a toilet. I think it's probably an outboard motor or something. And then for the next three months, nobody really heard anything about it. But then I saw that it went up for sale on Copart. And Copart. is this, you know, site where you can buy salvage cars and whatever. And I didn't want to buy it. I really didn't want to buy it because I said, well, this is a million dollar hypercar. It's hybrid. So it has an electric battery and it was all the way underwater and it's saltwater. And saltwater does

really, really bad things to everything, especially electrical. So I said this, there's nothing on this car that's like, savable. It's like you have to replace everything. The auction started and then I think they put a buy it now of the car. And there was a lot of talk about what this car would go for. And I know Houston Crosta is a friend of mine. He wanted to buy the car and I know some other like dismantlers. They wanted to buy the car just as like parts or, you know, artwork or something. And they were into it for like, if it goes for 200 grand, I'll buy it, you know, or if it goes for 250.

First, it went up for auction and it went up to $400,000 and it no sailed. So then it went up for auction a second time and it went for $398. So we knew that the market was around $300, like about $400,000 for this car. That's what people were actually willing to pay. So then they put a buy it now of $600 grand on this car. $600 grand was about half of what the car would be worth in good condition. That car in particular was sold for $2 million, $10 days before the storm hit because it was like, had 315 miles on it.

It was a really, really good spec. It was like the launch spec. It was awesome car. I saw that the buy it now went from 600 to 575. And I'm like, hey, so the universe is now talking to me.

And the universe says, you have to buy this car. So I went to one of my friends, one of my friends who has some money. And I said, hey, do you know anybody who would be willing to lend me half a million dollars,

like in the next few days? And he said, actually I do. So there is a bank that's here in central Florida. It's actually, I mean, I can give him a shout out. It's climate first bank. I told them the entire story. I didn't, I wasn't like, oh, well, I have this car, but wink, wink, you know, it does actually have a good title, but I just can't find it. Um, no, I told them, here's this car. It was underwater. Here's all the videos. This is what I do. I'd make YouTube videos. I have these exotic cars. I've done exotic cars in the past. And they were very familiar with what I did.

because sort of like friends of friends. They were like, you know, fans or whatever. And I said, here's how much I need for this car. I need $575,000. And I think I added an extra thing for like, you know, transportation or initial parts or whatever. So I think I'm into it like $600. And they wrote me a check. Oh, I mean, they sent a check over to Copart three days later.

We got everything done for the loan in three days. What's their collateral on that? Because don't you say... Boy, you're looking at it. Okay. So it's not the car itself because they're taking a loss on this, but you could basically say, hey, this doesn't work out. We got all these other cars. Yes. One good thing is I don't finance any of my cars. So all my cars are completely paid off by me. So I buy all my cars cash. So that means that I own all my cars. I have this, you know, this garage full of cars. Here's what they're worth. Here's what, you know, some comps are. And I will give you the titles to these. You can have them as liens. and that way I want to have my car. So I literally put my entire garage, put it up for this car.

What rate did you get on that loan? Not, well, we can talk about that off camera because it's more than 10 and less than 15. Okay. Yeah. We'll talk. We'll talk out there. Yeah, yeah. So here's a thing.

Financing options at this point. So the financing was not my main concern because my main concern was just getting the car. I knew I could make money off the content and I knew that I could make, you know, make the content work. If I had to pay 60 grand, what, a year or something like that on, to have a P1 and have that on my channel and have that. I think that's probably worth it just because nobody else in the world would be doing this. So I felt like that was a pretty good thing to do. I'm curious for the original owner of the P1, they bought a $2 million car and then effectively a week later, it completely flooded. Yeah. What did they do? Was there any recourse, their insurance? How much did that cover? Especially when they sold it still for effectively 600?

So next to this P1 was a brand new Rolls-Royce phantom. And they were actually in the same co-part facility. And the Rolls Royce was in really, really, really bad shape. It looked like the Hulk just smashed it. Yeah, I think he got paid out pretty well. So the car he bought after this was a Bugatti Shiron. So I think he's okay. He's okay? Yeah, he's all right. So for the P-1, what's been the most surprising aspect in terms of working on it? Just the fact that it is so everything there is bespoke, like everything in that car is carbon fiber. The wheel wells, which in most cars are plastic or whatever, carbon fiber. There is a lot of like F1 technology in there. So, you know, the wing has all these crazy hydraulics that are only for the car. They have to be, you know, calibrated specifically for this model.

And that works in conjunction with the suspension. and then everything else is bespoke. And, you know, I thought, because it's McLaren, oh, they're going to have, like, a lot of parts that can go on different McLaren's or whatever. It's actually very little of that. I've had to, like, reverse engineer a lot of the stuff that they did at the factory because I know rebuilding a P1

sounds like it's really easy. But I actually wanted to go one step further. And with this car, we're trying to make the fastest McLaren on Earth. So, you know, instead of the P1's original top speed, which is like 217 miles an hour, which was limited by tires or whatever, we're trying to go for the record McLaren, which is the McLaren speed tail, which at 250. So I want to do like, you know, 250 plus, 260, 270, something like that. How much do you think you're going to spend on this McLaren? Including the car, less than a million dollars, for sure. And what do you think it's going to be worth by the time you're done with it?

That never matters to me. I don't know. because it all depends on a few things. So the only thing that matters to people, to buyers, is like provenance. So a car could have been crashed. It could have something terrible could have happened to it. But as long as it was fixed right or it has the right provenance, it's still worth a lot of money. Like Mr. Bean's McLaren F1 got crashed twice.

Oh, yes. But it's still, you know, that car is still worth $20 something million. It's not, it's never going to be, you know, worthless hunk of crap. So I think if I rebuilt this and it was to the sort of to the standard of, you know, what a McLaren should be and it got the okay from McLaren or it got, you know, some accolades where it's like the fastest McLaren on earth or, you know, we had it out to Goodwood and it set some records or just did something notable. I think people would be like, oh my God, this is a really special car. Yeah. So, and then I don't know what the, what the value would be. I mean, you know, $2 million, $3 million. I have no idea. Or it could just be people think that it was built by some stupid YouTuber and then they don't pay any money at all. So it doesn't matter to me. Yeah. When you think it's going to be done? Because you did a podcast a few months ago where you said two to three months. Yeah. So two to three months. Yeah. I didn't say when those two to three months were starting. So there you go. That's a good point. Yeah. There you go. No, I think I'm all. very optimistic, very unrealistic, very unrealistic with time, like, timetables. My time management skills suck. I always want these projects to be quicker than they are, but then you get hit in

the face with reality where you're like, okay, well, just the wiring harness, which is back there, the wiring harness took $52,000 into that wiring harness in five months of work. And this is one of my friends, Adam, he runs a company called Smart EFI, and he's, done all the wiring work to this car, and we had to make a wiring harness for a P1 from scratch, and this includes custom-making a lot of stuff, because not only are we, I'm getting a little bit geeky here, but the original P-1 has eight injectors. We have 16 injectors now. We have different turbos, so everything is electronically controlled, but we have to make that integrate with all the P-1 stuff, which means that there's more fans and more hydraulics and more this and that, and the

active arrow has to work and all that stuff. So that's a big hurdle. And then you go to the bodywork. So the bodywork, I want it to be all exposed carbon fiber. But then we have to put, you know, candy over it. In order for it to be exposed carbon fiber, we have to, you know, fix the body works that's there. Then overlay carbon fiber, make it perfect. Do the same thing for the doors and make everything fit. And, you know, because we're doing a bespoke body for it. So, you know, how much does that cost? How long does that is that going to take? I don't know. How much original McLaren? is going to be left by the time you're done of it in terms of like a percentage. I mean, the tub is going to be left. The frames are original McLaren. I mean, everything's a McLaren part. But we're just like modifying it

and just kind of making it better and, you know, kind of, it's just going to be a chopped and screwed version of what the car used to be. Yeah. So if you're all in on this car, let's say a million or so bucks by the end of it, do you think that you could have started

from scratch and done it for like 800 They just built your own McLaren? Maybe, but I mean, there's no way I can get a tub of a P1. You know, like, there's a certain thing. For me, it's all about the story. And the story is that this car died famously. Like, everyone saw this car die, and everyone is going to be rooting for either my failure or my success. Nobody's going to be like, oh, I don't really care.

They're going to be like, oh, my God, that seems like, it's, it's like it's impossible. How's this guy going to do it? Or this guy's never going to do it. And I want to see him fail. You know, so I'd rather, you know, that be the story of the car versus me just going, I want to make a car from scratch. Let's see if I can do it. And then I just have $800,000. And I'm rich and I want to build a car. So here you go. Like I don't want that. I want to be like the guy that's that buys his car that's way above his pay grade. And he puts everything on the line literally that he's built over the years to do it. So that's that's sort of where I'm at.

Now on YouTube, there is this essence that you have to keep one-oping yourself. You have to keep going more and more extreme because your audience is now going to set the bar at like a McLaren P1. Right. Do you worry what's going to happen when you're done with this car and how you move on from that to something that your audience wants to see or that's even better? No, because you don't have to go more extreme. You just have to have a compelling story. And it's all about the story. It could be this car.

It could be something notable. I mean, the Pimp My Ride Van did better than the P1 ever did. So, you know, I can't pull 10 million views of video on a P1, but I can with a minivan. If I find a car, it has to have a really interesting storyline. It has to have something that goes, all right, well, that is a project that will never get done in my eyes. But I want to see you solve all these problems to make the impossible possible. Does it ever worry you driving such an expensive car? I mean, you have quite a few here that are worth money.

Mm-hmm. How do you get over that fear? Do you? Um, I mean, there's always a fear, but at a certain point, it just becomes a car. You know, it's like, you know, you fart in the seats, you have some chicken McNuggets and like that, that's it. It just becomes a car. Like, I, I remember, I'm going to, I'm going to name drop.

So when I went to Jay Leno's garage, I took my McLaren 675 LT, and it was really, really cool. I mean, Jay Leno's driving my car that I built, and it was awesome. And then we'd go into this little parking lot and he scrapes the bumper. And first of all, I'm okay with that because that's what a bumper is for. But he scrapes the bumper and I'm like, okay, well, those are my Jay Leno scrapes. You know, like, it's not, you know, it's a- What did he say would he? Hmm? Did he say anything when he scraped the bumper?

No, but I also, I also didn't say anything. Okay. So I'm like, whatever. It's because it doesn't matter to me. And, you know, I, I, a car is meant to be driven. if one of my guys here, if we're moving cars or like they take the car,

like, because I let people borrow cars all the time. So if they, if they borrow a car to take their wife out on a date and then, I don't know, they get a scratch on it or something. Like,

okay. Like, it's, it's not a big, like, if they were being malicious, and like, I saw them doing donuts

and whatever. Yeah. And like, they didn't care. And they're like smashed up the door. Like, yeah, then I'll get mad.

But if it's like, it's like a, you know, a mistake. steak and like nobody cares like it's it's fine it happens to everybody i'm not worried about it i would never get mad about that you lend your cars out to your employees to take their wives on dates well they're not they're not my employees they're i just friends yeah yeah my my friends so um if somebody goes hey i want to you know take the the the asterna like this is not like if

you're a subscriber don't like come come please uh no but just like uh you know my good friends and i know that they're gonna they're gonna they're gonna treat the car right uh yeah yeah Rex is looking at me over here like yeah um yeah Rex asked me like every once in while i was like hey can I take the GT3 out and you go ahead, buddy. Huh. I would. Hold on. What a good friend you are.

Because I've been saying that Graham should let me borrow his lotus. I was saying he should let me borrow his lotus if I ever were to go on a date. Yeah. And he says, no. I'm always worried about insurance. The last thing I want is for there to be an incident to file a claim with the insurance company and for them to say, sorry. You can take my Miata if you want.

No, but. So I could take the GT. But the issue is less of that of, let's say someone hits you or you hit them, then they come after me. You know, that's what I'm more worried about. Now you're planting ideas and Freddie's right. Rex is getting scared over there. So here's the reality of supercar ownership. If you have a car, let's say you have a Lamborghini, Marciolago LP 640, and it's worth about half a million dollars.

You're driving down the street, and there are cars that are worth $20,000. driving down the street. One of those cars rearends you, or like, let's say, side swipes you or something. It's their fault. Their insurance, there's no way their insurance, like, is going to cover your repair. Your insurance goes after them, and their life is ruined because you decided to take a drive out. I'm more worried about that than me, like, ruining somebody else's life than somebody trying to come and be like, oh, well, I'm going to, I'm going to take that rich guy's money or whatever, because like honestly that's what insurance is for. If you have good insurance, they'll have lawyers that that will shut those people right up.

I also trust the people that I give the cars to. Like they're not, they're not complete idiots and they're not going to be doing burnouts. Or at least I hope not. But even if that's the case, that's something I would be willing to deal with. And then that's a lesson learned for me. It's easier for me to just lend a car and then have somebody have a good experience. and then that's it. And then that person now appreciates that car the way I do.

Yeah. Versus me just going, no, it's my car. It makes sense. It's partly why I've gotten really into lately replica cars. Now, I don't own a replica car, but I want to say over the last year, I've become really obsessed with the idea of getting like a replica Diablo or a replica Kuntosh. I saw a replica. It was like a P4 Ferrari, like an old one from the 50s or 60s.

It was gorgeous looking. Right. And the idea that you could own a car that could be worth over a million dollars, probably several million dollars for a fraction of the price that looks 95% the same thing. Seems really appealing to me. Even the Diablo is behind you. I was looking at that. I'd rather have this. Because I know for myself, driving a real thing, I'd never drive it.

I'd be terrified of it. But driving a replica, it's totally fine. You don't have to worry about putting miles on it. It's bulletproof. If you want to do a replica of something like a little newer, I don't know, like a Ferrari, you know, Enzo or like, just spitballing here, something that's like made in the last 20 years and you want a replica of that. Usually the way you do a replica car is by stretching frames and, you know, you're getting an 88 Pontiac Fierro and then just putting whatever engine in that. But then you end up with a car that's literally hodgepodge together.

And that becomes really, really unsafe, even though it looks the part and whatever. But like if you get in a car accident, like who knows what happens when, you know, this car doesn't have crumple zone. So does the engine just fall in your lap? Like what happens? So I'm more worried about that end of things. At least when I give people like say, you know, the keys to Porsche Gt, Gt, and DBS, like, those are factory cars and they have airbags and stuff like that. They have like safety systems.

So I know if they do get sideways or whatever, it won't be the end of the world. It's still a very safe car. Yeah, that makes sense. For me, I think there's something appealing about getting an 80s or 90s car that is a replica that is like one-to-one, some of these guys spend so much money and time building out these cars. You know, it's so crazy.

And I don't get it because the replica cars, the replica car people, I just need to say they're insane. They are crazy people. Because these guys, they spend 20 years building this. And it's like, dude, if you just got a job,

any job, and you spent all this time working on this, you would have bought the real car in like half the time. time. Like, you didn't have to have a replica. Like, you would, like, and these people are building Kuntash is like, yeah, I built a, you know, Kuntash in 20 years. I'm like, bro, 20 years ago,

they were like, they were like free. Like, what are you talking about? Like, what, now that, now there are a million dollars, but like, what are, it just, it just. What's even crazier is they go and buy genuine parts, too. They're like, I bought the real tail lights from the real thing and the real emblems and the real. So, like,

you have all the retail markup on this stuff. And then what are they, what are they saying? But it's a good deal if you buy it. Because they never get their money back. No, because the divorce took everything away from those. Gosh. No, I think I like the idea of replicas.

Just if they're, I guess there's a, there's a, there's a weird thing in me where I want to have like a one up on the man, you know. So like the Diablo behind me, you know, that, that costs 20, 30 grand. But if you, if you got a real one, a real like 99 VT Roadster, that's 400. thousand dollars is it 10x the car probably not you know like so if you put in another 30 or 40 grand in that like you can make it look very very very convincing um so i think that would be like a good value but then a part of me is just thinking like it's it's a fake handbag and like who are you really fooling you know like are you trying to fool people or are you just trying to have like a fun time

for me it's just like it's a fun time i know it's fake like if i ever you know, get that car and register it. I'd put like fake Lambo on the license plate or something. I'd make it very clear that this is not a real Lamborghini. But there are people who are like, oh yeah, well, I have my Lamborghini. It just so happens to have a Chevy 350 in it. You know, I do that because it's more reliable. But yeah, I just never get those people. Going back a little earlier before the P1, really resonate with your video about getting out of your comfort zone. Oh, yeah. You made a video a few years ago where it's just you talking to the camera. going through a difficult time talking about openly depression and just feeling just really down and wanting to reinvent yourself. How did you go about doing that? And what sparked all of that?

Well, I mean, you know, there's a lot of personal things that happened in my life around that time. And that year was very pivotal for me, especially two years ago. You know, my marriage was falling apart. And I mean, a lot of that was like self-inflicted. And then I ended up like basically finding somebody else. And it was like my life turned upside down in a way that I never thought it would. You know, I lost friends. But then I gained, I gained friends that, you know, I didn't think I would. People that stuck around and understood, you know, what went on. So I'm very, very grateful to those people. But like, in terms of YouTube, what I think I was doing in those times were, like, like I was just phoning it in.

And I knew that I was happiest when I was trying to solve problems, when I was trying to find these, you know, stuff like the P1 and, you know, these really big ambitious goals. And I felt like for a while I was just coasting on my past successes. And it made me guilty because I was very, very driven by guilt and like just in my relationships and in general. It's a motivator. And it's not a healthy motivator, but it just does help me along. So it was something where I felt like I wasn't.

giving my all to my channel. And I think people deserve better than they were getting because I felt like I was just phoning it in. And I think that was the start point of me saying, all right, well, it's not me giving up. I do have something on the horizon. That was the P1 that I think you guys are going to love. And my most ambitious project ever. And I think I needed just to realign myself a little bit with that because you know there's i mean i i don't want to get into too much too much detail but there was there was a lot in that in that year that just made me reassess uh almost everything in life whether it's you know values and and the um the value of friends uh the values of family and who you're close to and relationships and everything you know would you be open to talking a little bit more

about that i'm curious what you learned about yourself and about those values you know i had a i had a for quite a long time. How long? For about 10 years. And, you know, during that marriage, we had, you know, we had disagreements like, like, every marriage. But it was very clear at the end that we were very different people. You know, the idea came up that we should go to counseling and that, that sort of thing.

And it just never happened mainly because, you know, I was told, oh, that this isn't the kind of problem that we need counseling for. It was just kind of like brushed off and a lot of like the way I felt was like all my, uh, my wants and needs weren't really, um, taken very seriously. Uh, they were just sort of like, you know, maybe pay some lip service to it and then, and then they just, they just go away or, or they're just, you know, uh, I remember once being told that, uh, you know, I, I, I told her I had a really big problem with something. I said, hey, I'm not happy. I think we need to fix something. and her immediate reaction was,

it's not that bad, you're just making it up. And I'm not trying to paint her in a bad light here because she's not a bad person. She's a very, very, very good mother. But I just, that's the way I felt in that situation. And, you know, based on that, I ended up, you know, finding somebody else. And it's never something I, you know,

and this is the first time I ever talked about it. Like, I found somebody else that was everything that, you know, that I needed. Like, she was compassionate and she was funny and she cared and she felt like it felt like, you know, when we talked, she was like present and she actually cared about what I had to say. And then I cared about her and we really connected in a way that I've never connected. I didn't know that it was possible to connect with a person like that.

And what that did for me was it allowed me to finally put put my happiness into the equation because I realized that for 10 years I'd been working I'd been you know just kind of existing um through like obligation like I felt like things were just happening to me because I'm the man I'm the breadwinner and like things were just you know like this is what you need to do this is the next part of your life uh get married have a kid you know do this do that and then at some point you'll find some happiness but I Happiness was just like something I shrugged off. I just felt like that was for other people.

Once you meet a person like that, you can't unring that bell. I could never know that I was that happy. I could be that happy with a person like that. And then go back to a relationship where I knew that I was going to be unhappy. So like, you know, that's when marriage ended. That's when, you know, and I'm never a person that I, first of all, I'm not, don't take any relationship advice for me ever. but I'm not a person that would ever, you know, have a woman on the side or anything like that.

I'm not, I'm not that kind of guy. But this, this just seemed like this was the only way it could happen. So, but I know that because of that, people got hurt. Absolutely. And I know that it was, it was my fault. And I absolutely take all the responsibility in the world for, for what I did to people I hurt. I think that there is something to be said about staying in a relationship that's not good for other people, especially when you're that young, you know, because you guys are still young. And so continuing on on something like that for the rest of your life, not doing anybody any favors rather than having the parents happy and living their own lives. Exactly. And we had, I mean, we had, me and my ex-wife, we have a daughter. And I kept on thinking, like, is it better for us to stay together for the sake of the daughter than it is.

is for us to be a part. I don't think there's a right or wrong answer for this, because I know parents that have stayed together for the sake of their kids. And for better or like sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. I knew that I didn't want to miss out on the opportunity to be happy because I knew that if I was happy and I could provide for my daughter because like I was a sold breadwinner and I made sure that, you know, my, my ex-wife and my daughter are taken care of. They have the house. They have, they have every, like she doesn't want for anything. She knows that she's loved by both her parents and she sees us and everything. So, like, I, I want to show her that there is a life. It might be not, you know, not with both parents

together, but both parents love you and that both parents, like, you can have examples of working relationship where people love each other. And we're all a family and everything. And everyone. Everybody loves everybody. So, like, that's, I think that was more important for me to show my daughter than just staying with her mom out of obligation. I wanted my daughter to grow up in a house where we're not fighting. I think it's very important because that, that can give a lot of anxiety. Yes. And I don't want, I, I grew up in a house where occasionally, you know, my mom and dad would fight and I realized that it would.

And they wouldn't like fight physically, but they were just, you know, argument, yelling or whatever. And it would affect me. And I knew that it affected me because I remember sitting, I think it was like fifth or sixth grade. And I was sitting in lunch, like with everybody, like in a cafeteria. And we would have this teacher that would overlook the cafeteria just to make sure the kids weren't, you know, killing each other. And the teacher was like screaming at a kid. and I started crying. I should like uncontrollably.

I didn't know why. And I was like, I started getting embarrassed. I'm like, why am I doing it? I'm like shaking. And then I'm thinking like, oh, it's because it's probably because, you know, I have this like response where like I have this almost like a fight or flight when I hear adults screaming and I can't do anything about it. So maybe it's maybe it's something like that.

I don't want my daughter to ever have that. And, you know, right now she is like the happiest kid ever. She's four. And, like, she goes everywhere. She's, like, in all the theme parks. And she's, like, the most spoiled kid ever. She loves going to the pool. She loves hanging out with us.

And, like, yeah, it's fantastic. So, I mean, that's, we just want to show her a world with only love. And I think that that's what we're doing. So was there a striking difference in the beginning of your relationship with the new person that you're with versus your ex-wife right in the beginning. You could 100% tell. Or do you think that that striking chemistry with your ex-wife was maybe lost over 10 years of marriage?

You think that there was an absolute resolute difference. Yes. Well, one thing, I mean, when I started off in my relationship that would become my marriage, that I was 19 when it started. So, I mean, I was a different person. I had, I mean, if you think, I have anything to offer society right now, then, I mean, I had nothing back then. I was living with my parents up until I was 27 or 26. And, you know, it was, I was a different person, but then I never felt

like it was like a, like a real big spark or anything like that. But then again, I didn't know what I wanted, because you're, you're just, you know, your brain's still developing. And it just seems like because I've had a experience of having a relationship for so long, and I knew what I didn't want in a relationship, and it became very abundantly clear to me, especially at the end, that this person that came along, she was everything that I wanted, like literally everything. I could, you know, right now, we're sitting in this, you know, sitting in my shop, but I can't wait to get home and talk to her and tell her about my day because she's my best friend, you know, and it sounds stupid and sappy, But, like, it's really, you know, I found my person.

So I'm curious, what advice would you give your daughter when it comes to relationships? If there's any advice I would ever give to, you know, my son or daughter, I would just say, have somebody that's patient, have somebody that is willing to accept you for the kind of person you are with all your flaws. How long did it take you to come out of that depression? It was quite a few months. I was, um, doing a lot. So I was filming my show Car Trek with Ed Bolian and Tyler, I was making a YouTube channel. I was doing like a lot, a lot of things. And then on top of that, you know, we had a newborn baby and then the relationship just wasn't really going anywhere. Like, it just wasn't

doing well at all. And it just seemed like everything was tough. I'm not complaining because this is, you know, the greatest job in the world. And, you know, I know a lot of people would kill for this position. But, um, there would be times when I got, when, you know, I come to this shop and I see all the cars and the last thing I want to see is a car, you know, because it's just, it's just, it's just what, what needs to be done next. And to turn a wrench, it's like, you know, it's just like, uh, it's the last thing you want to do. So, um, yeah, I mean, it took, it took quite a few months and especially after I moved out, that became easier because I didn't have to then, you know, live in a house that was, that was chaotic. But, you know, I still went to see my daughter, all that, all that stuff. And even though our relationship wasn't, you know, good in the end, in terms of, like, a husband, wife, I still want to make sure that she's a very effective mother because she's a really good mother, you know, and that's like the most important thing to me when it comes to stuff like that. So, yeah, I don't, I don't know.

I mean, after that, I moved in with my, my girlfriend, and we've been, you know, we've been very, very happy ever since. Yeah. I just want to say I really appreciate your transparency when it comes to stuff like this. Sure, sure. Situations, I'm sure are, like, way more complicated and nuanced than some of the viewers might be making them out to be right now. Yeah, I mean, to be honest, like, I want to make sure, because people are going to speculate

and they're going to worry about things that have nothing to do with them. But, like, I just want to show the broad strokes and show that, you know, if people are in a relationship that they don't feel happy in, it might not be the end of the world to end that relationship. Like, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. And even if you have, you know, a longstanding marriage or kids or whatever, like, really think about what that will mean. And sometimes it means staying together. Sometimes it means, hey, let's talk to each other and say, let's get marriage counseling or, like, let's think of some pros and cons. But sometimes you're just not compatible. Like, you just realize you've either grown apart or you just never were there to begin with.

There are certain things in life where you can't feel like you're just settling on some things. Like, you know, if you have a relationship with a girl and she, you know, doesn't do this one thing that you think, you know, relationship should have. And then if you bring it up to her, she says, well, that's not important to me, so I don't care. So like, so where do you go from there? You know, you either say to yourself, oh, well, maybe I just, you know, maybe this is just my thing and I have to deal with it. You know, you swallow your pride and then just like go without. Or you're just like, all right, well, now I have to find somebody else. So, like, there's, there's no other real option. But you know what? Before we go into that, this section is sponsored by

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I've just been a fan of their cars since I was a kid. It's incredible to be able to say and now represent the brand in this capacity. So it is an honor. Thank you guys so much for being able to make that happen and for supporting us. And now with that said, let's get back. to the podcast. How much is the overhead to own all of these cars? It's a lot. So the overhead to own, it's not, it's not just the cars. The cars are fine because the cars are paid for other than the P1. So the P1's about seven, seven grand a month. Seven grand a month? Seven grand a month?

Seven grand a month, yeah. How long's the the note for? Two years. Two years. It's not bad. Yeah. So, yeah, it's not too bad. But overhead on everything, including everything that I pay is about a little over 80 a month. Where did that come from? Yeah, that seems like a good. Because that doesn't make sense at all. Okay, so, all right, kids, let's, uh. There's got to be something snuck in there.

That we just are unaware of it. Yeah. Let's like finance. Okay. Um, so I have four shops. Okay. Uh, four shops with utilities is probably like 12, uh, 12 grand a month. Then I have the house.

House is about 10. Uh, those is 10 grand. The house is 10 grand. Where's that coming from? That seems like 10, am I wrong here? Where is that coming from? Well,

it's a pretty big house. Well, okay. No, no, no. Okay, now I'm thinking about the utilities. Well, yeah, utilities.

The landscaping and a pool maintenance and all that's because it's a large house with a lot of things, but I didn't imagine. That's the mortgage. That's the mortgage. I was going to say that I didn't imagine the mortgage to be that big, but I guess now. No, the mortgage is pretty big. Yeah.

Um, so. What'd you put down? I think I put down. 15% something like that is it sounding yeah right to you it's it just depends

in the interest rate what rate did you get oh oh you're gonna so I bought this at the wrong time my interest is like six and a half could be worse it could be worse because some people are out there

taking sevens could be better yeah could be better could be worse you don't have the uh the uh PMI too right like the private mortgage insurance

no no no you wouldn't have PMI no not on 15 uh If I had put down five, then yes. So the first house I bought for $2.99, I got that at four or something. And that was like, that wasn't even a good rate back when I got it, but like, but that house is paid for. But this house, I still owe quite a bit on it. So that's $10,000 a month.

But, but then the utilities and all that stuff, that's probably another $2,000. Then all my, all the people that work here. So that's probably another $45. How many people? Oh, that's not bad. How many people do you ever working with you? Four. It's not bad.

Yeah. So we have four. And then, I mean, I have my alimony child support, that, whatever. But, and then whatever we spend on the cars. But that I don't usually count as a, as a recurring charge because it's different every time. Yeah, but I'd imagine the money you spend on cars, you're getting back anyway in the value of the car. Like if you spend $1,000 on a car, you could get some. times. Yeah, but I don't ever realize. I don't ever realize that cost because I never sell my cars.

It's a problem. When's the last time he sold a car? I don't know. When's the last? I give these cars away. What do you mean? You don't know last time you sold a car. How many cars do you have? I have like 30 cars. Yeah, I don't know when the last time I sold the car is. And you just give them away. Yeah. You don't sell them. No, because they, because they don't owe me anything. They like literally, if I, if I went and took any of these cars and lit them on fire in the middle of the street, it would be, it would be a wash for me. So it's, it doesn't matter. to me. Like, I think, for me, the only thing that matters is a story.

How much am I going to pay for the story? And how much is a story worth? Right? So, if I could... You're a true enthusiast. Well, thank you. But if I, like, that Porsche 9-11 turbo, I ended up... I think I'm in that car, probably 15 grand.

Just because I traded... I bought a Bentley Continent L-GT for 11 grand, put it like a few grand into it, and then I traded it for that. and that car is probably worth 75. But since the car owes me 15, and I think I put another, I think I put another seven into it. So car owes me probably like 20 or something.

Car owes me 20, but I have a really good friend that would really appreciate that car. And I feel like for the story that I could put on a YouTube video that has a sponsor on it, why not just give that car away and then that could be, you know,

wow. What would it take for me to become a really good friend of yours? Hey man, you know, I like your hair. You know, you're, yeah, I like, you know, you got all dolled up today. I did. It's, it's wonderful. You're wearing blue, which I have a lot of blue cars.

Yeah. So, which, you know what? I'm going to give you the keys. Which, which one do you want? I guess I'll take that one right over there. Okay, you know what? You can, you can. You're not a friend anymore, man.

A real friend. Get out of here. A real friend would have said the Supra. Well, the Supra is not, that's, that's Rex's Supra. We actually gave that to him. Okay. So we, we ended up building that over two years. and brought that to Seema.

And right before Seema, we gave that to Rex. Wow. It was interesting. You were walking us through your warehouses, and you were like, oh, yeah, this car, I'm giving it to this person, this car, I already gave it to this person. Like, holy mackerel, that is...

I think, so cars are a very human experience. I mean, we're just talking about relationships and stuff, but, like, all these things are very human experiences. You have your first kiss in a car. You bring your baby home in a car. It's, you know, you have your first road trip and you have experiences like that. And the metal doesn't,

really matter, but it's all the, it's all the experiences and the love and the, and the pain and the anguish or whatever, like the emotion that we put into these things. And they're imperfect. You know, they have personalities of their own. It's a very human thing. So if I can give somebody a car that, that I know they'll appreciate, you know, because they either need it or like this will change their life in some way, then, you know, let's do it. What are the logistics of owning so many cars like for insurance, maintenance, filling them up with gas, being sure they're running, registration. That's a big one.

Well, what's easy in Florida is that your registrations are done online and then you just get a, you know, every two years or something like that because I try to do two or three years recurring. So every two years I get just a little slip that says you need to have a new registration for this car. And yeah, that's about it. It's like 40 bucks to register a car to re-register a car again. But you're still getting like three of them.

month. So they hit around the same time. So they're all like at the end of the year. So around the end of the year, I have to pay, I don't know, like a few grand or something just in registration, which is not terrible. Insurance, it's all on auto pay and it's all through Grundy, so it's not a big deal. Maintenance, these cars don't get driven a ton. And other than keeping up on tires and oil changes and stuff, there's not really much you need

to do. You know, they're not like 80s supercars where you're like, all right, you need an engine out and all this stuff. Like, they're modern cars. So you can just drive them whenever. And I tried to drive them as much as I can. But, you know, some of them just kind of stay up there, you know, for decoration. But, you know, most of them, if I could take them out, I'll do it. What car do you lost the most amount of money on? I mean, it all depends on what you mean by lost, you know, if you look at sheer money, it'd have to be the P1 because there's no. I mean, it's $575,000 and it looks like that. So I don't know what that really means because is it like value in the marketplace?

You know, like, is it... You're just like bought and sold, but you don't really sell, I guess. Yeah. As long as you don't realize the loss. True. It doesn't exist. Not a loss until you sell. Yeah.

I mean, it's not a crime until you get caught, right? Yeah. There you go. Well, I don't know. I mean, I have a BMW M3 that I bought for $6,000. And we ended up putting like $25,000 into it. Wow. And I know the car's not worth it.

It's like 200,000 mile like previous vandalism. And it's a car that does not deserve it. We gave it like this the craziest treatment. We did custom interior and paint and carbon roof and and, and we're redoing the engine and all that stuff. But like at the end of it, like, what's it going to be worth? It's going to be worth less than what I put into it for sure. But I also am I going to sell it? Maybe.

I mean, it also could be like a giveaway car. So, you know, if we give it away and it's like a vehicle to move like the merch brand for or something, then that's, I don't really realize that loss. Now it's, now it's worth that much more money. Yeah. What's your least favorite car, something you'd never own? That's a good question because I don't think there is a car that I would know. I've owned a lot of really crazy cars, like crappy cars. I think the only one I'd never own would be something.

like really boring something, I don't know, like, PT Cruiser. I would, I would absolutely own a PC Cruiser. Prieta, because a PT Cruiser has personality. It's ugly. It's, uh, it's striking. People look at it. Just because it has personality doesn't mean it's a good one.

No, it doesn't mean it's a good one. But it's like, it's cool. It's just because a person is an asshole, you can still have a, you know, fun conversation talking to them once in a while, you know? Like, it, it, people have an opinion about that car, which is fine. The cars that I wouldn't get are people, are cars that people don't have really opinions on. First gen Prius.

I like a first gen Prius. Second Gen Prius. It's something else here now. Something new. From exclusively on Paramount Plus, it's the series Stephen King calls Scarious Hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real. Sci-fi vision calls it the best show streaming right now.

We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules. Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch. Saving those children is how we all go home. From Binge All Episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. So Tommy has, I think Tommy has, my cameraman, has a first-gen Prius. And he's like, oh, I hate this car. And it's, you know, it's just an old Prius. But I'm like, I actually like the engineering.

I like that when you drive, it has like a little CVT and it has a synergy drive. You can drive on electric power and then charges the battery. I like all that stuff. That's really, really cool to me. 2010 Honda pilot. That's not, so my dad almost bought one of those. It's not a bad car, I think 3.5 V-Sick. Personality?

They're okay. They're all right. They're not, they're mall crawlers. They're not terrible off-road. But again, if this is a car that was like passed down through your parents or grandparents or whatever, and it's like, hey, I got the pilot. And then, you know, you could take all your friends to the beach or something. That's a cool car.

So, I mean, I don't think there's a car. that I wouldn't buy, but like, maybe not for the channel. I don't think anybody would care about a Honda pilot build. But, you know, just for me, if I was, like, gifted a car, I would never be like, oh, I'm too good for that, because I'm not. If someone were to flip a car, what is some of the red flags to look out for? Okay. So you are now asking a junkie how to stay off drugs.

Okay. I don't know the answer to that question because every red flag is a green flag for me. I looked at this car that was, you know, this P1 that was underwater, and I was like, we should do this. So for most people, I think you want to stay away from things that were, you know, saltwater flood, major fire, because that would introduce a lot of changing of the actual metal of the car. You can't get that back, no matter how much bodywork you do on the top of it. Then you have electrical issues, which is wiring. it all depends on the amount of skill that you have and the amount of project that you want. So let's say if we're talking about like a Nissan Ultima and you want to rebuild it, probably not worth it to get like the worst salvage one imaginable.

But if it's like a one of one, you know, Aston Martin Valkyrie and it's had some some crazy damage, like maybe take that on if you can because, you know, this is like worth saving. So it all depends on the, on the project. But like, if you wanted to flip a car, I mean, honestly, the best type of flip that you could do is get a car that's slightly neglected and slightly dirty. And then all you have to do is clean it up, do a nice, you know, oil change or service, and then just market it properly. Get some good pictures, put it on bring a trailer or cars and bids or even Facebook marketplace, and then you'll make a killing. What's going on with the car market right now? You see it going down in price because it seems like certain cars are really holding their value well. Yeah.

But a lot of others, I'm saying insane deals right now on Facebook Marketplace. I saw a Tesla Model 3 $14,000 for a 2018 Tesla Model 3. Yeah. Yes. It was wrong with it. High mileage. How many? I don't know, like 80,000, 90,000 miles, which I don't care.

These cars are like bulletproof from my perspective. I'm finding so many of them now under $20,000 from Model 3. Yeah. Model S's. I saw Model S plaid on cars and bids that went for like 50 grand. It was like 44 grand for a Model S that was like two years old. I'm thinking to myself, this lost 50% in two years. Yeah.

And the deals are only getting better. The cyber truck is still losing $5,000 a week in value. Yeah, because it was a cyber truck. Because so, well, my friend Rex, he just bought a Model S. I think it's 2016. and it has supercharging, that's free supercharging. It's a 90D, it's not a P, but it had 50,000 miles on it. He bought for 17 grand.

That's a lot of car for 17 grand. Is that the red one that we? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. We drove that here. There's nothing wrong with it. I thought that could be a $30,000, $40,000. Yeah, had autopilot.

Yeah, 17 grand. That's the price of a Honda Civic. The market, especially for used EVs, is hitting the floor because a few things are happening. So you have the rebates and all that stuff for new EVs. They're going away. So new EVs are becoming, you know, more expensive. So people aren't buying them as much and the demand is going down.

I think the infrastructure is not where it should be in the states and certainly not in the rest of the world. And people are just sort of getting, you know, there's range anxiety can be a thing. Honestly, I mean, if you can have a Tesla in your house, and you can charge it from your house. It's a really, it's not a bad car to have. I don't know where the market is going. I am not a Tyler Hoover who is, you know, he's this used car salesman and he knows all about the car market and whatever. All I do is buy what I like. And I never look at the market where it's like, oh, well, this car is low and this car is high. So maybe I just like, you know, ride the dip or whatever. Like if there's a car and I'm like, hey, I can afford that. That looks like it's a good deal. I'm going to,

I'm going to get it. Like I look at what the. I look at what the. other cars in the market are going for. And then I go, okay, that car's cheaper. For what reason? There you go. What's the best car to own? Come on. It's like...

You have to pick one. The kids are listening. I really, really, really, really, really, really like that McLaren 675 LT. I think that car is one of the best driver's cars ever made. Sounds great, looks great, and it's very comfortable to drive. I'm just losing enough weight that I can sit in the seats without my legs falling asleep,

so that's good. It has very, very narrow seats. But that car is, also, it's incredibly fast. It's like stupid fast. But next to that, I would say the Porsche 9-11 GT3. The GT3 is the best

manual driving experience I've ever had, and it's not even close. What makes it so good? The car, it has a naturally aspirated six-cylinder engine, And I thought, well, it's a naturally aspirated six.

It's probably not going to have that much torque, you know, whatever. But this thing revs like a motorcycle. And it revs to like 9,000 RPM. So you have so much usable range. Like, you know, it's crazy. And it sounds like a bike. It sounds incredible. It's very, very nimble.

It handles like, like it's the stupid thing is like it handles like it's on rails. But like this handles like it's just being like your brain. is connected to the car. It makes you feel like a race car driver. It also has the little rev matching. So, you know, when you put it back into gear or like you downshift the gear, it automatically goes into that rev and it just like stays there. So, you know, you don't wear out the clutch, but it also makes you just feel like you're in a racing car. But, you know, it's a street car. You can also drive it. It has trunk space. It looks good. I mean, it's not, it's loud, but it's not too loud. And it's a Porsche. So it's small. all it fits places. So I really, really like that. I mean, for most people, I think a Porsche

would be, like, the best all-round. If you got, like, a Porsche turbo, like a 9-11 turbo S in automatic, like their PDK, I think that would be like the best all-around car you can get. Why does it seem like all these supercars or hypercars are becoming SUVs? It seems like a lot of these brands are going in that direction. Why? Because they need to save their brands, because those those SUVs are the only cars that people are buying. What happens with these cars is that the rich guys buying the eventadors, they have wives that also want flashy cars where they can put their Birkenbags. So they go, hey, we have this Euris. And this is also a performance car, but it's also an SUV.

And it's going to cost you $350,000. And they go, okay, sign me up for one of those, but also I want an SVJ. That's honestly what saves a lot of those companies. So you have the Euris, you have the DBX, you have the Porsche, Panama, and the Cayenne. And like those are really, really hot sellers because people, they want all the technology and all the stuff that goes. Yeah, the status of having, you know, a Lambo or an Aston Martin or a Porsche or whatever. But they also want like practicality. They want to be able to roll down the tailgate and put down some groceries or something like that.

Yeah. When I saw Lotus make an SUV, I knew that that was the direction they had to go. So Lotus, I'm surprised they didn't do that 10 years ago. Really? Because Lotus, I don't see how they have any money left. There's no British manufacturer that is good at making money. Like, they just don't. I'm fairly certain McLaren's going to come out with some SUV.

They have to because they don't have any money left. Why does it seem like so many car guys hate Tesla? Because it's EV. So the EV thing seemed like it's foisted upon us as car enthusiasts. and you want to have, like, what's the best car, you know, I'll ask you this. I'll pose this question to you. What's the best car experience you've ever had? Lotus Elise.

Lotus Elise. And, you know, you're in that car and you are, you know, rowing through the gears and you hear the engine behind you. And it's a very visceral experience. And that is like the pinnacle of car enthusiasm. It's you in the car and everything's very connected. And Tesla is the antithesis of that. Is it?

I have fun in the Tesla Roadster, the one that's right behind me. Well, the Tesla Roadster is interesting, but it is different from the Elise because the Tesla Roadster is not what most EBs are. Most EVs are very quiet. You can't hear them. Like one of the selling points is, oh, you can't hear any engine. You can't feel the engine. It's just, you know, it's very quiet. And you might hear a slight hum, but that's it.

it. Like the quietest, the loudest thing about the cars, it's hires. So that in itself loses a bunch of enthusiasts because they want to hear the engine. They want to feel, you know, feel the, feel something that there's like a human element, like an animalistic element, you know. You want to hear the, you know, so you lose that. And then it just becomes, there's no real skill involved. It's just like, all right, well, we're going to put you in a centerfuge and then you're going to hold on. If you do a launch in a Tesla Model S plaid and then you put your foot to the floor and like there's no skill involved in that. The car tells you, all right, take your foot off the break and then you go and then all your organs get rearranged. If you're in a car like a Lotus Elise and you're like, I want to launch this thing and I want to get, you know, a zero to 60 in four and a half seconds.

And for that, it takes some skill. You have to have like the right pavement and you're like, all right, I'm going to launch it at 3,500 RPM and then like, you're, you have to, you have. a lot of stuff happening. There's a lot of stuff happening in your own head. So I think that all gets lost and that's why people don't really like EVVs because they feel like this future where none of the stuff that they cherished as kids, none of that's included. And they feel like that's where the entire industry is headed without them. Yeah. What do you think some of the biggest car stereotypes are out there that are true? Lamborghini owners being just like these these weird douchebags.

Stradman disagreed. He said that Lamborghini owners were like the nicest people. No, no. So, relatable. So some of them are relatable. There are a lot of Lamborghini owners that are,

that can't wait to tell you about their crypto portfolio. You know? Like, it's one of those things, like they get out of their car and they have like Lambo gear on. And it's the same thing with a Ferrari guy. The Ferrari guys are very particular. nowhere near as bad as the Porsche people.

Porsche people are very, let's just say, on the spectrum, because they will tell you about, as Doug DeMira calls them, leather air vents, and they're paint-to-sample, and, oh, I got my allocation from my GT3, blah, blah, blah, you know? So, like, that sort of thing is, like, I have this thing that you can't have, and this is my entire personality.

And I'm going to get this other thing in three years that you also can't have, and that will be my personality in three years. What about McLaren people? McLaren people are interesting because there's not they haven't really been a company for that long and the stereotype for McLaren owner it's very similar to a Lambo owner so I I know that the Lambo owner is more of a like a self-starter so you'll have more like new money entrepreneur that sort of thing but like I think the Lambo owner since that is an older brand you have people that

buy like a Mercilago or, you know, an event door or something like that. And then you have people that are like, that's their entire personality. They put everything. They have, you know, their entire wardrobe is Lambo merch. They need to tell you about their car. They put their keys on the table to, you know, for you to ask about it. What's it like driving a Lambo? But McLaren owner is like, I don't, I don't think that happens all that much. I think they just like to drive their cars, but then they don't really drive their cars that much because they break down a lot. What do you think is the most underrated car?

Underrated car. And overrated. I would have to agree with Stradvan. I think you said the GT3RS or something. I think that's probably it. Because I've driven a GT3 with an automatic gearbox, and it's just not as good. It just isn't.

And a GT3RS is that with an automatic gearbox in some arrow and whatever. In any other setting, Like in a track, yeah, I'm sure it's great. You know, it's great. But it just is missing that one thing, that Lotus Elise quality that you'd want in a car like that. It has just a right amount of power, 500 horsepower, and you want that to be a manual. So I think that people are, you know, killing themselves over this car for $400,000, $500,000.

That's kind of ridiculous. And what about the most underrated car? Underrated car. I would say, I mean, I'll look around and say, probably. an Aston Martin DBS, like that one. So it's Ashton Martin DBA. I'm biased and it's my money and no object dream car, but I love that car because it's, I think it's probably one of the most beautiful Aston Martins they ever made.

It's also one of the best sounding. I mean, mine has an exhaust on it. It sounds like an old F1 car. And with a manual, it's really nice. It's, you know, the shifter is nicely weighted. It doesn't feel like a sports car, but it's a very nice GT car. It's very well appointed. It's comfortable.

So I think that's, and for a car like that, that punches above its weight class in terms of fit and finish and all that stuff, I mean, you can get one of those for like 150 now. You'd be hard pressed to find anything like that for, you know, 500. Yeah. What car make would you say is the most unreliable? Something British, for sure. So any, I mean, pick any of the British brands. Right now, Aston Martin is probably okay because they have a lot of Mercedes parts in them. McLaren is fairly unreliable. And then I'd say Lotus, Lotus, especially the older. lotuses. I've never, I thought they're bulletproof. The craftsmanship is shoddy, but because they use a lot of Toyota parts. No, the Toyota parts are the good part. Yeah. That's, that's the, that's, that's the good part. Um, so the, the Lotus part, they, Lotus are really good engineers. They can't really put cars together very, very well. Um, and I'm thinking of like Lotus of, like, even past the Elise, like the espree. Like, I had two esprees and those were like, yeah, bad, bad. Um, but McLaren, I think McLaren's issue is that they have cars that kind of punch above their weight class

and sometimes don't really reach the mark in terms of reliability. So the original MP412C, which is the platform that this thing started as, it was, you know, they had transmission problems, they had electrical problems. They had like a bunch of these issues that they worked out throughout the years. But then, you know, they kept coming out with car after car after car, like every 35 seconds, McLaren comes out with another special car. And it just seems like they have tons of problems. Like their new Artura, they have tons of issues because of the V6 and hybrid and all that stuff.

What are your thoughts on Whistle on Diesel? And Cody, if you're watching this, we would love for you to come on our show. Absolutely. We've had on a lot of different car YouTubers. We can come to you wherever, whenever. We absolutely love it. Give us a place in time. You'd say would recommend?

Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. It's great. They ate all my bananas. And, yeah, they took all my toothpaste and it's great. I have talked to Cody once, but I mean, I've never met him, but here's a really nice guy. I love his videos. I really, so I didn't initially, I didn't know anything about him, and all I heard was like negative.

And I heard like, oh, this guy, whistling diesel. All he does is like break this, break these cars and blah, blah. And the thing that I love about his videos is the storytelling. And he puts so much effort into presentation. And people think that there are these like these like slapped together videos. But he's had like he writes these things out. He writes plot lines out. There's almost like A story and B story going on sometime.

And like just from a storytelling perspective, it's it's really a masterclass in how to market yourself and how to get people to wait till the end of something. So you have like really good retention and like I'm sure, you know, he looks at his metrics. But like it's a, it's a fantastic, fantastic watch. Like any of his videos, like any of his videos from last, you know, four or five years have the same sort of formula. And, you know, it's him showing something with like his very dry humor and it's very like Gen Z. So it's like lots of like popping and flashing in your face. But it's not like overly done. Like I think Mr. Beast is like Mr. Beast. For me, I can't watch a Mr.

beast video because I, I liken it to a trailer for a video that doesn't exist. It always feels like it's moving at way too fast to pace. And with Whistland Diesel, he lets things breathe sometimes. And there's like some wanton destruction for sure. But it all goes to serve this story. His pacing is fantastic, as I've noticed, I watched his cyber truck video where he would go from a calm part where he's just talking like this, an instant cut to the cyber truck just like jumping over. or something, and then it's back to him just talking, and it keeps you on edge.

Yes. I would say his videos are really one of the only few that I watch at normal speed. Everything else I watch in 2X. Really? It's hard to watch it in 2X. I can't. Yeah, I tried on the airplane because they downloaded his videos. Tried watching him 2X.

I had to actually go back and just play normal speed. I can't do it. I can never do faster speed on videos. Yeah. Because I don't know, maybe it's the ADHD or something like that, because I just start, like, I, something about, um, like, Like, I get a lot of, I guess, stimulus from, from auditory cues. So, like, for instance, I won't go to sleep if I hear, like, small noises. So I have to have, like, big noises to kind of cancel them out.

So I need to have, you know, specific set of white noise machines. So, like, if I do 2X, my brain goes, this isn't right, this isn't right, this isn't right, this isn't right, this isn't right, this isn't right, why isn't right? And, like, it just, it just won't turn that off. Interesting. And I know that I can't be like, all right, well, this is, like, if I, if I'm right, if, If I watch Destiny at 2x or something, like, that's, it's just word salad, you know. So. I'll go like 2.5.3x with the extension. There's a YouTube video player extension. I didn't know that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'll share it with the after the video. It's incredible.

But anyways, on Cody, I'm curious, what do you say to the people that say he's disrespecting vehicles like he did with the Ferrari when it burned down in the field or with like the old cars, like the Model T that he took and destroyed that? I mean, that's a, that's a. piece of history. Yeah, but the Model T, they made 17 million of those cars. Who cares? I've never seen a Model T on the road. I thought they were way rare. They're a hundred years old. Of course you never seen one on the road. The wheels are made of wood. How many exist, though? Where's it? How many exist

still? Still a lot. You can find one for eight grand. Are you serious? Why do I think these were like, you should get a model T? No, there are historical vehicles that are worth tens of millions of dollars and they're in museums, right? But a Model T, like, most of them got made into Hot Rod.

you know, like in a 50s and 60s. So you have like the tea buckets and stuff like that. I didn't know that. But yeah, it's like you can buy a Model T for not a 10 grand will buy you a really nice model T. What if you for a series got a Model T and like turn it into a McLaren? How does that work? I have no idea.

Put a Ferrari engine. Well, when you figure that out, then we can do it. Yeah, that would be a Ferrari engine in it. Yeah, a Ferrari engine. Lambo. The car's made out, okay, the car's made out of wood, dude. That's the funny part. See what happens.

Yeah. Just reinforce it with like a little bit of something. You die. Just see if it works though. You die. That's like, all right, we're going to try to run into this brick wall and see what happens. Like, you die. Like, that's it.

You don't need to figure that out. I mean, it would be interesting, but like, that seems like more of like a Mr. Beast type, you know, deal. It's like taking the old, most antiquated, you know, relic of vehicles and turning it into those modern things. Yeah, I guess. Like, what if we made a model T. out of carbon fiber. Like, okay. Yeah, true. Oh, boy. That's, we get tens of views. You know, um, no, I, I don't know. To answer your question about Whistland Diesel, I don't think anybody really cares about the, you know, you're disrespecting the cars. I see a lot of comments.

That was a lot of the hate for the Ferrari one, all, but you get through the top comments that love it, but then you get a lot of people saying that was a $500, $600,000 car. But it's not their There's not their money. Who cares? Like, why would any... People care about things? Not saying that that lend, you know, you should lend it merit because they care. I guess it would be the equivalent of let's say you have a house that you, like in a housing crisis, you get a house.

You're like, hey, hell, let's burn it down. And people are like, that could have, you know, people could live in that house. Or you take food. Somebody would have just, a family of six could have gotten that Ferrari. I'm just trying to come up with something. It's $500,000 Ferrari. Or it's like you take food and you just take all this great food and you just throw it all. like,

African kids could have been in that Ferrari. It's a little bit with the mindset. Yeah, but no, that's the way that they feel. We're not saying

that they deserve credit or that we should, you know, let, we should believe that. Right. So what I think is that those people think that Whistland Diesel

doesn't have a real job. And they think that he doesn't deserve the things that he has. So if you, if you base that on the fact that, you know,

this guy doesn't deserve these really nice things and he's just breaking them, oh, he's just a kid. He's this, you know, um,

negative impact on society. Meanwhile, it's just entertainment. All right, this Ferrari burned in the field. Did it hurt anybody? No. Who cares? It was a fun video to make. Do you think you could ever take it too far? Yeah, if somebody gets hurt, yeah, for sure. Okay. But as long as nobody gets hurt. Yeah, there's no permanent destruction of something. Absolutely. Yeah. Listen, if he wants to take a, you know, a McLaren F1, which is my favorite car in the world, if he takes $20 million and he wants to light that $20 million on fire, and run this McLaren to the wall at 200 miles an hour and nobody gets hurt? Who am I to say what he can't, who can and can't do it as money?

I think you're giving him ideas. Yeah, yeah, great. But I just mean like, why can't we enjoy this method of entertainment? Like, where else are we going to get this? I'm just thinking how many people would be outraged if you take the original back to the future car, like the actual movie car and just explode it. Just blow it up. So, so they're not even running it in anything.

They just, yeah, yeah, like the hero acre. Yeah, but you just take a one of... You steal it from the museum and you take a one of a car. But you buy it, like you buy it, but like a true one of one car, like a car that won, like, Lamon. Or like, you take a one of one and you just blow it up. Sure, sure. You just really upset people. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you could, you could upset people that, like, but again, you know, at what point can you not do a way? You know, this is stuff that Ken Griffin could do. He has the money to be able to just buy whatever. and just we light it off. Yeah, I guess. I mean, Mark Zuckerberg ever enters like an evil era. I could see him just going down that path.

Well, what's the, there's that Louis C.K. bit where he's like, if I ever become a billionaire, I just buy all the pants and burn him. No more pants. You know? So you could, you could always do the thing

where you take a really nice thing and destroy it. You know, the people that are waiting in line for a PS5, there's a guy that, you know, takes a PS5 and just smashes it and, uh,

with a baseball bat in the parking. lot. And people are like, oh, no, like, but like, what are we lose? You, you haven't lost anything. You didn't lose your PS5, so who cares? But people think that it's like this zero-sum game. And then they just attach their own biases, which is, this guy doesn't deserve this because all he does is make silly YouTube videos. And I actually get this a lot that making YouTube isn't hard work. So, therefore, it's not a job. Or like, oh, well, I actually have to work for a living. I don't get to just like not do work for and make a lot of money. And I always think about those people and I go, why are like, it seems like you're an idiot then.

Because if there's a method of like making a lot of money but you're not working, why don't you just do that? Why don't you just do that? And see, like it seems like that's what you think I'm doing. Why don't you just, you just do it. You do it. Obviously, it's a lot of hard work, as you guys know. And there's a lot of late nights and a lot of sacrifices and a lot of money spent on really stupid stuff. The stuff that's been getting to us recently is the travel. With this podcast,

we are spending. Oh, gosh. The overhead on this podcast has never been higher. And we're not just saying that to be like, oh, what was us? But it's gotten incredibly expensive. The travel can be pretty brutal. And recently we had a trip where we were like, what, three states or something like that. And I got back and I got the worst pharyngitis. That turned into like sinusitis. And I was sick and out for a week straight because of like overnight flight. or whatever and, you know, all of the, the crowd strike stuff that happened. Oh, yeah, we were traveling in the middle of that crowd strike thing. We got into the hotel at like 1 a.m.

The systems went down. We waited there for an hour. We had a podcast the next morning, East Coast time after being, so it was like an hour of sleep. Right. I mean, it can be brutal. Yes, we are absolutely blessed. Shout out our sponsors.

We are absolutely blessed, but it can be challenging. Yeah. Yeah. Try to battle that. Being gone from home. Not everyone's designed for that. I'm a home body. I love staying home.

Yeah, me too. So for me, travel, I get, I don't want to say I get, like, anxious leading up to it, but in my mind mentally, I'm like, okay, one week we're going to be gone. I got to catch up. I got to get all these things done before we go. And then once I'm here, I enjoy it. But it's always leading up to that. I'm like, there's a lot of stuff we don't talk about. I mean, in our last trip, our flight was delayed and we had to make it, but it was delayed.

So we didn't know what was going to happen. So we drove across the state of full. That's right. Yeah, we don't talk about this stuff. We drove across the entire state to film an episode for you guys. That was the funnest part of the entire trip. It was very fun. Was canceling our flight, getting a car, and driving across the state in the middle of a storm.

Oh. Where it was like lightning and rain. So much rain, by the way, that everyone is slowing down on the freeway to like 20 miles an hour with their hazards on. It's all much fun. Yeah. It's a little scary. But it was awesome. Yeah.

Well, you guys are going to have to travel again. I have an event in December that I would love for you guys to attend. I know you guys are, you guys are car guys. It's a car event. It's called Wrenchworks. It's going to be December 6 through 8th. Sorry about the plug here, but I just wanted to let everybody know that, yeah, we're going to be at Circuit Florida. It's in Arbondale, Florida.

It's like this racetrack where, you know, we're going to be taking all my cars, you know, the cars you see behind you, we're taking a bunch of other YouTubers and a bunch of people that are. have been on your podcast. We'll be there. Chris Fix. Oh, cool. Yeah. Shmi and,

and, uh... Shmi. Yeah. Hi, guys. I'm Shmi. Hi, guys. I'm Shmee. Yeah.

Today we're gonna... And today. Yeah. He's a... Tim's amazing. So, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna do that. And, uh, we hope to, uh, to see you guys there. Yeah, we'll have like a little podcasting, uh, you know, set up there.

So, so, yeah. Be really cool. What's your biggest insecurity? Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's a quick point. Yeah.

All right. I'll do a quick 35 minutes. So my biggest insecurity is letting people down. Like I never, never, never want to let people down. And it's allowed people to take advantage of me. And I know that it drives me to a certain, you know, there's a lot of guilt involved. But I always feel like the level of success that I have is never,

number one, never enough, but it's also not earned. Like I got here through like ill-gotten gains or just sort of like skated through. And at some point, you know, the cops are going to come and tell me that I have to stop. So it's like imposter syndrome. So that's my biggest insecurity. Mine recently is that I've been afraid that I've peaked because things have been so good that I'm wondering, could I ever surpass that? That's been my biggest thing. And then wondering, is the best behind me?

I don't know. I tend to think about things like if I died today or if I died tomorrow, would I be happy with the things that I've done? And I feel like I've done so much that I feel like it's, that's good for a lifetime. Now, there are certainly things that I haven't done that I want to, you know, accomplish. But it's just, you know, I, the peaking thing, it has to happen at some point. If it's right now, that's fine. If it was three years ago, that's fine too. So I'm going to do this thing until the wheels fall off.

And if I ever think about, oh, am I relevant or like, am I, like, that's when you start getting a little bit like ego-driven. And everybody has an ego. But, like, I, for me, it's just like that, that just seems a little icky. Like, it seems off. Like, I shouldn't be having those emotions. Where do you invest your money? Where do I invest my money?

We haven't talked about any investment. I don't invest my money anywhere. Like I need to do more investments for sure. And I would love to talk to you about, you know, where to do that and whatnot. You gave me some good advice about the credit card. So I never had a credit card. I never really did anything with a credit card. But then you gave me a good name of a credit card.

I got it. And now, yeah, I get points for stuff. Wasn't financial advice. Oh, that's definitely not financial advice. But for credit cards, your spend is at such a level. where you could get free trips anywhere in the world with credit card points. So I would recommend looking over at every eight months or so,

getting a new card. There are so many great sign-up bonuses right now that you could get two to three grand worth of free travel for five minutes of work. Cool. Yeah. Works for me. But as far as investments,

I've been looking into real estate and the usual mutual funds and stuff like that. I'm super boring when it comes to stuff. stuff like that. I would never like day trade or I don't have any crypto because I just don't know enough about those things. So, I mean, if you have any, you know, index funds. Yeah, index funds. Honestly, I would, I would probably just take a portion of your income every month, index fund it long term and that's it. And then the index fund is is what? What do that? You could just do a total market index funds. A little bit of everything. S&P 500 or something like that.

But that's just U.S. based, historically, that's done well, but it doesn't mean it's going to do well in the future. And it's like year over year, like 8% or something. Give or take. Okay. Some years, some decades, it's as low as three to four. Some decades, as high as 15%, somewhere on there. That's it. All right.

But otherwise, I mean, it seems like you're doing well enough just buying McLaren's, buying really dilapidated, crashed cars, fixing them up, doing well on your channel. And you'll see a higher ROI doing that than I think just about anything else. Thank you so much for coming on. Absolutely. Absolutely. I really appreciate it. Come back anytime. We will. You should change your flights right now and we should take up one of these calls like.

I wish. I would love that. If our flight could be another hour or two. So make sure to subscribe, hit the like button. You'll see plenty more episodes like this. Check out our lovely sponsors. They allow stuff like this to happen. They make it possible.

And seriously, to all the viewers that made it this far, honest, thank you. We would not be able to do it without you guys. So really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you guys. Until next time.