Banned From Austria! - Jamie Orr

[00:00:09] Speaker A: Hey, welcome to the DIY garage, the podcast for hands on, do it yourself automotive enthusiasts. I'm your host, Brian Joslin, coming to you from inside the workshop studio of the Eastwood Company in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. With me today is my guest Jamie Orr from Orchid Euro, among other endeavors. Jamie is many things, but a professional car show builder, or show car builder, I should say. A contributor to numerous tuner car publications and a somewhat self loathing social media influencer. He's best known in the modern Volkswagen tuning scene and hosts an annual festival weekend right here in Pottstown called Low show, which this can't be right, attracts some 20,000 plus visitors to town. We'll get to that. But before we get going, I just want to remind you that you can catch the DIY garage podcast in audio format on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, and most other podcast services. If you're not doing so already, you can catch the video version of the show on Eastwood's YouTube channel. You can also just go to eastwood.com garage and click on the podcast tab for the links to the podcast in either format. Whatever your preference, we hope you'll subscribe so you'll never miss a new release. So with the business stuff out of the way, Jamie, welcome to the DIY garage. I know it's not your first time here. Clearly you've worked with Eastwood over the years. Thanks for coming from all the way across Pottstown to be with us today. I know you're feeling a little under the weather. You just came back from Europe, right? [00:01:34] Speaker B: Just came back from Europe. And then before that, it was a big trip and car project in South Africa. So, yeah, we're just in April. It's been a busy year, but it's nice to be home. [00:01:44] Speaker A: Talk about those two trips, because I saw both of them on your social feeds. You start out in South Africa and then went to UK, correct? [00:01:53] Speaker B: Sure. So South Africa has just such a great car community culture going back many, many years, and Volkswagen specifically has a great big factory there. And it's a fascinating history. I mean, through apartheid, they were just really hiring and very forward looking. And so they've become such a part of the community there. But, yeah, I went and bought a car that had been sitting under a tree and with a few friends and companies, got it running, and then we drove it the entire way around the country in about ten days or so. [00:02:28] Speaker A: This is pretty typical of what you do. You travel somewhere, buy a car locally, fix it up, and take it to an event. [00:02:35] Speaker B: Yeah, for people that know me, that makes me tick. [00:02:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:02:39] Speaker B: And I think that's a lot of people's car, people's dream. I mean, go not rent a car, but go get a car and drive it and do a road trip. I just have happened into a habit of. I mean, there's lots of YouTube and tv channels that go and buy junkyard cars and do it, but kind of for me, whether I'm sharing it or not, I would do it anyway. So that car turned into a bigger project than I imagined. It was one of 150 of this very limited edition series, and people couldn't believe it was standing under a tree. And then we kind of put a hot rod motor in it and lowered it and then drove it to every corner of South Africa, including lots of gravel and off road and mountain passes. And along the way, we had impromptu meetings, so people would just meet us at gas stations. And it was. We didn't know if it would be two cars or 20, and sometimes it was 100. And we couldn't believe it. Parents, moms taking their kids out of school, like, oh, Timmy's got a doctor's appointment, and then, like, they just come and hang out with us. So just really heartwarming. And I think for. For me, I don't really. Cars make me happy. I like to go and meet people and talk about them, and so I don't really need to go and sit on a beach. So for me to have that sort of to go to mining towns or just kind of blue core towns and just meet car people there. So, yeah, so that was February. Last month was Europe. Every year I send over, at least since COVID my own car. Before COVID I would ship over a group of cars and sort of lead a group on a tour. So I have my own wide body motor, sporty style car over there with a big turbo and 500 hp or something. So, yeah, we went and drove that around a little bit. [00:04:32] Speaker A: You leading a pack of Americans or locals over there. [00:04:34] Speaker B: So the plan this year, this will be the first year since COVID that we've done the group trip. So we're going to do two weeks in Germany and we ship over american cars. And then others will buy cars over there or rent them, and we'll take them on a guided tour of Germany's car industry. So we'll visit the major factories, museums, and then a lot of suppliers as a lot of companies that produce products there for global markets. And so we'll go in just ten days of factories and then drive the Nurburgring and go to the. Yeah. [00:05:10] Speaker A: Is it same people that come on these trips, or is it new people rotating? [00:05:12] Speaker B: No, we just kind of open it somewhat to the public. We keep it. We don't really market it as such. It's kind of word of mouth. [00:05:19] Speaker A: It's more of a Tagalong kind of thing. You're gonna be there. Yeah. [00:05:22] Speaker B: Like, hey, we're doing it. And it used to be 2018. We used to book all the hotels and everything and really take a guided tour. And now we've kind of made it a little bit more simple. And here's the route, here's where we're going, here's the hotels that we're staying at. You're welcome to book the same ones. But what we found was that people would say, well, I've got a friend that I'll stay at with that night. And then my long lost cousin lives somewhere in Belgium, so I'm just going to disappear for a couple days. And so it turned into be easier than instead of me booking 300 nights of hotels, just, hey, you can book it direct, use your points, whatever. But the big thing is the logistics, the travel insurance for the cars, etcetera. But the Europeans love it as well. I mean, you show up with a bunch of us registered cars on us plates, it doesn't matter what you're driving, really. People are very welcoming. And it just, the conversations in gas stations again, are just so good. When someone wanders over and says, oh, why are you here? And oh, I have a car in my garage and it just sparks that kind of cultural exchange. [00:06:31] Speaker A: And they clearly know that they're us market cars, right? There's stuff that comes over that they never got right in some cases. [00:06:38] Speaker B: Or I mean, again, I come from the kind of european import scene. So if you ship a mustang over, I mean, fascinating. I go to the Netherlands quite often and they have a huge us car culture. And the same in Italy, Sweden, I've. [00:06:51] Speaker A: Heard too, they like the big, the Chryslers, the stuff. [00:06:55] Speaker B: But even, I mean, anything, just mustangs. And then you see, and I won't be mean, but you'll see just the crummiest american quote unquote cars over there. And you're like, this isn't cool to us, but over there it is novelty. Oh, it's so obscure, it's so american, and it's the same modern era. What gets me is the new chevrolets over there that were never sold in North America, maybe Mexico, they were never made here, but they're still like, I drive a Chevy, you drive a Daewoo. But I can't say that and tear someone down. But. So, no, it's really interesting how car culture works around the world and what's cool. But, yeah, we do generally take cars with sort of more of a us style, and a lot of our modifications are not legal. Street legal over there. [00:07:50] Speaker A: Wide tires, the stands, things like that. [00:07:52] Speaker B: Engine swaps. [00:07:53] Speaker A: Engine swaps. [00:07:53] Speaker B: I mean, if you do a motor swap over there or anything like that, even in Germany, suspension has to be registered. So you can't build your own. You can't do your own frame notch. [00:08:02] Speaker A: So can you come in as a tourist on a short term, yes. [00:08:06] Speaker B: Exemption, in theory. I do have one car that is banned from the country of Austria, and they really did not like the big 3.6 liter v six motor swap that I jammed into a little mark one rabbit and a lot of the other modifications. I mean, hey, I was gonna say, that's too long of a story, but we're here to chat. We did the motor swap in South Africa, shipped the engine from New York City down to South Africa because it was an EPA compliant motor, and that car could then come back into the USA with that motor, put it into this little car, shipped it from South Africa up to Europe. And I broke the front motor mount, which is part of the swap. And it happened, you know, running really, really low, an inch off the oil pan to the road. And the police were following my social media, and they stopped us at one point, and they knew who we were. And we had a car with four guys from Mexico with their car. And so they checked the passports, everything. And then they saw my oil pan, and they thought this wasn't very amusing, but they let me go. Then I broke the front mount, and we ended up DIY garage. Let's bring it back to the subject of this. I went to a friend's probably 40 zero year old barn garage in a little village in Austria, and I went and just rummaged around and found an old square metal pipe tube, and it was probably quarter inch thick steel. And I just chopped it down to the outline of the bell housing of the transmission. And I just cotton welded this bracket, and it's now the strongest thing on this car. I mean, it is stronger than the rebar. It is stronger than anything else on the car, so it's not going anywhere. But it was not approved. Neither was any of the rest of the shop. But they didn't realize that. And so they saw me driving late at night and pulled me over, and he walked up and said, mister orr, it is over. Oh, okay. So they brought out two state carb safety inspectors and failed the car on the spot for so many reasons. It was because I had DIY'd this engine mount, which I knew is like. [00:10:18] Speaker A: That was the strawberry. [00:10:21] Speaker B: They said, yeah. We have you on video saying that you have a non approved part. And that was it. Long story short, we made it on the national news. We made it. Yeah. All the little ladies in the village that they stayed. We knew them because we stayed. Every year we made friends with them. They were coming. Oh, is the hell. Okay, can we help? This is not fair, what is happening on the news. So they gave me back my papers, allowed the car to leave, but I had to sign an agreement that the car would never come back, leave directly, not drive on the roads on the way out and never come back. [00:10:52] Speaker A: Fine. In Germany, they don't care. [00:10:54] Speaker B: Nowhere else does. [00:10:55] Speaker A: Leave Austria with the car. [00:10:56] Speaker B: In Austria, we could have argued. I mean, the car is legal. You can't what's legal in the USA. But no, we are the land of the free modification. Like we can. [00:11:08] Speaker A: We see it all. [00:11:08] Speaker B: I mean, sure, yeah, no, everyone. I mean, no matter what kind of car you have, if you are doing a Chevy c ten or you're doing whatever, a Land Rover, you just weld your own patch panels, you can just fabricate it if you want to lower your car, I always say this, there's nothing. Modifications are pretty universal. We like popping up motors, we like putting different wheels, wider tires. Doesn't matter if you're in a Honda Camaro. These are all kind of fundamentals of what we like doing. Sure, the angle of your wheels or the size of the wheels, etcetera changes, but that's taste. Sure, you know, it's the same as shoes or handbags or something, but no, we are afforded a luxury of not being forced to register every single modification and having it put on the paperwork of the car. But when we take our cars there. No, they're legally registered and insured, so we should be free to drive and knock on wood and I'm going to upset your microphone. We've basically never had an issue ever with any other cars. We're always welcomed. If the police stop us out of interest, they take a selfie. Generally. [00:12:21] Speaker A: Yeah, that's it, yeah. Having worked in the media side of the business for years, covering a lot of german brands, BMW and stuff, we used to have german executives come over to their first trip for a north american launch and were often surprised at what was on the road, you know, the lifted trucks, the super slammed cars, like some states don't have inspections annually. You know, I mean, some of the things that are on the road are sometimes scary. And it was always amazing. You could tell it was someone's very first trip. Their eyes were just falling out all the time. I couldn't believe what we got away with here. [00:12:56] Speaker B: It's definitely wild. [00:12:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Coming back to. You're obviously known for VW's. That's your brand. VW, Audi, I mean, the family. But really, Volkswagen is where you got your start. Coming back to the whole modification scene, I feel like Volkswagen is very much a kind of a modern hot rod brand. It's very modular kind of platform. You can swap in engines, you can go big brakes, big engines, go front wheel drive to all wheel drive. The landscape is wide open in terms of what you can do for modifications. And I always found, I don't know that people recognize that there are other cars that are modular in that way. But I feel like the scene really took off when VR six s came in and you could start stuffing them into smaller rabbits and earlier versions of golfs. And then later when turbos came and the Wild west opened up for tuning. [00:13:53] Speaker B: To me, I feel like it's nothing new. And if an older generation that grew up with hot rods, be it buckets or whatever, once you get past the initial aesthetic, which can be very different and weird, 100%, I think a lot of the fundamentals are very similar. I mean, if you had a bucket with tiny little tires up front and wide in the back, and you took parts off of something else and you made it fit, and then someone else worked out that, oh, you can use this seat or this steering column. It's a lot of that same stuff. But I think Volkswagen is also, again, kind of similar to the original hot rodders, it's accessible. You're taking cars that generally aren't worth that much money, so they're accessible. When you're a teenager or your friend had one, or you grew up driving in one and your parents were driving. And I think it's a lot of that same kind of mentality that you can take a cheap car and make it your own. It gives you that freedom of the road, but also that kind of outlet, if that's what you're into. And a lot of the modifications we now have, I don't personally, but there is a trend in the import turbo scene of outputting the blow off valve or the exhaust through the hood or out through the fender or something which, again, not my personal aesthetic, but if I'm talking to other people that don't understand it, it's the same as running your exhaust down the side of the car and jutting out in front of your rear wheel. It's impractical. You burn yourself on it. Does it make more power? Probably not. Does it look cool to some people and does it get a reaction? Yes. And so I feel like, again, you go, well, it was drag racing. I don't really believe that. A lot of the kind of bucket rods with the tiny tires are hot. I know it's drag style, but when you're driving around Pottstown, you're not going for top performance. It's a look. It's trying to be shocking or getting a reaction 100%. And so I feel like that same thing is just kind of repeating itself. And we still, we like shaving door handles, roof rails, whatever, wrenching. You know, there is still a lot of those same mods. [00:16:10] Speaker A: I think the other parallel there is, it's very much a build it, don't buy it kind of culture. People are really proud of what they create at home, themselves. I mean, for better or for worse sometimes, but they do a lot of their own work. It's not a, you know, have some shop do this, $100,000 worth of modifications, and then I drive it. This is my creation. This is something I conceived and built, and the work stands on its own. [00:16:33] Speaker B: I totally agree. And I always sort of say, if you are, I mean, you can never stop learning. Go look at the other hot rods, go look at the same thing, and then just ask the person, how did you do that? And they're probably very excited to share. They might be a little surprised, and they're like, oh, you're driving a Honda Civic, but you're asking me about how to shave door handles or something. But no, I think that's always been the car culture. And it's really, again, it's the whole world over. No matter where you go, if it's Italy or, yeah, Africa, it doesn't matter. People are just love doing those kind of things. If they're into cars. [00:17:12] Speaker A: Yeah, it's an expression of their personality. It's their own. [00:17:15] Speaker B: It's an outlet. And whatever drew us all into cars, and then we also still look at trends. So, for me, the Volkswagens in the late nineties, early two thousands, were very much into wheel fitment, into shaving the engine bays, tucking the wiring, things like that, which is all very diy things, but you would have to be Picasso, to suddenly come up with all of those things immediately to invent them. But when you start looking at, again, the hot rodders, when you start looking at something else and like, hey, how did you change the offset of your wheels? Or how did you get your fenders at that angle? Or whatever it is. We now sit here in 2024, kind of looking back at the last ten years and seeing a lot of people in the car industry came from that community, because it was, it was kind of fashionable. It was a little bit ahead of its time, almost looking back to some of the magazines again from 25 years ago, tucking engine harnesses, and now looking back, it's so rudimentary, it's so basic. Like, oh, you didn't hide your throttle cable that's not even shaved. Whereas you've got to build on other people's footsteps. [00:18:33] Speaker A: You got a footing with in the enthusiast world, especially bringing in parts from Europe, cars and parts. Right. There's a lot of exchange, a lot of parts we never got here. Special edition cars. Seats, bumpers, lights, you know, a lot of accessories that the show scene, the crowd, you know, the show crowd really kind of gravitated towards. And you were a conduit for a lot of that for a while, at least, right? Sure, yeah, yeah. And vice versa. Right. You had stuff going back. [00:19:03] Speaker B: Car people just want things that make their cars different. [00:19:06] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:19:06] Speaker B: And you can do that by putting on a big fiberglass body kit or something. But within our kind of niche in the market, it was OeM plus was the term. So it was. [00:19:19] Speaker A: George Acorn claims to have coined that term, and he very much. [00:19:24] Speaker B: But I mean, again, anyone from the car, whatever car era or brand you're into, you still know, oh, that bumper was only available on that one special model in that one market, the canadian one, or on a cop car or something else. And so for me, yeah, we would go over and rummage around junkyards and do it a very laborious way and just find things that weren't available here and then vice versa. In Europe, they want side marker lights. [00:19:55] Speaker A: Which we want to shave. We want them gone. [00:19:57] Speaker B: Yeah. We're like, no, we want these orange pimples removed from the fenders, or you find the year that didn't come with that hole. Whereas to them, hilariously or interestingly, they'll put side markers on cars that were never available in the us market. [00:20:13] Speaker A: Okay, it's an american mod. [00:20:16] Speaker B: Sure. They're like, oh, it's a us spec. And we're like, we never got that car at all. Like that didn't exist. But again, you're just trying to find interesting details that make you happy and make your car to use stand out a little more. [00:20:29] Speaker A: How did you gravitate to VW's? Cause I know the first car you had was a Ford, right? [00:20:34] Speaker B: Yeah. My first real car was a Ford. I still own an identical model 1989 Ford Fiesta. So if anyone's like, oh, maybe he's gonna see something cool. [00:20:43] Speaker A: No, no, not the cool Ford. [00:20:45] Speaker B: It was the german Ford Fiesta. So they did have, like, the RS turbo. They had factory turbo versions. [00:20:50] Speaker A: Not yours? [00:20:51] Speaker B: No, no, mine was a one liter. My one now is a one liter. I bought a no horsepower carbureted, identical. Just like granny spec. [00:21:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Out of pure nostalgia. [00:21:04] Speaker B: Sure. And I love it. And I lowered it, and I put the correct three piece german wheels on it that I would have done if I had money when I was 17. No. So I moved over from Britain. I am scottish. And when I moved over, I basically very little money and looked around and was like, what car can I. [00:21:26] Speaker A: No one liter fiestas to buy. [00:21:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, so you. You did get them here. 78 to 80, but they didn't exist even when I moved over in, like, 2002 ish. But there was a mark one rabbit GTI sitting pretty much abandoned in a parking lot in south Philly. And I found the owner, and he was like, give me $300. And it didn't run. And I didn't get it running, I would like to think. Well, it went missing, basically. I came home and it wasn't there anymore, but I parked on the street, and I don't think it was really registered. So the city probably took it, but there was no warning. So maybe it was stolen, but, like, who would really have to, like, I'm gonna tow away this car. And in the car had came some extra parts. And I signed up on a website called VW Vortex. [00:22:17] Speaker A: I'm familiar. [00:22:18] Speaker B: Yep. And that's how we met, I believe. And I posted them for sale, and guy came, picked him up, and was like, you should come to a car show. And that was it. [00:22:29] Speaker A: When was that? About how long ago? [00:22:30] Speaker B: 2002, 2003 ish. [00:22:33] Speaker A: 20 years plus. [00:22:34] Speaker B: Yup. And then still didn't have a lot of money. Went to a auto auction in North Philly. Yeah, north Philly. Just off I 95 and had never been to one before. They had a Volkswagen fox, which is brazilian built, never sold in Europe. So again, one of these weird cars that it's a Volkswagen, but you could. [00:22:54] Speaker A: Never buy one seventies audi platform. [00:22:56] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah, I mean, an obscure one. Yes, obscure here, but in Europe, like, I'd never seen one. And, you know, when you're a kid, I always play that game of, like, what car is that based on the headlights or something? And I'd never been to an auto auction before. And I bid against myself. I was the only bidder. $300 or something. And then I panicked, and I raised my arm again, and this very Philadelphia auctioneer kind of stopped and went, hey, everyone. What? What? Just. Can you everyone be quiet? Look at this idiot. Sir, you really want to bid against yourself? Do you know how this works? And I was deeply embarrassed. And he kind of maybe cut me a break. He said, does anyone want to bid against this idiot? And nobody did. And that was it. So I got it for, like, $300. Had to pay title, registration, whatever, which was more than I paid for the car. And I hadn't really planned. I was like, okay, I've got, like, whatever, $600. So went over that budget, including the auction fees. Okay. And I walked out to the car, which had driven through. I checked it out. I think it was one owner, low mileage, super base model, jumped in, tried to start it, didn't start. And that's immediately as I'm akin to doing panicked. Oh, my God, I just spent all my money. Like, I don't have aaa. Like, what the hell am I gonna do? And I was freaking out. I'm like, but it was running. Like, this doesn't make sense. And another surly auction worker walked over, picked up that seat belt. You have to plug in to make. [00:24:25] Speaker A: It run, to have to jiggle it. [00:24:26] Speaker B: Yep. No, no, no. It wasn't plugged in. [00:24:28] Speaker A: It wasn't plugged in. [00:24:29] Speaker B: I guess I unplugged it, or someone else did. So he walked over without a word, reached over, grabbed it, plugged it in the door. Things started up. I don't think he said a word and just walked away. I'm like, okay, american cars are the same, but different. [00:24:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:41] Speaker B: So that was my learning experience of y'alls forcing people to make seatbelts. Yeah. [00:24:50] Speaker A: So how did you get from there to building cars for Volkswagen, for SeMA shows? Long story short, summarize that. [00:24:59] Speaker B: So I started working as a lot boy in a Volkswagen dealership, and then they realized that I knew about the cars, and so I started selling them. And then they realized that I was maybe had more skills. So I became a manager, and I did all the financing and started working at Volkswagen credit selling warranties, which I would sell the ones that I believed in. So you weren't buying the seat protection, but the wheel and tire, like, sell all day long, and people come back and later you're like, yeah, this is like an dollar 800 bbs wheel, and this insurance is $400. And you live in Philly, so probably got a pretty good chance of using it. And they pop their head in six months later and be like, yeah, yeah, new wheel and tire. Yeah. So from there, I went to work for Vanguard investments, and that helped me get my first house, you know, real job, but I would just work in the evenings. And then I started flying to Europe for long weekends and coming back exhausted and under my fingernails. And then on the trips to Europe, realized that I could just build a car here and take it to a show. You know, that kind of sparked it all. It was the 7th generation Jetta. Volkswagen was bringing it out, and there was rumors that they were going to be building a few for the SEMA show. And I already had worked with some marketing companies, etcetera, and there was a third car up for grabs, and a suspension company, KW, that I worked with a little bit, just on a friend basis, said, yeah, there's a third car, but we're not going to do it, and we don't think anyone else is going to sign up for it. It's a lot of work and it doesn't really pay particularly well. It's been a term dollar car that the manufacturers, Chevy, Ford, will sell your. [00:26:55] Speaker A: Car for a buck, write them down, and. [00:26:57] Speaker B: But then you've got to go and put the rest of the money in to then make it cool. So this new car was coming out. I did get to go and see it pre launch, and there was a couple of body lines on it that really struck me. And so I called them up and said, hey, can I do this one? And they said, no, no. And so kw, their marketing guy, the person, said, how about we do it? We'll sign for it, but you all understand, we're never going to touch it. And they said yes. So they basically co signed on it. The car came to me and they wanted to use the highest spec model. And me being mean, being slightly difficult and strange thought processes, said, no, I want the base model. I don't want a sunroof. I want uninterrupted body lines. I don't want side marker lights on the mirrors. I want this thing to be smooth. And then with another company from Ohio, we developed a body kit and I showed them what I wanted. I'm a terrible drawer with a pencil, but I'm okay in technical drawing. And that was it. So we 3d printed the full body kit back in 2018 or so. So now we're like, oh, you do it at home, it costs nothing. At the time, it was kind of groundbreaking, and we put really amazing suspension and seats and everything on it. And I knew at Sema, the car would be placed behind a Nissan Skyline GTR, which at the time was the hottest car in front of a Ferrari on air ride. So how do we take a base model Jetta and get any attention? Which is the point. Sema, it's a trade show, and the manufacturer wants this jetta to get attention. And I also knew the other two companies, so I kind of was talking to them, seeing what they were doing, and they were doing kind of normal modifications. So that was it. I credit carded a lot of the build. I kind of took the risk. I'm smart enough to know I'm not smart. So this was not a targeted, like, let's make this a really great build. But I just knew I wanted to try and make it the coolest of the three. [00:29:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:29:12] Speaker B: And I think we did it. We had a company in Japan, work wheels, launch a new wheel on it. Volkswagen had said, don't go bigger than 19s. So of course I went to 20 inch wheels, tiny little tires, custom, everything we could do to it. And it did so well. I remember dropping. I hate dust and dirt and paint. I really abhor it. And I've been lucky to work with a lot of great people who have tried to teach me well, and their attitude is really, just don't get dirt in it in the first place. [00:29:48] Speaker A: Did you paint it? [00:29:49] Speaker B: I did not paint the body kit. I took it to a body shop, and it was only the body kit, so it wasn't a lot. Yeah, but so that's why I don't paint in house. And I never really have painted in house. I've always used a booth. And it's the people that taught me, in fact, the person who taught me how to paint. And I painted that very first photo, fox myself, later on, his house was on the COVID of the very first Eastwood catalog. [00:30:20] Speaker A: Oh, really? [00:30:21] Speaker B: It literally was. He had this beautiful, wonderful gentleman. Dick Holtman. Built brass era phaetons, 1920s, had a mercedes 300 sl, had this beautiful, beautiful lifestyle. He was a Villanova professor, and he also. [00:30:41] Speaker A: You painted the fox at his house. [00:30:43] Speaker B: I painted the fox in his house. [00:30:44] Speaker A: Wow. [00:30:45] Speaker B: And I found out years later, because I painted it bright orange, that as soon as I had left and I thought I left it clean. He repainted the booth, but he. He taught me how to weld as well. And very much. You could see the old style professor, because I walked in thinking, I'm gonna metal together today. No, I didn't. I sat and watched a video and I read theory. And then he had plates set up for me to start practicing on. It was very. He'd never taught welding. I assume he had helped Ford on the mustang. I think he'd even worked with NASA. Like, he was a wonderful, very intelligent man. But he very strategically had a plan for me to teach me how to mig Weld, and then he taught me how to paint. And he was using lacquer. He was. When he restored his cars, he would find the original hides that were used, the same breed or something for the seats. He was so meticulous. And here's me with my crappy brazilian built volkswagen. And I used base coat clear, which he wasn't really. Yeah, he never really used, but he really taught me very well about attention to detail and cleanliness. And I'm forever grateful that this person, you know, that's going to concourse events, you know, we have the Radnor hunt, et cetera. That's where he was. And he would walk into Fred Simeon's museum, and Fred would drop everything and run over. And one of his cars is now sitting in the Simeon museum, which is for people that don't know it. It's in Philadelphia near the airport. [00:32:24] Speaker A: It's a fantastic museum for motorsports, motorsport. [00:32:27] Speaker B: Focused museum motorsport, but really kind of the grand era, like fifties, sixties, seventies. So it ends there. But sitting in the very, very back corner is a little cloth bodied, french built rally car from, like, the 1910s. And it was my favorite car in his collection. And it was two seater, but the rear seat was for the mechanic, who sat offset jammed behind the driver. And that was when you broke down. You were just carrying your own mechanic. And this thing is made of wood and cloth, and it sits quietly in the back of the collection. Fred's collection now. And he's passed also. [00:33:08] Speaker A: You ended up with one of his cars. [00:33:10] Speaker B: Not Fred's, my father in law. He had two buicks that sat, again, just beautiful facility. It was the catalog. I can picture the covers so vividly, and I haven't seen it in 20 years. [00:33:24] Speaker A: Let's see if we can dig one of those out. [00:33:25] Speaker B: It was sitting out in front of his barns. It was an old barn, and it had stables. And he converted each part of the stables into a different work. Area. So he had his lathe in one and you'd go next to it and there'd be the drill press. And each horse stable inside the stables was a different work part. Another learning experience. Again, like, he kind of Diy'd everything himself, but he had the full setup. He had the english wheel that he had shipped from England. Remember that? [00:33:56] Speaker A: The genuine English proper. [00:33:57] Speaker B: Like, who knows when it was made and what it weighed. But I remember one time they were standing around looking at this piece of metal, oh, how do we trim this edge off? And I'm like, give me an angle grinder. And I did it. And then they came and politely, forcefully tapped me on the shoulder and said, you're shooting sparks over into the next bay. And we don't do that here. Yep. So that was a quick learn for more attention to detail. [00:34:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:34:21] Speaker B: So, yeah, I just. I kind of learn everything there, but also that dirt and paint is the devil and you can sand it out later, but if you just. Even if you're painting in. And I do, I do powder coat in my workshop. I've done that for years. We will paint, but it's really to get the quality. It's easier to get it right first time. And if I'm building a car for Volkswagen of someone else, it needs to be perfect, right? But I still love taking the random ADHD decisions. I remember when we dropped off that spoiler, the 3d printed rear one, as I'm handing it and just signing off, I said, look, don't paint the last six inches. Leave it so you can see the 3d printed construction. And he, the painter, did a great job. Overlaid the. The clear coat over the paint by half an inch. You could see this graduation of nothing going into clear. And that car did so well at Sema. It was so much fun to just stand back and watch people walk past. And they wouldn't really look. If you haven't been to SEMA, it's overwhelming. I mean, there's thousands of booths, cars everywhere. You could walk 10 miles a day and still not cover it, it feels like. But people would walk past and then they'd see this unpainted spoiler and you'd see them kind of put their hand on it, which I don't think you should do at car shows, but fine. And then they'd walk around and then they'd look at the wheels and then they'd see maybe the remote reservoir from the suspension, which on a Jetta, you don't expect. So then people would get in their hands and knees and look underneath and like, oh, and then they'd take a minute longer, and then they'd walk 360 degrees around the car, which, again, is a base model jetta next to a Ferrari and a GTR or whatever next to some of the best builds. And just to have that interest and then discussions on it, that was my first build for a manufacturer. And, yeah, it was a lot of fun and kind of addicting. [00:36:25] Speaker A: Some of your subsequent sema builds have been challenging to get to the show. Right. I mean, you're kind of legendary for kind of getting right there as the gates closing almost right then. This, this sprinter this year was a challenge. [00:36:40] Speaker B: Yeah, it's gone. It's gone too far. Yeah. You know, I always kind of joke that I'll always get it done. Yeah. It's just kind of that mentality. [00:36:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:36:51] Speaker B: But this, I'm gonna make a promise to myself in 2024. I need to be more conscious of. I'm not even gonna say I'm getting older, certainly not really getting wiser properly. But, yeah, I wasn't going to have a proper big build last year. We had a couple of things, and then we also, my company does work for manufacturers and for vendors. We go out and we look after cars, we load them, we'll make last minute repairs. So that's what kind of pays my bills for a part of the year. And, yeah, last year, probably three weeks before, like, hey, do you want to do a build? It was a local paint shop who specializes. They also do hearses and funeral cars, etcetera. And they were doing their own tv show, which had nothing to do with me or whatever, but they said, hey, you've got this van sitting there. You want to do something? I'm like, yep, fine, let's do it. You know, and in true television style. Yeah, I went to hell. Like, parts aren't showing up, and, you know, you've seen every normal tv show. Will they get done in time? Stay tuned to find out. Oh, the deadline's coming up, and the team's got it. And it was very, exactly like that, but non scripted and not really set up. [00:38:07] Speaker A: And three weeks isn't enough time to really build a car from scratch. Right. [00:38:12] Speaker B: So much like a lot of this, I've gotten away mechanically, you know, I did. I flew out to California and took a car out of a junkyard, and we kind of had a whole bunch of just friends or strangers show up with parts, and I put it back together and just fixed it as I went. And nothing broke that I couldn't fix on the side of the road. [00:38:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:38:33] Speaker B: But the van, you know, we were supposed to. There was on a to do list of timing belt things like that, and it didn't get. [00:38:42] Speaker A: It was a diesel sprinter, right? [00:38:43] Speaker B: Diesel. Yep. [00:38:43] Speaker A: Five cylinder. [00:38:44] Speaker B: Yep. It's a big diesel. Big, big van. And, yeah, it made it to St. Louis. And then the timing pump for the diesel pump. Timing belt for the diesel pump, which is a critical part, left the discussion. And that was it. So it's. God, it was what? Sunday night? And Sema started on Tuesday. And I'm on Facebook marketplace, like, legitimately Sunday afternoon or something, and I just bought a massive used trailer. The guy did dirt track racing, and I bought the unknown trailer from him. We got a truck out of nowhere, and I just drove cross country to make it. About halfway across country. [00:39:29] Speaker A: Someone lend you the truck? [00:39:31] Speaker B: No, I rented it. [00:39:32] Speaker A: You rented it? Okay. I couldn't remember. [00:39:33] Speaker B: Yep. So I did that, and then I lost my spot outside the booth. So you can't Seema's funny for, again, people that don't know Sema's not a car show. You can't just kind of enter your. [00:39:45] Speaker A: It's an industry trade show. [00:39:46] Speaker B: It is a trade show. You are supposed to be industry to get in, which they are now officially changing this year and next year. But it was an industry joke that, like, oh, my buddy owns a car wash company, so, like, he gets us all tickets, but that was fine. But it's also a real deal trade show. And it was with century tires, with Delinte, a company that I work with. And they had a really cool booth spot right outside the south hall, which, if you go to Sema, you know, like, that's. That's a cool spot, right? And I'm calling up and, you know, again, we're at my company, we load a lot of cars. We work with Sema a lot, and called up and say, I ain't gonna make my cutoff time. I'm just not, like, so how close are you? And I'm, like, a thousand miles away with a massive trailer with an even bigger van on top of it. So I'm just not. And he said, okay, we'll work on it. And it got to a point where they put a different car there. They just have backup cars that are gonna be out back somewhere, a local or something. So that got my spot. So very grateful that rotiform, another wheel company, let me go in their outside booth. [00:40:56] Speaker A: So it went. But it didn't go where it was intended. [00:40:58] Speaker B: Sure. [00:40:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:40:59] Speaker B: And it was right behind the Ken block memorial. So, like, it was in wonderful company. And the reason for that spot was they have their own gate. [00:41:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:41:08] Speaker B: So they could open up a gate and I could go in for trailer. [00:41:11] Speaker A: Did you tow it in there? [00:41:12] Speaker B: I had to. You can't push this van. This van is, you know, loading it with it was a gentleman follows me on social media. He's a salesperson at Porsche in St. Louis. He came out in torrential rain and helped me ratchet strap this huge van up onto this trailer in dark. Literally couldn't get a come along. Couldn't. Like, maybe I had, like, a six foot come along. So I would go three foot stop, strap it down, move the come along back. I'm pretty sure that's exactly what we did. So, again, could not be more idiotic. Diy. Yeah. It's like, how can I get a tow truck to come out and winch over the truck? And I'm like, this is stupid. So 2 hours of ratchet strap come alonging it up, and then. No, once we got it down, there was a little dip for a drain at the convention center. And I think we parked at the top of the dip to try and get as much of a run as possible. And then I spent most of sema trying to fix it like I had a gentleman. Again, social media. [00:42:21] Speaker A: And not a typical scene at SeMA. Wrenching on cars. [00:42:25] Speaker B: No, kind of not. I mean, we always joke about sema cars that they don't have to be finished. They don't run. It doesn't matter. Bluetooth axles or differentials or bluetooth coils or something on the engine. But no, I had to drive the damn thing home. And then it turned out I had kidney stones as well. Didn't know where this excruciating pain was coming from. So I would work on the car, go and have my meetings, and then curl up in a bow and basically cry from whatever painkillers I could, you know, just like six ibuprofen at a shot and then wake up and do it again. So, yeah, I don't know what to learn from that. [00:43:06] Speaker A: Get more. [00:43:08] Speaker B: Drink more water. Sure. Start earlier. There you go. [00:43:13] Speaker A: I want to get to the low show because that's a big part of what you're doing now, and we're going to be involved with it this year. Finally. You launched that during COVID right? Is that correct? In 2020? [00:43:25] Speaker B: No, no, it was after. And if anyone doesn't know me now, you do, because we're just going. Just bouncing around and just. I am I am not the most. I will work hard, but I'm not the most sensible. So welcome. If this is. If you are new to this. Yeah. So no low show. And the name is. I didn't want to name it. There was after Covid, a lot of car shows kind of ended. And even before COVID there was the sort of takeover culture of even official car shows would spill out into the streets and just being unsafe. I mean, just. And again, it doesn't matter if you're import domestic trucks, whatever, you probably have seen. I mean, you've all seen videos of people leaving car shows, spinning out and hitting people. [00:44:15] Speaker A: And the VW seems pretty notorious for having some wild antics at times. [00:44:19] Speaker B: Yes and no. I think we have seen shows come and go, unfortunately, and I won't say any party is innocent, but I've sort of stood there at events that have gotten out of hand and stood at a distance and seen that it's a mixture of vehicles. There was one particular where, you know, a couple of big diesel trucks decided to start doing burnouts. And then it kind of, you know, what can the police do? So I'd been asked for many years to do a show and I always said, no, it's not really something that I'm interested in. And then it got to a point. I said, okay, I think it actually needs to happen because a lot of the shows are closing. And I think it's also a venue thing. We've lost so many great people, or they move. [00:45:11] Speaker A: A lot of moved every year was a different venue because they couldn't lock. [00:45:14] Speaker B: Which I think is actually an interesting thing. If you do that on purpose, then that can be interesting and keeps it fresh. But, you know, if you were. [00:45:21] Speaker A: When you don't get invited back, it's a different. [00:45:23] Speaker B: Sure. And, you know, english town, that drag race got sold at co got sold. So these kind of classic venues. And I think also kids maybe grew up going there and it's not interesting or unique for them. And so, yeah, in my hometown of Pottstown, which I've now lived in longer than I lived in any other country, so as I am scottish, grew up in England, but I've now lived in Pottstown longer than anywhere else, it's had such a great car culture. [00:45:53] Speaker A: Right. [00:45:53] Speaker B: Going back. [00:45:54] Speaker A: We talk about that all the time here. [00:45:56] Speaker B: Okay. [00:45:56] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:45:58] Speaker B: For people that don't know, it's an east coast town near Philadelphia. We are the last suburb of Philly. But back 150 years ago, it was its own standalone town, the Golden Gate bridge. The metal was built here. A lot of the great bridges on the east coast were built here. If you picture big, proper steel girder. Do you use the word girder? [00:46:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:46:21] Speaker B: Okay. There you go. Steel I beam or whatever bridges, they were built here. [00:46:25] Speaker A: There was a Bethlehem steel plant here at one point. [00:46:28] Speaker B: Bethlehem Steel is from Bethlehem. The higher end, more intricate steel company was here, and Bethlehem Steel bought them. So the story goes, and I don't quote me, Bethlehem Steel was building the Golden Gate bridge. One of the seniors went out and all he saw was the Pottstown company's name on everything. And somebody said, oh, it's so exciting to see our trucks here. And he was like, well, no, it's Bethlehem Steel. We own them. And so that was the turning point where it got renamed. So we still have the steel buildings here, but the town, it went from having its own tram system, going around to local towns, et cetera, to having a big car industry here. And within a 20 miles range, again, we're talking 19 hundreds, tens, twenties. It left, sure. And we ended up a bunch of tire companies, Firestone, etcetera, who took up the employment and then left and left a lot of pollution. [00:47:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:47:26] Speaker B: And so essentially we lost our tax bracket and we had a lot of pollution, but we also had a lot of blue collar workers that would go and cruise. High street. [00:47:37] Speaker A: Yeah, it's legendary. [00:47:38] Speaker B: I mean, sure, people would drive. [00:47:39] Speaker A: High street is legendary. [00:47:40] Speaker B: Hours around our high street is six lanes wide. Supposedly, Mister Potts didn't want to have to do a three point term with his horses. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's the story. So we had this culture, and of course, like a lot of things, it did kind of get shut down. [00:47:58] Speaker A: Sure. [00:47:59] Speaker B: So we have a lot of traffic lights, an excess of traffic lights, low speed limits, etcetera. And I love hearing the stories of people. I used to come and cruise in the seventies, or my parents, whatever, and they're like, oh, but they took it away from us. And then I'll also see the reminiscing stories or posts of we used to try and hit 100 before the bend to McDonald's on High street. I'm like, that's a residential street. Things never change. Like, we're all kids with cars. But, yeah, so the town's been really great to work with. The first year, I did rent the local shopping mall, right. Which was kind of down on its luck. [00:48:37] Speaker A: Indoor mall, which was pretty much wiped out at the time. [00:48:40] Speaker B: Sure. It was probably vacancies under 30% occupied. So I went in and made a deal and rented basically all unoccupied stores that were viable. And then again, talk about me not having enough time and whatever. I then learned the world of occupancy and fire and everything else. So it turned into, yeah, running around making sure that sprinkler systems and toilets worked and then working with the building you didn't own. Sure. Like, oh, no, we had a hurricane come through the week before. [00:49:16] Speaker A: Right. [00:49:17] Speaker B: And it wrote off a couple of the stores because they leaked so badly. So it's me in there with a shop vacation and fans trying to clean out stores and some of them, and it's just me making this decision of, yeah, that one's not viable, but also working with fire codes and everything else. And so we basically outgrew it in the first year. [00:49:35] Speaker A: So you use the vacant stores for kind of curated. [00:49:38] Speaker B: We put cars inside the store. [00:49:40] Speaker A: But you also brought in vendors and did pop up stores in there, right? [00:49:43] Speaker B: Yep. Yeah, exactly. So we had companies from across the US come in, we had Volkswagen bring their fleet of show cars. We had, I mean, incredible museum cars. We had the one of the surprise ones for people was the Audi that won Le Mans. Overall, it took the victory. It was Tom Christensen. He set the record for most wins in that car that year. And it's just sitting in a mall in Potsdam, in a former music store in the mall in Pottstown. The fire marshal, bless his heart, great to work with. They really weren't sure what to expect, and so the rules kept changing. We're loading in and they'd be like, oh, no, that's too many cars being too loud. Push them and then they're like, okay, you can start driving, but let's only do five driving, and then push them. And it kept changing and it kind of annoyed everybody. [00:50:41] Speaker A: Definitely a logistics nightmare for running a car show. [00:50:44] Speaker B: Sure. But I mean, again, I worked at SEMA, loading cars, etcetera, so I knew the backend. But I never had to do permits for opening up twelve retail stores in one go. [00:50:57] Speaker A: So the convention center is also equipped for. [00:50:59] Speaker B: They handle that, they give you the rules, and it's easy, whereas I'm doing this. And so that year, we outgrew them all. The mall also decided to try and rebrand and rebuild, which is wonderful. So we moved to downtown, which then meant to do the pop up stores, which is a big part of the show. I now deal with ten different landlords and permits and fire on all of those. But the town's been wonderful. Wonderful to deal with. [00:51:24] Speaker A: And Pottstown's got a great historic. I mean, high street is a great, beautiful architecture, and there are a lot of vacancies in beautiful old buildings. [00:51:32] Speaker B: But I think it won us a lot of friends after the first year, because a lot of these companies come in, not just us now. Now from around the world. Manufacturers from Europe are. Now, this is the only public event they do in the US. They do trade shows. But we had the CEO of Hanks filtration who have been going for 80 years or something, and they support oil. [00:51:57] Speaker A: Filters, air and oil filters. [00:51:59] Speaker B: So they make literally, in Germany, they cast the oil filter housings for the car manufacturers. Mercedes magic paper. No, no, no. Literally, like, and I can't believe it. Like, they're literally casting aluminum. Like, I went and watched them melt aluminum, which to me is always fascinating. Any kind of production I love, or mechanization. And they're doing that for german OEM supply. And so every year we do a lot of free giveaways for the show cars to thank them. So last year, they came out CEO of North America and his son came to the car show and they had filters for the cars made in limited edition packaging, and they gave them out for free. So instead of their company brand, and if you work in branding, you know your colors, your logo is, you can't mess with that. But this full worldwide global OEM manufacturer produced 600 filter boxes in a GTI plaid colored box and handed them out to free to every show car owner that came to the show. And it was literally the CEO and his son. The son, a year or two ago, they called and said, hey, we're looking at a first car. What would you recommend? I'm like, okay, safety wise, you want this year, if you're doing a Volkswagen on. And that just means the world to me. But then also for car owners, I mean, to have that gift, I mean, again, what's a filter? $8, but it's personalized, it's limited edition. And then you realize that this is like a full german OEM company that's going out of their way to just embrace you. And, yeah, they get marketing. They hope next time you buy that seven dollar filter, you choose Hanks. So it's not for no reason, but it's still pretty amazing. And then with the town and the pop up stores, pots town has a really beautiful main junction of high street in Hanover. It's our main interchange. And the store in the corner had been empty for multiple years. And another company, SCP Euro, went in and they're great at marketing, so they decorated it. They set up video screens, touchscreens, displays. They'd won the national championship in touring car, so they had race suits and car parts from it. And the story goes, one of the attendees of the show saw how good that store looked, decorated, and moved their business to it. And that we've had multiple feedbacks of that, of, oh, we didn't realize. [00:54:33] Speaker A: So you're facing a dwindling supply of pop up shops. [00:54:35] Speaker B: I love it, and I will, if we need to, we'll move this. We have some, unfortunately. Unfortunately, fortunately, we have so many great buildings in Pottstown. The steel mills, for example. We still have a lot of empty things that need revitalization. Companies such as Eastwood, Dana Corp. Who make axles. There are companies here that have good employment, that have good tax basis, etcetera, that are car companies through and through, but there's still a lot available. So, no, I would love, as a resident and as somebody that's rooting for it, that every single store downtown is vibrant and filled year round. Would I like one of those stores maybe to be mine? And we have kind of a little museum car collection going, sure, that would be a nice daydream. But no, it would be a great problem to have. [00:55:27] Speaker A: So you did one show in the mall. The last two have been downtown. We were talking about the post last year show, and you said 20,000 plus people came into town. You can't get that many in the show, but it brings people to right. [00:55:44] Speaker B: Here again, prove I'm not smart. My business model I love. Cause it's so broken. It's completely free attendance. We have a. [00:55:54] Speaker A: It's very hard to lock down an entire town to gate out an entire town. [00:55:58] Speaker B: No, it's been done. There's residents out there. I've been worked at a show that did that. That basically has entrances kind of blocked and you have to pay to go through the entrance. But I've always felt like it's kind of like you go to Disney World. Disney World is expensive to get in because you're paying for the kids, but then you've also got meals, and it's a whole big thing. And I really want it to be very welcoming and the opposite of gatekeeping. So I'm like, this should be super family friendly. So we pay for. We make all the parking free across the town. So no parking tickets. I should asterisk that with try and it may be. Yeah. So, yeah, don't quote me on that one. Yeah, that's what we try and do. So please park respectfully, because it is a town, there are lots of residents, etcetera. But I really try and say we want it to be welcoming for anybody. Not if they're not Volkswagen people, if they're just car people, or even if they're not car people, please come out, because we have beautifully decorated stores and I want to make it a show. We've probably all been there where we go with friends or family to a car show, and after a couple of hours, they're bored, right? Our. There's. There's kids and they want to go somewhere else or whatever the attention span. So my goal with it is that you can spend the whole day shopping in the local shops, in the local restaurants, the beer gardens, everything else. And it just so happens to be decorated town. Sure. Don't drink and drive, kids. There's six or 700 cars on display last year. We had cars from seven countries. We had visitors from ten countries. We had cars registered from 22 us states. [00:57:41] Speaker A: What was the furthest one out? Was it Washington state? [00:57:44] Speaker B: We do a trophy or we do a prize for furthest driven? Yeah, I think it was Washington the year before it was California. All of them are meant to be fun. So it's kind of. If you're trailering your car, we're probably not going to say you're farthest driven. We'll take someone that's lower if they broke down on the way. And really, you know, we had two kids. Nice, great guys from California, broke down two years ago. Diesel timing belt snapped. They got a trailer, brought it out, and we literally borrowed a caravan or an rv for them. They slept outside my workshop, and I gave them a used cylinder head, and they replaced their cylinder head outside. Just because we were like, we can't. There's so many show cars inside, we can't get you inside. They're like, it's fine, we'll just do it outside. It was like the most diy punk rock thing ever, and it was amazing. [00:58:35] Speaker A: We came by your shop last year, a couple days before the event, and it was a hive of activity. Quite random. Like there was in the parking lot. There was no clear order to anything that was going on. [00:58:47] Speaker B: I would like to disagree with that slightly, but no, there was an outside observer. [00:58:50] Speaker A: It looked like there was no clear order. [00:58:51] Speaker B: There was a moving piece. And so we do not have numbers for attendees. We simply don't. And I won't try and make one up. I know how many people we have registered, etcetera. The other part of it there is. We also have Saturday, which is the. [00:59:06] Speaker A: First of the month, Sunday. [00:59:09] Speaker B: But the local car club, Red Horse Motoring club, which is a private member's car club, really, really cool. In an old historic building. First Saturday from May through September, they do a free car show. And it draws 800 to 1000 cars on the high street area, plus at least probably another 200 dotted around. So they're pushing 1000 cars. So we incorporate that weekend. So we start Thursday evening and we go straight through Sunday evening. And so we have thousands and thousands of cars in town for that weekend, plus all the other people. And so we go on the estimates. Basically the police, fire, then one of the main manufacturers also has their own estimation. So they'll use drone shots. They do. They'll have somebody stand and count the amount of people that walk over a certain point. At one point, I think another one is based on how often do you see this person walk by and then you can make an average. And they have all these numbers and I'm scrunching my nose up and kind of thinking, I don't trust any of these, unfortunately, whatever. I have a number that I'm assigned for safety and that's what I have to do for insurance. And that's the number, that is my official number because I have been told, no, no, this is your number. So I don't really use it for marketing, etcetera. [01:00:33] Speaker A: But clearly it brings people, we have. [01:00:35] Speaker B: Thousands of the area, thousands of people. We have hotels filled already, starting to get booked up, and people have been booked since last year. [01:00:42] Speaker A: We're in early April now and the show's over. [01:00:44] Speaker B: Five months. [01:00:44] Speaker A: Yeah, five months out. [01:00:46] Speaker B: And I've been working on it. It's turned into what would be a normal full time job for somebody, which trying to get away from last minute, because this year we're essentially repeating the same footprint as last year. And I try to every year change it a little bit. [01:01:01] Speaker A: Is that about six blocks of downtown or something? [01:01:03] Speaker B: We have a mile. We close a mile. Wow. Yeah. It's a kilometer long on high street, six lanes wide. So if you need to envision this, it's almost, in the european car world, a little like the downtown of verdice in Austria. In the US, it's almost like, what's the one in Detroit that goes out? [01:01:25] Speaker A: Woodward. [01:01:25] Speaker B: Woodward dream cruise. But if you just took a 1 mile section of that main beautiful road and everything's kind of stationary in there with the manufacturer's displays, etcetera, it's hard to envision. So this year, and this is going to be a pitch to Eastwood for DIY. We want to have better car displays. And so super DIY, we'd like to. There was a show I went to in Austria run by a manufacturer of Porsche, Audi, Volkswagen, and they had car containers stacked on top of each other, and they cut the sides off the car containers and had spotlights, and it was cars stacked on top of each other in beautiful settings. And I'm like, let's do that. And then the reality sets in. That, okay, container is $3,000. We've got a plasma. Cut the sides off. We have to weld reinforce the sides, in which case we're going to have to paint an entire 20 foot, which is 20 by eight. By eight. And suddenly we're like, this is really big. [01:02:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:02:26] Speaker B: And of course I'm like, oh, let's just chassis black it. Like, that'll be hardy. And then we're like, but what if we made them a couple of, like, color match? Like, we work with lickomoly oils. They're red and blue. So why don't we have a red one up top and a blue one underneath? And then we'll have speakers and lighting and like, oh. So I worked out the budget and just the hard cost. We're going to get a crane and lift this up, and we're like, so it's $10,000 in just supplies and buying two nice containers, etcetera. Never mind. Me and my buddies just painting it outside, we're like, okay, we won't use a sprayer because we'll paint the neighborhood, whatever color we're doing. Like, there's no booth that we like. It's a shipping container. Okay, we'll use a roll on or a paint on or a heavy spray in. Again, we're like, okay, rust encapsulator and chassis black. So that's what we want to try and do this year is more beautification of the car displays. And again, for anyone, if you're not a car person, if you're local, like, I don't know why you're listening to this podcast, so. But we just want families to come out. Just come and have a great time. It's beautifully decorated. We have a beautiful town. We put its best foot forwards. And again, Saturday, it's all brands for free, so you can bring out anything. And on Sunday, yes, downtown is Volkswagen group Audi, Porsche Ducati. Technically, we don't advertise the Ducati and Bugatti crowd. They're welcome. But all the other parking lots are free. And we saw that last year that just outside in the free parking lots. It's a show. Oh, yeah, they're just parking for free. And then you go downtown, and I. [01:04:08] Speaker A: Saw people wandering where I was parked and just meandering and taking pictures of the parked cars that were. [01:04:13] Speaker B: We know they get in early, and our attitude is great. Come for free, park for free, walk in for free, and spend your money in the stores. Go buy a nice meal. Come and see Pottstown. And then all of the restaurants are here year round. Even the food trucks that we set up on high street are all local businesses. And I think that it's a lot of goodwill for car people from the community. But then also we get to hopefully give them their biggest day of the year for selling pizzas or jewelry or whatever else they do. [01:04:45] Speaker A: Yeah, it's certainly a unique show to come to. I've been to the last two. I didn't make it to the mall event, but, I mean, it's. It's unlike any other car show I've ever been to. And I've been to a lot of car shows in my. My days, too. [01:04:57] Speaker B: I'm. I'm really lucky in my career and for fun to have been to so many shows around the world. [01:05:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:05:02] Speaker B: And there's beautiful shows again in Africa, Europe, far east. Yeah, I'm the great. One of the best ones in is in southeast Poland. It's 4 hours in the ukrainian border. But they. The job they do is just world class. It's like taking an NFL stadium and just setting the entire place up, a banner going from the top of the stadium to the crown with pictures of cars on it. I mean, unbelievable car culture across the entire world. But I get to just kind of be a sponge and then see what we can do here on a much smaller, humbler level in Pottstown. [01:05:38] Speaker A: And you get to play by your own rules somewhat. [01:05:41] Speaker B: Again, we get to just kind of diy and see what we can make happen. So, yeah, this year, we've been working on a lot, so hopefully, hopefully we'll get nice weather. It'll be good. [01:05:51] Speaker A: Yeah, well, we'll be there. We'll talk about the display possibilities. And. [01:05:55] Speaker B: You like that sales pitch? [01:05:56] Speaker A: Yeah, that was good. [01:05:57] Speaker B: Yeah. We need 17 gallons of chassis, black. [01:06:02] Speaker A: We've got some scratching deck cans in back. We might be able to make something happen. But I really appreciate you coming by and being a guinea pig on our new podcast here. We've obviously got history over the years, and it was great to have a friend come on and make it easy for a first recording here and hope to have it back. I know you're working on some cool stuff over there. We need to come by more often, see what's going on. But I really appreciate you coming by and getting us off the ground here. [01:06:28] Speaker B: I appreciate it. I say, I've literally, I've bought my Tig welder here. I bought chassis black for years. [01:06:33] Speaker A: I know. We come over, we see all our stuff in your shop. [01:06:36] Speaker B: Yeah. And literally, the guy that taught me how to paint and weld, I'm going to shut up and let this end. He literally helped get it set up. I believe he. For, in exchange for product when the very first catalog, I think he helped make suggestions. So he's doing it for NASA and Ford and then also the very beginning of Eastwood. [01:06:57] Speaker A: It's a small world, right? [01:06:58] Speaker B: It's just car people. It doesn't matter. Yeah, just car people. So, yeah. Thank you so much. And again, for me personally, y'all were in Pottstown. [01:07:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:07:08] Speaker B: Like, you have a retail store that people can drive in, and then if you want to drive half a mile and go buy, get a nice meal downtown. Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Eastwood. [01:07:19] Speaker A: Thanks again.