We Bought Willow Springs Raceway

Sam Byrne and Maz Fawaz are part of the group that bought Willow Springs Raceway. On this exclusive interview they lay out their big plans for the iconic race track. Recorded April 22, 2025 For more information on Willow Springs' Future: https://www.willowspringsraceway.com/ Check out the full lineup and get 15 percent off your first order at https://www. TRUEWERK.com/TIRE CarGurus Go to https://www.cargurus.com to make sure your big deal is the best deal. New merch! Grab a shirt or hoodie and support us! https://thesmokingtireshop.com/ Use Off The Record! and ALWAYS fight your tickets! For a 10% discount on your first case go to https://www.offtherecord.com/TST Want your question answered? Want to watch the live stream, get ad-free podcasts, or exclusive podcasts? Join our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thesmokingtirepodcast Tweet at us! https://www. Twitter.com/thesmokingtire https://www. Twitter.com/zackklapman Instagram: https://www. Instagram.com/thesmokingtire https://www. Instagram.com/therealzackklapman

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Matt Farah?

  What up everybody, welcome to the spoken tire podcast. You know it and I know it. Your favorite car podcast. This podcast is brought to you by off the record as always, but asterisk very important. We're getting rid of the app code. It's been problematic. People have been having problems using the code on the off the record app. Instead, you want to support your favorite podcast when you use off the record. The best legal aid service, legal aid service is probably not the right term. Service to help connect you with a lawyer to fight your tickets and win 97% of the time. That's off the record. Go to off the record.com slash T S T.

• 0:42Matt Farah?

  They'll get you all legal services 10% off when you book through us. Right off the record.com slash T S T. They're the best, but ditch the code on the app. You can use the app once you make an account. Right? The app is still good, but the something about the software and the code through the app. It just, it's causing problems. So it's gone, banished. Right? Like your tickets, like the points off your record. Off the record.com slash T S T. Love them. All right. This is a very special episode of the podcast because I've been waiting to talk about this in detail for months. Today, we're going to go out to Willow Springs. Zach and I are going to sit down in the famous Willow Springs diner.

• 1:27Matt Farah?

  With Sam Byrne of Cross Harbor Capital, my new friend. And with Maz Fawaz of Singer. And they are going to talk about all of the plans in detail of Willow Springs of what's happening. They've bought this place. What are they going to do with it? Long form on the record, also some really interesting tidbits about what's going on at Singer. Vehicle design. Maz gives us some inside baseball there. And we learn who Sam is. Who is this guy who shows up out of nowhere? And buys one of the most famous racetracks in the country. So this is a really interesting bit of radio. Zach and I out at Willow with Sam and Maz, who own the track.

• 2:12Matt Farah?

  All right, here we go. At the diner, the legendary diner surrounded by a photorealistic. Cactus in the Corvette with Sam and Maz. Thanks for doing this, guys. I appreciate it.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Pleasure. Nice to be here.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks for having us.

• 2:26Matt Farah?

  Big news. You guys own a racetrack now. Good times. You know, there's certainly, this podcast may be a little bit inside baseball to Los Angeles because of what this track means to

• 2:41Matt Farah?

  this car community, not just LA, but San Diego and the whole SoCal area. But I think even if you're not from Southern California, it is important to like, recognize how important it is for LA and San Diego and everyone in this area to have a world-class motorsport facility. And so, when they announced the track was going to be sold, and when they announced that Sam's company, Cross Harbor Capital, was partnering with Singer, and Maz is representing Singer today to purchase this, it was, "Oh no, don't take it away. Don't make it private." But the thing is, I already knew Sam and Maz. And so, I was confident that they were not going to mess this one up. So, Sam, let's start with you. Who are you? I'm just kidding.

• 3:27Matt Farah?

  Sam Byrne, I'm not going to throw you on the spot. But what about you and acquiring this racetrack? Tell me the story of you seeing it and then following through.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  Sure. Well, first off, enthusiast and collector to begin with. And I think that's kind of where I started. And for the last decade, as an investment firm, we've seen a lot of track deals shown to us, typically de novo, new places, being built in more obscure areas, trying to get financing, largely modeled around private clubs. And we had financed a bunch of stuff in the private club business. You've visited a couple of them. And we thought it was a really interesting business, except that the clubs didn't seem, the ideas didn't seem to have much soul. They didn't really seem to appeal to me as an enthusiast, because

• 4:23Speaker 01

  they didn't, beyond not having any history, the idea of being in a place that was purely Really private seemed just a little awkward to me, particularly given the scale that you can achieve with these facilities. And so, you know, we had, we had looked off and on at various places around the country, continued to see more tracks that were close to major urban areas go away, basically become the Amazon warehouse, as we know is going on.

• 4:52Matt Farah?

  That was a fear too, when the track sold, that it, that it might not remain a racetrack. Forget being a private track.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. And this sort of dropped in our lap. We saw, I saw this, I'd known about Willow, and I saw it advertised in one of the, you know, I think it was podcasts and blogs and things like that. And I couldn't, I sort of was shocked that something of this scale was being publicly offered. It was being sold by a broker who was in the, largely in the residential, mobile home business, right?

• 5:24Matt Farah?

  Well, there were some mobile homes here.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, there were.

• 5:26Matt Farah?

  Maybe that's how they got through.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  But right from the start, given the scale and given its proximity to LA, this was super appealing to us. Really interesting.

• 5:36Matt Farah?

  Maz, Singer has, Singer Vehicle Design has been like, really, I mean, the, the sort of a figurehead in the modern Los Angeles customization, restoration, modification culture, inspiring lots of imitators and other people that were, are not imitating, but were clearly inspired by the, the early and continued success of, of Singer and what they're doing. I just went to your fact, your new factory. Incredibly impressive stuff. I drove a little taste of Sam's new turbo last time I was here. We're, Zach and I are driving your turbo on Friday. But a club? What do we, what, first, first it was like

• 6:21Matt Farah?

  when you guys did the watch two years ago. I was like, car guys, watch guys, I get it. But like, a complicated watch, not like a cross brand, and you know, and that was like crazy. And you stuck with that. And now, a club. Talk to me, what's going on here?

• 6:39Speaker 02

  Well, we, we, we, we think of ourselves as sort of of California. I mean, we're made, we're, we wouldn't exist. It's not like this could, we don't think this could have happened anywhere else. Singer could have happened anywhere else. It's like, it's, you know, LA, Malibu, the whole thing. That's really, it's sort of ingrained in our cars. The idea that, you know, this, the excitement for us really is the idea that Southern California can have a racetrack, a real racetrack. We think of the nearest one as Laguna. So we go there all the time. We've been, you know.

• 7:12Matt Farah?

  It's eight hours, guys. With a trailer, that's eight hours.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  No, it's, yeah, it's a.

• 7:16Matt Farah?

  It's all day.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  But that's, you know, the idea that, that LA, Orange County, San Diego could have a motorsports facility, one where we could be, you know, be a part of it is like a fantasy.

• 7:25Matt Farah?

  It's so crazy that we went so long without.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  It's so crazy we went so long without. This place operates, I've raced here a few times, but it's, you know, it's, it's just hasn't been touched in so long. I would argue that, you know, when it was built, cars were a lot slower, tire technology sucked. Maybe it was fine.

• 7:43Matt Farah?

  Dude, they shot Ford versus Ferrari here and didn't change anything.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right.

• 7:48Matt Farah?

  I, I was on the elliptical yesterday, not because we were doing this today, but I'm on the elliptical and Ford versus Ferrari is in the Netflix, it's just, just put up on Netflix. I'm like, you know what? That's a good cardio. And I watched it and the Ken Miles Willow Springs scene with the, with the wrench. I'm going, they put up the little banners like you put up for the photo shoot. Did absolutely nothing else.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it's incredible. And so, so I think for, at least from a personal perspective, the idea that I could, you know, drive an hour and a half from, I live in Santa Monica, and go to a, go to a racetrack that we're a part of, that would just be a part of the story and be a part of the, and now, you know, part of the ownership. I mean, it's, it's the coolest thing, just from a car lunatic perspective.

• 8:33Matt Farah?

  Well, it's the right, if you're in LA, this is the right amount of distance for a racetrack, right? It's far enough where you've got a real racetrack. No disrespect to the kind folks at the concourse club who are fabulous people. You've done a great job. Aaron is the best. But it's in the city and you're, it's limiting what you can do there. But here, it's still, it's still a day drive. You're out and back. You don't have to stay out here.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  You can be home, you can be home by dinner. You can have a fabulous day out.

• 9:01Matt Farah?

  And you've got a real racetrack.

• 9:02Speaker 02

  And there's no, no noise restrictions, right? I mean, it needs a lot of development and so on. So I think, I think the. The first, first for us, it's being part of a Southern California racetrack. The private club side really came after meeting Sam and understanding what Yellowstone Club

• 9:21Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  has become.

• 9:22Matt Farah?

  Well, my next question was Singer and Cross Harbor. How did that, how did that happen?

• 9:27Speaker 02

  So, so Sam is a car, I met him through, we have, we have investors who, who he's known for a long time, but he's also a customer. And I met him at LeMans last year, and that's where the conversation started. The idea that Singer could have a private club wasn't something that, you know, had been brewing for a long time. In a, in a weird way, we do have, you know, we have private get togethers, we have our clients get together, there's just a kind of a club element, right? That really, that really, when we started looking at the idea of Willow Springs being an actual thing.

• 10:00Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  Well, it could host a private club, it could remain a, a public circuit, but have a private club, and of course, we could be at the center of that.

• 10:07Matt Farah?

  Which aspect of this, of this, of having your name on a portion of this is most appealing to Singer? Is it the club? Is it that you can have a, a testing and development center here? Is that you can have a customer experience center here, a sales center? Is, does any of those branches of business appeal to you guys more than any other?

• 10:27Speaker 02

  The, so Singer gets to participate in Willow Springs becoming a, a thing in Southern California, which again, we're sort of, we're sort of made of. We get to have a, be part of a private members' club, which is kind of cool. It's, it's a, it's sort of a, it's a step for our brand, right? It's a thing we, we've been trying to, our little brand has been trying to punch above its weight for a very long time. To me, it's just another, here's another thing to participate in. But of course, having now a facility here where we can keep cars, we can service cars, we can come out and do development and testing, we could, you and I can just go out and drive, like that's.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  You know, we can just leave Torrance with a few customers or just ourselves and go out to the circuit.

• 11:08Matt Farah?

  And you can make a really nice road drive here. You go over Bouquet and Spunky Canyon to get here. You can make that drive nice.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:15Matt Farah?

  Uh, Sam, uh, let's talk real quick about the, uh, sort of division of public and private. This is the, the major concern for a lot of people.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 11:25Matt Farah?

  When they talk to me and I've been saying people for weeks, wait, just wait, just trust me, wait, trust me. No, no, trust me. Sam's cool. He's not gonna hose, he's not going to hose us, right? So talk to me about, about how, how we're gonna, how we're gonna divide up the usage as well as the physical property.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Yep. Well, we're still working through some of the usage pieces and.

• 11:47Matt Farah?

  Oh, wait, by the way, sidebar, the renderings that you showed, are we allowed to show those? Can we, is that?

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Probably not.

• 11:53Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  But I think we can, by, by September, we'll give you stuff that we absolutely know we can do and build.

• 11:59Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  And we're, we've been working with the county. The county's been fantastic, but we have lots of work to do there.

• 12:04Matt Farah?

  But just even, even as like inspir- like non-committal inspirational visuals, when, when I saw the photo, the, the renderings, I was like, oh, that it could look like that? Oh.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  And certainly around the track, like the track will, I think we came to the conclusion yesterday that we're gonna be FIA two, which means there's gonna be a tremendous amount of improvements to the Big Willow that will, uh, make it more flexible, make it more interesting and first of all and foremost, make it more safe.

• 12:30Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Which is really, it's safe not just for human life, but also for.

• 12:34Matt Farah?

  For cars.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  People's property.

• 12:35Matt Farah?

  Yeah, this is, this is, this is a bad place to have an off.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  I was having, I had, uh, I was fortunate enough to sit with a bunch of car enthusiasts last year in Monterey, and I sat with Danny Sullivan and he said, the reason we stopped testing there wasn't because we were killing drivers, but we were destroying cars.

• 12:50Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  And, uh, we just couldn't, we couldn't, we couldn't afford it.

• 12:53Matt Farah?

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's bad. So, uh, but I, I got away from it. So, public, private, talk to me about the plan here.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  I did my best politically to work away from the question.

• 13:01Matt Farah?

  Yeah, you can, you can, you can, so, so, what are the five D's of Dodgeball?

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Well, I led with, I led with this idea that pure private places, you know, don't really have a soul, don't feel like they have a soul. And I think I shared the anecdote with you that I might have a dozen cars and I meet a guy who has the 73 RS Lightweight and I'm gonna talk to him for three hours and it's the only car he has and he's been, you know, he's owned it for 40 years. And that's the community. And I think that a pure private experience would lack, dramatically lack, community. They also are very difficult to make, make money. So, from a pure business perspective, having public access here is,

• 13:45Speaker 01

  is really important. And so, we, we, we will lean at, at least as much into the public and OEM as we will the club side. What we're fortunate to have here is these multiple facilities. That's a really, that was the thing that was most, most unique. When we looked at de novo land outside of any big city, first of all, prohibitively expensive.

• 14:07Matt Farah?

  You've used that word twice and I've never heard it before. What is de novo?

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Undeveloped, new, of nothing.

• 14:12Matt Farah?

  Is that, that's an acronym for something? For what?

• 14:15Speaker 01

  It's Latin.

• 14:15Matt Farah?

  Oh, okay.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  I think, and they're gonna, someone's gonna correct me on there, but it's basically of nothing. There's nothing there yet.

• 14:21Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  So you're starting with a fresh piece of dirt.

• 14:23Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  First of all, permitting. Second of all, anybody, you know, complaining about noise, for any number of reasons, they're just not getting built in any place where people can drive to comfortably.

• 14:33Matt Farah?

  Sure. Yeah, okay.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so, the, from my perspective, having the public element is really important. Now, people that are gonna spend the money, which is gonna drive the revenue to make a lot of these improvements, they don't wanna be exclusionary. They, they maybe want a slightly more comfortable vertical. That's fine, let them pay for it. You know, and we'll provide it. We're good at, we're, we, we know the club business.

• 14:57Matt Farah?

  I see it more of like... Instead of like, opening like, a members only like supper club, you're putting a VIP section in a, in an already hot club.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  It's a really good way to describe it.

• 15:10Matt Farah?

  And, and I think more people, there are certain type of people that don't, literally don't want to be around the regulars, but I think there's more people, particularly in Southern California, who are looking for, like you said, maybe a more comfortable VIP experience, but at the thing that is cool because the reg, like, if you cut this off and wall this off from people, there's no racing, there's no track days, people stop caring, no one cares. What does a lap time, no offense to them because they do a fine job, what does a lap time at Thermal mean to anybody? Nothing, because who's ever driven it? Who can compare? But when you've got a race car, and when you've got a public track day, and all the YouTube videos, and now you're a member, blah, blah, blah, it actually means something.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  And you will be able to run, at least in our current design scheme, you'll be able to run the original Big Willow course. That won't necessarily always be the course at Big Willow, because a lot of people won't be capable of driving that in a really, you know, a really fast, modern car, but you will be able to run that course, and be able to talk about your lap time compared to something in 1958 or 1961.

• 16:15Matt Farah?

  Uh, yeah, uh, track configurations, I mean, we're still under development, and there's a bunch of racetrack folks that are here driving around in Suburbans today. But, but, I, from what I understood, you guys largely plan to keep the layouts that, that exist now, add a little bit where, where necessary, and, and Maz, why don't you speak to that?

• 16:37Speaker 01

  It's adding optionality.

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• 20:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, right. So, Big Willow will remain. Streets will remain with a tiny few adjustments, but...

• 20:50Matt Farah?

  Can we keep the four-foot orange cone where if it's not there, you drive into a deep hole? And if it is there, you get to avoid the hole?

• 20:56Speaker 01

  The answer is no.

• 20:57Matt Farah?

  You should keep it and put it in like a glass box at that table that Anthony Bourdain ate with Obama. Actually, it's pretty funny, and you could like turn that cone into like a trophy for like a championship on that track. That would be pretty fun.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  It's not a bad idea.

• 21:17Matt Farah?

  You should keep the cone. The cone has to live on.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  We're not throwing anything away that we need.

• 21:20Matt Farah?

  You need to hire my wife for sentimental whimsy, and she'll go around and find interesting stuff to keep before you bulldoze things.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  Seriously? We're not bulldozing things. That's not us.

• 21:34Matt Farah?

  Yeah, that's the next question. What are we bulldozing?

• 21:36Speaker 02

  We're gonna start today.

• 21:40Matt Farah?

  Please let me. Have you ever, have you ever knocked a building down? It is fun. Oh, it's so fun.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  When the time comes, we'll, we'll let you out here with a D8 and let you do it.

• 21:49Matt Farah?

  Okay, so we're gonna-

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Very little right now. We're gonna actually make some improvements for early activation. So another concern people had was, is the track gonna close for three years? We're, we are continuing to operate on the schedule that the Huth family committed to through the end of the year. They hadn't booked anything into 2026 yet. We'll start taking bookings for 2026 based upon what work we need to do around it. And so we will be, we will, like, streets will probably close for two months this summer because we actually will uh, be focused on streets first.

• 22:18Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  In terms of improvements.

• 22:20Matt Farah?

  Are you guys gonna do a, a, a sort of intermediate improvement before you do the big thing?

• 22:25Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, early activation, this will change a little bit, but we'll stay here. It'll just be a little more comfortable.

• 22:30Matt Farah?

  Please leave the Corvette, don't-

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Well, you have the-

• 22:32Matt Farah?

  Don't take away my-

• 22:33Speaker 01

  The montage to Bill Huth here on the wall, so we'll leave that. Uh, we'll do some stuff, uh, up at the Budweiser clubhouse. I'm not sure a lot to talk about booze on TV anymore.

• 22:43Matt Farah?

  Oh, yeah. No, no, we don't have an FCC.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  You don't have anything. So, uh, we'll, we'll make some improvements up there to get early activation out of. We'll build some temporary storage for cars. We'll improve security. We have a whole-

• 22:55Matt Farah?

  Safety improvements, yeah.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Safety's like the number one thing, so we're running the track very carefully right now. I think you, you mentioned it earlier. Our partner Speedway Motorsports, uh, and they run and own Sonoma in Las Vegas. This is like the perfect triangle for them.

• 23:10Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  And, uh, you, I'm, I think you, you know, uh, the Smiths.

• 23:15Matt Farah?

  Oh, I do. They're, they know what they're doing.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, some of our, well, you saw Marcus at my, at, at Laguna, at, uh, Sonoma with me last year.

• 23:22Matt Farah?

  I did, and, and Zach and I just got to try out 10 Tents in Charlotte.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, you were there, right.

• 23:27Matt Farah?

  We were there two weeks ago.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:28Matt Farah?

  And it was really cool. A little roller coaster of a track.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's cool.

• 23:32Matt Farah?

  Have you, have you been?

• 23:32Speaker 01

  I have, yeah.

• 23:33Matt Farah?

  It's a, it's a good time. We got to drive a Roof SCR, which is a really neat-

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Fantastic.

• 23:38Matt Farah?

  Really neat little car. And we learned later the rear tires were about eight PSI too high, so the thing was like insanely tail happy.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  That looked like a really good, did you guys go to the-

• 23:49Matt Farah?

  It was nice.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  And you did the Bruce Meyer Award and the whole thing. That looked like there were some great cars there as well.

• 23:54Matt Farah?

  There were some great cars at the concourse, but you know what, when you do an event like that, even at a relatively small racetrack, it's amazing, you go, oh, there's 5,000 people here, but with that much space, it's like amazing how fast they sort of disperse. So they could probably triple the size of that event and it would be just fine. But what a beautiful racetrack.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  So two points to your prior comment. One was, you know, some people want to be excluded and want to be private. That's probably not the right person for us if in our club membership. That person's not going to necessarily be happy here ultimately, because that's not the community and the culture we want. The second point was to the Smiths, you know, their ethos as a business and as a family, just the quality of human beings they are, fits so perfectly with Maz and my philosophy and why we get along so well. It's just, we want to create something special that has longevity, that our kids can be proud of long-term here.

• 24:51Matt Farah?

  So run down the list real quick of the tracks, FIA2, fabulous. But there's so many other amenities that you guys have talked about putting in here. To the extent that you feel comfortable saying what will be here, what are we talking about?

• 25:10Speaker 01

  We will have to build a proper paddock setup to support corporate, to support public events. We'll have to build something like that. The scale of what that is, how big it is, we're sitting where it's probably going to be ultimately.

• 25:25Matt Farah?

  There's only so many places it could go.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  We can make track-related improvements, so garages, support facilities, paddock facilities, potentially clubhouses with the current zoning that exists today. Beyond that, to build hospitality-oriented stuff, like potentially a hotel, which I think would be great down the road, we have to go through a process with the county and find a way that it works for both of us.

• 25:52Matt Farah?

  Is that changing zoning or is it conditional use permits?

• 25:55Speaker 01

  It's probably changing zoning, yeah.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, so when the track was developed, there wasn't zoning in Kern, so.

• 26:04Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah, it just like doesn't exist.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  And you have California Sequin, you have all kinds of things you have to go through. So we want to do a bunch of improvements that can get us a quality experience out of the gate.

• 26:14Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  And then we'll go through that process, which could be as long as 18 months to two years. Even with all the support from the county, assuming we, that we come to a conclusion on what the right things are to build.

• 26:25Matt Farah?

  Yeah, well, this is like a majorly long-term project. This is like, we're talking about a decade or something, right?

• 26:31Speaker 01

  I would hope in five years that all those public facilities are basically completed or, you know, far along in their development. There may be other pieces of it that, you know, we have a lot of land here.

• 26:44Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  That would be down the road, but that's, that would probably be in the second half of the decade.

• 26:49Matt Farah?

  School?

• 26:50Speaker 01

  For sure, yeah.

• 26:51Matt Farah?

  Drivers, drivers' educational facilities?

• 26:53Speaker 01

  Drivers' school, yeah, I think you saw, we're planning on building a large format training facility on one of the two ovals. We'll keep one of the ovals, one of the ovals will become a training facility with kick plates, skid pads, the ability to water the entire facility, we'll be able to do insurance training, police and fire training, young kid driver ed, that type of stuff, which is a good business.

• 27:17Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  And if you look at the European tracks and how they're operated, they all run those types of programs as well as race training and continuing ed for younger drivers, that type of thing.

• 27:27Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I mean, this, a facility of this size has been criminally underused. I mean, with three tracks, five, how many, five tracks are here right now?

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Seven, actually, add them all up, plus the karting track.

• 27:40Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I mean, it's, even if you, I mean, my experience, I've been to a million track days here, what, private, public, whatever. If there was a club, and that club had access to streets on Wednesdays, and I'm at a public track day on big track. My experience is not any different than today. In fact, it's much better, given what you're talking about doing. So, you know, what are the techno guys like to say, you know, two-thirds of a huge pie is way better than 100% of a tiny pie, right?

• 28:12Speaker 01

  You might have a commercial being shot on the horse thief at the same time, right? That's a sort of iconic, if you go into any McLaren dealer's service shop, that's the photographs that are on the wall.

• 28:24Matt Farah?

  So many commercials.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  Not that I've been in a...

• 28:26Matt Farah?

  You might have to stripe that like a road. That's what they do out at the Hyundai Proving Grounds. If you want a racetrack that looks like a road, the Hyundai Proving Grounds has one that they've striped. And so it looks like you're shooting a commercial on a road, but it's a track. It's pretty cool.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, actually, for production, could be fun.

• 28:48Matt Farah?

  Maz, have you guys thought about, I'm sure you've thought about, but to the extent that you're willing to share, what does a membership look like? What does a membership get you? Do you have to have a Singer Vehicle Design car?

• 29:02Speaker 02

  No, absolutely not. So, these guys run maybe the finest, you've been there.

• 29:07Matt Farah?

  Yellowstone Club? My head exploded. My head exploded. It is the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  The idea that you could translate that, it's not just the facilities, right? Translate that to the car world, the kind of concierge...

• 29:19Matt Farah?

  Yeah, it's wild.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  ...version of, you know, dealing with your equipment, dealing with your race suit, your helmet, your gloves, sort of all of that, all that being taken care of so you can come in, arrive and drive. That's that convenience, making it very, very easy, right, to come in. You have a little bit of a home base, whether it's a clubhouse, or eventually, you know, a place to stay overnight, or store cars, or whatever. That kind of thing is something that's not limited, obviously, to just our customers. I think anybody in...

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Anybody in sort of the business of having a bunch of cars and wanting to use them and saving some time and inconvenience and coming out to a place like this. Imagine a public event, a race or a, you know, whatever it is. And you have the ability to kind of go back to the private area.

• 30:10Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  If you feel like it, where your, where your stuff is or come out and mingle. I mean, the whole thing is it's an experience that we've been to a bunch of private, fully private clubs, they can be really quiet.

• 30:21Matt Farah?

  They are really quiet. Often they're really quiet. If you're looking for quiet.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  You go out with 10 people, there's only 10 of you, right?

• 30:27Matt Farah?

  Like I just said, how, how hard is it to fill a racetrack? You need so many people to make a racetrack look busy. So, okay, but we're, but as of now, we are not suggesting that to get a membership, you will have to buy a property, right? Those are separate things, right?

• 30:45Speaker 01

  There, there's no, there won't be a connectivity between those. People that are members ultimately will have the first rights to buy garages, for example. The things that we can build today as of right with our billing permit, we, we, those would be things that the members would get access to first.

• 31:01Matt Farah?

  Yeah. What, um, other than the history and the general track layout, as you wander the property and look at stuff, do you find anything where you go, we should keep this? This is, this is something cool.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  I, I think overall, the, the answer is yes. Like I, I mentioned, keeping the original big layout so that we can, that's kind of a nod to history because that's not, we, we could, we could make it better. We could change it, but then it wouldn't be the same. So there'll be options to run the track in both directions. For example, there'll be options to have different configurations of the track. You could potentially even split it into two, but at, at, at its core, you could eventually, you can still run the same track that was being run in 1960.

• 31:44Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  I think, you know, the more time I spend here, the less I want to scarify the earth, build tall buildings, big, build big things outside of maybe this, uh, western side of the property. You know, it, the landscape is. Historically beautiful, it's cool. I mean, you know, there's these foothills are very cool. We're gonna have some off-road tracks in there as well to supplement the ones they're here today. But I don't want it to look like a large-scale development. I want you to be able to continue to see all of Big Willow from almost any locus around the track. For me, that's really important.

• 32:26Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  So sort of limiting the height of anything that does get built here.

• 32:30Matt Farah?

  Yeah. When you guys said that you had looked at so many other tracks, private clubs, what did you see anything around those where you went, oh, that's a really good idea. We should do that?

• 32:41Speaker 02

  Magarigawa in Japan.

• 32:43Matt Farah?

  That's the Japanese one, right?

• 32:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've been there a few times.

• 32:45Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 32:46Speaker 02

  What a spectacular and huge scale project that is. It looks like something Dubai would do.

• 32:53Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  I mean, they're giant retain, they carved a racetrack out of mountains. It's beautifully executed. It's quiet. I mean, it's purely, purely private. But the way some of the, some of the things flow, I'll give you an example. They have condos there and some of the owners have their cars stored in there, but they're all glassed in. So if you're a member, you can sort of walk through a gallery of everybody else's cars.

• 33:18Matt Farah?

  Oh, that's pretty cool.

• 33:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's some, some, some pretty, they have an indoor pit lane, which, which may not, may not work here, but it's magnificent.

• 33:27Matt Farah?

  An indoor pit lane? So you drive into a tunnel that goes into a building?

• 33:32Speaker 02

  You go into a building, there's a plastic, sheer plastic wheel up that goes up super quick. You pull in, if it's hot, if it's cold, if it's whatever.

• 33:41Matt Farah?

  Is it air-conditioned?

• 33:42Speaker 02

  It's fully climate-controlled. You get out of your car, there's like sofas and drinks. It doesn't look like a pit lane, but it just.

• 33:48Matt Farah?

  You just drive into a nice living room and the car.

• 33:50Speaker 02

  It looks like a fabulous car gallery.

• 33:52Matt Farah?

  That's crazy until you have a car fire in there. Man, when you pull into a pits and all of a sudden the car's on fire and now your clubhouse is burnt out.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  You can tell they're expecting it. There's a bunch of ventilation and all that.

• 34:03Matt Farah?

  Oh, that's pretty cool. I gotta, it's too bad we don't have a visual aid day today. Normally, we've got our screen. We could look at stuff, but damn, that's sick.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  It's, uh, it may not be practical here, but the, but the, it's, it's really the idea of that experience.

• 34:17Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  Something, you know, that's very special.

• 34:19Matt Farah?

  I mean, to their credit, I lightly crapped on them before, but to their credit, Thermal does an amazing job in their pit lane with the, um, the swamp coolers, the misters, the chilled towels, the pit crew that checks your tires and does your windows, the fridges of drinks all right there. I mean, that's great. The, the big shades, like, that's, that's pretty good stuff.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:38Matt Farah?

  That's all A-level stuff, right?

• 34:40Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 34:40Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  That's the blocking and tackling.

• 34:42Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  Perspective in terms of what we have to deliver to a member to make that experience valuable.

• 34:48Matt Farah?

  And I also, I remember I, I, it was sort of in casual conversation, Sam, but you said something to me about you wanted it to be open to a place where we could have Cars and Coffees and you could allow, you know, car clubs or whoever, you know, SoCal people to come use the parking lot. Like, you know, there'll, there'll be a, a restaurant that the public can come in and eat at.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  This restaurant.

• 35:10Matt Farah?

  Yeah, basically.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  For the time being.

• 35:11Matt Farah?

  Basically.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, in the short-term food trucks, we're gonna, you'll, we'll, we're gonna try to kick off that activation in early October.

• 35:18Matt Farah?

  Hmm.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  And we hope to have, you know, a great community out here and then have regular Cars and Coffee opportunities. A little bit more family-oriented maybe than some. Uh, you know, we don't, we don't need a lot of, uh, people creating accidents on the way out of here. Uh,

• 35:34Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I mean.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  It's limited, but it's what you see online.

• 35:37Matt Farah?

  Yeah. I'll tell you, I mean, I think, I think one of the ways that you could probably, that you might be able to admit, just the fact that we're, you have this long driveway between here and the road. No one's gonna like rip it in the paddock. I think, I think.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:50Matt Farah?

  I think.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  Well, and then the road.

• 35:51Matt Farah?

  It's all gonna happen on that driveway. Some asshole's gonna do it.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:54Speaker 03

  But if the road is so far away, then no one's showing off way over there because the crowd's here. You know, that's the problem with the Cars and Coffees.

• 35:59Matt Farah?

  How about you do a launch box on property, one at a time. You get a launch right here.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:05Matt Farah?

  Just do, just have. It is a racetrack. Just have, you, it is a racetrack. Just let people do that before they get to the public road.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  Interesting. Yeah.

• 36:12Matt Farah?

  I mean, that would be. That would be, it would be.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  Get it out of your system.

• 36:15Matt Farah?

  Yeah, you'd be the first people to go, you know what? Here, you've, you've got a little skid pad between here and the road.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  Run into something so we could set up like bushes and some other stuff from Mustang.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 36:25Matt Farah?

  Uh, listen, Australia is very inspirational in this regard. Let's go. Oh, man. I mean, that would be a fun one.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  It feels like it's close enough to LA that you could do something every month and really make it special.

• 36:37Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah, it's not too far. And it's such a great, for me, and I'm jaded, the Cars and Coffees I go to are the ones that have a good drive to get there. I don't go to the ones in the city because I don't need to go up Fairfax to go to a Cars and Coffee. I love you Peterson Museum, but that drive stinks. Up Little Ethiopia, the one in a Coontrauk. Ah, kill me. Um, Sam, I want you to brag for a minute. It's not a thing you do. You're, you're, you're a mild guy. Uh, but you're, you are a car collector. Uh, I have two of your cars, uh, under my care, which is a real treat. They're, they're two of my favorite cars to look at, the 73 RS Lightweight and the 1952 Hudson Hornet NASCAR.

• 37:21Matt Farah?

  Actually, I got to, I'm gonna throw me and Sam under the bus. He, we were out here a month ago when they first were doing things. And we brought out this Hudson Hornet and I, I ran like two laps in it. It's like any car from 1952. It runs beautifully, but like, and like seven different people tried to get it into reverse to back it into the garage.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  I did do that.

• 37:41Matt Farah?

  Sam eventually did, but it took him a long time. I was unable to. I could, I, all the cars I drive couldn't get this thing in reverse. Two other people tried, they couldn't do it. Back at the shop, I talked to my three guys at the shop and I go, hey, guys, you boys ever have a problem getting this car into reverse? And they looked at me like, like Lawrence asked if he had a case of the Mondays in office space, like, no, like, why would we have a problem with that? Like, of course, goes into reverse. And they proceed to like, just right away and just like three point back it up into its spot. All right, that's why you guys have.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  I'm gonna need a lesson in that because I've signed that car. I got accepted to do, uh, the going to the Sun Rally in that car.

• 38:21Matt Farah?

  No, is that the one where you're like,

• 38:22Speaker 01

  Out of Bozeman.

• 38:23Matt Farah?

  Where you go like flat, uh, oh no, going to the sun.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  Going to the sun, not the grand.

• 38:27Matt Farah?

  That's the, I'm thinking of that Sun Valley.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  That's the top speed.

• 38:30Matt Farah?

  The top speed. I was like, yeah, no, fifty-two, let's, let's see what I'll do.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  I'm gonna go do, go into the sun in September in that car with my son.

• 38:37Matt Farah?

  What are the, uh, requirements for that event?

• 38:40Speaker 01

  Fifty-year-old car.

• 38:41Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Uh, and then it's just, uh, they have a, they have a committee that picks who gets to go, and I think they limit it to thirty cars.

• 38:47Matt Farah?

  Okay, cool.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:48Matt Farah?

  That'll be great.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  Should be fun.

• 38:49Matt Farah?

  Yeah, as long as you find reverse.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  That car will live out here.

• 38:53Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  That's this, that, that car's an interesting story. I was looking, I got, um, I answered an ad for someone who had a, a low mileage, purple nine forty-four turbo, and I was like, I gotta go see this thing. And when I got to it, I was like, oh, the colors. I just can't handle it. I can't drive that. It was just too much. The interior was purple, too, but it was a cool car. And, uh, and I looked in the corner of the building and I'm like, what is that, covered up over there? And the guy said, oh, this is this fifty-one Hornet that was a Herb Thomas tribute car, built out of three cars, and it was the, uh, first car built by a guy called, uh, Mark Allen, who had left Paul Russell and Company.

• 39:32Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  Twenty-two years ago for a dealer in Massachusetts, and it's been sitting for a long time. And I was like, that thing's just spectacular. We've got, we've got to get that thing out to Willow, yeah.

• 39:42Matt Farah?

  Yeah, it's, it's, it'll be perfect, like, as a, as a display here once in a while, yeah.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  It's not subtle with the, the market.

• 39:49Matt Farah?

  And you should, like, cruise Pebble Beach in it.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm taking it, we're taking it to Monterey.

• 39:52Matt Farah?

  Are you?

• 39:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:53Matt Farah?

  Oh, that'll be fun.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  And we'll put a Willow Springs sticker on there and stuff, yeah, yeah.

• 39:58Matt Farah?

  Hell, yeah, that's gonna be so fun. Okay, what else is in the garage that I haven't seen?

• 40:03Speaker 01

  Uh, you, you, I, you know, I drive, I, I collect what I love, and I drive them. So I'm not like, they're not to- total garage queens. I wish I had more time. Uh, this weekend, I drove, it was an all P car weekend. I'd just come back from, Maz and I went to, uh, talk to some OEMs at, uh, Bahrain for F1.

• 40:25Matt Farah?

  Uh-huh.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  And I'd just come back and I was like, I gotta get out driving. So I took out, you know, I took out a classic nine-nine-three, uh, that got me going again, and then I got my ST out for the first time. It had not been driven yet.

• 40:37Matt Farah?

  Oh, really?

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I was trying to, I couldn't remember if it was seven. 1000 RPM and I was jet lagged. I went the wrong way on the highway and didn't realize I'd gone the wrong way. But, pretty impressive. And so that was Saturday. And then Sunday, I took out the 2019 Speedster, which Maz and I both, Maz and I both agree is maybe, it's definitely in the top five all-time Porsche cars for us.

• 41:00Matt Farah?

  They're, they're good.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  It's a great car. And so, those two, I'm a 993 guy, so we've talked about this. I have a number of unique 993s and, you know, turbos and C4Ss and weird stuff. And then early rally cars, early Porsche rally cars. So I have one of the rally package cars from 70, is it 72 that has the oil filler, external oil?

• 41:23Matt Farah?

  Oh yes, I think that, I think that's 72.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  That car's, yeah, one of my favorites to drive.

• 41:28Matt Farah?

  Sick.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  And of course, the lightweight, as you said. I only got that car, Joe McCary found me that car this year, who was another relationship I met through Maz. We were ice driving in, at Richard Toddhill's place, and I overheard him talking on the phone about taking it in trade. And I sat him down with a bottle of wine. I said, "We're not leaving here until..." It, it cost me a pretty penny, but I had to have that car.

• 41:52Matt Farah?

  That car is unbelievable. No, no radio, no, and no any, just a hollow dashboard.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  You got to drive it here, right?

• 41:58Matt Farah?

  I didn't drive it, because Dwayne was driving in, and the shifter linkage was wonky or something. The most I've done is I unloaded it from the trailer and parked it in its space. But, you just, you look at that car and you go, every Porsche sports car of the last 50 years is just chasing this. This is the thing. They're all trying to be that.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  And once you're in it, you realize it's a sublime driving experience. It's so good. It doesn't, you don't think about it. It's completely timeless.

• 42:24Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 42:24Speaker 01

  Well, you saw, I had a, my John Wilholt 57 Speedster, which was a great car before, but now is like, that's a sublime driver with the Wilholt 2.2 and his, his suspension in it.

• 42:39Matt Farah?

  Yeah, that's a monster car.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  It's just a wonderful car.

• 42:42Matt Farah?

  I think Spike's car is similar. I think he has the same suspension and that will, and it's a, it's like 160 horsepower.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  I don't know if you were here when Jimmy Johnson had it going 140 miles an hour.

• 42:53Matt Farah?

  No, I was here the next day. I was here the next day.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  He got in a lot of trouble for that. No hel- no helmets in his supermodel.

• 42:59Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Jimmy Johnson can do pretty much whatever he likes.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  Not here, apparently. We didn't own it at the time.

• 43:06Matt Farah?

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  He got, yeah, he got in a lot of trouble.

• 43:09Speaker 02

  Twice.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Twice, yeah. He also took, uh, was that the turbo?

• 43:13Speaker 02

  He and I were chasing each other once, but he was out and yeah, he got yelled at.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  No helmet. And by the way, that was just stupid. And he would be the first to tell you it was stupid. He wouldn't do it again.

• 43:22Matt Farah?

  Yeah, but like you get in the, you get in the zone. What are you gonna do? You got this car, you got this model next to you. They're on an empty racetrack. Come on.

• 43:28Speaker 02

  Did they even wear helmets?

• 43:29Matt Farah?

  We've all been there. No, they wore like a leather hat.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, football, leather football helmet. Exactly.

• 43:34Matt Farah?

  Yeah, and they wanted to be thrown clear if it, if things went wrong. Um, Maz, can I invite you to talk a little bit of shit? Why is it that so many people are trying, in my opinion unsuccessfully, to

• 43:54Matt Farah?

  either copy what you guys are doing? And some people do different things and do them well. Oh, no shit. I'm gonna grab a nap again. Hang on. Uh, I have a long microphone. Why, some people do them well, but so many people are trying to crib this,

• 44:09Matt Farah?

  doing a poor job of it. And when what, what do you see as the, the, the, the real special sauce that makes it uncopyable about a Singer vehicle design restoration? Cause I, I, I do feel that, that it, that no one's gotten there.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, there's, there's, uh, there's some folks out there that are, that are

• 44:32Speaker 02

  chasing something they, they think is very cool and they're inspired and they're having fun. There are some people out there that are clearly just kind of doing it for the money or trying to make a buck or it's a, it's a business, it's a business plan. And we can go do something like these guys and sell a few of them. And it, to me, they're fairly obvious. They're easy to, you know, easy to tell apart.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  Why are we good at what we do? I mean, part of it is just, it's been 15 years of committing.

• 44:59Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I mean, it's a little bit of a loaded question. Why are you good at what you do? I mean, there's the everything is important philosophy. But it just seems that what you guys sell is a more complete product than anybody else.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  It's thorough.

• 45:14Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  So we, so it's a, it's a, so Rob and I are, I mean, it's, it's like a place to get our OCD out. But it doesn't, it's not limited to just how the car looks, right? Now, I would say it starts with how the car looks.

• 45:30Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 45:30Speaker 02

  Rob is, has the ability, he's like a.

• 45:33Matt Farah?

  Someone is like falling asleep on their horn outside, but it's okay.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  He's a, he's a guy who can write hit songs. Like, he's, he's, he's one of the best designers in the world, maybe one of the best ever. That's not something I just made up. We interact with the design teams from, I mean, we get visits from everybody.

• 45:52Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 45:52Speaker 02

  And name, name, name a car company, or a shoe company, or whatever, who hasn't visited us to, to want to understand like how we go about getting our point of view into this, you know, into these things. So he's really, really talented. And he's also, and I would say this is what happens in the rest of the business. He dedicates a tremendous amount of time to detail. So if, think about the exterior of a car, could be 150 components. Every single radius, every single part is deeply, deeply considered for a lot of time. It takes a vast amount of time, which a lot of people don't have, even other car companies don't have. They need, they need to get to the next job and the next job.

• 46:35Speaker 02

  So we do that on the, you know, underneath the skin as well. So everything is really, really deeply considered, even things you'll never see, unless you have a terrible accident, whatever. We really pay attention. It's, it's kind of like a watch movement, right? You know it's in there, you can't really see it. But, you know, we develop to that level.

• 46:54Matt Farah?

  When I drove Sam's Turbo, which was very brief, 10 minutes, in the wet. On, on, on the worst.

• 47:01Speaker 02

  It has stability control.

• 47:02Matt Farah?

  On the worst place you want to be in the wet. It was fine. And I was, and it was a very new car. So I was not doing anything that was strenuous on it, but. I came away from that and the overwhelming experience was that what made that car special is that it's the first time I've ever driven any restored car at any price point, at any manufacturer, where you genuinely couldn't tell there was a car there before. Which to me was a real turning point in modification of vehicles. I've just, I've never experienced that before. I imagine that's not on accident.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  No, I mean, every, every single thing has been addressed. It's still, and there's a 964 under there, trailing arms, control arms.

• 47:47Matt Farah?

  Yeah, no, but you can't, to sit in it and like, touch stuff and look at stuff and hear the engine and turn it, you cannot tell, anything was there.

• 47:55Speaker 02

  Everything has been massaged. It's very, very deliberate, whether it's a pedal pressure or the, what you feel in a door panel.

• 48:02Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  How it feels when you push on it. Inspired by a Chiron, actually. If you go sit in a Bugatti, some of these things feel like they're made out of, there's, you know, leather is covering granite or something.

• 48:14Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  We really wanted that, that, you know, old school, German highway cruiser feel. Like it felt like you were driving a piece of marble down the road, right? That was, that was very deliberate. It's not, there's nothing, there's nothing in there that's by accident.

• 48:30Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  At all.

• 48:31Matt Farah?

  It's a, I really look forward to our, our longer drive in the dry on, what are we driving? The Tokyo, the white one?

• 48:39Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, it's white and green. It's a 40, it's sports seats.

• 48:42Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 48:43Speaker 02

  Um, it's, it's a great car. It's actually the very first one.

• 48:46Matt Farah?

  Are we, are we out of names for cars yet? We're out, we're out of major cities, certainly.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  The buyers named them.

• 48:51Matt Farah?

  Are they repetitive, have you, have you, do you allow people to repeat?

• 48:53Speaker 01

  They wouldn't let me.

• 48:54Matt Farah?

  They wouldn't?

• 48:55Speaker 01

  I tried, yeah.

• 48:56Matt Farah?

  What did, oh shit, what did you get? What is your car called?

• 48:59Speaker 01

  Uh, my first, the first one is called, is the Rock Lake Edition.

• 49:03Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 49:04Speaker 01

  Which is a lake in Montana that I go to.

• 49:07Matt Farah?

  Okay, and what's the turbo? Does that have a name?

• 49:09Speaker 01

  That's the turbo.

• 49:10Matt Farah?

  Oh, that is the turbo.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  The classic is called the Corano because it's the city in which, where Laura Piano was formed. And they've helped us with that car.

• 49:18Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 49:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:19Matt Farah?

  All right, cool.

• 49:20Speaker 02

  Some of them are cities, some of them are just cool names, some of them are just numbered.

• 49:24Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 49:24Speaker 02

  We obviously have a numbering system internally and it's, it's really for the customer to, to do that or not.

• 49:30Matt Farah?

  Okay, so, Sam, what?

• 49:35Matt Farah?

  What do you want to, you know, say to someone who is listening to all this and rolling their eyes and going, you know what, all that sounds really nice, but like, there goes my affordable track day. You know, what do we, what do you have for those folks?

• 49:56Speaker 01

  I think if you're a PCA member, a POC member, a FCA member, you know, any one of those, you're gonna have the, you're gonna have the same access you had here, and it's gonna be better. And you might pay a little bit more for it, but it's not gonna be unobtainable. This is, and we're talking about a lot of fancy stuff, and, but that is not the, that is not the bread and butter business that you have to be in to make these things work. It can't just be dues-supported. You can't run food and beverage outlets just off of a couple hundred members that come 25 days a year. It just doesn't work. So that will be a big part of the business. There'll be, the section of the track that we're in now, that's the sort of public section, that's, will continue to be the public section of the track.

• 50:40Matt Farah?

  Do you see for members, because you have so many tracks here, three legit road courses, do you see it being like, member 365 track access, it'll, it'll rotate which track based on day of the week, or whatever, to keep it variety, and the other ones will be available for rent, or do you, is that kinda how you see it, or is it, is there gonna be a more reduced number of member days?

• 51:06Speaker 01

  You'll always have a motorsports experience available to you when you come as a member. So it might be an off-road day.

• 51:12Matt Farah?

  Gotta read between the lines a little bit, but okay.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's not meant to, it's, when we look at it, we, I originally come at it thinking, we're gonna have one track that's always gonna be available to members, that's what you and I talked about. They don't really want it.

• 51:24Matt Farah?

  Oh, really?

• 51:26Speaker 01

  You know, and, there's, no, like, it's not like on that random Monday in the summer, when it's 115 degrees out here, they may, we might wanna have a photo, or a film shoot going on.

• 51:37Matt Farah?

  Yeah, alright, so yeah.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  So, so I, so I wouldn't say 365, but you will never come and not have something you can do. And your kid will never not have access to a experience for them, something that they can do, whether it's simulator training, whether it's on the kart track, whether it's, you know, going and wrenching on something in the service side of the facility. There'll be some programming that will always be available to you. And virtually all the time, there will be one of the tracks available, at least on a half-day basis, to members.

• 52:09Speaker 02

  And any exceptions, maybe imagine a multi-day event.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:14Speaker 02

  You'll know, you'll know.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  If you had Speed Week here, you know, we only talked about the, there seems to be a gap in the schedule in January and February in motorsports, and the US just doesn't have this place where enthusiasts can all go. That's not brand-specific, where you can, you know, like a Goodwood, where you can go and all the brands all feel like they need to be there. You know, in a long-term vision here, that's, we would love to create, have the place-making that allows for something like that to happen.

• 52:39Matt Farah?

  Yeah, a few people are trying to do a quote "Goodwood." No one's quite gotten it yet.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  It took them 20 years, right?

• 52:49Speaker 03

  Right, I think it takes a long time to build that as well.

• 52:51Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I also think a, it's a different look. It's all, it's like grass and trees and shit over there.

• 52:57Speaker 02

  Goodwood is a place.

• 52:57Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  But to have, to have a, to have a multi-day motorsports event, you know, with historic cars and new cars and all of that in Southern California, I mean, it's

• 53:09Matt Farah?

  It's doable.

• 53:09Speaker 02

  It's dying for it.

• 53:10Matt Farah?

  Totally doable.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  We think there's a lot of places we can build to get people out of the sun. We can, we can have facilities where people, there's camping here now, right? There's, there's RV pads. There's, there's a lot of things we can do to make for a great experience in that regard.

• 53:23Speaker 03

  Well, team velocity is cool, but it's far. I mean, from SoCal, it's eight to nine-hour drive.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  It also doesn't have a home base.

• 53:29Speaker 03

  It doesn't have a home base, it does move around, but it's like, the places it has been have been in Northern California, which is quite far from the SoCal kart community.

• 53:36Matt Farah?

  The, uh, do you, do you guys see other like mixed use such as like having concerts and stuff like that here or not?

• 53:42Speaker 01

  We don't, we don't see music because I don't think the county really is supportive of it. So we're gonna, we want to be a good neighbor and when they've tried in the past, they've had some chaos here. So we'll probably sit back on that one and just focus on the motorsport enthusiasts for a while.

• 53:57Matt Farah?

  Sure, yeah. Have you, as someone who has bought an old building and renovated, you've bought a very old place. You're going through it, you know, without being too mean about it. Has there been any, you're not gonna believe what we found in here conversations?

• 54:12Speaker 01

  I've, I have, uh, given my business, I was a liquidation guy, a workout guy, a distress deck guy. Uh, I've seen so much worse. I had much lower expectations. Turns out things are pretty good here. They just haven't been improved. They've been maintained. They just haven't been improved in 60 years.

• 54:32Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 54:32Speaker 01

  During the course of my life, we've found nothing yet that shocked us.

• 54:35Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  And we've dug lots of holes. I mean, it took, you knew, I think I talked to you, we, we got together in, uh, August.

• 54:44Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  And I said, we were buying it and, uh, like everyone was giving me kind of strange looks, but we got together in Monterey. And it took us this, this long to get it done.

• 54:55Matt Farah?

  Yeah, it's like eight months. Yeah.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  There were a lot of things that, that the, the former owner had to clear up.

• 55:00Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Have you inherited any fun, interesting vehicles that were scattered about the property?

• 55:06Speaker 01

  Uh, there's one, what did I tell you? I, we found a Bianchi.

• 55:09Matt Farah?

  Yeah, an auto Bianchi.

• 55:10Speaker 01

  An auto Bianchi.

• 55:11Matt Farah?

  Yeah, a micro car.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  I don't know if it's still here, but I think I've shared with you that I have this weird affiliation for, uh, affinity for, um, post-war microcars.

• 55:21Matt Farah?

  Yeah. And so. Were we talking about the microcar museum? There's a microcar museum somewhere. I don't.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  Cars like an, like an Isuzu. My wife, my wife would tell you it's in my warehouse.

• 55:32Matt Farah?

  Oh yeah, you have an Isetta.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  I have a few Isettas and I have, um, yeah, multi plot.

• 55:37Matt Farah?

  Yeah, Hannah.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  Drive.

• 55:38Matt Farah?

  Hannah really tried to get me to bid on the four seat, four passenger, I think it's an Isetta 600.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  600, I have one. They call it the limousine.

• 55:46Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 55:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:48Matt Farah?

  Imagine how painful the death would be.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  And certainly. It's gonna be quit. It's gonna be quit though.

• 55:55Matt Farah?

  Your head would be crushed and then you would be trapped and then you would burn to death.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  We go to family. 14 miles an hour. We go to family dinner, but we never leave our hometown. As fast as you can run. We go to family dinner in the, um, in the multi plot. We put six people in the multi plot and take it to dinner. It's fabulous.

• 56:11Matt Farah?

  If you have never seen a Fiat, is it the weird one that looks like it's going backwards?

• 56:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 56:15Matt Farah?

  Yeah, okay. If you Google Fiat multi plot van and it is the strangest looking.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 56:20Matt Farah?

  It literally looks like it's driving down the road in reverse. It's so weird.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  It was designed when they were trying to support post-war Europe to be a car that a, a, a tradesman could use during the week. And then on the weekend, they were trying to support the middle class. So it was a, it was the most affordable sort of post-war Marshall Plan-y type thing. Uh, and it, it was important for Italy for that reason.

• 56:44Matt Farah?

  I've only ever seen a couple of them on the street. They're rare now, but man, are they cool.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  You see them over there.

• 56:48Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  I see them over there.

• 56:50Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Micro, we should, where are all the micro cars? They in Montana?

• 56:53Speaker 01

  No, Boston.

• 56:53Matt Farah?

  They're in Boston? Oh, man, I got, if we, if I have a reason.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  We'll get you out there.

• 56:56Matt Farah?

  Me and Hannah have to come drive that Isetta. That'll.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  We'll do a show.

• 57:00Matt Farah?

  That'll, she, she won't have the urge anymore. She won't want one. She has the little, this little Nissan Pow, which is the Japanese version of that. And 57 horsepower. Oh, yes.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  I'm still looking for the Messerschmitt.

• 57:15Matt Farah?

  Oh, you know who's got them is Bo Bachmann at Galpin. He's got a couple of Messerschmitts. Yeah, he likes, he likes, he's got a couple of Peels also.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  He's got a bunch.

• 57:24Matt Farah?

  He's, what else does he have? I think he has an Autobianchi too. He's, he's got at least like 10 micro cars.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  I'm gonna go look for the Autobianchi. It's, it's, I'm pretty sure we do, we did get it. I don't know that we'll ever be able to find a title, so we'll have to go.

• 57:35Matt Farah?

  Oh, we got a bond. Let's go, whatever.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  We're gonna talk to the registrar. Turn to a race car.

• 57:43Matt Farah?

  It put a cage in it and exoskeleton would be amazing.

• 57:46Speaker 01

  There's something so satisfying about trying to work on and restore one of those cars because you can actually do it. You know, there's, there's, there's something that I'm actually capable of doing in my garage and distracting my brain from everything else that's going on in my car.

• 57:58Matt Farah?

  Are you, are you a wrench?

• 58:00Speaker 01

  I try to.

• 58:00Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I try to.

• 58:02Matt Farah?

  Good.

• 58:02Speaker 01

  Got a couple. I have, I have the, uh, one of the Asetas, the 300 is taken apart right now and I'm struggling with a part.

• 58:09Matt Farah?

  The 300 is the traditional Steve Urkel Isetta.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  The two-door.

• 58:13Matt Farah?

  I don't. Two-door. We keep saying two-door. It's one-door.

• 58:17Speaker 01

  The two-door is the 600 limousine, yeah.

• 58:20Matt Farah?

  And that has what? One side?

• 58:22Speaker 01

  One side only.

• 58:23Matt Farah?

  One side in the back opens. Yeah. Funky. Yeah, really crazy.

• 58:27Speaker 03

  They're so cool though.

• 58:27Matt Farah?

  Yeah, they're, oh, they're amazing. Uh, if you, uh, if you, uh, want to ask questions of our guests for the show, if you want to listen to the live stream, uh, when we can do it, we don't have live streaming internet here in Rosemont yet. We will soon, I imagine. Uh, if you want to get the show ahead of time, if you want to get the show without ads, if you want to get access to special merch drops and collabs, patreon.com slash the smoking tire podcast is where you do it. And we have some good questions for the show today and I did not get my glasses. Oh, we're, uh, we're back. Okay.

• 59:01Matt Farah?

  Uh, grilled tale of the dragon. Are, are, they have fun usernames. So, uh, as someone who recently got into HPDE events, uh, and had a hard time figuring out what to do. Are there plans to do, and some events organized by the track itself rather than third-party track day companies? This is a question that comes up a lot. Apparently like doing a track day with a track day company, like that's not an intuitive process at all.

• 59:30Speaker 02

  You mean, you mean through a club, through a?

• 59:32Matt Farah?

  Basically, the question is, will the track be organizing its own track days as opposed to renting itself out to a club who then sells individual spaces?

• 59:41Speaker 03

  I think most of the events here on the weekends were done by like Speed Secrets or some other party.

• 59:45Matt Farah?

  They were, yeah. This idea that I was, you know, reading a lot on social media that people would just come up and make a payment. They weren't.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  They weren't paying the Huth family. They were paying somebody else who was renting the track and providing the insurance. Uh, we, this was a big topic with Speedway of conversation yesterday, so we want to try to do it. And it's just a question of how it fits into the schedule and when you can, they would, you know, some sort of test and tune thing or some form of ability for people to run the track safely.

• 1:00:11Matt Farah?

  Um, this is interesting. We are going to need more Advil. That's the username. Also true for me. Um, wants to know about big picture racetrack solvency issues. For instance, my local track just went to a rather pricey membership model, only offering basic, single lap HPDE one day a week to non-members. In a racetrack, what keeps the lights on and what are the big costs, generally speaking? Would love to have even a basic explanation about how a track stays in business versus folds.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  So let's take three different verticals. So the public vertical, where however they access it through a PCA, FCA, POC, or through somebody who puts on track days. That's one vertical, right? So that's a, that's a big revenue generator and you're making money with food and beverage, you're making money with track rental. Uh, you're trying to run the track as efficiently as possible. In the US, uh, they typically don't, uh, let two people run simultaneously on a track, even though they may only use it in 20-minute increments of each hour.

• 1:01:15Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  And so in Europe, they do it differently. They run, in Austria, they'll run all three 20-minute intervals with three different people. We're going to try to be more efficient than the traditional track and make that business more, uh, sustainable. The second piece is what we're calling our OEM or our, our, you know, and we'll, we'll rent space, uh, to the OEMs. We'll rent, um, you know, Singer will have a customer experience center here. That will be really cool. Uh, I can't talk about the other ones yet, but there will be others that are here that will have, uh, facilities here, both the vehicle level manufacturers and then people that support them, tires and whoever else it might be. And so that will be a more permanent revenue source, leasing space to those folks. Uh, car storage, huge thing.

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  I think I've shared with you, we do have a partnership I can't announce yet. But it's not around so much storage, but around someone who's a big name in the industry. And that'll come out in September. But the having, we may have, we may have as much as a thousand cars of storage here. For, for both entities and for individuals. And that's the ultimately the goal, really good business to store cars for people, look after them as you're, you're in the business and you're sold out.

• 1:02:29Matt Farah?

  I am very well aware, yeah.

• 1:02:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, and hopefully we'll do something, you and I have talked about maybe doing something together. And then the club business, we really want the club model to be a break even model. That's all you really are trying to achieve in that. And it takes a while to get to that natural break even point. But you want it to break even, but you want that dues, I'm sorry, the membership deposits that people are paying to, to get access. To basically go to build the improvements and to do a lot of the track improvements.

• 1:02:56Matt Farah?

  So if you don't have any one of those hoses going into the bucket, does the model not real, I mean, because that's a whole bunch of stuff.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  You know, it's, if you talk to, look, it's a, it's a complicated business to run.

• 1:03:07Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  And it will be a real business. But if you talk to Speedway and you look at the operating performance of Vegas and Sonoma, they're the best comps for us. They're great businesses and they run them very efficiently. They used to, they've take, they took over the operation entirely at Sonoma in 2019. And it's a real business.

• 1:03:27Matt Farah?

  Do you think that the, the success or the failure of a racetrack, assuming it's in a good market. Has to do really with how well they're optimizing the use of that, of that, I mean, it's very basic to say that, but.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, and capital.

• 1:03:41Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  Right, they're under, they were under capitalized. Yeah. And also, you know, the, the market has changed.

• 1:03:47Matt Farah?

  Like you would.

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  Um, Maz was, you know, the amount of people who have bought cars that need to be stored, you and I talked about this, Maz and I have talked about this. The amount of people who want to have an experience with their car that you cannot have on the road. That has increased dramatically in the last decade. Like the numbers, more of those cars have been sold in the last 10 years than the entirety of history prior.

• 1:04:09Matt Farah?

  Track day cars.

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  Uh, high, high end performance collector cars, for example, new, new builds or high end restomods.

• 1:04:17Speaker 02

  I would also argue that a lot of tracks are, are. Not in the, not in the easiest areas.

• 1:04:24Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:25Speaker 02

  They're far. I mean, Buttonwillow's far.

• 1:04:26Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:27Speaker 02

  Right? This is, I mean, the location of this place can't be ignored.

• 1:04:31Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:31Speaker 02

  It's kinda perfect.

• 1:04:33Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:33Speaker 02

  Right? I mean, it's an hour and a half out of town.

• 1:04:35Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  There's 18 million people with a 90 minute drive.

• 1:04:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  And there's, with two hour drive, there's 23, 22 and a half hour drive, there's 23 million people.

• 1:04:45Matt Farah?

  I've never driven from San Diego to here. Is there a better way to do it than through LA?

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:04:49Matt Farah?

  There isn't?

• 1:04:50Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:04:51Matt Farah?

  Um, I don't, uh, this question I don't think is accurate, but Nice Cams says, "Why are the noise ordinances in California so restrictive?" I don't think it's California. I think it's Laguna Seca and only Laguna. What other tracks have noise restrictions in California? They don't here.

• 1:05:09Speaker 02

  California, I don't know.

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  They don't at Buttonwillow. They don't at Sonoma. They don't at Sonoma. They don't, they've never had noise restrictions at Sonoma. I think it's, I think it's just Laguna. Where you have neighbors. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, our planners are the people that built that large community, the reserve, uh, or the San Luis Obres around, um, that track. And it wasn't until that neighborhood got established that they started to have real problems.

• 1:05:32Matt Farah?

  I, I, when I run for president, any racetrack that was there first, you don't get to complain about. That's, I'm running on that. If they, if they build the racetrack after your house is there, like, okay, complain. But like, if it was there first, you knew it was there.

• 1:05:46Speaker 02

  And you got my vote.

• 1:05:46Matt Farah?

  Yeah. That's my platform. Ted Stryker, uh, we may have already, um, we may have already covered this sort of, but what would need to be done to have a future where NASCAR, IMSA, or IndyCar has a Willow race on their calendar?

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  You'd have to spend some money to get them here.

• 1:06:05Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. NASCAR dates are worth a fortune. It's the date that has value, not the track.

• 1:06:11Matt Farah?

  Say that again. It's the date.

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  The date has value. Owning the date is the valuable thing. So if you talk to Speedway, for example, uh, they rent out Cota for the date that they own for the, for the race in Texas. Yeah.

• 1:06:24Matt Farah?

  That makes sense.

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  And there's more road tracks being used in NASCAR now, which I think is great.

• 1:06:29Matt Farah?

  Yeah. I went to that Texas race, that's where I met Marcus.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:32Matt Farah?

  That Texas race was awesome.

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  Fantastic.

• 1:06:34Matt Farah?

  It's insane, yeah.

• 1:06:35Speaker 01

  And I think we're...

• 1:06:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, we were there at the same time.

• 1:06:37Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:37Speaker 02

  We went to dinner.

• 1:06:38Matt Farah?

  Yep. Yeah, Jensen was racing.

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  I think the product is great and they're doing a lot of cool things with it. They've sort of solved their economic model. And so, we would love to see something like that here, but I think it's, it'd be very hard to get a date. People have approached us because Southern California is lacking for major events. So, it might be MotoGP or something like that. But the question is, how much money do you want to put into giving your track away? And having it cost you money and taking all the risk on ticketing? And I think that's something we'll have to just consider down the road. Smaller format stuff, I think, would be great.

• 1:07:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, you said earlier that the safety will be built up to FIA 2?

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  Eventually. Not in this first phase. We're just putting in, we're spending a bunch of money on tire walls and a whole bunch of stuff to make it safe enough.

• 1:07:27Speaker 02

  That's right now.

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  Right now.

• 1:07:28Speaker 03

  Got it.

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  But then when the full renovation of the Big Willow gets done. And that isn't necessarily every one of the tracks is FIA 2. But the goal would be ultimately to have the Big Willow be FIA 2. So, those are the types, so you can't have Formula One, but you can have virtually anything else.

• 1:07:41Speaker 03

  Got it.

• 1:07:42Speaker 02

  You have an M7 SRO.

• 1:07:44Speaker 03

  Cool.

• 1:07:44Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:46Matt Farah?

  Tim A., which is pronounced Timmer.

• 1:07:50Matt Farah?

  Seinfeld, guest on episode 999 a couple of weeks ago, is not a fan of resto-modded Porsches. What Singer Vehicle Design build would you put him in to convince him he's wrong?

• 1:08:06Matt Farah?

  What do you give your guess?

• 1:08:06Speaker 02

  I don't know him at all, but I'm...

• 1:08:07Matt Farah?

  I said, don't, he must not have driven one yet.

• 1:08:10Speaker 01

  I would say, I would say a DLS. I think a DLS would probably do it.

• 1:08:14Speaker 02

  I mean, the DLS is...

• 1:08:17Speaker 01

  It's kind of an exaggeration. I mean, it's, it's pretty spectacular.

• 1:08:21Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  Turbo is, well, you've driven in turbo.

• 1:08:24Matt Farah?

  But I, yeah. Well, he, cause it would probably, the turbo would seem, the turbo really does seem like if Porsche were allowed to build a 930 turbo today, that's what they would do. It really does seem like that. So he'd probably, it is that good. That's probably why.

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  I, I was telling a friend of mine, a good friend of mine who's a collector back east, I said, don't drive this when it comes, cause you're gonna have to find a way to buy one.

• 1:08:48Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  You're just, you're gonna, you're gonna need it.

• 1:08:51Matt Farah?

  That's what I just told Graham about my Spyder, cause Graham Smith has a GT, came in GT4 and he's like, oh, can I try that? I was like, listen, you, you better be ready, cause you don't try this car and then you don't end up buying one.

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  You convinced me to buy one on the cheap and I'm grinding into the ground before I send it to Demond and having.

• 1:09:07Matt Farah?

  Oh, you, you're starting with a car you already have?

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  Correct. Now I have it, but it was after, uh, watching one of your things in the fall and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go out and source one.

• 1:09:15Matt Farah?

  It's a GT4 or a Spyder?

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  GT4.

• 1:09:17Matt Farah?

  Okay. It's, you're gonna love it. It's the best.

• 1:09:19Speaker 01

  And it was my color. It was exactly what I wanted. So.

• 1:09:21Matt Farah?

  What color?

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  It's deep sea blue metallic, which is sort of my, my conservative thing.

• 1:09:26Matt Farah?

  It's a good color.

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, great color.

• 1:09:27Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah. Um, you're, you're gonna love it. It's there. It's, it's awesome. Uh, okay.

• 1:09:36Matt Farah?

  Okay. The Pink Pony Car Club, uh, has, has a lot of words here, but basically I'm gonna, I'm gonna pivot the question slightly to, I'm sure Maz gets asked all the time, the Singer Vehicle Design Treatment for cars that are not 911s. They're not Porsches even. I'm sure you've, people approach you, why don't you do this? Why don't you do this? Why don't you do this? And there's a lot of reasons not to do those things.

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  I said it. Turbo.

• 1:10:04Matt Farah?

  There's a lot of reasons not, but, but.

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  Alcoholics, I would say that would be the car I want.

• 1:10:09Matt Farah?

  Alcoholics does a nice job.

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. Amazing.

• 1:10:11Matt Farah?

  They do a nice job. Yeah.

• 1:10:12Speaker 01

  There's one, there's one at auction in the next two weeks.

• 1:10:16Matt Farah?

  There's other folks that do great jobs at doing other cars as well. Um.

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  I would just, I would just make a point there though, that, and this is the thing that I've had to understand better is the amount of money these guys spend on engineering.

• 1:10:26Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  It's a whole, it's one thing, I just, I just did a restomod with a great builder in Chicago, Tim Olson, fantastic car, but it's basically taking components that other people build and you're taking a chance on what they're all gonna feel like when you put them together.

• 1:10:40Matt Farah?

  This is a Porsche?

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  Yep, a pre-variational 993, 95 convertible.

• 1:10:45Matt Farah?

  Oh, good times.

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  It was a gift for my wife's big birthday.

• 1:10:49Matt Farah?

  Ah, okay.

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  And so, but that is not anything remotely like what they do. And so that you can restomod a whole bunch of things, but if you're not spending literally tens of millions of dollars on engineering with Bosch and everyone else to make it perfect, it's not gonna be this car.

• 1:11:04Speaker 02

  No, that's what it takes.

• 1:11:05Matt Farah?

  Well, how much, okay, but, back to the question, how much of your company's ability to do what they do stems directly from the fact that you're starting with Porsche 911s?

• 1:11:21Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, it's sort of, it's the most iconic sports car ever.

• 1:11:26Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 1:11:27Speaker 02

  That helps, but, but significantly, it's a tremendous car.

• 1:11:32Matt Farah?

  That's, I mean, that's what I mean.

• 1:11:33Speaker 02

  A 964 is a very, very, very good car.

• 1:11:35Matt Farah?

  That's what I mean, starting with a fundamentally good car versus poor John Ward over here doing Broncos.

• 1:11:42Speaker 02

  I mean, we, we, you know.

• 1:11:43Matt Farah?

  Unshitboxing is the, is the worst.

• 1:11:46Speaker 02

  We talk about and fantasize, you know, a DB4 GT and a Countach and a, and a Ferrari Daytona, how fabulous would it be if we could, I mean, it would take, everyone would take five years, right? But they're not what a 964 is, which is, like I said, a fundamentally fantastic thing. So, it's, it's kind of cheating, right? So, you get to go and take this thing that's already great and start to, you know, make improvements where you can make improvements.

• 1:12:11Matt Farah?

  Plus, because the 911 from the factory was so, was changed so little for so long, that things like backdating, even if you're not using the actual backdate parts and you're implying a backdate from across the room, right?

• 1:12:27Matt Farah?

  You can do that with a 911. How do you backdate a Ferrari that has a new body style every seven years? They're totally new bodies. You try to put Testerosus side strakes on a 458, it'll look insane. It won't look right at all.

• 1:12:42Speaker 02

  I mean, they iterated that car from 1963 to 1998.

• 1:12:46Matt Farah?

  So what other cars have they, what other cars had hugely long production runs? Where, in which you could mix and match visual elements to create a best of in the way that, to totally diminish what you're doing, but visually it's sort of a best of.

• 1:13:03Speaker 02

  Well, the only things that, that have, that have continued are Mustangs and Corvettes.

• 1:13:07Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 1:13:08Speaker 02

  911s.

• 1:13:08Matt Farah?

  And pickup trucks.

• 1:13:09Speaker 02

  Well, things where you have this car that just iterates in one form or another. But Porsche did something in 1988, the 32 Carrera. And then they did the 964 in whatever, 89. Under the same bodywork, you had a completely different car, which is unheard of. I don't know that that's ever been done. You can just go, you can open up the same.

• 1:13:29Matt Farah?

  I will, I'll give you one. Because you have challenged me, the Ferrari Mondial. They turned the engine from transverse to longitudinal when they went to the Mondial T.

• 1:13:40Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 1:13:40Matt Farah?

  Yeah. So in 80, in 80, whenever they went from Mondial to Mondial T, the powertrain went from a 328 powertrain transverse to a 348 powertrain longitudinal. And the exterior bodywork, exactly the same.

• 1:13:53Speaker 02

  So if you take a 32 Carrera and a 964, put them next to each other, open the, the, the front. Same piece of metal, the entire stamping of the, the entire chassis is completely different. Oh. Everything's, the suspension is different, everything is fundamentally different. But you can take the doors and exchange them. I mean, that just, I can't imagine that's been done somewhere else. And I don't know if that was done. You know, if that was the sort of financial condition of Porsche at the time, I know that that had a lot to do with the limitations to the 993 changes, but that's really the opportunity. That may be why there's a bunch of people backdating 911s because

• 1:14:32Matt Farah?

  Yeah, because it's possible.

• 1:14:33Speaker 02

  You can't really do it on other stuff so easily, right?

• 1:14:36Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:36Speaker 02

  And those cars, you know, the original cars, the 60s cars were beautiful. They were very pretty. Right? And, you know, you kind of want to go back to that. Some of them got kind of plasticky and big over time, right?

• 1:14:47Matt Farah?

  Can we real quick talk about interiors? Because of all the things I saw at your factory two weeks ago, I saw a lot of pretty cars. I was a little disappointed with what your customers are choosing to paint their cars. But I understand that this is their subtle car for a lot of people. So it's a subtle colors. I like them loud.

• 1:15:05Speaker 02

  You want a little flashier?

• 1:15:06Matt Farah?

  A little flashier. For that, for that kind of money, for that kind of, I would go big, but that's just me. The most impressive thing I saw was the guy who turned woven leather into Pasha.

• 1:15:20Speaker 02

  How? Well, that guy is us.

• 1:15:21Matt Farah?

  Well, that's the guy. But there was, there was a guy working on it when I, but, but, you know, Pasha, the stripes aren't even. They get wider and more narrow. And someone had woven that into leather. And I don't actually know how.

• 1:15:34Speaker 02

  You see it installed in the orange car?

• 1:15:36Matt Farah?

  I didn't see it in the car. I only saw it.

• 1:15:38Speaker 02

  Come see that car. That car's done. I saw it yesterday.

• 1:15:41Matt Farah?

  Is it the craziest fucking thing?

• 1:15:42Speaker 02

  It's fantastic. Super cool.

• 1:15:44Matt Farah?

  What you guys have done with weaving leather, when you went first from just the weave, till then you made plaid out of woven leather or a tartan where it's a gradient and stripes and nuts. To now do that, what is pushing the, what's pushing the evolution of weaving leather?

• 1:16:03Speaker 02

  Well, it's not, it's not just really weaving leather, but see, part of the experience for our customers is that they get to go and really thoroughly design something. They really, really get to make it there. Sometimes they bring in their, you know, their family, their wife, their designer, whatever it is. But, you know, that's, you know, there's some folks always sort of pushing, you know, how, you know, can we try this? Can we try that? So, you know? And we'll do that certainly on things like interiors. We won't do that with, you know, with bodywork or.

• 1:16:34Speaker 01

  Anything heavy, but yeah, the pasta thing was something we looked at. It might have been, um, I forgot who first got us to look. It might have been Dario first. He never did it, but I think he asked us if we could.

• 1:16:44Matt Farah?

  Dario is a man of taste. I'm not surprised. He is a man of taste. We gotta get him back here.

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:49Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:49Speaker 01

  We'll have him here.

• 1:16:50Matt Farah?

  Yeah, he's the man. Um, he just did some content with Johnny Smith. That looks like fun. Yeah, I love Johnny Smith. We gotta get him back here, too. Um, boys, we're gonna, we're gonna wrap this one up, and I really appreciate your time this morning, and I'm so excited to see, you know, what happens here. I will be utilizing the place all the time. You're gonna have to kick me out. I'll pitch a tent somewhere. Um, where, where do you want to leave this? What, where, where do you, where do you want to walk away from this conversation? The Southern California car community, a few might be able to afford memberships, most can't, but they all want to see this place.

• 1:17:25Speaker 01

  It'll be a home for you. It'll be a home for you. Like, it really should be about a great enthusiast place. And I want to thank you. You've been super helpful in referring me to people. There's been so many people that have come out of the woodwork, uh, that I didn't know over the last year that have been helpful in giving us advice. I would say like Zach Brown turned us on to Alex Wertz, who's been a gift to us in terms of safety and, uh, experience having run all these tracks in Germany and Austria historically, uh, and then just so many others. It's been great. So, uh, you, you've been a contributor there. So you'll always be welcome here, Matt.

• 1:17:58Matt Farah?

  Woo-hoo!

• 1:17:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:59Matt Farah?

  We will, we will take your track time. Thank you very much. And Matt, thanks very much. I can't wait. We're gonna go out on Friday with, uh, with the white car. There'll be video. Um, and, uh, I'm just, I'm super stoked to spend a little more seat time in that. It was, the taste I got was, uh, fabulous, but also a little bit, uh, glazed over with pressure because it was his brand new car.

• 1:18:24Speaker 01

  Mine might have been overly conservative, too.

• 1:18:27Matt Farah?

  It was, it was in the wet.

• 1:18:29Speaker 01

  Subtle interior on mine.

• 1:18:31Matt Farah?

  It was very much, uh, don't break this because...

• 1:18:36Speaker 01

  They're meant to be driven.

• 1:18:37Matt Farah?

  Oh, drive, yeah, driven, but I think it got it that day. Yeah, I know.

• 1:18:41Speaker 01

  I got it, I got it one track day prior. You know, so like three weeks before, but I did, there was still plastic on the carpets, which is, yeah.

• 1:18:49Matt Farah?

  Yeah, well, this was great. Thank you, guys. Thank you to our patrons for some good questions today. And of course, if, you know, if anyone has any very specific questions or needs, or we can, we can ask them later and get you information.

• 1:19:00Speaker 01

  We'll get you back in September and October. We hope to roll out a lot more information on what's going to be possible here.

• 1:19:04Matt Farah?

  Cool.

• 1:19:05Speaker 01

  And we're excited for it all.

• 1:19:06Matt Farah?

  And did you guys, did someone took back over the Willow Springs Raceway Instagram and was posting on it? Somebody was doing that. Was that you guys?

• 1:19:13Speaker 01

  I think Khan is running it with us.

• 1:19:15Matt Farah?

  Okay, great, yeah.

• 1:19:15Speaker 01

  And the Speedway folks, yeah.

• 1:19:16Matt Farah?

  Okay, cool. So, yeah, follow the Willow Springs Raceway Instagram for, for updates and all that. And, and I can't wait to be back out here, um, driving some stuff. And, and trust me, I've seen the renderings, even if they're not 100% accurate to production. If it looks anything like that when, when they're done, we're in for a real big treat. Thanks, guys. We'll see you next time. Bye.