The Dark Side of Exotic Cars: Hoovies Garage on Getting Ripped Off & Scammed

You've collected how many cars at this point? I try not to count because that's the first step in admitting there's a problem. At the height is around 40. Hi, I'm Tyler Hoover of Hooies Garage, the dumbest automotive channel in all of YouTube, but probably the dumbest financially as [music] well. What cars did you lose the most amount of money on? There's there's so many. [music] But if I buy a terrible car for YouTube, I show up as totally misrepresented. I can make YouTube videos out of it so bad becomes good. How do you throw away a car? I'll dig a hole. I'm going to bury this thing. Had a hard year. What's it like to drive a Countach? It's incredible that that noise with the V12 behind you. The Countage is just experience. There's nothing. Oh my god. [music] Well, thank you so much for agreeing to come on here and be roasted by us. The interrogation is starting. Hi, I'm Tyler Hoover of Hooy's Garage, the dumbest automotive channel in all of YouTube, but probably the dumbest financially as well, which is why I'm here, right? [laughter] You want some dumb, right? This is what we have to talk about. So, you know what's funny? Dave Ramsey does these videos about how financially irresponsible people are for buying certain cars. Guess who comments on that video all the time. All the time. Troll him. Oh my goodness gracious. He tells you not to take on any car debt or buy anything exotic or fancy and you know how it'll never pay off and ruin your life and I'll, you know, just post a photo of all my cars or something like that. Seems to work out fine for me. And uh yeah, sometimes the comments get deleted, but usually there's a fun respon. They've been deleted a time or two. Yes. But uh usually gets a good response because the thing is if he's gonna post on the channel, people are going to see the check mark, go to his channel and then see all the dumb decisions he's made. See cars. You've been on his show. Yes. I have not. It was It's a dream especially when I was at the biggest mountain of debt like nightmare situation to see if I could break him. I I wanted to like see his brain just start sizzling at the thought of how I lived and uh uh but yeah didn't get Do you think there's any way he might be able to justify what you're doing or say like okay well you're making money from this [laughter] no no this is this is worse than uh Strad man which I know you talked to him about his situation where there's no retirement or any of that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's uh Yeah. Wow. You know what? I think Tavvarish is the only one we've not yet had on the podcast. He's already agreed to it. Okay. But otherwise, I think we've talked to everybody. Uh Stradman, Doug Demiro, checked every box. Shme, Chris Fix. Yeah, Chris Fix. He didn't show his face. Oh, he showed his face. He showed his face. Yeah, but but we had to blur it. We had to blur it. It's a very special moment. We saw his face. Beautiful man, by the way. I know. He's really attractive. It doesn't make any sense. Yeah. Like it's a beautiful man. Beautiful hair. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for agreeing to come on here and be roasted by us for uh all the dumb decisions. The interrogation is starting. We're going to get into it right after you tell us. Why are you in Las Vegas? I am here for the Barrett Jackson collector car auction. That's why I'm dressed like a used car salesman somewhat. Uh but uh yeah, I've been doing their live TV coverage for about 3 years now and I just love it. I watched it on TV when I was a kid and it's live TV. It's very different. Well, it's I guess a podcast. This is live. Like if I screw up then, well, everybody sees it. But on YouTube usually we can sort of you know a podcast we edit. Oh we would be screwed if we did not edit this. Oh goodness questions. Jack Jack asked [clears throat] this guy. Oh you would not believe the things that come out come out of his mouth. [laughter] Okay. All right. So if this goes into a a cancelable territory then need we'll be able to fix it. Okay. Very good. Chris fix it. But yeah in in YouTube we can just start over. We can drop any fbomb we want. What and and start over and it's a jump cut which is fine. But live TV Yeah. You can't. Scary. Oh, it's very scary. Very scary. So, I found it funny. You told me a story earlier. Uh, you got slapped. Yes. What happened? Um, well, so we were reenacting a scene from the8s. Well, it wasn't a movie, but what an actress named Za Gabbor got pulled over in Beverly Hills in her Rolls-Royce Cornesh. And she got arrested because she got so fed up with the police officer, she just slapped him. And she thought she could do that cuz she's a big Hollywood star and and ended up her getting arrested. So, there was another Cornish at the auction and I convinced April to slap me to sort of reenactment, but she wanted it to be sort of a stage slap. I leaned into it for the full I took a hard hit. She can She's kind of Yeah. And what did the car sell for? Oh, it's cheap. So, knew this car would have been about probably $300,000 adjusted for inflation for the 80s, you know, triple or whatever. Um, but it sold for 39 grand for a Cornish, you know, convertible like Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra had one. Uh, Elton John, so many famous people had this car and now it's, you know, sort of a depreciated, you know, relic. This this Rolls-Royce. Yeah. So, how difficult is it to maintain a car like that? I could see that 39 grand and think, you know, a new Toyota Highlander way more expensive than a Rolls-Royce that you could buy today. History behind it. you you basically treat that as the down payment and then the maintenance is the car payments because they have this mineral oil suspension system that controls the suspension makes an amazing riding car but also the brakes. So when the system runs out if you're ignoring all the lights eventually you lose your brakes and it's just oozing from everywhere on these cars and to go through it is tens of thousands of dollars and if you try and fix one thing then it's like fingers in the dam and you it just goes for the next weakest link and starts breaking. So, the people that buy these cars, do they buy them to actually drive them? I'm sure they're not daily driving them. Are they taking them out on Sundays or do they just put them up to show them off? Um, on those, I mean, there's there's plenty of people that still drive them. There's a lot of devoted people to those cars that are really hardcore. And the fact that they're still very mechanical and easy to understand in that sense where you don't have to plug it in and scan it for like a check engine light or advanced computers or any of that kind of stuff. They're easy to keep going in that sense, but it is pretty complicated in that mechanical sense and end up seeing the parts cost. Um, so it it's doable, but yeah, most people just probably park and look at them, pretend to be. Why is it so why is it so expensive to maintain an old Rolls-Royce when other cars from the same time period require none of the maintenance that that car requires? Uh it's it's basically who's there's no support from Rolls-Royce today on the parts. So it's it's the aftermarket the Flying Spirits. It's all in England and it it's just very expensive. They can charge whatever they want because there's no competition for them, you know, making these parts. Um this weird stuff. So, at Barrett Jackson, what deals are you seeing right now? And how is it how has it changed? Because I was there two years ago, uh, around Father's Day, actually. We watched some of the cars go to auction. We saw the Ghostbusters car. I remember that one. That one went up. How much did that sell for? Was like 100 grand. There's been a couple of Ghostbusters cars, but yeah, I think there was the one last year that was kind of a ratted Al patina one that sort of went for 50 and then there was one the year before I think that brought big money. I think like 150, 175. Not the actual Ghostbusters car, but a recreation of it, which you have to find like a 59 or 60 Ambulance or hearse Cadillac in order to make these. So, that's pretty much unobtanium in the first place. So, you find that, then you have to make a Ghostbusters car out of it. How did you get into cars? Uh, it's always been there. I think my dad's was definitely a car guy. And, uh, he had a Lamborghini Countach poster in college in his his wouldbe a dormant apartment. And so when I was a baby, he started hanging that stuff in my room. So I had a Lamborghini Countach poster basically over my crib. Had it my whole life, the old Alpine stereo poster. Um, so and he had some old aircooled Porsches and things and so it just always there. I was watching Herby the Love Bug over and over again and seeing the cars in there. Yeah, always obsessed for sure. And then what was your first car when you turned 16? Did you have that obsession for driving? So my grandmother, her car, she had a amazing thing. It was a 85 Mercedes 500 SL which is the gray market Euro highperformance convertible and my dad had it saying it because she wanted a Chrysler Learon and oh no no no we can get you something much better and he was able to go through the gray market and got my grandpa his dad to order this and get the car in. What's a gray market? basically um you had the Mercedes dealer in the 80s um and then you could go around the Mercedes dealer and buy directly from Europe and import the Euro market cars for less than what they were selling for at the dealers. And then they got around all the emissions regulations, you know, the big impact bumpers you see on a Euro car versus a US car. And it was a big, you know, undercutting franchise Mercedes dealers or BMW dealers or anywhere in Europe. And they closed that door, the feds in ' 85, I think. And then you really, it was really hard to get a car in after that. Now they have the 25-y year rule for importing, but back in up until ' 85, you could pretty much import anything new. And different states had different laws for federalization. How did he contact the people in different countries? Like is there was there like an actual like a marketplace where you could just go and do this? Was it a simple thing or was it like a It was like used car dealers, but they could go buy new cars and import them. So there's some there's a lot of big importers in the country that were doing this. And then their livelihood got cut off. Wow. But it it made sense. These franchise dealers, they're paying all this money to have it and then they're getting undercut by anybody just going to Europe and buying cheaper. What was the margin on that? Oh, I'm sure it was obscene. Yeah. Especially with uh you know, since they're cheaper there and they're better cars because they had less of the emissions restrictions, so they were faster, better looking. So some of like the European like the Ferraris, Lamborghinis, they were obviously better than what you get in the US. So I don't know exactly. I wasn't around then, but uh Interesting. It's a good business. So, that Mercedes, that was your first car? That was my first car. Yeah. I She gave it to me. I started driving it. She bought other grandkids cars. So, one cousin got a Saturn SC2, one got a Chevy Cobalt, and I My sister got a Kia. I was the sucker who took the old Mercedes, you know? It's a cool car, though. The 500 SL at the time. It was it was cool to me, but it was kind of an old car that had like things didn't work on it. I I warped the heads on it, overheating it and that kind of stuff. So, it was could have gone to the junkyard several times. I still have it to this day, but it it wasn't worth maybe three, four, $5,000 at the most. Really? So, was the Kia at the time worth more than Really? I I think Mercedes 500 SL I think cool car. No, not back then. It was It was old. Yeah, it was 15 years old at that point. Could you work on the car yourself where you're like, "Well, I'm not much of a wrench even to this day." But even back then, you know, after the uh issue where I overheated it and warped the heads, learned a lot about mechanics and little things here and there cuz obviously mechanics are so expensive and I'm a kid with a Mercedes that I can't afford to keep running. So, I was learning how to fix it here and there myself. Uh, and eventually got a Mercedes diesel as sort of the extra car. And that's so simple. It's like Legos for grown-ups and learned off of those. Yeah. All right. But before we go into that, we got to do some quick math because the less money your business spends, the more money you get to keep. But with higher expenses on materials, employees, distribution, and borrowing, everything is costing more. So to reduce costs and headaches, smart businesses are upgrading to our sponsor, Netswuite by Oracle. Netswuite is the number one cloud financial system, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform and one source of truth. 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Yeah, before YouTube. you get on the online forums and I made a lot of friends like my mechanic the car wizard who's on my YouTube channel I met through the Mercedes forum he would bought the same car as me and then I realized he was just an hour away from me and we met and became friends from that over 15 years ago. Yeah. Wow. How did that first conversation start? Well, I mean it's a stranger on the internet and you see Oh, you're 30 minutes away from me. I don't know. I just [laughter] thought, yeah, let's meet and get our cars together. Park 11 exactly. I don't know. Parents asleep. Yeah. I mean he met his wife on the internet which was an early thing and so he was used to it so he probably initiated meeting all kinds of people on I met people off the internet when I was like 12 13 I've told the story before but I used to be really into I still am reef aquariums and so I was in this forum I think it was called reef central.com and there was a Southern California sub forum within the website and so what I would do is go on there and talk to locals and they would do what's called a frag swap which is where they'd get together once uh, you know, every few months and trade pieces of of coral with each other. And so at 12 or 13 years old, I went to my parents. I'm like, I want to go to the Frag Swap. And so they took me to the Frag Swap and I met a lot of the people in person that I was talking to online as like a 13-year-old kid. Everyone was so friendly, though. Everyone there was nobody in a van saying, "Come and eat." None of that. I got the frags in here. Exactly. [laughter] Okay. Wait, were they surprised to see that you were a 13-year-old kid? I think they knew. They knew. So you would tell them your age? [laughter] Probably shouldn't, right? I was I was so trusted. How old you were? [laughter] No, I think I was voluntarily like, "Hey, by the way, I'm like 13 years old, you know. I'm sure some people were surprised." Mhm. But uh I mean, my username was Pineapple House, so they got to put the two and two together. It probably wasn't like And your parents, they didn't think anything about, you know, you going to these frag swaps or anything? They were totally fine with it. I'm not going alone. Oh, yeah. They they would Yeah, they would go with me. Uh, you know, and usually they just like be in the back or they didn't want to get in the way or they weren't like hovering, but they'd be there, be present, make small talk. Yeah. I I still am mad at my parents for my eighth grade graduation and being forced to go to it rather than getting together with my friends and watching the series finale of Star Trek Voyager cuz I'm a big Treky. No, they I it was at the same time the finale of Star Trek Voyager and all my friends from forum and internets and things they were getting together have a watch party at the same time as my eighth grade graduation. That was way more important to me than eighth grade graduation. But they said no you you have to go to that and go to the dance afterwards. So it's like okay I can go to the graduation and then the dance. I can skip it and go to Star Wars Trek thing. You know I skipped my eighth grade graduation. Never went to it. Wow. Yeah. I didn't want to go. I thought it was pointless. Why are you just skipping out? Yes, I hated school. I know you hated school gram, but just because you hate [clears throat] like I didn't really like school for a lot of the years I was in it. But if I had to go to the promotion. No, I didn't have to go. So you said Thursday or Friday. You said, "Dad, mom, mom or dad, I'm I'm going to promotion. I'm graduating eighth grade. I'm not going to go." Yes. And they were fine with that. Yes. See, my parents, you need to be normal. like go and talk to girls. No, I want Star Trek kids. I saw it as it was a waste of time. It's what? You're going there and sitting with a group of hundreds of other kids to what? Just go up on stage, shake a hand. It's eighth grade. We're talking about Exactly. So, you're college. So, I'm high school. I wanted to skip. I wanted to skip that one, too. You did. You skipped a lot of high. I did. I went to the graduation, though. Okay. I wanted to skip I wanted to skip. I think they actually made that mandatory that you had to attend. I did not want to go, but I but I went and I left right afterwards. There we go. Yeah. So, what did you think you wanted to do when you were younger? Ever anything with cars? You know, I graduated from college with a degree in political science because it was the easiest exit out. realized just to be able to open a car dealership because I already had that figured out because I couldn't get through business calculus or a lot started in the business aspect of of college or whatever the business major and couldn't get through the math. So, I did that and then opened the car dealership a few months after. How do you open up a car dealership right out of college? I'm assuming you need some funding or experience. So I worked as a car salesman at a Chevy store in like 2007 8 n while I was in college and then finished up. That's why it took me a little longer to get finished and then open. So I already had that source for to go uh the experience and also to get tradeins from that store. They were happy to sell them to me. But then yeah, getting the license and all that was a thing. And um I was very fortunate to where I I was able to get a line of credit for inventory. Um my dad signed as a personal guarantee on it. though. Um, that that was the big start that I had basically to be able to to buy inventory versus the normal. I've always wanted to ask someone who is a car salesman, what is the commission structure for somebody that sells cars? Also, can you continually cut down the price that they give you? And is that directly cutting out their commission one to one? Um, yeah. So, usually, at least when I was doing it a long time ago, it was 33% of the profit of the car on new and 25% on used because the margin on used was higher. But they and they really wanted to encourage you to sell more new cars because the margins were lower and the more they were able to move then the franchise would get better, you know, better inventory and that kind of stuff. And there was there was definitely some bonuses and different things. So, like the very first car that I sold there, I walked up to a guy, it was in 2007. The new Chevy Silverado had just come out. He said, "I want this." So, you want to test drive it? No, I want this. He went and applied for the loan. This is with GAMAC, which went bankrupt in 2009 because they were doing stuff like this. Uh, you know, Pontiac went out at the time and and Saturn and GM's bank because they were doing these crazy loans we're seeing a little bit more of now, most recently here, 15 years later. So, he had a truck that was getting traded in, $10,000 in negative equity that we that we bid it um versus what he owned owed on the car. And then full sticker on the truck, no discounts. This is a kid maybe 25 years old, living with his parents, had a good job, auto approved, done. He's out the door upside down with taxes traded in as 15 grand probably upside down. And that moment he drove off the lot, he's another probably five or 10 grand upside down just immediately. Does anybody tell him that's a bad idea? No. And I didn't really understand it because I'm just learning and I just that that day I made $1,500 and I thought this happens every day. So I went to Ultimate Electronics, which is that store is long gone. Bought a plasma screen TV, thought, "Okay, tomorrow I'll make the same amount of money and then I'll have, you know, I'll just do it again." And it didn't happen. But uh uh yeah, I had there's nobody giving these people advice for sure. And it's you still see it to the I mean it's almost worse today because they were charging over MSRP for cars most recently you know the Kia teller normal cars because of the supply chain shortage they were charging over MSRP and people were buying them and uh I can't imagine that the when the crap hits the fan here in the next year or so with that. Yeah. So what's going to happen to all those loans that were issued at over MSRP when they're no longer worth that anymore anywhere close. they're just going to walk away from the cars or I hope they get gap insurance. They call it the basically, you know, that the insurance where if you owe more than the car's worth in insurance value, then this you buy this and it covers it. So then you just find a tree and hit it and total out your car, you know, still you see a lot of that. But I think a lot it'll just be a huge repo pool and you'll see this revolving door of bank repos and the the inventory will keep growing and growing until there's a big pop and finally used car values start going down to what they were before. Um but yeah, a lot of people are going to have their credit messed up again. Now, why do you think that hasn't happened yet? I think that it's you seeing it build. You're seeing if you check Mannheim because I still have my dealer's license. I'm able to check all this. You see that there's more and more inventory in the auctions going every week, more and more bank repos, and it's growing. And right now, the banks just aren't willing to cut bank bait yet. They're not willing to take that hit. And so, they're just sending it back through the auction every single week. It's not a loss until they agree to sell it. So, right now, it's just sitting as inventory, more or less, but you don't you're not showing loss until you sell it. And I think they're just not really willing to do that yet. Yikes. What's the business model behind a car dealership? Um, well, I was terrible at it. That's I was like a drug dealer doing too much of his own drugs. I wanted to like a big Tony Montana stack and I wanted to keep everything. So, I like I was I was consuming the car. Someone walks, is that for sale? No. No, I want mine. That's not for sale. I didn't I didn't do Yeah. I mean, obviously you you you want to go to the auction or basically this the smart car dealers don't go to the auction and buy from the lane, but that's that's where most people starting out. They go to the auction and they bid on the cars at the auction, which usually are dealer rejects where people are not able to sell them on their car lot for one reason or another. Either they need to too much to be fixed for it to make sense for them to make a profit or [snorts] um it's a tough to sell car that nobody wants. It's an aged inventory that they're selling. So, the good dealers have these sources, these honey holes that they go to and and dealers that they go directly to if it's too old at a new car franchise store, uh, or a little bit too high mileage for them, but still a good car, then they'll buy it and then resell it. That's I had a little bit of both, but I was also a big car enthusiast, so I'd see something cool and shiny and buy it and then lose money uh, obviously because I kept it or was just so obsessed with it and spent way too much fixing it. And uh yeah, I I I failed. But before we get into that, when I first moved to Vegas a few years ago, it was actually my first time living far away from my hometown back in California. And recently, I took a little bit of a spill, and it made me learn a very valuable lesson. I realized how hard it is just to get a hold of a doctor, let alone finding a doctor that's accepting of new patients and your insurance. That of course is where our sponsor Zachdoc comes in. Soft Doc is a free app and website where you can search and compare highquality in network doctors. Choose the right one for your needs and click to instantly book an appointment. 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That is zoocdocc.com. zockdoc.com/ic. Thank you so much, Zdoc, for sponsoring this episode. And back to the podcast. What cars did you lose the most amount of money on? [laughter] There's [gasps] there's so many. Um, but yeah, I think the the worst one was trusting this Florida car dealer that his that on his word and buying three cars from him and two of them showing up with bad transmissions. This is a Mercedes. One showing up with a swapped odometer and uh there was a rust hole around the sunroof where water was continuously pouring in and uh damage on this Jeep, like accident damage where they purposely took a photo not of this corner. I bought all three and that was early into my business and that was about a over $10,000 hit which was absolutely massive. Did he just not tell you about like purposely how does that not affect his credibility? Well, he's just doing a dealerto-deer wholesale to a guy a dealer in another state and this is asis and it it it's less shady they think if it's if it's asis to another dealer they don't mind screwing over another dealer. Not saying they don't mind screwing over a customer, like a a normal retail customer. But then, you know, if it's in Florida, then obviously there's some recourse for uh a normal buyer, but it was a dealer. They're just like, "Hey, really?" There's no chance of you saying, "Hey, you didn't tell me this car has crashed with this." And like, I called them every day. They just ghosted me. Yeah. And they could do that. Oh, absolutely. Could you take them to court or anything? Or you just kind of like it was worth it? I mean, they're thousand miles away. Yeah. Wow. How long did the dealership last before you moved on from that? So [sighs] opened in 2010. By 1415 I was moving on because I realized I am way too into cars to make this a business of buying and selling where my hoarding tendencies. The things that serve me well now on YouTube aren't good for a car dealer. And uh I moved on to a franchise that started in Witchaw in 2002. It was called Freddy's Frozen Custard and Steak Burgers. Went from selling cars to literally flipping burgers for years. How long were you flipping burgers for? Uh, so five years or so. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I still I'm still involved with it. But, uh, I was in the day-to-day operations. So, I didn't realize Yeah. that like the best way to get involved with restaurants and to open stores and you really need to know everything top to bottom. If they don't see you getting in getting involved and then once you're really good at it, say on the grill with like a a Freddy's burger, it's it's you're smashing it on the grill. You're rolling it out to where it's a domed in the center and crispy on the edges and and then you flip it over after 45 seconds is a scraping. It's a crispy um really really good but it it's very labor intensive versus a normal sort of burger flipping operations. Yeah. So when you're opening like in training these people, they can't do it. So then I would be the guy on the grill for 5 hours and during the rushes knocking it out because these guys just weren't ready yet. And so I was literally doing that or mixing custard and getting u you know chocolate ice cream all over me and all that for years and I enjoyed it but it wasn't what I expected where oh I'm going to be a businessman and get into restaurants and I didn't know what that you know what really running a restaurant was without you know with with all this involved. I heard it's a very high uh turnover for employees. Oh my goodness. So we would hire about 100 people to open a store and uh this the roster after 2 weeks would be about 30. Oh two weeks. Yeah. Why what would happen to the 70 people? Well, this that that pool of people where it's that's there it's the re revolving door. They don't have a job for a reason because you're not going out and you know recruiting from other stores necessarily. there's just the people applying and you you don't know and and a lot of it is they just don't show up because it's too hard or you know very few where I would actually have to go out and fire them. Usually you would just sort of like keep on them until they realized they couldn't do this and then and then quit. But um yeah, it's it was it's amazing. You would think uh and especially nowadays at at uh you know the $15 an hour or $14 an hour where hiring them with that and it's still not enough to keep them coming back to work. Can you say one of the unique things that maybe someone did that caused you to fire them or some something like interesting as a franchisee? Most definitely the most wild one was opening North Little Rock and I was in the middle of a training class and we had everybody sitting around. I'm talking about the fundamentals of Freddy's and what makes it different and special. And while that was going on, someone was interviewing a girl and hired her and she was going out to her car. or it was a ride and two people that were sitting in my class, maybe it was a dozen people, 20 went out, the two girls and proceeded to beat the hell out of this girl in the parking lot. And of course, she got in the car, they're grabbing her hair, pulling her hair out, all this stuff, screaming all this. She leaves, they hit the cones on the way out cuz we're not opening yet and dragging the cones out. Our cones are gone. And uh they come back in, sit down, and think they can just resume the training class. And so obviously I stop everything, go talk to them. And they said, "Well, we had a beef with her and you wouldn't wanted her anyway. She's terrible. She's she's a liar. She's a thief. You wouldn't you wouldn't want her working with we did you a favor." And like they thought that was perfectly acceptable to do. Yeah. And [laughter] it's uh sorry, that's not how it works here. So you you have to go. And they were just they were floored cuz they they like they they were in the parking lot. They were off property. Yeah. That was definitely the wildest. So you just straight up said sorry. Like Were you afraid maybe at that moment they'd turn on you? Yeah, it's the dragon. [laughter] He was a liar. He was a cheat. There was moments. Yeah. No, but no, I never felt really in danger for my safety. That was that was kind of a a cat fight, you know. Oh my gosh. Yeah. That's pretty crazy. I I did fire a lot of people because my job was sort of to come in, you'd set up the the management team, employees, get them get them all trained up really well, and then I would move on to the next opening. So since the guy who's not going to be there permanently, I I could be the bad guy. You don't need to be, you know, you don't need to be in these because especially younger people really, they'd rather break up over text, you know, they don't want any direct confrontation. And I didn't mind just taking him out to the patio and say, "Sorry." So you started out as a burger flipper. Yeah. For this place. And then how did you climb that corporate ladder? I was I was always u a partner in the company, but really the only part where I could be helpful and productive was in the operations. But how do you go from being a college Well, you graduated college with Polyai, right? Yeah. And then from there you had this failed car dealership. How do you go from failed car dealership and right into partner of this place? So that has a little bit to do with my dad and well a lot a bit because he was um in the oil business with my grandfather and when the oil business and in about the time when I was born when it cost more to pump the oil out of ground than it was worth all these oil companies were going under. You know there you remember like the uh Jimmy Carter crisis where there's the fuel lines and all that stuff from history class. Well, after that there was a big crash in the 80s in oil prices and all these companies went bankrupt, including my grandfather's company. And the only thing that saved him was he diversified a little bit into hotels. And then one of them was very early into Wendy's. And so my dad saw that and he was involved a little bit in the Wendy's and he got involved in uh different restaurants. He's tried to do his own um launching his own franchises and things, but then eventually in the late 90s he bought into Taco Bells and uh um really did well with that as he still uh has some Taco Bells to this day. But since Freddy started in Witchaw, Kansas, some people he had worked with in the past were branching out and selling the territories and locations and he was getting involved and he encouraged me to get involved with it as well because it's a great opportunity and uh that's how I got in with this group and uh as a small partner. So yeah. Do you think a franchise is a good business to get into today? Well, I guess it depends on the franchise, but I I think um yeah, Freddy's, you know, the the territory all developed really quickly. I'm not sure what's left now, but it was it it was very good at the time. Yeah. I remember when Subway franchises were popping up everywhere around like 2010, 2011. Yeah. But then they undercut them with the $5 foot long thing and just killed them. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's the thing where you where you're sacrificing price. That was the nice thing about Freddy's because we could keep up because of the quality. We can charge more, you know, like a Smashburger is very expensive. You go in there and get a shake and fries and a burger for what 30 bucks or something like that nowadays. Freddy's not that expensive, but because of the quality you sort of justify it where like we're better than the dollar menu of McDonald's. So that that helped in that sense where you're not just razor thin margins, you know? Yeah. So when did you decide to make YouTube videos? So when I got out of the car business and I'm in these apartments or I'm in hotels opening the stores, I wanted to do something still with cars and I had followed uh like Doug Demiro on Jalopnik at the time. He was starting to make some YouTube videos and like Doug like he was into forums and so when he was a kid he pretended to be this high profofile rich Ferrari owner when he was like 12 or 13 on Ferrari chat. So that was his fun thing to do as a kid. I don't know. It's it's one of his funny stories that he tells. But yeah, so I followed him was a big fan. Freddy Tvarish on on YouTube. He was also writing for Jalopnik at the time. So I got my foot in the door with that. Doug left Jalopnik. I start just started writing articles in in the hotel room in my spare time, just submitting them, getting paid a few hundred. Uh but when Doug went to Autotrader, they were bringing in more writers. He was already writing for Autotrader. They hired him for something called Oversteer which he left when he started Cars and Bids and he was the editor of of that and I came on as one of his writers and uh with him he was posting his articles along with the video. the video was a supplement to his articles. Like writing was his thing and it was sort of the same with me and they wanted me to follow suit except they caught Wise I think with Doug doing it on his own YouTube channel and wanted me to do it for Autotrader. So I tried to make a video sort of for Autotrader and I it was so terrible that they said well just go ahead and put it on your own YouTube channel. So I I did and that's that's how I started making YouTube videos. It was just once a week with an Autotrader article and it was I I yeah I had no idea YouTube was a thing at all. Where would you get the cars? Would they be handed to you by a manufacturer? No. So Doug was doing a lot more reviews and I was just talking about um my own cars that I had the time and I was still was doing a little bit of buying and selling as a dealer on the side as well because it uh the also the Freddy's had not started paying out for se until very recently last couple of years because we were always reinvesting to build new stores. So I paid myself a salary just enough to to keep my head above water. Uh but then anything extra I needed to sort of hustle and do something on the side. So I was flipping cars. I' write articles for $100, $200 per article or whatever. And uh so I had a few cars in the stable. So I would I would write about my own cars and that's where Doug and I sort of separated because now Doug is exclusively his new car reviews, but he also had his own Doug cars and things at the time. But I sort of stayed in that uh you know with my own cars. What cars did you have at the time? Oh, so back then I had a 2007 Mercedes S600 that I bought for $4,000. So, 600 horsepower V12 bought with a blown motor. And that was my first viral video. I think it's sitting at like 4 million views right now. Went viral on Super Bowl Sunday in 2017. Weirdest time to go viral, but that's it went from at 3 days after the video was posted. It got picked up and and went nuts. So, I had that at the time. I had a Toyota Prius just whatever junker car I had. I remember that Mercedes video. Wasn't that titled like I bought the cheapest Mercedes in the United States or what was the title? I didn't start that wasn't that one was just a a V12 for $4,500 in the one-year update of what it was like to own this for something so cheap. But that definitely became my genre of buying the cheapest such and such. So I the first car that I bought for YouTube was an NSX 92 for $30,000. The cheapest NSX in the USA. I thought with the articles and the videos, I took out a loan. The goal was to make the car payment and uh it showed up. It had hit a curb and it was massively out of alignment. They didn't tell me this the dealer that sold it to me. Um but it was overall a solid car went through fixing that and uh yeah, it worked. So whatever was the cheapest version, the cheapest car available in the country of something that was once nice, that became my thing. I guess I still do that thing here all these years later. You've collected how many cars at this point? Oh, so a lot. The height it was around and this was I try not to count because that's the first step in admitting there's a problem. But the height is around 40 and now I've had a little bit of an exodus. So I'm around 20 right now, which feels much more manageable. Yeah. I mean that's that's normal, right? About 20. But I see you got a garage that has a lift. Like you is this a customuilt garage or what's No. So, my old garage that I just moved out of, we added on to the back. Um, but I'm not living there anymore. I live in a hanger um which has a condo attached to it and we moved the lift over. But yeah, Benpac was kind enough to send me that lift and it's been the background of my videos for years. But yeah, it's on the cars swing on this crazy cable system that it looks really cool uh for background of videos. It's it's their most in intricate complicated lift other than like a triple stacker. So, how did you evolve growing this this this car collection from that Mercedes? Did you just take the money that you were making from YouTube and reinvest into buying more cars? Yeah. Yeah. And and took all the debt that I could, so I'm showing more income from YouTube and that justifies me to be able to get a bigger loan on something else. And I think the next one was a Bentley Continental GT that I didn't know until it showed up. spent 10 years in Russia, had his odometer rolled back twice. So, yeah, I went and that was another $30,000 loan, I think. I'm sure the the credit union that gave me all these loans that I'm admitting to this now are not thrilled, but uh yeah. Um yeah, Ferrari 355 was the next step. That that's the one that burned to the ground shortly after I bought it. So, what happened? Um it had a fuel line let loose. This was a recall with Ferrari um that was 15 plus years old when they started I think initiating this recall wasn't done on my car yet and I thought well it's been fine for this long I'll wait until I'm doing some service work with it I want to take it to Monterey Car week shipped it out to California to a friend he was driving it the fuel line popped loose it hit a spark and burned to the ground so what happens in a case like that when a car burns down insurance just writes a check right I did not have agreed value insurance so I had to go tango [clears throat] with uh with them at the time to get an agreed value. So they were pulling up the cheapest accident in history, Ferraris and ever and then I was pulling up the nicest ones with the most obscene ridiculous prices and we met in the middle somewhere. Yeah, it it worked out fine. I got more than what I paid for the car. Gosh. And what was the story with the Bentley? The Bentley I Well, so yeah, it was sold at a car auction in Chicago, completely misrepresented as, you know, 40,000 miles. And I didn't look where it said exported to Finland, I think. I think I saw that but didn't put it together. But Finland is like the filter to get something into Russia. And then Russia, it's the wild west. They have all the hacks. It's a Volkswagen based car to where they could roll back the odometer when it came time to sell. This is common place in Russia. You just roll back the odometer to a few thousand more miles than when you bought it and then sell it. And the next person does the same thing. So before you know it, this Bentley is showing 40,000 mi. It has 150,000 mi on it and it's really terrible Russian roads and and uh it it just showed up barely running. Motors toast. The suspension's toast. Everything's ruined. Um and there was no there was no saving it. I sold it to Freddy, I think, and he put a motor in it and saved it. But he's much more of a wrench than me, so I was I have to pay mechanics to do this. I'm not as hands-on as he is, so it didn't make any Well, it doesn't make sense for Freddy either with his time, but other than YouTube videos, but I can't like just work for free on it because I'm How much did you lose in the car? Not bad. 15 grand. Okay. No, it was bad. Yeah. Yeah. But you know what? Before we go into that, this section is sponsored by the Range Rover Sport because, as I'm sure you guys have seen, I'm a huge car fanatic. I've made several videos about cars and I even have a car on display in my office. 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And you can start designing your Range Rover Sport today at Land Roverusa.com. Again, that's Land Roverusa.com with the link down below in the description. Thank you again to Range Rover Sport for sponsoring this video and just being able to say that is such a huge honor because growing up I was a huge fan of their cars and now being able to be sponsored by them, it's a dream come true. So, thank you so much for making this a reality. Really appreciate it. And now, let's get back to the podcast. So, what are cuz we were we were discussing the really bad financial decisions andor mistakes that you've made, right? What are some of the worst ones? And that one was definitely up there. But the the funny thing about YouTube and where where this completely changed cuz I would buy a terrible car at my car dealership. I'd lose all this money. But if I buy a terrible car for YouTube, I show up as totally misrepresented. like a Chrysler Learon for instance that the guy said that it had no rust and I could put my fist through the holes in the floor and it had rust on every panel. I can make YouTube videos out of it. So bad becomes good. So I got so mad at this car I dug a hole. I buried it in a year. I dug the car up to see if it would start again and it started and I get millions of views out of this and then the bad turns into good. So if it's a terrible car then then I win. If it's a good car then I win. Where did you get the idea to just bury a car for a year? And did you know that you were going to dig it up in a year when you initially buried it? I knew I was going to bury it in a year, but this was just like, what the heck do I do with this thing? Because it is worthless. It is unsellable. And I thought, I'll dig a hole. I'll dig a hole. I'm [laughter] going to bury this thing. Yeah, it uh Where do you have the space to vary the car? So, my mechanic has a large property and I just hired a guy with a backhoe. came out, dug the hole, drove the car in there, and uh forgot about it. Then we brought it back up, the thing started. That was that was the incredible car part. The electronics came alive, the radio came alive. Uh the car was completely pancake from the earth and the suspension had collapsed from from, you know, tons and tons of earth sitting on it. Windshield collapsed. It was a convertible. The top had collapsed. Um so the car looked like a pancake, but the motor turned over and started [laughter] How deep was the car underground? 10 ft. 10 feet? Why does it need to be 10 feet? That's I didn't I wasn't [clears throat] supervising the entire whole digging process and when I showed up to see the hole to how deep it was. 10 ft from the bottom of the car. Or 10 10 ft from the roof. Yeah. 10. Which what? It's deep. I mean, these guys were used to digging foundations, I guess, so they just thought, "Oh, we'll dig a hole." Yeah, it was it was I You thought it would be like this far underground. No. Do this with your hands. No, it was it was more than 6 ft under more than a grave. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And the next one was a Range Rover drove it in there and we had record rain so it turned into a pond and the whole thing was just a swamp cuz the the car didn't collapse cuz it more structurally stable. We pulled it out and it was disgusting. No hope of it ever starting. Yeah. So what do you do in that case? Oh, I just bury it again. So, turns on a couple years later. Just threw it away. Yeah, that was How do you How do you throw away a car? Oh, you just haul a scrapper comes hauls it off. It's It's that was aluminum body, so it's worth a few hundred bucks in scrap. Yeah. A few hundred. Yeah. That's wild. So, those are some of the worst financial mistakes that you've made with regards to cars. I just There's just so many. I don't like it. What's What's the junkiest car you have ever boughten? Um there's there's there's plenty. Um, there was one where it was a Subaru Baja. That's a pretty cool turbo. So, like a WRX motor, but it had a little truck bed in the back. So, it was a turbo WRX little pickup truck thing they made in the mid200s. And I thought I had stole it, buying it sight unseen from an auction for oh, I don't know. I think it was about 10 grand. And it it was rusted. Like, we put it up on the lift. And you know, it's a there's four spots that you put on the anchor point for the car to sit on the list. And this thing was flexing so much and digging into the floors. And then we realized that one of the arms wasn't even holding the car because the car was just structurally just bending in with the lift and like about to just fall and kill us as we're looking underneath it. And uh yeah, had to junk that. There's just so many instances because it's fun for me to buy a car site unseen because of that experience where I don't do any of this due diligence or you're like, "Okay, let's just let's just see what it is." And uh some Yeah, I could get lucky. I It's about a coin flip. You ever buy cars sight on scene and then they show up and they're way better than you thought? That happens. Yes. I'm I'm counting on it being an absolute turd and it's not. Like what percentage is it what you expect versus way better than you expect versus way worse? It's about a coin flip of of being surprised in a bad way or good way. Yeah. Mhm. Now, what about some of the more large car purchases that you've been making lately? Uh I know the SLR has been one of them. Yes. Was there a Z8 or No, a Z8. Yeah. Yes. The SLS. You've done quite a few high-end cars that I've seen. So, the the first I mean there's been a few, but yeah, I got into six figures. Uh really the first time was with the Diablo and the Countach, two Lamborghinis on the same day, same seller. Um and he was a neurosurgeon um and got into tanks. He was opening a tank museum, but every time he got depressed, he was a single guy. He would buy an exotic car. He quit doing that and started buying tanks. So he wanted more tanks. He was selling Lamborghinis. He wanted for what he paid for them uh 8 years ago, which was way less than what they're worth now. It was 250 grand for both cars, a 89 Countach 25th and a 97 Diablo VT Roadster [sighs] and uh so 125 a car. I made videos on it. The guy lived on a dirt road just a few miles from me. I had no idea these cars were there. And it was every dime that I had basically shaking myself upside down at the time. And I but I knew I had to buy these things. And this was just just lucking into it from uh one from he knew I was a YouTuber buying exotic cars and and two my mechanic had worked on the Diablo once and I bought that. I was able to hang on to the Diablo for a year. I sold it for almost $300,000. So I had I made money and I have a free Countach. Last time I turned down Countach was $450,000. So, that's the best deal I've ever made. And my I will never top that for a car deal ever. That's the one in a million moonshot where a hundred other cars where I've lost thousands. That's the one that'll make up for it. Why didn't he just take this to an auction or sell it through Cars and Bids? It was an impulsive thing. Cars and Bids wasn't around quite but but it was an impulsive thing. We're like, I want to sell this right now. Who can who can buy it? and it was just me and I knew this was so crazy and I just agreed to his price. Um that like he had he had moved two years ago and was still in boxes and he's like I'm not sure where the titles are. Maybe you come back. I'm like well this one needs a battery so they'll give you time to look so I can like I was not leaving without him shop because like the next day he could call and shop this and it would be over. And I just I knew I had to get the cars. I had to get a check in his hand and like get out. And so it it was just just that impul his impulsiveness and me determined to get the cars out of there immediately was where I just looked into it. How do you buy a tank though? That's the thing. I Yeah, he's he's opened this museum in Kansas and it's really cool. What's the museum? It's a tank museum. It's called the tank museum. Tank museum. What does this guy do again? He's a neurosurgeon. He's he's he's very cool. But uh he [clears throat] had he had two countages there. Tessterosa. The next Countach he did sell to to Marion of Curated for and it was the same 8925th. I think he sold it for around 400 or 450. So he did the he didn't do it again. Oh my gosh. What What's it What's it like to drive a Countach? Well, I wish I was about 2 in shorter. That's the thing. I call it Lambo yoga getting into it. Uh, but once you're in, it's incredible that that that noise with the V12 behind you, and it's very old school analog, but handles very well, shifts very well. Like a difference between that and the Ferrari, like an old Ferrari, it needs to warm up. The the gears kind of crunch like in a Tessterosa and and it feels a lot more old. The Countage is just an experience. There's nothing like it, but it's it's it's just old school, but very modern feeling at the same time. Do you take on loans to buy these cars? How do you Oh, I had I that was the first time I was able to stroke a check and pay cash, but I've I've done every single type of car loan. Like on the Z8, I did a a lease with Putinham to see what what that would be like. And you know, obviously I I ended up when I could I paid it off, but every sign cuz I thought, okay, if I can get this car, then I'll make videos and it'll pay for it. And it just turned to at one point at my height I think I had I think I had five car loans at one point at my height of of stupidity. What's the what's the maximum amount of loans that they could give you on these cars? So like the credit unions had limits. The platinum leasing there's there's no limits, but they they structure it to where you you put down a decent down payment to where if they had a repo, then you're covered um or they're covered. Um, but yeah, I everywhere I could, I was I was grabbing for financing to just cuz I saw when I would get something special and exotic that, you know, my subscribers would jump, my views would jump. Like the Rolls-Royce Phantom was another big moment for me. I like that. And I Yeah, buying that from the Chicago dealer and and yeah, getting that was a $80,000 car, which was the cheapest Rolls-Royce Phantom in the country at the time, which was a almost $500,000 car new. So that's a huge depreciation. and the experience of that and owning it and and and I saw that it worked and that I could go through that for a year and then sell it and go to the next one hopefully not lose too much money and and it actually worked. But at that peak when I got the Phantom all that stuff that's like man I wish I could go on Dave Ramsey and just have him lose his mind with these five car loans and combined of you know over 10 grand a month in car loans you know just to just to see him just just smoke from his ears. What did you sell the Rolls-Royce for? Cars and bids 696 69696 bought it for 82,000. Are you serious? That that's it? Yeah. You fixed it up? You put money in the car? Oh, yeah. I mean, not too much. But why so little? That was it it was fine. I mean, I had sponsors and videos of course in the ad revenue and then Doug was starting his new cars and bids so he was kicking a little money to for me to take the chance and things as far as me promoting it and things. So, it all shook out fine. Still, a buyer walked away with a a $300,000 car for 69 grand. Yeah. And then he traded it in for something else a few months later and it Yeah. I think it's changed hands two or three more times since then. Oh my gosh. What's been your favorite car to drive and own? Probably between the Z8 and the SLS AMG. Two very different u mechanical feelings, but they're both kind of throwback classic looking. The BMW after the old 507, the SLS after the Gold Wing, but the SLS has that naturally aspirated V8 and a dual clutch. The Z8 has the naturally aspirated V8, but it's more of a classic feeling with the individual throttle bodies and that six-speed manual. So, it's been more of like a classic feeling experience. So, I love going back and forth between those two probably. If you had to pick one, what would you pick? Uh, SLS. Yeah, I'd use I use that a lot more. See, that for me is one of my dream cars. And part of it's rubbing it in a little bit. So, because I know you don't have it because I really wanted a Ford GT and I missed the boat, which you didn't, but so I'm going to rub my SLS in your face cuz you can rub the G 4GT. Yeah. Average car buyer, let's say the average viewer of this channel. Okay. Maybe they got like a few grand, maybe 10 grand, and they want to buy a car. They're they're maybe getting to be a car buff, like enthusiast car for 10 grand, or somewhere around that price range. What type of car would you recommend? I you shouldn't ever take my advice first of all, but I I guess if I was taking giving good advice, probably Miata is always the answer. I was about to say Miata. That's what That's what it stands for. M I ATA. Oh yeah, that's a great pick right there. Jackpot. Yeah, that's a fantastic fantastic choice. And I I love a American so like a like a 98 to 2002 Pontiac Trans Am or Camaro. It's the birth of the LS motor and it's a it's a nice modern feeling driving car. Good handling. um C5 Corvette. Um the Mustangs at that price point aren't very good. And you can go into some BMWs and not get in too much trouble if you I like the 2000s M3s. Yeah. But those are way out of 10 grand nowadays. Yeah. Yeah. True. So you'd have to you'd have to get like a 330 with you know like a a norm car of that E46 platform would be in that price range and definitely doable. Yeah. Yeah. When Jack was looking at Miata, I was trying to talk him into a Lotus Elise. Yeah, but that's like not even close to the same price. But you get the money back, Jack. Like I was telling Graham like, "Yeah, Graham, I I've got a few grand. I want to toss it into a car. Looking for something very fun, very sporty, and I wanted a Miata. I think it's a great car." Also, one thing that I appreciate about Miatas is I think because they made so many of them, their price trails all of the other JDM cars that have just gone crazy in price. At least I think it's because there are so many an S2000 they totally blew up. Uh but yeah, there's so many Miatas on the road. But why do the JDM cars specific like all of those like like the sportier cars, they just go crazy in value? But the Miata always trails. Well, they they're still making the Miata. There's so many of them. They quit making the S2000. They quit making the MR2. They quit making a lot of these, you know, the Mitsubishi quit making cars. So there there's this big gap in in what we have today from from JDM and what we have back then with the Integraas and stuff because there's so like what's what's accurate today? Obviously the new Integra is awesome, but it's it's not the same thing. It's Yeah. And I don't know if I would love a Lotus to be honest. I get so worried. Tell me if you suffer from this exact same thing. Not suffer, but you experience the same thing when you drive a nice car. I like I'm just consistently worried that a rock is going to get spit up and hit the windshield. It's going to chip some paint on the hood. Does that still worry you at all? Because I've asked a lot of other car buffs this and they're like, "Well, at this point it doesn't bother me. You buy a car to drive it." Oh, I regret that the Countage has become sort of an because I wasn't an buying cars for investment kind of guy. So, the Countage now scares me cuz it's worth too much money. Uh, but usually not. I hit a mirror in my Ferrari 599 and it just exploded on the bumper and chipped it all up and I I kind of laughed it off. But but uh yeah, you know, Lotus, lots of trouble usually serious. That's L O T US. So, but those I guess they have the Toyota engines in them, but yeah, Miatas, they're awesome. They're awesome. Yeah. What was your experience with the Tesla Roadster? Oh, so I drove it years ago. Um I I really enjoyed it. I just couldn't believe when I researched it how, you know, a lot of people say, "Hey, it's just a electric Lotus Elise with batteries in it." But I mean, it was so he he might as well have started I think he said it with his own car, designing it from the ground up because it's so so little left like the firewall and the windshield frame and that's about it cuz the the proportions are different, everything's different and yeah, I've never experienced a car like that as far as the driving experience and things. Um, yeah, it's really cool. Definitely. What was your least favorite part about that car? I mean, probably the, you know, the the soul of it, you know, where I'm I'm used to hearing and feeling and all that and and it's just it's just too good at acceleration. It's too good at handling where it's just like where's where's the personality? I guess that that's that's where I sort of lost it a little bit. I wonder as cars continue to evolve and get better, will there be a certain point, like you just mentioned where all the supercars are effectively the same? Because I feel like at some point physics will take place and a car literally cannot do 0 to 60 faster or it becomes a just a missile that you're basically stepping into and it's a huge like a super dangerous thing and the government's going to have to step in and regulate it. Won't there be a period of time where all of those upper echelon cars get too perfect where they're all effectively the same? I think so. It's all a race to basically a 1000 horsepower hybrid that goes to 060 in 2 seconds. I think that's that's what they'll all eventually end up being and that'll that'll be pretty much the end of it. Limit of tires and everything else and they'll all be the same until whatever the future is. I'm still not sure if it's going to be totally electric, but do you not think it's going to be totally electric? I do. I feel like so many manufacturers are just going to go that route because of instant torque, less maintenance on the car. It seems like all the states or a lot of states are really pushing for electric only. Seems to be the future. I mean, there's there's synthetic fuels. There's there's other kind of fuels that that could pop up to where you still have this ability to have a long range and be able to fill up your car quickly. And that's the the the thing like if you in Texas, you go to BIES or whatever, that's how every gas station across the country would have to be right now for people to plug in and charge their cars. There's hundreds and hundreds of bays just because it takes 45 minutes. So, so whenever there's that jump in battery technology, I I don't know which how that will happen where we can get a car charged up in 20 minutes and be able to go 500 miles. I'm sure it'll happen, but I there's there's other ways of doing it. I think the synthetic fuels is is one that seems really interesting that it's not talked about that I'm not that versed on to really speak on as an expert. But yeah, I think for me the biggest drawback is not having a true 500 mile range on a Tesla cuz what they say and what you actually get are two totally different things. Mine I think has a range of 220. I'd be lucky to get like 140. Yeah, that's that's the big problem. I I had the issues with the Teslas where I bought the older ones and the batteries fail as well. I've been in that twice now and it does sort of total the car. So in 10 years, battery fails, the car is worth less than what the battery replacement is. Is it's just thrown away. And that's the other thing that I really don't like about them. Now, I've seen though where they could replace the individual cells on the battery. Yeah. And that's very I don't want to say inexpensive, but it's way less expensive than replacing the entire battery. I did go that route with with the last Tesla that I had that failed, but it was the car was down for months to to do it and it was, you know, obviously Tesla really frowned upon that and they just want to completely replace the whole packs, right? But yeah, the eventual individual sales go bad and then they fix it and they warranty it for another year or two, but then in a year or two, what is the next little bit of sales to go bad? Then you're doing it again. It's a constant thing. Sure. Yeah. So, what's been the most expensive car to maintain from your experience? We were talking about the the Josha Gabbor slap thing. Those mineral oil Bentleys had a few of those and and they are pretty obscene. The the one that that was incredible was the 2001 Azour that was really originally owned by JeanClaude Vanam and uh it was about 500 grand new. I bought it for 25 grand. But it it's a very constant maintenance thing. And looking through the records of it before, like the top failure that if it would quit working like twice and it was over $8,000 each time to fix the top just with the complicated electronics of it and those cars are are pretty hardcore. Yeah. Have you ever heard of the Fisker Traanto? Mm- No. No. There's a Fisker Karma that's sold today Barrett Jackson for 21 grand. 21 grand? Yes. Yes. With 30,000 miles and nice. Wait, what's happening with those cars? Why are they so There's, you know, they went bankrupt that that initial iteration of Fisker where it was sort of a hybrid with a Chevy Ecote Tech Turbo in it. And uh now they're back as electric, I believe, but the same body, but that that early version, it's just nobody knows what to do with them. My understanding is that parts are somewhat hard to come by and they're not reliable. A lot of them had mechanical issues. Some of them would burst into flames. Yeah, I think that's right. So you have a small chance of that. I don't know how many actually burst into enough for them to go. I feel like a couple and then the media outlets just love to talk about because like one media outlet like posted an article or something on it and everyone was talking about it cuz Justin Bieber was driving a fiscal drama. So then the next time it happened like everybody [clears throat] just jumped on it. BMWs had their big fire problems more recently or Ferrari when the 458 came out, they had that glued that didn't bond very well on that and then it would melt on the exhaust and catch fire and burn the cars to the ground. So, it's not uncommon, but yeah, it's how it's handled, I suppose, is as far as the automakers and things. BMW, I think they just buried their head in the sand and Ferrari was, "Well, we'll fix it, give everybody new cars and things." But So, would you buy a Fisker Karma for 21 grand? I really wanted to just to see what that experience would be like. Why? Why can't you see 21 grand and be like 22? I stood there and I thought about it and I thought, well, I'm meeting Graham for dinner, so if I do that, then this is going to slow me down, so that's why I didn't tonight. No, that's actually why you don't tell me that. Are you serious? You You would have bid on the car otherwise. Come on. No, there's other fish in the sea, man. I wanted to see you. I wanted to have dinner. It was lovely Italian. I really appreciate it. Yeah, but it's a Fisker. The Fisker's car. [laughter] I know. I've seen them sell 21 grand. I've seen them sell that cheap before, but not with that low of mileage and one that looked that nice. Yeah. For your cars, do they have a reserve or is it just whatever? Every single car there is no reserve. So, I suppose someone could come bid $1,000 and end up with my Shelby, but it won't happen. But yeah, it's totally no reserve. So, how do you market for this? Like, what if hypothetically you're there and the car is up at auction and someone's at the going to the bathroom just like misses it? Well, hopefully there's more than two people in the room that want the car. Um, but the thing about So, in my case, I'm selling four cars. They automatically give you a bid's badge. So, everybody there selling a car has a bid's badge. A lot of them are car dealers. So, they'll watch and they'll see an opportunity where you rarely see something go below what a dealer wholesale would be because a dealer will see this and say, "Ah, I can make money on it. I can buy it." So there's no there's never a situation where a car's worth $100,000 and it goes for 10 grand because there's plenty of dealers in the room that know the market and then they come in and buy it. So the risk is a little lower in that sense. Same like what what Doug Mural would say on cars and bids is the same thing. You could you get more interest in a no reserve car. You have more dealers watching because hey maybe I'll be able to get it for a wholesale price. So you know you're going to at least get that. Is there a study of how much more you get with no reserve? I don't know. Um, it makes it much more compelling auction environment. And what makes Barrett Jackson so much different than anything else, you go to, say, Monterey Car Week, there's all these incredible vehicles, but they're all mostly reserve cars, and then it's just air out of the room when this big car comes up for sale, say like a McLaren F1, and it's supposed to sell for 15 20 million, and it doesn't meet reserve, and it doesn't sell, and everybody's in the room's like, "What did I come here for?" And so Mikum Auctions is the big competitor to Barrett Jackson and most of the cars there are reserve cars and you watch the TV coverage and it's really hard to watch in my opinion because they'll be working the room trying to get biders trying to get people to bid to bid it up to the seller's reserve where at Barrett Jackson it's a much more you know rhythm environment where each car gets two or three minutes versus you know trying to beat up a seller to get them to lift to the reserve in person or getting someone to bid. Interesting. How? Let's talk. Yeah. What were you gonna ask? Oh, I was gonna say we got to get you to buy the Fisker Traumato. It's on Bring a Trailer. I didn't even know this car existed. Fisker was doing coach building after he designed the Aston Martin. Okay. Uh the X5, a lot of these these great cars, and he did coach building. So, what he did is he took an SL Mercedes and then put Fisker Touches on it. So, he redesigned the entire car. Oh, hello. And uh I'm looking at pictures now. Yeah, that's it. Okay. So, I had no idea that car exists. He was selling those cars for about $300,000. Okay. Could you believe it? There's only 15 of them in existence. And this is one of his first ever cars. It's on Bring a Trailer right now. The top bit is 29 grand. Wow. The interior is screwed apparently. And the powertrain is Mercedes. It's Mercedes. It's an SL I think it's an SL500 Mercedes underneath it all, but it's whole custom. Interesting. And so I kind of thought, man, if this sells for like 30 grand to say you bought one of Fisker's one of 15 cars. Yeah. For 30 grand. Could be kind of cool. I'm just saying. Might be interesting. Good idea for you, too. Just because it's rare doesn't mean it's valuable, though, because that's that's the one car I did buy so far at Bear Jackson in Vegas was a HHR Chevy panel with the SS. It's an SS package. So, I don't know if you know any of this, but basically Chevy came out with a PT Cruiser competitor called the HHR, and then they made it a panel with no rear windows, so people could use it as a work van. And somehow they optioned it, or you could option with the SS. So, you get the hot turbo four-cylinder and all that stuff, the body kit, the wheels, and all that stuff. But nobody would take a work van and make it the SS except 200 people. And that's how many of these cars exist. And I I got one of them. It has 200,000 miles on it. I got it for six grand. But that that that's [laughter] my that's my pickup of the auction. Yeah. I'm thrilled. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Let's talk about the logistics of owning 20 cars. And you also said at one point you owned 40 cars. So when you owned 40 cars, what were the monthly costs on that? Like like I'm sure you have maintenance coming up every single couple of days. Something's wrong with one of the cars. They're all broken. Yeah. They're all broken. Yeah. Mostly. Yes. It's It was a revolving door. And I mean that's You have a full-time mechanic, like a personal mechanic. I that would have been very smart to hire the car wizard and and just pay him as staff staff salary, but no, he opened up his own shop and I I pay his rate and all that. He has his own YouTube channel called the Car Wizard. He's fantastic. But yes, it is literally a slave to your things is what I am. I am a total slave running them around to get things fixed all the time. If YouTube didn't exist, it wouldn't make any sense because that's all I mean that's really all I do is run the cars around to make sure they still live. See, that makes sense. I would be so concerned because even nowadays, like I try to be somewhat minimalist with like as far as the the things that I own because I know that the more things I own, the more responsibilities I have. And I have two cars right now. I have a 2005 Lexus RS RX 330 and my Miata 2000 SE Miata. And between those two cars, like I feel like I'm constantly having to go do stuff, get new tires, fix the windshield wipers, the oil changes, stuff like that. M so between 40 cars and insurance and everything as well on top of it. Yeah. You bundle with all that, you know, the collector car policies are pretty reasonable. So that's that's under $20,000 a year right now. The insurance that's not bad. So for you know multi-million dollar car collection, that's you know that's not too bad. But the uh yeah, the maintenance it can easily be $10 to $20,000 a month is what I'm $10 to $20,000 a month. Yes. What's the total value of your car collection? Uh, now probably around 2 million at the height, maybe about Yeah, double that. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So, you're selling up cars. Is it because you don't want to have so many cars? You want to thin out your collection a little bit? Uh, yeah. It's it's some personal issues that I'm going through that I I don't I haven't talked about on my YouTube channel, but everybody's guess sort of, right? But yeah. Uh, and uh, uh, I just, you know, I'm I need to buy a house at some point. I'm wanting to build my dream sort of barn garage on a few acres and things. So, I'm still sort of hunting that down at this point. And just finally, hey, maybe I'll have some money in the bank for once in my life, but um, probably not. I'll pro tomorrow. That's the thing. Car dealers are all there, not only are they there to buy wholesale, but they sell these cars and then you have this money in your pocket that from selling your cars that you can use sort of as instore credit to buy something else. So the last time I sold cars at Barrett Jackson, I sold five and one was a Superbird came out with a couple hundred,000 but never saw the check. I actually wrote Barrett Jackson a check because I ended up buying three cars from the auction. One of them SLR McLaren. So I I see these cars. Did the cars that you bought gain in value? Did they appreciate SLR? Amazing. SLR did. Yes. Yes. Um Yeah. So I I did find Yeah. with with the SLR and the Maybach was such an amazing pickup and be able to go and do Jay Leno's garage with that car and and all those things. So it was a great experience. But yeah, that that just shows how much of a crackhead I am where I was a check would have been coming and same with a lot of car dealers there. You have you can wait 2 3 weeks to get a check from Barrett Jackson or you can spend it right now on something else there. And uh yeah. So is it compulsive? Oh, is it like an addiction? Yes. Yes. Really? Yes. Yes. I feel like I've mellowed a little bit because I've I I've gone through pretty much every a lot of cars that I've always wanted to own and now I've sort of hit this threshold where the next things I want are like a a Ford GT, but I can't afford a 4G. I can't like that's that's a I know. I know you could do that, but then what's what's the guy driving around 4GT and making videos? That's that doesn't make any sense. Not a good YouTube. Yeah, the economics of it don't make sense. Buying a 300 SL going, which is my ultimate dream car for $2 million. Yeah, I know. What What What does that How would YouTube ever pay for that? But I guess Tvarish with the McLaren P1's proving us wrong on that. But I need to dunk one in the ocean hurricane or something and then buy it. Yeah. So, you go and you buy these cars and you get this like exhilaration, right? As soon as you buy them, you're very excited. How long does that honeymoon period last? It's like two weeks that you're super pumped on the car and then all of a sudden it just like sits in your lot. The crackhead comparisons are coming. So yeah, the Yeah, I think you're about right. You You got it. It's about two weeks. Yeah, I think so. Before I'm shopping again for something else [laughter] that it just one more. I swear. Just one more. I mean, yeah. To own 40 cars, it's there's got to be something going on there. Yeah. Thank you. Compulsion combined with some hoarder tendencies for for sure. I mean, I guess hoopties. I'm self-aware of it. Is that admitting there's a problem is the first step, right? That's the first step. But I've been admitting to this problem for six, seven years, so I haven't progressed yet. It sounds like you're content with it. Yeah, very much. See, if I had the garage space, I could be I could be similar to that with cars. Oh, you're so disciplined. Are you No. No, he certainly wouldn't. Yeah, he would get overwhelmed with the amount of maintenance between each car. Like, he you wouldn't want to spend your time fixing all the cars. No, but you A lot of the cars you could get don't need that sort of maintenance. Ford is easy maintenance. The Lotus is easy. You are wired like so differently for me because when I bought my 66 Shelby, I was selling my old 66 Mustang. You were interested in it. I remember it was a very long process of consideration and questions and follow-up questions and let me think on it and let me run the numbers and all this stuff where I would where I would have been like yes just thing shiny thing. Yes. where yours was a uh you eventually didn't buy it and it was fine. It was fun talking to you and all that stuff since you're a friend and everything, but uh yeah, you you would go on a car lot and drive a normal car salesman. Absolutely insane. Yeah. Yeah. Every time like I'll get random texts from Graham. He's like, "Hey man, what do you think about this?" And he links me to a an auction on a certain car. He's like, "I'm thinking about going and you want to come over and we can watch it together." And I had so much fun. And we used to do that like back when I lived with him in Santa Monica. He would come down to me all the time and just constantly be placing bids on all these cars and freaking out the entire time. And uh like there were so many cars you put bids on. You didn't end up getting who? Yeah, but you know what? You set a limit. Set a limit. You would exceed like you would set a limit. And we would flip coins. Yeah. And he'd be like, "I want to go over. All right, let's go higher. One more. I'll flip it one more time." Because then it was meant to be. And if it was tails, it wasn't meant to be. I leave it to fate. If bait has determined it was not meant to be. It is always meant to be with me. That's You don't flip a coin. No, you should try. No, you should try flipping a coin. Or I could just have dinner reservations with you and that that stops me from buying a car apparently. [laughter] Yeah, if I had an extra garage spot, the SLS AMG would be my top spot. Or the Super Performance GT2 um GT40. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I've driven one of those. It's the MK MK2. So, yeah. Fantastic. Yeah. And there's one right now and bring a trailer. But see, I see I set a limit as like, okay, here's a price where I just can't say no to it. And that, you know, whatever that price is, I'll bid up until that amount because then I can't say no. If you get that car at that price, it's a good deal. You have to take it. But in fairness, the price that Graham can't say no to is like 60% of the price that the average person can't lower than wholesale where a dealer would say I can buy this and make 10 20 grand and it's on a public auction like bring a trailer where that would never ever happen. So yes, he's constantly texting you like I really want this car. You never know. I I think the same thing with real estate like every now and then someone throws out an offer and the seller takes it. It's just a numbers game. Well, that's the Ed Bullan method. So he won't go to auctions. He will seek out a car for sale normal advertised price and he will just just throw low balls out and throw throw a hundred low balls out and then the one that'll bite and that's that's where he ends up with amazing crazy cars. Yeah. Let's talk about driving all these very very fancy cars that are mechanically maybe unstable. Okay. You ever had really interesting situations while you're driving? Like maybe something gave out or you ever crash maybe one of these very fancy cars you drive? Um, yes. I have blown a few motors and uh 911s. That's one of my early YouTube projects where I blew my 911 on the track and then Ellis swapped it, took it out on the track, immediately blew that first LS motor and then swapped it again. How do you just blow a motor? Well, the first one had 238,000 mi and it was saying that it had low oil pressure and I thought the gauge was broken, but it had low oil pressure. And what happens when you blow a motor? You're just Did you floor it or something? It makes all these fun noises. And uh yeah, it just it Yeah, I just really grenaded. I was actually What was I chasing down a Miata, I think, in my 911? I was like, there's no way a Miata's going to beat me. I'm going to chase it down. The thing's giving me all these warnings of bad things are happening. I'm like the Miata Miata. I'm like, no, this Miata's not beating me. having a Porsche and uh what happened? Kaboomski. Yeah, Miata wins. Oh, Miata's always there. Okay, so you LS swapped it, right? LS swapped it and then what happened there? So the motors mounted backwards and you know maybe L and a Corvette is mounted this way and now the the motor is facing the other direction. So when you're accelerating, there's nothing stopping the oil from starving the bottom end on that end because it's designed for the gravity when you accelerate to pull it back. And now I had it opposite. So, it was starving the oil on that part of the engine. Fried it, blew it. I needed to change the oil pan, modify it to uh make that not do it again for the next one. So, you LS swapped it again. Yes. And then you you made the final issue. You corrected the issue. I am maybe $70,000 into this 99 Porsche with bad paint, 240 50,000 miles on it. That's maybe worth 15. You think you could take my Miata now? Oh, yes. Yes. I'd smoke you. I think so. I'd blow the motor, too. [laughter] Oh my gosh. All right. Yeah. So, you blew the motor on this this car twice. Twice. Yeah. Okay. Any other incidents? Oh, plenty. The most recent one was uh I picked up the 68 Charger that I'm selling at Barrett Jackson in Miami and thought it'd be a good idea to try and drive it back to Kansas on tires that were 30 something years old. Massive blowout them on the side of the road. 30-y old tires. Yeah. And they they were a little So what do they even look like at They were very old and very stiff, I'd imagine. Cracked. Well, they so so I drove it on the highway for the first hour and then I stopped for gas and I looked at them and the cords had ripped to where it was bulging like that. It looked like a old car tire from the 20s or whatever. I was like, "That doesn't look right. Maybe I should just keep driving." And yeah, just exploded that. Thankfully didn't damage the car. But then I'm stuck on the side of the road in middle of nowhere Florida for hours. So that that was a recent one. But yeah, there's I I'm on the side of the road about once a month. It's it's normal. Once a month. Yeah. I have a first name like I would call familiar with the towing company. Yeah. So his name's Dennis. He looks he looks a bit like Jeremy Clarkson actually. And uh yeah, I call him up and say, "Dennis, oh, where are you?" And I just because I gave up on roadside assistance like AAA sent me a letter thinking that I was defrauding them. Um yeah, because AAA common roadside assistance company because of all the toes that I needed. Like you must be doing this for um purposes other than like driving your cars. Like you're using it to like have cars delivered. You're pretending they're broken. There's no way you're doing this honestly. And I I sent them a very detailed letter explaining like everything that broke for every single incident and that they go away. Yeah. So we had a situation a long time ago. I had a a Prius that broke down in between Las Vegas and Los Angeles. And we broke down, I think, 100 miles away. So, we were 200 and something miles from Los Angeles where I was going. This is when I still lived in Los Angeles at the time. But my AAA would only get us, I think, like halfway there. And the cost Yeah. the cost per mile was so high. And this is an old Prius. It wasn't worth that much. Yeah. And so the cost of towing I believe was worth about as much as the car was. And uh the way we got around that was that I had the car towed 100 miles and then my friend who I was with called his AAA and then got the car towed another 100 miles. Perfect. And then I think at that point we were within like 5 miles of a deal of the the mechanic. So saved it. What what was broken? Uh strut. Oh, okay. Yeah. So, when I was driving on the freeway, I heard a P. And I was like, that's kind of weird. I'm going to keep going, but I'm going to be careful. And I kept going. And then it started getting louder. And then all of a sudden, boom. And just you feel the whole wheel go like this and, you know, pull over to the side. I thought it was a flat tire. No. But this the whole strut gave out in the front. I've blown a motor in a 2005 Prius. Really? Yes. Wow. Were you racing a Miata? I made it look like the Fast and Furious Supra. So, painted it orange. put the spoiler on it, lowered it, put the all the graphics on the side, and the next logical thing because it's a Fast and Furious tribute is to do nitrous, put it on there. But the way that the ignition cycle is on the uh Priuses, uh it didn't like it. And then it spun the wheels and kicked on the traction control, so that cut the power, but it was still feeding itself nitrous. And most I've blown up an engine, there's pieces all over the side of the road. the oil filter with the part of the block that it was attached to was on the floor. It it grinded on the bottom of the car for a while and then fell out the back and I could see through the block. So, [snorts] in summary, do not nitrous a Prius. Yeah, that was that was a fun one. How many engines or motors do you think you've blown? I don't know. That's that's about 20. 20? Yeah, would be a good guess. You know what would be wounded before? I'm not just Right. No. Of course. Of course. Of course. Should buy the uh on Cars and Bids. There's a Ferrari there right now. The F50 with the uh Yeah. Vo. I could see you getting that car and making great content on it. I want a fake Countage to compare it to my Countach. Yeah, that would be a fantastic. You don't think that's too close? Like your subscribers maybe can't really tell the difference between That's the whole point is just, you know, like because I'm a real Count probably the only real Countage owner with a fake one and then it just just mess with people in that sense. I've wanted a replica Lamborghini for a long time. Ever since I was 16, I wanted a replica. Uh, and I I don't want to say I I I got scammed. I definitely didn't. But there was this one website that was saying that they made this like replica Mercielago. I think it was like in the Philippines or something like that. And they were like 20 grand for this car. And it looked identical to the real thing. Like look the real thing. You'd have no idea. And I was like I was thinking to myself, this is me at 16, like oh man, if I could work like this and put a down payment, get a loan, get this replica car and ship it to the United States, like this is perfect. I basically you you get a Mercielago for like 20. It's a good deal. It's weird to hear you being impulsive and stupid. Yeah, but but it turned out I didn't do it. Okay. Way later on, I found out that this they what they do is they they take real pictures of the real car, put it online, say it's a replica, take thousand deposits, and you never get the money back. That sounds about right. So, that was it. I thought, hey, they're making good replicas that look exactly like you even see the engine bay, and it looks like a real like V12. Yeah, there there would be no way for that to get imported and all that. Yeah, that'd be impossible with with the current regulations and things. I guess there's enough people out there that they see that like 20 grand. Here's a thousand bucks cuz they said it was going to take like 8 months to build it and they showed like parts in a facility and it's like it's got to be real. No, it's a scam. So, what are the plans for your future? Well, like I said, I want to get a few acres to build my dream poleb barn and to be able to fill that up with cars and not be constricted in the space with garages. Um, as far as the the business side of things, I mean, I really haven't figured out anything new as far as like when I experiment on YouTube nowadays, I feel like I'm punished if I try and do something different. And so, I think people like what I do already and I just continue doing it and I I enjoy it. I mean, it's I've had a lot of, you know, different normal jobs and this this never has really felt like a job. Thank you so much for watching. Shout out Marino. Shout out Tyler. super nice for coming on the podcast and until next time. Until next time. That was funny. Cool. Thanks so much. I didn't realize it's already 10.