Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Latton Lads & the cursed MINI: A Motorsports Saga of Fire, Flood, and Brotherhood

Transcript

Latton Lads & the cursed MINI: A Motorsports Saga of Fire, Flood, and Brotherhood · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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  Grand Touring Motorsports started as a social group of car enthusiasts,
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  but we've expanded into all sorts of motorsports disciplines, and we
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  want to share our stories with you.
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  Years of racing, wrenching, and motorsports experience brings
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  together a top notch collection of knowledge and information
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  through our podcast, Brake Fix.
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  Hey everyone, Crew Chief Eric here, and this week I get the pleasure to
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  introduce you to two of our members.
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  The plucky Brits, the Latin lads, but better known to most of us
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  as brothers, John and Steve Wade.
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  John hails from our Southern states region and Steve from the DMV.
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  We're really excited to have them on the show tonight and know you'll
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  really enjoy what comes next.
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  And with that, welcome to break fix.
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  Gentlemen, so many stories, so many laughs, all revolving
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  around the two of you.
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  So let's start off with how you got into motorsport and probably
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  explain the whole Latin lads.
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  I can tell you, I can explain the motorsports bit.
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  Really easily.
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  And Steve will actually tell you the truth.
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  But the way it all started was because we were bloody broke.
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  So we had to get into repairing cars because we couldn't
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  afford any sort of pay for it.
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  So, a little story goes along with that.
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  One of my very early experiences with Elder Brother, there's
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  actually three of us.
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  Les.
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  Yeah.
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  . So Les bought an old Austin, 19 56, 57 Austin, while we lived in England.
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  Well, this car had a magneto and it was misfiring quite badly.
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  So I'm little, I'm about, I know, 7, 8, 9 years old, something like that.
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  And so Les is trying to figure out why this car is misfiring and what
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  run He close under the bonnet and he, he said, me sit in the driver's seat.
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  Yeah.
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  Now it's got a key, like, like an ordinary American car.
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  So I'm sitting in the driver's seat.
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  And it's also, by the way, an automatic, which is very important, because I did not
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  actually run him over, which surprised me.
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  So, I'm sitting in the driver's seat.
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  Les, all I can see is his buttocks sticking up from underneath the bonnet.
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  And he's like, Alright, John!
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  Yeah, I'm alright.
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  No, turn it over!
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  Cha cha cha!
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  Oh, sod it!
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  Fiddle, fiddle, fiddle, couple of wrenches, some very foul words.
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  Do it again.
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  Chaka chaka chaka chaka chaka naffle.
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  So what he has apparently done, at this point in time, is pulled a spark plug out.
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  You remember this, didn't you, Steve, eh?
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  Oh yeah, oh yeah.
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  It's shocking, literally.
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  So, Les has pulled the spark plug out.
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  Now you and I would ground the spark plug to the block.
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  Well, it doesn't really matter anyway, because it's a magnet, isn't it?
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  So he says, crank it.
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  So I turn the key and all I see is his head up over the hood
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  and out he goes about ten foot on the other side of the car.
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  What he was doing was hanging onto the spark plug wire, the magneto turn,
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  20, 000 volt shock right up the elbow.
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  Bang!
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  It shot him about six, seven feet past the car.
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  And he gets up and he goes, that's alright, that's working, mate.
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  And that's how I got started in motors as a littler.
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  Is trying to figure out how to fix the things because we were
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  completely and utterly broke.
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  Now, the motorsports bit, brother Steve here, is actually completely to blame
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  for an enormous expense in my life, and I'll let him tell you how it came about.
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  It what?
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  Yep, that's true.
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  Yeah, I started in motorsports in the States at least in 2000 and
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  something, just doing pro solo and all.
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  That was when I was much younger and I had long hair and it
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  was darker than it is now.
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  But anyway, John was turning 50 or something like that, I
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  don't know what age it was.
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  I thought to myself, you know, this Motorsports stuff is quite fun.
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  Uh, my wife and I bought him a Richard Petty race thing at Atlanta Motorsports
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  Park which is his 50th birthday present.
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  So we go down there, him, Carolyn and me and we go to Atlanta Motorsports
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  Park and he's never done any of this stuff before at least on a track,
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  he's done other stuff on a track.
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  So, you know, I get in the car and he gets in the car, he gets in the car,
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  he goes around and around and comes out again, he gets out the car I get
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  in the car, as I'm getting in the car he grabs me by the shoulder, yanks my
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  head back And the top of his head fell off with a smile that was so broad.
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  I said, that's it, it's gonna cost you millions, mate.
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  You're in, you're done, the adrenaline's going, you're totally hooked.
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  And that was the beginning of Latin Lads.
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  And I'll hand it back to John, tell you why we're called Latin Lads.
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  Oh, Latin Lads, yeah.
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  And by the way, yeah, I still haven't got rid of the case of permagrin.
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  It doesn't wash off, by the way.
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  Yeah, but you have got to get rid of the money, that's for sure.
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  Yeah, no problem.
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  The wallet's a lot lighter.
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  I mean, I want to introduce you to my main sponsor, you know, Hip Pocket Racing.
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  I've got a backup sponsor, Mr.
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  Card.
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  Those guys have been so good to me ever since I started.
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  Oh, the Latin lads, yeah.
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  So, Steve and I were born fairly close to each other in two neighbouring
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  towns, but we grew up in the same little town called Harlow in Essex.
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  Well, Harlow has been there since Roman times.
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  It's a shit hole now, but it was alright back in them days.
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  Uh, you know, we had the old centurions and the spears.
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  We remember that, it's no problem.
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  One region of the town itself was called Latinium or Latin.
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  In the middle of what used to be a nice Roman settlement, they built
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  our bloody school, didn't they?
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  Well, it's bad, because it was one of those 60s blocks, you know.
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  All it was, was essentially a rectangular cube, plunked.
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  With holes in it, and you wouldn't sit down, somebody yapped
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  for a day, and then you left.
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  That was it.
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  So, in this lovely Roman villa, they plunked our school.
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  The school was called Latin Bush.
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  How about it, yeah?
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  So, the Latin Lads is a bit of alliteration of that part
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  of Roman and British history.
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  So, it goes back, what, about 3, 000 years or so.
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  So, the name's great.
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  The place is a dog bath.
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  But, you know, the name's alright.
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  It's Swiss, isn't it?
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  Because no sod knows.
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  You know, they go, Oh, Latin Lads, what's that all about?
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  Well, Lads in England.
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  Is a, a bit of a, uh, a bit of a sly compliment.
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  A lad is somebody's a good boy, he's a good boy, you know, goes for the eyeballs.
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  But, he's a bit of a miscreant, you know what I mean?
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  He's always out doing that.
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  Well, that fits us perfectly well.
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  Now the griffin, mythical beast, ancient Greece I think.
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  The griffin was the school symbol.
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  And to this day, it's been, it's since been turned into office blocks, which
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  is a lot better use of it, because we didn't get any education out of it.
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  Yeah, yeah, not the Griffin, it was the building that turned into office blocks.
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  The Griffin's still there.
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  No, the Griffin's still there.
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  So, the class before mine, which was between Steve and I, made about, uh,
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  oh, I would say a 12 foot tall cutout of a Griffin, and put it on the wall as
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  their sort of graduation thing, yeah?
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  It's still there.
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  That's where the Griffin came from.
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  And the 3 and 37, uh, Steve's 37 comes from the, uh, Mini
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  Cooper in the Monte Carlo Rally.
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  Four years ago now, yeah.
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  The number 3, yeah, is extremely important.
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  There's no, no question about that one.
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  We all know number three was, right?
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  No, you don't.
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  Because it's completely coincidental.
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  So, like most people, after I got hooked, I went out and jumped in
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  a car, bought a full focus, never regretted anything more in my life.
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  Anyway, never mind.
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  It all, it runs alright now.
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  Well, it doesn't run at all at the moment because it's in about 8,
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  000 pieces parts, but that's okay.
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  So, I went and did autocross, yeah?
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  So going on the solo like everybody you go under your first
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  solar you've got no clue right?
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  You've no idea.
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  What's going on This car's all over the place.
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  This guy's leaning and going brr rr psssss psssss And things are blllllllll squish
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  you know, so you go to your course walk Sure, I thought I was gonna drive No!
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  Go out and walk it.
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  So you walk around, you're supposed to memorize the thing.
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  What a load of old cobblers.
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  No way.
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  Right?
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  You go around.
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  What do you see?
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  Cones!
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  And you go around the corner.
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  What do you see?
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  Cones!
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  More cones.
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  You go down a little straight bit and they say, Oh, this is a Chicago box.
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  Chicago?
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  Not a bad band, but you're back in the 70s, sonny.
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  No, Chicago box is great.
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  And what do you see in the Chicago box?
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  Cones!
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  Fleeting more cones.
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  And they said, don't eat the cones.
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  Alright, I got it, yeah?
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  Lovely.
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  Memorize, of course, my foot.
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  So they said, all right, go get your number.
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  So I says, anyone do what now?
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  He said, go over there to the trailer.
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  Chat me in there.
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  Cough up some dosh, some pictures of dead presidents.
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  Give that to him, and he'll give you a number.
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  Ha, fine.
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  So off I go.
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  You know, how much do I owe you?
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  Believe it or not, it's still the same today.
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  35.
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  I said, alright, that's not bad for a little, you know, it's about a mile walk.
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  So I'm done for the day, yeah, give him the 35 bucks, I'm off,
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  back in my car, I'll drive home.
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  And he, he says, you need a number.
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  I suppose, it's just one on, on the car, like, you know, on the back.
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  Yeah, it's got Alabama written on it.
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  And he says, now I'll give you one.
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  So, he had a stencil cutting machine for cutting magnetic plate.
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  He goes, turns around, comes back, guess what's in his hand?
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  A number three.
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  That's how that came about.
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  Pure coincidence.
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  I don't think anybody has a more thorough or complicated story about the selection
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  of their racing number than you do.
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  That is by far the most interesting story about the number three.
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  It's all good, mate.
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  Yeah.
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  That's how we came to be known as racing.
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  Steve and I were sitting there, um, you know, drinking a fruit
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  beverage based mostly actually on grains, but it's, we didn't know.
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  I said, well, what are we going to call ourselves?
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  And that's how it all came about.
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  That was the only legal one we come up with.
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  There was others you couldn't really put in public, you know,
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  there's lots of other names.
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  John, when we visited you last year, we saw that you're also a
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  bit of a car collector and you do a lot of your own, your own work.
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  Was that something that started before you got into motorsport, or did that
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  start as a result of motorsport?
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  Nah, it came about many, many years before that.
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  So I told you the story of, you know, the first attempt at fixing a car and
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  shooting my brother across the car park.
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  So that was it.
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  Well, that was inspiring, that was, because I could shoot many
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  people across the car park.
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  I'm up for it, you know?
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  No problems.
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  So, as life progressed, we actually immigrated to the States.
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  And I'd just learned to drive in England, so I had a British driver's
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  license, came to the States.
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  So now I've got to learn to drive in America, yeah?
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  Great.
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  So, eventually, my dad gave me one of his cars.
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  Well, actually, he bought another one.
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  I got this one.
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  It was a 73 blue Chevrolet Impala, right?
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  Everyone's owned an Impala.
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  Steve called it the Batmobile.
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  You know, it's like everyone in here Hey, you lived in the damn thing!
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  Oh, yeah, actually, yeah, that's another story.
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  Completely different subject.
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  Yeah, that's another story.
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  I lived in it for a long time, but that was an ugly story.
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  That was a good punch up, that one was.
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  So, this car, being built in good Detroit steel, began to rust quite badly.
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  So, what did I do?
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  Went and got a drill, a bit of metal.
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  And one of the old acetylene torch things in the little cans.
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  And I welded a bit of metal in it, sanded it down, and painted it
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  completely the wrong color, by the way.
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  So I'm like, Ah, that looks great, that darts not, it's terrible, but
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  it looked good, at least to me, yeah?
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  I thought that was fun.
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  I love some of that.
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  So as life progressed, I got to where I wanted to buy an E type, which
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  is, by far and away, the sexiest thing ever to be put on four wheels.
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  Even Enzo says, That's a nice motor, that.
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  And when Enzo says, That's a nice motor, you gotta listen to the man.
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  You know, he's had, he's had his shot at nice motors.
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  Completely cocked it up, apparently.
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  But nevermind.
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  So I said, I'm gonna have an e type.
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  To pay my way through college, I was working in a British car shop.
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  Blokes would bring their cars in and I'd completely and utterly cock them
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  up and give them back and take money.
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  Magic, right?
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  I was making a mint and every time I gave it back it was broke.
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  So they came back.
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  It's fantastic.
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  It's a self licking ice cream cone, Eric.
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  It's beautiful.
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  I was digging this, you know.
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  There was an e type parked in the shop and a bloke came down and this
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  is a terrific story, absolutely true.
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  He came down, his name was John and my boss's name was Bear.
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  John comes down and he's got a 73 black e type V12, red connelly
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  leather interior, red stripe tires, wire wheels, good business.
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  And as he drives in, you know, I'm tripping over my tongue, my entrails
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  are going around my kneecaps.
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  I'm like, I love some of that.
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  So he brings the thing in and he says, It's rattling and
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  knocking and it don't run well.
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  It's an E Type.
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  Big shock.
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  So, Bear comes and gets me and says, Can you tune that car up?
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  I've got absolutely no idea what I'm doing.
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  Uh, yeah, no problems.
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  No problems.
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  So, he says, Alright, go tune it up.
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  He's going to give it a valve adjustment.
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  Have you ever tried to adjust V12 E Type?
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  This, by the way, this is going to the car collection.
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  I'm getting there, right?
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  I start, yeah, I pull out the manual.
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  Bring out the, you know, little tall car.
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  All professional like.
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  I look down at this engine, which is about three quarters of a
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  mile long and about 40 feet wide.
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  It looks like a runway.
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  I'm like, ooh, that's tricky.
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  And it's got all these bulges on it, you know.
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  And I'm like, what's that then?
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  And Bear says, well, that's the valve covers.
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  Right, yeah, got it.
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  I'll have some of that, yank that off, and I'll tweak the valves.
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  Well, I yank those off, and what's underneath them?
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  Look in the book, of course, they're camshafts.
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  Because it's dual overhead cam.
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  Not only is it dual overhead cam, there is no lash adjustment.
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  You have to adjust the valves on an E type with shims.
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  So I go get a box of shims, and I fiddle fart around with this motor
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  for two days, and it's not bad.
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  Then it's the carburettor time.
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  Little did I know what awaited me there.
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  None of this SU cobblers, mate.
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  None of this noo, Six twin Webers.
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  Twelve bleeding carburetors.
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  So, I had some experience with tuning silly little English cars with stupid
• 13:29
  carburetors that are mounted sideways.
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  So, I had a clue, despite the fact these were not English carburetors.
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  I said, I'll have a go at that.
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  So, Bear comes out and he's got this disc in his hand, about that
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  big, with a little tube on it.
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  If you've ever seen a Unisin, that's what it was.
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  And he gave it to me, I went, nice, eh?
• 13:47
  Right, sounds good.
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  Now, what I want, inside, and we've got a link for a rubber tube.
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  About that long.
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  Stick it in my ear.
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  It's not, it's not a word of a lie.
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  And there's another mechanic that is watching me, like, this bloke's
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  completely lost his marbles.
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  Stick the tube in your ear, stick it in the throat of the carburetor,
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  and adjust the carburetor.
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  Then you hear the sissing sound.
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  Shhh.
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  Go to the next one, it goes, psst, adjust it again.
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  And keep going around, and around, and around, till they
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  all kiss the same amount.
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  Which means they're taking in the same amount of air.
• 14:13
  Is that why you're hard of hearing in that ear?
• 14:18
  Yeah, so eventually we'll adjust it, and I get this engine purring, yeah?
• 14:23
  This monstrous engine, and it's going, Ssssh, tick, tick, tick.
• 14:28
  Ssssh, tick, tick, tick.
• 14:30
  It's actually driving me bonkers, I got it that, so we called up John, I said,
• 14:33
  John, You come down and get your mower.
• 14:35
  So he comes down and he comes down in a rather tasty little car, drives up
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  and he gets out of his little car and he walks over and I said, John, it will
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  tick about once every minute or so.
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  And he stands there and he says, that's the best that car has ever run.
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  I said, you know, take it because you've got about 20 minutes
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  before it goes out of tune again.
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  So better get on the road, you know, better drive it to the next gas station.
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  Cause it's got a gas tank about the size of a beer bottle.
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  I look at the little car he drove up in.
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  Remember this is 1982.
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  Gas crisis, big engines are out of vogue, and it's a little British car.
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  And I look at this little British car, I don't know what that is.
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  And he looked at me and he said, do you?
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  I said, yeah.
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  I said, I've seen those before, we've seen them in England.
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  I said, they're pretty rare, aren't they?
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  He said, and he kind of grinned, you know, he had this sly grin on his face.
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  He owned an electronic shop.
• 15:20
  Yeah, they're very rare.
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  I said, yeah, I don't think I've ever seen one in America.
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  So.
• 15:25
  Walk around his car, it's blue, and the other mechanic wants to come up and look
• 15:30
  in the, where the engine bay is, you know?
• 15:32
  And he leans on the fender, and John says, don't lean on the fender.
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  He goes, oh, sorry, I didn't want to put fingerprints on it.
• 15:38
  He says, you're not gonna put fingerprints on it.
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  You're gonna bend it.
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  Odd story.
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  So I'm like, what's all this about, you know?
• 15:45
  Some arrogant American worried about bending his car with
• 15:47
  the pressure of a hand.
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  You know, oh, don't worry about the mosquito, we'll
• 15:51
  just go for the windshield.
• 15:53
  He says, do you wanna have a go?
• 15:54
  He said, I'll take you for a ride.
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  I said, yeah, alright.
• 15:58
  So out we go, it's a place called Hanover Street in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
• 16:00
  So we go up Hanover Street, and we go down to the local shopping
• 16:03
  mall, when there was such a thing, before they were all torn down.
• 16:06
  And we do the Mall 500, yeah?
• 16:08
  Go round and round the parking lot, waving at the girls and
• 16:10
  their little sports car, yeah?
• 16:12
  We get back to the top of Hanover Street, which slopes downhill, to Bear's Shop.
• 16:16
  And he stopped.
• 16:18
  And he looked over at me and he said, You want to see how this thing goes?
• 16:21
  And I'm like, yeah, I mean, I've been in sports cars all my life.
• 16:24
  Since I was a little kid.
• 16:25
  He mashed the gas in that car and I could not move.
• 16:28
  The thing burned rubber for an entire city block.
• 16:31
  And all I'm doing is screaming.
• 16:33
  I mean, little girls screaming.
• 16:35
  This car is accelerating.
• 16:36
  There's clouds of smoke and there's snot mouths and camel
• 16:39
  fur flying every which way.
• 16:41
  All I can do is grip on this little car.
• 16:43
  And so I look at him like, What in the hell is that?
• 16:46
  So we come back to the shop.
• 16:48
  And he goes, he says, he says to me, he says, it goes all right, doesn't it?
• 16:51
  I said, yeah, it goes all right there.
• 16:53
  I said, what is under the hood of this car?
• 16:56
  So he walks around and a little bonnet with two door handles on it.
• 16:59
  Like from your shed, and he turns the two door handles from your
• 17:03
  shed and takes the bonnet off.
• 17:05
  Oh, that's pretty stylish.
• 17:07
  You know, don't get a gust of wind, mate.
• 17:09
  Poof, off she goes.
• 17:10
  All I can see under that is carburettors.
• 17:13
  You know what kind of car it was?
• 17:15
  I thought it was called a Bristol.
• 17:17
  It wasn't a Bristol, it was an AC.
• 17:19
  It was a Cobra 427 Semi Comp.
• 17:21
  525 horsepower from the factory.
• 17:24
  In a car that weighed about 2, 000 pounds.
• 17:26
  That was my first experience with rather natty cars.
• 17:29
  But I like his E Type best.
• 17:31
  I want to buy one.
• 17:32
  Well, my finances didn't, and still don't, run to buying an E Type.
• 17:36
  Plus the fact that they're now a precious artifact and no longer a car.
• 17:41
  So I said, I know what I'll do.
• 17:43
  I'll build myself one.
• 17:44
  So I found a company in the Goodwood Motor Racing Circuit, in the old Shell building,
• 17:49
  which is since gone in the last few years.
• 17:52
  But the Super Shell building, which is where they used to
• 17:55
  paddock the cars, the race cars.
• 17:58
  There's a guy called John Randall, and he was making a car called a Wildcat.
• 18:03
  The Wildcat's an sort of E Type replica.
• 18:06
  It's really E Type inspired.
• 18:08
  It's about four inches longer and four inches wider, if you ordered it like
• 18:12
  I did, with the much wider fenders, because I'm going to put American wheels,
• 18:16
  tires, and running gear in the car.
• 18:18
  So, when I got the car, it had no mounts.
• 18:19
  It had a chassis and a body and no mounts of any kind.
• 18:22
  Nothing.
• 18:22
  I made all the mounts myself.
• 18:24
  Built the car myself, it's still sitting in the garage right now.
• 18:27
  Although I destroyed the gearbox in it two weeks ago.
• 18:29
  Completely melted.
• 18:30
  I melted third gear.
• 18:31
  You want to try doing that?
• 18:32
  It's tricky.
• 18:33
  No, don't.
• 18:34
  It's naughty.
• 18:35
  Completely melted the gear.
• 18:36
  Except for third.
• 18:37
  Third worked, right?
• 18:39
  Ah, yeah, I had a, yeah, it was melted.
• 18:41
  I had a box full of firsts, really.
• 18:43
  Uh, it wouldn't come in, there was no neutrals, just a box full of firsts.
• 18:47
  Uh, so it's out of the car at the moment, but that's alright.
• 18:49
  Um, so when I finished it, drove it for years, and then a major
• 18:53
  problem started with the car.
• 18:54
  It kept blowing a fuse, yeah?
• 18:56
  Well, I'd used an old Mustang wiring harness, and what was happening
• 18:59
  was the wires were getting wrapped around the steering column, and
• 19:01
  shorting out, they'd blow the fuse.
• 19:03
  So I said, right, I've had enough of this.
• 19:05
  I'm going to put a new wiring harness in it.
• 19:07
  Fine.
• 19:08
  This is six years ago.
• 19:09
  So I said, great, that'll work.
• 19:11
  So I'll buy one of these Ron Francis super duper wiring harnesses for it.
• 19:15
  Well, to effectively put the wiring harness in, you really will take the
• 19:18
  engine and gearbox out of the way.
• 19:20
  Okay.
• 19:21
  Well, one engine and gearbox is out of the way, we'll have,
• 19:23
  we'll have a different one.
• 19:25
  So, I added about 200 horsepower, fuel injection, limited slip rear axle,
• 19:30
  changed all the suspension because I wasn't overly pleased with it, then I
• 19:33
  got, uh, Aldean shock absorbers, Fat Man front suspension, polished stainless
• 19:38
  steel A arms, had the body painted and had a new interior put in it.
• 19:42
  So, other than that, I left it alone.
• 19:43
  It was exactly, exactly stock.
• 19:45
  So, in the meantime, when I was flying for the army, I decided from a very little
• 19:51
  kid when I was 10 years old, there's a place called Bush Fair near Latin Bush,
• 19:55
  little shopping center in England, got a pub in it called The Painted Lady.
• 19:58
  You remember that, Steve?
• 19:59
  Yeah.
• 19:59
  In the parking lot of that pub was the most gorgeous automobile
• 20:03
  I had ever seen in my life.
• 20:04
  Flying fenders, long bonnet, little bitty tail, two seats, beautiful car.
• 20:10
  It was a Morgan.
• 20:12
  I thought, I'm thrilled.
• 20:13
  Then I saw on TV a documentary of how they made them.
• 20:17
  It's like, I've got to have one of them.
• 20:18
  Got to have one of them.
• 20:20
  Little did I know that it would cost the best part of a year's salary and
• 20:23
  get three, take three years to buy one.
• 20:26
  So I said, well, that's a bit of a problem.
• 20:28
  So I started looking for a used one.
• 20:29
  And as it turns out, I got a bonus for being a pilot in the army.
• 20:33
  So I said, I know what I'm going to do with that.
• 20:35
  Yeah.
• 20:36
  Two years on the internet before I found the car I now own, which was a Morgan Plus
• 20:40
  8 with a roller throttle and treated wood.
• 20:43
  Which is sitting in the garage right now, next to a 65 Mustang Fastback, which is a
• 20:49
  running driving car, it just, you wouldn't want to be seen running and driving it.
• 20:54
  It may be running away from it, perhaps, but not in it.
• 20:57
  So it's purple at the moment, and that's the next restoration.
• 21:00
  Next to that is a 73 VW Super Beetle convertible, which is
• 21:05
  in an excellent state of rust.
• 21:07
  Really, what you've got here is a VW pile of metal oxide.
• 21:12
  It's shaped like a VW, but it really isn't there.
• 21:15
  It's just a myth.
• 21:16
  I believe they call that the, uh, Wolfsburg edition.
• 21:18
  Yeah, yeah, it might be the Rustberg edition in my case, but yeah, like that.
• 21:22
  It's something like that.
• 21:24
  So next to that are two John Cooper Works Mini Coopers.
• 21:27
  One's a Clubman, the other one's a 17, uh, JCW, and I course, naturally, it's fairly
• 21:33
  new, it's only got 20, 000 miles on it.
• 21:36
  I could not let that rest, could I?
• 21:38
  It's only got 230 horsepower, I've got to have something more than that.
• 21:41
  So, a couple of calls to Mini Mania, and M7, and in comes, uh,
• 21:47
  about 1800 bucks worth of bits in boxes, and a little bitty box.
• 21:52
  That is the secret to that car, right?
• 21:55
  Because what it is, of course, is a tuna fish.
• 21:56
  Looks like a fish.
• 21:57
  Stick your tuna fish in, put your bits on, go drive.
• 22:00
  280 horsepower Mini Cooper S.
• 22:03
  That thing will flat scream.
• 22:06
  It is so much fun, and it embarrasses so many people.
• 22:10
  I absolutely adore that little car.
• 22:12
  It's great.
• 22:12
  And the only reason I ever got into Minis was because of that
• 22:15
  twit next to me over there.
• 22:16
  So I was actually going to ask, oh, you have a lot of experience turning wrenches.
• 22:21
  You've also been in magazines for your, your miniatures and your
• 22:25
  collections and things of that nature.
• 22:26
  I've seen the work you do.
• 22:27
  It's very, very good.
• 22:29
  We don't have to go, we don't have to go down that rabbit hole.
• 22:31
  It's exceptional.
• 22:32
  So Steve, do you have the same wrench turning background that John does?
• 22:36
  Or how did you get to where you are now with your cars?
• 22:39
  No, no, not at all.
• 22:40
  I'm just a cheap bastard who won't let anybody else work on my cars.
• 22:43
  That is the sum total of it.
• 22:44
  There's nothing else to it.
• 22:46
  Actually, what happened, I have nowhere near that mechanical background at all.
• 22:49
  It wasn't until about, let's see, 2002, when the new Mini came out in the States
• 22:55
  that I actually got into anything.
• 22:56
  I bought a 2002 Mini, which I gave to my son in the end.
• 23:00
  Then I bought the 2004 Mini, known as the MC40, and we'll come
• 23:04
  on to some of those stories too.
• 23:05
  And, you know, as I said, I started in autocross and started to mess around
• 23:09
  with it, and you know, you get all kinds of ads about, well, try to do
• 23:13
  this, and try to do that to it, so I thought, well, I'll give it a try.
• 23:16
  But, you know, I couldn't take it to the dealer because I couldn't afford it.
• 23:19
  Didn't want to anyway, didn't want to mess with my car.
• 23:21
  So bought some tools, bought some bits, you know, put a pulley on it, put a
• 23:25
  cold intake on it, that kind of stuff.
• 23:27
  And it started going faster and faster.
• 23:30
  And then, you know, John and I went actually to, as I said, on
• 23:33
  his 50th birthday down to Atlanta.
• 23:36
  And then it was it was like, let's get these cars on the track
• 23:38
  and let's do some serious stuff.
• 23:40
  And that was when I really started pulling wrenches and taking cars
• 23:43
  apart and reading books and then screwing it off and taking it apart
• 23:47
  and putting it back together again.
• 23:48
  And then as, as is, uh, The name of the show, break it, fix
• 23:52
  it, break it, fix it, right?
• 23:54
  Exactly.
• 23:55
  That's it, so.
• 23:56
  You both have Mini Coopers.
• 23:57
  Is that just a inherent patriotic British thing?
• 24:02
  Or did you have Minis, old school Minis, as we call them
• 24:05
  here, when you were younger?
• 24:07
  It's not very patriotic because it's German, aren't they?
• 24:10
  Well, they are.
• 24:11
  Well, the new ones are.
• 24:12
  The new ones are.
• 24:14
  Actually, I, um, When I first came to the States, you know, because I was
• 24:18
  English, of course, I was looking for stuff that would be, you know, a little
• 24:21
  bit of a home style kind of thing, and I actually saw a classic mini for sale
• 24:26
  in a place called Leesburg, Virginia.
• 24:28
  I didn't actually go get it at that particular point in time, but I thought,
• 24:30
  you know That would be fun to have an old MINI, because it's very unusual, you
• 24:35
  know, it probably gets a lot of attention.
• 24:37
  So, I actually ended up buying a, uh, 1984 Classic MINI, which
• 24:43
  I've still got out in the garage.
• 24:44
  25th anniversary edition, so it's silver.
• 24:48
  And that's another car that I, I got to work on myself because nobody else
• 24:51
  can work on or very, very few folks.
• 24:53
  So, joined a club, you know, Mini, Capital Mini Register, actually
• 24:56
  was president of that for a while.
• 24:58
  Tooled around, you know, doing Christmas shows, all kinds of stuff
• 25:00
  and exhibitions with that car.
• 25:02
  That was before I got into the new Mini at all.
• 25:05
  And I say, I got a 2004, which was the MC40, and then we put that on the track.
• 25:10
  Of course, at that point, John had his focus.
• 25:12
  He was a fooled man at that particular point in time.
• 25:15
  And was, uh, running his focus all over the place, trying to
• 25:18
  keep up with his older brother.
• 25:19
  Because at that point in time, not only did he not have a car that was as fast as
• 25:23
  mine, he didn't have the talent either.
• 25:25
  I just want to make that clear, you can repeat that, you can put that on a loop,
• 25:29
  and just put that on the podcast, that there was a time When I had a faster car
• 25:33
  than him and could drive better than him.
• 25:35
  Doesn't occur anymore, but it did back then.
• 25:37
  It was fleeting, Jack.
• 25:38
  Fleeting.
• 25:39
  I want to dive in just to the younger versions of yourselves.
• 25:43
  Not that you're, not that you're that old.
• 25:44
  Maybe no classic Mini in your portfolio, but was there the
• 25:48
  other British staple in there?
• 25:50
  Was there a Cortina or was there a Mondeo or anything like that?
• 25:54
  Because the way it's portrayed to us here across the pond is that everybody owned.
• 25:59
  A Cortina at some point in their life.
• 26:01
  Well, I it's not a Cortina story But when I first got in industry in england,
• 26:06
  uh, it's very common for part of the benefits in Companies in england,
• 26:11
  so you get a company car and the first company car I ever had was a 1.
• 26:16
  6 full capri And then I got promoted and got a two liter that
• 26:21
  was special a two liter capri mate And that thing was awesome.
• 26:25
  I loved that car.
• 26:25
  So I made it I I was all the way to the top as far as I was concerned.
• 26:29
  I had a Really neat sports car, you know, it was a Ford, but
• 26:33
  you know, it was what it was.
• 26:34
  So yeah.
• 26:35
  If it's any consolation, my dad had a Capri.
• 26:37
  I believe it was a 76 with a 2.
• 26:40
  8 liter.
• 26:41
  He must've been way up in management.
• 26:43
  That's all I can say.
• 26:44
  It must've been.
• 26:45
  Gave him a track car, mate.
• 26:48
  He told me more than once he spent more time going backwards in that car than
• 26:51
  forwards because it was very tail happy.
• 26:54
  The absolute death trap.
• 26:55
  Yeah, oh yeah.
• 26:55
  You guys probably saw the end, or quote unquote the end of the grand
• 26:59
  tour with our favorite trio, you know, Clarkson, Hammond, and May.
• 27:02
  Were you guys saddened in the same way that they were with the exodus
• 27:07
  of the Mondeo or the Cortina?
• 27:10
  Did you see it go away?
• 27:12
  It's like, it's like saying you're nostalgic about a pinto, for God's sake.
• 27:16
  No!
• 27:17
  Yeah, yeah, right.
• 27:18
  There are certain things Good riddance, that thing was a piece of crap.
• 27:22
  You know, measles, herpes, cortinas, capris, those things.
• 27:26
  No, you don't want that hanging around, mate.
• 27:29
  I think you want to get that off the road.
• 27:30
  No, they're dangerous.
• 27:31
  Population control.
• 27:33
  I have to ask, this one is going to be one of my favorite questions for
• 27:36
  an interview, but since you guys are from England If you could have a beer
• 27:41
  with any one of the three, Clarkson, Hammond, or May, who would it be?
• 27:44
  Steve, you go first.
• 27:45
  Uh, May, I think.
• 27:47
  One, because he's got so many other interests.
• 27:49
  Captain Sloane!
• 27:50
  That's why!
• 27:51
  Yeah.
• 27:54
  Well, you know, he likes trains and stuff like that.
• 27:56
  Builds big Legos and stuff.
• 27:58
  So he's really cool.
• 27:59
  No, but Captain And I'm about his same pace as well, so yeah, that's right.
• 28:04
  I think James may be a lot of fun, he's a, I think he's a pretty neat, and not only
• 28:08
  that, you know, I don't like people that aren't too much taller than, so, can't
• 28:12
  go with Hammond because I'm like six foot taller than he is, and Clarkson is just
• 28:15
  an arse, so, you know, he don't count.
• 28:17
  Your turn, John.
• 28:18
  Uh, it's got to be the producer that took the blow from Clarkson, I
• 28:21
  think that's a bloke I would pick.
• 28:24
  If anybody's been to stick his nose in front of Clarkson, mate, you got that.
• 28:27
  He got him fired.
• 28:28
  Cool.
• 28:29
  That's the bloke I'm on.
• 28:30
  Yeah.
• 28:31
  Uh, the hamster's pretty cool.
• 28:33
  Why?
• 28:33
  Because he's the only one who's got the balls to stand up to Clarkson.
• 28:36
  I love it.
• 28:37
  He may be short, but he's wiry me all the time.
• 28:39
  He's wiry.
• 28:41
  That's awesome.
• 28:44
  Oh man, I've got to contain myself.
• 28:46
  So let's fast forward a bit.
• 28:48
  You guys have done some pro solo, you've done some autocross, obviously you guys
• 28:52
  have been competitive, all three brothers competitive, probably since day one.
• 28:56
  I know you guys are avid time trialers now and I've run with you guys as well,
• 29:00
  but let's fast forward to, I somehow got to be both of your instructors.
• 29:06
  You did.
• 29:07
  Yeah.
• 29:08
  Yeah.
• 29:09
  And that's the reason So it's your bloody fault?
• 29:12
  Yeah.
• 29:12
  That's the reason we've had no success since.
• 29:15
  Yeah, so I can't drive, dammit.
• 29:16
  Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
• 29:18
  So it's a sod all, not a trophy.
• 29:20
  Not a bleep.
• 29:21
  Yeah, I don't know about that thing.
• 29:23
  No, actually All the time I thought it was, I had no talent.
• 29:26
  And that's not true.
• 29:28
  No, well, I mean you could say that, because even Eric couldn't
• 29:31
  bring it out of us, could he?
• 29:32
  Oh, oh, ow.
• 29:34
  Oh, complete lack of talent.
• 29:37
  Nothing you do about that.
• 29:39
  You know, you can teach, you can train, you can mentor, but
• 29:41
  you can't fix stupid, can you?
• 29:43
  That's it.
• 29:46
  So let's, let's talk about the Glen because that was one heck of
• 29:50
  a weekend for both of you guys.
• 29:52
  And I know John, you got a really good story, which really sets up
• 29:55
  the curse of the mini conversation.
• 29:58
  Well, hold on.
• 30:00
  Let me tell a story before we start because I'll probably fall asleep
• 30:04
  when he tells that story again.
• 30:05
  So I'm going to tell you a story that preambles that one.
• 30:08
  So it's about a bear and it's a very important bear.
• 30:12
  Does it involve a small blonde child in a bowl of porridge?
• 30:16
  Yeah, it's, it's a bit of a new story, isn't it, this one, coming up.
• 30:20
  Yeah, that's it, just steal the punchline, right up the
• 30:23
  top, just steal the punchline.
• 30:24
  No, it doesn't.
• 30:25
  Anyway, so I'm doing solo cross up in Cumberland, Maryland, you know, and I
• 30:29
  have a house up there, so I took the mini out, and it wasn't really that
• 30:32
  Uh, modified at that point in time.
• 30:34
  So it's just a regular mini.
• 30:35
  So I take the mini up there and I go up there on a Friday.
• 30:38
  We run Saturday, Sunday.
• 30:39
  So I leave the car outside the house and about two o'clock in the
• 30:43
  morning, I hear this noise outside, scraping noise, really weird noise.
• 30:48
  So I go down in house, look out the window and there is a bear on the
• 30:53
  back of my mini, ripping it to pieces.
• 30:56
  In one paw, he has got, I think he's trying to mate with it.
• 31:01
  That does come into the story, but anyway.
• 31:03
  One day he's got the rear windscreen wiper, because I figured, you know,
• 31:07
  getting windscreen wipers in the bare world is fairly difficult, so
• 31:10
  that's why he took one of those.
• 31:12
  He rips off the bumper cover of the back, literally rips it off with his teeth.
• 31:16
  I'm looking at him wrecking my car.
• 31:18
  I'm thinking, what the hell am I going to do?
• 31:20
  So there's a broom in the house, and I thought, Oh no, I'll go,
• 31:24
  you know, hit with a broom.
• 31:25
  But I've heard his stories about poking a bear that you're not supposed to do.
• 31:28
  So I didn't mean that was an idea.
• 31:30
  So I think to myself, I don't know, I, I did what any red
• 31:34
  blooded Anglo-American would do.
• 31:36
  I went and woke and woke my wife up.
• 31:38
  That's what I did.
• 31:39
  So I go upstairs and I wake her up.
• 31:41
  Well, she's from the mountain.
• 31:42
  It's legitimate.
• 31:43
  It's not that funny.
• 31:44
  So anyway, I got upstairs.
• 31:45
  So I wake her up, I said, there's a bear eating my car.
• 31:49
  And she said, and I didn't think it was funny at the time.
• 31:51
  She said, well, he's probably hungry.
• 31:53
  Now, if it wasn't a true story, I would have said that was pretty
• 31:56
  funny, but I didn't take it that way.
• 31:58
  So I said, is there a bear eating my car?
• 31:59
  I'm not kidding.
• 32:00
  So she goes back downstairs with me, goes, looks out the window, and now the bear
• 32:04
  is not on the back of the car anymore, he's standing on the side of it with
• 32:08
  his paws on the roof, shaking the car.
• 32:11
  And he's probably six foot at that point.
• 32:13
  And I go, what am I going to do?
• 32:15
  Yeah, he can't shoot the thing.
• 32:16
  Well, mainly because he didn't have a gun, so that didn't, didn't help much.
• 32:19
  But anyway, so She looks at me, she opens the door, sticks
• 32:22
  her head out and goes, Shoo!
• 32:24
  And the bear runs away.
• 32:25
  And, it's like, wow.
• 32:28
  That's, that's what you do with a bear.
• 32:29
  She said, you don't come from the mountains.
• 32:31
  Went upstairs and went to bed.
• 32:35
  I mean, the bear, in the minute, it thought it was
• 32:38
  trying to get salt out of it.
• 32:40
  Where's no bloody salt?
• 32:41
  Where are the holes in the top?
• 32:43
  Trying to put it on a windshield wiper.
• 32:44
  But let me tell you why it was trying to get in the car, see,
• 32:47
  because this is also my wife's fault.
• 32:49
  So I, as far as I'm concerned, it was her job to get rid of the damn thing anyway.
• 32:52
  So before I came up that day, she says to me, stop by the
• 32:55
  nursery and pick up some mulch.
• 32:56
  So I said, sure, you know, you can't get too much mulch in a mini.
• 32:59
  So I go down the, uh, nursery, open the back of the car, the guy
• 33:03
  throws three bags of mulch in.
• 33:05
  I get up there.
• 33:06
  Now let's park the car.
• 33:07
  I've come to find out it is cocoa shell malt.
• 33:10
  That is, it's the husk of the cocoa bean, which is used to make chocolate.
• 33:16
  So my buddy Yogi was just trying to get himself some chocolate
• 33:20
  dessert at the back of my car.
• 33:21
  That's all he wanted.
• 33:22
  That was why he broke into the bloody thing in the first place.
• 33:24
  Fortunately, I think the bear is my spirit animal.
• 33:27
  So therefore the connection continues with this cursed mini
• 33:30
  and wet head and everything else.
• 33:34
  Yeah, and that goes back, that was kind of the first prelude for, Oh my
• 33:39
  God, this car is definitely cursed.
• 33:41
  So anyway, fast forward some years later, We've gone to Atlanta, we've
• 33:46
  done a few bits and pieces, We've thrown some wrenches on it, And
• 33:49
  John and I end up at Watkins Glen.
• 33:51
  At the coaches meeting, I was told, Hey, you have two brothers in the mini,
• 33:55
  And I was thinking to myself, Great.
• 33:58
  I've got two 20 year olds in a hot rodded, slammed Mini Cooper.
• 34:03
  What am I in for this weekend?
• 34:05
  And as I round the corner, and you guys were in a bay not even that far
• 34:09
  from me, I was, I was very surprised.
• 34:11
  I was very taken aback.
• 34:12
  Two mature gentlemen like yourselves.
• 34:14
  Yeah, now what you're trying to say is two fat, 50 ish foreigners.
• 34:18
  That's exactly right.
• 34:20
  In a minute.
• 34:22
  With an engine the size of a wallet.
• 34:24
  One of the goals in all this, by the way, of us doing this racing thingy,
• 34:29
  is, yeah, there's the thrill of the racing, but also the fact that we get
• 34:34
  to go on places that very few people get to go in the world, and places that
• 34:40
  we'd heard about in England, and you can pick up your bottle of beverage
• 34:44
  and tell stories that nobody believes.
• 34:47
  It's awesome.
• 34:48
  So we go to some of the most famous tracks in the world,
• 34:51
  and that's part of what we do.
• 34:54
  We have what's called a treat track every year, and we pick one track
• 34:58
  that's world famous and go there.
• 35:00
  We've been to Indy and Daytona and the little Talladega bit,
• 35:03
  Watkins Glen, all over the place.
• 35:06
  So the Glenn was in a special challenge and we got to share in some of that
• 35:10
  enthusiasm with you last year because for a lot of us the cannonball run
• 35:13
  is very similar and so and coming to barber last year was part of that
• 35:18
  bucket list of going to a world famous track again Thank you for hosting us.
• 35:22
  That was an incredible weekend, but yeah, it's It's bucket list and it buckets down.
• 35:27
  It's Alabama, four o'clock in the evening.
• 35:29
  That did bloody rain.
• 35:30
  It did rain that night.
• 35:31
  No good way to end it.
• 35:32
  So the glitch, you know, for us especially, because a lot of British
• 35:36
  drivers drove there in the Formula One, back in Formula One days,
• 35:38
  Formula Two, the Formula Three days.
• 35:40
  People that we idolize, people like Graham Hill and Stirling
• 35:43
  Moss have driven that track.
• 35:44
  So there we are walking through the town and there are paving stones in
• 35:48
  the town with the names of our heroes.
• 35:50
  Who have eaten in the restaurants we go into and have driven on the track
• 35:53
  that we're going to go drive on.
• 35:55
  So this is like reverence to us, yeah?
• 35:57
  Reverence be damned.
• 35:59
  Let's go fast.
• 36:00
  So we get on this world famous fast track in a car that most cars on
• 36:06
  the track would outrun in second.
• 36:08
  But it's alright, we're going as fast as we can, yeah?
• 36:10
  So we get in the car and we're trading stories.
• 36:12
  What about this corner?
• 36:13
  What about that one?
• 36:14
  Can't get up the S since Every time we get up the S since people
• 36:16
  are passing us left and right.
• 36:17
  Diabolical.
• 36:19
  Point bias left and right.
• 36:21
  cannot figure it out.
• 36:23
  So Steve and I said to each other, we need to get someone to show us how to do this.
• 36:27
  And that was you.
• 36:28
  And what we were doing was changing out a third coming
• 36:30
  into turn two to go up the S's.
• 36:32
  And you said, don't do that.
• 36:33
  Leave it in fourth.
• 36:34
  Which, of course, Steve and I are both like, Kya!
• 36:36
  Cobblers.
• 36:37
  No way.
• 36:38
  Yes way.
• 36:39
  And, of course, we got up the hill much faster.
• 36:41
  And we started to develop quite a bit of speed.
• 36:42
  Got that little mini up to about 137 miles an hour on that back straight.
• 36:46
  Going into the bus stop.
• 36:47
  Which, in a mini, is trucking right along.
• 36:50
  Little car was going pretty well.
• 36:52
  Fortunately, it's got pretty decent brakes because I'd have killed
• 36:55
  myself five times if it didn't.
• 36:57
  I'm going around, yeah.
• 36:58
  After you left us, and I'm on me own.
• 37:00
  Having a lot of fun.
• 37:01
  Well, Steve and I are firm believers in the fact that cars talk to you.
• 37:06
  They do.
• 37:06
  They do.
• 37:07
  Especially Dominic cars like this one.
• 37:10
  It's like Damien, you know, this thing.
• 37:12
  And it was talking to us very, very gently by dropping its entrails
• 37:18
  onto the ground in the shed.
• 37:20
  So it's dripping steadily.
• 37:21
  It's a British car.
• 37:22
  Not only do we expect it, if it's not dripping, it's empty, yeah?
• 37:27
  So what happened?
• 37:28
  Well, look underneath.
• 37:29
  What's that, Steve?
• 37:30
  Steve looks like a dial, mate.
• 37:32
  I think that's power steering fluid.
• 37:33
  Ah, no big deal.
• 37:35
  Like, these little cars, front wheel drive cars, when you're hammering the steering
• 37:37
  around, have a tendency to boil the fluid.
• 37:40
  Pukes out all over the place.
• 37:41
  Nothing but a thing.
• 37:42
  Yeah, it's back on the track.
• 37:44
  No problems on the track We go sort of around a couple of laps come down
• 37:49
  boom on the main straight the pitch straight and then coming up turn
• 37:53
  two Steering gets a little bit stiff right before I'm starting to turn in.
• 37:58
  Like, ah, no, power steering's gone, yeah?
• 38:01
  All the fluid's pissed out.
• 38:03
  No big deal.
• 38:04
  So I'm like, I'm gonna, I ain't gonna stop.
• 38:06
  I'm not going in the bloody pits.
• 38:08
  I'm gonna complete this lap, Sonny.
• 38:09
  I paid for this.
• 38:11
  And around I go.
• 38:12
  And it's, it's not that bad.
• 38:13
  It doesn't weigh that much, right?
• 38:15
  So it's like, ah, sod it.
• 38:16
  And the faster you go, the better it is anyway.
• 38:18
  So put your foot on the pedal.
• 38:19
  You'll be alright.
• 38:21
  Well, by this time, there's sort of concerned looks.
• 38:24
  of people around the track.
• 38:26
  But that's all right.
• 38:27
  So we go through the bus stop, down five, up through seven, and all
• 38:32
  of a sudden, I see black flags.
• 38:34
  I'm like, oh, no!
• 38:36
  I'm trying to get into the pits and get this thing fixed, will ya?
• 38:39
  Black flags, big black flags.
• 38:42
  So I'm sort of coasting to a halt.
• 38:44
  Black flag pointed.
• 38:46
  Stop!
• 38:47
  Okay, red flag.
• 38:49
  Okay, so I pull over onto the grass, and I'm sitting there with a little car
• 38:53
  idling, you know, and behind me comes a GT Mustang, and he's blowing his
• 38:58
  horn, and I'm like, yeah, yeah, nice Mini, yeah, it goes well, doesn't it?
• 39:03
  Lovely little car.
• 39:04
  I wonder what's going on.
• 39:05
  Somebody's obviously hit the wall in 8 or 9 up ahead of us.
• 39:09
  So about that time I hear the sirens, and there's the lights.
• 39:13
  And up comes the emergency vehicles to go up and rescue this
• 39:16
  prat who just bashed the wall.
• 39:17
  So as I'm looking, you know, you can't turn very far.
• 39:20
  The emergency vehicles, there's a fire engine, an ambulance,
• 39:23
  a rescue car, jaws alive.
• 39:26
  There's like four helicopters flying.
• 39:28
  So, screech!
• 39:29
  Next to me.
• 39:30
  What's the matter, officer?
• 39:32
  The speedometer's broke, you know, I was just guessing.
• 39:34
  And a cab gets out, and he comes running over to the car.
• 39:38
  And I'm sort of like, Oh, nice.
• 39:40
  Yeah.
• 39:41
  It's a nice little mullet.
• 39:42
  Why don't you go rescue the prattler himself up there?
• 39:45
  And he leans in the window and he goes, Get out!
• 39:48
  I'm like, oh no, I wasn't going that fast, officer.
• 39:50
  He goes, Get out!
• 39:52
  Now!
• 39:53
  What?
• 39:54
  So I'm starting to undo the belt, you know, the little buckle thing, you
• 39:57
  know, making sure I'm smelling good.
• 39:59
  And he says, You're on fire!
• 40:02
  I'm like, Eh!
• 40:04
  Boom!
• 40:04
  Out the door I jump.
• 40:06
  Sure enough, there's smoke billowing out the back of the car.
• 40:10
  So I'm like, Okay!
• 40:11
  And another guy runs out the fire engine, Comes round the front of the
• 40:15
  car, And he says, Where's the hood latch?
• 40:18
  I have no clue!
• 40:19
  It's Steve's car!
• 40:20
  I don't know where it is!
• 40:21
  It, um, it's There in the car because I've suddenly figured out it's
• 40:26
  probably on the wrong side, isn't it?
• 40:28
  The hood latch is on the passenger side in this little mower.
• 40:31
  So I'm slowly figuring this out whilst about that time Some little chap about
• 40:36
  that tall grabs me by the shoulders spins me around and pins me up against the
• 40:40
  ambulance I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
• 40:43
  What's up?
• 40:44
  And he goes, okay The hood latch and he pins me back in and he
• 40:49
  goes how many fingers have I got?
• 40:51
  I'm hoping ten but There's four in front of me.
• 40:54
  And he says, How many there are?
• 40:57
  I said three.
• 40:58
  He goes, You alright?
• 40:59
  And I'm like, Well, yeah.
• 41:01
  What's the problem?
• 41:02
  By this time they figured out how to open the hood of the Mini and there are flames.
• 41:06
  Not much.
• 41:07
  Flames shooting out the engine.
• 41:08
  It's bad because the fire should be inside the engine.
• 41:10
  You know, the outside flames now.
• 41:12
  Not a good thing.
• 41:13
  So, he says, you gotta come with me.
• 41:16
  I'm like, okay.
• 41:17
  So he bundles me into the ambulance.
• 41:19
  So, car, yeah, car, not, not mine.
• 41:23
  Not my car, right there.
• 41:25
  Uh, you need to get that.
• 41:26
  So the guys come around and they gently pick up this little motor to
• 41:29
  put it on the back of the tow truck.
• 41:32
  Yeah, to get it up on the flatbed.
• 41:34
  Because it's so low and so little, it wouldn't actually get over the ramp.
• 41:38
  So all these guys cluster around the front and they pick it up.
• 41:41
  And they march it up on the back of the flatbed, put it down.
• 41:44
  So I get in the ambulance, and they're doing the So this guy
• 41:47
  comes up, he goes You, get off me!
• 41:51
  Is that you?
• 41:51
  You alright?
• 41:52
  How are you?
• 41:52
  He's giving me oxygen!
• 41:54
  Why am I getting oxygen?
• 41:55
  I'm perfectly alright!
• 41:57
  And so he's, then he's doing things with little discs sticking over here and stuff
• 42:01
  and sticking his fingers up under my neck.
• 42:03
  He's like, you alright mate?
• 42:05
  Yeah, I'm fine.
• 42:06
  He says, alright, I think you're alright.
• 42:08
  Yeah, I've been trying to tell you that for about the
• 42:10
  past ten minutes, never mind.
• 42:11
  But don't worry about the freaking car that's burning to the ground
• 42:14
  over there, you take care of me.
• 42:15
  So off we go back to the paddock.
• 42:17
  Into the paddock we go, and here's Steve.
• 42:19
  Well apparently there'd been a radio call that my wife and Steve
• 42:23
  had heard while I'm out there.
• 42:24
  Number 37 on fire.
• 42:27
  So we get the car, get it off the back of the flatbed, put it up
• 42:30
  on jack stands, and it's melting.
• 42:32
  The bottom of the cars, all the wires are melting, it's nasty.
• 42:35
  I'm thinking we'll put it back on the track.
• 42:37
  Steve's like, nah, probably not.
• 42:38
  About that time, up comes a corner marshal who goes over to Steve.
• 42:41
  He says, is that your car?
• 42:42
  He says, yeah.
• 42:42
  He said, uh, we saw you out there.
• 42:44
  And he goes, no, it's actually my brother.
• 42:45
  So he comes over to me, he says, were you driving that car?
• 42:48
  I said, yeah.
• 42:48
  He said, I'm the corner marshal from turn two.
• 42:51
  I remember I stopped at turn seven, which is, I don't know, about 150 miles away.
• 42:56
  And he says, when you went past me, flames were shooting out from under
• 43:00
  the car, both sides and in the rear.
• 43:02
  No way!
• 43:03
  He's like, yeah.
• 43:04
  He said, we tried to stop you all the way to turn seven and
• 43:06
  you just ignored everybody.
• 43:08
  I was racing, mate.
• 43:10
  I don't want to stop, do I?
• 43:12
  As it turns out, it was probably a really, really smart thing to do.
• 43:16
  Just by coincidence, because as the fluid drained out, caught fire,
• 43:20
  the wind, because I was going so fast, blew the flames out, the fluid
• 43:24
  puked on the ground, and then I got arrested and thrown into jail.
• 43:28
  Yeah, so not a bad day at Watkins Glen, all in all, you know, so
• 43:30
  that was about the third time that thing went home on a trailer.
• 43:33
  It's very fortunate that you played.
• 43:35
  John didn't get hurt or anything, and none of his clothes got hurt or anything.
• 43:38
  Especially his fire suit, which was actually sitting on the chair
• 43:42
  in the garage and not on his back.
• 43:44
  His fire suit was very safe.
• 43:46
  Not a mark on that fire suit, lovely.
• 43:49
  That's very good.
• 43:50
  Yeah.
• 43:50
  Yeah.
• 43:50
  So Steve, that was the first fire and the second plague.
• 43:55
  We had the bear attack, our first Inferno, followed by the second Inferno.
• 44:00
  Yeah.
• 44:00
  See, like I said, I'm a cheap sod.
• 44:01
  So what happens when I got it back home again, I decided that.
• 44:05
  You know, I can fix it, no big deal.
• 44:07
  So I'd, you know, put the car up, get underneath it, take the power
• 44:11
  steering out, because it's electric anyway, take all the hoses out,
• 44:14
  everything, just take it all apart.
• 44:16
  You know, throw all that crap away, buy a whole bunch of new stuff,
• 44:19
  put it back in again, put some more power steering fluid in it.
• 44:22
  Start it up.
• 44:22
  Works fine.
• 44:23
  No problem.
• 44:24
  It's running peachy king.
• 44:26
  So I go, okay, fine.
• 44:27
  When's the next event?
• 44:28
  Next event is at Shenny.
• 44:29
  So I drove it to Shenny.
• 44:31
  I didn't tell it.
• 44:32
  Drove it to Shenny.
• 44:33
  Everything was perfectly fine.
• 44:35
  We're running on Shenny.
• 44:36
  And Eric, I do believe you were there that time too, weren't you?
• 44:39
  You actually were, right?
• 44:40
  You!
• 44:41
  You!
• 44:42
  I'm telling you, yeah.
• 44:44
  He even looks like a bear now you come to look at it.
• 44:46
  Yeah, he's a bear!
• 44:49
  Yeah, he's a bear suit he was in that day.
• 44:50
  I tell you, anyway, so, we're at, we're at Chenny, right?
• 44:53
  So I'm driving the Mini around Chenny.
• 44:55
  And I'm going, doing the same thing, you know, going as fast as I can through
• 44:58
  all the corners, slowing everybody else, but still going as fast as I can go.
• 45:01
  And there's somebody going, Toot toot!
• 45:03
  Beep beep beep beep!
• 45:04
  Around the tracks.
• 45:05
  Well, what the hell's that supposed to mean?
• 45:06
  I have no idea.
• 45:08
  So I'm coming down the straightaway, you know, doing that U turn, coming
• 45:12
  back in again, and all of a sudden, the, uh, steering gets really stiff.
• 45:16
  I went, I've heard this friggin story before.
• 45:18
  So I know what's the matter with this.
• 45:20
  The power steering's pissed out all over again.
• 45:22
  As you come over the hill at Shenandoah, through that U turn, you
• 45:25
  now can just go straight into the pit.
• 45:26
  So I just went, okay, fine, you know, hand out the window, went straight,
• 45:30
  let it run down the hill, into the middle of the paddock, stop the car,
• 45:34
  and it Instantly fills with smoke.
• 45:36
  Instantly.
• 45:36
  I mean, it's like, just like that.
• 45:38
  It fills with smoke.
• 45:38
  So I thought, well, I probably, I'd better get out.
• 45:41
  Don't need any advice.
• 45:42
  Not like my brother.
• 45:43
  Don't need anybody coming up and talking to you.
• 45:45
  Just get the fuck out of the car.
• 45:46
  So I undo everything, jump out the car.
• 45:48
  And the problem was there was probably 50 people who now wanted to help me.
• 45:53
  with fire extinguishers, and there are fire extinguishers and shit everywhere.
• 45:58
  There's smoke from the car.
• 45:59
  There's white powder all over the place.
• 46:01
  I'm standing next to it.
• 46:02
  So I'm trying to tell people it's all right.
• 46:04
  Don't worry about it.
• 46:04
  It's not a before I can fix it.
• 46:06
  It's no big deal.
• 46:07
  And then someone opens, opens the hood and the chimney effect happens.
• 46:11
  And now somebody said to me, I don't know.
• 46:14
  It was, have you turned it off?
• 46:16
  And I said, of course I've turned it off.
• 46:18
  But, I didn't know this at the time, I was lying.
• 46:20
  Because it was still on, which meant the fuel pump was on.
• 46:24
  So every time somebody went up with a fire extinguisher, they put a fire out,
• 46:27
  then the fuel would come back up again.
• 46:30
  And I did like four or five times, I went, let me take the key out.
• 46:33
  So I took the key out, and uh, that was, that, that, that time.
• 46:36
  Even I couldn't fix it.
• 46:37
  There was hardly anything left, any plastic left under that, that at all.
• 46:41
  Your reenactment of Chernobyl was quite authentic.
• 46:44
  Oh, it was a meltdown.
• 46:45
  It was, yeah, there was crap everywhere.
• 46:47
  It was clouds of stuff all over the place.
• 46:49
  So what you didn't know, as we saw you coming in with the smoke coming out
• 46:53
  from underneath the car, I had yelled to the, to the crew, Steve's on fire,
• 46:58
  grab your fire extinguisher, and so we, as you stopped, we were running
• 47:02
  towards you, and I remember yelling at you in the car, You're on fire!
• 47:06
  You're on fire!
• 47:07
  And you're like, what?
• 47:09
  Like, get out!
• 47:10
  And at that point, we just unloaded the fire extinguishers all over the car.
• 47:15
  You said it wrong.
• 47:16
  What you should have said was, you're on fire again.
• 47:22
  By the way, you know, in the world of races, stuff like this happens, you know,
• 47:26
  cars blow up, bits come off, gearboxes drop out the bottom, that sort of thing.
• 47:30
  But in the world of civilians, this is not a common occurrence, yeah?
• 47:35
  So we had our niece Miranda there, Carolyn and I's niece, actually
• 47:38
  Carolyn's niece was there.
• 47:40
  And she saw this whole event.
• 47:41
  By the way, I'm on the track behind him.
• 47:43
  And come around the corner to this great column of smoke coming out of the pit.
• 47:48
  Going, that's not good.
• 47:49
  No, that's my brother.
• 47:52
  It's like, oh well, he'll fix it.
• 47:55
  Nah, I got, I got another ten minutes on this session.
• 47:57
  I'm rocking baby.
• 47:58
  So, Miranda apparently comes up to the car with Carolyn.
• 48:02
  And she turns to Carolyn and says, Is it normal for flames to be
• 48:06
  coming out from underneath the car?
• 48:08
  She had no clue that this was not a normal occurrence, even for us.
• 48:12
  After that, we loaded your car up on my trailer, and I took you home, began
• 48:16
  the process of finding a replacement.
• 48:18
  Yep, that's exactly what happened, yep.
• 48:20
  Because this time, even with all the wrenches and the cheap shit, so I've got
• 48:23
  some stuff I do, so we get it back to my house, I put it in the, uh, in the
• 48:27
  courtyard, and, you know, I get underneath it, and they're All it was, was the
• 48:31
  block, and everything else was gone.
• 48:33
  All the plastic's gone, everything's gone, so I could see how it was, I was
• 48:35
  in Nope, even I can't fix this one.
• 48:37
  And by the way, the reason it did it, was because I changed out everything
• 48:41
  I said on the power steering fluid and all that kind of stuff.
• 48:43
  But the rack for the steering, which is right by the power
• 48:46
  steering pump, surprisingly enough, I didn't change the seal.
• 48:49
  And apparently when you put seals under pressure after
• 48:51
  they've been on fire, they leak.
• 48:53
  Ask me how I know.
• 48:54
  Now wait a minute.
• 48:55
  Wait, I've got to call cobblers on this.
• 48:57
  I know exactly what happened here.
• 48:59
  It was sod all to do with seals, although it was a contributing factor.
• 49:03
  What happened?
• 49:04
  You know that little funny little curve called the carousel?
• 49:07
  The carousel's got an ankle biter in it, doesn't it?
• 49:10
  It's about 45 degrees, yeah.
• 49:12
  Yeah, so there's a ridge.
• 49:14
  And if you put two wheels on the right side of that ridge And two wheels
• 49:18
  on the left side of the ridge, the middle of the car hits the ridge.
• 49:23
  What is there in a mini?
• 49:25
  Power steering cooler.
• 49:26
  Power steering pump.
• 49:27
  Bye bye now, bye, didn't need you anyway.
• 49:30
  See ya.
• 49:31
  Now little does he know, little did we know at that time, that
• 49:35
  many years later we would spend a hell of a lot of time, effort and
• 49:37
  money doing exactly what he did.
• 49:39
  tearing everything we can off the car, leave just the block
• 49:42
  and the metal, and go race.
• 49:44
  Yep, yep, do it again.
• 49:45
  It was the carbon effect.
• 49:48
  So, moving on to the next part of this pestilence story, was in fact, again,
• 49:52
  at Shandy, but this time on Main, right?
• 49:54
  So, as we were saying there, the car was pretty much wrecked, so I
• 49:57
  ripped out of it what I could take, which was the, um, seats and, you
• 50:01
  know, sway bars and crap like that, and went and bought another one.
• 50:04
  Well, actually, John got and found the one down in, Huntsville way.
• 50:08
  So we find this Mini, actually it was in Nashville, wasn't it John?
• 50:11
  Yeah, it was in Nashville.
• 50:12
  So we find this Mini, look just like the Mini that we set on fire twice
• 50:16
  and you know, had been broken into by a bear and all those kinds of things.
• 50:20
  Except it wasn't an MC40, it wasn't a commemorative edition.
• 50:23
  But anyway, so we buy that one, so I go down and get it.
• 50:26
  Drive it back, then we take all the crap out of it, or most of it.
• 50:29
  Take the seats out, all that kind of good stuff.
• 50:30
  Get it ready for the track, so, no problem.
• 50:33
  Get back in it again.
• 50:34
  This time I checked the power steering pump.
• 50:36
  Actually, I left it alone, which was probably a good idea.
• 50:38
  It was apparently ruining a touchstone scrap.
• 50:40
  So anyway, so I, we, uh, take it to Shenny.
• 50:42
  As you know, Friday night we get there.
• 50:44
  John's there with his trailer and his Focus.
• 50:46
  He gets the Focus off.
• 50:47
  I park the Mini beside it.
• 50:49
  We're up at the front end on Main, there, where the paddock is.
• 50:52
  And everything's good.
• 50:53
  All good.
• 50:54
  No problem.
• 50:55
  We go back to the hotel, have a couple of beers, and, uh,
• 50:57
  apparently the heavens opened.
• 50:59
  In fact, I think it was the second coming of the apocalypse that
• 51:03
  night, because it hammered down.
• 51:05
  I mean, one storm.
• 51:08
  Yeah, that's right.
• 51:09
  Yep, yep.
• 51:10
  There was all kinds of stuff.
• 51:11
  Noah was staying in the room next to mine in the hotel.
• 51:14
  He hadn't got his boat ready at that time, but he was definitely there.
• 51:17
  Apparently it rained that night, and it rained where we were.
• 51:19
  So the next morning we go back to Maine and there's a sign right by the
• 51:24
  cars that says subject to flooding.
• 51:28
  Well no shit.
• 51:30
  At that point in time there must have been 400 million gallons
• 51:33
  of water all around all the car.
• 51:36
  My car, again, my car is up to the wheels in water.
• 51:41
  It's full of water.
• 51:42
  The engine, the battery is dead as a dodo because it's been
• 51:45
  underwater for about two hours.
• 51:47
  So I'm looking at it and Eric, I think it was you that came up and said.
• 51:52
  Is that your car, Steve?
• 51:53
  And I said, yes, it is, because we didn't know how to get ahold of you.
• 51:56
  And I'll tell you a story.
• 51:57
  Every time I go somewhere in this region at this point in time, someone comes up
• 52:01
  to me and says, is that your red Mini?
• 52:03
  And I go, yep.
• 52:04
  They go, well, we couldn't get ahold of you.
• 52:06
  Well, why don't you just throw the fucking thing out?
• 52:08
  What difference does it make?
• 52:09
  You know, nevermind.
• 52:10
  So there's a little extra piece to that story, because I happened to
• 52:14
  drive to Summit Point, Maine that night to meet up with some other
• 52:18
  people that were there in the paddock.
• 52:19
  And I saw your car.
• 52:20
  park there.
• 52:21
  And as I drove around, it had just started to open up.
• 52:24
  It was very difficult to see.
• 52:25
  And I'm in the, I'm in the station wagon, which is very low car and all that.
• 52:30
  I actually got beached in the middle of the paddock and it flooded out
• 52:34
  and it killed like everything.
• 52:36
  It locked up the serpentine belt and all this kind of stuff.
• 52:38
  So I'm sitting there and pouring down rain and mountain man, Dan, who.
• 52:42
  As the listeners know has been on several other episodes at this point comes and
• 52:46
  basically yanks me out of the, out of this giant puddle that I trapped myself in.
• 52:50
  So we're underneath of the, the canopies there and waiting for stop raining.
• 52:54
  And so I was trying, I was still trying to figure out why my car wasn't running.
• 52:56
  So soaking wet at this point, I'm underneath the car.
• 52:59
  We basically ripped the shroud out from underneath cause it had jammed
• 53:02
  itself into the serpentine belt.
• 53:04
  keeping the car from wanting to start because it was locking up the peripherals.
• 53:08
  Got all that figured out, again, because we knew it was, the water was starting
• 53:12
  to rise, so I took the long way around as we were leaving, following in Dan's
• 53:16
  wake, because he's kind of breaking, breaking the flood with his truck.
• 53:19
  I wasn't the only one to say this, because the Crutchfields were there
• 53:22
  too, we actually saw your car lift, and the back end was floating, and the only
• 53:27
  thing keeping it in place was the motor.
• 53:29
  Because it wasn't in the same parking spot we left it.
• 53:33
  Correct.
• 53:33
  Because it's floating when we left and all of us looked at each other.
• 53:36
  We're like, I don't know how to get all the Steve.
• 53:38
  This is going to be ugly.
• 53:40
  But we also need to figure out how to get out of here.
• 53:43
  You don't want to get older, Steve.
• 53:47
  Don't tell him whatever you did and nothing he can do.
• 53:49
  So that's why Noah didn't have his boat because he was using my bloody car.
• 53:54
  So yeah, next, next morning we get there and it's full of
• 53:56
  water and it's shit everywhere.
• 53:58
  Where the flasher still on because that was the funniest part as the
• 54:01
  car was floating the hazard lights were just The battery was dead Yeah,
• 54:08
  there was dead fish all over the place because it all been electrocuted but
• 54:11
  the battery I said it was so after the great So that that ruined your weekend.
• 54:15
  Let's let's say that Yeah.
• 54:17
  Well, it's not John's, I should point out.
• 54:19
  John's like, well, so do you.
• 54:20
  I'm taking the Focus out.
• 54:21
  That's running fine.
• 54:22
  My Focus was in the trailer, completely dry.
• 54:24
  Yeah, that was lucky.
• 54:25
  Yeah, the flood, right.
• 54:26
  I mean, so why am I worried about his motor?
• 54:28
  I mean, I've got track time to get.
• 54:29
  That's great.
• 54:30
  That's what privately loves you for.
• 54:31
  Absolutely.
• 54:32
  I mean, I love So, as the time's gone by, little tribute to that little car,
• 54:40
  time's gone by, Steve is, um, distressed to some degree about this situation.
• 54:45
  So, he starts pulling things out of the car and he's using all
• 54:49
  sorts of language I haven't heard since I was a very small child.
• 54:52
  It's Walter Gush.
• 54:53
  He opens the doors, and Walter Gush is out of the car.
• 54:57
  Yeah, sorry.
• 54:57
  Yeah.
• 54:58
  His feet were wet.
• 54:59
  So, I'm like, that's a bit annoying.
• 55:01
  So, he's pulling out stuff, and then he decides And he, by the
• 55:04
  way, he's putting it in everybody's way, but he's just ripping stuff.
• 55:08
  He's getting, pulling carpet out of carpet, soaking wet.
• 55:11
  And he gets in, and I look at him, and I go, What do you want to do, Steve?
• 55:14
  You know, what are you going to do with a mower?
• 55:15
  He said, I don't know.
• 55:16
  I said, put the key in it.
• 55:17
  He says, go on, I said, put the key in it.
• 55:19
  So, he puts the key in it.
• 55:20
  We charge the battery, he turns the key, and it starts!
• 55:23
  No!
• 55:23
  It shot three foot columns of water out of his head!
• 55:30
  It looked like two bloody bushes, all the water got in it, and he drove it.
• 55:34
  God, that thing would not give up.
• 55:36
  But that wasn't the fucking plague either.
• 55:39
  There's another one after that that involves Yeah, yeah,
• 55:42
  yeah, yeah, he ain't done yet.
• 55:43
  Yeah, no, he ain't done yet.
• 55:44
  So, uh, but this one's kind of, kind of the cause.
• 55:46
  I'll bring the car home and, you know, soak him wet.
• 55:49
  And by the way, there is a, um, mark on the side of the car.
• 55:52
  HWM, high water mark.
• 55:54
  And it is about 15 and a half inches off the ground.
• 55:56
  It is, it, it, there was a lot of water.
• 56:01
  So anyway, so about a week later, I'm sitting in the house here, and my wife
• 56:05
  comes down, she goes, come upstairs, come upstairs, come upstairs, come and see.
• 56:08
  So you know, I said, okay, fine.
• 56:09
  So I go upstairs, go into the front of the house there, just above where
• 56:13
  the car is, and there is a swarm of bees that you cannot see through.
• 56:18
  It is, you know, I don't know, about 20 feet across, about 10 feet high.
• 56:22
  Just bees.
• 56:23
  Thousands and thousands of bees.
• 56:25
  I mean, that's it.
• 56:26
  You know, the apocalypse.
• 56:27
  The world is coming to an end.
• 56:28
  We're done.
• 56:29
  That's all three now.
• 56:30
  I've had fire, flood, and now pestilence.
• 56:32
  And they went into, at the eaves of our house, the queen did, and
• 56:36
  they made a nest in our house.
• 56:37
  That was the, uh, that's all the trifecta of the, uh, pestilences.
• 56:42
  Okay, so that car is biblical.
• 56:44
  It's absolutely biblical.
• 56:45
  There's no good ways about it.
• 56:46
  So after sacrificing a lamb over the hood of it, Or the bonnet, rather.
• 56:52
  Dripping blood on the roof, yeah.
• 56:53
  Yeah, has that seemed to calm the demonic powers of the mini, or is
• 56:58
  there something more to this story?
• 57:01
  Yep, yep, let me, let me show you a picture because I think you'll
• 57:05
  enjoy this, this particular picture.
• 57:08
  No, it's not funny.
• 57:09
  Hold on a minute.
• 57:10
  Just bear with me.
• 57:11
  Talk amongst yourself for a little bit.
• 57:12
  And for the listeners, and for the listeners, we'll post this
• 57:15
  on the, uh, the show notes, so.
• 57:18
  Yeah, you see where those tires are?
• 57:20
  Yeah?
• 57:20
  Steve, tell them what was where those tires are now.
• 57:23
  A jersey wall was there seconds before that because on Sunday
• 57:28
  at Dominion, I wrecked it.
• 57:30
  And you can't quite see it there, but yeah, I hit that tire wall, hit the
• 57:35
  tire wall, tire wall hit the jersey wall, the jersey wall got Pushed about
• 57:40
  six foot down the hill and tipped over that I am afraid is pretty much
• 57:44
  the end of that poor car looking for another Really Yeah, I don't think
• 57:52
  your next car should be a mini at all.
• 57:54
  I think you're right I'm, i'm thinking something much more, uh, you know
• 57:57
  apocalyptic, you know, maybe a firebird perhaps or something like that, you
• 58:03
  know a triumph Dodge beeman Yes, you gotta embrace, you embrace the demon.
• 58:11
  Maybe it's, maybe it's the color, like you need to get away from the red.
• 58:15
  You know, something more subtle like black.
• 58:17
  You know, that's not a demonic color in any way.
• 58:19
  So, you know, just gotta change the pace, right?
• 58:22
  But actually this is a good segment, planning your third
• 58:24
  generation of minis, right?
• 58:27
  Is it really at the top of the list or are you considering something different?
• 58:30
  Why I'm looking at minis is because I've got so many spare parts now.
• 58:34
  I might as well just put it all back together again.
• 58:36
  I got seats, I got roll bars, I got superchargers, I've got gear boxes.
• 58:40
  I've got so many bits and pieces that if I don't get another mini,
• 58:44
  that stuff's all just useless.
• 58:45
  That's why I'm going for minis first.
• 58:47
  That stuff will sell on racing junk.
• 58:49
  Yeah, that may be what happens, I don't know yet, but we'll see.
• 58:53
  That's what he dropped on the thread, racing junk.
• 58:59
  I'll pose the question this way, if If you didn't have to worry about what it
• 59:04
  cost and you just wanted to buy a track car, start from scratch, get rid of the
• 59:08
  minis, gut reaction, what would it be?
• 59:10
  I think, you know, running maybe a Spec Miata or something like
• 59:14
  that would be a lot of fun.
• 59:16
  It's easy to work on, it's a blast, they're little small cars, so, you
• 59:20
  know, that could be fun, I think.
• 59:22
  Mate, he's old!
• 59:23
  Ah, he's a glutton.
• 59:24
  He's a glutton for punishment.
• 59:26
  Exactly.
• 59:27
  Only if money's no object, I don't care if I bring it up, right?
• 59:30
  And apparently I don't care if I bring it up anyway.
• 59:32
  You just buy a box of Miatas.
• 59:36
  That's what you do, right?
• 59:37
  I thought he was going to go, oh, I'm going to buy a 911 or something.
• 59:39
  Just something totally off the wall, like money's no object.
• 59:42
  So, let's phrase it that way.
• 59:43
  If money was no object, top three cars in your three car garage, what would they be?
• 59:48
  E Type will be the first, without a doubt.
• 59:50
  That is the most beautiful car ever made.
• 59:52
  So, I'd definitely start with one of those.
• 59:54
  I think the McLaren MP2 is a hell of a car, too.
• 59:58
  I think that would be fun.
• 59:59
  We can park that next to it.
• 1:00:01
  Not too close, because we don't want a mating or anything.
• 1:00:03
  So, that would be a good second car, I think.
• 1:00:05
  And then the third one, I don't know.
• 1:00:08
  It'd have to be a classic of some kind.
• 1:00:10
  Some old, I don't know.
• 1:00:11
  A full Capri would be kind of cool, wouldn't it?
• 1:00:13
  Maybe a Cortina.
• 1:00:15
  I thought you were gonna say a Hillman Imp.
• 1:00:19
  Oh yeah!
• 1:00:22
  Eric, Eric, the first car I ever personally owned, I told
• 1:00:25
  you the Capri was the least.
• 1:00:27
  The first car I ever owned was a Hillman Imp.
• 1:00:29
  God bless you.
• 1:00:30
  It got, it got 465 miles to the gallon.
• 1:00:33
  He's taken it to the next level, doesn't he?
• 1:00:35
  I mean, that's where it's gone.
• 1:00:38
  This, this torch goes back many, many years, apparently.
• 1:00:41
  Yeah, oh yeah.
• 1:00:43
  So, John, if you had to add three bays to your existing garage,
• 1:00:46
  what would you put in there?
• 1:00:48
  I would.
• 1:00:48
  Uh, actually, there's actually going to be several consistent drawers.
• 1:00:52
  So, and some of them already own, so it's alright.
• 1:00:54
  So, any type, no doubt, right?
• 1:00:56
  A Morgan Plus 8, already got one of those.
• 1:00:57
  The next one would be a four and a half litre blown 1929 Bentley.
• 1:01:02
  from the Le Mans car.
• 1:01:03
  I mean, that is absolutely the epitome of a driver's car.
• 1:01:08
  I mean, chain, drive, gears that you actually have to move,
• 1:01:12
  handbrake over there, you know, got timing on the steering wheel.
• 1:01:17
  Yeah.
• 1:01:17
  What a mower and sound.
• 1:01:18
  Oh my God.
• 1:01:19
  There's nothing that sounds like that mower.
• 1:01:21
  I think if you went, yeah, John, you got to come into like sort
• 1:01:24
  of nearly the 21st century.
• 1:01:25
  I think I'd have to tell you an Audi R8.
• 1:01:28
  Which is an absolutely fair.
• 1:01:29
  Yeah, yeah, that's a good car.
• 1:01:30
  And then if I just had enough room a McLaren 720s.
• 1:01:35
  Oh yeah, good, good choice, yeah.
• 1:01:37
  I want his, I want his cars next to the ones I chose.
• 1:01:40
  They're good cars.
• 1:01:41
  You just borrow his or just?
• 1:01:42
  Nah, he's selfish.
• 1:01:43
  He wouldn't let me drive him.
• 1:01:44
  He's terrible that way.
• 1:01:46
  I'm not lending him shit.
• 1:01:47
  I wouldn't lend him a car.
• 1:01:50
  He'll come back burnt.
• 1:01:51
  So let me flip back for a second.
• 1:01:54
  If now, with all of your guys experience, all these years wrench
• 1:01:57
  turning and competing and the laughs and everything that goes along with
• 1:02:01
  it and the curses as well, what advice would you give somebody that's just
• 1:02:06
  now starting out in this discipline?
• 1:02:09
  Don't!
• 1:02:10
  Don't do it!
• 1:02:12
  Now, first things first, mate.
• 1:02:16
  Go get yourself, from some source, a wheelbarrow load of money.
• 1:02:20
  Where you need to start.
• 1:02:22
  The best way to make a small fortune in motorsports, as we all know.
• 1:02:26
  It's the start of a big one.
• 1:02:27
  First thing I would do is say, go learn how to drive.
• 1:02:29
  Don't even worry about your car.
• 1:02:30
  Just go learn how to drive.
• 1:02:32
  Just go to some schools.
• 1:02:33
  Start off, you know, figuring out what happens when you get a car going
• 1:02:37
  fast and you get momentum changes and all that kind of good stuff.
• 1:02:40
  Because that will hold you throughout your racing career,
• 1:02:43
  whatever it turns out to be.
• 1:02:45
  The car will fly.
• 1:02:46
  You'll get good cars.
• 1:02:47
  You'll drive faster cars.
• 1:02:49
  You'll do better and better.
• 1:02:50
  But if you don't get the nut behind the wheel nice and tight,
• 1:02:53
  you'll be forever chasing yourself.
• 1:02:54
  The thing you can chase fastest, the cheapest, that will make
• 1:02:59
  you go the fastest is you.
• 1:03:01
  I will tell you this bit of advice.
• 1:03:03
  Get a good crew chief and I'll tell you why.
• 1:03:05
  No unsupervised racing ever.
• 1:03:09
  When I hit the wall at Barber, I was on my own.
• 1:03:12
  When Brother Steve hit the wall at Dominion, he's on his own.
• 1:03:15
  Ever go out on your own.
• 1:03:17
  Never do that.
• 1:03:19
  Have adult supervision for our childish behavior.
• 1:03:22
  That is sage advice, if there ever was one.
• 1:03:24
  So I a hundred percent agree when we are all together, you know, as
• 1:03:28
  a larger group, that's part of, you know, we talked about that in episode
• 1:03:31
  two, where we come to each other's rescue, it's the premise of break fix.
• 1:03:34
  I mean, it's not the, the whole theme of what we talk about here.
• 1:03:37
  And obviously we don't want to portray racing as a big crash fest.
• 1:03:41
  I mean, things happen, they're mechanical.
• 1:03:44
  Failures to your point earlier, the race cars, and even the track prepared cars,
• 1:03:51
  because there are very different full on race cars versus track prepared cars.
• 1:03:54
  They're under such extreme stresses that you would never encounter the engineering
• 1:03:58
  failures that we encounter on the street.
• 1:04:01
  So I don't want to dissuade anybody from trying it.
• 1:04:04
  You know, we we've tried our best in the previous episode to talk about what it's
• 1:04:07
  like your first time out and to advocate for people to try it with the cars.
• 1:04:11
  They have, I don't want them to run away scared, but there's
• 1:04:14
  life lessons to be learned here.
• 1:04:15
  The harder you push, like in any sport, if you were a runner, a marathon
• 1:04:19
  runner, if you're a football player, there's always the risk of injury.
• 1:04:23
  There's always the risk of something going wrong.
• 1:04:25
  The harder you push and the more you reach for that trophy or reach for that goal.
• 1:04:29
  So, you know, that's, it's very sage advice at the end of the day.
• 1:04:32
  Well, I'll tell you, Eric, you know, it's a lot different.
• 1:04:35
  Getting hit dead smack in the face by a 300 pound linebacker than it is letting
• 1:04:40
  your piece of metal hit the wall for you.
• 1:04:42
  This is very true.
• 1:04:43
  I feel much more at ease, you know, hitting something than
• 1:04:46
  getting hit by something.
• 1:04:47
  I'll put it that way.
• 1:04:49
  Yeah, don't get in the motivation to lose weight.
• 1:04:51
  It don't work.
• 1:04:54
  Another valid point.
• 1:04:57
  For me personally.
• 1:04:58
  The goal of getting in the car was improvement.
• 1:05:01
  Now, I don't really yet know what that means.
• 1:05:03
  And I'm deadly serious there.
• 1:05:05
  There isn't an end to that, right?
• 1:05:06
  Because success is a journey, not a destination.
• 1:05:09
  Every time, every lap, every track, you learn something.
• 1:05:12
  And you challenge yourself harder and harder and harder.
• 1:05:16
  And you get more and more dissatisfied with yourself.
• 1:05:19
  And then when you hit that good lap, that one good one out of the 57 that sucked.
• 1:05:24
  Is well worth the effort it is in and of itself its own reward And especially if
• 1:05:30
  you're not racing high dollar staffing, we don't obviously you're not that worried
• 1:05:33
  if you bend it I mean other than you know, if you get hurt, so that isn't a worry on
• 1:05:38
  your mind You're not worried about a bunch of snapper heads and grandmas going the
• 1:05:42
  other way while you're trying to avoid a pothole Your same way same day with like
• 1:05:47
  minded people who are trying to improve and learn and compete against each other.
• 1:05:52
  And that is, in and of itself, its own reward.
• 1:05:54
  The one thing that sharpens you the most is competition.
• 1:05:57
  It doesn't matter what level that is, whether it's solo, TT, road
• 1:06:01
  race, it doesn't really matter.
• 1:06:02
  You're gonna get better because you want to.
• 1:06:04
  You have to have that desire to get better.
• 1:06:07
  And you run across people in this sport, in this little amateur game
• 1:06:11
  that we play, some of whom are really pretty damn good at this.
• 1:06:15
  And you can learn from them and try and go get them and there's no greater
• 1:06:19
  reward, ask me how I know, than finally catching up that one guy who's been
• 1:06:24
  a pain in your side ever since you've been doing this and watching him stick
• 1:06:28
  his little finger out the window.
• 1:06:31
  Your heart rate goes up, you puff up with pride, you know, you can
• 1:06:35
  hear yourself screaming on the recording at the end of the day.
• 1:06:38
  To me, there's no illusion.
• 1:06:40
  that we're ever going to be pro racing drivers or even particularly good
• 1:06:44
  ones, but we're going to be the best we can and get the most fun out of
• 1:06:48
  little cars as we possibly can while we've got the time and money to do it.
• 1:06:53
  And so it builds its own reward and you get more and more
• 1:06:57
  competitive, faster, more and more desire to go a little faster.
• 1:07:02
  The trouble is, where do you draw the line?
• 1:07:04
  Because, how fast do you want to go?
• 1:07:07
  How much money you got?
• 1:07:09
  I got 10 miles an hour if you got 10, 000 and so on and so on.
• 1:07:13
  So you just eventually have to set the bar, and realize what your
• 1:07:17
  expectations are for yourself.
• 1:07:20
  What your expectations are for the particular vehicle that you're
• 1:07:22
  driving and then try and maximize and optimize everything you can
• 1:07:27
  within the box you just built.
• 1:07:28
  If you can do that, you can walk away proud of yourself if you were
• 1:07:32
  15th or first because you maximized what tools you had in your hand
• 1:07:38
  at that time to include yourself.
• 1:07:40
  And that's, I think, one of the greatest rewards of motorsports of all.
• 1:07:43
  I cannot agree more.
• 1:07:44
  That is, that is very well put.
• 1:07:46
  Advice for people getting into this, and then we've already said it, I think.
• 1:07:51
  Yeah, it's great for the mechanical side of it, right?
• 1:07:54
  And there's a lot of cerebral effort into what it takes to get a car
• 1:07:57
  to run fast, and how you handle it, and the driving techniques,
• 1:08:01
  and all that kind of good stuff.
• 1:08:02
  So there's a lot of physical skill to it, as well as you can drive.
• 1:08:05
  You know, if you like working on cars, it's a lot of fun
• 1:08:08
  doing that kind of stuff.
• 1:08:09
  Actually, about GTM and I mean, no criticism to the guys down here,
• 1:08:13
  but when I've raced up with you guys, it's a couple of things.
• 1:08:17
  Don't be afraid to ask for help, for advice, for a wrench, for a beer.
• 1:08:22
  It doesn't matter.
• 1:08:23
  Interact with those people and build a support group.
• 1:08:26
  Build a group of people who go racing with you, even if they're not always there.
• 1:08:31
  You know, so you've always got that with you.
• 1:08:33
  Like I said, whether they're physically there or not, you know, it might be you're
• 1:08:36
  gonna call up, Do you know somebody who's got a serpentine belt for a 0 4 Mini?
• 1:08:42
  All of a sudden there's a support group and one arrives at your doorstep.
• 1:08:45
  Just a thousand things.
• 1:08:47
  If you isolate yourself, and like a lot of the guys who do
• 1:08:50
  autocross, just go, race, go.
• 1:08:53
  And they isolate themselves, you miss two thirds of the
• 1:08:56
  experience of actually going there.
• 1:08:58
  I think, you know, it's great going out on the track, great going
• 1:09:01
  fast, great, you know, setting fire to things and smashing walls.
• 1:09:04
  That's all good.
• 1:09:05
  But the best thing, I think, that I get out of it is one, spending time with my
• 1:09:09
  brother because we live so far apart.
• 1:09:10
  That's awesome.
• 1:09:11
  And then, the evenings.
• 1:09:13
  Are generally just great.
• 1:09:15
  You swap stories, you tell bullshit, you drink beer, you have fun, you unwind.
• 1:09:21
  With a group of like minded people.
• 1:09:23
  Whether they like you or not, at least they're gonna hang out with you, you know?
• 1:09:26
  Ha ha ha ha!
• 1:09:28
  As, as Brad says, you know, Friends are the family you choose.
• 1:09:31
  And it's a very poignant theme within our organization.
• 1:09:35
  And, you know, it's We've been very fortunate to pick
• 1:09:38
  up members like yourselves.
• 1:09:39
  You guys are great.
• 1:09:40
  I mean, I always look forward to talking to you and hanging out.
• 1:09:42
  I know this year has been really tough for everybody with, with the pandemic
• 1:09:46
  and everything that's going on.
• 1:09:47
  Tracks didn't reopen until recently.
• 1:09:50
  We've had to postpone a bunch of our events.
• 1:09:52
  The cannonball is really still up in the air.
• 1:09:54
  We just now released.
• 1:09:55
  The information about summer bash, you know, things of that nature.
• 1:09:58
  And it's just been tough.
• 1:10:00
  And you know, this is a great way for us to get together, but it's not the same to
• 1:10:03
  your point is everybody getting together at the event and doing what they're doing.
• 1:10:07
  And what's really funny is maybe if you have telepathic powers, unlike the
• 1:10:11
  demonic powers of the mini, it was my way to kind of put us in top gear and talk
• 1:10:16
  about your experiences with the club.
• 1:10:18
  And I know you're a lot newer than some of the other members that we've
• 1:10:21
  interviewed, but I think you did a good way of kind of driving into that.
• 1:10:24
  Well, you've got to remember, Steve is the COVID 19 of the race track.
• 1:10:27
  We spend months and months until the rally opens up, and
• 1:10:30
  he shuts it down immediately.
• 1:10:31
  First time.
• 1:10:32
  Yeah, that's right.
• 1:10:33
  But the camaraderie of the groups is really the big value.
• 1:10:38
  John said it himself, you know, he and I have spent more time
• 1:10:41
  together as brothers in the last 15 years racing than we'd ever done.
• 1:10:45
  For the previous 15 years, and that's just two brothers, right?
• 1:10:48
  Then there's you guys, you know, we've met you, met the rest of the GTM group,
• 1:10:52
  every track you go to, someone knows you, or you know them, and they come up
• 1:10:56
  and, you know, they help you, you help them, you bullshit for a little while.
• 1:11:01
  One time on Shanny, there was one of the guys running a mini there and he
• 1:11:05
  over tightened his lug nuts and stripped them and sent his wheel into the woods.
• 1:11:10
  So they, um, towed his mini off and John and I basically jacked
• 1:11:13
  it up, fixed it, bought him a new wheel on and he went running again.
• 1:11:16
  By the way, I think it's a bad thing to give yourself a point by.
• 1:11:20
  I'm just saying.
• 1:11:21
  All right, on that, gentlemen, I cannot thank you enough for
• 1:11:25
  spending all this time with us.
• 1:11:27
  I'm sure the people on the other end listening to this are going
• 1:11:30
  to be laughing their heads off.
• 1:11:32
  It's always a great time with the Latin lads, with both the Wade brothers,
• 1:11:36
  incredible stories, and I can't wait to see what the next plague is with
• 1:11:39
  the next red mini in the series.
• 1:11:44
  And Meteorite.
• 1:11:46
  Yeah.
• 1:11:47
  One comedy is one.
• 1:11:49
  Greatest racing driver of all time.
• 1:11:51
  Eric, go.
• 1:11:52
  Santa.
• 1:11:52
  Steve.
• 1:11:53
  Sterling Moss.
• 1:11:54
  Ken Miles, sonny.
• 1:11:55
  Hey.
• 1:11:55
  Oh, that's a good choice.
• 1:11:57
  Yeah.
• 1:11:57
  Yeah.
• 1:11:58
  But on that note, it's time to end.
• 1:12:00
  Thank you guys.
• 1:12:01
  Thanks a lot.
• 1:12:02
  See ya, Eric.
• 1:12:03
  See you at the track.
• 1:12:04
  See ya.
• 1:12:04
  Thanks, Brad.
• 1:12:05
  Yeah, take care, Brad.
• 1:12:06
  Take care, Brad.
• 1:12:11
  If you like what you heard and want to learn more about GTM,
• 1:12:13
  be sure to check us out at www.
• 1:12:16
  gtmotorsports.
• 1:12:17
  org.
• 1:12:18
  You can also find us on Instagram at grandtouringmotorsports.
• 1:12:21
  Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can
• 1:12:25
  call or text us at 202 630 1770 or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.
• 1:12:32
  org.
• 1:12:33
  We'd love to hear from you.
• 1:12:34
  Hey listeners, Crew Chief Eric here.
• 1:12:36
  Do you like what you've seen, heard and read from GTM?
• 1:12:39
  Great.
• 1:12:40
  So do we, and we have a lot of fun doing it, but please remember we're
• 1:12:43
  fueled by volunteers and remain a no annual fee organization, but we still
• 1:12:47
  need help to keep the momentum going.
• 1:12:49
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• 1:12:53
  all of your favorite content.
• 1:12:54
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• 1:12:57
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• 1:13:01
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