Latest / That Car Show / Meyers-Manx's Chet Parsons Gets Buggy

Transcript

Meyers-Manx's Chet Parsons Gets Buggy · That Car Show

• 0:00
  If somebody passes you and a Myers Manx, they're probably
• 0:02
  having more fun than you are. This week on that car show, it's
• 0:07
  our Myers Manx pal Jet Parsons, From the brand's Southern
• 0:11
  California roots to its modern rebirth, is a full-fledged
• 0:15
  lifestyle company, complete with its own amphibious airline and a
• 0:18
  cafe at the Peterson Museum. But Jet's story starts earlier,
• 0:23
  back when Tesla was still a scrappy disruptor and the Model
• 0:26
  S felt like the future. He's had chapters with other
• 0:29
  manufacturers too, including a stint at Faraday Future and even
• 0:33
  some time spent on a mysterious island with everyone's favorite
• 0:37
  Evie enigma. Then fast.
• 0:40
  This is a fun one with some great industry insight and a few
• 0:43
  surprises along the way. It's Chet Parsons and it's that
• 0:46
  car show. Welcome back to this week's
• 0:54
  episode of That Car Show. I'm Lindsay and I'm here with
• 0:58
  Ryan and I'm really excited to have my friend Chet Parsons with
• 1:02
  us this week. Chet describes himself as a full
• 1:05
  time automotive idealist and a part time automotive cynic,
• 1:08
  which I think is a pretty good balance in the car world.
• 1:12
  He began his career in the dealership world when he was
• 1:15
  only 19 and he's built a career out of playing with cars, which
• 1:20
  I mean, we all want to do that. He has recently found himself
• 1:24
  working with one of the most specialized brands in the
• 1:26
  industry, Myers makes. Along the way there were exotic
• 1:30
  cars, EVs, commercial trucks, and that included stints at
• 1:35
  Faraday Future, Vin Fast, Bollinger Vintage Modern and
• 1:39
  Tesla, as well as experience at Canopa and Ferrari.
• 1:43
  All that to say, you know, he's got some really good stories
• 1:46
  which he is happy to share when he is offered a Negroni or two.
• 1:51
  And we are so excited to hear some of the stories tonight.
• 1:55
  I mean, we definitely don't have time to cover all of that, but
• 1:58
  I'm so excited to hear all about it.
• 2:01
  Yeah. So welcome to the show, Chet.
• 2:03
  There's thanks, brought my own Negroni so we can keep going.
• 2:05
  Perfect. And everybody has everything
• 2:08
  they need. Everything.
• 2:09
  We need. Feel a little low class here
• 2:11
  with my Coors Light. Just say in Chet.
• 2:13
  It's a local. It's a local thing, Brian.
• 2:15
  That's right. You gotta, you gotta keep up the
• 2:17
  local flavor. That's right.
• 2:18
  That's. Right, Yeah, What is it?
• 2:19
  Buy local, drink local, all that.
• 2:21
  Yes, I have my I have my iced tea, but it's in my cool blip
• 2:25
  shift mug so. That's like bourbon to me.
• 2:28
  But. Yeah, right.
• 2:30
  I'm like iced tea, wink, wink. I think that one could argue,
• 2:34
  Chet, that you are definitely having the most fun in the car
• 2:37
  world right now with Manx. Like given, you know, I love
• 2:41
  watching your Instagram feed because it's like, where's Chet,
• 2:43
  you know, bugging today and you've had some pretty amazing
• 2:47
  experiences. So can you tell us a little bit
• 2:50
  about kind of your career path and then we'll get into, you
• 2:54
  know, all the buggies, which is what we all want to talk about.
• 2:58
  Car nuts. Since I was a kid, my mother
• 3:00
  would tell me stories. She was like, you'd be in the
• 3:01
  backseat of the car and you'd point and look at that Mercedes.
• 3:04
  And my mother would say, no, you can't tell what it is from here.
• 3:06
  And I'd be like, it's a Mercedes.
• 3:07
  And it would go by and it was a Mercedes and I'd be the smug
• 3:09
  little kid in the backseat, like told you.
• 3:11
  And she was like, how do you do that?
• 3:13
  So it kind of been like that since, since the beginning and,
• 3:17
  and always was in a family with cars.
• 3:19
  You know, my, it's the garage in our house was what a lot of
• 3:23
  people think it was reversed because my dad had the station
• 3:26
  wagon and my mother had up, you know, up to 911 turbos in the,
• 3:31
  in the garage at any given time. SO944944 turbo, 9/11 turbo, 9/11
• 3:38
  C4. She had a boxer for a little
• 3:40
  while. Then she got into Jeeps and she
• 3:42
  went off roading with me. So she was a huge influence on
• 3:45
  me and we've done things illegal on the streets.
• 3:50
  You know, I remember being in the car with her when I'm pretty
• 3:54
  sure this was in her turbo 9/11. We live in Memphis at the time.
• 3:58
  And she was driving us home, probably from church, and we
• 4:03
  were racing on the freeway. A guy in a GNX.
• 4:09
  So this is, this is the household I grew up in.
• 4:11
  And Dad's station wagon was not just dad's station wagon.
• 4:14
  It was an Audi 5000 CS turbo Quattro wagon with a manual
• 4:18
  transmission. And also, you know, a fun car to
• 4:22
  drive. He drove like a grandma, but it
• 4:24
  was a fun car to drive when he wasn't in it.
• 4:27
  So that's kind of where I grew up.
• 4:28
  And through that and through those connections we had, I got
• 4:32
  called one day by the manager at the Porsche, Audi, Mercedes
• 4:35
  dealer that we did business with in Memphis.
• 4:37
  And he said, do you want to come sell cars?
• 4:40
  And so I started selling cars age 19 at the Porsche Audi
• 4:44
  dealer in Memphis, TN and ever since then, you know, with some
• 4:48
  breaks to go back to school or to oddly drive a FedEx truck for
• 4:52
  a few years. I've been in the car industry
• 4:56
  ever since. So we won't say how many years
• 4:58
  that is, but many. Nobody's going to do the math.
• 5:01
  Nobody's nobody's doing math, no.
• 5:03
  I feel like there's stories I didn't even know about with the
• 5:05
  FedEx driver like. That's got to be.
• 5:08
  Quite an experience. Yeah, that was 2008 ish and the
• 5:12
  market had just gone to complete crap, especially I was working
• 5:16
  for a dealer in Houston that was mostly like pre owned exotics
• 5:20
  and classics. And yeah, we saw Ferrari three
• 5:23
  60s and Gallardos that had been, you know, over MSRP cars at one
• 5:27
  time tanking. I mean, ten $20,000 losses in
• 5:31
  six months on cars, it was a good time to get out.
• 5:35
  You know, it was, it was a good time to take a break from the
• 5:38
  industry and kind of clear my head and, and had kind of gotten
• 5:41
  tired of little dealers and little things.
• 5:43
  And, and that's kind of what my career had been up to that.
• 5:46
  And so it in 2008, I started applying at Tesla because it was
• 5:50
  new. It was a thing.
• 5:52
  I met George Blankenship at the Tesla Gallery opening in Houston
• 5:56
  and he's famously did the Apple stores that created that retail
• 6:00
  program, Microsoft Stores and then the original Tesla
• 6:03
  galleries were all part of his his plan and had a great chat
• 6:07
  with him. Decided I needed to go work for
• 6:08
  this company and eventually I did.
• 6:11
  It was 2013, was there until 2018 running service operations
• 6:16
  for them in Dallas, which was a huge delivery center.
• 6:20
  And, you know, it was fraught with all kinds of crazy things
• 6:25
  of like, you know, why do you need more than one entrance into
• 6:28
  this service department? No, we rented you a, we leased
• 6:31
  you a building that has this massive storage space in the
• 6:34
  back where you can put cars. Great.
• 6:35
  We moved in and the garage door to that back area was
• 6:38
  sheetrocked over. And we're like, what happened to
• 6:40
  this area? It's like, oh, we couldn't put
• 6:41
  sprinklers in yet. So you don't get it.
• 6:44
  So it was, it was it's, it was fun.
• 6:47
  Did someone say growing pains? Yeah.
• 6:50
  It was, you know, five years in that company was still acting
• 6:53
  like a startup revolving door at upper management.
• 6:57
  It was it was it was interesting.
• 7:00
  I'm glad I was there. And you know, people always ask
• 7:02
  me, it's like, oh, do you hate Tesla now?
• 7:04
  Do you hate it? I'm like not a fan of Elon.
• 7:06
  Never was always thought he was kind of questionable.
• 7:09
  But I was really more just disappointed because they were
• 7:12
  so successful and yet they could have done more and could have
• 7:15
  done better if they'd gotten a certain someone's ego out of the
• 7:18
  way when it came to insisting on things like Falcon wing doors.
• 7:23
  And yeah, anyway, you get the idea.
• 7:26
  So that was, yeah, so much promise and and so little
• 7:30
  delivered, even though so much was delivered at the same time.
• 7:32
  So, yeah, I left Tesla when I moved to California.
• 7:36
  I was in in Texas for a long time and like I said, moved to
• 7:39
  LA for personal reasons and Tesla didn't really make it easy
• 7:45
  for me to try to find something out here.
• 7:47
  So I ended up end up at Faraday Future, which was another
• 7:52
  experience all in and of itself. A company that I can't fathom
• 7:56
  how they are still in business, how they still exist.
• 8:00
  Lots of questionable things going on there.
• 8:03
  Sean Arcane did a big piece, an ongoing piece for The Verge when
• 8:07
  he was still there, documenting all the crazy stuff that was
• 8:10
  going on and houses and other people's names and people who
• 8:13
  didn't have visas. That should have been I'm, I
• 8:15
  mean, we had somebody come in who was a head of department,
• 8:21
  had come from a cell phone manufacturer, brought in his
• 8:26
  deck and had the whole company wide meeting all hands sitting
• 8:29
  in this big conference room in Gardena, CA.
• 8:33
  And he pulls up the slides and he's like, I didn't have time to
• 8:36
  do new slides. So he pulls up all the slides,
• 8:38
  slides and they say Hawaii way on them.
• 8:39
  Like, Oh my God, we're using, we're literally using Hawaii way
• 8:43
  as slides for your presentation. And I'm guessing you didn't make
• 8:46
  these, which if he had, it might have been the guy who did the
• 8:50
  worst PowerPoint presentation I've ever seen, which was at
• 8:52
  Faraday Future. I'm sorry if they're listening,
• 8:55
  but they had I, I still have it somewhere.
• 8:57
  I actually saved it because it was just the worst.
• 9:00
  And it's like, here's an example of how not to do.
• 9:03
  Yeah, here's an example of how not to do.
• 9:05
  I went in and took over that position at very day future and
• 9:10
  that guy got moved into something else, so it was under.
• 9:13
  Allocation of resources. Yeah.
• 9:16
  And then they allocated all their money to things that we
• 9:19
  don't know where it went. They were burning through.
• 9:22
  They burned through $800 million, like $100 million a
• 9:24
  month. And then like 9 months that I
• 9:25
  was there, ran out of money, furloughed a bunch of people,
• 9:29
  put a bunch of people on a cap salary and then gave us an
• 9:33
  option to take furlough or the cap salary.
• 9:35
  And I was just like pipe, you're like I will.
• 9:38
  Do neither of these things. I will, I will.
• 9:39
  I will not take a cap salary. I'll take furlough and keep my
• 9:42
  benefits while I search for another job.
• 9:44
  What does things drive like? Chet couldn't tell you.
• 9:48
  Never drove 1, rode in one. It was a big, fast electric car,
• 9:51
  but the interior was, you know, hodgepodge.
• 9:54
  It was a neat idea in 20, 17 or 2014 or whatever when they
• 10:00
  originally designed it. When I was there, it was about a
• 10:02
  five year old design and I think they didn't change much.
• 10:06
  I think they actually D contented it a little bit from
• 10:08
  what it was supposed to have originally.
• 10:11
  By the time they actually produced the car you in 2024, I
• 10:15
  think it was so neat design, cool looking, had some promise.
• 10:19
  They ran Pikes Peak with it there again, a lot of promise, a
• 10:21
  lot of cool things. They had some great engineering
• 10:23
  talent. They had some really neat tech
• 10:25
  ideas, but the execution wasn't there and the we'll just say the
• 10:31
  financial acumen was questionable.
• 10:34
  Could have, could have done with a little more.
• 10:37
  Little more sensible handling of the funding.
• 10:41
  Yeah. So I'm just thinking like.
• 10:43
  Man, imagine if you had access to $800 million.
• 10:47
  I feel like I could have stretched it more than nine
• 10:48
  months. You'd think, yeah, I mean, one
• 10:52
  more thing. I mean, they may have just
• 10:54
  stretched it into other things like houses and arts and things
• 10:59
  for executives. I'm not saying that's what
• 11:02
  happened, but yeah, there's articles out there that that
• 11:05
  allege what happened. So, yeah, it was interesting.
• 11:09
  So that was kind of my first real EV startup and kind of saw
• 11:13
  how that world worked and saw how crazy it was.
• 11:17
  And so then I stayed in it and went into another company and
• 11:22
  went through the EV, the EV startup pain again and then
• 11:26
  again and then went back to one. And then, you know, got out a
• 11:29
  little bit in 2023 and and got to the rest O mod world, which
• 11:35
  is also chaos as as we were discussing before we started,
• 11:39
  right. Well, and that was where the
• 11:41
  big. Names getting yeah.
• 11:43
  That was where we met in person was when you were with Vintage
• 11:46
  Modern because I got to drive one of their cars.
• 11:49
  It was one of the demonstrators, I think, yeah.
• 11:52
  Yeah, that was the first demo that we had a neat idea.
• 11:55
  And they're still going strong. You know, I left on great terms
• 11:59
  with those guys, still friends, you know, nothing.
• 12:01
  It was just I was there to do a project and I did it, and then I
• 12:05
  left and they're still making modern Broncos.
• 12:09
  And it's funny, I was watching a video the other day with Jay
• 12:13
  Leno in Fuzzy's garage, Gabriel Iglesias's garage, and you could
• 12:18
  see his vintage modern in the background.
• 12:19
  It's like I that's his vintage modern.
• 12:20
  I know what color that is. I remember when he ordered that.
• 12:23
  That's cool. Yeah.
• 12:23
  So it's pretty interesting. It was, it was fun.
• 12:25
  And, you know, having access to those was a blast.
• 12:27
  When we did Car Week, we had three of them and we were
• 12:29
  cruising around. We got more attention than just
• 12:31
  about anything. You know, we could be parked in
• 12:33
  a lot. And if 5 Bugattis could go by
• 12:34
  and they'd be like, yeah, those are cool.
• 12:35
  But did you see this pink Bronco?
• 12:38
  Because we had, we had one that was going to one of our first
• 12:41
  clients here in LA and she let us bring it to the car week and
• 12:44
  show it and drive it and get some really good content with
• 12:46
  it. And we did.
• 12:47
  We met up with a guy who had the full car rig.
• 12:49
  He had a drone. We did things, We went towards
• 12:52
  Big Sur and we went over the, the Canyon Bridge and we got it
• 12:55
  to where we were. Had the whole bridge, no cars on
• 12:58
  either end, three Broncos rolling across.
• 13:00
  We got the drone footage. We go to lunch, he's showing us
• 13:02
  the footage. He's like, this is great.
• 13:03
  Ghosted us after lunch. We never heard from him, never
• 13:05
  saw any of the footage, never asked for payment.
• 13:08
  He spent, he spent 5-6 hours with us that day.
• 13:12
  All the footage, we don't know if it's gone.
• 13:14
  We don't, we've never seen it. It's not like he did anything
• 13:16
  else with it. I don't know if he lost it and
• 13:18
  just didn't want to tell us his hard drive crashed.
• 13:21
  But yeah, he had a Mustang set up with his great camera rig and
• 13:24
  we're like, that looks like the guy that did our stuff in
• 13:26
  Florida and he's like, Oh yeah, this is what I modeled it after.
• 13:29
  I'm like, this is great. We were doing all kinds of fun
• 13:31
  for it kills me that we lost all that footage because it was some
• 13:34
  amazing, you know, driving up and down Hwy. 1 towards Big Sur
• 13:37
  with we had a green Bronco, a purple one and a pink one.
• 13:42
  And they were all kind of different flavors.
• 13:44
  Like one had Chrome wheels, one had black wheels, one had white
• 13:46
  wheels, like white interior on one black interior on or like a
• 13:50
  dark, dark brown interior on one.
• 13:51
  Then like a saddle. Great looking trio of cars.
• 13:55
  Yeah, great opportunity for photos.
• 13:57
  And then we never saw it. That's.
• 14:00
  Hysterical. Do we know if he's still with
• 14:01
  us? I think maybe that's later.
• 14:03
  Apparently he was still posting stuff and one of our one of the
• 14:07
  guys that was working with us was reaching out and talking to
• 14:09
  their, his friends on Instagram. He's like, hey, have you heard
• 14:12
  from so and so? And he's like, yeah, he's he's
• 14:14
  still doing stuff. I don't know.
• 14:15
  I don't know what happened. Yeah.
• 14:17
  Wow. Never heard back from him.
• 14:18
  It was, it was absolutely crazy. The automotive photographer
• 14:22
  version of Weekend at Bernie's, They're like, yeah, he's totally
• 14:25
  fine. He's totally fine.
• 14:27
  Yeah, he's doing. He's doing really well in jail.
• 14:31
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, stranger things have
• 14:32
  happened. I wanted to ask if that's the
• 14:34
  weirdest thing that's ever happened to you working in the
• 14:36
  industry, but I have a feeling it's probably far from it.
• 14:38
  That's. Child's I mean weird stuff is
• 14:41
  not like there was like I Vin Fast I be careful how much I say
• 14:46
  about this, but Vin fast was hands down the most extreme
• 14:52
  experiences I ever had just because of how they operated and
• 14:58
  my particular scenario. So I was at Vin past.
• 15:03
  I was the head of sales operations and product landing
• 15:06
  for them in 2022. I guess it was.
• 15:10
  And so they were launching in the US My goal was to build
• 15:13
  sales operations and be able to do direct to consumer
• 15:16
  deliveries. We built lease programs.
• 15:19
  We did all kinds of stuff and we were, we were killing it for
• 15:21
  what we were given and the resources that we had, which
• 15:23
  were limited to say the best. And so I don't know, I'm
• 15:28
  probably 6 months in four months into this, this job, things are
• 15:32
  going well. The CEO for the US was liked me
• 15:35
  and, and you know, was congratulatory.
• 15:37
  And they kept doing these trips where they would fly
• 15:40
  influencers, vendors, suppliers and like team for rewards over
• 15:47
  to Vietnam. And the parent company of Infaz
• 15:51
  is called Vin Group. They own an island off the coast
• 15:54
  of Natrang, and on this island is like the Vietnamese version
• 15:59
  of Disneyland. So they have a theme park,
• 16:01
  multiple hotels, golf courses, there's a big shopping mall.
• 16:06
  The tram was being redone and you have to get there by boat.
• 16:09
  And once you go in, it's like facial recognition for
• 16:11
  everything. It's all looped in, no cars on
• 16:13
  the island, and it is wild experience.
• 16:17
  We fly in, you find this little airport, you drive up to the
• 16:20
  small city and then you get on a boat and you go to this
• 16:22
  Vietnamese Disneyland and you stay at one of the hotels.
• 16:26
  They closed one of the hotels for this event.
• 16:29
  So I'm going to this event the second time around, I think it
• 16:31
  was. And at the last minute they're
• 16:33
  like, you're going to come to this trip with us.
• 16:34
  It's like, sure, I'd love to go to Vietnam.
• 16:36
  This would be fun. And I didn't have anybody
• 16:38
  specific that I was entertaining.
• 16:40
  I didn't have a vendor, didn't have a supplier.
• 16:41
  They're like, come support fleet, come support these guys,
• 16:44
  meet some of the production people.
• 16:45
  This is great. I get over there, they have the
• 16:49
  hotel closed down for us. Everything is comped.
• 16:51
  You can get massages, you can do this.
• 16:53
  They take us out on a cruises in how long Bay they get all these
• 16:57
  things and have us going all around.
• 16:59
  Spend some time in Hanoi going to dinner with some of the
• 17:01
  vendors and the production team is super interesting.
• 17:05
  And while I'm there like the second day and I'm sitting at
• 17:08
  lunch at the factory and I get an e-mail from somebody in bin
• 17:14
  group and they're like, we want you to come to Vietnam or the
• 17:17
  VIN 29 celebration. So Vin group does an annual
• 17:20
  celebration where people who have performed well get to go as
• 17:24
  a reward. I apparently had performed well
• 17:27
  or I was just the only one left in the US who would, would go.
• 17:31
  But the the the catch was that I was supposed to be there one
• 17:34
  week after I got home from this trip.
• 17:37
  So they wanted their I was just like, this is crazy.
• 17:40
  But I was like, yeah, I'd love to go, but I can't really.
• 17:45
  So I run into my equivalent that might the the woman who's the my
• 17:48
  equivalent in Vietnam, kind of my counterpart over there at
• 17:52
  lunch. She sits me down, we're
• 17:54
  chatting. And then she was like, are you
• 17:55
  going to come back for Vin 29? I was like, I kind of need to go
• 17:58
  home. I don't have, you know, I wasn't
• 18:00
  planning on staying for three weeks or much less.
• 18:02
  And she's like, we should just stay through.
• 18:04
  And I'm like 3 weeks. And while we're doing that, kind
• 18:08
  of surreptitiously, she's texting her good friend who is
• 18:11
  the CEO of the US of Vin Fast US, who then comes down from the
• 18:16
  restaurant upstairs and sits down with us.
• 18:19
  And she asked the same question. It's like, well, late, It's my
• 18:22
  wife's birthday next week and I kind of need to be home for
• 18:25
  that. So this is middle of July.
• 18:28
  And she just looks at me. She's like, well, what if you,
• 18:30
  what if we gave your wife a trip to Vietnam for her birthday?
• 18:32
  I was like, I mean, sure, if that can be done.
• 18:38
  And like got approval from the chairman of Vin Group to fly
• 18:42
  Halle over to Vietnam flew her over business class treated her
• 18:46
  better than anybody else had been treated at this point.
• 18:49
  She gets a car from the airport. All these things like
• 18:50
  everything's great. They bring her over.
• 18:52
  She's there for been 29. So I stay the week in between.
• 18:55
  I'm working in the office. I'm doing laundry at the hotel.
• 18:58
  I'm staying in different hotels and moving around because
• 19:00
  they're closing hotels to get them ready for this big event.
• 19:03
  All kinds of crazy stuff going on and I'm I'm thinking this
• 19:09
  whole time that I'm there to be groomed for promotion like I've
• 19:13
  done well, like things are going well, like they need more
• 19:15
  leadership in the US and that was still I guess a possibility,
• 19:19
  but nothing really happened. And you know, without going into
• 19:23
  much detail, VIN 29 that starts and I've got all these events to
• 19:28
  go to and dinners and things like that.
• 19:30
  And I'm pretty well just completely told, oh your wife
• 19:32
  can't come to this. Like oh these are employee only
• 19:36
  things, she's not allowed to participate.
• 19:38
  She can come watch some of the team building exercises they'll
• 19:41
  get to later, but she could only go to 1 dinner with me.
• 19:45
  So they brought her over to be with you and then they were
• 19:47
  like, just kidding. She's also not invited.
• 19:49
  She had. The best time because there were
• 19:52
  two other employees that I worked with my counterpart and
• 19:54
  her like next in line and Tracy and Haley when my wife's name is
• 20:00
  Hallie, Tracy and Haley took my wife.
• 20:02
  Everywhere they went into Natrang, they ate local food,
• 20:05
  they were doing all kinds of stuff.
• 20:06
  They went to the Disneyland theme park and rode the rides
• 20:09
  and went to the botanical gardens and did all the things.
• 20:11
  While I'm sitting in these crazy conferences, some of them are
• 20:15
  like 2 hours long. We're getting translated into
• 20:17
  earpieces live from somebody who's like dial into this team's
• 20:21
  call and so and so is going to translate into this so you can
• 20:24
  hear in your earbuds. And so we're in this meetings
• 20:28
  about the craziest stuff because things that would not fly in the
• 20:32
  US, like punitive penalties for not performing.
• 20:35
  And when I say punitive, I mean financial penalties.
• 20:39
  If you don't meet your KPIs, they'll dock your pay.
• 20:42
  You didn't hit this number, Great, that's 10% off your next
• 20:44
  paycheck. And enforcing these things and
• 20:48
  like talking about how this is such a great way to do people
• 20:50
  getting up and giving testimony about how that worked and it
• 20:52
  made them realize why they'd missed their KPI and they did it
• 20:55
  the next time. People saying I didn't feel like
• 20:57
  this was right, so I paid the penalty for my employee and then
• 21:01
  when it happened again, I didn't it's just like, so I'm sitting
• 21:05
  in that stuff she's going and having crazy lunch and, and, and
• 21:08
  like downtown not trying. So we had some fun times like we
• 21:11
  got to go eat local food with people who are local because you
• 21:14
  go in in a place no pictures on the menu.
• 21:16
  Everything's written in Vietnamese because not trying a
• 21:18
  smaller city than Hanoi, you know, so it's, it's more rural,
• 21:23
  you know, it's more traditional and we had a great time.
• 21:26
  She had a great time and and there's there were more stories
• 21:30
  about their drinking habits and other things that happened too
• 21:33
  that I won't go into. But offline, if you want crazy
• 21:37
  stories, it's it, it that's that's the tip of the iceberg.
• 21:40
  And I came home and I was just like, I, I I don't want work for
• 21:44
  this company anymore. Yeah, it sounds like a cult.
• 21:48
  Oh, did you? Sign a billion year contract or
• 21:50
  anything while you were there. Oh no, you've come after in five
• 21:52
  years. You don't understand.
• 21:54
  They have a theme song Vin group has a theme song that the
• 21:57
  employees all have to learn. There used to be a video on
• 22:00
  YouTube. I can't find it anymore.
• 22:01
  I don't know if it changed, got pulled down or just moved, but
• 22:05
  they have a theme song and you all need the ways to go to this.
• 22:10
  It was it was kind of ridiculous.
• 22:13
  And and the 1st morning of this event, they have us all go up to
• 22:17
  the office building, which is up on a hill on this on this ledge
• 22:21
  looking over the water. Beautiful view.
• 22:23
  And it's just a big concrete courtyard in front of this, what
• 22:26
  they called the Pink Palace, because it was a model of the
• 22:28
  building in Hanoi that's called the White Palace.
• 22:30
  But this one was pink, obviously.
• 22:32
  Yeah, makes sense. They had us line up in rows by
• 22:35
  the teams that we were with or by our department, by our
• 22:38
  company, by our company, whatever it was.
• 22:40
  And we all had to be in matching uniforms.
• 22:44
  Their their their company colors are like bright red, burgundy
• 22:47
  and yellow. Matching hat, Aesthetically
• 22:51
  pleasing. There were people.
• 22:53
  Walking around with hats and who's like, oh, where's your
• 22:54
  hat? Where's your hat?
• 22:55
  Oh. Here's a Here's a hat for you.
• 22:57
  Here's a hat for lined up security detail.
• 23:00
  Marches in step with the flag, raises the flag.
• 23:03
  The flag has the little things to blow it so it flutters in the
• 23:05
  wind singing the theme song, and everybody knows the theme song.
• 23:09
  Wait, so was there a dance? Like please tell me there's a
• 23:13
  dance. There kind of is like there was
• 23:16
  a talent show as part of this event.
• 23:18
  Like there's a theater on the island where they did a talent
• 23:20
  show. The talent show involves some
• 23:22
  people lip synching too. I mean it was it's wild.
• 23:26
  The theme for the event was called conquer was conquer the
• 23:28
  world. Like that was the theme for Vin
• 23:30
  29. Well, and when you were?
• 23:32
  Talking about like, you go, you take a boat to the island and
• 23:35
  it's all facial recognition. Like, at which point did you get
• 23:37
  to see the dinosaurs? Stuff like, and then we get to
• 23:43
  tour the lab, you know? Islands are just a bad idea in
• 23:46
  2026, let me tell you, I got to tour the.
• 23:48
  Factory and then there was some there was some Jurassic
• 23:53
  technology happening in the factory which kind of made me
• 23:55
  worry about how all these cars were getting built it was
• 23:58
  interesting for as as much high tech as there was there was some
• 24:01
  also some things that were just like running off an Excel
• 24:03
  spreadsheet so it was just yeah despite.
• 24:05
  All this they they couldn't win in the States, right?
• 24:10
  I mean, they're still trying. They still claim that they're
• 24:12
  going to build a factory in North Carolina.
• 24:14
  That's right, They were. At the LA Auto Show last year,
• 24:16
  weren't they? Yep, yeah, sure wasn't.
• 24:19
  But Vin right, but. Vin fast was.
• 24:21
  Vin Fast was. Make it make.
• 24:24
  Sense I know every now and then I see a VIN fast on the road
• 24:29
  like one of their cars and I'm like there it is still there's
• 24:33
  the token 1. But they're all different.
• 24:36
  Colors, I know they're like, I know they're.
• 24:38
  I'm not seeing the same one over and over.
• 24:40
  That's what's wild, yeah. Yeah, there's a Body Shop in my
• 24:43
  neighborhood that specializes in them, so I can walk around the
• 24:46
  corner and sometimes I'll see three of them in the parking lot
• 24:50
  crashed, but they'll see three of them in the park.
• 24:52
  So they, so they work on those fiskers.
• 24:54
  What else do they specialize, I mean?
• 24:56
  The thing is you can still go out and buy a new Vinfast in the
• 25:01
  US It's through they they scrapped everything that we
• 25:04
  built for direct to consumer and then went to a dealer model.
• 25:07
  So they completely switched that up.
• 25:10
  Yeah. Do you remember?
• 25:11
  Daewoo and how they had their their business model was selling
• 25:15
  cars through college students. Mm hmm.
• 25:17
  Yeah, that was their. Business model, that was.
• 25:19
  Weird, yeah. That's just yeah, there was, I
• 25:22
  mean wild it was that was very early direct to consumer.
• 25:26
  Yeah. Wow, wow.
• 25:27
  OK. Were they selling them?
• 25:28
  On college campuses, I mean, this is this is brand new
• 25:31
  information. I don't that's.
• 25:32
  The last person I think they were just.
• 25:34
  Like, yeah, I think they were just enlisting college students
• 25:37
  and like, here, do you want to make a couple of bucks?
• 25:39
  Go drive this day? We were out and sit in a parking
• 25:41
  lot and try to sell it. Like, it was almost like
• 25:44
  guerrilla marketing. Yeah, but with.
• 25:46
  An automobile, but with an. Automobile.
• 25:48
  Yeah, yeah. Every once in a while I'll see
• 25:50
  one on the road still, and it's just, you know, I have to
• 25:53
  recalibrate, right, to recognize what that thing is like, what is
• 25:56
  happening. That's wild.
• 25:59
  So. That emerging thing is a, is a
• 26:02
  whole, the whole different thing.
• 26:04
  Like that's an emerging brand in a market you think.
• 26:08
  And we went in thinking, this is great.
• 26:10
  Like we'll be Hyundai in the 70s and 80s.
• 26:12
  Like we'll be, we'll be this emerging brand and we'll come in
• 26:15
  and undercut the Teslas and things with this car that has
• 26:17
  more features at a lower cost. And the, the, the corporate,
• 26:23
  the, the, the chairman's marketing team, we're like, no,
• 26:26
  no, no, we should be competing against Tesla and Mercedes.
• 26:29
  I'm like, no, no, you're like, we're not.
• 26:33
  What if we? Don't.
• 26:34
  Yeah, what if? We what if we set our sights at
• 26:36
  something more realistic but yeah, reality is not something
• 26:39
  that was was often in the in the mix with that crew yeah when
• 26:44
  you. Were describing your trip.
• 26:45
  I'm like, haven't we all seen this movie?
• 26:47
  This. Wait a minute.
• 26:49
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. My wife tells a different
• 26:52
  version of it. And like I said, there's some
• 26:53
  stuff that's not fit for error that that that I can tell you
• 26:57
  later that it just it got darker.
• 27:00
  That's for. Patreon Yeah, that car show
• 27:03
  After Dawn. That's that's.
• 27:04
  A whole that could be a whole episode in and of itself.
• 27:07
  Like, I mean, yeah, I mean, obviously see how much we had on
• 27:09
  it just just this time around. And I and I've edited a lot.
• 27:13
  So, so Fast forward back to the world of reality.
• 27:16
  The world of reality the last several years, Yeah.
• 27:20
  Yeah, restomods are fun, but it's, you know, it's a that
• 27:25
  general market of the actual restomods is is tricky to to to
• 27:29
  navigate. And unless you have something
• 27:31
  truly different in that market like vintage modern you, you
• 27:34
  don't really have, you know, a way to gain to gain anything.
• 27:39
  And so for people. That aren't familiar with
• 27:42
  vintage modern cars. Can you describe, you know, I
• 27:45
  mean, no one will be surprised that I was excited because it's
• 27:48
  Bronco related. So Vintage flips the restomod
• 27:51
  model and instead of taking an old car, restoring it and
• 27:55
  modifying it, they take a new car and modify it to make it
• 28:00
  look like a car that was restored.
• 28:01
  So they take and this is a brilliant idea and it worked
• 28:04
  really well specifically on the 2 door Bronco.
• 28:06
  It just it it all came together very well.
• 28:09
  It was executed very well, like no bad things to say about the
• 28:12
  product. Had fun driving those.
• 28:15
  It was it was so much fun to have those in LA, but it was a
• 28:18
  new Bronco chassis. So they would buy a new Bronco
• 28:21
  from the Ford dealer register entitle it.
• 28:23
  So it was no longer a new car. We didn't run any issues there
• 28:26
  re body it with all new steel body work that was made to look
• 28:30
  like the original 66 to 77 and that body almost fit perfectly
• 28:38
  like it was such a good. It was such a good like
• 28:41
  dimensionally fit and the interior was all done up by a
• 28:47
  company in Europe called Carlex that does crazy leather and they
• 28:51
  do G wagons and things like that.
• 28:53
  So it's that level of interior trim, new stereo, better
• 28:57
  suspension, you know, bespoke wheels and tires and turned out
• 29:03
  great, beautiful and the same kind of price as a really good
• 29:06
  restomod. Yeah, well, and I mean, the
• 29:11
  interior, I drove the green one which had that kind of saddle
• 29:15
  brown leather, and it was just gorgeous.
• 29:18
  Like, you know, Yeah, top quality, absolutely beautiful.
• 29:22
  And it was, and you mentioned the pink one, which I got to see
• 29:25
  in Monterey that year at Car week.
• 29:26
  And it was just, I mean, it was just so fun.
• 29:29
  Like you couldn't look at it and not smile.
• 29:32
  And, you know, it just brightened your day.
• 29:34
  So I can imagine, like if you're, you know, going about
• 29:39
  your day with that car, it definitely would make you smile.
• 29:43
  And you and I talked about it that day was that a lot of the
• 29:46
  demand was people that loved the classic styling, but they wanted
• 29:50
  the modern safety features because they want to be able to
• 29:52
  take their families in it and not stress about the the decades
• 29:57
  of safety development that have happened in the meantime.
• 29:59
  Yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it's the ease of use
• 30:03
  and it's the accessibility and a lot of people, you know, a lot
• 30:07
  of people aren't car people. And I think, you know, it's easy
• 30:10
  to lose sight of that. And that's where kind of my part
• 30:13
  time Senate comes in is it's easy to lose sight of that of
• 30:16
  there are people out there who want this car because it's cute
• 30:21
  or it's pretty or it's just neat.
• 30:24
  It's something that I want, you know, there's a reason for it
• 30:26
  other than the technical. I don't care if it's got AV8 or
• 30:30
  AV12 or A6 or whatever. They don't they don't know and
• 30:35
  they want the the joy of driving it and owning it and seeing it
• 30:39
  and looking at it and being seen in it, but without having to
• 30:43
  learn new things about how to drive a 67 Bronco, which doesn't
• 30:47
  drive like a modern car right. So the accommodations of the.
• 30:51
  Classic. Yeah, Yeah.
• 30:52
  This is like the the idea of kind of modern luxury and this
• 30:55
  is where we were with vintage is accessing the joy and the
• 30:59
  pleasure of driving the thing without having to have the
• 31:01
  compromise. And as car people, I think we
• 31:05
  see that compromise is a challenge and there's fun to it.
• 31:08
  The manual transmission, the car that's a little harder to start
• 31:10
  because it's carbureted. Like these are all like the
• 31:13
  badge of honor things. It's like I do these things
• 31:15
  because they make the enjoyment more visceral for me or whatever
• 31:18
  it is, right? And there's a lot of people out
• 31:20
  there who just don't know how to deal with that and don't want to
• 31:23
  learn and they just want to enjoy the car.
• 31:25
  And so that's where Resto mods came in.
• 31:30
  But this took it to another level and, you know, it's a car
• 31:34
  that nobody's mad at, regardless if they know it cost $300,000 or
• 31:38
  not. They look at it and they don't
• 31:39
  care because it's just a thing of happiness.
• 31:43
  You know, it's a thing of joy. And and it kind of, you know,
• 31:46
  sparks that with people, which is, you know, transitioning that
• 31:50
  into the only thing that does that more than a vintage Bronco
• 31:54
  is a friggin Myers Manx Doom Buggy.
• 31:57
  This, this car, the joy that a buggy elicits when people see it
• 32:02
  going down the road or when they ride in it.
• 32:05
  And, and there's still people who it's, it's not for them just
• 32:07
  fine. So many people have a story
• 32:10
  about a buggy in the 70s, especially living in Southern
• 32:12
  California, right, Right. And I've had people like honk
• 32:15
  their horns and flash the lights and wave and dance and sing at
• 32:18
  me in traffic because I was driving a buggy.
• 32:21
  And it's every, it's every age, gender, race, everybody.
• 32:27
  And I get kids pointing at me while there are people taking
• 32:29
  pictures while I'm driving on the street and any buggy.
• 32:32
  And it doesn't matter if it's pink, purple, green, Gray,
• 32:36
  people smile at it and love it. And nobody's mad at it unless,
• 32:40
  you know, sometimes they're old and they're crotchety and they
• 32:42
  blow smoke when they start. That's why we try to get that
• 32:46
  out of the way before they get to customers.
• 32:47
  But that kind of leads to why Myers Banks exists the way that
• 32:51
  it does now. And kind of what I'm doing
• 32:55
  there, which is, you know, I've come on board to kind of help
• 32:58
  revitalize sales and prepare for the next generation of Manx,
• 33:05
  which is the remastered classics, which are what we sell
• 33:08
  currently. We started delivering these last
• 33:09
  year. And these are turnkey cars with
• 33:14
  a body that looks just like the original Manx because we got the
• 33:17
  original molds from Bruce Myers before he passed away.
• 33:20
  He sold the company to to our group and gave us all the molds,
• 33:24
  all the everything that he had. We took those original molds.
• 33:27
  We took those original bodies, 3D scanned them, figured out
• 33:30
  where they could be improved because they were all done by
• 33:32
  hand. They were all designed by, you
• 33:34
  know, by sight and by feel, by Bruce.
• 33:37
  And they're pretty close. Like they're actually pretty
• 33:39
  good all things considered. But then we took them, we put
• 33:43
  them into CAD, we started fixing things on them.
• 33:45
  The tolerances are better, they're more symmetrical.
• 33:47
  The tolerances and the thickness of the fiberglass is better
• 33:49
  because we, the modern fiberglass technology, you know,
• 33:52
  laying fiberglass is more precise.
• 33:53
  Now we've done a couple of things.
• 33:56
  We added a trunk that you can lock and little things that make
• 33:58
  it more functional. But at the end of the day, these
• 34:00
  are stronger, stiffer bodies that are more accurate.
• 34:02
  The better tolerance as they fit the bodies, the chassis better.
• 34:05
  We use completely restored Volkswagen chassis just like
• 34:09
  Bruce did, but we go much further with those.
• 34:12
  They're fully seam welded powder coated.
• 34:15
  The the 2 door or the two seater buggy.
• 34:17
  Sorry, no doors. The two seater buggies are
• 34:19
  shortened by 14 inches and then they get new floor pans.
• 34:21
  They're all welded. They're powder coated.
• 34:23
  They look brand new. We've got a rack of them sitting
• 34:25
  in the shop. The 4 door 4 door it's getting
• 34:29
  late. The four seater is a is a the
• 34:33
  four seater is a a standard beetle wheelbase and same thing
• 34:36
  fully restored, but the new body goes on top of that a brand new
• 34:39
  crate motor still the the the standard motor still AVW flat 4
• 34:44
  crate motor. Tweak them a little bit little
• 34:46
  more displacement, little more power, couple of carbs if you
• 34:49
  want it. And then we can go crazy with
• 34:52
  it, which is a whole other thing.
• 34:54
  But you know, they're all manual transmission.
• 34:58
  They're all traditional buggies. You know, they have a little top
• 35:00
  that's standard, but otherwise you're completely exposed to the
• 35:03
  elements. But you can do fun things with
• 35:06
  them. And we've had a lot of people
• 35:08
  who have bought them who are also Porsche people, Ferrari
• 35:13
  people and. They like the idea.
• 35:15
  Cross shopping that's. I mean, a, a boat, a motorcycle,
• 35:20
  another house, you know, whatever it, it could be, you
• 35:24
  know, a, a vacation, a Cabo, you know, a vacation place in Cabo,
• 35:26
  who knows? It's not, there's not a direct
• 35:29
  comparison car, but we get a lot of people who have personalized
• 35:33
  them and we can do all of that. We've got designers in house who
• 35:37
  have the experience to do that. So if you want fancy leather,
• 35:41
  better seats, you want, you know, German square weave carpet
• 35:44
  and a, you know, a canvas top, we can do that.
• 35:47
  We can do paint to sample. We can do all kinds of fun stuff
• 35:49
  with the gel coats. So you can have a very
• 35:52
  customized Manx that is, you know, down to a personalized
• 35:57
  shift knob if you want. I was going to say, I think we.
• 36:01
  All are familiar with the the hot dog shift knob has probably
• 36:04
  gotten the most notoriety on Matt Ferris.
• 36:09
  Can we go back to the beginning because I don't know if everyone
• 36:11
  listening, you know, knows Myers makes in the history and sort
• 36:14
  of, you know, the Genesis and Bruce Myers and and what a part
• 36:17
  of southern southern Colorado, very much not Southern
• 36:22
  California automotive and surf culture and this kind of thing.
• 36:26
  Because when you think of a dune buggy, when you think of and
• 36:29
  that's maybe a bit of a misnomer, right, or beach buggy.
• 36:32
  This is that. This is that iconic form.
• 36:35
  Yeah, it really is. And and he didn't know what he
• 36:38
  had created. He just wanted something that
• 36:40
  was simpler and easier because he was seeing guys build these
• 36:44
  crazy tube frame things with small blocks and Porsche engines
• 36:48
  and VW engines. And I'm driving around and he
• 36:51
  was just like, I don't need all that.
• 36:53
  I just want something bounce around on the sand and put my
• 36:54
  surfboards on, get down to the boat, do whatever and and
• 36:57
  realize very quickly like how he could make that happen.
• 37:01
  So Bruce was an artist and a surfer and poet and a boat
• 37:06
  builder. Like he had the skills because
• 37:08
  of these other things that he did to draw and design and to
• 37:12
  kind of have that creative feel for what this was going to be
• 37:16
  and figured out how like easy it would be to take this
• 37:20
  fiberglass, you know, tub and then both the VW engine and
• 37:25
  suspension to it. And you've got a super
• 37:27
  lightweight, plenty of power because of the Volkswagen
• 37:30
  engines made to move more. And it achieved what he wanted
• 37:34
  to. And, you know, famously, you see
• 37:35
  him jumping in on the cover of the magazine and it did that.
• 37:39
  And he evolved it and made it better and stiffer and ended up
• 37:41
  using the whole VW chassis at one point.
• 37:43
  And it took off and people wanted wanted them.
• 37:47
  So he started offering the bodies and made the kits and
• 37:49
  people can buy them and make their own, never intending to
• 37:52
  the be, you know, anything big and didn't protect himself.
• 37:56
  So he didn't know to go, you know, patent his IP and do that.
• 38:01
  And so it became the most copied design in the automotive
• 38:04
  history. So this is the most copied car
• 38:06
  ever made is in my Manx. So there were so many clones of
• 38:09
  dune buggies and some of them were flimsy.
• 38:11
  You could just, you know, bend the, you know, the bodies and
• 38:13
  and break things. And they didn't have the the
• 38:16
  design kind of elegance that that Bruce's buggy did down to
• 38:21
  the fact that, you know, historically, and this is kind
• 38:22
  of a neat little fact is to tell if it's a real Manx or not.
• 38:26
  One trick is put your beer on the front Fender, set it flat on
• 38:30
  the front Fender. If it slides off, that's not a
• 38:32
  real Manx. If it stays flat, and chances
• 38:34
  are it's a real Banks because that he made it so that while he
• 38:37
  was working in his shop and fixing his surfboard or
• 38:39
  painting, he could reach around and put his beer on the Fender
• 38:41
  and it wouldn't fall off. Fantastic.
• 38:43
  Attention to. If you see us.
• 38:45
  If you see us in an event and we're taking a Margarita and
• 38:47
  putting it on the on the Fender, it it's made for that.
• 38:50
  It's not we it's we didn't have too many margaritas.
• 38:53
  So, yeah. So he's, yeah, he created this
• 38:56
  thing. It created that phenomenon
• 38:58
  because it was so easy, it was so accessible, so much fun.
• 39:01
  And in this is in 1964 that he did this so really kind of at
• 39:05
  the right time. And everybody wanted that
• 39:07
  freedom and that ability to get around.
• 39:09
  And the Beetle was cheap. The buggies were not expensive
• 39:12
  to build. You could build it in your
• 39:13
  garage even if you weren't that mechanically inclined.
• 39:16
  The motors and everything people could work on and you could hot
• 39:19
  rod them. So it, it really touches nature,
• 39:21
  surf culture, hot rod culture, VW culture.
• 39:25
  It it had a lot of the early ones that people were building
• 39:28
  356's weren't precious like they are now.
• 39:31
  So there are a lot of the early buggies.
• 39:33
  They have 356 motors in them. Yeah.
• 39:35
  So that was a. Big piece of it.
• 39:38
  Yeah, it's crazy to think that, you know, they were disposable
• 39:40
  cars at that point. You know, get a rusty 356 and
• 39:43
  like, I'll put that motor in my doom buggy.
• 39:45
  We've done that too, to a different degree.
• 39:47
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 39:50
  Give a shout out to our friend Bassem Wassef of.
• 39:52
  Course, who literally wrote the book in the history of the
• 39:55
  company literally wrote it's a fantastic, you know, it's a,
• 39:58
  it's a tome. It's a, it's a coffee table
• 40:00
  book. It's the first thing I did when
• 40:02
  I started it. That started working with with
• 40:05
  Myers and IX last year was acquire my own copy of said book
• 40:09
  and have Bassem come by to sign it.
• 40:12
  Yeah, nice. I had to.
• 40:15
  I had to part. With him a little bit, I had to
• 40:16
  I. We we got him some extra books
• 40:18
  for himself too. But yeah, no, it's it, it's
• 40:21
  great to have that and to, to kind of have that documented
• 40:24
  because it is such a big part of the history.
• 40:26
  And it touches on so like I said, so many parts of
• 40:28
  California culture and California car culture, you
• 40:32
  know, both. So it's, and the fact that we
• 40:34
  still build them in Costa Mesa, miles away from where Bruce's
• 40:38
  original shop was. I think it's a yeah, storage
• 40:41
  unit now or something. But yeah, yeah, if I may so, So
• 40:45
  what was sort of the? The demise of the original, you
• 40:48
  know, incarnation of the of the company.
• 40:49
  And then where did we get from there to where we are today?
• 40:52
  You know Bruce never tried to make it.
• 40:53
  A big company, it doesn't seem like it wasn't his goal with it.
• 40:56
  He wanted to make them for himself and his friends and and
• 40:58
  build them. And then people started copying
• 41:00
  them and his he couldn't keep up.
• 41:03
  You know, he wasn't building them cheaply.
• 41:06
  It was and, and then I think also things happened in the
• 41:09
  market, in the economy and things that just, you know, it
• 41:12
  wasn't as common the to do that anymore.
• 41:14
  But there's still a very loyal Manx owners group in Southern
• 41:20
  California all all over the world really.
• 41:24
  So it just eventually just kind of fizzled out into the probably
• 41:27
  the Eighties. But Bruce was still selling kits
• 41:28
  into the, I think into the Eighties or nineties and he kept
• 41:32
  the business name and everything alive.
• 41:34
  And every now and then I think he would do a run of bodies or
• 41:38
  do enough to keep the brand going.
• 41:39
  But he was also getting up into his eighties by the time our
• 41:44
  owner our our the owner of our our company, Philip Seraphim,
• 41:47
  who's a big car guy in his own right, Philip and Freeman
• 41:50
  Thomas, who's our designer and also very well known in his own
• 41:54
  right. They approached Bruce Freeman
• 41:58
  had known him, had met him before.
• 42:01
  And so they approached him knowing that he was looking for
• 42:05
  a way to preserve the brand and he liked what we were going to
• 42:09
  offer and what we were going to do with it.
• 42:10
  And he was like, this is great. I like you guys, I want you to
• 42:13
  have it and did that. And sadly he passed away a
• 42:16
  couple of years later. This was in twenty nineteen
• 42:19
  twenty twenty. So we we kind of started the
• 42:21
  business in twenty twenty eight, but I I when I met Freeman and
• 42:25
  Phillip in twenty nineteen was when they were acquiring the
• 42:28
  brand. And so that's where it you know,
• 42:31
  it is now. And we started off selling kits
• 42:34
  and parts, but we were getting people who wanted us to build
• 42:37
  full cars. And so we were experimenting
• 42:39
  with that, playing with that, and we still have some of the
• 42:42
  first remastered cars that we built, being able to redesign
• 42:45
  it. And do you know the the body,
• 42:47
  sorry, remaster the body. It's it's still the original
• 42:49
  design and create this. And then people are like, I just
• 42:52
  want one. I want to turn the key, go.
• 42:54
  I just want to have it and be able to go enjoy it.
• 42:57
  I don't want to have to go through building this in my
• 42:58
  garage. I don't have the time.
• 43:00
  I don't have the inclination, but I want to enjoy it.
• 43:02
  And so that's where we are now is the people who are really
• 43:07
  interested in this and really want this as that that car and
• 43:10
  have the luxury of being able to afford it and have the place to
• 43:13
  use it. They want it the way they want
• 43:15
  it. They want it built and they want
• 43:17
  to turn the key and drive it and enjoy it.
• 43:20
  And so that's that's the the market that we're fulfilling
• 43:23
  now. Yeah, Yeah, I got.
• 43:26
  To take one of the. Remastered original ones out
• 43:29
  with Freeman a couple years ago and he was showing me the
• 43:33
  updated touches. And one of the things I really
• 43:36
  liked is the panel in the back And it's, you know, functions as
• 43:41
  a storage space. But then if you need to work on
• 43:43
  the engine, like if you've taken it out in the dunes and
• 43:45
  something happens, this panel comes off and you can access the
• 43:48
  engine without having to get under the car.
• 43:51
  So I really liked the thoughtfulness of all of the
• 43:54
  little features that have been added while preserving obviously
• 43:57
  the original design. It's like the best of both
• 44:00
  worlds. And then, you know, he was
• 44:03
  talking me through the resort and all of the thoughtfulness
• 44:08
  that has gone into like the safety and like, how are we
• 44:11
  dispersing the energy? And so people feel comfortable
• 44:14
  taking their families in them and they can just go enjoy.
• 44:18
  Yeah, no. It I mean, it's, it's hard to
• 44:20
  talk about safety in a car that has, you know, no doors and you
• 44:23
  can literally reach out and touch the road like as much as
• 44:25
  possible, right. Yeah, exactly.
• 44:28
  I mean the. The resort has a lot of
• 44:29
  reinforcements in the body, outside of the body.
• 44:32
  We did think so that it wasn't a floppy little noodle and to
• 44:35
  drive an original resort and drive a modern when you're like,
• 44:38
  oh, this is very different and the resort is very different to
• 44:40
  the buggy. The two seater is like a little
• 44:42
  sports car. It's short wheelbase, it's kind
• 44:44
  of twitchy. It bounces around, you feel
• 44:46
  quick and you just kind of want to drive it crazy all the time,
• 44:48
  which means you're going like forty miles an hour because it's
• 44:50
  dune buggy. You feel like you're going a
• 44:51
  million when you're going forty. The resort is like just a little
• 44:55
  bit more calm and you just want to cruise in it.
• 44:57
  And it's really more the like it's a little bit more reserved,
• 45:02
  if you want to call it that for a four seat open air dune buggy.
• 45:07
  But it's it's still fun. Like they're still it, you know,
• 45:12
  it's there's still a level of joy.
• 45:13
  And you know, that's the slogan of smiles for miles.
• 45:16
  Like this is what we're all about is just making people
• 45:19
  happy. Whether you're in it driving it
• 45:20
  or looking at it or seeing somebody driving and enjoy it.
• 45:23
  It's like you see somebody driving when you just like that
• 45:26
  person's having more fun tonight.
• 45:27
  I don't care what you're driving.
• 45:29
  If somebody passes you and a Myers Manx, they're probably
• 45:31
  having more fun than you are. And for so many different
• 45:35
  reasons, because it is you're exposed, you're open air, it's
• 45:38
  quick feeling and they are pretty quick.
• 45:40
  You know, it's a two liter motor and a little two thousand or
• 45:42
  fourteen hundred pound buggy. The the nice thing for me,
• 45:45
  though, is like there's no radio, there's no phone, there's
• 45:48
  no GPS, which sometimes is tricky if you don't know where
• 45:51
  you're going. But you know, you put your phone
• 45:53
  in that trunk in the back and close it just like there's
• 45:55
  nothing. All you're paying attention to
• 45:57
  is driving. And when you stop the light,
• 45:58
  you're looking around and seeing what's there.
• 46:00
  And usually you're seeing somebody waving at you like,
• 46:02
  that's so cool. And it's just like, how can you
• 46:04
  not smile? How can you not enjoy this?
• 46:06
  It's just I did. I dare you to drive one and not,
• 46:10
  not not have fun. Yeah.
• 46:12
  Yeah, it's the opposite. Of of you know, most cars, I
• 46:15
  guess, right that what that's what so wonderful, right most
• 46:18
  motor cars. So you mentioned the two models
• 46:20
  there's a two door, there's the resorter and then you have
• 46:22
  different powertrain options. So can you break down sort of
• 46:25
  what's available So there's. The current, what we're
• 46:29
  currently selling and what's currently available or to order
• 46:33
  are the the classic Maxes. So this is the buggy and the
• 46:36
  resorter. The buggy being the two seater,
• 46:38
  the resorter being the four seater.
• 46:40
  You can, like I said, build them however you want all the way up
• 46:43
  to in the buggy. You can actually order it with a
• 46:47
  radial three cylinder two liter like Aeromotive power plant
• 46:53
  that's liquid cooled and fueled injected and has more horsepower
• 46:56
  and more torque. And it looks ridiculous to have
• 46:59
  this three cylinder thing that looks like an alien poking out
• 47:01
  of the back of your Manx. But when you drive it and you
• 47:05
  have this seamless torque, little more horsepower, a really
• 47:08
  crazy sound and it turned the key and go, you don't have to
• 47:12
  worry about carburetors. It's like it's, it feels kind of
• 47:14
  modern. There's a Motech digital dash
• 47:17
  like this is this is very incongruous to a, a, a sixties
• 47:21
  dune buggy. But at the same time, it feels
• 47:23
  absolutely perfect. And I when I finally got the
• 47:27
  chance to drive one of the radials, I was just like, oh,
• 47:30
  this is worth the not inexpensive price tag for it.
• 47:34
  It's it's just so it it just is silly.
• 47:37
  It's just silly in the best way of just like this car is too,
• 47:41
  you know, quicker than it needs to be.
• 47:43
  It sounds cooler than anything else out there.
• 47:45
  It looks cool, it functions. It's the reliable.
• 47:49
  The internals are from Chevy LS motors, So like from a G M L S
• 47:53
  crate motor, like you can take the Pistons and rods out and
• 47:55
  they fit in this three cylinder radio engine.
• 47:57
  It was designed to be repairable by anybody, you know, and we've
• 48:02
  developed the cooling system for it so that you can drive it on
• 48:04
  the highway and it can stay cool and you can drive in hot
• 48:07
  temperatures and stop and go traffic.
• 48:09
  And it's just kind of there. It's just lawless.
• 48:12
  It's just this great little thing.
• 48:14
  But then it goes quicker and it's, you know, more fun around
• 48:16
  corners and things like that. It's it's just like I said, it's
• 48:19
  silly and the best way kind of going towards that, you know,
• 48:22
  bringing joy to somebody who's driving it.
• 48:25
  And, you know, we'll, we'll build a lot fewer of those.
• 48:28
  Most of the buggies are still going to be the VW engines, but
• 48:31
  the radial is just like our exotic car, like it's the it's
• 48:35
  the craziest thing. You know, your neighbors not
• 48:38
  going to go buy one. Your neighbors not going to come
• 48:40
  back after you bought your, you know, SF ninety with a two
• 48:43
  ninety six and like I've got a Ferrari too.
• 48:44
  It's like, no, you don't. It's somebody's going to come
• 48:47
  over and they're like, I bought a Manx with a VW engine because
• 48:50
  your radial was so cool. You know, it's it beg you say
• 48:53
  it. It's a hoot to drive.
• 48:55
  It really fits the character of the buggy and I I that you said
• 49:00
  I I think it's worth every penny of it, and not just because I'm
• 49:04
  actually in charge of selling them now.
• 49:06
  Yeah, yeah, but yeah, minor detail.
• 49:08
  No, the radial is just. The the radial.
• 49:10
  Is just the coolest the coolest thing.
• 49:13
  It's not for everybody and it's like you said it's not not it's
• 49:17
  not inexpensive. It it raises the price of a
• 49:19
  buggy considerably so but yeah, drive one.
• 49:23
  We'll we'll get you guys behind the wheel at some point.
• 49:25
  Love to. Yes, please.
• 49:26
  Yeah. Well, who's?
• 49:27
  Buying these Like where? Are they going?
• 49:29
  Are they, you know, because they're not just being, you
• 49:31
  know, people, it's not just Southern California people who
• 49:33
  are, who are buying, you know, it's, I mean a lot.
• 49:35
  In Southern California, but we've got clients that are
• 49:38
  taking them to their properties in Idaho and Montana to drive on
• 49:42
  the ranch because they're buggies, they're off road tires.
• 49:45
  You know, we do a king off road suspension for them that's
• 49:47
  bespoke for us so they can handle doing these things.
• 49:51
  We've raced them in in Nora races at, you know, Baja so and
• 49:56
  famously Bruce won his class with stock makes at Baja.
• 50:01
  So they're capable little things off road because they don't
• 50:03
  weigh anything. They got plenty of traction.
• 50:05
  You got the engine in the back and they're a hoot for bouncing
• 50:08
  around fire roads and driving around your property because you
• 50:10
  can just like, let's go that way and you can do it.
• 50:12
  So we see people buying them for ranches in Texas and Montana and
• 50:16
  Idaho. We have people buying them
• 50:17
  because they want to cruise around their beach community in
• 50:19
  Florida. We're starting to see more
• 50:21
  interest in Texas. People want to drive them around
• 50:24
  the Hamptons. The four seater is really
• 50:26
  starting to get more attention because people want to be able
• 50:29
  to take their friends and their kids in it and do things with
• 50:32
  them. And you resto mods were big in
• 50:35
  the Hamptons. You know, you see a lot of
• 50:36
  vintage vintage, you know, modern vintage Broncos, kindreds
• 50:40
  and all those things up there. You see those up there and
• 50:44
  they're saturated, you know? There's a bunch of them, you
• 50:46
  know, right? This is something notoriously.
• 50:48
  Rolled. Over in, in East Hampton, you
• 50:50
  know, it's like there's this is different.
• 50:53
  And it's also it's, you know, it's less likely to be like
• 50:58
  overt and in your face. It's kind of subtle and cute,
• 51:00
  even though, you know, it's still a fun car to drive it.
• 51:05
  It's it's definitely more approachable.
• 51:08
  Well, I think you summed it up well when you said.
• 51:10
  It's silly. It's sort of inherently like
• 51:13
  it's a silly proposition in the best way possible, and it's like
• 51:18
  it knows that. It's sort of like, I know I'm
• 51:19
  silly and that's why I'm here, to make everyone smile.
• 51:22
  Yeah. Yeah, it.
• 51:24
  When I first started with the company they they sent one over
• 51:27
  to me to drive because I hadn't driven any of the buggies before
• 51:29
  and they sent me a classic. It's called Surf SAP.
• 51:32
  It's got a license plate. California plate says Surfs EP,
• 51:37
  it's got quilted like diamond quilted white vinyl interior and
• 51:40
  the piping on the interior matches the metal flake
• 51:42
  exterior. Coolest little car Bulletproof
• 51:46
  had been, you know, lovingly driven, restored, driven,
• 51:49
  restored, maintained. I had that car for a week and a
• 51:53
  half, two weeks, and I was like, what am I going to do with a
• 51:55
  dune bug? Like I'm going to drive it in a
• 51:57
  weekend. I'm going to take it somewhere,
• 51:58
  see what's going on. I would find myself in the
• 52:01
  middle of the day like working from home, I'm going to go to
• 52:06
  lunch. I'm usually eat lunch at home.
• 52:09
  I'm like I'm going out for lunch So I have a reason to drive the
• 52:12
  buggy. It just makes every little thing
• 52:16
  more fun without extra like any extra lift.
• 52:21
  It's like it's no harder than getting in your car to go out to
• 52:24
  lunch, but it's more fun than getting in your car to go to
• 52:27
  lunch. And it kind of makes you want to
• 52:28
  get in the buggy to go to lunch. Like I don't necessarily want to
• 52:31
  go get my F one fifty to go out for lunch, but if I have a buggy
• 52:35
  in the driveway, I'll find somewhere to go that's further
• 52:37
  away. It kind of it kind of inspires
• 52:40
  you to do things and to be out right, Sorry, right.
• 52:44
  Right, which is pretty great when you think about it, but.
• 52:46
  Yeah. You're standing there, you're
• 52:47
  like, we have dry cleaning that needs to be picked up, don't we?
• 52:49
  Or we need. No.
• 52:50
  Yeah, or. It hangs over the bar I.
• 52:53
  Have picked up my dry cleaning in a buggy before and then when
• 52:57
  you get. Home, absolutely.
• 52:58
  Yeah, that's right. So I'm convinced I.
• 53:00
  Want to order one tomorrow. What's the process?
• 53:02
  What do I do and how would you spec yours?
• 53:04
  I guess I'm curious too. I, I I.
• 53:07
  Do a radial with the the the the good suspension and man,
• 53:14
  everyday I see one that we've built, I'm like, oh, that's cool
• 53:17
  Porsche sepia brown paint to sample with like brown leather,
• 53:20
  like that's great looking. And then we built one that was a
• 53:24
  we just sold. It was a gun metal Gray with
• 53:26
  brown seats and a tan top and white wheels and like a wood
• 53:29
  steering wheel. And like, that's kind of up my
• 53:32
  alley too. You know, we've done some really
• 53:35
  neat builds. You know, it, it's it that, that
• 53:38
  answer of what I would order would was change from
• 53:41
  day-to-day. But the process is, you know, we
• 53:43
  keep a few cars in inventory. So we have cars to test drive,
• 53:46
  to take events, to show people and to sell.
• 53:48
  If somebody just like I got to have a buggy tomorrow and
• 53:51
  varying colors, I got one that's bright green metal flake looks
• 53:55
  like a green disco ball with a black interior and black wheels
• 53:58
  and it's real sporty looking. We've got one that's the gun
• 54:02
  metal one we got that we just sold a yellow one with like an
• 54:04
  off white vintage GT Porsche seat interior, just like really
• 54:08
  simple but really elegant looking.
• 54:11
  If I were a building one, it'd definitely be the radial.
• 54:13
  At this point. I just I I love that the good
• 54:16
  the vintage shifter, you know, the the vintage GT or the fiber
• 54:21
  steel seats, like the three fifty six style seats for sure,
• 54:23
  just because they're more comfortable for me.
• 54:25
  The colors. I don't know, like I said, it
• 54:27
  changes day-to-day, but to start the order process, you know, if
• 54:31
  if we there's something we can choose from.
• 54:34
  If you want one, you call us up and you say, Hey, I really got
• 54:37
  to have one of these things. If we don't have one in in ready
• 54:40
  to go that suits your needs. If you're not like I want that
• 54:42
  one, then we go through the design process with you.
• 54:45
  Like our sales team kicks it off.
• 54:47
  Like what roughly do you want? Like what color We've got these
• 54:50
  colors and these interiors. Yeah, like I like this, but I
• 54:53
  kind of wanted to do this. I saw one with Plaid inserts.
• 54:56
  Great. Here's a package that you can do
• 54:57
  this. Just got Plaid inserts and some
• 54:58
  other pieces. That's, that's the quick and
• 55:02
  easy version. Then if you want to go crazy and
• 55:04
  you're like, no, I want I want to sit down with the design team
• 55:07
  and I want to do some really fun stuff like great takes longer
• 55:12
  cost more, but we can do it and we spec the car out with you.
• 55:16
  We have a design team. Our design team has a rendering
• 55:18
  tool. They'll render it for you so you
• 55:19
  can see what the whole thing is going to look like.
• 55:21
  And then we put it in the build queue.
• 55:23
  And right now a two seater buggy is probably about four to six
• 55:27
  months out resorter six to nine months away from from delivery
• 55:32
  radials or be early next year. And then the big news is the
• 55:37
  other part of the business is Manx two point O, which is
• 55:42
  electric. Yeah, yeah.
• 55:45
  So this has been something that's building cars is hard.
• 55:49
  Hey, look, it's the same. The body is this close tolerance
• 55:53
  wise to being an original. So it's very much you park them
• 55:58
  next to each other and they're so close.
• 55:59
  It's just a more modern, refined version of it.
• 56:01
  And again, to Freeman and his team, making this new thing that
• 56:06
  looks very much like the old one, but just more refined and
• 56:10
  modern and electric powertrain, similar power to something like
• 56:14
  a radial. We're going to do a launch
• 56:17
  edition. This has been a a labor of love,
• 56:20
  you know, coming for years now. And it's finally we're getting
• 56:24
  this much closer to production and hopefully we'll have them in
• 56:27
  customer hands by the end of the year.
• 56:29
  Hopefully we'll have something to show at car week.
• 56:31
  Fingers crossed everything goes well you know and we'll have the
• 56:35
  launch edition cars to show for that same premises.
• 56:38
  The original lightweight two seat quick but not you know,
• 56:42
  ridiculous, but finished out in the same way.
• 56:45
  The launch edition is going to be all available in one of two
• 56:49
  combinations because we're going to be able to build more of
• 56:51
  these. So custom will still be on the
• 56:53
  table once we get started but for now there'll be two launch
• 56:57
  editions that are kind of a yin and Yang to each other if you
• 57:00
  want you know, red pill, blue pill, green pill, orange pill,
• 57:04
  whatever. So that's, that's the next step
• 57:07
  because that goes one step further to the accessibility and
• 57:11
  for people who don't want to worry about servicing their car
• 57:15
  with carburetors on it, gassing it up before or when they leave
• 57:18
  their house in the Hamptons and leave it there over the winter.
• 57:21
  People who don't drive manual transmissions want an automatic
• 57:24
  things like that where it just kind of opens up our our market
• 57:28
  to people who are inclined, but maybe not so inclined that they
• 57:33
  want to learn to drive a manual transmission to deal with
• 57:35
  carbureted engines. So it really opens us up and
• 57:38
  takes us into that like next chapter.
• 57:40
  That's why we call it Max two point O.
• 57:41
  So it'll be eventually, you know, similar process, but for
• 57:45
  right now, we're about to start kind of reopening the the order
• 57:48
  books for those. So that'll come out later this
• 57:51
  year. Like I said, people are excited
• 57:52
  about the brand, you know? You guys are out there, you're
• 57:55
  doing things, you're doing the Fat Ice race, you're at Car
• 57:57
  week. When I mentioned that you were
• 57:59
  going to be on the show chat, the question I got from a couple
• 58:02
  people was tell me about Myers Manx Airways, because that is
• 58:06
  sort of the epitome of cool. Break that down for us.
• 58:10
  How does that fit into the larger picture?
• 58:13
  Tell us what that is exactly, because it's who's this cool?
• 58:17
  So it's this is, this is. Purely Phillip, who I love him
• 58:22
  for. This is he has an eye for really
• 58:26
  good design and things that are elegant industrial design.
• 58:30
  And so the albatross plane that we have that is Myers Manx
• 58:33
  Airways, it's just the one airplane that lives in Europe
• 58:36
  right now. It, it, it was something that he
• 58:40
  picked up early on in the Manx revival to kind of promote the
• 58:45
  brand and kind of explore the, the greater Manx lifestyle,
• 58:50
  which, you know, I used to cringe a little bit when people
• 58:53
  say it's a lifestyle brand. I'm like, we really embody this
• 58:56
  in a way that nobody else can. Is like this car was built
• 58:58
  around a lifestyle. So this is the, this is the
• 59:00
  original lifestyle car and the Airways kind of takes this to
• 59:04
  the next level and it really kind of going to goes to the
• 59:07
  bigger picture of, of even that is that not everybody has the
• 59:12
  place to keep a buggy, drive a buggy, own a buggy or the means
• 59:15
  to own a buggy. It's not for everybody as far as
• 59:18
  owning one, but the brand brings so much joy and is so
• 59:23
  recognizable. Now when you start to see a
• 59:25
  buggy and, you know, and as we kind of gain some recognition,
• 59:29
  people recognize that a buggy is a Manx and the Manx is the
• 59:32
  original buggy. And so our apparel has blown up
• 59:38
  because it's a way to get involved with the brand and kind
• 59:41
  of have that joy and have that in a sweater or shirt.
• 59:45
  And it sounds kind of cheesy, but it's like I get more
• 59:47
  compliments on my Myers Manx sweater that I was lucky to get
• 59:51
  from the new collection. It's just a cream sweater with a
• 59:53
  red buggy like I just stitched into it.
• 59:56
  And it's just the simplest thing.
• 59:58
  I have people wanting to steal it off of my back because it's
• 1:00:01
  such a fun thing. And then again, buggies bring
• 1:00:04
  joy. And even on a sweater, a buggy
• 1:00:06
  brings joy. So it it's been really fun to
• 1:00:08
  see the Airways, the merch, the merchandise, the apparel, the
• 1:00:12
  brand at large. And we have other plans for how
• 1:00:15
  to. Bring people into the brand and
• 1:00:18
  enjoy it without having to necessarily own a buggy because
• 1:00:21
  people in certain, you know, certain markets, if you live in
• 1:00:24
  Manhattan, a buggy is probably not on your radar to have parked
• 1:00:28
  in the garage of your building or somewhere.
• 1:00:30
  But you know, you might want to go to the Hamptons and drive
• 1:00:33
  one. So we've seen opportunities
• 1:00:35
  where we can work with resort properties and places to have
• 1:00:37
  house cars that are Manxes, especially with the electric,
• 1:00:40
  because then the barrier to entry is much lower for
• 1:00:44
  maintenance and for people to be able to drive them.
• 1:00:46
  So building this out as a bigger brand than just the buggies is
• 1:00:52
  absolutely part of what we're doing.
• 1:00:54
  And you know, we've brought on new people to our team and we're
• 1:00:57
  working in collaboration with people who are specialists in
• 1:01:00
  building apparel brands of merchandising retail to kind of
• 1:01:07
  help us build all the verticals in our brand at one time.
• 1:01:10
  So off road racing, so Kowloon buggies, cool apparel, seaplanes
• 1:01:17
  flying through Europe, it's all part of our, our bigger brand.
• 1:01:21
  And yeah, the, the, the Airways thing is interesting because you
• 1:01:25
  know, the, the first time I saw that was well before I ever was
• 1:01:29
  involved with the company. But I knew Phillip had it and I
• 1:01:34
  met Phillip and Freeman before that.
• 1:01:36
  It was at Quail in probably 2020 or 2021 and I was there working.
• 1:01:46
  I was there with Bollinger Motors and midway through the
• 1:01:49
  day you hear this low rumble as that plane did a low, low fly
• 1:01:57
  over of the Quail field and you just see this thing coming over
• 1:02:01
  and it just kind of trundles because it just kind of like,
• 1:02:04
  you know, the way that it moves along with those giant motors
• 1:02:06
  and the giant props on it and it just you could feel it shake you
• 1:02:10
  as it flew over and it just did this giant sweeping arc fly
• 1:02:13
  over. I was like, that's how you do a
• 1:02:15
  brand, that's how you that's how you show up, show up for your
• 1:02:18
  brand, you know where where you can do it.
• 1:02:21
  So it was pretty cool to to have seen that and, you know, to know
• 1:02:26
  that that's part of our, you know, our brand DNA is just like
• 1:02:30
  silly stuff that makes you smile, but it's also functional.
• 1:02:33
  Yeah. You know, you can drive a Max to
• 1:02:34
  work if you want, especially when the weather's nice.
• 1:02:37
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:02:38
  Just ask them. You'll just show up.
• 1:02:39
  You're. Gonna show up wind you're.
• 1:02:41
  Gonna show up wind blown and, you know, like a little suntan.
• 1:02:44
  But you know, everybody will be jealous.
• 1:02:46
  So yeah, right. You're yeah, Sun.
• 1:02:48
  Kissed cheeks. I know I would.
• 1:02:50
  Say Phillip is definitely the master of sort of having notable
• 1:02:54
  fun vehicles that put a smile on people's faces like with the VW
• 1:02:58
  bus that is has been at quail was at air water and you know, I
• 1:03:02
  mean even the bus like they're just so cute and that plus the
• 1:03:05
  Manx and then the plane. It's like you can't not smile.
• 1:03:09
  The beach chairs, parking. The buggies in the in the
• 1:03:12
  bunker, you know, it's just you can't do that.
• 1:03:15
  You can't do those things with other brands and have them take
• 1:03:17
  you seriously. That's The thing is we can be a
• 1:03:20
  little silly and have a lot of fun and people can still take us
• 1:03:23
  seriously. And we backed it up with good
• 1:03:27
  quality stuff like these. These buggies are amazing the
• 1:03:30
  way that they're built and handcrafted.
• 1:03:33
  You know, we, we are when we're looking to other brands of
• 1:03:38
  benchmarks for how we're going to how we're going to build
• 1:03:41
  these, how we're going to produce them.
• 1:03:43
  You know, we went and toured Singer vehicle design, we're
• 1:03:45
  going to go tour icon. We're looking at those brands as
• 1:03:49
  the benchmarks in this. But what we're going to be
• 1:03:52
  delivering is that level of, you know, hopefully we can aspire to
• 1:03:55
  this, that level of quality and build and personalization at a
• 1:04:00
  fraction of the cost. So, you know, Singer vehicle,
• 1:04:05
  you know, Singer vehicle designs, Porsches are not, not
• 1:04:08
  cheap. They make ours look very
• 1:04:10
  reasonable by comparison. You know, where the, where the,
• 1:04:14
  the, the tender to the Singer yacht, you know, and, and it's
• 1:04:18
  interesting. One of the last, one of the last
• 1:04:20
  buggies that we sold last month went to a gentleman who showed
• 1:04:24
  up at, at our Costa Mesa facility just kind of out of the
• 1:04:27
  blue one day. And I happened to be there and I
• 1:04:29
  saw him and I saw what he was driving.
• 1:04:31
  And it's just like, that's an icon Bronco.
• 1:04:34
  And he pulls up and I see it says icon on the side.
• 1:04:37
  And I was like, this is beautiful, you know, great color
• 1:04:39
  combination, beautiful finish. And he hops out and he's like,
• 1:04:42
  yeah, this is I built this with Jonathan and told me all about
• 1:04:46
  it. And he's like, I really wanted
• 1:04:47
  one of these blue buggies I saw online.
• 1:04:48
  And he ended up buying one of the the blue remastered that we
• 1:04:52
  had in stock. And he drives it back and forth
• 1:04:54
  to work in like in San Diego area.
• 1:04:57
  And so it's, it has that same kind of ethos and the same kind
• 1:05:01
  of attracts the same kind of buyer.
• 1:05:03
  You know, when, when you ask that question about who buys
• 1:05:05
  these, it's the same kind of people who have that attention
• 1:05:07
  design. And it's very much like Philip
• 1:05:09
  is our demographic. You know, when we talk about
• 1:05:10
  him, like he's the kind of person that appreciates these
• 1:05:13
  things and he loves he he'll show up in a buggy and drive
• 1:05:17
  from his house in, in, you know, Beverly Hills to our shop in
• 1:05:20
  Costa Mesa for the, you know, for lunch.
• 1:05:23
  It's like that's a long drive in a tastic.
• 1:05:25
  It's it's a long drive in a car, you know, much less than a
• 1:05:27
  buggy. He's like, he's a nice day.
• 1:05:29
  He's like, I wanted to drive the buggy down.
• 1:05:30
  PCH He's like God bless you like that's great yeah.
• 1:05:33
  And this is this is who I work for It's like This is why this
• 1:05:36
  job is fun. That's that's that's right.
• 1:05:38
  Well, and I. Think that's something Philip is
• 1:05:40
  known? For and he does sort of, you
• 1:05:42
  know, live the lifestyle like he's sort of an example of it
• 1:05:45
  himself because he has, you know, the wedge cars and he
• 1:05:49
  drives those like all these things that a lot of other
• 1:05:52
  people would put them away. He is like out exercising them
• 1:05:56
  living, you know, to the fullest and sort of setting the example
• 1:06:00
  of like, here's how I want the brand to be viewed and I'm
• 1:06:03
  putting my money where my mouth is.
• 1:06:04
  So it's pretty fun. You bought a plane for for
• 1:06:07
  goodness sake, I. Mean it's right, it is he is
• 1:06:10
  very committed to this brand and and that's and again, you know,
• 1:06:13
  one of the reasons when I came on board is like, I know that
• 1:06:15
  he's committed to this. We can be realistic and tell him
• 1:06:18
  what we need to do and what the, you know, the day-to-day, the
• 1:06:21
  reality of the business because it is a startup, it is very
• 1:06:24
  building cars is hard. I will say that for eternity.
• 1:06:27
  And this is again part of that, you know, idealist, cynic kind
• 1:06:30
  of balance is not an easy thing to do.
• 1:06:34
  Building 1 prototype, designing and building a prototype is
• 1:06:37
  hard. Iterating that and making a
• 1:06:38
  hundred of them, 1000 of them, 10,000 of them even harder.
• 1:06:42
  And so where we are now is because he has been willing to
• 1:06:47
  to to really, you know, put his weight behind this and commit to
• 1:06:51
  it. And the people that are here,
• 1:06:53
  the people that are working for this company get that.
• 1:06:55
  And that's why we're here is like, we're committed to it too.
• 1:06:58
  Like nobody's here just because I'm not I'm not here because I
• 1:07:01
  needed a job. This was not the, you know, I
• 1:07:04
  need a new job. I'm going to go work for this
• 1:07:06
  dune buggy company. This is a job because I'm
• 1:07:08
  passionate about automobiles. I'm passionate about these
• 1:07:10
  things. And as I've gotten older.
• 1:07:12
  It's been kind of hard to find that thing that still really
• 1:07:16
  makes me smile and doesn't have any negative connotations to it.
• 1:07:20
  And you know, it's it, this is that thing.
• 1:07:23
  It it's funny that I found it and like vintage was kind of
• 1:07:25
  that same way. It's like, there's nothing,
• 1:07:27
  there's no downside here. Like there's no, there's no
• 1:07:30
  negative except that it's expensive to do and it's hard
• 1:07:32
  and it's, it's a challenge to make that business work.
• 1:07:34
  And so that's what we're doing now is we're putting everything
• 1:07:36
  we've got into this to make sure that it's successful and we
• 1:07:39
  deliver that level of products so that people can come in, turn
• 1:07:44
  the key and go and enjoy it. We all need a little more silly
• 1:07:48
  in our lives. These days especially, I think,
• 1:07:51
  no, I think the word is. Jaunty.
• 1:07:53
  That's the word that comes to mind.
• 1:07:54
  What do you think? A jaunty buggy?
• 1:07:56
  Yeah, a jaunty buggy. We need more of that in this.
• 1:07:58
  World, yeah, it makes. You, and I think you.
• 1:08:01
  Described it well, Chet like, and I was thinking back to when
• 1:08:03
  I was driving the one with Freeman and it's a really good
• 1:08:06
  it makes you be present in the moment, which I think we don't
• 1:08:10
  have a lot of opportunities for that because of our phones and
• 1:08:13
  all the connectedness. But yeah, I mean the combination
• 1:08:16
  of the open air manual, you know, and just the design and
• 1:08:21
  seeing other drivers around you react to it, you kind of go
• 1:08:23
  like, yeah, this is a pretty special moment.
• 1:08:25
  I mean, I remember driving it and just going like Freeman
• 1:08:29
  Thomas is next to me and I'm driving a restored Myers Mags
• 1:08:32
  buggy in the sunshine like Tuesday for you Lindsay stuff.
• 1:08:38
  You know, but it's. I will tell you, like one of the
• 1:08:40
  best drives I did was we had an event at the Motoring Club over
• 1:08:45
  on the West side of LA, and it was a test drive event.
• 1:08:48
  And I had one of the buggies at my house on the east side of
• 1:08:51
  Burbank. And the event started at 8:00
• 1:08:53
  AM. So I needed to be there at 7:00
• 1:08:55
  AM. Yeah, it was a little chilly,
• 1:08:57
  not going to lie. But I got in the buggy, fired it
• 1:09:01
  up here quietly in the street, so I didn't wake up.
• 1:09:02
  My wife and I drove. I stay off the highways with it
• 1:09:06
  just because it's less pleasant. I went all the way across the
• 1:09:09
  valley on Ventura, the Sepulveda, up over the Sepulveda
• 1:09:13
  Pass. It was, the sun was just coming
• 1:09:15
  up. It was a little misty.
• 1:09:16
  It was a little cool. Didn't see another car the whole
• 1:09:19
  way. And like if I'd been in a
• 1:09:22
  Porsche or, you know, an M car or an exotic car, I would have
• 1:09:29
  been lost a little bit because I would have been driving too
• 1:09:32
  hard. I would have been like, oh,
• 1:09:33
  let's go fast because there's nobody in my way wearing the
• 1:09:37
  buggy. I could go a little faster and
• 1:09:39
  still have a hoot and not feel like when I got there, like, Oh,
• 1:09:42
  thank God, I'm coming down off this adrenaline rush.
• 1:09:44
  It was just like this, like perfect level of serotonin, just
• 1:09:47
  like this is happy. It's just like I got there and I
• 1:09:50
  got to the test drive and I was like, that was that was amazing.
• 1:09:52
  I'm going to go have a coffee now.
• 1:09:53
  Like it was just like no stress, no nothing.
• 1:09:56
  And you'd think that driving a car with no doors and no roof
• 1:09:59
  would, you know, beat you up. And it's like now you kind of
• 1:10:01
  get out like relaxed and refreshed.
• 1:10:03
  Sometimes, you know, after a long day, it's, you know,
• 1:10:05
  getting in and out. It's for older guys like me.
• 1:10:08
  It's not a little more gymnastics.
• 1:10:10
  Be careful. I've gotten more flexible
• 1:10:13
  getting. Into these, like especially with
• 1:10:14
  the soft top on, you kind of have to right, right.
• 1:10:16
  Do some. Yeah, some.
• 1:10:18
  Some gymnastics incorporated more yoga and Pilates.
• 1:10:21
  To his life just getting in and out of buggies that's.
• 1:10:24
  That's that's it early, another benefit.
• 1:10:27
  Right, exactly. It keeps you healthy.
• 1:10:29
  It keeps you young. That's.
• 1:10:30
  Right. Takes the years right off but I
• 1:10:32
  think that's a perfect exam like description.
• 1:10:34
  Of the drive it's just sort of like it set your day set you up
• 1:10:37
  for the event. It like started your day on the
• 1:10:40
  most you know delightful note and then you're like ready to go
• 1:10:44
  for the rest of the day. So I love it.
• 1:10:47
  So for those listening. Who want to buy one?
• 1:10:49
  Very lucky. Yeah, very, very lucky to have
• 1:10:51
  this job. And to have access to this, and
• 1:10:55
  yeah, it is amazing. So you're living the dream, but
• 1:10:58
  I feel like you sort of paid. Your dues, you know.
• 1:11:03
  Yeah, there's been some. Yeah, there's been some sketchy
• 1:11:05
  minutes of existence that, yeah, I wasn't quite sure what the
• 1:11:09
  next thing would be, but yeah, no, this is I'm happy.
• 1:11:13
  I'm here now where I am and at this time of my life, this is
• 1:11:17
  what I need right now. And it's like I said, you know,
• 1:11:20
  I'm working with people I know and, and like, and it, it's an
• 1:11:23
  enjoyable experience. And the people I've gotten to
• 1:11:26
  know since I started here in the company, customers, people who
• 1:11:29
  are just friends of the brand, brands that we work with.
• 1:11:33
  You know, we did a corroboration with Cherry in Los Angeles, a
• 1:11:36
  couple like last year and they invited us to a cars and coffee
• 1:11:39
  this year. And so we went and almost a Manx
• 1:11:42
  takeover of their cars and coffee.
• 1:11:44
  We had like 10 Manx's that showed up.
• 1:11:45
  We brought four and then people just showed up in their own and
• 1:11:49
  so it was really fun to have that and have that support and
• 1:11:51
  have that familiar with the brand.
• 1:11:54
  I think we're going to be doing an event with Deus, I believe.
• 1:11:58
  I don't know if that's public public yet.
• 1:12:00
  We haven't we haven't really formally announced it.
• 1:12:02
  I think I'm meeting tomorrow to finalize the details.
• 1:12:05
  Yeah, I'll let you know if the meeting goes S tomorrow.
• 1:12:09
  So that's, you know, just another like a cars and coffee
• 1:12:11
  type event that we're going to do with them because there's a
• 1:12:13
  really similar vibe between motorcycles.
• 1:12:16
  And again, motorcycle crowd loves us, the hot rock crowd
• 1:12:19
  loves us. Like everybody has some
• 1:12:20
  connection to Manx in a in a positive way.
• 1:12:24
  Yeah. And so much history.
• 1:12:26
  You get a lot of. Different like a more universal
• 1:12:29
  appeal for sure. It's fun and it.
• 1:12:32
  Speaks a lot to the car, I think to the guys that run the
• 1:12:35
  Treasure State show, which is for those who don't know is a a
• 1:12:40
  curated, very exclusive. Not in a Snooty way, but just
• 1:12:45
  know, like we want the coolest cars and we know the people that
• 1:12:47
  have them and are willing to bring them.
• 1:12:49
  And we get invited to that to bring buggies.
• 1:12:53
  And the last Treasure State event was at the Greystone
• 1:12:55
  Mansion in Beverly Hills. And you can't the only people
• 1:12:59
  that could park on the on the property were people who invited
• 1:13:01
  to show and display and other people that were spectators
• 1:13:04
  would park on the street. We were shuttling them from the
• 1:13:07
  street up the driveway in resorters the whole day back and
• 1:13:12
  forth. And we had a couple of cars
• 1:13:13
  there. Phillip brought out the Steve
• 1:13:15
  McQueen Thomas Crown affair. Myers makes dune buggy that he
• 1:13:18
  has in his collection and so we we fit there, but then we can go
• 1:13:22
  to Deus and hang out with the motorcycle hipsters and Venice.
• 1:13:24
  It's great. It's like there's there's it,
• 1:13:27
  it's appealing across all demographics.
• 1:13:30
  It's it's really fun to be in a brand like that where you know,
• 1:13:34
  everybody's friendly. I think if you want to get a, a.
• 1:13:37
  Taste of of the brand of the flavor of Myers Manx.
• 1:13:41
  Go to the Peterson Museum. Go to the Myers Manx Cafe, which
• 1:13:45
  is probably the most. Well.
• 1:13:48
  Curated space. I've ever eaten a breakfast,
• 1:13:51
  breakfast burrito and it is. So it's got like this vintage
• 1:13:55
  Macintosh stereo. It's it's, I think there's a
• 1:13:59
  even the playlist is curated, right?
• 1:14:00
  There's some famous DJ who, who, you know, programs the audio.
• 1:14:05
  It's just this wonderful space, especially after you've spent
• 1:14:07
  the day in the museum to make a pit stop.
• 1:14:09
  No pun intended. It's just a great space, But
• 1:14:12
  it's it's sort of AI don't know. It's, it's, it's just, it's,
• 1:14:16
  it's Myers Manx in a, you know, it's very on.
• 1:14:21
  It's very on brand. For us, but it speaks to.
• 1:14:23
  The. The level of quality.
• 1:14:25
  That is the expectation of our brand.
• 1:14:27
  Like we're not going to make a cheap T-shirt, we're not going
• 1:14:30
  to make a cheap sweater, and we're not going to make a cheap
• 1:14:33
  buggy. You know it.
• 1:14:34
  That's not what we're doing. And our Cafe is going to serve
• 1:14:36
  good food. And the pricing is actually
• 1:14:39
  pretty reasonable. We knew who we knew who we were
• 1:14:41
  serving at the museum. And we didn't want to exclude
• 1:14:43
  people. We wanted people to come enjoy
• 1:14:44
  it. So we made sure that what we
• 1:14:46
  what we, what was curated for the restaurant on a menu was
• 1:14:50
  accessible. Again, just like the buggy, like
• 1:14:52
  this is not an exotic car that cost hundreds of thousands of
• 1:14:55
  dollars. It's an accessible, fun car that
• 1:14:57
  doesn't cost much more than a average, you know, mid size
• 1:15:00
  luxury SUV. The Cafe is, is curated in that
• 1:15:03
  same way. The decor, the design, the Manx
• 1:15:07
  that's sitting out on the patio, you know, so you, you get that
• 1:15:10
  same feel. And the staff there is amazing.
• 1:15:13
  We do pop ups with them at Peterson events.
• 1:15:16
  The Peterson staff is great for us.
• 1:15:17
  They really enjoy the brand. Like, you know, Dan's been super
• 1:15:22
  helpful. You know, I, I see Dan a lot.
• 1:15:23
  So we, you know, we see him frequently.
• 1:15:26
  We talk to him a lot about doing events at the Peterson.
• 1:15:29
  I yeah, I definitely do. We're writing each other's
• 1:15:32
  backyard on assignment tonight. I was just, I was just glad he
• 1:15:36
  didn't, like, ask you guys to play me into, like to to play me
• 1:15:39
  into Counting Crows. I'm just, I'm glad he didn't,
• 1:15:41
  like, put that out there before I got on the show.
• 1:15:44
  You do know Dan, right? No.
• 1:15:46
  We've had that conversation before.
• 1:15:50
  I still. Want to hear that Vin Pass song
• 1:15:52
  I had? To get a 90 shot out.
• 1:15:53
  Got some Googling to do. After this if.
• 1:15:55
  I can ever find that link I'll. Send it to you guys.
• 1:15:59
  That would be amazing. I feel like we have.
• 1:16:02
  Obviously barely scratched the surface of your stories, but we
• 1:16:05
  want to be, you know, cognizant of everybody's time tonight.
• 1:16:08
  So for now, tell people where they can find you online so they
• 1:16:12
  can follow along with your Manx adventures.
• 1:16:15
  Myers, manx.com. Gets you into everything.
• 1:16:19
  And at Myers Manx on Instagram, we, we have a great creative
• 1:16:23
  director who keeps our social full of the fun and the joy that
• 1:16:28
  we experience. We, we keep a buggy where he and
• 1:16:32
  I can access it so that anytime we have somebody who is worthy
• 1:16:35
  of taken for a ride, which is a lot of people.
• 1:16:38
  We're, we're, we're pretty, pretty free with our ride
• 1:16:40
  giving, you know, we go out and we capture it because, you know,
• 1:16:43
  capturing somebody experiencing that joy.
• 1:16:45
  So shout out to Hag up for, for, for curating that as well.
• 1:16:48
  But yeah, myersmax.com at Myersmax on Instagram.
• 1:16:52
  And yeah, you'll see us out and about.
• 1:16:55
  Feel free to say hi to me and then what's your Instagram
• 1:16:58
  because. You have a good time too.
• 1:17:01
  Yeah, if. We really want that out there.
• 1:17:03
  My I am just WCPFOURW CP4. So my, my full name, which we
• 1:17:09
  won't say on there, No. Well, thank you.
• 1:17:13
  For joining us and being so generous with your stories, I've
• 1:17:17
  really enjoyed kind of the peek behind the curtain to all these
• 1:17:19
  different brands. And you know, you've had quite a
• 1:17:22
  career and we're so excited to see where you are now and watch
• 1:17:26
  as Manx develops. So everybody, Please remember to
• 1:17:31
  like and subscribe and tell your enthusiast friends about us.
• 1:17:34
  And remember, always be driving and we will see you next week.
• 1:17:40
  Thanks guys.