Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Behind the Scenes of Gymkhana: How Skate Films, Subaru, & Ken Block Changed Car Culture Forever

Transcript

Behind the Scenes of Gymkhana: How Skate Films, Subaru, & Ken Block Changed Car Culture Forever · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  We always have a blast chatting with our guests about all sorts of
• 0:03
  different topics, but sometimes we go off the rails and dig deeper into
• 0:07
  their automotive and motorsports pasts.
• 0:09
  As a bonus, let's go behind the scenes with this pit stop mini sode
• 0:13
  for some extra content that didn't quite fit in the main episode.
• 0:17
  Sit back, Enjoy, and remember to like, subscribe, and
• 0:20
  support BreakFix on Patreon.
• 0:25
  So Matt, let's get back into it.
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  You've name dropped something huge earlier.
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  We mentioned Ken Block and then Jim Kahnna, and you
• 0:31
  said you were part of that.
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  So let's unpack that a little bit.
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  Tell us about what that was like and how you were involved in the making of those
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  films that a lot of us just salivate over.
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  You know, we can watch them over and over and over again on YouTube.
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  Yeah, no, absolutely.
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  I grew up with Ken and both of us were Um, rally enthusiasts and, um, you
• 0:50
  know, we were doing some work in rally.
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  He had sold his company and wanted to start rally racing.
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  And, and he did, and he brought Travis Pastrana along.
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  And one of the things that's cool about Ken is he always has
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  a plan, you know, like there's, you're like, Oh, you're done.
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  You're retired.
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  You sold your company and, you know, you're, you're, I think
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  he was in his thirties still.
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  Right.
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  At that point, he's like, well, I'm going to go look at this and do some
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  things and stay on as a, you know, as an advisory person or whatever we
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  went rally racing that was going well.
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  And what we started doing is documenting that.
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  And we had a unique perspective because we grew up making skateboard films,
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  which skateboard films by nature, you.
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  You're very close to the subject matter.
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  You're really focused on passing through the visceral experience of
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  skateboard, you know, skateboard action.
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  And everything from the sound to feels like you're there.
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  If you watch skateboard films, it feels like you're hanging out
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  with the skateboarders, right?
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  And it's raw.
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  And so we wanted to, or actually we didn't even want to, we inadvertently
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  did that when we were documenting rally.
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  And so we started putting out video content and this is.
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  Right at the beginning of YouTube.
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  So we were putting out video content at the time on like Flash Player and Windows
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  Media and Real Player . Yeah, real player.
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  Like every time you had to do a post, you're like, no, we have to
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  put it up in these five formats.
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  And it was a pain in the ass to say the least.
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  And YouTube came along and, and at the time everybody was just suspect of it.
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  They're like, what's the scam?
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  The game changer.
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  Yeah.
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  What's the scam though?
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  Like we're all looking at it going like, we know how expensive video
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  hosting is like, what's the scam.
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  So we were just trying to figure out how to bring attention to
• 2:32
  really to rally racing and the, the incredible vehicles and the
• 2:35
  incredible performances of the drivers.
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  Ken had kind of looked at Gymkhana and come up with this base concept
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  of, you know, what if we build a four wheel drive Gymkhana car?
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  I'm like, yeah, it sounds sick, but it sounds expensive and you know, all
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  these different hurdles and he did it.
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  He took his own money and you know, everybody has these theories
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  about like how Subaru funded it or.
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  Somebody else, it wasn't, it was in the beginning and Ken was taking his own
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  personal money and funding the racing and funding really everything from
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  that point, we collectively concepted, Hey, we want to try and capture all
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  these special moments within one video.
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  We knew that we couldn't do that out on a rally course.
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  We had to do it in an environment that was a little bit more attainable.
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  We knew that people were doing different events in El Toro.
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  We went up and looked at it.
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  And to be honest, like it was really sketchy.
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  You know, one of the things that I remember clearly about gym kind of
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  one was, you know, we had this opening drift idea where Ken was going to go
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  down about a hundred miles an hour and throw the car sideways and, and drift
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  the car and do a four wheel drift.
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  And it was going to be rad.
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  Right.
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  Well, I'm out there first time looking at the car and it didn't, wasn't fully caged.
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  It was a car that was prepared by one of the guys here locally, who's a really well
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  known Subaru car builder, Cor Crawford.
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  And, you know, he put like one of the sissy bars in the back.
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  I remember looking at that going.
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  I thought this car was caged, right?
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  You know, that was the first thing.
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  And then the second thing was I was looking at the lips on the runway
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  and there were, there were lips that were like four and six inches tall.
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  So in my head, I'm imagining Ken throwing it sideways, hitting a lip and doing a
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  pirouette and landing on the roof and die.
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  And I'm sitting there going like, yeah, that would be really bad.
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  If I killed Ken at this point in his life, you know, you know, look,
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  we went out there and we did it.
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  And I think we completed in two or three days.
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  It was a team of myself and my brother and a couple guys that worked for us at
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  the time and you know, we put together the shots and the stunts, but really
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  it was feeling like a skate film.
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  Like in our heads, we're like, we're making a skate film with a car.
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  That was really the beginning of it.
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  And I thought it was going to be really good.
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  I had no idea.
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  No, nobody did really, you know, and again, like Ken finance part of
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  it, we finance part of it, you know, sweat equity and equipment and all
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  that type of stuff in the beginning.
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  And we just thought like, Hey, this is good for everybody.
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  And let's see what we can do.
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  Right.
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  And obviously it took off, but it was funny because.
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  When we first posted it, we did the same thing where it's like Windows Media
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  Player, QuickTime, Flash, all on a web host and people started watching it, a lot
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  of people, and then the web host company calls us and they're like, Hey, you,
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  you're going to owe us a lot of money.
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  And so then we quickly then put it on YouTube and it exploded.
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  It was really interesting for us because my biggest takeaway wasn't that we were
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  some geniuses or we did something that.
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  Nobody else could have done what our takeaway is, is that people were,
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  they were dying for good content.
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  They were starving for it.
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  And, you know, there was all this bullshit that was constantly
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  put out in the automotive space.
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  And I don't think since, you know, the films like climb dance
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  was a huge influence on us.
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  Rendezvous, some of the other early films that were shot, you know, on
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  film about Lamar and those things that McQueen shot and Garner was involved
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  in and people that were racers and they were like, look, we don't care.
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  Put the camera on the front of the car.
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  This is how we get the shot.
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  Right?
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  And so that was kind of our, our mindset.
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  And that was really due to our, our history and making films with
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  skateboarding, because you kind of had this cavalier style of filmmaking.
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  So I have to pause you because I mean, this is fascinating.
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  And you should see Drew's face.
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  He's just like in awe here.
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  You named drop something that I don't think a lot of people, except
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  for folks that maybe grew up in the group B generation, like I did.
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  Know the term Climb dance, that's Ari Vains run to the
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  top of Pikes Peak in the peo.
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  I mean, that is an incredible film.
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  I actually have a copy of it.
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  I have it privately stored on YouTube, so I wouldn't lose it.
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  Something like that to provide you that inspiration.
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  I mean, hats off mad props.
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  That's a reach right there.
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  I mean, outside of Rendezvous, which was one of the original.
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  Car film shot in Paris, all in one, all in one go.
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  We talked about that actually on a previous episode with one of our guests,
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  Paul Wilmosky, who's from Hollywood and how that film influenced him and whatnot.
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  There's a lot of mystery and allure behind Rendezvous as well.
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  But I mean, again, we're all petrol heads of a certain age, so it's
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  really cool that you bring that up.
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  Yeah.
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  So I got to say that's that what you just said, Eric, but that
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  inspiration you got Matt springboarded.
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  You guys to create what you guys created.
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  And I want to say it was like the mid 2000s when I was introduced to that video.
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  And I'm imagining everyone else who's probably listening to this
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  was you heard it from somebody who heard it from somebody.
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  And then when you saw it, the way you guys.
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  Film that video was in a way that no one had ever done it before.
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  And it was very light watching Rob Dyrdek or whoever skateboarder when
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  they're on the street and you're getting like those cross shots in
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  the action video of the vehicle going through that four wheel drift.
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  And I got to tell you, dang, it's coming up on 20 years ago when that was done.
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  I know.
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  Right.
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  I had never seen anything like that, like, and then the drift that Ken did, nobody
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  had ever filmed anything like that before.
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  And I feel like what you guys did, bring boarded other creators to film like that,
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  those crazy low, close action shots.
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  Well, not only that, I was going to say, I think you guys set the stage to be our
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  generation's climb dance and rendezvous and whatever, like those Gymkhana
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  videos, when you talk, you're like.
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  Jim Connor and everybody goes, yeah, I know.
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  Oh my God.
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  It's epic.
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  Right.
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  And the 27 versions of it later, but still they have set the bar really
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  damn high at the end of the day.
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  So congratulations.
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  No, I appreciate that.
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  And it's, I love being a part of the timeline of, of motorsports
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  culture like that, because there are a lot of things that influence.
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  My brother and I as kids and one of them were the couple films I just mentioned.
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  The other one was just growing up in the era of wide world of sports.
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  Yeah.
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  You know, it was a magical era of like watching TV and they're like,
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  Oh, we're at Isle of Man today.
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  And we're, they took you all over the world to all these different things.
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  And it was spectacular and very well shot, especially for that era, because they had
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  some very crazy limitations with film.
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  You know, like when you.
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  understand rendezvous.
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  There was no GoPros when they shot that.
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  No, I mean, look at Lamont's.
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  If you look at the behind the scenes of McQueen's movie, he's got these
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  massive cameras mounted in the 917 and he could barely drive the damn thing.
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  And the cameras are so big.
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  That or a helicopter.
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  Yeah.
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  Right.
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  Yeah.
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  And, and like to the other part of it.
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  To me, that was so impressive is in particular with climb dances.
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  The sound is like how violent and visceral it was.
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  And that's one thing that we carry forward in a lot of the work that we do.
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  You know, even now it's like jumping forward to why, why we, you know,
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  are involved with the mint 400.
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  It was because we got tired of being filmmakers and the creative
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  sitting on the sideline, telling these old men who, you know, own the.
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  The sport, Hey, you need to do this and you need to allow us in there to shoot.
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  And we need to have controlled environments.
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  We need to do all these things.
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  And they're like, who are these kids shut up, you know?
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  And so it was our way of taking control and having the creatives
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  run everything rather than the administrators, the bureaucrats, right.
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  It was a great experience and I'm really stoked to put our stamp down, you know,
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  on that first film and then follow up with the second and the third, we had a
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  lot of fun and you know, I can't speak higher of Ken too, because you know,
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  the guy is, he's a very unique person.
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  People constantly come to me and they're like, Oh, he's not the greatest driver.
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  He's definitely not the greatest driver.
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  He never said he was, he just was trying to show people really to put light on.
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  The vehicles and the drivers so that that people would recognize them and go,
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  okay, drifters are badasses and rally.
• 10:51
  Not only that, after like the big names left group B or group B was disbanded in
• 10:56
  1987, 88, and you were left with the, with the group A cars and whatnot, people were
• 11:00
  like rally, forget it, Audi's not there.
• 11:03
  And Blanche is not there.
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  We're not going to watch anymore.
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  So there was like this dead zone.
• 11:07
  And I think Ken, I attribute him to revitalizing rally.
• 11:12
  I mean, yes, Colin McRae and Carlos signs and all those names for sure.
• 11:16
  Even Yari Mati Latvala, who is now a team owner that came up through that.
• 11:20
  90s and 2000s era of rally, but it's just not the same.
• 11:23
  It didn't have the same allure to your point.
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  It wasn't nearly as visceral as the group B cars like Ari Vatanen and Michel Mouton
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  and Walter Wuerl and all those guys.
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  It was a different time.
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  It was a different place.
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  They could get away with more, but I think Ken.
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  Brought it back.
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  The thing that was most impactful and still brings the biggest question
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  in mind is I don't remember what Jim Conant is, but where they closed down
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  San Francisco and we're like, yeah.
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  I'm like, how the heck did they do that?
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  Because how do you get the whole city to basically shut down and
• 11:53
  not have some random person walking their dog or they need to get.
• 11:56
  Go jogging or go to Starbucks or whatever.
• 11:58
  I mean, how do you guys manage that?
• 12:00
  Well, to be clear, we didn't do that one, but you pay, you pay the city,
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  you pay permits, it's expensive.
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  You know, and that, that I think is one of the things too, that, that
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  people don't understand is, you know, it becomes a, uh, a race war, right?
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  Like you do one and everybody's like, Oh, wow.
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  And then number two, we're like, Hey, let's go to Porta Long
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  Beach and tap the dock and, you know, do some camera effects and.
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  You know, bring Robin and do some different things kind of, you
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  know, make it have a wider appeal.
• 12:29
  Then when we got into Jim Connor three, we're like, how do we wall ride the car?
• 12:33
  That was at the autodrome, right?
• 12:35
  Yeah.
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  That was at the auto show who basically pissed off France, you know, entirely.
• 12:40
  But, you know, again, it was.
• 12:42
  You know, it was a lot of fun and it was, there are a lot of
• 12:45
  challenges and it was awesome.
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  We had a, we had a great time doing it.
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  So let me ask you this.
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  So, you know, when you watch the videos, they're so fluid,
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  the editing is so seamless.
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  Like you can't really tell, you know, where one stops and the other one begins.
• 12:58
  Obviously it took multiple days, as you said, to put it all together.
• 13:01
  I remember watching the roof yellow bird videos.
• 13:04
  If you remember those of the guy in the loafers famously driving, you know, the
• 13:07
  twin turbo 911 around the Nurburgring.
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  And you could tell where there was oops moments.
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  They cut that video and put it back together.
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  And you're like, oh yeah, here he comes around that corner again.
• 13:16
  And you're like, that, that isn't right.
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  So, you know, what were the technical challenges with doing Jibkana?
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  Like how many takes did it take?
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  Did you destroy any of the cars?
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  We were wrecking the shit out of stuff.
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  Like, it's like, that's the thing is like, it's funny.
• 13:32
  It's, you know, after Gymkhana, we went on and we did a series
• 13:35
  of films for Polaris called XP1K.
• 13:37
  By the time we got to that, we're like, look, we need three cars.
• 13:41
  You know, we need four cars because.
• 13:43
  We're going to wreck a car and we can't stop production.
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  We just need to, we need to drag that car out, have the mechanics start
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  working on it and put the guy in the next car and a lot of the stunts
• 13:54
  you're trying stuff that you're like, theoretically, we think we can do this.
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  Right.
• 13:57
  And we're literally going, okay, well.
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  You know, Ken, I think you need to go 40 miles an hour into this and
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  then hard break and rotate the car.
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  And he's like looking at me going based on what, you know, I'm
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  like, that's the starting point.
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  Like, let's do it, you know, but to your point about editing, I mean, that that's
• 14:15
  my brother, you know, that's one thing that it's very special about us as a team
• 14:20
  is that he came from a music background.
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  So he was trained as a, as a music engineer.
• 14:26
  And so he sees things.
• 14:28
  As a music edit, as a song, right?
• 14:30
  And a song has to have beats, right?
• 14:32
  And it has to work together.
• 14:33
  And if you're offbeat at all, people, they know what's wrong.
• 14:37
  And so he approached editing the same way.
• 14:39
  So the level of detail that goes into the editing was really all my brother.
• 14:45
  And it's funny because it's.
• 14:46
  often something that's not talked about, but you can see it now in other films
• 14:51
  that get made that are, they're not as fluid and they're not thinking about,
• 14:55
  they're not thinking about their shots.
• 14:57
  They're not thinking about, you know, all the different variables.
• 14:59
  I can tell you, like, I mean, we painstakingly.
• 15:03
  Poured over all the details, time of day, angle of the sun, composition,
• 15:07
  color of the car, like just on and on and tried to make it better.
• 15:12
  And then lens choices and camera techniques.
• 15:15
  And now it's funny because I feel like I ruined the world with slow mo.
• 15:20
  Because we were some of the first people to really utilize it.
• 15:22
  And now it's completely overused.
• 15:24
  And it's like bullet time in the matrix.
• 15:26
  Right.
• 15:27
  Figured it out.
• 15:28
  Everybody does it now.
• 15:29
  Yeah.
• 15:29
  And then the other thing too, is like being a petrol head and going like, okay,
• 15:33
  look, this part of what the car is doing.
• 15:36
  That's remarkable.
• 15:37
  And that's when you slow it down, this other shit, you're just
• 15:40
  coming in and you're exiting, but this point, that's the magic.
• 15:43
  And if you don't understand that, you're not going to get the shot and you're
• 15:46
  not going to nail that in the edit.
• 15:48
  And you know, that's, that's why even with the stuff that we do with the mint
• 15:52
  400, it's like, you know, after we're done here, I got to work on script
• 15:55
  notes for our live stream, you know?
• 15:57
  So, because I want it to be right.
• 15:59
  Can I say something and you probably don't give a shit, but
• 16:02
  there's one thing that I noticed.
• 16:04
  That was different.
• 16:05
  I noticed that you guys do a lot more over the head shot versus the dead on shots.
• 16:11
  And so the earlier videos was very dead on and kind of off camber topper like shots.
• 16:17
  So when we started getting like the over the head shot to see what the
• 16:21
  vehicle dynamic was doing, that's when I realized, aha, there is somebody behind
• 16:28
  the curtain, because that then let me know that in the earlier videos, I felt like.
• 16:33
  Can't like this guy is doing all this stuff first take, but then when
• 16:36
  you pay attention to the shots, you see the different tire marks on the
• 16:41
  ground and say, Oh, there was about three runs right there in that scene.
• 16:45
  You have to pay really close attention.
• 16:47
  And that's what fooled me in the earlier videos because it was a lot, I feel like
• 16:51
  it was a lot more dead on, so we couldn't see all that that's just camera technique
• 16:55
  and, and like us getting to the point where Jim kind of one, we had no budget.
• 16:59
  Like, so we were, we were like, Hey, we, we, we shot it entirely
• 17:03
  on Panasonic HVX cameras, which at the time we're like cutting edge.
• 17:08
  We were some of the first people on the West coast to get our hands on them.
• 17:12
  They were the first digital cameras to have, you know, slow
• 17:14
  mo at 60 frames per second.
• 17:16
  Right.
• 17:16
  Which was pretty remarkable for the cost of the camera.
• 17:20
  You know, when you go back and you even look at the rally stuff that we did, it
• 17:23
  was like, we would go out onto a stage.
• 17:25
  We'd find the outside of a gravel corner.
• 17:28
  I would dig a hole.
• 17:29
  I would stand in the hole with the camera and then put PVC over the
• 17:33
  front of the camera, knowing that I was going to get hammered just so we
• 17:36
  could get the gravel moving in slow mo.
• 17:40
  And we weren't, you know, we weren't making any money at that point.
• 17:43
  It was fun stuff that people don't appreciate about what goes into doing
• 17:48
  that kind of stuff is you had to dig your own hole to stand in to, you know,
• 17:52
  this whole apparatus to get one shot of some gravel flying in slow motion.
• 17:56
  I mean, that's a lot of dedication for what a second or two of a shot.
• 18:02
  Yeah.
• 18:02
  It's, it's interesting.
• 18:04
  It's like one of my favorite, as you can tell, I'm a, I'm a big food guy.
• 18:07
  Right.
• 18:08
  I'm definitely not a skinny man.
• 18:09
  You know, there's a series that came out called chef's table on Netflix.
• 18:13
  I don't know if you've seen it, but I love it.
• 18:15
  And I really hope that somebody produces a series like that on
• 18:18
  cinematography, because I know a lot of different cinematographers
• 18:22
  who are much the same way.
• 18:23
  And for us.
• 18:24
  You know, being car guys, like I can tell you, we, we drive around.
• 18:28
  I go spend weekends looking at locations like, Hey, I think we can do stuff here.
• 18:33
  I want to go look at it.
• 18:34
  I'm a middle of wherever the desert different countries took a vacation
• 18:38
  to Japan to look at some stuff there.
• 18:41
  Pissed my wife off, but you know, it's part of the deal.
• 18:43
  If you really are passionate about something, then dedicate yourself to it.
• 18:48
  You know, go all the way don't half ass it.
• 18:50
  And there's always going to be compromise that you're.
• 18:53
  Forced to do, whether it's budget sponsors or people paying for stuff that you're
• 18:57
  doing and they don't understand it, but what we try and do as much as possible,
• 19:01
  set up a situation where, whether it's us or people that are working for us, where
• 19:06
  they can really thrive and be creative and take those risks and try things.
• 19:11
  And you know what, not everything works, you know, but if you're not trying stuff,
• 19:15
  then it's all going to be the same.
• 19:16
  And unfortunately I see a lot of that out there.
• 19:19
  I see a lot of like.
• 19:20
  Hey, I have a red camera.
• 19:22
  I'm just going to shoot everything slow mo.
• 19:24
  And then I look at it and it's like crappy, like crappy composition.
• 19:28
  Like, it's like, meh, you know, that's not good content.
• 19:30
  I always use music analogies.
• 19:32
  It's like, I feel like, you know, the first three Jim Connors were like
• 19:36
  the first three Metallica albums.
• 19:38
  Right.
• 19:39
  And.
• 19:39
  And then consequently, after that, it was a lot of copying, a lot of the same stuff.
• 19:43
  Totally fine.
• 19:44
  Right.
• 19:44
  But it's not those first three.
• 19:46
  I'm really proud of the work that we did back then, you know, in those films.
• 19:50
  But I think it's interesting because I'm glad that it influenced the
• 19:54
  whole generation of filmmakers to go out and make different films
• 19:58
  and different disciplines that.
• 20:00
  Was part of the point and that's what we had in skateboarding.
• 20:03
  We had a war, you know, it was like every skateboard company would drop their skate
• 20:07
  film and you were always at war with each other trying to one up each other.
• 20:11
  Even to this day, you know, like I said, we, we did the XP1K series for
• 20:15
  Polaris, which is very successful.
• 20:17
  We did some really wild stuff with RJ Anderson and Polaris Razor.
• 20:21
  You know, we continue to look for those opportunities.
• 20:23
  I mean.
• 20:24
  Our goal and kind of our mandate when it comes to that type of content
• 20:28
  is to go find the best drivers, the best vehicles and the best locations
• 20:32
  in the world and show people.
• 20:33
  It's a question like, why did you guys fall in love with rally?
• 20:37
  I could tell you the moment I fell in love with rally and I'm sure you have
• 20:40
  similar moments, but it's because I saw something incredible and went, wow, that
• 20:45
  is an incredible moment that happened.
• 20:47
  And so for us, how do we capture that and share that with other people?
• 20:51
  So then they can fall in love with it and whether that's.
• 20:53
  You know, rally or drifting or off roading.
• 20:56
  That's what we're interested in doing.
• 20:57
  All I have to say to that is amen.
• 21:00
  Amen.
• 21:01
  So Matt, you know, normally on a pit stop, we ask all sorts of fun questions
• 21:05
  like, you know, if you had a million bucks, what kind of car would you buy?
• 21:08
  60s car of all time, this, that, and the other.
• 21:10
  But, you know, we're going to spare you that because I have a really
• 21:12
  important question to ask you that goes right in line with everything
• 21:15
  we were talking about, which has to do with your friend, Ken Block.
• 21:18
  You know, there's names.
• 21:20
  In the, let's say the motorsport world that are synonymous with certain cars.
• 21:24
  You hear Hurley Haywood, you think Brumos Porsche.
• 21:26
  You hear Colin McRae, you think Subaru.
• 21:29
  You hear Ken Block and you think Ford Fiesta.
• 21:31
  Sure.
• 21:32
  What do you think about him signing with Audi?
• 21:36
  I think it's cool.
• 21:37
  Like, I think.
• 21:38
  You've got to take those opportunities.
• 21:40
  It's really weird to be giving somebody the gift of what I feel like we gave
• 21:45
  Subaru and then, you know, later on we gave Ford and yeah, they paid for it.
• 21:51
  But I would always argue the fact that what they paid and what they got
• 21:55
  were completely off balance, right?
• 21:58
  I'll give you a little analogy, an average television commercial for a
• 22:01
  car is north of a million dollars.
• 22:03
  There's very few of them that you remember.
• 22:06
  So when you look at that level of money, that's being spent on selling a car,
• 22:10
  knowing what we achieved with Jim Connor, with Subaru, and then with Ford Fiesta.
• 22:15
  I mean, as far as America goes, Ford Fiesta was pile of junk.
• 22:20
  And then all of a sudden a whole generation of kids wanted a Ford Fiesta.
• 22:23
  Same thing with the Subaru STI.
• 22:25
  Like what was interesting about that was that that car was dope.
• 22:28
  You know, and, and you had a generation of kids who were car
• 22:32
  builders with the whole Honda movement and they weren't quite mature.
• 22:36
  They, they hadn't graduated to a BMW because of money and,
• 22:40
  you know, different things.
• 22:41
  So there was a gap, but there were also a Volkswagen defectors in there.
• 22:45
  The dubbers went to Subaru as well.
• 22:48
  Yeah.
• 22:49
  And so we recognize that and we're like, look, this is a dope car.
• 22:53
  Then nobody knows about it.
• 22:54
  Even Subaru, they didn't understand what they have.
• 22:57
  And I'm like, this is a car of a generation potentially.
• 23:00
  And what we did with that vehicle, it lives on forever.
• 23:03
  You know, it doesn't go away.
• 23:04
  It's not like a television commercial that like you stop paying for and it goes away.
• 23:08
  We stamp that into the cultural timeline of automotive forever.
• 23:13
  And I think people are still trying to recreate that magic with the new cars.
• 23:17
  And it's not quite the same.
• 23:18
  You know, again, it's like, you have to get down to the basics, right?
• 23:21
  I'll use the Metallica album again.
• 23:23
  It's like, I'm a big Metallica fan, but like.
• 23:26
  They're new albums.
• 23:27
  Like that's not Metallica, right?
• 23:29
  So at some point you got to put all the fancy stuff down and get
• 23:33
  back to the dirt and get down to the nucleus of why it's special.
• 23:37
  And a lot of people don't want to do that, man.
• 23:39
  They don't want to do the work.
• 23:40
  They don't want to put themselves in that position.
• 23:42
  It's hard.
• 23:43
  We've done some really crazy shoots that I can go into details and you're
• 23:47
  like, why would you ever do that?
• 23:48
  And it's because, you know, we are trying to do something better, different, more
• 23:52
  visceral, and create the impact that we.
• 23:55
  Felt when we were kids and watching wide world sports and
• 23:59
  ESPN eight, the Ocho, right?
• 24:02
  And like you, you kept mentioning group B I'll back this up into one
• 24:05
  of your questions of like, you had a million bucks or a limited budget.
• 24:09
  What car would you buy and drive?
• 24:11
  I'd buy a group B car.
• 24:12
  A hundred percent.
• 24:13
  Thank God somebody agrees with me.
• 24:15
  It would be so fun to just offend everybody violently driving around town.
• 24:20
  And it's just visceral rock.
• 24:21
  All right.
• 24:22
  All right.
• 24:22
  All right.
• 24:22
  So since you brought it up.
• 24:23
  Best group B car, in your opinion, the one you would buy, if you could buy one.
• 24:27
  You know, that's a hard decision because I like ugly cars, right?
• 24:33
  Oh, man.
• 24:33
  He's going for like an MG Metro or something terrible.
• 24:38
  No, I don't know.
• 24:39
  Like that, honestly, that'd be a really hard decision because like, you know,
• 24:43
  the funkier, the better, the more like.
• 24:45
  You know, in your face, the better.
• 24:47
  So honestly, it'd be hard to decide, but I mean, even the Audi's were dope.
• 24:51
  So, you know, it just, it just depends.
• 24:53
  Right.
• 24:54
  Personal note, I've owned a UR Quattro, never drive your heroes.
• 24:57
  I'm going to say that I've driven an R5 turbo to never drive your heroes.
• 25:02
  Just going to repeat that again.
• 25:04
  I've driven a bunch of the homologated cars or owned a few, but I'm trying
• 25:08
  to look at, I remember that car.
• 25:11
  So I'm right there with you.
• 25:14
  I think because I grew up in a VAG family, I'd have to buy an Audi S1 or even a
• 25:19
  long, a long wheelbase Audi, just because there's nothing like the sound of a five
• 25:23
  cylinder I'm all the boxer engine fans.
• 25:25
  I'm sorry.
• 25:26
  The five cylinder is a dragon with its tail on fire.
• 25:30
  Why don't you do that?
• 25:31
  That's it's funny because that's part of it.
• 25:33
  It's like really this hit home with me.
• 25:36
  We did an event in Germany years back called power days, and we actually.
• 25:40
  We took Ken Block and we took BJ Baldwin.
• 25:42
  The idea was that we were going to go show Europe what we were doing
• 25:47
  and connect rally with off road.
• 25:49
  And so we took trophy trucks over there and, you know, we did this big event
• 25:53
  and, you know, it was really cool.
• 25:55
  But one of the things I learned is that the power of sound, we started
• 25:58
  the trophy trucks up and started backing them out of these secrets,
• 26:01
  thousands of people just surrounded us.
• 26:03
  They're like, Oh, that sound that's incredible.
• 26:05
  I'm like.
• 26:06
  Yeah, it's cool.
• 26:07
  This isn't even a big block.
• 26:08
  Like this is just a, you know, small block V8, like it's straight pipes.
• 26:12
  So it's a little bit more violent than normal, but they
• 26:15
  couldn't understand the sound.
• 26:17
  I realized at that point, unless you grew up in North America,
• 26:20
  you've never heard that.
• 26:21
  Yeah.
• 26:23
  And it made me understand like how valuable sound is to your experience.
• 26:28
  Right.
• 26:28
  And whether it's.
• 26:29
  on film or whether it's you there in person and you feel
• 26:33
  it in your chest, right?
• 26:34
  So that, that I think was one of the things that was
• 26:36
  magical about the group beer.
• 26:38
  It was like, you'd hear these vehicles and you're like, it's going to explode.
• 26:42
  It sounded like it was going to blow to pieces and it got louder and more
• 26:45
  violent as it got near you or near to the camera position, you know, and, and
• 26:49
  they were just, Spectacular horsepower, spectacular drivers, spectacular crashes.
• 26:55
  It was totally punk rock.
• 26:56
  And I think that that's a very important thematic to hold on to in racing.
• 27:00
  It's like, look, I'm a race promoter.
• 27:02
  I understand all the problems that we have with insurance and
• 27:05
  all these different things, but cannot lose that punk rock ethos of
• 27:10
  like, look, at the end of the day.
• 27:12
  What we're doing here is we're having a polite fist fight and
• 27:15
  when we forget that and we make it too poofy, then there's no point.
• 27:20
  Well, and we say that all the time in the road racing world that if you want
• 27:23
  to go to a professional event and you want to get close and you want to get
• 27:26
  in the pit and you want to see engineers and you want to see drivers and take
• 27:30
  your selfie with anybody that's there.
• 27:32
  Yann Magnussen is an example, right?
• 27:33
  I mean, we did that.
• 27:34
  IMSA is the way to go.
• 27:36
  WEC, any of the prototype or GTL MM cars.
• 27:39
  I mean, you can get in there with those guys.
• 27:41
  They'll talk to you.
• 27:41
  They're super friendly.
• 27:42
  You go to an F1 event, no offense.
• 27:44
  They're great to watch.
• 27:45
  They're a lot of fun, but it's always, everything's at arm's length and
• 27:49
  it just doesn't have the same draw.
• 27:51
  But because IMSA like rally started in Trans Am and SCCA, and it came up
• 27:56
  through that world, it still has that grassroots appeal, much like you guys
• 28:00
  are bringing to the table with the mid 400 is it's such a prestigious event
• 28:04
  where you can still get in there.
• 28:05
  You can still be hands on and be in the action in part of
• 28:09
  the event, be part of history.
• 28:10
  You know, Matt, as we wrap this Pitstop up, amazing again, mind blowing
• 28:14
  information here, I do want to ask one question because you brought it up and
• 28:19
  it is a Pitstop question that we usually ask, but since you're a fan of ugly cars,
• 28:23
  what's your favorite ugly car and what's the ugliest ugly car in your opinion?
• 28:28
  Wow, man.
• 28:29
  So VW bugs, man, I love them.
• 28:32
  They're funky.
• 28:32
  And it's funny because part of it's childhood, I guess.
• 28:36
  Part of it is regional where we live.
• 28:38
  Yeah.
• 28:39
  VW bugs.
• 28:40
  Continue to be made in Mexico for years after they were
• 28:43
  discontinued in the U S up to 2003.
• 28:46
  Yeah.
• 28:46
  And so we're right on the border.
• 28:47
  We have a lot of Mexican friends.
• 28:49
  We spent a lot of time in Baja and they like, they go crazy over class 11
• 28:53
  VW bug racing, and it's very serious.
• 28:56
  Right.
• 28:57
  And so I just love that.
• 28:58
  I love that somebody just picked a completely out of date and practical
• 29:02
  vehicle, and it was like, this is what we're going to fall in love with.
• 29:05
  Yeah, that's rad.
• 29:06
  Man, ugliest cars.
• 29:07
  Ugly of the ugly, the fugliest one you can think of.
• 29:10
  The Toyota 86, the Hachiroku that started drifting really,
• 29:14
  like, that thing's funky, man.
• 29:16
  You know, like, you think the AE86 is ugly?
• 29:19
  I mean, I always looked at that as Toyota's bad copy of the Scirocco.
• 29:23
  Which I think the Scirocco's ugly, too.
• 29:25
  Oh, all right, then.
• 29:26
  All right, then.
• 29:27
  All right, then.
• 29:28
  At least, at least you can look at a VW and go like, yeah, man, that's like a
• 29:32
  poor guy's Porsche, you know what I mean?
• 29:36
  It's like saying, yeah, I'm broke.
• 29:38
  It's okay.
• 29:38
  You know, like, well, very cool.
• 29:41
  Thank you again.
• 29:42
  This has been a lot of fun.
• 29:43
  Likewise.
• 29:44
  I appreciate it guys.
• 29:44
  Thanks for having me.
• 29:51
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• 29:56
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• 29:58
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• 30:01
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