Latest / That Car Show / Rory Carroll Stops by for Dinner

Transcript

Rory Carroll Stops by for Dinner · That Car Show

• 0:00
  My first like honest to goodness, like obsession with
• 0:04
  reading about cars was Jopnik was like when it started.
• 0:08
  I, I don't know how I came across it, but within a few
• 0:12
  months of it starting, I had, I started reading every post and
• 0:16
  like this is extremely embarrassing.
• 0:18
  But for a period of, I will say several years, I read every
• 0:23
  single post that went up on the site.
• 0:25
  This week on that car show, Rory Carroll.
• 0:28
  Rory, of course, was editor in chief at Jalopnik twice.
• 0:32
  He's also LED Auto Week and written for all the best car
• 0:35
  regs and websites like Road and Track, Car and Driver, and even
• 0:39
  The New York Times. Rory's got something new to
• 0:41
  share, and that's something is Alloy Mag, which I promise you
• 0:44
  is the next big thing in automotive journalism.
• 0:48
  We talked Porsches and Project cars, what might be the world's
• 0:51
  fastest Lada, and why your local retention pond might hold the
• 0:55
  next big thing in the culinary world.
• 0:58
  It's that car show. That car show is brought to you
• 1:02
  by Sheffield Watches. The Sheffield Watch brand has a
• 1:05
  long and storied history, but it was revived a couple years back
• 1:09
  by our good friend and TrueCar guy Jay Turkish.
• 1:12
  Jay was gifted a Sheffield Watch by his parents when he was a kid
• 1:15
  and he still has it to this day. Jay wanted to make the same
• 1:18
  experience available to all of us, a reasonably priced, high
• 1:21
  quality watch that indoors and that we enjoy sharing with our
• 1:25
  fellow watch enthusiasts and car people.
• 1:28
  From divers watches to watches designed for travel to
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  collaboration with automotive pals like Spike Ferriston and
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  Jay Leno, Sheffield has a watch for you.
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  Find your own Sheffield watch at sheffieldwatches.com.
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  And at Sheffield Under Score, all sport Under Score watches on
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  from that car show. We're also happy to welcome new
• 1:52
  sponsor Drake Motor Cars to the show and if you are in the
• 1:55
  Denver area on Saturday, October 11th, please join us along with
• 2:00
  friends from Avant's Cars and Bids, Velocity Restorations,
• 2:04
  Automobile Rally, Huffingley, and 1st Western Trust for the
• 2:08
  Drake Motor Cars launch party Saturday, October 11th from
• 2:11
  10:00 AM to 2:00 PM Drake Motor Cars is at 4840 Broadway in
• 2:16
  Denver, 4840 Broadway in Denver. You can find them online at
• 2:21
  drakemotorcars.com. It's going to be a good time.
• 2:24
  There can be some cool cars on hand, some good food, good drink
• 2:28
  and we look forward to seeing. Welcome back to this week's At
• 2:32
  That Car Show. I'm Lindsay and I'm here with
• 2:34
  Ryan. Hi, Ryan.
• 2:35
  Good. To see you both.
• 2:37
  Hi, and this week we have a guest with us, Rory Carroll.
• 2:41
  Rory and I first met at a Subaru dinner ahead of the LA Auto Show
• 2:45
  a few years ago. That was a particularly
• 2:48
  memorable evening for me because not only was that pouring rain
• 2:51
  in Southern California, but at one point at my end of the
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  table, there was an in depth discussion about Swan being on
• 2:58
  restaurant menus. So, you know, it was a fun
• 3:02
  group. Rory and I got to say hi.
• 3:04
  And then we've run into each other at events over the years.
• 3:07
  We're lucky to have several mutual friends in the industry,
• 3:09
  of course, including the Subaru team and our dear friend of the
• 3:13
  show, Derek Powell, who tipped us off to Rory's exciting new
• 3:16
  endeavor, which we're looking forward to learning about.
• 3:19
  And of course, a big thank you to Derek for the heads up.
• 3:22
  Rory has held a variety of leadership roles in the
• 3:25
  automotive industry and written for many of the big names,
• 3:28
  including The New York Times, Washington Post, Car and Driver,
• 3:32
  Road and Track, Haggerty, Porsche, Panorama Magazine and
• 3:35
  Gizmodo, just to name a few. He ran Auto Week and a content
• 3:39
  studio called 1155. Then he worked at Jalopnik and
• 3:43
  RM Sotheby's before heading back to Jalopnik and Gizmodo, which
• 3:47
  ultimately led to the new project that is launching soon.
• 3:51
  And he's here to tell us all about it.
• 3:52
  He's joining us tonight from his hometown of Traverse City, MI
• 3:55
  Welcome, Rory. Hey, great to be here.
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  Thanks for thanks for having me. And thanks as always to Derek or
• 4:02
  Angel. What a sweet boy I know.
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  He's the best. We love him so much.
• 4:06
  Yeah. He is the best.
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  Yeah. He was on the show a few weeks
• 4:09
  ago and we just had the best time.
• 4:11
  And so we're so excited that you're here now.
• 4:14
  Yeah, he's, he's my favorite. We send each other the Fender
• 4:18
  pictures all day long. As of the show, we'll not be
• 4:22
  surprised to hear. He is always sending me Colt
• 4:27
  Vista, you know, the, the captive import.
• 4:30
  I, I told him five years ago that I really wanted one and I
• 4:34
  still really do. And every time he finds a clean
• 4:38
  1, he sends it to me as if to say, like, when are you actually
• 4:42
  going to do this? You have to at some point.
• 4:44
  Own, I mean, the commitment level is pretty low, right?
• 4:46
  Like the bar. I mean, this can't be.
• 4:47
  Yeah, it got expensive, right? There's like one, It's probably
• 4:49
  the last cheap type of car you could buy.
• 4:51
  It's like too ugly for anyone. Right.
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  Yeah. Like 3500 bucks I just need to
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  do it. And I think Derek excels at sort
• 5:00
  of like the the like with love nudge, like every now and then
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  he'll just drop like a bring a trailer like Defender or.
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  I don't want this, but you might.
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  Right. Yeah, he's.
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  A totally, I love it. Yeah, he sent me.
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  I will say he sent me one of the big Range Rovers the other day,
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  and it was white with the black top 2020, and it had a blue
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  interior, which was amazing. And I'm like, I actually really
• 5:24
  love it. And I told him that and he said,
• 5:26
  yeah, and they're really rare. So we'll see.
• 5:29
  Watch this space. Love not vintage but new used
• 5:35
  Range Rover purchase. Exactly.
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  Yeah, I feel like that's the only way to go.
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  Let somebody else take the hit. Yeah.
• 5:40
  Speaking. Yeah, Speaking of rare, What?
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  Sorry. Tell me about the swan that was
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  on the menu because I I guess I'm going to the wrong
• 5:46
  restaurants. What is?
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  This a thing you no, it's not a thing, but people were talking
• 5:51
  about, you know, different dietary programs or if you're if
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  you have a dietary restriction and trying to order at a
• 5:57
  restaurant. And then that kind of devolved
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  into if you go to a restaurant that has like a prefixed pre fee
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  menu, you know, and usually the cuts of meat are specified and
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  you can get whatever, but then they'll have the option to I
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  think it's supplement. There's a restaurant term and
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  you can upgrade your cut of meat or you can change it.
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  And so one of the guys said, I'm just going to start asking for
• 6:20
  swan just to see what they do, like just to watch their faces
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  just with a straight face as if this is totally normal.
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  I'm just going to say I'm going to get the blah, blah, blah, but
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  I'd like the swan filet medium rare.
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  I mean. You don't have it.
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  Pepper sauce on the side and it devolved into this whole thing
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  of like, is there anywhere that they do eat swan?
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  What would it taste like? You know, how much meat do you
• 6:42
  actually get off of a swan? It's.
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  Got to be like a goose I would imagine.
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  That's what we were kind of thinking like kind of gave me
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  probably some fat in the meat, you know, like, but Swans are so
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  big you might actually get more yield.
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  It was. It is kind of a Russian roulette
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  situation though, because like if in the tiny chance that
• 7:00
  you're at a place and they actually do have the swan, at
• 7:02
  that point you do have to eat it.
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  Right, you have to commit to the pit like.
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  Yeah, you can't. You can't be like, oh, no,
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  that's just a joke I've been doing for 10 years.
• 7:10
  Yeah. Right.
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  You're like, shoot, yeah, My what is it?
• 7:13
  You have to pay the piper. Like you're like, man, I got a
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  lot of mileage out of this. Car.
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  Yeah, you got. It.
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  We have Swan, but only Swan tartar.
• 7:22
  Right. Yeah, you gotta, you gotta.
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  Hack it. Even karma.
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  Yeah, I, I did that probably 1520 years ago.
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  I was friends with this German family in Traverse City and I
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  was, I always used to joke that I loved head cheese.
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  You know, like the gelatin with, like the scraps on it with.
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  A nice bite of blood sausage. Yeah, it was, it was a it was a
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  running gag for a very long time with these people.
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  And then they had family come in from Germany and they brought
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  all of their favorite head cheese specifically for me.
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  And I was like, wow. Well, would you look?
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  At that, yeah. If it isn't my favorite food, it
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  isn't what is very famously my favorite food to eat.
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  In front of these. People and they were all grossed
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  out. It was like.
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  Oh, like they don't even eat it. No, they, I mean, the people in
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  Germany did, but like all my friends were like, Oh my God, I
• 8:15
  can't believe you're doing that. I was like, yeah, got to sorry.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not a pleasant.
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  Experience myself. Yep, that's your pain.
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  Yeah, you pain the piper at that point, Yeah.
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  Well, next time Bush meet new challenge.
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  Yeah. What does Bush meet?
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  We've talked. I've heard of that before.
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  Baboon kinds of you know, from like markets where like you
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  know, diseases like COVID start. I think you.
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  Know just, I just probably want to say pangolin or whatever.
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  Yeah, I feel like that's right. I'm having a weird memory where
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  like I don't know where I came across this, but like at one
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  point I found maybe a catalog where you could order that
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  summer, like a website and some friends were talking about
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  ordering like some exotic meats. Maybe we should do that.
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  Maybe next time I'm on we could do it like a taste.
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  We all do like a thing and we have like OK, so first up is the
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  swan. Yeah.
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  Yeah, Next up I'm. Very curious about that.
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  I can go down to my local pond and find that.
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  I know. Right.
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  I think if I recall my My Third Grade animal report, at least
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  the trumpeter swan is endangered in the state, so I don't think
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  we're supposed to. OK, OK.
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  Yeah, that just is just as well. I like the animals.
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  I'm a friend of the animals. I'm that.
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  Yeah, I'm all talk. Don't worry anyway.
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  Cars, the swan population of Denver can relax for the moment.
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  Yeah. That's really they only have to
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  worry when we're recording in person and we can enjoy the swan
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  together so. Yeah, on video you got to, you
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  know, prove the. Truth.
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  I know, I know. But yeah, should we come back to
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  cars? Yeah, Sorry.
• 9:48
  That'll happen. It's my fault.
• 9:50
  No. Yeah, it's your fault.
• 9:51
  Yeah, you're right. Yeah.
• 9:53
  So what's your car story like? How did you get into this whole
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  this? Is a good question.
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  You know, like I, I don't have, I don't come from a car family.
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  I think like I was really surprised to figure out like
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  once I got into the business, how many people were like, oh,
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  my dad was super into cars or I had an uncle or whatever.
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  And it's like my dad had a couple of Miatas, but was not
• 10:14
  really like a car person. He had maybe a cheap Wrangler.
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  But like, you know, it's not like a hardcore enthusiasm.
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  In fact, was like extremely cheap and would always tell me,
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  like, this is the worst thing you can do with your money.
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  Like, don't, you know, don't do this.
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  Like. And I remember I tried to buy
• 10:33
  when I was 16, a 60 Chrysler Imperial because I was like,
• 10:36
  this would be a great driver for me, a 16 year old.
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  Yeah. Solid.
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  Choice. No, he was like, absolutely not.
• 10:43
  That's that's stupid. Don't do that.
• 10:45
  You want something you can drive every day that's reliable.
• 10:48
  Yeah, I mean it it, it would not have been the most unreliable
• 10:52
  car I've ever daily driven, I don't think.
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  But story. There.
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  Yeah, I mean, I've. Heard to you about that.
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  I, I don't, I, I think like prior to 2015 I had owned one
• 11:05
  car that was newer than like 30 years old.
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  I just don't, they don't vibe with the new stuff as much.
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  But I, I, I don't know. So I guess I kind of got into it
• 11:18
  by fixing cars and I think like had kind of like a formative
• 11:24
  experience, like getting my first like fast Internet
• 11:26
  connection and getting on like VW vortex and like getting into
• 11:29
  like water cooled Volkswagens at college.
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  And then like just kept buying cars that I couldn't afford to
• 11:34
  take to mechanic and like learning wrench and you know,
• 11:38
  like one thing led to another. And then it took a long time.
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  I worked in a bunch of other shitty jobs that I kind of hated
• 11:47
  for like a decadish before I found I found a job at Haggerty
• 11:53
  as I was actually their lobbyist.
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  And then I saw. That did a.
• 11:57
  Bunch of other, yeah, weird stuff.
• 12:00
  Did a bunch of other stuff there and then sort of writing and
• 12:02
  that was like, oh OK. Like shit, I wish I would have
• 12:04
  known, right. This was a job.
• 12:07
  Like the whole time. Yeah, it's like, I guess someone
• 12:10
  does have to write all the articles in the magazines that I
• 12:12
  read, and I guess they probably get paid.
• 12:15
  That was pre tragic. Yeah, right.
• 12:18
  It was a thing. Yeah, it.
• 12:19
  Doesn't apply now, of course, that's not not how it works, but
• 12:23
  but yeah, that's, that's kind of it is it was a weird journey.
• 12:27
  And I think like, I don't know, there's there's parts of it
• 12:32
  again, like I wish I would have started earlier on it, but I
• 12:34
  just like, I feel like I had a good like, well of experience to
• 12:38
  draw from when I finally like did start writing where it's
• 12:41
  like I did this as an amateur, as a hobbyist for a long time.
• 12:45
  You know, like before I got to go on press trips and like drive
• 12:49
  fast stuff and learn what I was actually supposed to be doing
• 12:53
  and all that stuff. So yeah, that's the story,
• 12:56
  roughly. Well, and you have a really
• 12:58
  unique and I would say very personal fleet, so I'm curious.
• 13:03
  Yeah, Yeah. Can you kind of walk us through
• 13:04
  what you have right now? Yeah.
• 13:06
  How you came to have the collection that you have?
• 13:10
  Yeah. So it's funny to call it a
• 13:11
  collection. It's like, that's not, that's
• 13:14
  not how I look at it. Like the, you know, like you go
• 13:16
  see a collection, you're like, wow, this is a collection of
• 13:19
  cars. This is just stuff that I've
• 13:21
  failed to get rid of over years. Over the years, Yeah.
• 13:23
  We can all relate to that. Coined the term for that.
• 13:27
  Yeah, so I have my daily is a Rivian R1 S nice that I had to
• 13:34
  try EVI had to try, you know, like a new car like every 10
• 13:40
  years or so I have to try a new car and see that it's not for
• 13:42
  me. Remind yourself that you don't
• 13:44
  like them. Yeah, yeah, it's a great.
• 13:46
  I mean, it's awesome. Like it's an incredible machine,
• 13:48
  but it's just right. It connects to my phone just
• 13:51
  like, yeah, yeah, but I've got that.
• 13:56
  My wife has a 15 GTI that she bought new and will not get rid
• 14:02
  of manual. She's like that's like we've
• 14:06
  talked about kind of upgrading it.
• 14:07
  It's like been the kid mobile for a long time and it's like
• 14:12
  showing some some wear. But it's there's really so few
• 14:15
  options that are manual, right. And that's kind of like the hang
• 14:19
  up is like, what else would you get?
• 14:23
  And also like Mark Sevens are awesome.
• 14:25
  I think like a future. That's the best one, yeah.
• 14:27
  Yeah, they're they're awesome. It's my third or fourth GTI and
• 14:32
  the Mark 7 is like astonishing. Such a good.
• 14:37
  Yeah, that's have a really. Tough if you want a good manual
• 14:40
  option. I mean we.
• 14:41
  This really? Yeah.
• 14:42
  Like the the the offerings are so slim if.
• 14:46
  If at all. Yeah.
• 14:48
  And it's like, you know, dog in the back, kids in the back,
• 14:51
  like, you know, that thins it out even more.
• 14:54
  It's like takes kind of the BRZ Miata out of it and like, yeah,
• 14:58
  yeah, it's tough. Then I have an old 911 that I
• 15:02
  bought when I was 23 back when they were like cheap.
• 15:05
  It was like, this is the most 2006 story in the world.
• 15:08
  But I was like also date myself a little bit.
• 15:09
  But I, I was driving, I actually had bought a mark 5 VTi brand
• 15:14
  new one. And I was like, I hate this
• 15:16
  fucking car, which is it's stupid.
• 15:18
  That's a wonderful car, but it was too new and it was like,
• 15:21
  this is too nice. And I was driving around and saw
• 15:25
  this old 911 and I stopped. It was at a repair shop and I
• 15:29
  was like, who owns this car? This is like, I live in a small
• 15:31
  town. So it's like you don't see stuff
• 15:33
  like this all the time. And I was like, who's this
• 15:35
  belong to? And I found the guy in, went to
• 15:38
  his house, just showed up at his house and I was like, hey, he's
• 15:42
  a black 911 years. And he was like, yeah, he's
• 15:44
  like, you're in luck because I've got five of these and my
• 15:46
  wife said I have to sell one of them this month.
• 15:48
  And I was like, he's like, this is the worst one.
• 15:51
  And I was like, I'll take it like.
• 15:53
  I'm your man. Yeah.
• 15:55
  So I went to the bank and I was like 20, whatever.
• 15:58
  I was in my early 20s and I had a would get kind of had been
• 16:03
  duped into buying a house. So I had a mortgage and then I
• 16:06
  had the payment on the GTI and I walked in there and the guy was
• 16:13
  like that. We don't, we don't loan money on
• 16:15
  cars that are older than however, whatever, 20 years or
• 16:18
  whatever. And I was like, what if I can
• 16:20
  show you like how much it's worth like like what the value
• 16:23
  for it? And he's like, yeah, yeah.
• 16:26
  So I like went to Haggerty and got like, whatever their, their
• 16:29
  Haggerty value guide was. And I brought it back.
• 16:33
  And he was like, man, he's like, I really shouldn't be doing
• 16:39
  this. And he's like, he's like, your
• 16:41
  credit picture is really bad because I like, I had the
• 16:45
  mortgage, the car payment. I'd never had a credit card.
• 16:47
  I had never, I had no credit history whatsoever.
• 16:49
  And he was like, you're going to pay me back on this.
• 16:52
  And I was like, yeah, of course. And he was like, all right.
• 16:54
  He's like, I know your family. You're good.
• 16:56
  And he like just gave me a check like off of his desk.
• 16:59
  And it was like, This is why, This is why like the financial
• 17:04
  crisis happened. I think like that type of
• 17:07
  underrating underwriting when you just tried to this anyone.
• 17:11
  Yeah, just like, yeah, it's fine.
• 17:13
  And it was. I trust the payment.
• 17:14
  You have a good face. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 17:16
  Yeah. Never missed a payment, never
• 17:18
  had a late payment on it. And it had the car.
• 17:22
  I daily drove it for a long time, drove it in the winter,
• 17:27
  really drove it all the time. And because it was like at the
• 17:30
  time it was like a cheap sports car.
• 17:32
  It was like whatever, 14 grand and then put it up like 8 years
• 17:38
  ago to start a like sympathetic restoration and have just been
• 17:42
  like touching it. OK.
• 17:45
  I had like a weird mental block about it for years.
• 17:47
  Like we can get deep. And I had like some kind of
• 17:51
  psychological block where it's like I would work on anything
• 17:53
  else. And it was like, I worked on
• 17:55
  cars. Like I built that lot that we
• 17:57
  can talk about in a second. I built it twice in the span of
• 18:00
  me having the 9/11. I built it from scratch twice.
• 18:05
  Let's talk about it. For you where you're just like
• 18:08
  La La. Yeah.
• 18:10
  Did you think you didn't deserve it or something?
• 18:12
  Let's go deep. I.
• 18:13
  Would. I don't know.
• 18:15
  It's, it's like a, it's something I think about a lot
• 18:17
  because it was, it was a daily driver and it so it's not a car
• 18:20
  that was super precious to me. And it's not like it's not in
• 18:23
  good enough condition to be super precious to anybody.
• 18:26
  But I think like, honestly, I think there was like a period
• 18:30
  where I was so kind of annoyed at the air cooled 9/11 thing.
• 18:39
  Do you guys have air cooled 911 before I say this?
• 18:41
  No, I don't. But it became.
• 18:43
  A thing. OK, it became a thing and it was
• 18:46
  like it was like a a man of my age.
• 18:50
  Like it was kind of like the default cool thing to do is to
• 18:53
  buy an air cooled 911 and it's like it it was like, I just
• 18:58
  can't like I didn't want to be a 9/11 guy.
• 19:01
  I didn't want to get rid of it because I knew that this like
• 19:03
  trend would kind of pass and go by, but it was like, and it
• 19:07
  wasn't like, Oh, I don't want to be that guy, so I'm not working
• 19:09
  on it. But what it was is that every
• 19:11
  other thing that came across the transom was like more
• 19:13
  interesting to me. So it was like the I got an old
• 19:17
  Willy's, which I still have and it was like, Oh, I'll just like,
• 19:20
  I'll that'll be my old car. You know what I mean?
• 19:22
  Like so the 9/11 kind of SAT and it's like I went through spurts
• 19:27
  of like really basically like people giving me a hard time
• 19:30
  about it being like you have a really good the old 911, like
• 19:34
  you should be driving this car, which I agree with.
• 19:35
  Like that's insane to not drive that car.
• 19:38
  It happened though. Yeah, but it was like again.
• 19:42
  And it was, it was so strange because you, you know, everybody
• 19:44
  has seen those like YouTube shows or whatever where it's
• 19:48
  like there's some old guy in like in the back corner of his
• 19:52
  garage. There's like a De Tuaso Pantera
• 19:54
  or whatever. And you're like, how would you
• 19:55
  not drive? Like, what's wrong with you?
• 19:57
  Like there's some and it's like, I would always be like, yeah,
• 20:00
  what is wrong with it? Oh, wait a second.
• 20:01
  Like that's also, yeah, that's also what I'm exactly what I'm
• 20:07
  doing right now. But I think it's one of those
• 20:09
  things too, Like, I think we've all driven by those houses where
• 20:12
  you can tell there was a car that, like, is in the front yard
• 20:15
  or it's wherever. And I don't know about you guys,
• 20:17
  but I always see like, a what was the story?
• 20:19
  Like, what was the tipping point where the car was set there?
• 20:22
  Nobody probably anticipated that it would still be here 10 years
• 20:25
  from now. But like, yeah, how did this
• 20:27
  unfold? And you know, like, same thing
• 20:30
  where you're like, Sir, how did the De Tomaso Pantera get stuck
• 20:33
  in the corner and never brought back out?
• 20:36
  And that was me he didn't want. To be the He didn't want to be
• 20:38
  that guy. Again, it was, it was not like I
• 20:42
  was so annoyed by the idea. It was just like every other
• 20:47
  thing was just a better distract.
• 20:48
  You know, It's like it was and really like I think like driving
• 20:52
  that 48 willies around Detroit was like one of the best times
• 20:55
  of my life. Like it was like an awesome car
• 20:59
  to RIP around the city and like. Yeah, what an experience.
• 21:04
  And you were probably the only one I'm assuming.
• 21:06
  I've certainly, it was awesome. It was so cool because everybody
• 21:09
  would like wait, it's like it was a farm truck.
• 21:11
  So it's like it's totally original, never been painted.
• 21:14
  And it's like, it is mostly roster like very heavily
• 21:18
  patented paint. But it was like you could leave
• 21:21
  it anywhere because no one could figure out how to start it.
• 21:24
  It's like a floor push button starter.
• 21:25
  Like just leave the keys in it wherever you want.
• 21:28
  You can park it anywhere. And it was like it was super
• 21:30
  reliable and it was like, yeah, it was open.
• 21:35
  No seatbelts, no, no anything in it.
• 21:38
  It was, it was a phenomenal. I, I drove that car and I think
• 21:42
  I was probably driving that car like 2500 miles a year, like,
• 21:46
  and I live 2 miles from my office.
• 21:48
  It was like I put a ton of miles on that thing was so fun.
• 21:52
  You were enjoying it. Well people laugh about like
• 21:55
  like a manual transmission being an anti theft device and you're
• 21:57
  like, I'll do you one better. That's cool.
• 22:00
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 22:01
  It's like, if you can steal this car, you literally deserve it.
• 22:04
  Go ahead. Like it is.
• 22:07
  Yeah, it's yours. I will applaud the effort and
• 22:10
  send you off with a fanfare if you can accomplish.
• 22:12
  Yeah, yeah. And I'll find it eventually.
• 22:15
  I'll find it. Right.
• 22:16
  Do you like living in Detroit? Because I think a lot of people
• 22:19
  listening have probably never been to Detroit.
• 22:20
  They have a certain sort of idea of what Detroit is.
• 22:23
  Yeah, I think Detroit's a really neat place, but there's no other
• 22:26
  town like Detroit, is there? No, it's a it is it is the best
• 22:30
  place that I've ever lived. And I think like it is a place
• 22:36
  that has like a lot of big city character, obviously, but a lot
• 22:42
  of like big city, like, you know, there's, there's sports,
• 22:45
  there's, you know, like baseball, NBA, NFL, downtown
• 22:50
  hockey, great restaurant scene, great music scene.
• 22:55
  Like, you know, the the awesome thing that I loved about Detroit
• 22:57
  is like you could just go to a club Eddie night of the week and
• 23:01
  see a band that you knew or like that you wanted to see or like
• 23:04
  that you were excited about and like just show up And like the
• 23:09
  same for, you know, same for sports.
• 23:11
  Like it was just easy to live there.
• 23:13
  You can drive. You don't really have to know
• 23:16
  anything special. Like there's not a lot of like
• 23:18
  being in New York. Wonderful place.
• 23:20
  And I would you know, they'd love being in New York.
• 23:22
  I spent a ton of time there last year, But you have to know some
• 23:25
  tricks to get around. Like you don't have to like know
• 23:27
  how to navigate a little bit and like to try.
• 23:28
  It's like it's exactly the way that you think it is.
• 23:31
  It's very user friendly. And it's also like, I mean, it's
• 23:35
  it's getting more expensive. It's gotten more expensive than
• 23:38
  the last, certainly since we left.
• 23:40
  But I think like it's a place where you can kind of as a
• 23:46
  younger person live kind of a version of the American dream
• 23:50
  that we're all, you know, it's like home ownership.
• 23:52
  You want to start a business, you want to like be active in
• 23:56
  your community and like have friends in the 3rd place and all
• 23:58
  that stuff. Like that's Detroit like.
• 24:00
  And that's, I really love that about it.
• 24:02
  It was like I had a bunch of friends who were entrepreneurs
• 24:06
  trying stuff out and like, you know, some of the ideas were
• 24:09
  better than others. And so, so it worked.
• 24:11
  And someone didn't. But like, that was fun.
• 24:14
  It was like, yeah, let's do this together.
• 24:15
  Let's figure this out. And I think, like, you know, you
• 24:20
  can still today, you can still buy a decent home in Detroit on
• 24:23
  a normal wage, which is, like, tough to say for most places in
• 24:27
  the United States. Yeah.
• 24:30
  So yeah, I loved it. I mean, I would move back in a
• 24:32
  heartbeat. I think I, I recommend it very
• 24:36
  highly to anybody who's thinking about like, how do I take the
• 24:39
  next step? You know, like I said, you want
• 24:42
  to buy a house, you want to start a business.
• 24:44
  Like it's a great place to do it and there's tons of support.
• 24:47
  It's, it's a really fun, welcoming community.
• 24:51
  Like it's, it's a really good time.
• 24:53
  Yeah, sounds amazing. So we're all moving to Detroit
• 24:56
  next week. It sounds like you have.
• 24:58
  I mean, I can't recommend highly enough.
• 25:00
  I get you set up. It's, it's so fun and it's like,
• 25:04
  again, it's like because of all that stuff, there's so much good
• 25:06
  creative energy. So there's like good shows,
• 25:09
  there's good, it's a good art scene.
• 25:11
  Like, you know, like you, you can afford to try things and do
• 25:16
  things in Detroit that you can't afford to do in other major
• 25:19
  cities. And I think like, and it's also
• 25:21
  got some juice. Like there's like, there's a lot
• 25:23
  of like big Midwest cities that are like kind of cool, but like
• 25:26
  just don't have the juice. But like Detroit still has like
• 25:29
  a little bit something to it. Like people are coming to town,
• 25:34
  you know what I mean? Like for reasons, not just
• 25:36
  because they're stuck there because they're, you know,
• 25:38
  flight got delayed or whatever. Like people go to Detroit for
• 25:41
  things. So it's I don't know, I dig it.
• 25:44
  I. Going on a huge.
• 25:44
  Fan. Yeah, I'm a huge fan.
• 25:47
  That's awesome. So, OK, so I know you have.
• 25:50
  So we talked about the Willies. But then I want.
• 25:52
  To hear about probably, probably the the member of your fleet
• 25:56
  that is the nearest and dearest to my heart is the 95-F-150, so
• 26:00
  I would love to hear the story of that.
• 26:02
  So actually that car lived in Denver.
• 26:04
  I don't know, Ryan, do you know a brewery called OMF?
• 26:07
  Our mutual friend. I don't how cute.
• 26:10
  OK, sounds like a great brewery. I do need to know them though,
• 26:13
  yeah. Really great.
• 26:14
  Yeah. I mean, some of the best bread
• 26:15
  I've ever had in my entire life. Really.
• 26:17
  OK. Really, really fun.
• 26:19
  But a couple buddies own it and Jan was using it as a as his
• 26:26
  daily driver, but also like to Hulk eggs and it's I think it
• 26:30
  was owned by like a mining company at one point because
• 26:32
  it's that really that teal color, like the Super teal.
• 26:38
  Which was so like the era. Like yeah, you see that on
• 26:41
  Broncos every so on. Surface or something?
• 26:43
  Yeah, it's. It's like the the forest surface
• 26:45
  is like a little I I would, I think I prefer the forest
• 26:48
  surface that was a little bit more like sea foamy.
• 26:51
  Like it's a little bit more and it's massy.
• 26:52
  Yeah. And this is like a this is a,
• 26:57
  this is a metal metallic teal color.
• 26:59
  I mean it's like it is very Alan Jackson video fairy.
• 27:04
  Tale there, there was a Bronco like 95.
• 27:08
  There was a Bronco color scheme, and it was that teal and white
• 27:11
  and like, yeah, with the white on it, it made the teal even
• 27:14
  more teal. And you're just like, yeah.
• 27:17
  Yeah, there's one of those running around Traverse City
• 27:18
  that every time I see them look cool.
• 27:20
  That guy's got it going, man, right?
• 27:22
  You you better check the seat cushions of this thing if it was
• 27:24
  owned by a mining company in Colorado.
• 27:25
  I mean, the price of gold is way up.
• 27:28
  Yeah, right. You never know what you
• 27:29
  actually. Find I actually did find a knife
• 27:32
  in the seat cushion. Really.
• 27:34
  And they've had killed a man. Yeah, yeah.
• 27:36
  That's a. Real blood.
• 27:37
  Yeah, yeah. You're like, should I feel like
• 27:40
  I should turn the? Yeah, I just hit it with some
• 27:44
  brake cleaning, but yeah. Call the day.
• 27:48
  It so Jan was using it then he had a baby and it was a 2 door.
• 27:51
  And I was like, hey, you know, if you're gonna sell the track.
• 27:54
  And he obviously decided to sell it.
• 27:57
  And I, I had previously gone to Denver with a buddy.
• 28:00
  This is an entirely different weird story.
• 28:02
  But he showed up with six. Yeah, he was like, years ago, I
• 28:08
  was dating my, my wife. She was in, in law school in
• 28:11
  Denver. And I, my buddy was like, we
• 28:14
  should go out to Colorado and buy a pickup truck for, you
• 28:17
  know, to take it back to Michigan, like a clean, dry
• 28:19
  pickup. And so he figured out you could
• 28:22
  carry $6000 in cash on an airplane back then.
• 28:26
  So he brought $6000. And then I, I had sent him a
• 28:29
  bunch of Craigslist links like go, like make a deal before we
• 28:34
  get there so that we're not standing here like, you know,
• 28:39
  with $6000 in hand, which he obviously didn't.
• 28:42
  Turn it a hole in your pocket. Yeah.
• 28:44
  So we made this, we made like 20 appointments to go see trucks
• 28:47
  and like finally ended up in I forgot what town it was, some
• 28:52
  little, some little tiny town met this incredibly weird guy
• 28:55
  named Brock Fuller, who's like a sculptor and would he had all
• 28:59
  these little sculptures of like little aliens that he made out
• 29:03
  of junk metal. But they were all like, I don't
• 29:06
  want to say anatomically correct because they don't know they
• 29:11
  were. Humanoidish.
• 29:14
  They were, yeah, they were. They had, they were in Dad.
• 29:17
  They had some parts. And I'm imagining they were
• 29:21
  beings he'd met on his travels, maybe.
• 29:24
  I, I don't know, he was, he was a strange fella.
• 29:26
  I would say like kind of like, you know, you kind of like the
• 29:30
  guy you aspire to be where it's like you're crazy, obviously in
• 29:34
  a very pleasant way. Like this is like not not unfun
• 29:37
  to be around you. You want to.
• 29:39
  Farmingly, adorably crazy, Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 29:42
  It's like, and even the sculptures, even though they're
• 29:45
  kind of weird, it was like, this is nice, you know, good for you.
• 29:49
  You got a thing going. You found your niche.
• 29:51
  There, yeah, not physically. Yeah, it's fine.
• 29:56
  You know, you're just, you're up here in the.
• 29:57
  Mountains. Well, did you buy a sculpture
• 29:59
  too or? No, I should have.
• 30:02
  I know I had that. They can take the sculpture
• 30:04
  home. Yeah, but we, so we ended up
• 30:07
  buying this truck that was like the, IT was owned by this guy
• 30:14
  who bought it when he retired and then immediately had a heart
• 30:17
  attack and died in his widow. Put it in, left it in the
• 30:20
  garage. And it was like, had like 67
• 30:23
  miles on. It was like, it was absolutely
• 30:26
  like a, like a, a vehicle cast for like no country for old men
• 30:33
  where they had all those like hyper accessorized 80s pickups.
• 30:37
  But like had the light bar, had the bull bar had orange, it was
• 30:42
  silver with orange and red hockey stripes, red interior
• 30:46
  wood grain, had everything on it.
• 30:49
  And it was like, I was like, we're buying this car.
• 30:52
  Like we, we did the thing where we're like, yeah, we'll think
• 30:55
  about it. And we like went down the block
• 30:56
  and just stood there and I was like, we're buying this.
• 30:57
  Like it bought it cash and drove it back.
• 31:02
  It was 5 speed, 4 wheel drive. I mean, just like everything.
• 31:04
  Wow, perfect. And it was an F-150.
• 31:08
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. F-150 single cab, short, bad.
• 31:13
  I mean just like exactly the truck that you would want.
• 31:17
  It sounds incredible. I think we need.
• 31:19
  To find it's so good. Yeah.
• 31:20
  Well, I know where it is. It is in.
• 31:23
  It's been living in Michigan. So it's completely ruined now,
• 31:25
  but I remember like. Crawling underneath that.
• 31:29
  Yeah, it yeah, it would be an endeavor, but I imagine.
• 31:35
  Yeah. Yeah, but I so we did that and
• 31:37
  then exactly 10 years later, we drove this green truck home in
• 31:40
  the same way, which was you would drive, drive it straight
• 31:44
  through, you know, drove it it's like 19 hours to Traverse City.
• 31:48
  Really nice. It's one of my absolute favorite
• 31:50
  things to do is just like do too long of a road trip, you know,
• 31:54
  like. Uh huh.
• 31:55
  You like 6 hours, right? Yeah.
• 31:57
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 32:00
  You start seeing some well in doubt aliens and you're like.
• 32:02
  Oh yeah, yeah. Is that a real alien?
• 32:05
  Yeah, that sculpture guy has moved.
• 32:07
  Yeah, all. Right, that's good for you.
• 32:11
  That's all the workout here. Yeah, shoot, shoot.
• 32:15
  But yeah, I, I use it as a truck.
• 32:17
  It's like, yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's in the barn in the
• 32:21
  winter. I don't drive in the winter, but
• 32:23
  in the summer it moves, you know, like trees or moves gravel
• 32:31
  and all kinds of like move tires.
• 32:34
  And like, it's, it's a truck in the, in the, in the summertime,
• 32:37
  which is like trying to explain to somebody, they're like
• 32:41
  suggesting I get a new pickup truck.
• 32:42
  And I was like, I don't know if I could drive a new pickup
• 32:44
  because it's like I, I need to abuse, I need to harm the truck,
• 32:48
  you know, like I need to. I would feel if it's a new thing
• 32:50
  that I'm making a payment on, I would feel really like hesitant
• 32:54
  to use it in the way that I do. You need it to be not precious
• 32:59
  because then it has the utility because you go get something
• 33:02
  really nice. And it's like, I mean, I think
• 33:05
  about that like I have an F-150 that's my daily and I went to an
• 33:09
  off road event last spring and I was going to take the truck and
• 33:13
  I ended up getting to take Subaru loaned me a car to take.
• 33:17
  And later I was so glad because I'm like, I didn't really want
• 33:20
  to scratch up the truck, you know, like, and it's not a new
• 33:23
  truck, but it's still in really good shape.
• 33:25
  And yeah, it changes how you use it.
• 33:27
  Like you're hesitant to throw a bunch of gravel in the back if
• 33:30
  it's still in good shape. Yeah, yeah.
• 33:33
  I mean, it's, it is nice to have a car that you can like Chuck a
• 33:36
  car battery into. It's like, yeah, like without.
• 33:39
  Thinking about it. That's a very freeing
• 33:41
  experience. That's a very, very nice thing.
• 33:45
  Like, yeah, like you said, like the utility of that And like the
• 33:49
  utility of like, there's a picture I took this summer where
• 33:53
  I literally piled it. So I cut down a bunch of trees
• 33:57
  and I piled it so full of trees that you could no longer see the
• 33:59
  truck. And I had to like, wow, crawl
• 34:01
  around the other door and like kind of halfway climb in the
• 34:04
  window to drive it. And I was like, this is good.
• 34:07
  This is. That's what.
• 34:08
  We call Maximum Truck. Yeah, this.
• 34:11
  We're living at this .0. Man stuff, Rory.
• 34:14
  Yeah, yeah, you get up to like you have to, you have to get the
• 34:17
  blood flowing every now and again.
• 34:20
  Yeah. Well, I think when you have a
• 34:21
  new one, like there's that one thing that kind of like breaks
• 34:25
  the seal and you're like, well, now it's official.
• 34:26
  Like mine has a Ding in the back tailgate where like a stump was.
• 34:30
  It was used to pull a stump and the chain, you know, it went a
• 34:33
  little more quickly than anticipated.
• 34:35
  Oh, we hate that. Yeah, that's a tough one.
• 34:37
  But then it was like, now it's official like.
• 34:40
  Yeah, now you can fill it with trees.
• 34:42
  Regrettable. Now, like we're not worried
• 34:45
  about it anymore. Just destroy it, yeah.
• 34:48
  Game on, yeah? Yeah.
• 34:51
  Let's let's change topics a little bit and talk about car
• 34:54
  journalism, automotive journalism and sort of the state
• 34:57
  of automotive journalism in 2025.
• 34:59
  I don't know if you were one of those kids like me and I think
• 35:01
  Lindsay, who like couldn't wait for like the new car and driver
• 35:04
  to show up in the mailbox or the road and track, whatever.
• 35:06
  Were you one of those kids? And if So, what was your poison
• 35:09
  and and who did you read growing up?
• 35:12
  Yeah. I mean honestly like it, it was
• 35:15
  the later onset thing for me. And I think like I, I certainly
• 35:18
  would like buy at DuPont registry at the grocery store
• 35:22
  and like just look at the ads. It was like very important to me
• 35:26
  as a, as a 12 year old to know like how much a Dodge Viper
• 35:30
  cost. I remember like flipping to the
• 35:31
  Vipers and being a night, OK, 70 grand, all right, maybe, you
• 35:34
  know, save some pennies or whatever.
• 35:37
  And then like I would buy. People on the hypermarket as a.
• 35:39
  12 year old yeah, it was that was what it was.
• 35:41
  It was like I just need to know how much they were cuz someday.
• 35:45
  400 horsepower. I mean, mind.
• 35:47
  Blow. Yeah, we're crazy.
• 35:49
  I mean, I, I remember seeing him at the Detroit auto show and
• 35:52
  being like, like at the time, like nothing looked like that
• 35:55
  car. It was so insane looking.
• 36:00
  But yeah, I would buy like a road track or pick up a car and
• 36:02
  driver. If I was at the store and saw a
• 36:05
  car, I'd like to on the cover or whatever.
• 36:08
  But my first like, honest to goodness, like obsession with
• 36:12
  reading about cars was Chopnik was like when it started.
• 36:16
  I, I don't know how I came across it, but within a few
• 36:20
  months of it starting, I had, I started reading every post and
• 36:24
  like, wow, this is extremely embarrassing.
• 36:27
  But for a period of, I will say several years, I read every
• 36:32
  single post that went up on the site.
• 36:34
  Like, and if I was traveling because I didn't have a phone or
• 36:37
  a computer, sure, if I was out of town, I would go back like to
• 36:41
  the day that I left and go back and catch up and reread all the
• 36:45
  posts. And that was like massively
• 36:48
  influential as far as like, to me, it was like finding a group
• 36:55
  of people who liked cars in the way that I liked cars where it's
• 36:59
  like, you know, like a little bit more esoteric and a little
• 37:04
  bit more about like story and a little bit more about like the
• 37:08
  context of the car than like the raw, you know, specs.
• 37:14
  And yeah, which is like, you know, I don't get me wrong.
• 37:18
  I, I did memorize a lot of car specs back in when I was
• 37:22
  younger. I had this book called like 50
• 37:25
  years of Classic Cars. And I remember like, I've never
• 37:29
  been a studier, never been a much of a student.
• 37:32
  It was not into that. But I remember like making
• 37:36
  tables like by hand and memorizing specs for the cars
• 37:40
  and it was like. Because you were interested in
• 37:42
  it. Yeah, I.
• 37:43
  Mean you wanted to do that? Yeah, that's the difference.
• 37:46
  Yeah. That's how you know you found
• 37:48
  your your place or your thing or your people where you do it
• 37:51
  without thinking about it. And then you look back and
• 37:53
  you're like I was making tables. That's a lot of work, yeah.
• 37:56
  So it's more work than I ever put into school, probably in my
• 37:59
  entire life. I was memorizing all of July.
• 38:01
  Yeah. I reached the end of the
• 38:02
  Internet. Yeah.
• 38:04
  Yeah, yeah. But yeah, that's that's how I
• 38:07
  got into it. I think like, you know, those
• 38:10
  those guys also too like I think those that early group,
• 38:19
  Spinelli, Johnny Davey, Bumback and Phil like those guys for
• 38:25
  whatever reason, read as cool to me in a way that like the other
• 38:30
  car journalists never did. You know, like especially like
• 38:34
  in that era of like the early 2000s, it was like those guys
• 38:37
  just seemed like, you know, like guys that I would want to hang
• 38:43
  out with her. And it turns out like they are
• 38:45
  like as now that I know them all, they are guys that I like
• 38:48
  to hang out with. Like I was 100% correct.
• 38:51
  Isn't that wild? Where you're like and now we're
• 38:53
  friends. And yeah, yeah, that was right,
• 38:55
  Right. They're they're good guys.
• 38:57
  They actually those guys, Phil and Johnny talked me into buying
• 39:01
  that stupid lot of that. I still have.
• 39:03
  That was their idea. So we can blame or thank them or
• 39:07
  both. I would at this point we're
• 39:09
  blaming them I think like this has been a near 20 year ordeal
• 39:13
  of me owning A Soviet car all. Right, we have to talk about
• 39:17
  this because you don't just, yeah, you don't just stumble in
• 39:20
  a lot. Yeah, OK.
• 39:23
  Where'd you find this thing? Yeah, I it was a nice pricier
• 39:26
  Crack Pipe car on Jopnik. And OK, you know that that's a
• 39:30
  joke like this, like no one would buy the Crack Pipe.
• 39:33
  Great. Yeah.
• 39:35
  Yeah, No, it was it was project car.
• 39:37
  Hell, it's actually. At the Oh, OK, OK.
• 39:39
  So that's even worse. It was like, this is, it was
• 39:43
  like this our Dodge Power Wagon. And I was like, fuck it, like
• 39:47
  call the people in Canada who had the Craigslist ad for the
• 39:52
  Seafoam Lotta. And I was like, would you take
• 39:55
  500 bucks for it? And they're like, yeah, yeah,
• 39:58
  yeah, absolutely. Like we'll even deliver it for
• 40:02
  free, Sir, weren't you say you are.
• 40:05
  Would you have taken $50.00 for it?
• 40:09
  And it was, it was. So it was in Canada.
• 40:11
  It was too new to import. So I told them it was going to
• 40:13
  be. I told the border people it was
• 40:15
  going to be a race car and never registered for the street, which
• 40:17
  got me detained. Amazing for a really long time
• 40:20
  at Customs and Border Patrol. They did not believe.
• 40:22
  That story. They didn't believe that story.
• 40:26
  No. And I had done a bunch of
• 40:27
  actually done a bunch of research and like looked up the
• 40:29
  law and like, that's how I had the cover of a race car.
• 40:32
  And they tore the whole thing apart.
• 40:34
  And they were like, you are like to them looking at the Latta, I
• 40:39
  could see where it didn't seem plausible that it was actually
• 40:42
  going to be a race car. You know, like, OK, fair enough.
• 40:45
  Like this guy? Knows nothing about cars.
• 40:47
  What's going? On Yeah, it doesn't look like a
• 40:48
  race car. Wow, race cars.
• 40:51
  Rejective ran it in lemons. Yeah.
• 40:54
  Yeah, yeah. It's like you guys don't know
• 40:55
  what Lemons is. This is anything can be a race
• 40:59
  car. As it turns out, you're.
• 41:02
  Like a lemon to tackle you. Yeah, let me show you some Drop
• 41:06
  Nick articles. Right.
• 41:09
  But yeah, it's I ran it in lemons and then and then twice
• 41:13
  and then tried to give it away to to Camille from universe And
• 41:20
  he had it for a number of years and then finally called me and
• 41:22
  was like, hey, this car is never running again while I have it.
• 41:27
  Like I just we're never going to get to it.
• 41:28
  Do you want it back? And I was like, no, I don't.
• 41:31
  And he's like, well, it's probably going to go to scrap.
• 41:33
  And I was like, OK, I'll so. Brad Brownell.
• 41:38
  Yeah. From 1:00.
• 41:39
  Of the founders of Radwood, too, we had yeah, yeah.
• 41:44
  He was like, I'm doing Radwood in Chicago, so I'll be in your
• 41:48
  neck of the woods six hours away.
• 41:51
  I'll just run out to Boston and get it and then deliver it to
• 41:54
  your house, which is like so much driving to do.
• 41:59
  It's like a. That's a wild just pop in.
• 42:04
  It's really like a cross country's worth.
• 42:06
  Yeah. So he went and got it, hit the
• 42:09
  huge ambulance and he like towed it here on AU haul.
• 42:11
  Trailer. And then Long story short, I was
• 42:15
  like, I'm going to case swap it. And then I was like, if I case
• 42:19
  swap it, I should put an independent rear in it.
• 42:23
  And if I put it in a dependent rear in it, I might as well
• 42:25
  match front and back so that it's the same thing for for
• 42:29
  handling purposes. There's like a hill climb up
• 42:32
  here. And it was like, anyway, it
• 42:33
  snowballed into like this stratosphere.
• 42:38
  I have I have more money into the lot of that I have ever put
• 42:41
  into a car. I will say that.
• 42:43
  And it's. Yeah.
• 42:45
  So it's a lot of body with that like integrated cage into the
• 42:53
  subframes. So it's Subaru BRZ front and
• 42:56
  rear subframes bolt into the cage, which is awesome.
• 43:00
  You can just drop the entire subframe with two bolts and then
• 43:05
  that's. Handy.
• 43:07
  It's great. And then it's AK 24K24A2 that
• 43:14
  I've got from eBay that thankfully runs.
• 43:17
  I like I, it's like I built the whole car and then I didn't fire
• 43:23
  it until like, you know, week before the the race and it was
• 43:27
  like I had no idea where the motor came from, what it was
• 43:31
  doing for the last, you know, since it had been out of a car
• 43:34
  like, and thankfully it worked fine.
• 43:38
  Didn't work great, honestly the first time we had it out, but it
• 43:40
  worked and then it runs awesome now.
• 43:42
  It's like, I mean it's it's really incredibly lightweight
• 43:48
  and it's you know, there's nothing in it.
• 43:51
  It's like that. I it was like a butter nightmare
• 43:56
  getting everything to fit and then getting, I had Thompson
• 44:00
  racing fabrication built a cage up here, which actually I, I
• 44:04
  took the old cage out of the Lada that I built for Lemons and
• 44:07
  it was like so sketchy. It was like, I cannot believe I
• 44:12
  did 2 lemons races in this cage. Like it seemed fine when I was
• 44:16
  in my 20s but it's like it's so horrifying to be to anyway.
• 44:22
  You look at and you're like, I felt good about this at the
• 44:24
  time. I felt.
• 44:25
  More to lose now, yeah? It, it would have I I honestly
• 44:28
  think that the cage that we built was more dangerous than
• 44:32
  going without a cage. Like there's so many places
• 44:35
  where it's like just too big. That could have impaled me
• 44:38
  somehow. Yeah.
• 44:40
  Yeah, would have been. Yeah, Cage would have killed you
• 44:41
  instead of. Yeah, yeah.
• 44:45
  So yeah, that's, that's the lot of it's a, it is a super fun
• 44:49
  car. I'm super proud of like figuring
• 44:52
  out how to do all that stuff. Like it's like, sure, no one's
• 44:56
  ever done it, obviously. So there's no like, reference to
• 45:00
  look at, right? But yeah.
• 45:02
  And now it's, it's fun. It's like super fast.
• 45:05
  I shouldn't say super fast. It's fast enough.
• 45:07
  Sure. Fast for a lotta maybe.
• 45:10
  It's yeah, it's probably one of the faster Lotta's out there.
• 45:13
  Sure. That's there's a guy in Miami
• 45:16
  who has a 2 JC powered Lotta which I feel like.
• 45:18
  Oh wow. Almost.
• 45:19
  Wow. Faster.
• 45:20
  I think we need to do like a head to head lotta addition.
• 45:23
  I would love to get get in contact.
• 45:25
  I would. Make it happen to.
• 45:26
  Do that, yeah. There are enthusiasts and then
• 45:28
  there are enthusiasts like yourself.
• 45:31
  I mean, that's, you know, that's dedication for the.
• 45:34
  Craft. Yeah, it was, we built it in I
• 45:37
  think like a year and a half. And it, you know, is also like
• 45:41
  one of those things where I, I think at a certain point it's
• 45:45
  like you, you don't progress in your ability to do stuff unless
• 45:50
  you do something that you don't know how to do.
• 45:52
  And it's like the my ability to like Weld and think through
• 45:56
  bigger problems and like build parts and structural parts of a
• 46:03
  car. And that like taught me so much
• 46:06
  about like about how how cars are built, but also like how
• 46:10
  like what makes cars handle, what makes cars behave in a
• 46:12
  certain way. And it was like I was at a
• 46:15
  point, I think like wrenching wise, where it's like I could
• 46:18
  most close enough to being able to do it.
• 46:20
  And it was like, really glad I don't.
• 46:24
  I don't know that I'd build a car from scratch again by
• 46:26
  myself. Yeah, that's an but I know I
• 46:30
  can't. Yeah, it's like, and maybe it's,
• 46:33
  I don't know, I like now that I said that out loud, I'm like
• 46:35
  others like I would actually. I'd like to revise my answer
• 46:40
  immediately. No, I I will probably end up
• 46:43
  doing that again. But if you can do it with a
• 46:46
  friend too, you're right. Like that's.
• 46:48
  Yeah. It's more approachable like your
• 46:52
  9/11 might get done. Yeah, yeah, that's, I mean, the
• 46:55
  real thing is like I have to just go out there and I have
• 46:58
  made a ton. I got it running for the first
• 47:00
  time in a long time. Yeah.
• 47:02
  That's amazing. Made some big progress.
• 47:03
  But anyway, we were talking about automotive media.
• 47:05
  I'm sorry. No, no, but I mean, this, I
• 47:07
  think this is good evidence of kind of where you're coming
• 47:10
  from. And you know, I mean, you're the
• 47:12
  real deal if you're doing some shit like that.
• 47:14
  I mean, that's that's incredible.
• 47:15
  And so. And you were the editor at
• 47:17
  Jalopnik twice. Yeah.
• 47:19
  You've written for New York Times.
• 47:21
  You've written for what? What else was on the list,
• 47:23
  Lindsay? It was a whole Yeah, I can go.
• 47:25
  Back to mine. I'm glad you had the last of
• 47:26
  that was like, right? Took me a lot of time, yeah.
• 47:29
  Right. Washington Post car driver, road
• 47:31
  and track, Haggerty, Porsche, Panorama and Gizmodo.
• 47:34
  And of course, did you write for Auto Week?
• 47:36
  I know you ran the outlet. And started there as a web
• 47:40
  editor under Davey, actually. OK, wow.
• 47:43
  So that was something I was going to ask you and it leads
• 47:45
  into obviously the ultimate reason that we're here.
• 47:48
  But you have obviously written for many of these outlets,
• 47:51
  you've freelanced, you've been full time and then you've been
• 47:53
  in leadership roles. And like, what did you, what was
• 47:56
  that like going from writing into leadership in the
• 48:01
  automotive industry and kind of at these outlets where you've
• 48:04
  been a writer and did you continue writing while you were
• 48:06
  running them? Like what was that path like?
• 48:09
  Yeah, I mean, you do, you do write a lot less, but I I tried
• 48:13
  to keep doing it just because it's, I think it's an important
• 48:15
  skill and you have to you have to keep that that muscle active
• 48:20
  or whatever. But I think when I got to Auto
• 48:25
  Week, I knew right away that I wanted to run Auto Week because
• 48:28
  it was like such a cool story, such a cool publication and like
• 48:34
  there was so much potential in the brand where it was like, and
• 48:39
  I like, I really love the people who I worked with and like my
• 48:42
  boss and everything. But it was like, if there's an
• 48:44
  opportunity, if, if he retires or moves on or something like I,
• 48:47
  you know, I told the cranes early on, like this is what I
• 48:50
  want to do is run this, this book.
• 48:53
  And like we, I was super, I, it was like a crazy opportunity.
• 49:00
  Is that, you know, I, I done a lot of good stuff there, I
• 49:03
  think, and like I had really helped kind of shape the
• 49:06
  business and, and sell a lot and kind of grow the business and
• 49:10
  did all the stuff that like LED them to believe that I was able
• 49:13
  to, to run it. But I think I was like 3032 or
• 49:18
  something when I took it over, it was like maybe 33.
• 49:21
  So it's like really had no business, you know, on paper
• 49:26
  doing it. But I was, you know, we, we had
• 49:31
  a great time. We completely redesigned the
• 49:32
  entire brand from top to bottom, got it profitable.
• 49:37
  It had not been profitable in a super long time and did a lot of
• 49:41
  really cool stuff and ended up, we ended up selling it to Hearst
• 49:44
  who owns it now. But it was like when I think
• 49:49
  about as well as it could go at the time and yeah, yeah.
• 49:53
  It was like a great learning experience.
• 49:55
  I mean, what a cool thing to be like handed this 62 year old
• 49:58
  brand that like meant so much to so many people, right.
• 50:02
  And like the people that you get to meet and talk to, like
• 50:04
  remember getting like a a fan letter from Alex's idiots, the
• 50:08
  Owl, Hot Rock kind of. This is the most surreal.
• 50:12
  He like liked a column that I read or wrote and they accept me
• 50:15
  a handwritten letter. I was like, this is, yeah,
• 50:18
  freaked me out, but it was like. I hope you framed it.
• 50:22
  Yeah, I've still got it for sure.
• 50:24
  It's but it was like, you know, it was like a old man scrawl
• 50:28
  sharpie marker, like each one inch inch tall.
• 50:31
  It was like. Yeah, you're like, OK, I'm gonna
• 50:33
  hold it up. Ransom letter or something?
• 50:35
  Yeah, well, at first I was like, oh, this guy's mad.
• 50:38
  Like just by looking at it, that's why are.
• 50:42
  You yelling, Sir? Yeah.
• 50:46
  The analog version of all caps. Yeah, maybe you just can't see
• 50:49
  as well, Sure. But but yeah, it was super cool.
• 50:54
  You know, I think like the, the Jalopnik thing too, it's one of
• 50:57
  those opportunities. Like obviously, like I said, I I
• 50:59
  grew up loving Jalopnik. I actually got offered that job
• 51:04
  pretty shortly after selling auto week after after Crane sold
• 51:09
  auto week. And I turned it down because I
• 51:12
  was, I've been hearing some things about the ownership and I
• 51:17
  had a bunch of conversations with some friends who were like
• 51:19
  close to it. And they were like, yeah, you
• 51:21
  know, this is tough, tough situation.
• 51:24
  And then I ended up getting on a call with Jason and David
• 51:30
  Torchinsky and, and David Tracy. And they were like, hey, we feel
• 51:36
  like they're going to hire somebody who does not get what
• 51:38
  Jalopnik is. And they're like, it is a tough
• 51:41
  situation right now, but like, we would really love it if you
• 51:44
  would take this and like just do it for a couple years so that it
• 51:48
  doesn't get ruined. And like, right, Which is a
• 51:53
  tough position to be in because it's like, you know, you go from
• 51:55
  auto week where it was like total free for all.
• 51:59
  Like you do whatever you want, you hire whoever you want.
• 52:02
  Like this is your thing to like, OK, let's try to keep this thing
• 52:06
  alive during during this period which like.
• 52:10
  Definitely a different challenge.
• 52:12
  Different vibe. Yeah.
• 52:13
  It's like a different, different challenge.
• 52:15
  And it ended up, you know, it's like the the people and this is
• 52:21
  we can get into this too. But I think like the, the
• 52:24
  company that owned Jalopnik was a private equity company and
• 52:28
  they have a three to five year time frame where they need to
• 52:33
  own the company, make a return and sell the company.
• 52:36
  And like, yeah, you know where at auto week, it's like you're
• 52:40
  looking for, how do you build a brand that people are going to
• 52:43
  be in love with for 20 years? And like you got these returned
• 52:46
  customers and like people like this brand means something to
• 52:48
  them or whatever. And it's like, just because of
• 52:51
  the nature of, of private equity and these kind of shorter term
• 52:56
  ownership, it's like they're, they are fundamentally in a
• 52:59
  different mindset, different business.
• 53:01
  They don't care what happens 10 years from now.
• 53:03
  And it's like, you know, it's like, it's like there's a you
• 53:08
  quote about like you can't blame the hawk for eating the rabbit.
• 53:11
  Like the hawk eats the rabbit. Like that's what it does.
• 53:14
  It's like, and that's what private.
• 53:15
  It's like, you know, it's like that's the system.
• 53:17
  It's. Out of the Swan.
• 53:18
  Love it. Yeah, Yeah, exactly.
• 53:20
  Yeah. Can't blame the Lindsay for
• 53:23
  ordering the swan, right? She does.
• 53:24
  Every time we go to a restaurant, she orders the swan.
• 53:27
  That's what I do. I don't love it, it's annoying
• 53:29
  but she does it every time so. What are you gonna do, guys?
• 53:32
  Yeah. We all have our own lanes, I
• 53:35
  just this is mine. Yeah.
• 53:37
  So what a position to be in though.
• 53:39
  Yeah, that's. Yeah.
• 53:40
  Wild. Yeah, it was.
• 53:42
  It was really interesting. I think like probably one of the
• 53:46
  most, you know, honestly really rewarding.
• 53:50
  Yeah. I got to do a bunch of cool
• 53:51
  stuff and I got to be in New York all the time, which was
• 53:53
  great. Yeah.
• 53:55
  And then got to help out with Gizmodo, too.
• 53:58
  Had like the most incredible staff at Gizmodo.
• 54:03
  It had the people who are now running it were like really,
• 54:09
  really smart and like have like absolutely blown up Gizmodo and
• 54:14
  it's like new iteration. It's like I think they're up
• 54:16
  like 400% in audience. Like they're making money.
• 54:19
  Like, it's a really great story. Amazing.
• 54:22
  Yeah. So it's like it was, it was, it
• 54:25
  was different challenge, but it was it was fun.
• 54:28
  And also like at Jlofnik, it's like at the end of the day, you
• 54:31
  do kind of get to write whatever you want.
• 54:33
  So it's like, you know, like that part of it was was very
• 54:37
  satisfying and I got to add up some cool stuff.
• 54:41
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was it's a different
• 54:42
  deal, but it it and it also like I am very proud of the fact that
• 54:46
  it survived. Like yeah, made it.
• 54:48
  True, like I think under your leadership truly and it was a
• 54:51
  launching pad for so many names that we know and love now,
• 54:54
  right? I mean, I think that all began
• 54:56
  under your. That that was, you know, there
• 55:00
  were there were certainly Jalopnik has always kind of been
• 55:02
  that place. But I think like one of the
• 55:03
  things that I've been most proud of is like, I think really
• 55:09
  reaching into like some obscure places to bring people into the
• 55:15
  business that I think are talented and good.
• 55:17
  It's like, that's like, it's like looking at the, who's the
• 55:21
  guy who's like the San Francisco coach who it was like the West
• 55:27
  Coast offense, like back in the 80s and you would look at his
• 55:30
  coaching tree and it was like every, every current NFL head
• 55:35
  coach had like some connection to this guy's bill.
• 55:38
  And it's like, that's, that's kind of like, I feel like that,
• 55:41
  you know, like, look around all these publications.
• 55:44
  You're like, Oh yeah. Like I, I heard that guy into a
• 55:46
  freelance thing or hired her to shoot some photos or whatever.
• 55:49
  And it's like so many people now come up to me and they're like,
• 55:51
  oh, you're my first paid whatever, like writing job or
• 55:55
  paid photography thing or whatever.
• 55:57
  And it's like, I don't remember that at all, but that's
• 55:59
  fantastic You. Are welcome, but yeah.
• 56:01
  Yeah, all. Started it all started there
• 56:04
  well and I mean I think without knowing it you were like molding
• 56:08
  yourself into the ultimate you know, Jalopnik editor because
• 56:12
  how many other people were they going to find who had the whole
• 56:14
  site memorized? That's true.
• 56:16
  Yeah, that's. True, I did.
• 56:18
  You're the guy. I did have a freakish dedication
• 56:21
  to Jalopnik at one point. The knowledge, yeah.
• 56:24
  Yeah, like I've. Been studying for this job most
• 56:27
  of my adult life. Yeah, yeah, I know everything.
• 56:30
  I know everything about Mike Spinelli.
• 56:31
  What do you want to? Know.
• 56:35
  Going away folk. Yeah, post.
• 56:37
  But Fast forward to 2025 and things have changed so much.
• 56:41
  Yeah, yeah. So we, we, we actually raised
• 56:45
  the money and we tried to buy Jalopnik.
• 56:47
  We had put all these ideas together, but like we would do
• 56:49
  differently and, and how we would how we would, you know,
• 56:54
  kind of rebuild it in our ideal world or whatever.
• 57:00
  And that ended up fizzling for reasons that I don't understand.
• 57:04
  I think they ended up selling it for way less than we were
• 57:08
  offering. Really.
• 57:11
  I think they but OK, I think they kind of 9th dimensional
• 57:15
  chest that we could, we could get into it, but it's it's a
• 57:17
  it's a very weird story where I was like, you know, the multiple
• 57:24
  points. Yeah.
• 57:25
  It's like what what is happening here?
• 57:27
  What is what are you trying to do?
• 57:29
  Can you tell me what you're trying to do and I'll help you
• 57:31
  do it? Yeah.
• 57:33
  You're like, I'm so fascinated. At the same time, I'm just.
• 57:35
  Yeah. I wish I wasn't involved with
• 57:37
  this because this would be so fun to watch.
• 57:41
  Yeah. But yeah, so we did that and
• 57:43
  then we got this opportunity to build our own thing in Alloy,
• 57:50
  which like through that Jalopnik process and then like through
• 57:53
  this early process with Alloy, like we really got a chance to
• 58:00
  interrogate the entire business model.
• 58:03
  And I think like going back to Auto Week and Jalopnik and then
• 58:08
  Gizmodo and kind of like seeing what's happening at different
• 58:12
  like bigger publishers outside of auto.
• 58:14
  Even we came to this conclusion that like the, the actual issues
• 58:19
  that are facing a lot of these publications are structural.
• 58:22
  And I think like they're all related to this, this early
• 58:25
  2000s business model, which is like massive audience and
• 58:30
  extremely low cost ads. And then like if you can get to
• 58:35
  a certain audience number, like even though you're not getting
• 58:38
  paid very much for individual like clicks, reviews or
• 58:41
  whatever, it adds up over time, which is like it, it doesn't.
• 58:47
  And it really hasn't for a very long time.
• 58:49
  I think like, you know, there was a, there was a tremendous,
• 58:52
  there's a period like in the early 2000, early aughts maybe
• 58:55
  where it's like, you know, Vox and Slate and all these like
• 58:58
  different companies were raising tons of money and they're like,
• 59:01
  oh, we have a billion dollar valuation.
• 59:03
  Like everybody has to get it. It's like AAI thing now.
• 59:05
  It's like every, it's like, it's like the metaverse or whatever.
• 59:08
  Remember that like 2 years ago or whatever.
• 59:10
  Yeah. So many years ago.
• 59:13
  Yeah, none of. It's.
• 59:14
  Real guys. Yeah, but it was it was the.
• 59:17
  I mean, I have a whole theory on why that's happening, but yeah,
• 59:21
  I'm just. Like, hey, we have time.
• 59:23
  There's just not a lot of places to put money anymore.
• 59:26
  So there's not a lot of like, you know, like you used to be
• 59:30
  able to buy bonds against the freeway or whatever, like
• 59:32
  highway projects you used to be able to buy like, but there's
• 59:37
  not a, there's not a lot of places that offer like big
• 59:39
  explosive returns. Yeah, Yeah.
• 59:41
  Back when we would invest in infrastructure, is that what
• 59:43
  you're saying, right? Yeah, yeah, that's right.
• 59:46
  But you used to do a lot of that.
• 59:47
  So I mean, rich people used to buy a lot of construction bonds
• 59:50
  and like, sure, municipal bonds and stuff.
• 59:53
  But now it's like I read something yesterday where it's
• 59:55
  like the entire economy is like NVIDIA and I forgot what the
• 1:00:01
  other company was investing in in AI and then reinvesting in
• 1:00:04
  data centers. And like it's like if one of
• 1:00:06
  those companies falters, like we are in such a bad position.
• 1:00:11
  But it's like every couple years you have to have like a hot
• 1:00:13
  thing to invest in. It's like, you know, it was
• 1:00:16
  blogs and then it was social media or maybe it was social
• 1:00:20
  media than blogs. Anyway, there's like a new thing
• 1:00:23
  that it's like crypto. NFT metaverse AI, like that's
• 1:00:28
  kind of like what is making the economy happen now, which is
• 1:00:32
  terrifying, but yeah, I remember that.
• 1:00:35
  But anyway, like. That was wild.
• 1:00:37
  Oh man, it was so fun. That was I was at RM Hawking and
• 1:00:41
  really there and I was like, guys, we can't we're going to
• 1:00:44
  get burned on this real bad and you're.
• 1:00:46
  Like this is going to go poorly. Just.
• 1:00:49
  This is, yeah. It's like this is not real.
• 1:00:51
  We can't put our name on this, but yeah, the, but yeah.
• 1:00:57
  So the, the, the, that era, I think like that, that kind of
• 1:01:03
  optimism about like, oh, if we can get to these mass numbers,
• 1:01:10
  then we can continue to grow and we'll like we'll figure out the
• 1:01:15
  profitability end of this eventually.
• 1:01:18
  And I think there were, there were a bunch of years kind of in
• 1:01:20
  that interim where it's like they, they were, you know, ad
• 1:01:23
  rates were higher. They were selling a lot of like
• 1:01:26
  direct and like sponsored content type stuff and you could
• 1:01:30
  kind of keep it afloat. And, and a lot of them did and a
• 1:01:32
  lot of them made a lot of money. But like we've been seeing for
• 1:01:35
  the last like 15 years this like slow or like it goes in big
• 1:01:40
  chunks. Like big layoff, everybody
• 1:01:43
  survives for another five years. Big layoff, everybody survives
• 1:01:46
  for the five years. But it's like, I remember having
• 1:01:49
  this conversation on Auto Week in 2015 or 16, but it's like
• 1:01:54
  every year they want more impressions and they want to pay
• 1:01:56
  less for them. Yeah, eventually this model
• 1:01:59
  exhaust. Itself, Yeah, it's sustainable.
• 1:02:02
  It's a race to the bottom and I think unfortunately that's kind
• 1:02:07
  of where we are now. And I think like if you look at
• 1:02:11
  the, the environment, you have, you know, these three kind of
• 1:02:15
  main constituencies in digital publishing, we have the
• 1:02:17
  publisher, you have the marketer slash advertiser or whatever.
• 1:02:21
  And then you have the reader. And it's like the, the
• 1:02:24
  experience as a reader is, as everyone knows, awful.
• 1:02:28
  Like if you go to try to read a website today, the ad
• 1:02:33
  experience, to say nothing of the content experience.
• 1:02:36
  I mean, there's, there's some, and this is, you know, I should
• 1:02:39
  say too, it's like everybody in this business from the ownership
• 1:02:43
  down to like the individual writers are, it's like, I'm sure
• 1:02:48
  some of the people on the ownership side are evil people.
• 1:02:50
  But like, I think most of them are trying to like make this
• 1:02:54
  work and putting a good faith effort into it.
• 1:02:58
  But I think like a lot of them are stuck in a cycle with this
• 1:03:01
  business model where, you know, you have to produce a bunch of
• 1:03:06
  kind of mass market, I would say like commodified content to get
• 1:03:13
  to a certain like SEO position to get to like a share of
• 1:03:17
  traffic that is going to like make this little tiny individual
• 1:03:24
  spend on each each ad. You know, like you can get to
• 1:03:28
  that size audience that's going to like eventually all those
• 1:03:30
  little pennies add up and then you get to a revenue number.
• 1:03:34
  And then you have you have the, the actual publisher kind of
• 1:03:40
  like they're, they're kind of facing that, that diminishing
• 1:03:45
  returns thing where it's like they're, they're making more and
• 1:03:48
  more traffic, they're making less and less revenue every
• 1:03:51
  year. But anyway, like, you know, if
• 1:03:53
  you're, if you're the reader, I was like, I could just digress
• 1:03:56
  for one second, but I was reading this like, sorry, it's
• 1:03:58
  like again, but I was reading this, I was reading this profile
• 1:04:03
  in, in GQ. It's a good magazine, I think.
• 1:04:09
  And I, it was this Walmart ad started showing up on the page
• 1:04:15
  and it would like hover over an entire like 2 paragraph block of
• 1:04:19
  text I have. And there's no, yeah.
• 1:04:23
  It's like no way to dismiss it. No way to.
• 1:04:25
  So you had to refresh the page to dismiss the ad and then you'd
• 1:04:29
  Scroll down a little bit more and it's two more paragraphs are
• 1:04:33
  covered by the wall and then you'd have to refresh it.
• 1:04:34
  It was like, hey, it's like, why is there a GQ at or a Walmart at
• 1:04:39
  on GQ? Like, right.
• 1:04:41
  It's like it doesn't flagship. Yeah.
• 1:04:42
  Question. Why is it broken in a way that,
• 1:04:46
  like makes it impossible to dismiss?
• 1:04:48
  And like, why is no one at GQ fix this?
• 1:04:51
  Like this is like, yeah, this is a miserable experience as a
• 1:04:54
  reader. The app, like Walmart doesn't
• 1:04:57
  want that ad on GQ. Like it's not doing anything for
• 1:05:00
  Walmart. They don't want to pay for that
• 1:05:02
  ad. And they don't want to be
• 1:05:03
  irritating you where your only experience of the brand is like,
• 1:05:06
  gosh, it was so annoying. That sucks.
• 1:05:08
  Yeah. I hate Walmart.
• 1:05:09
  It's like. You're paying to irritate people
• 1:05:11
  like. That, yeah, but like that,
• 1:05:13
  that's the experience of, of, of using the Internet now.
• 1:05:16
  And I think, like, you know, there, there are a lot of pages
• 1:05:19
  where it's like impossible to see what you're reading.
• 1:05:22
  And it's like you just, you give up.
• 1:05:23
  It's like, you know, Jalopnik was like that when I was there.
• 1:05:25
  There was like the number one complaint that we would get from
• 1:05:28
  readers. It's like it is physically hard
• 1:05:31
  for me to read this page. Like it's making my phone hot in
• 1:05:33
  my hands. Yeah.
• 1:05:34
  Because it's trying to load so much shit.
• 1:05:37
  And then you get those ones where it's like moving and like
• 1:05:40
  the ad is the fixed content and the article you're trying to
• 1:05:43
  read is the mobile it's. Scrolling.
• 1:05:45
  This is insane. It's madding.
• 1:05:47
  It's madding. And it's like, again, there's,
• 1:05:49
  there's, there's these, you know, the three constituencies
• 1:05:51
  are like, the publisher is not making enough money.
• 1:05:54
  The reader is having this incredibly frustrating
• 1:05:57
  experience that like, just really is like, we don't care
• 1:06:00
  about you at all, right? And then?
• 1:06:03
  The worst part of that's the message.
• 1:06:04
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:06
  And the the worst part too is like, if all that was true, you
• 1:06:09
  could have like an evil little business if the marketers were
• 1:06:11
  still like, OK, we'll pay for that.
• 1:06:12
  But like the marketers don't want to pay for it either.
• 1:06:15
  Like they don't like it either. And it's like one of the the
• 1:06:18
  discussions I had really early on with one of these marketers
• 1:06:22
  was like, we will continue to do this.
• 1:06:26
  It still makes sense for our business.
• 1:06:27
  Like we still sell, we still do like sales promotion stuff on
• 1:06:32
  there. But like we will pay exactly
• 1:06:36
  what we think it's worth, which is almost nothing.
• 1:06:38
  And it's like, so like all three people who are making this
• 1:06:42
  little industry happen hate it. Like this is the sucks for all
• 1:06:45
  three of them. Like every you ask anyone
• 1:06:47
  involved, they're like, yeah, this is terrible.
• 1:06:49
  Like I read websites, it's awful and so.
• 1:06:53
  Nobody's winning. Yeah, like no one's happy but
• 1:06:56
  but because of the way it's set up and because of the way these
• 1:07:00
  these companies operate, like they're only or like at least
• 1:07:05
  they're big source of revenue now is this display ads that are
• 1:07:09
  bought programmatically, you know, via a third party auction.
• 1:07:14
  And the idea of going into a boardroom or going to ownership
• 1:07:17
  and saying like, we should get rid of this part of it is like,
• 1:07:23
  might as well shut the whole thing down.
• 1:07:24
  Like it'd be really hard to do. It'd be really hard to like turn
• 1:07:27
  that ship. So like our position is if we
• 1:07:30
  start from here is start just building a reader experience
• 1:07:35
  where it's like, let's get something that readers are super
• 1:07:38
  excited about that looks good, that doesn't hurt your eyes,
• 1:07:41
  it's not distracting. Like all the things, you know, I
• 1:07:44
  think like on a content level, you, like I said, there's a lot
• 1:07:47
  of great stuff being written on almost any website that you can
• 1:07:51
  think of, regardless of the ad experience, regardless of who
• 1:07:55
  owns it or whatever. They're good journalists doing
• 1:07:57
  good work on on almost all those sites.
• 1:07:59
  But I think like the game that you have to play to rank in
• 1:08:05
  Google, the game that you have to play as far as we used to
• 1:08:10
  call the curiosity gap headline writing where it's like
• 1:08:15
  basically like a quick bait type thing.
• 1:08:18
  That's the official. I like that package term though
• 1:08:21
  for it. It's much more friendly.
• 1:08:23
  I don't know. Yeah, this is not clickbait.
• 1:08:25
  We're just creating a little curiosity gap.
• 1:08:27
  We're just. Engaging with our audience.
• 1:08:30
  Yeah, but I think like that's, you know, like building a 100
• 1:08:35
  page slideshow where like every slide reloads the ads on the
• 1:08:40
  page like hurts. It's just like you got to do
• 1:08:42
  that stuff because that's the business bond.
• 1:08:44
  Like that's like, you know, what I was saying about the the
• 1:08:46
  Jalopnik thing is it's like that's the model.
• 1:08:50
  And if you want to keep these companies afloat on that model,
• 1:08:55
  you are incentivized to do a bunch of stuff that you probably
• 1:08:58
  wouldn't do naturally. You know what I mean?
• 1:09:00
  You probably wouldn't say like this is valuable journalism.
• 1:09:03
  This is fulfilling to me as a writer.
• 1:09:05
  This is going to connect with a reader or whatever.
• 1:09:07
  It's just like, you know, it's like you wouldn't write the
• 1:09:10
  article that is, this is what your tire inflate tire pressure
• 1:09:17
  should be. That's just like meant to be a
• 1:09:20
  response to the Google query of what's my tire pressure supposed
• 1:09:23
  to be? You wouldn't do that like the
• 1:09:25
  entire that would. Be the entire focus of the
• 1:09:26
  article, yeah. Yeah, like you wouldn't, you
• 1:09:29
  wouldn't write that article. But it's like, so our our
• 1:09:33
  proposition is, is like I said, build, build this user
• 1:09:36
  experience, build this reader experience.
• 1:09:38
  And then it's like write stuff that readers are going to value
• 1:09:43
  and they're gonna feel like I, I learned something or I got
• 1:09:46
  smarter or whatever. So like we're lower, lower
• 1:09:48
  volume, we're a little bit, I think slower to the punch in in
• 1:09:54
  every case. But it's like I said, we're
• 1:09:58
  really trying to to really hit that next level of like, you
• 1:10:02
  know, the, the way that I've explained it before is like
• 1:10:05
  there's five people sitting around talking about like the
• 1:10:08
  new BMW M5 or whatever. One of those people knows what
• 1:10:11
  factory it's being built in. And like, that's the guy we want
• 1:10:13
  to talk to. Like that's the reason for us.
• 1:10:14
  It's like the the weirdo. And but it's like, you remember.
• 1:10:21
  Yeah, yeah. But it's just like you remember.
• 1:10:24
  You can all, everybody who has read car stuff can point to a
• 1:10:29
  moment reading an article where they were like, either that was
• 1:10:33
  the most entertaining thing I've ever read or I learned something
• 1:10:37
  that has stuck with me for the rest of my life.
• 1:10:40
  And it's like that's that should be the, you know, like what you
• 1:10:43
  aspire to as a publisher is like, yeah, yeah, producing
• 1:10:46
  something like that. So that's the plan.
• 1:10:49
  And then I think like, you know, we have some, we have some kind
• 1:10:53
  of creative ways to to bring in revenue.
• 1:10:56
  We have obviously like the regular stuff that everybody
• 1:11:00
  does, like the merch memberships, live events, like
• 1:11:03
  that kind of stuff. But I think like we're also
• 1:11:06
  offering like a quarterly sponsorship thing that has like
• 1:11:10
  been really well received by automakers.
• 1:11:12
  I think like, you know, our pitch is that you can, you can
• 1:11:17
  land a kind of suite of content on the site and we'll trickle it
• 1:11:22
  out like in the order that you wanted to, to trickle out.
• 1:11:24
  It's like the problem that a lot of marketers now are having is
• 1:11:27
  like used to be able to do like a campaign on social media where
• 1:11:32
  it's like we're releasing a new car, a new, new technology or
• 1:11:37
  whatever. And like over the course of six
• 1:11:38
  months, we'll like trickle this, this messaging out.
• 1:11:42
  But now everything is served algorithmically.
• 1:11:44
  They have no control over what order things come out.
• 1:11:47
  And it's like, you know, it's like totally jumbled, like if a
• 1:11:50
  reader would ever see it at all anyway.
• 1:11:52
  So it's like this solves that problem for them.
• 1:11:54
  It seems to be something people are really excited about.
• 1:11:58
  We'll see. I mean, it's like everybody's
• 1:12:00
  really excited in the pitch. You know, that's when it's check
• 1:12:04
  time. We'll see who's really excited.
• 1:12:05
  But but it's yeah, but it's been awesome.
• 1:12:09
  It's, I think like, you know, I, I guess my, you know, like I
• 1:12:16
  said, it's been very well received on the pitch side.
• 1:12:19
  Anytime I have an idea, there's like a six month period where
• 1:12:22
  you're like, how good of an idea could this be if I came up with
• 1:12:26
  it? And like, or if, like in this
• 1:12:28
  case, like Fernando, my partner came up with a bunch of the
• 1:12:30
  stuff. And it's like, if, if us like us
• 1:12:33
  2 morons think this is a good idea, like we're going to need
• 1:12:36
  some external validation for this.
• 1:12:40
  But we've gotten a lot of a lot of it.
• 1:12:41
  And I think like, you know, I'm sitting here and, and you guys
• 1:12:45
  are in the same position, but you, you're watching a lot of
• 1:12:49
  your friends and colleagues and people who you know and admire
• 1:12:53
  either getting laid off or having their like career
• 1:12:56
  prospects diminished or, or whatever.
• 1:12:59
  And it's like, you know, these are some of the most talented,
• 1:13:03
  hard working people that I've come across.
• 1:13:07
  And I feel like if someone doesn't try something different,
• 1:13:12
  really different, yeah, you know, then then it's like, it's
• 1:13:19
  almost like giving up, you know what I mean?
• 1:13:20
  Like if it's like we're gonna just keep banging our head
• 1:13:22
  against the same old model that everybody knows is failing.
• 1:13:25
  Yeah, everybody can feel it collapsing.
• 1:13:28
  Yeah. It's like somebody has to try
• 1:13:30
  something different. And like, yeah, yeah, if it
• 1:13:31
  doesn't work, it doesn't work. But you can't.
• 1:13:34
  You have to try. Like someone has to.
• 1:13:37
  Someone has to and, and maybe this is not the idea that like
• 1:13:42
  solves the problem, but it's like it's again, it's like you
• 1:13:47
  have to, you have to try something.
• 1:13:48
  And I think like, you know, like I said, for I feel really good
• 1:13:52
  about it. I feel like everybody who we've
• 1:13:54
  talked to has been excited and we'll see, see what happens.
• 1:13:58
  But yeah, it's. Give us an example of of your
• 1:14:03
  content, like what's What's something that's just going to
• 1:14:06
  kill on the new site? Yeah, I mean, that that'll be
• 1:14:09
  actually really interesting because I, I don't have a like
• 1:14:12
  Jalopnik, it took six months for me to figure out like what was
• 1:14:16
  really going to hit. OK.
• 1:14:18
  But we have, we have a bunch of really good stuff.
• 1:14:22
  Then I guess I, I can give you like the preview, but like Tim
• 1:14:24
  Stevens is writing something about OTA, like over the air
• 1:14:29
  updates and how like he was a gaming journalist in kind of the
• 1:14:34
  early 2000s and, and at the beginning part of his career.
• 1:14:38
  And he watched that process of like shipping unfinished
• 1:14:41
  products and then like updating them down the road, like ruin
• 1:14:44
  gaming in a way that it hasn't really recovered from.
• 1:14:48
  And he's like this, the pattern is like this yearly recognizable
• 1:14:54
  pattern with cars. And I think like I've had that
• 1:14:58
  experience. I've had other people like, you
• 1:15:00
  know, tell me that they're having the same experience and
• 1:15:03
  it was like Tim is Tim. And I think one of our things
• 1:15:07
  with this is like Tim is somebody who has genuine insight
• 1:15:10
  who can tell you because like he saw it first hand.
• 1:15:12
  And I think like for me, that is one that is going to be really
• 1:15:19
  useful information. I think it's going to be very
• 1:15:21
  illuminating. And I think we'll like 'cause
• 1:15:23
  some some discussion in the car business, we have a bunch of
• 1:15:27
  stuff like John Volkler. I don't know if you know John,
• 1:15:30
  but he's a brilliant. He's been following EVs since
• 1:15:34
  before anyone was following EVs. And I think like he's got a
• 1:15:39
  really cool piece coming about analyzing cash burn for all like
• 1:15:42
  the EV startups and like just figuring out kind of where they
• 1:15:46
  are, which is like. What the real story is, Yeah.
• 1:15:49
  Yeah, I mean really like I've seen.
• 1:15:51
  Before, I don't know what what that is where people stand and
• 1:15:54
  like kind of what you know. Yeah, and.
• 1:15:57
  Across the board to see, because I think we've all watched, you
• 1:16:01
  know, they're not all on the same cycle.
• 1:16:03
  And I think you sort of get like an article will come out and say
• 1:16:06
  like, all right, they have X amount of cash left or they have
• 1:16:09
  this many months left. But to see it all spelled out,
• 1:16:12
  especially from somebody who has lived that cycle in a different
• 1:16:15
  industry, would be fascinating. Yeah.
• 1:16:18
  And I think the, you know, our, our thing on this is like the
• 1:16:23
  gap that I see is like, again, because of like this, this
• 1:16:29
  programmatic and kind of display based model, it's like, it's
• 1:16:32
  very hard. And I saw this as an editor at
• 1:16:35
  Telopnik. So it's like I had people on
• 1:16:37
  staff who I, I think could write those types of pieces.
• 1:16:41
  But it's like, if my job is to get to 30 million page views or,
• 1:16:47
  or, or whatever impressions this month, it's like, do I want
• 1:16:51
  someone to take four days off to write this really good story
• 1:16:55
  that maybe, well, maybe, well, writer maybe won't.
• 1:16:57
  Or am I going to make them write up, you know, 10 posts about a
• 1:17:01
  viral about different viral videos or whatever.
• 1:17:03
  And it's like, that's an unfortunate calculation to have
• 1:17:06
  to make, But it's like that is that's kind of where I think the
• 1:17:11
  gap is in the the market is, is around that kind of stuff.
• 1:17:17
  I think like we also, you know, I like to talk a lot about like
• 1:17:21
  the journalism and like the analysis part of this.
• 1:17:24
  But I think like one of the things that like really
• 1:17:29
  differentiate differentiates us is like Fernando that the
• 1:17:32
  designer is a full time designer.
• 1:17:34
  He's creating custom art on the page.
• 1:17:37
  All the like, everything that goes up has these like
• 1:17:40
  incredible visuals. And I think like there's there's
• 1:17:44
  an opportunity to to like tell stories through visuals.
• 1:17:48
  That is also like, unfortunately, again, is like
• 1:17:51
  because of the way that car sets are made, if you go from car set
• 1:17:55
  to car set, you're going to see a lot of the same images because
• 1:17:59
  sure, it's just like, what did you get with the press packet
• 1:18:02
  for this press release and like get it up as quickly as possible
• 1:18:04
  and then you get a lot of the same stuff.
• 1:18:07
  So I think like I'm super proud and excited about the art and
• 1:18:10
  the level of like design thinking that's going into this.
• 1:18:17
  So, yeah, I think it's it's going to be very different.
• 1:18:19
  I will, I will say like the site is in beta now and I've been
• 1:18:23
  looking at it and say I've never seen anything that looks like
• 1:18:25
  this on the Internet before. It's like a totally different
• 1:18:28
  experience, which maybe people like or maybe they will hate it.
• 1:18:31
  I don't know, I think. There's a huge appetite for just
• 1:18:34
  that. Really.
• 1:18:35
  Yeah. Quality and like I liked the way
• 1:18:38
  that you described it and that it was, you know, news and
• 1:18:41
  analytics from like for the enthusiasts or kind of from the
• 1:18:44
  enthusiasts perspective. I think that has fallen by the
• 1:18:47
  way said like you were saying where you as the editor, your
• 1:18:51
  calculation is like, I have to get the clicks.
• 1:18:54
  Yeah. And that changes the content.
• 1:18:56
  And then the people that are sort of the true enthusiasts are
• 1:18:58
  like, where's the meat? And this sounds like.
• 1:19:01
  Yeah, I mean, and it gets tired. Of being talked down to, you
• 1:19:04
  know, I mean, that's. Yeah.
• 1:19:06
  Right, it's. That is that is like something I
• 1:19:09
  don't like to say, but it's like so many of the sites that you
• 1:19:12
  read, not just an automotive or whatever the the assumption.
• 1:19:15
  And I think like it's this way on social.
• 1:19:18
  It's this way in video too, but like the assumption is that the
• 1:19:20
  audience are idiots and it's like.
• 1:19:25
  And also doesn't like that they're not going to read beyond
• 1:19:28
  the headlines, so you don't really have to worry about it.
• 1:19:31
  Like there's not going to be that much attention to the
• 1:19:32
  actual article anyway. Yeah, that's just, it's like a
• 1:19:36
  not a nice way to start up your relationship of like, I assume
• 1:19:41
  you're not actually going to run this and I assume you're not
• 1:19:44
  going to understand it even if you did.
• 1:19:46
  So why am I bothering with you? Why?
• 1:19:50
  Don't we just end this now? Yeah.
• 1:19:51
  That's not nice at all, Yeah. Lomag.
• 1:19:57
  Yeah, it's lamag.com.com and it's, it's in beta.
• 1:20:02
  I think we like we have a soft targeted mind of like end of
• 1:20:06
  October, OK. But it this like, because this
• 1:20:10
  is a extremely like high risk situation where it's like it's
• 1:20:14
  got to deliver on all this crazy stuff that I just told you like.
• 1:20:19
  We will not. Yeah, we will.
• 1:20:21
  We will not push it until it's right.
• 1:20:23
  So like, it's it I think or? Should you?
• 1:20:26
  Yeah. Yeah, I think we're we're still
• 1:20:29
  gonna be like that last week in October to go live.
• 1:20:33
  But you know, caveat of I can always hold it back if if we
• 1:20:38
  need to keep tweaking it, but I think you can keep up with it.
• 1:20:40
  We have an Instagram page up where we're up upgrading or
• 1:20:45
  updating regularly at Alloy under score Mag and there was a
• 1:20:53
  newsletter sign up, but that's now down because we're we've
• 1:20:56
  pushed the site live behind a password.
• 1:20:59
  So like that our sign up sheet is now behind the password as
• 1:21:02
  well. But yeah, should be a couple
• 1:21:05
  weeks. Excellent.
• 1:21:06
  And I will see what happens. There's a great manifesto, for
• 1:21:09
  lack of a better term, on Instagram, right, that scrolls
• 1:21:12
  through like, Star Wars, right? And really talks about what?
• 1:21:15
  You're doing what you're. All about that, I think really
• 1:21:16
  sums it up well. So check that out.
• 1:21:19
  Good place to, yeah. For now, yeah.
• 1:21:20
  That's like how you know you're dealing with a crazy person when
• 1:21:24
  they say manifest. It wasn't in Sharpie, Rory, so.
• 1:21:28
  Got that, Yeah. No, it's true.
• 1:21:29
  That's true. That's it.
• 1:21:30
  I. Did crazy good.
• 1:21:32
  You know it's hyphenated. It's.
• 1:21:34
  It looked weirder when I did it, but Fernando Vander.
• 1:21:37
  Yeah. So it's Alloy under Score Mag on
• 1:21:41
  Instagram. Instagram.
• 1:21:42
  Yep. OK.
• 1:21:44
  And there will be did you say there will be subscription
• 1:21:47
  options? Or yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:21:49
  We've got a bunch of different subscription options, one of
• 1:21:52
  which comes I think is gonna come with me making a custom car
• 1:21:58
  out of steel by hand. So please really think about if
• 1:22:02
  you want me to, how many of those you want me to be making?
• 1:22:04
  I like, I put it in there. And Fernando was like, Are you
• 1:22:07
  sure about that? And I was like, yeah, yeah, I've
• 1:22:09
  got to do it. So I.
• 1:22:11
  Feel like this is like the story of the the Bombas founder where
• 1:22:14
  he's like, when we sell, you know, X 1000 pairs, I'll get a
• 1:22:17
  tattoo of Bombas and like guess who now has a tattoo of Bombas?
• 1:22:20
  Yeah, that's another. Option for your memory?
• 1:22:23
  Yeah, I mean, I will be very happy if we sell that many, but
• 1:22:26
  it will not be very happy making little tiny scale cars with my
• 1:22:31
  welder that will I actually tattoo.
• 1:22:35
  So remember the the Volks, the Volkswagen thing where they said
• 1:22:39
  that they were going to change the name to Volkswagen on April
• 1:22:42
  1st and everybody fell for it. I wrote it out of Collins
• 1:22:46
  Lofnick that said if they actually change their name to
• 1:22:49
  Volkswagen, I will drive to Herndon, VA, Volkswagen's
• 1:22:54
  headquarters and get a tattoo like at Volkswagen of a
• 1:22:58
  Volkswagen. Like I'll get the Volkswagen
• 1:23:00
  logo tattooed on my person somewhere.
• 1:23:03
  And everybody got so mad at me because of course I was right.
• 1:23:09
  And, and everybody else had had it confirmed by by Volkswagen
• 1:23:13
  PR. But yeah, it was it was not a
• 1:23:16
  not a good weekend in the the publishing chats for me as we're
• 1:23:22
  so mad. Anyway, sorry another.
• 1:23:24
  Decoration US Gate is the moral of the story clean.
• 1:23:27
  As the whistle we got. You're right.
• 1:23:31
  Oh my gosh. Well, we're so excited for
• 1:23:34
  Alloy. And like I, I know at least for
• 1:23:37
  this corner of the Internet, we're very I think it's gonna
• 1:23:40
  fill, you know, the enthusiast needs and wants that we've all
• 1:23:44
  been sort of like wishing for. So I'm super.
• 1:23:48
  Excited, yeah, if, if we can, you know, if you can build a
• 1:23:51
  sustainable publishing business on the Internet in 2025, you
• 1:23:55
  really did something. I think like that's our goal and
• 1:23:58
  we, you know, we don't have, you know, huge ambitions to be the
• 1:24:04
  next billion dollar company, but I think like we can do it the
• 1:24:08
  right way and really respect our our readers and our partners.
• 1:24:11
  I think we can build something that people really value and I
• 1:24:15
  think that's that's the goal. So we'll see, yeah.
• 1:24:18
  It's a winning endeavor when you get that valuation.
• 1:24:20
  We'll celebrate with the meal of Swan.
• 1:24:23
  Right, gotta get a swan tattoo. Only the freshest swan.
• 1:24:28
  You know this is endangered, right?
• 1:24:30
  It doesn't. Makes it taste a little better.
• 1:24:32
  Yeah. Be quiet.
• 1:24:35
  We're celebrating. Come on.
• 1:24:36
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:24:38
  I love it. Well.
• 1:24:38
  On that note. Yeah, I know.
• 1:24:39
  I was gonna say. Yeah.
• 1:24:43
  Where can we find you on Instagram, obviously.
• 1:24:46
  LOA. Under Score Mag and the website
• 1:24:50
  is just LOA. Magloamag.com no under score and
• 1:24:53
  then I'm on Instagram at Rory under score Carol and I think
• 1:24:58
  all the other ones are Rory under score Carol too.
• 1:25:01
  I have like a dead Twitter account.
• 1:25:04
  You and most of the other. You know, I used to have a lot
• 1:25:08
  of fun on there, but I just don't find myself doing it as
• 1:25:11
  much. Yeah.
• 1:25:12
  I feel like Joel, when we had Joel Feder on, he was saying the
• 1:25:15
  same thing, like that was when he got his start and you know,
• 1:25:17
  it was a good launchpad. Yep, yeah, I know for sure.
• 1:25:22
  RIP Yeah, but yeah, yeah, I I really appreciate you having us
• 1:25:27
  on or having me on and love talking about download, but I
• 1:25:31
  yeah, yeah, me and Fern. Yeah, but yeah.
• 1:25:35
  We're so excited for you guys and can't wait to check it out.
• 1:25:39
  And you know, we wish you an amazing launch.
• 1:25:42
  So we will be we'll be keeping an eye on the Instagram account.
• 1:25:46
  Excited for the launch, soft and otherwise, and and.
• 1:25:50
  Please come back, you know. Yeah, I will do it.
• 1:25:53
  OK. Let me know whenever you need a
• 1:25:55
  late ad. Yeah, I.
• 1:25:57
  Appreciate that. Yeah, this was really fun.
• 1:25:59
  Well, thank you. So much 15 minutes notice.
• 1:26:01
  Yep. Thank you and.
• 1:26:03
  Like and go, we're started recording 10 minutes ago.
• 1:26:06
  Can you join? US, yeah.
• 1:26:09
  Yeah. Well, on that note, it was such
• 1:26:11
  A to have you on and we're excited for what you're doing
• 1:26:14
  and, you know, look forward to enjoying it.
• 1:26:17
  And we're that car show, so always be driving and we'll see
• 1:26:22
  you next week.